i was going thru ur blog and u have good posts about ableist aus and i was wondering - what if in the aus the requirements for warriors were different? Like instead of having to fight jay only hunts? Would the muddling of roles still be ableist? In a Tree-like situation?If its not presented in a "work super hard to get what you want" and more in a "yeah they can decide what he wants to do". This is mostly for jay (and cinder) specifically because they had desires to be warriors yet were forced to be medicine cats because of ableism (ig this can apply to briar but i just truly cant remember oots that well and i havent read her death). I am asking because i am still trying to unlearn the ableist mindset that i grew up with. Feel free to ignore this ask and thnx!

hey yeah thank you for asking! took the opportunity to write up more general thoughts on rewrites as a whole and i went over why exactly theyre ableist hopefully that provides a better perspective

i think the major thing to keep in mind is that the structure of the clans is very abled centric and overly ignorant of inner community work (for example dens are only solidified or altered when either the area takes damage/the clans grows wrt population) theres a fixation on marking territory and starting fights and whatever with other clans which is whats expected of most warriors to partake in. to fix those implications in any fanwork youve really gotta knead into them and understand the nature of their ableism....its not just a problem with cats being barred from being warriors its the whole occupation and the standard its held to, so to speak (+ that fits into general clan society being flawed but eh thats another thing and also its easy to branch out into thought about)

going to stress other disabled people might have other solutions to how disabled cats are received this is just how i like to think of things

first i think its kind of interesting to examine discrepancies between disabled cats in canon as somewhat of an indicator of clan attitudes and leaders and whatnot. like i think you could get something interesting by regarding lets say deadfoot in windclan and cinderpelt in thunderclan who both have bad legs yet had different experiences with them in clan life. if you wanna go a step further comparing generations like lilywhisker and deadfoot or cinderpelt and jayfeather (+ the consideration of how congenital disabilities are regarded) can also make things interesting and just give you an idea of what to do. having the clan systems stray from a clear-cut common attitude both gives you more freedom for different approaches + adds to worldbuilding anyway. imo boiling down clan society to perfect utopia just gets boring but you can have imperfections in the system that depict the disabled experience just fine. just be careful with them and the way they come across yeah?

(real quick as an in between. god just dont refer to cats/their injuries as crippled. it still happens somehow)

im a little ambivalent on the idea of creating a ‘special role’ for disabled cats to be thrown into. cause then thats a repeat of canon medicine den really. its like ‘oh youre disabled youre instantly discarded into the x role pit’ i think just adding substantial in-universe changes to the warrior rank itself (vagueness is fun actually) or expanding on ‘warrior types’ rectifies the othering angle. ‘othering’ as a whole is just as bad as the ‘exception’ archetype people run for most warrior aus i want to state that clearly. effectively if youre gonna introduce roles that dont depend on fighting or hunting or both make sure theres abled cats who have them too. like say you want a camp-based role where a cats job is to fix dens or one where they help in the nursery, its far easier for a cat who cant run to manage those but also have some cats who are physically capable of doing other ‘tasks’ do the same thing for personal reasons

the tree comparison is interesting honestly cause i guess you could just give a cat a particular thing to do as a nonfixed position. and roles accordingly being made for a cat to fill until they cant and the positions done away with afterward. but youve gotta do it carefully so you dont fall into othering as ive said. id avoid something like that personally i just dont like the quality of ‘well theyre not a warrior (the most noble/useful concept in cat society) theyre actually some other thing’

in general giving disabled cats agency and choice is the best thing you can do. whether this means them deciding on tasks they can do themselves or picking a certain kind of warrior to be or asking for an assistant to help them out when they do stuff. the way you wanna pull it off again depends on my first question of “how does the relevant part of your warrior cat world treat disabled cats already”

very important point, the majority of the ableism also comes in the form of character narratives and not just the structure of the world itself. like think for a bit why the writers decided jayfeather shouldve been forced to be a medic or why briarlight got killed off early etc etc. characters ‘wanting’ to be like the abled ideal and still being bitter about not fulfilling that years down the line are just part of the ableist storylines. if youre abled id literally say just do away with those sadstuck ‘i wanted to be a warrior!’ moments. if you really want to id say pull a cinderpelt or a shadowsight where a cats time in the medicine den started their fascination with medicine and they switched to that path due to personal intrigue. id say a more interesting and realistic angle to it is having a disabled cat who found fulfilment in doing something else besides being a warrior becoming bitter about their entire clan ‘mourning’ how theyll never fight again or giving them the pretence of being a warrior being the best thing you can do.... it depends on the character really

this is just a very basic disability thing but stray from the whole ‘useless/dead weight’ way of regarding disabled characters. like dont place their worth on how well they service a clan or not theyre still deserving of shelter and whatnot. you dont need to justify a cats existence or usefulness by going ‘well they may be blind but their sense of smell is excellent so we keep them around’ or whatever its just no good

last thing i can think of is like. dont disregard how a cats disability affects them. like its fine that briarlight cant fight (or even hunt major types of prey) she doesnt need some convoluted method that lets her do that. there are like a dozen other warriors hunting and fighting and theres present value and enjoyment in the stuff she does around camp. she doesnt have to be brightheart 2 its ok

how old is ash on yours au’s?

It really really depends and I’m finding out that I’m absolutely horrible at actually giving out somewhat concrete ages, barring a few Au’s.

Unspokenly Ash is usually around late 20 to very early 22, unless I did write down and post an age for him in what ever Au has it, but thats also more drabble and fillet based. That is… basically my standard and I really need to vocalize that more from the content that I do write him as younger.

Basically how it goes is that with each region he ages up a year. Spending his birthday at home with his mom and the Oak’s that are present at the time before going off on another adventure. This gets kind of tricky around Sinnoh because Ash stay’s there to take on The Brain. I have that written down that it takes 3 month’s to even half a year. Which then put’s off the ‘sharing the birthday with mom and oak’ thing. This lands his birthday in the middle of his current journey at the time or a bit later like right before the league or a month before, if that makes sense. So in the end he comes home obviously older. Though I have been messing around and making the time in Orange Isles shorter to around 9 months instead of a full year.

Like here’s a time table and I’ll keep both set’s of ages if I do mess around with Orange Isles time line and add it as concrete. It gets really complicated so if you want a little more explanation please don’t be afraid to ask. I am also keeping the Brain Arc to half a year.

Starting age to finishing age *0/12 means how many months he is instead of a full year.

Kanto: 10 to 11

Orange Isles: 11 to 12 or 11 to 11 + 9/12

Johto: 12 to 13 or 11 + 9/12 to 12 + 9/12

Hoenn: 13 to 14 or 12 + 9/12 to 13 + 9/12

Sinnoh: 14 to 15 or 13 + 9/12 to 14 + 9/12

+ battling the Brain: 15 to 15 + 6/12 or 14 + 9/12 to 15 + 3/12

Unova: 15 + 6/12 to 16 + 6/12 or 15 + 3/12 to 16 + 3/12

Kalos: 16 + 6/12 to 17 + 6/12 or 16 + 3/12 to 17 + 3/12

Alola: 17 + 6/12 to 18 + 6/12 or 17 + 3/12 to 18 + 3/12

Galar: 18 + 6/12 to 19 + 6/12 or 18 + 3/12 to 19 + 3/12

I just want to say that typing all this out looks like one hell of a long ass math equation, kinda hate it and might change it later. But this is my completely basic format of what I use. Of course there’s a lot of wiggle room as I write Ash starting around 20 to 21 in Alola and Galar. He’s obviously going to probably spend more the one complete year in a region and less then another. The end of the league doesn’t dictate when he stays and leaves. Theres also the months that build up between each “arc”, another word I use to refer to his journeys, and to account the HC that some leagues start off at wildly different times then others.

It’s literally just a pick-and-pull basket and just a large general target where Ash would be ages wise. As you see in the end the two different age lists end up being only 3 months part from each other. It really doesn’t matter and I’m mostly just playing around with it. Another note thats… vital isn’t the correct word but I’m use it is that I don’t take Cerise Laboratory and the research assistant job into account. This is based off if Ash travels Galar to his normal standard with every other arc but Alola but I did keep the characters.

You didn’t ask for this but I want to add in other traveling buddies and side rivals ages and how they are compared to Ash as well. Usually Ash is the youngest if not one of them up until Hoenn. With the exception of being exactly 24 hours older then Ritchie. And all of this have way to much detail but its making my ADHD brain go brrrr happily.

He’s older than May, surprisingly, by like a month and a half but he doesn’t realize that and mentally clocks that he’s younger than her because of how responsible and adult like she acts a good chunk of the time. Max is obviously the youngest while Brock is the oldest. The same thing kinda happens in Sinnoh. He’s older then Dawn by a good year and a half to maybe even two years. Though Ash is younger then Paul and Barry by a varying few months between each boy.

Unova is where it changes a lot. Going from one of the youngest to one of the oldest out of his group of friends. Iris is drastically 3 years younger then Ash, making her around 12 at the start of the arc and somewhere around 13 at the end, and around 3 and a half with Cilan. This causes her to constantly pick against Ash because to her he’s older. Ash should be acting more like a seasonal trainer with known responsibilities and shouldn’t be so excited about everything. That’s also an expectation that was subconsciously taught to her by Drayden when she was still in School in the Dragon Village. Virgil is actually the oldest being freshly turned 18 years old while Cameron is the youngest at 11 and 5 months. Stephan is like the closest to Ash’s actually age but also acts a lot more older and more adult like then he really is just by his laid back attitude. Bianca actually just turned 18 before starting her journey.

Age Note: the reason why Cilan is weird and awkward around Burgundy is not because of her short temper and brash attitude but because Burgundy just turned 13 years old. She is a legitimate child just like Iris, compared to Cilan’s 16 years and 6 months when the meet on the road for the first time and not at a connoisseur event. Her deep infatuation and how young she is really puts Cilan in a active land mine field. Unlike Iris who listens to him and actually talks, he has no clue how to interact with her. Burgundy isn’t a normal gym challenger coming to his and his brother gym for a badge or even a normal crazed simple fan. As a gentleman at heart as well he raised to talk between certain age limits close to his own and this ends up making Cilan see Burgundy actually younger then she really is. Kind of like how Iris clocked Ash as a ‘kid’ when he’s obviously older then her and more experienced.

Kalos then thrusts Ash or being the oldest out of the main group but not as a whole. Bonnies around 8 while Clemont is 2 months and a half younger then Ash. This is where I struggle a lot in placing peoples based age in Kalos is actually because of Serena. I don’t want to make her too young to which the point it’s weird and also I based the other contest girls age’s around hers. But I also don’t want to make her too old to the point that Miette, the oldest out of the contest girls no matter what, is older then Ash. The general consensus is that Miette is right in with Clemont and Ash age wise while Nini is the youngest out of the trio. So that places Serena around 13 to 14 while Nini is like 12 and 7 months. Sawyer is obviously just turned 10 while Trevor, Tierno, and Shauna are between 12 and a half to 13 and a half years old. Giving that easy bonding connection with Serena and Shauna while giving Miette a older more experienced vibe and the childlike wonder to Nini. You’d think with Alain and all Ash would be the second oldest but your wrong. Ash is exactly 1 whole week older then Alain but, much like May, he doesn’t know that and mentally clocks Alain older then he really is.

In comes Alola and this is again where I usually bump Ash up to 20 to 21 but for the sake of everything I’m going off the basic target. Ash is obviously the oldest of the class by a good year on them alone though the classes collective smarts pushed them up different grades in school so thats how their together. Kiawe was the oldest at 16 and 9 months while Sophocles is still the youngest at 12 and 3 months, again bringing in the fact that the class is super smart and its based off intelligence instead of age like with every other class. Mallow is the third oldest at 16 and 2 months with Lana following on by at 16 and 1 month. Lillie is specifically around 15 years to 13 years and 4 months based off if I want her to suffer more as a older teen or as a child, literally her age is based off if I want to traumatize her more or not. Hapu is around 12 to 13 years old despite her obvious size and squeaky-ish voice. Acerola despite being very very mature for her age is only 17 years and 4 months old. Horacio is about Ash’s age at an even 17 years old when he and his lackies first meet Ash, Sophocles, and Kiawe.

Age Note: Horacio absolutely used his age as a card against Sophocles as many times as he could to the point it was so overused. This made Ash especially angry because he hated it when people used their age against much younger kids. Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you’re right.

Then we reach Galar as our final stop. Ash is once more the oldest out of him, Chloe, and Goh but not everyone else. That would be Hodge at a straight 19 years old when he first meets Ash and Goh at the Battle Frontier Flute Cup. Chloe comes at 14 and a half years old with Goh just freshly turning 14. This makes Ash’s relationship more of a mentor type distant older brother thing. Those two actually don’t find out about Ash’s age up until he and Goh get their letter so of recommendation and have to fill out the normal personal stuff. If you think Hop is close by in age with Ash then you’re wrong again. He’s actually two days younger then Chloe making Hop around 14 and a half years old as well. Marine is 13 years and 9 months old. Bede is much more closer to Ash then the others at 16 years 8 months. For Leon, Raihan, and Sonia their still very much the same in a way. Leon is still the youngest at 20 years while Raihan is the oldest at 23, leaving Sonia in the middle at 21 and a half years old.

Age note… once more: this fits perfectly for the Kanto and Galar Trios as they basically get opposite of themselves in a way. Goh who’s very oriented, loud, and on the go gets paired with marine who’s very quite and shy for the most part and their going to subconsciously teach each other that its okay to come out of your shell or its okay to take a moment and relax. Hop is very much like Ash and Goh combined with the strategies and the none stop puppy own straight crack like energy and he declares himself as Chloe’s, who’s silent and very critical and almost broody like it’s not quite there but it’s close enough, rival and is trying to teach her that battling is fun and okay and a lot of Pokemon like battling for those reason. Ash and Bede are the obvious choice for each other because once again Ash is very bright, happy-go-lucky, just sweet in general to everyone while Bede is completely broody, extremely sour, and just utterly rolling in his own image and being way to cocky.



in regards to the aoex pride post i made last month, here are my personal headcanons as to why i think those are their sexuality’s! ( also thank you to @johnannepeterric for asking about this as i’ve been waiting to share these for a hot minute!!)

rin:

sexuality + gender identity:gay and trans(ftm)

reason: i don’t think he exactly cares for the concept of gender and sexuality but just thinks people should be allowed to like and be whoever they want. he knew he was in the wrong body since he was a little kid but never knew how to phrase it till later on in life. as for on screen reasons, he tends to cover up quite a bit before and after becoming a demon as well as tending to wear baggy clothes to hid his form. not to mention he has very poor posture which most transmasc people (myself included) tend to do when we can’t bind or don’t feel masculine enough. and i think he’s gay mostly due to the fact that he’s never really shown to have any friendships outside of the exwires and tends to get his platonic and romantic affections mixed up quite a bit (as to explain why i still headcanon this after the manga and his confirmed feelings towards shiemi)

yukio:

sexuality: bisexual

reasoning: he seems to show and equal amount of emotions to his colleagues and to the exwires and im like 90% sure he doesn’t really talk about romantic through the manga/anime at all. i think he’s always known he’s liked both genders since he was young. shiro seems like he was very accepting and i honestly think he would’ve helped both the boys with their sexuality’s and gender since he didn’t get the freedom to express that stuff when he was younger due to you know ‼️‼️(SPOILERS) ‼️‼️ literally being a clone made in a lab. yukio seems the type to not really care about gender when it comes to romance and instead look for traits like personality and motivations. his friendships are most based on him genuinely liking the person rather than keeping up with his appearance as someone who’s quite popular. this could possibly lead to the same being transferred over to his romantic bonds.

shiemi:

sexuality: lesbian

reason: like rin, she tends to get romantic and platonic affection mixed up from not having friends till high school. there’s a bit in the manga where izumo brings over some romance novels to try and help shiemi out with figuring out her feelings. we all know most romance novels don’t exactly have the best explanation for feeling so i think that’s where shiemi got mixed up. she gets her admiration for rin mixed up with romantic feelings when in reality, she’s not into him. we can also use the garden scene from kyoto arc as some reasoning to this headcanon. izumo called shiemi a weed and she surprisingly takes this “insult” very well and even thanks izumo for the interaction. even later in kyoto saga, we see shiemi use even more of her power to save izumo from the miasma. she clearly cared a lot about izumo and basically wore herself down to the the brink of exhaustion trying to dave izumo herself when she could have easily run and got help from another exorcist. sheimi seems to care deeply about her friends but shows more concern to izumo than any other exwire (minus rin and yukio).

shima: ‼️‼️ HIS WHOLE HEADCANON REVOLVES AROUND MANGA SPOILERS SO THATS A HEADS UP‼️‼️

sexuality: gay

since he found out about izumo from the illuminati, he never really had a “crush” on her per say, but showed an unromantic interest in her due to her past and just wanted to know more about her. since he had kinzou around him as a kid, i think that played a huge part in him hiding that he was gay (just bc kinzou is a huge perv and probably pushed some of that onto him). that could also lead to the reasoning as to why he’s so pushy with izumo. he’s trying to convince himself he liked women by trying his hardest to like izumo. the kinzou thing is the only thing really leading to me believing this but an alternative reason could also be a fear of changing his personality this late on when both suguro and koneko have known him to be a certain way since he was young. he’s shown to have this perverted personality since he was quite young and it’s even mentioned in an extra concerning why suguro and koneko use his last name and not his first. these two factors lead me to believe his attraction to izumo and subsequently, his attraction to women, is just a lie he’s putting on.

koneko:

sexuality + gender identity: pansexual and genderfluid

reason: koneko is shown to have a deep love and care for the people around him and i think that not only applies to him with friendship, but with romance as well. like yukio, he tends not to focus on the gender of the person perusing him, but rather their intention, personally, and motivations. he wants to know if his partner is a good person rather than their gender. gender wise, i just don’t think he cares. it’s not explicitly shown but it can be heavily implied when he talks to rin about why he has a hard time trusting him after the “son of satan “ reveil happens. for gender identity, i think i as a kid, he was commonly referred to by most pronouns since he wasn’t exactly the most “boy looking” when he was young. later on he learned he didn’t exactly mind what gender people perceived him as but rather how they perceived him as a person. there’s no canon information for the genderfluid headcanon but again, these are my personal headcanon, they don’t exactly have to make sense.

suguro:

sexuality + gender identity: gay and trans (ftm)

reason: this one is mostly me projecting onto this man so if it doesn’t exactly make sense, y’all know why! but he’s shown to be quite affectionate to rin in both the manga and the anime. he doesn’t really tend to do that too much to other people, especially the women that are around him. he probably has some sort of crush on rin or at least some form of admiration to him. as for his gender identity, this is literally just me projecting. that’s it. but i think he does show some signs that i tend to show as a trans person ( the one example i can name off the top of my head is that he seems pretty insecure when shima and koneko brought up his body before he started working out and hates mentions of his body in general ). like rin, he tends to have very poor posture and also doesn’t wear form fitting clothes and this is especially prominent in official art.

izumo:

sexuality: lesbian

reason: she has a very deep relationship with paku and shiemi after the events of the manga take place. she never shows this same connection with any one else throughout the series. she gets severely worried once paku leave cram school and is shown to be quite empty after this happens. ‼️‼️SPOILERS‼️‼️ the same thing happens once shiemi leaves cram school as well and is taken by her family to go train. she seems to be deeply affected by these two events and even goes as far as to show the others her concerns after the thing with shiemi happens. after she ‼️SPOILERS‼️ gets kidnapped by the illuminati and winds up the the hospital, shimei is the first person she lets see her true emotions and feelings and doesn’t once make a comment on her being some kind of hindrance. we also see her show quite a bit of empathy towards shiemi when in kyoto. there’s a scene where they two are gardening and she calls shiemi a weed. she’s very much plays into a tsudere type roll in the beginning but this seems more like a backhanded compliment rather than trying to be a jerk to her. both of the girls receive this interaction in a positive way. we also can use the scene where shiemi saves izumo as a reason for this as well. izumo shows a genuine concern for shiemi both during and after her being stuck in the miasma. even when they go to the hot springs, she seems to have this perpetual blush while looking at shiemi. these all lead me to think she has some sort of feelings toward both paku and shiemi, leading me to headcanon her as a lesbian.

shura:

sexuality: lesbian

she was basically born just so she could produce a child to fuel some demons deep desires. her unhealthy attachment to shiro can be explained by this. i think this is the case for all the “attraction” she showed towards him as a young girl. all her life she’s been told she has to have kids with a man and that’s was her purpose for a long time. thus why i think she’s a lesbian. she never shows any real attraction to a man throughout the entire series besides the man who saved her as a child. she never talks about men till after her character arc in the manga and even then, it seems she just wants to live the rest of her life differently than before and doesn’t exactly seem too enthusiastic about finding a husband as it’s never mentioned again after that point. she really only seems to show an “attraction” to men when it’s useful to her. she uses her looks and charm to get what she wants when it comes to men. she has this facade she puts on where she acts innocent and cute and uses her looks to her advantage. she never truly shows an actual attraction to a man.

mephisto:

sexuality + gender identity: gay and genderfluid

reason: i don’t think any of the demon kings are cis. like not even remotely. they all have to take on different forms and have taken on many in the past. as long as it’s a body, they’re basically fine with whatever. mephs past forms are never shown but we can assume he’s taken on many different body’s in the past as well. after all this body hopping and the fact that gender is literally a thing made up by humans, i don’t think meph really cares about the forms he takes and how his gender is perceived. he knows he’s a powerful demon and could easily destroy the knights of the true cross if he wanted too so gender is the last thing he really cares about. as for sexuality, nothing on screen really points to anything but he tends to show more affection to the men on screen than the women. in fact, the only women we see him really interact with (that i can remember) is shura and we all know how they feel about each other. even though those two both “flirt” with one another, these seem to be more so parts of their personality’s rather than them both having an interest in each other. his “flirting” with shura seems to be more taunting her and displaying his absolute discard for human problems.

amaimon:

gender identity: agender

reason: just like meph, amimon had possessed(?) many different forms over the course of their existence. we even see him take on a rather feminine presenting form when they were destroying the earth. but unlike meph, he is less fluid in terms of gender and instead, prefers to not identify with one. she does use all pronouns and doesn’t exactly care on that front but i think there’s certain terms and compliments they don’t exactly like. meph does use gendered terms with amimon, but these two seem to be very close and have probably communicated this before as well. like koneko being genderfluid, there’s no definitive evidence to support this claim other than these are my own headcanons and i can do what i want.

How did you get into Arthurian legend? I don't know where to start!

hi omg sorry for getting to this late but uh i alwaysss recommend my mutual @/gringolet's post on an intro to arthuriana which covers most of it but hmmm if you're asking me how i went about it i started semi chronologically with uh some early arthurian adjacent docs irt to subroman britain (i dont recommend this. dont do this have fun) and made my way up to historia regum britanniae (i do recommend this one but you can just read the arthurian parts if you dont want to read anything else lol..) also i recommend reading other pseudohistories! layamon's brut and historia gentis scotorum are my favs but wace's roman de brut is good as well..then when you get to romances most famously there are the romances of chretien de troyes. my favorite is lancelot, knight of the cart but it is...a lot. yvain, knight of the lion is also very good i recommend that as well. perceval, or the story of the grail is unfinished so fair warning but there are lots of other grail narratives if thats your thing (my personal favorites are parzival, peredur fab effrawg, and the didot perceval. i really like perceval stories lol) also theres the epigonal romances and like thats an entire thing in itself but my favorite of all of them has to be meraugis de portlesguez it is so entertaining it is more entertaining than a lot of modern stuff ive read honestly.

if you're looking for prose romances, there is...the lancelot grail cycle, or the vulgate, which is really long and has a lot of content it is where most of the most popular arthurian traditions originate. then there's the post vulgate which is a sort of a condensed version of it? ive not read either i dont know how much they differ lol. i know that it features more tristan and iseult stuff which is like, if you like or want to read tristan and iseult stuff this post is really good also by my mutual @/tillman i personally am not really invested in the tristan and iseult stuff but like. that is a personal thing lol. also irt to prose stuff the three romances of the mabinogi + culhwch ac olwen + breuddwyd rhonabwy are the arthurian stories in the book but i just recommend it in general it is so good. it is so good please god read the mabinogion im a big fan of welsh arthuriana in general so if you want to have more recs for that specifically lol...

also yes i will talk about the english stuff now cause thats what people like well layamons brut is in like..extremely archaic english but there's also the prose merlin (highly recommend but it is hard to find a translation online that's in like. contemporary english), there's also lancelot of the laik which is great, the alliterative morte arthure which is probably one of my favs it is excellent but then again i like the iliad so maybe i'm a biased slut for war epics (also yeah its a war epic lol). um also theres sir gawain and the green knight which i know is like the most famous of all of them and theres a movie coming out and whatnot and like its fine. its a good starter because it tells a very contained story on its own it doesnt expect you to understand everything ab arthurs court its very entertaining but imo i would read other romances featuring gawaine before this one (which is basically like. all the verse romances lol hes a popular character. my little meow meow). speaking of gawaine the dutch romances (which feature him. heavily) are good. theyre very good and i recommend them highly they also tell contained, highly entertaining stories um id start with moriaen (which is what i started with) and then skip around from there they're all great tho.

um now everyone's wanting me to say it which is uh. lets talk about le morte darthur! i dont recommend it as a starter text even tho i read it like really early on myself so do what you want however id say get one of those like, condensed versions like howard pyles king arthur, andrew langs book of romance, beatrice clay rodger lancelyn green and henry firth bc they all tell condensions of it and id keep it on you while youre reading the original thing just in case like things dont make sense or whatever lol plotwise. le morte is a very late text, and it is very strange for an arthurian text so like idk why people say to read it first because. if i had to say read any arthurian medieval text last. it would honestly be this one because there is such a beautiful finality to it.

i do recommend it though but fair warning that things presented in le morte are like. not the same across all texts? thats something you should keep in mind in general like a lot of these texts are from diff cultures diff languages with their own shifted traditions of arthurian stuff so just in case theres contradictions or whatever between them even in the texts itself (i am looking at you geoffrey of monmouth and anna's family tree) like, dont sweat it or whatever theyre just weird like that. its like comics or whatnot.

anyways this is all to say you have a lot of places to start and pick around from id recommend shorter stuff first and stuff whose translations are usually pretty accessible and contemporary (this is why i highly recommend de troyes' romances in the beginning) just to get used to it cause the 'plot' structure of these things esp in the verse romances is like a bit different than modern lit so i know that can be offputting for some people. like i said like modern condensions of arthurian stuff are invaluable, so are um indexes? there's a couple i don't know if there are any pdfs floating online but i know they usually carry them at libraries and whatnot...

there's a lot of modern modern stuff i dont know about any of it. i couldnt even tell you about bbc merlin i am quite stupid in regard to it. i do know a fair bit about victorian stuff which is modern tho! i should make a post on that but like tldr victorian arthurian poetry good. most of it. victorian arthurian content tho is really in a whole different world as compared to medieval lit so like. well leave all the generally post medieval stuff off for a min asjkldfskld

so like. yeah have fun i know i didnt leave any links on this post (mostly) but if you want any text i mention here please please ask me i WILL send you a pdf guaranteed except for the vulgate and the post vulgate i have not read those and afaik they are hard to come by. i dont know of any pdfs of arthurian indexes if you want one but i could try to find one..?

anyways yeah if this is confusing im sorry 😭😭😭ive answered a question like this a couple times as well jic ehehe https://itonje.tumblr.com/post/641224624484581376/could-i-ask-how-you-got-started-in-arthurian

https://itonje.tumblr.com/post/651581606366265344/hey-finny-im-so-sorry-to-bother-you-but-a-week

Well, here it is - a lengthy explanation of each card in my mdzs major arcana deck and what I meant to convey/what i would have changed in retrospect/what alternatives i considered! It’s a bit messy and my typing style is lazy but hopefully it will be an interesting read to some of you :)

And so you don’t say I didn’t warn you - jiang cheng’s section (11 justice) is absurdly long lmao

0 the fool  I elaborated on this in the post itself but yeah basically jin ling is kind of representative of all the damage and trauma caused by the past, and there’s a kind of danger there of him falling victim to the same vices as the older characters and repeating the same mistakes and perpetuating the cycle of war and misery (the cycle that we already see with how the jin sect became the new wen sect, and later with how jgy became the new wwx) and he has a lot of room to grow! He grows so much over the course of the novel, comes to realise the complexities of the past and gets a harsh life lesson in how nothing is as black and white as it seems. But ill save talking about his progress for the end, for now whats important is that he has room to grow and also a dog. I don’t really have a justification for the sun, i mostly just thought it looked sick? It made its way to the next card as well, where it makes a bit more sense, but then i realised it was a dumb motif to include 1 the magician I still very much like wwx for the role, and that illustration would have probably had him raising a corpse on his left and pointing threateningly to the sun on his right. I considered including the table as well, with some mdzs relevant items replacing the card suits. Anyway, like i said wwx got a few cards to himself already so i went with the alternative wq design, since i think she fits the card as well. Both she and wwx are highly skilled people, extremely driven once they set their mind to something. The card to me symbolises the creative mind as well as a general drive for action, which fits them both - wwx was famously a prolific inventor, and wq came up with a previously unheard of surgery, after all. This card strays pretty far from the rider-waite deck design, largely because i was still figuring out how i wanted to approach this series, but you can still see the influence. 2 the high priestess I was actually going to skip this card at first because I couldn’t think of a fitting character, but once i considered a qings character post death, it all fit pretty well. She was already a highly intuitive person in life, and in sharing her memories with wwx she is, in a way, relaying a kind of secret knowledge. Anyway she’s one of my fav characters so im glad i got a chance to include her. The coffins could be interpreted to be xxc and sl or xxc and xy 3 the empress Theres other mother figures in mdzs who got to be mothers for a longer time, but jyl definitely embodies the positive aspects of this card the best. She’s nurturing, kind, emotionally supportive, she already mothered wwx and jc quite a bit when she was young. Plus i liked that the rw card had both water and flowers, making an easy lotus connection. In retrospect the stars look kind of out of place and i should have replaced them with something more relevant... Also, i should have had her hold a lotus seed pod instead of a flower, haha 4 the emperor Like i said I considered jc for the role but hoching bullied me into admitting that nmj was better… they’re both more of an inverted emperor than an upright one but then again theres hardly any character in mdzs who would fit upright emperor so. Jgs was also considered but he’s even uglier than nmj so i couldn’t bear to draw him 5 the hierophant It was pointed out to me that lqr would have fit this card better and the truth if that statement haunts me to this day. Unfortunately I have no space in my brain for lqr so lxc got the role instead. My main reason was his role during the wen destruction of gusu lan, when he ran away with the contents of the library - this is why there’s bookshelves behind him. The keys, take, from the rider-waite deck, are meant to represent the gusu pendants that allow you to enter 6 the lovers Im sure many people would have chosen wangxian here but I uhh don’t really care abt wangxian personally? And also their love story is so convoluted that jyl and jzx seem idyllic by comparison lol. Also i didnt really have an idea for who to put in the angel’s place for wangxian… mme jin certainly did not get these two together in the end but undeniably she and mme yu did initially give them a chance to fall for each other so. Thats something i guess. Anyway the trees became their sects’ flowers and the mountain became the burial grounds - an omen of their tragic fate, basically 7 the chariot There might have been other characters who fit this card better but i couldn’t really think of another card for lwj and i thought it would be weird to not include him… anyway i don’t really care for current timeline lwj BUT i do like that he was clearly influenced by wwx to walk his own path in life based on his moral convictions rather than follow his sect’s rules blindly. The chariot is to me a card of self control, self determination and focused action, so it seemed fitting. The composition felt kind of empty without the actual chariot so i padded it out with the guqin, the cloud recess in the bg (it doesn’t look great but i tried to replicate the drama design….) and the bunnies which conveniently fit the colour scheme of the sphinxes in the rider-waite design 8 strength Like i said before, my interpretation of this card is more… morally ambiguous than the quote unquote official meaning, so i thought about manipulative or duplicitous characters more than kind characters whose strength is expressed through gentleness (though i did consider jyl briefly for the latter interpretation). As such, i considered both jgy and nhs, but ended up going with jgy largely because i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put the nie sect’s beast as the lion. 9 the hermit My thoughts immediately went to bssr lol. It may be an overly literal interpretation but whatever, i like it just fine. And i like that i managed to echo the rider-waite silhouette in the mountain and the tree (and even in bssr herself) 10 wheel of fortune God i love the parallels between these 2… this card to me is about how you cant trust your current situation, good or bad, to last forever, and these 2 embody that perfectly imo. Wwx went from son of a well off servant and a powerful cultivator, to street rat orphan, to adopted son of sect leader jiang, to double orphan, to MIA, to terrifying but admired warrior, to terrifying and despised traitor, to dead, to, at the very end, suddenly respected and trusted again. The dishonesty and cheapness of whatever the public’s current opinion of him is is portrayed beautifully as far as im concerned. And jgy of course claws his way up to power only to instantaneously become public enemy number one, to the point that he’s probably blamed for stuff there’s no reason to believe he had a hand in. Wei wuxian’s silent astonishment at how quickly the cultivation world turns against jgy and towards him again is a delicious moment of thematic resonance.  11 justice I settled on this card for jc after he got booted from the emperor seat but i do think it fits, in a somewhat convoluted way. I turned both the sword and the scales into visual representations of the golden core transfer (can you tell im obsessed with it). According to biddy tarot, the justice card is partly about searching for the truth, and the scene where jc finds out about the transfer is of course a big deal. I was also very influenced by the reversed meaning again - which is about being reluctant or unwilling to face or accept the consequences of your actions. I feel on an intuitive level that this fits jc but I’m not sure how well i can explain it - it’s something about how he’s a little too comfortable scapegoating wwx for things that were also, if much less so, influenced by his actions, and also something about the way he keeps wwx at an arm’s length emotionally but still leans on him and accepts his support when he really needs it, and somewhat hypocritically expects wwx to put the needs of him and the jiang sect before the needs of others. And also something about the core exchange is the consequence and proof of wwx’s deep - terrifyingly deep, even - love and care for him, which is something jc doesn’t seem to let himself acknowledge. Maybe even something about how you could argue that the way all of the jiangs acted around wwx - jfm’s favouritism that left him with the feeling of a debt he needs to repay, mme yus insistence that he be a servant more than a brother to jc, prepared to give his life for jc, and jc’s own unwillingness - or inability, he was a child after all - to clearly acknowledge wwx as an equal to himself, enabling wwx’s self sacrificial and protective tendencies - that all of this was what caused wwx’s complete and unquestioning willingness to do whatever it took to protect jc, and therefore paved the way to the golden core transfer. And i don’t mean this to be scapegoating jc - especially considering how young he was when this all went down, it wouldn’t be fair to expect this level of emotional perceptiveness, awareness and maturity of him - but i think adult jc has to grapple with the fact that the chain of cause and effect was not as simple as wwx fucking everyone’s lives up to be a martyr, and that both jc and his parents had a role in that story as well. I don’t even necessarily think this is something that jc only realised in the current timeline - i think it’s something he felt on some level this whole time, and it probably led to a lot of feelings of guilt - but the suibian reveal definitely puts it in sharp focus, and i think he’s now better equipped to handle this introspection than he was as a recently orphaned, traumatised teenager, lol. ANYWAY the window with the fabric is both a nod to the rider-waite design and a reference to the destruction of lanling - i actually did some basic ass research for this, and it seems that in ancient china fabric would indeed be hanged in a window if the normally used paper was damaged. The design of the window, as well as the very idea to use it to imply the reconstruction of lanling, was taken from this great piece of jc angst by my pal moroll1! Oh yeah also the covered window kind of works as a denial of forgiveness for jc because it’s like a halo but covered up... Also I completely forgot to put a blindfold over his eyes which would be perfectttt because blind justice and the core exchange......... ok moving on 12 the hanged man I always have issues with this card because i cant find a satisfactory summary of what it’s really about. Best i can tell it symbolises a need to hit pause, surrender or let go of something… ive also seen it tied to sacrifice? So mo xuanyu doesn’t fit perfectly, but sacrifice is definitely there in a surface level reading kind of way, and the idea that you have to surrender or let go in order to achieve your goal does fit the whole deal of getting revenge but giving up your life in exchange and not being there to see it 13 death This is probably one of my favourite cards, definitely not because I have huge issues with change or anything…. I see this card as signalling the necessity of change or putting an end to something / leaving something in the past in order to start anew? At first i considered putting past wwx, mxy and current wwx here as a kind of transformation and one cycle flowing into the next... But firstly, I’d already used mxy in the very previous card, so putting him in again would feel like overkill, and secondly, the longer I thought about it the less convinced I was that this would even fit with the card’s meaning? Because coming back from the dead doesn’t like... trigger an internal transformation within wwx or anything? Anyway, fun fact: the design I ended up going with was actually originally intended for judgement! I thought I was being very clever with the whole “figure plays an instrument and the dead rise” parallel, but apparently I’d just completely forgotten that the judgement card had a completely different composition... Truly I was boo boo the fool... But yeah anyway at the end of the day I figured the design would kind of work for death as well, with Wen Ning and the theme of transformation, (since in his case coming back as a fierce corpse does actually mark a certain transformation in behaviour) and Wei Wuxian’s protection of the Wen people essentially signifying an attempt to break the cycle of oppression if that makes any sense? Like, wwx is trying to revolutionise the way the world works a bit, if you catch my drift 14 temperance  The centrist card! Again this is probably going off track from the “official” interpretation, but to me this card has a certain “don’t commit fully; do everything in moderation; don’t take either side” flavour to it that i personally find infuriating irl and that i very much assign to lxc. It’s entirely possible that I’m misinterpreting his character because i didn’t really pay him (and the 3zun in general) much mind while reading, but hell, I’m allowed to pick favourites and choose who i want to interpret deeply vs shallowly. Again, i wish id chosen lqr for hierophant because its so annoying for a character i don’t care about to get two cards…. But oh well 15 the devil My alternative idea for this was jgy as the devil and lxc plus nmj as the figures, but since all three had been featured already (multiple times, even!) i figured I’d go with xy instead, especially since he’s among my faves lol. I think the devil signifies something along the lines of unhealthy attachment, obsession or addiction, which isn’t 100% accurate in the case of xxc and a-qing, but if i stretch it a bit to cover toxic relationships in general, and especially manipulation or negative influence, i don’t think it’s half bad. My main struggle here was to choose who amongst the xxc/sl/aq trio to choose for the human figures. 16 the tower Arguably jin zixuans death and the following massacre of nightless city were the final and most direct reason for the siege of burial mounds, and the tiger seal is good shorthand for wwx’s loss of control over his powers, which led to the deaths of jzx and jyl. When reimagining major arcana i like to feature some kind of building in this card (spoilers for a possible future project but in my rose of versailles major arcana set the tower is bastille) and even if it’s not a tower, the image of wwx looming over the gathered crowd from atop a rooftop is so good i couldn’t resist 17 the star Struggled with this one - considered both jin ling and lsz for it, as symbolising a hope for the future, but that was kind of covered by the world so it wouldn’t make sense to include here as well... As usual when I struggle with interpreting a card (as opposed to understanding it but struggling with matching a character to it, like with death or moon) I went to biddy tarot and read all the details about its meaning. What i got was that this card signifies an incoming period of introspection and inner peace following a time of turmoil, as well as a general moving on into a new, better phase of one’s life or finding new meaning and purpose. The figure also suggests someone vulnerable, but possessing a keen sense of intuition as well as a good degree of practicality and common sense. Given all those, I settled for mianmian because IM LOVE HER..... I also kind of see her as a prelude to the “just one person is enough” theme present in tgcf!! And i think her decision to abandon her sect because she saw the toxicity and corruption in it is a very inspiring action - even if it didn’t make a large visible impact, i think the appearance of her and her idyllic family at the very end of the novel - paralleling and mirroring wangxian - implies that at the end of the day, it was a meaningful one 18 the moon Another card i ALWAYS fuxking struggle with - this time less because i can’t grasp its meaning and more because I can never find a character that fits it well. I usually get fixated on the “dreams and subconscious” part, but if i lean more on the “disguise, deceit, anxiety and fear” part, i eventually figured the whole yi city arc wouldn’t be a bad fit. I say the entire arc because it really does encompass all those themes if you include both the past and the present - xue yang’s disguise, his tricks with the villagers, a-qing’s lies and even xxc’s reluctance to talk about his past as well as xue yang pretending to be xxc all fit the disguise and deceit angle, and the general mystery and creepiness of the current timeline yi city work well with the anxiety and fear - the mist, the slow uncovering of the past, even a-qing being revealed to be an ally after scaring the shit out of the protags. I definitely struggled with including all the elements and characters, and even moreso with making them vaguely fit the rider-waite composition, but i think it ended up okay ish. OH and i completely forgot to draw mist swirling around them :( 19 the sun I was considering mianmian’s family for this one, but since I used her for star, I ended up with wwx and his parents instead. Once again I’m reinterpreting the card a bit - normally I think it symbolises incoming times of pure happiness and abundance, as well as a connection with the inner child, but I gave it more of a nostalgic or sentimental twist - wwx looking back at the brief glimpse of his happy childhood. 20 judgement another card that i struggle to interpret a bit... Here i actually used the tgcf tarot zine as a reference! In it judgement is summarised as “rebirth, following duty, absolution” SO i figured that nhs, mxy and wwx all together would fit pretty neatly... wwx achieving (public) absolution through clearing his own name after being reborn, and nhs sort of calling on wwx to expose jgy’s crimes... It’s a bit messy but not bad I think! 21 the world This ties very closely to my read on mdzs as a story - which is that it’s, at the end of the day, largely about cycles, and about how hard it is to break them, but how we gotta keep trying and have hope anyway. Or maybe more precisely, that the people directly involved with and influenced by the trauma of the past might not be able to get over said trauma and that the hope for healing from it will be shouldered by the new generation. Or something like that… Basically what i mean is that jc and wwx and lwj and lxc and nhs and jgy and all these people who were in the thick of the sunshot campaign and the siege are so profoundly affected by it that it genuinely feels by the end of the story like there is little hope for them to ever truly overcome that trauma and build a better future without repeating the same old mistakes - but there is a glimmer of hope in the new generation, specifically in jl and lsz. And it’s a bit paradoxical, because they have also been directly impacted by the past tragedies - lsz having his entire clan wiped out after wwx failed to protect them, jl losing both his parents to wwx’s mistakes - but despite that loss, and despite coming from arguably the two opposing sides of the past conflicts, they are both, in the end, capable of moving past that tragedy, of recognising the complicated nature of those conflicts (jl’s moment of clarity at the end is both heartbreaking and hopeful) and forging friendships between clans in the process. I honestly think that the extra where jl is struggling to assert his authority as sect leader, to treat his subjects well and to cooperate with other sects in a truly amicable way is the single hopeful ending note for the larger themes of the novel - it allows us to imagine that maybe these kids can learn from the mistakes of their elders rather than getting sucked in by resentment at those mistakes, and actually build a brighter future for the cultivation world. And sidenote, this is also why i have a soft spot for jin ling and lan sizhui as a ship... speaking of which their poses were directly referenced from the lovers card ehehe

Looking back, I’d like to add some symbol of jin ling’s trauma so that it mirrors baby wen yuan in the tree stump... maybe his father’s sword? 

Dem’s Big Post About The Spn Fics Part 1/2

aka The Wrap Up to celebrate To Exist Again and To Become a Man now being finished!

(This will be a long post. This is your only warning.)

Admittedly this is a bit of a weird thing to be doing, but I wanted to try it out for 3 reasons: 

I love talking about my own work and 

It functions really well as a self-reflective tool for me to improve on, and 

I can answer some big questions people might have because there was a LOT of worldbuilding in these stories. 

We’ll start off with reflective stuff, and move into the juicier world-building focused stuff later into the post. There will be major spoilers for both fics to come!

To begin with a funny anecdote, Why Did I Write These Stories?

I was beginning to write and work out the story that I wanted to write for Spn (what will now be To Destroy a Man. As I was writing the scene, I realized I had a LOT of ideas and while I was trying to avoid as much exposition as I could, it became quickly apparent that I was needing to create my own au (this scene eventually became chapter 34 of To Become a Man). A short prequel seemed like a good idea, to quickly hash out the ‘prior’ events that I needed to go through so all the readers could be on the same page. While plotting out prequel points, I realized Sam and Dean were going to have drastically different experiences during the same time period, and I was trying to figure out who’s pov would be better for which scenes, and how to keep momentum when they’re going through such radically different types of changes. Ultimately I decided to split their povs, which I also thought would be a fun project! And I naively assumed each pov would take about 2 chapters each, rounding out to maybe 15k total.

I had my ending points: Dean n Cas soul-merged and (basically) married, Cas on the lam from heaven and a complete anomaly, and Sam juiced up full of powers and a weird mix of archangel and antichrist but still 100% human and ready to fight God. 

Now I needed to add weight to these changes, so I wrote 200k of build-up.

Am I proud of these fics?

OF COURSE I AM!!! These are the longest fics I’ve ever written AND finished AND in the fastest freakin turnaround ever (both were finished writing, barring edits, in like 6 months holy shit)

I didn’t write a single scene that I “didn’t” want to write. If I had trouble writing it, as in it was fighting me, I scrapped it. Most obviously was the scene in Dean’s pov where he and Sam were intended to meet some other hunters and Dean declines working with them because he’s nervous about being outed as queer. It was meant to be a good scene! I wanted to introduce some new characters! But it just wasn’t working so I said ‘thank you, next!’. 

But it means this story was an absolute joy to write. Because for a while all I was doing was ‘if I wanted to write one scene into supernatural, what would I write?’ and then just DID that!! It’s why there’s a lot of ‘Salmondean do dumb shit or have really dumb heartfelt conversations’ scenes.

Would I change anything?

If I’d been less eager to start sharing, I might have planned out the story beats a little tighter so there were less ‘soft’ chapters and a draw/pull for people to come back and keep reading. I felt Dean’s story specifically lagged at points and could have used some tighter editing (there was a noticeable lull in directed movement between Dean n Cas getting together, until Sam corrupts Amy).

I also probably would have held Sam’s story until I’d finished Dean’s so I could make the two line up better! Probably could have inserted more scenes into Sam’s fic that way, and made sure things were a little more consistent. In an ideal world one concept I had was to release 1 chapter from each pov every week that would correspond to the same time frame so we’d be getting real-time SalmonDean pov narrative. Unfortunately that didn’t work!

The biggest takeaway overall is for me to focus more on what moves the plot, and to make my scenes do more than 1 thing so I can cut down on wordcount and increase my efficiency. 

Of course every writer will find things they want to fix in anything they’ve ever written, so these are minor “mistakes” at best. I’m so dang proud of these fics. 

Onto more interesting things!

How Did I Put These Fics Together (because it’s different than anything I’ve ever done before)

Normally when I write a story, I plan out the beats I need to hit, see where I need to insert any kind of foreshadowing/buildup, and then write from A to B to C and so on and so forth. Hence, this is why I can normally post things as I complete chapters, because it’s all a linear progression. 

For these two stories, rather than linear plot/a normal story structure, I just sat and free-wrote any and every scene that came to mind and then pieced them into a kinda-linear form like putting a quilt together. You’ll note that this is why there’s not a lot of internal callback or a feeling of sense of time flowing within the fic (save for points where I went back and specifically edited it in). How long does the story take place over? Hard to say! Your author has the barest grasp on linear time even on a good day (how many times did I say ‘see you on [wrong day]’ at the end of chapters lmaaoooo)

This also meant EXTENSIVE editing on the back end once I decided in what order I wanted my ‘quilt pieces’ to be. Hard to say if this is a bonus or a negative!

But I did want to try and capture the vibe of the lives they lead, as a bit of a ‘slice of life’-style story, when the slice of life is the profound weirdness of the Winchester roaming life, and how things are status quo- until everyone almost dies oh shit!! And then they have to keep living because no therapy we die/undie like Winchesters. Do I think I captured this effectively? Hmm. Good question. 

Dem where the FUCK did the inspiration for a lot of the magic and creature weirdness even come from?

Honestly? Music, primarily. And completely mishearing lyrics!

Nightwish ‘Ever Dream’: the line is ‘my song can but borrow you grace’ and because my brain is scrambled eggs on a good day, I heard ‘grace’ ‘song’ and ‘borrow’ in that order and have had, for YEARS, the mental image of Cas borrowing Dean’s soul to power himself up for battle.

From there I’ve always been enamored with the ‘wavelength of celestial intent’ descriptor that Cas drops in s6 for “what he is”. 

I also really like ocean metaphors mostly because I’ve been obsessed with the ocean and things in it since I was like… 5??? So really this was me just rolling with what I know lmao. I love using (somewhat) accurate scientific metaphors for very intangible things!

I was also finishing my degree in biology/ecology while writing these fics and I think it shows

Stars ‘The Night Starts Here’ gives us the series title and the fic titles. Except for ‘To Exist Again’. TEA was almost titled ‘The Upwards Fall’ because I wanted all 3 of the Main Stories to have titles from this song, but I couldn’t make anything else work in tandem with the series name ‘The Love It Takes’ while also working for Sam’s personal story. So Sam, as always, is the rebel <3

Stars ‘Up In Our Bedroom, After The War’ is basically the vibes of the whole story. TFW has been, literally, to hell and back!!! There’s a bit of melancholy and sadness, a lingering dark, but the chance of a bright new tomorrow and a soft start.

Let’s Talk About Themes in The Story! What were you looking to accomplish? 

My earliest notes for TFW are, as follows:

Dean’s journey of self-discovery (who am I when I’m not trying to be Dad?)

Dean wants to settle down! He wants a big family! He wants to be domestic!

Basically: Dean doesn’t want to have a short life of hunting. He wants to live!

Dean’s journey of realizing he’s bi, and him accepting that

Dean’s relationship to Sam is both older brother/parent 

And continuing Dean balancing these roles while also letting Sam be an adult 

Dean’s Big Issues/Fears about never being good enough for people to want to stay with him (these are effectively highlighted in that Cas thinks he’s not useful enough to be wanted)

Sub Plot:

Castiel’s autonomy

Cas’ fall from grace, to trying to restore Heaven, to wrecking it further

He’s majorly depressed by the end of s7 (before purgatory)

Wants to stay in Purgatory but doesn’t tell Dean

Remains depressed after leaving, but resolved to keep living on because he’s clearly meant for something

After the seraphim reveal: does he have free will?! How does he grapple with this? How does he live in a way he can be proud of?

And lastly

Sam gets his powers back CAUSE THATS HOT

where tf did they go????

he got them from Lucifer?????

sleeper agent??????

Sam is The Chosen One

Accepts that he is More Than Human and to celebrate all parts of him

Lucifer and Sam friends?? Work together????

Sam needs autonomy in his choices/his life

If you compare these to the overall arc of TFW within the two stories, I think I got a lot of them! But you’ll also note a lot of these things aren’t concrete goals that are easily measurable (ex: Dean wants to learn to bake pie. In chapter 1 he starts a fire in the kitchen. By the end of the story he finally makes A Good Pie.) part of the lack of concrete milestones was why I felt it was important to tell Dean (and Cas’) story by going back to the point they meet, in s4! Dean’s gradual change towards his feelings for Cas, his relationship to Sam (heavily influenced by the s7 events of this fic) and then his own relationship with himself were such slow burns that I felt it would be a disservice to try and cram a change like that into a timeline like “1 year”.

I felt like these subtle changes and adjustments actually felt a lot truer to life-- people often change in very small, gradual ways over time, even without realizing it and often times not consistently! If only we could all gain skills like the sims, where we can easily level up and remain at that high level of performance! 

So the Guy Who Ate Satan, A Celestial Nuke that Developed Sentience, and Dean walk into a bar…

Sam’s story in Spn The Show has always been a ‘chosen one’ kind of narrative. Sam is living with one foot in the realm of the monsters, and I wanted to bring that back full force! It really makes sense for him that he should only continue to grow in power, might, and magic!! As the story progresses.

Cas also got a power up! I do desperately love in the show that he was kind of a grunt/nothing angel, and so even when he defected to TFW he was a huge help for them, but in the scale of things he was an annoying fly to most other angels. It really worked for the underdog story of s4/5. In this I wanted to give him a power up, and originally it was actually going to be close contact with Sam that eventually changed Cas into something unknown (you can still see traces of this in ch34 of TBAM, where Death remarks ‘Castiel could be [Sam’s] first creation’. But for a combo of reasons: how Sam’s magic needed to have intent, the entire concept of free will and consent, and how much I wanted Dean and Cas to have their effect on each other, I decided to go with the route that Cas has actually always been something angel-adjacent rather than becoming something new. TFW/Supernatural has always been about free will and making your own story, so I amplified that with Cas.

Dean has always been A Normal Guy, which is part of the appeal of him and Sam (2 normal dudes!) taking on the Very Not Normal. As explained above, Sam’s story is ‘normal guy finds out he’s the chosen one’ and so, in a story about very large concepts and huge monsters and acts of magic, I felt it was very important to keep Dean as normal as possible. To the point it became a running gag to me, personally, in that ‘no matter what cool shit happens around him, Dean has to stay as Just A Guy’. And it’s a very humanizing role that allows the story to have the scale it does!

What were the most important themes in your story?

Sam’s Autonomy

I wasn’t even going to include the plot about Lucifer’s death in this story— that was going to come up in a later story, actually! And rather than Sam having ate Lucifer, the original idea was that they’d become a SamandLucifer entity (this harkens back to a concept I wanted to write when Swan Song first aired). 

That storyline would have involved a lot of mental ‘Sam and Lucifer discuss what it means to live, which one of them is more worthy of life and if they do deserve to destroy the world for the pain they’ve been forced to go through, just to create the dichotomy of good and evil for everyone else’ discussions. There would be a lot of talk about how Sam hates and fears Lucifer for the pain Lucifer put on Sam, how Lucifer hates Sam because he and Sam are the same but Sam’s brother loves him anyways, etc. 

Ultimately that was scrapped because Sam’s entire story in the show is always about how the world and everyone around him manipulates him and that he never actually gets to make choices about his own life or body that aren’t influenced or part of someone elses’ design. And that always bothered me that Sam was never allowed to be himself without having to be ashamed of it, and I wanted to make sure that Sam’s triumph of being proud of himself/proudly choosing to exist (again) was evident in his story

In the end I needed Sam to have this visceral win over his tormentor. As the story shows, in this case Lucifer was abused and put into a position where he was incapable of empathy and could only express himself in violence. Sam even understands this! But it doesn’t change the fact that Lucifer tortured Sam in unimaginable ways for thousands of years. 

With that in mind I didn’t like the idea of Lucifer and Sam having “co-ownership” of their new identity, so I made the choice that Sam had to be the survivor. This tied in well with Sam’s new crusade to restore free will to the universe, because he’s breaking the narrative of his own story!

While Castiel wasn’t a pov character, his own autonomy and free will was equally as important. You’ll note that many, many paragraphs and conversations revolved around that theme and that in the end Cas followed himself (and love!) which ensured his freedom of self <3

The Brothers are WEIRD PEOPLE!!!! And Codependent to a Worrying Degree, but It’s Also How They Survive

It’s very hard to show “unusual” relationships when you’re writing from the pov of the two people who don’t think there’s anything weird about their relationship. Sure, they say ‘yeah it’s probably weird that we still share a bed’ but that’s kinda more in line with ‘I had a nightmare and I want to be close to the person who makes me feel safe’. Hashtag normalize co-sleeping when you need it!!!

From there I did try to point out how the boys have a weird perception of lifestyle in the little things they did. 

From thrifting everything from clothes to appliances to books (thrifting is a valid lifestyle! It’s incredibly handy when you’re on a budget.) 

To never actually having condiments or knowing how to use a dishwasher cause they’ve lived in a car, a motel room, or squatted in old houses their whole life.

I tried to have them wear each others’ clothes or casually swap things as much as possible. They live out of each others’ pockets!

Also the brothers are just weird people!! It’s hard to show from their pov, cause they don’t know how far off from normal they are, but like…

Everything about Sam and Amelia was NOT right like holy shit those two were wilding in their grief. They are very lucky things worked out for them and that they got to be hashtag Weird Girls together

Dean explicitly, in the story, gets horny after killing stuff!! Violence has done a number on his psyche and he’s gotten some wires crossed that maybe shouldn’t have been, or maybe could be worked out in a safe space but… uh… how likely do we think Dean is gonna go find a safe space to deal with any of his shit???

LOVE!!! Love is truly what this whole story is all about

If you’ve read the stories, you know how much emphasis I put on love. Love is the strongest force in the Spn Universe! It’s what averted the apocalypse and saved the world (Swan Song), it’s what created free will (Cas’ entire arc!) I love love!!!!

I went out of my way to not put any definitions on platonic love vs romantic love because I think love is love is love and how you express that is the difference. Neither is more powerful than the other because LOVE is powerful!! Sam and Cas are the most important people in Dean’s life and he loves them equally! He shows this by giving Cas kisses and stealing Sam’s socks.

It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when I have to hear explanations like ‘I love you, like a brother’ or ‘I love you, but like, as a friend because I’m a lesbian and you’re a man’ etc etc in media. If you have to continuously define how your characters love each other, then I don’t think you’re doing a good job of portraying their relationship. So you’ll see that I never put those parameters in any conversation. Dean DOES muse that he loves Cas differently than he loves Sam or Bobby, specifically because there is a romantic and sexual tone that his feelings for Cas takes, but not because he loves Cas more or less than he loves Sam or Bobby.

Which means, if you haven’t realized it yet, the Series + Fic Titles are meant to be a complete sentence because the power of love IS the thesis of this series:

The Love It Takes To Exist Again (Sam’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Become a Man (Dean’s journey!)

The Love It Takes To Destroy a Man (TBA)

And now for fun stuff. Behind the scenes!!

What’s Something People Probably Don’t Know?

The demonic fungal/hydrothermal vent growth on Sam’s arm was thrown in literally as I was posting the chapter because I had just finished a 48 hour cram session of writing a report on tube worms for an ecology class (I was chanting my tube worm song as I wrote it) and it ended up being a HUGE hit with both readers and myself. But it was so last minute I had trouble fitting it in more throughout the rest of Sam’s story!

Cas’ orders? That may or may not have bound him to Dean and removed his free will? Were written into Sam’s story and I went ‘oh SHIT that’s compelling’ and then left them there as a ‘guess I’ll figure that out when I get to Dean’s story lol’

Originally Dean and Cas were supposed to get together after having their souls bonded, and have been in a UST limbo the entire time before that. Mostly because I think the entire concept of ‘we just got married of the soul I guess we should try dating?’ is very funny. CLEARLY the two of them were way more eager to fall in love than I anticipated (thank you Cas for your honesty) but you can still see shades of this original idea here and there (especially in ch35 of TBAM)

I never intended Dean and Benny to connect so well!! Benny was going to reunite with Andrea, she was going to live, and they were going to go off into the world and leave the story. And, uh, here we are. I’m still debating if I need to adjust the relationship tag or not haha. Polyamory is fun, especially when I was planning for Sam to be the polyamorous brother...

Speaking of, I can’t believe I forgot about Sam and his sexuality! If I rewrote TEA I would have had Sam contemplate more on his lack of sexual appetite due to trauma, up until he meets Benny and he gets to rediscover how he wants to be a sexual person

Many of Sam and Dean’s absolutely stupid sibling conversations were lifted near-verbatim from conversations I’ve had with my siblings

And lastly...

Dem where’s Kevin????????????? Where is our sweet baby boy????????

He’s SAFE!! He’s in the Hunter pipeline somewhere cause Sam handed him off to Bobby’s people. He and his mom are safe and at some point they probably got rib sigils like SalmonDean did against angels, but for demons. I didn’t have room in this story for him!!! But my baby boy is SAFE and I want to get him back to university because it’s WHAT HE DESERVES!!!!

To that point: god there were/are SO many characters that I just didn’t include in the story so far because I didn’t feel comfortable including them without stalling the story for them. To that point: pretty much everyone who is alive/dead in s8 is that way in this story, except Bobby who gets to live.

[Check Out Part 2 for reader questions!]

some continuation i guess

this time with the emperor

we get the basic rundown, born to human parents, massively gifted, immortal, hidden among humanity and all that. It’s here where his motivation to shepherd humanities psychic awakening is really first brought up [something thats given overall more prominence in the book as well]. a much more interesting note however

now, this probably seems inconspicuous enough at first glance. Indeed even in modern canon 40k’s imperium is first actually created over ten millennia ago. However, take into consideration this little bit earlier in the lore section that i didn’t think to much off at the time

now, taking this into consideration, the implication here is that the age of strife, something that is typically thought to end right before the unification wars in modern 40k lore, is only considered to have ended after the emperor’s internment upon the golden throne, and that further the imperium seems to only officially be a thing upon the that internment. Now this suggests some things to me, two large ones possibly being

a) the unification wars and the great crusade were more so part of the same wider war, ie that the wars ‘only the emperor remembers’ were a large conflict between various warlords to determine who got the rightful rulership of the crumbling pre age of strife human civilization. or

b) the emperor started the age of strife in order to dominate humanity to control and shepherd the psychic awakening he saw humanity stumbling into.

take your pick i guess. food for thought and all that. also

in my earlier post i jumped the gun, the 1st edition emperor is still a punk who needs human souls to survive. Though in this case its not some vague need to bind his soul to the chair or anything, no, its just that he apparently cant eat or drink anything else and hes really god damn hungry and thirsty all the time. Which is hilarious and i almost feel is just a better explanation in general.

to be fair he does look like this 10 millenia later

makes sense he would need to eat unconventionally.

as well, as opposed to specifying 1000 psyker souls a day it just mentions a vague ‘hundreds dying every day’ which is still a lot but also likely less then modern emps eats everyday.

some explanation/emperor wank on why the emperor needs to be fed everyday. not much to say, just that i feel like the implications here atleast lean a bit more towards the emperor being pitiable in his own right as someone so dedicated to this vague future ideal of humanity that hes forsaken most of his own physically and mentally. 

apparently humanity underwent no genetic changes over 38,000 years that werent the direct result of mutation from environmental hazards.

@ lordsofmedrengard  early dark angels lore, here we can see where they got stuck with the moniker of “first legion” from in 30k modern lore, and its cause here in the first 40k book they’re noted as being ‘honored as the first marine chapter’. Guess it was something they felt needed to carry over... I like the copious more amounts of wine in the old dark angels chapter, and they seem a lot more aristocratic here then in modern 40k. Which makes an interesting contrast compared to the barbarian stocks of soldiers mentioned earlier in the book as being preferred for “legiones astartes”

we get some rundowns on the branches of the adeptus terra next, not much particularly new to note outside of them all being part of this larger governmental priesthood. some highlights though

the old school custodes uniforms are in fact the traditional uniform of the custodes in 1st edition. 

custodes wielded ‘lasers built to resemble the traditional and symbolic guardian spear’ whatever the fuck that means

tech priests and the adeptus mechanicus were monastic monks who primarily lived on earth and didn’t stick metal parts into and all over their bodies. they were consequently much more boring as the echlissiarchies IT department.

arbites basically doubled in the sisters of battle’s role as the militant branch of the state religion.

arbites fashion choices and the arbites acting in a similar manner of chaplains as well really.

the more voluntary nature of the astronomican in the first edition, the trainees learn how to safely let the battery drain them but it still seems to be a demanding job with a high fatality rate

they also share monastic tendencies and a uniform with the mechanicus, though theres is a fashionable blue.

included the entire bit on the administratum cause honestly, i find it incredibly fascinating. The parallels are certainly there between modern and 1st edition administratum, but i feel how its presented here just has more teeth and intrest to it. That is to say, its not just the ‘oh what fate, administration has become even more horrid, tedious and soul draining in this grim dark future, woe be us!’ that tends to get tossed around when mocking administration. Instead its a literal organization of religious monks dedicated to tax filings, school administration, rezoning and what have you. Blessed be the regulations and all that. Is there small cults dedicated to paper clip gods? what holy rites are involved when faxing documents compared to when faxing fourms? This is shit i want to know more about.

all adeptus terra adepts carry a knife and are likely legally allowed to shiv you here as well incidentally. 

the inquisitors are mostly the same, though with no mention of chaos whatsoever. less sub divisions from the looks of it too. this bit did catch my attention though.

psychic powers seemed to be a hell of a lot more common among inquisitors back then as well.

quirky inquisitors, who’d have thunk it. [its not that surprising, i just like that they took the time to mention it is all]

don’t know wtf is going on here though, especially as to whats going on with dudes armour on the left. looks like a knight crossed with an oven.

we get the usual spiel of psyker background, but then we get some interesting differences in opinions here on psykers compared to modern 40k imperium. How justified or not it is, is up to you but its definitely a shift in tone i would say.

possibly the proto servitor narrative wise? As said, 1st edition 40k readily uses robots, so servitors would be unnecessary. technomats on the other hand fall between that as menials who likely operate these things but dont full on replace them like servitors eventually will.

astropaths are basically the same, though the 90% statistic im not sure if it holds over to modern 40k. im thinkin likely but i could be wrong.

navigators outside of not ubiquitously having the third eye mutation also seem to have much more personal freedom and respect in imperial society in 1st edition. probably pretty comfy to be a navigator back then really. Aside from that, navigator families are still a thing.

space marine time!

well we get the same ‘feral world recruits as warrior god soldiers’ sortta stuff, it is mentioned and stressed that hive world criminals apparently make better stock in terms of raw aggression. Entire gangs will even be rounded up for the purpose of making new space marines.

the early process to create a space marine. no special organs, but bio-chem and the black [plastic?] carapace were there from the start, and hypno indoctrination is alluded to. Apparently this is still barely controlled chaos though. [and on a personal note, nothing that indicates it was male exclusive either, outside of general attitudes of the 1980′s]

early organization graph of a space marine chapter.

chapter markings and armour

AND THE POSSIBLITY OF SPACE MARINE BAGPIPES, WHERE ARE THEY GW WHERES MY SPACE MARINE BAGPIPERS!

iron hands apparently only had the one iron hand?

list of chapter symbols with names and colours, these keep appearing in the book. seems i was wrong on only the imperial fist symbol, its actually the crimson fists chapter symbol so thats 3 of the modern big 9 that didn’t exist back then.

we get a break down on the typical structure of a fortress monastery for space marines next, using the space wolves funnily enough who were far more normal as it were in 1st edition [and also their home world was lucan isntead]. and its got a lot, and well its all fairly interesting ill just shotgun blast some highlights

that the space wolves had an entire fuckin ship hanging in their great hall i find endlessly amusing, so thats why its there. the rest are interesting in terms of the domestic situation of space marines.

h a h look at the thing I did- All the vessels + Grimmchild,, and I’ll be sort of... talking about them further below. Wowie finally using this feature-- Basically its me recapping them as characters and how they are in the AU. This is going to be a long read god I’m so sorry :<

Ghost- Ghost is the energetic one of the vessels. They just do whatever they want, they literally often do not care a lot about what they do. Ghost likes helping others, because they just wanna fix a lot of things. They like making friends, and just-- having fun. Who wouldn’t? There are rare times Ghost gets mad, and when they do- they go big Shade Lord mode. In conclusion Ghost is just a very.. chaotic.. fun-loving-- andd-- helpful baby. We love them. - But onto how they appear once more- Basically, since this AU is a mix of both the dream no more ending and as well as the embrace the void ending,, this basically has Ghost go full on shade lord in their fight with Radi. They disappear afterwards, only leaving their shell behind. They are presumed to be dead by Hornet. As described quite a bit ago (when I first talked about this AU), Ghost is just.. verryyyy angry as the Shade Lord. They finally appear in Dirtmouth, lashing out and just being a ng y. They try to attack Hornet, but no, Hollow stops them-- fighting them off even in their weak form. Eventually they are given time to run back into the home they and Hornet have been staying in to retrieve Ghosts shell. Why do they retrieve Ghosts shell? Well, because they are aware that  Shade Lord = Ghost. They just carefully lay their shell on the ground and sort of.. apologize. They do this by speaking to Ghost through void, void beings can do that right? Surely. Though eventually, Ghost calms down and accepts their shell, fitting their big Shade Lord form into their tiny shell. Then going to their siblings to... hug them.. strangely enough. Hollow would of course hug them back. Anddd-- thats that. Another thing that Ghost does is revive PK, Radi, and even get NKG up in the real world too. One more is that they too ‘revive’ their siblings Clematis (aka the Greenpath Vessel) and Beryl (Lost Kin/Broken Vessel) by getting Mask Maker to fix their shells and then they just yeeted them into the Abyss. After a moment, they go and retrieve them, and bring them to their parents so they can deal with them then. They too sort of helped Godseeker get out of the Junk Pit, because who wants to live in garbage? They do a lot of stuff. They are happy to help. Grimmchild- Ah yes, my favorite. Grimmchild in general is.. less.. childish than she was, of course she’d be less childish- She’s an adult. She has more sense than she used to, she’s much smarter, though still retains those silly aspects of hers. She’s rather protective, over Ghost mostly, and usually is always with and around them. best friends for life. She’s the one who generally calms Ghost down when they get angry. - Alrighty, so-- After Ghost presumably had died, Grimmchild was very sad, quite sad. She usually sought out Hornet or Hollow for comfort, but generally it was Hollow who’d give her pats and let her lay on their head. Hornet on the other hand, was quite busy,, doing Hornet things of course :> When Ghost returned, and was brought back to the house- oh-- what did Grimmchild do? Well, she literally tackled them to the ground in a hug (the way this bat lookin child hugs) because ‘oh my god, best friend is back, hi friend, you okay friend?’ and so on, just really happy to see them. And truly-- truly-- ever since then you can never see these two apart. How Lovely. Grimmchild has a good enough relationship with her ‘aunt’ Radi, generally it started off.. not that well but as time passed Radi decided to tolerate her (and Ghost) enough to actually be nice. Grimmchild usually seeks out Radi for advice and so on, some of the rare times that she’s away from Ghost. But when Ghost does allow her dear ol dad to actually exist in the real world (with their ultimate goddamn shade lord powers.. pff..), she’s very happy, very appreciative. Then theres the dilemma of her taking on the name ‘Grimm’ and her fathers name too basically being Grimm. She just calls him dad but usually they get confused on which Grimm someone is calling for. Silly. Clematis- Okie dokie, third one! and its the precious short baby, Clematis. Aka of course.. the Greenpath vessel. Clematis is a very meek fellow, and they generally like and appreciate being alone. They do sometimes like company, but peace and quiet is better than that. It’s quite obvious here, Clematis is not very social. They are not very skilled at socializing but a certain someone is gonna help em. - As stated before, yeah, Clematis gets basically revived alongside Beryl and given to PK and WL so they can properly take care of their goddamn kids. Even then, Clematis often hid in places that gave them such peace and quiet that they’d fall asleep there. It’d take a long while to find them. They are somewhat close with their mother, since she’d often take them to garden with her when they weren’t hiding. They formed a somewhat bond with Beryl, but Beryl eventually pushed them away because of how damn mean they are. Bad Beryl. Later in life, when Clematis is an.. adult? sure, they’ve reached their own prime form. Very short though for a vessel. By then, they are living alone in Greenpath. Somehow someway, they come to befriend the oh so lovely Lace, who’s just been seeking out someone who does not absolutely dislike her. The two become friends, and she just comes by often to have this one person who understands where she’s coming from. Both were very lonely, now they besties. And now, a fun fact, those flowers decorated them and their moss collar are clematis flowers. They generally are quite pretty. And oh-- Clematis likes to grow flowers as they did back in Queens Gardens with their mama. Beryl- Beryl! I love them, but god are they mean. As said, Beryl is.. quite mean,, quite stubborn. They feel as if they don’t need anyone, just preferring to do things their way. They don’t really like their family at all, and show it by once more- being a big ol bitch. Strangely enough though, the only person in their family they aren’t..really...that mean to-- is Lil Lady. Their littlest sister. They actually are nicer to her, one of the only moments they are gentle and nice are when they interacted with her. Sometimes, they are actually nicer to other people as well. That rarely happens though. - Yada yada- even when they are being taken care of by their parents they dislike them. PK is a bit distant as always, WL tries to give them love but they say no. They don’t want anything from these people. Since they already did grow a bit beforehand, they are the first out of the two revived siblings to reach their prime form. They once were nicer to Clematis, now the two barely interact. It’s kinda sad. (It’s not fully Beryl’s fault, Clematis just barely interacts with people anymore) During this time, a young Lil Lady gave them the ‘necklace’ that they still do wear to this day. They are sometimes teased for it. (Their little sister made it for them, don’t j ud g e) Beryl generally likes fighting, its very fun for them. So when Hornet asked them if they would like to be one of her knights, they ‘happily’ obliged. Then being one of her knights, they are constantly told off by Hollow, who’s one of her other knights because they don’t like to listen to orders. And they often get into little fights with Lace, who too is a knight of Hornets, because oh my lets step on the shortest one who you never agree with. Either way, Beryl isn’t totally terrible- but they never planned on listening to their parents when they tried to teach them to do better. Even though they are a bitch, their fellow knights (and family) will come to their aid if they need it. Hollow- FINALLY- the last one. Oh my god...I’m mostly taking this from the recent post I did about Hollow and their own reference. Hehe. Hollow is a very gentle vessel, and too is protective, mostly over their family. They have a deep care for those who they are related to, of course of course. They too hold deep respect for their parents, and for the most part, is somewhat ‘closer’ to PK, due to the fact he was the one who mostly.. raised them back then. They still are close with their mother of course. They are very friendly, but not as friendly as Ghost. More reserved?? sure. They are the one who usually keeps their fellow knights in check. - It all starts off with Hornet finding them strangely alive after the black egg is no more, and her helping them get to Dirtmouth and-- get patched up. After quite a while of recovery, the whole big shade lord thing happens-- and-- Hollow sees it fit to apologize to Ghost for everything, for leaving them to fall back into the Abyss. They are happy that Ghost accepts their apology and literally carries them back into the house. How cute. Afterwards, Hornet decides to finally take these two to see the White Lady. Oh at last, Hollow gets to face their mother. And so, they do. The moment is... quite emotional for the poor bean. They feel so guilty, that they weren’t truly empty, and WL reassures them with the notion that it was not them who failed their parents, it was their parents who failed them. She’s going to actually try to be a proper mother.. huh.. finally. And so, Hornet leaves Hollow with WL, Ghost coming along with her because they too feel as if those two deserve some time to fix things a bit. Ah, and once more-- a bit of a timeskip. Hollow has been living quite well with their mother, with her having unbound herself and gaining some of her sight back, enough that she is able to walk around without bumping into anything lmao. They get along quite well. When Ghost brings PK around, and Hornet finally drags him to Queens Gardens-- another emotional moment for Hollow. They go and embrace their father and wont let go until he asks them too..they’re just too damn happy to see him, though there is still that guilt of them failing him. PK himself is guilty. Then from that, and PK’s reunion with WL, they live.. quite happily, quite comfortably, and Hollow accepts their two siblings whenever Ghost is to bring them around. They are generally pleasant to their smaller sibs. But oh,, when their newest sibling finally arrives- Lil Lady- OH GOD- are they a loving big big sibling. They sort of,, cared for her a lot, and whenever PK and WL needed a break? They were there. Of course, they are a good influence on her, and Beryl is the bad influence. Though in general they have spent much more time with their little sister than Beryl has. Soon enough, when Hornet finally ascends to the throne, Hollow too is requested to be one of her knights, and of course they’d accept. This is their sister here. Whenever she is to need help, they help, and whenever their fellow knights need help, they are there. They feel useful like this, and Hornet does greatly appreciate their company and how they can easily split up Lace and Beryl from their constant fights. They’re truly an older sibling, scolding those two. And lastly, the whole Radi thing. I did explain this in that post about Hollow- but I’ll say it here too. Hollow wanted closure for everything, so they’ve gone and forgiven most people who have.. hurt them? yeah. This includes Radi. Radi doesn’t really want to be forgiven, she knows she did horrible things, and she isn’t the most guilty about them. But either way, they forgive her, and they somewhat become.. acquaintances?? friends?? They don’t really know. She’s just not as mean as she was to them before.. OH GOD- AND IM DONE AAAAAAAA This is a whole mess I tried my be s t whoever has read this whole thing, I thank you for reading my bullshit.

Comparing RWBY and YGO DM: The Handling and Evolution of Themes

Hey! Its been a hot minute since I last posted anything RWBY-related but Im laying in my bed right now and Im sick and bored so I guess we're doing this. Today I will do my best to analyze what I percieve to be the main themes and messages of both of these shows, or more specifically, how theyre handled narratively. Im mostly focusing on that part because, while these series do have similar themes and messaging, they are still a few things in which they are wildly different. And with that, lets start with this essay-post-thing!

1. Theres something we need to adress first

Okay so, before we can really talk about this, theres something I feel the need to clarify here: Neither of these stories was "planned from the beginning".

Now, I dont think a story being planned from the beginning or not nesscessarily makes the story any better or worse by default, however, it is still important to acknowledge because the way the story is planned is going to affect every facet of it. Things are not going to be foreshadowed properly, things are gonna be set up only for nothing to come of it, the story might drastically change directions, characters might act differently, etc, etc.

And, this is bit off-topic but, it's much better to just admit that the story was not planned than trying to pretend that it was. Like, there are a lot of reasons why I tend to be so forgiving towards YGO even though its not very good, but one of them is definitely the fact that, as far as Im aware atleast, the guy who wrote it isnt pretending to have had this big master plan all along and neither is the fandom. With RWBY on the other hand... yeaaaah, its kinda the opposite. From what Ive seen of RWBYs fandom, there seems to be this pretty popular narrative that everything was planned even though it clearly wasnt. Thats pretty bad and honestly lowers my opinion of the writers so much more than if they would just admit to not having a proper plan.

Like, I initially consumed YGO like this: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh (aka Season 0), like, a quarter of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (I still havent finished it)

In all three of these we have the character of Yami Yuugi, or just Yami. Broadly speaking, he is an ancient egyptian gamer spirit who lives in a magical puzzle that has not been solved for 3000 years until this highschooler named Yuugi Mutou comes along and solves it, thus setting him free and allowing him to possess Yuugi and have access to the vague magical powers of the puzzle.

In Duel Monsters he's perfectly fine most of time, morally speaking. There is an instance of him almost murdering a guy and its a bit unclear what exactly happens to those he mindcrushes but overall he's very much a pretty good guy. In Season 0 most of what he does is set up these games for bad people, where they will go insane no matter what they do. From how I understand this whole Shadow Game, Penalty Game stuff, if you lose a Shadow Game, you get violent and intense hallucinations and you will always cuz yknow, gamer spirit. But if you try to cheat, which most of the bad people do in this show, you get violent and intense hallucinations as a punishment.

Since the two anime are generally considered two different continuities, its perfectly fine that Yamis characterization is wildly different in both of them. But in the manga both of these characterizations appear, basically one after the other with no real arc or consequences, for that matter. Why is that? Simply put, someone thought it was a good idea to try to turn an episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror manga into a more traditional, more plot-driven battle shounen. From what Ive heard, it was apparently largely because of network interference or something, but the point is, it changed directions incredibly drastically with little planning and everyone knows this and I can understand that for the most part.

In RWBY we have the character of Blake Belladonna, who, in the first 3 volumes/seasons atleast, was this aloof, more toned down loner-type character with a pretty strong sense of justice. She's an in-universe marginilized racial minority and she clearly cares about racial injustice. The way its initially framed makes it seem like she had a very hard life and no stable support system, which is what eventually pushed her to join a Civil Rights group/Terrorist organization (good god, the Faunus subplot is so awful, I could write a whole essay about it but Im already de-railing rn so I'll just save that for later).

Then, in volumes 4-5 it turns out her father is actually like, the mayor or chief of this island-place called Menagerie and she grew up in this big mansion with multiple guards/servants. Oh and also, apparently "space is a commodity" on there, so theres that. She still retains large parts of her personality but she's kinda like, worse somehow I think. I cant really describe it in a meaningful way but I hope you get what Im saying anyway. Then in Volume 6 she confronted her emotional abuser Adam (sorry for not mentioning him sooner but yeah, he was like, her abusive boyfriend, which is something that a lot of people disagree with but I wont really say anything about it either way because I dont really feel any specific way) with her friend, Yang, and ended up killing him.

After all that, she pretty much lost the rest of her personality, as well as her arc about all the Faunus stuff. She just kinda became the meek, generically nice, recovering abuse victim. Why? Well, the actual reason is that they didnt plan out shit and are just kinda flying by the seat of their oversized clown-pants and if they and the fandom just admitted it, I would have less of an issue. I still wouldnt be as forgiving towards RWBY as I am towards YGO because the crux of the issue, for me, is just that I dont particulary like RWBY but also like. Do you really expect me to take MKEK seriously as writers after admitting to not have a timeline because iT wOuLd CaUsE pLoThOlEs?

However, since they want us to believe that everything was planned out from the beginning, the explaination would be.... Idk, they deliberately butchered one of their main characters?? Because.. they hate her?? Maybe????

So yeah, that was quite a detour however, I would like you to keep this mind going forward.

2. Themes of the Early Series'

First, what do mean by 'Early Series' for both of these shows respectively? Well, for YGO that would have to be Season 0 or if youre reading the manga, everything pre-Duelist Kingdom. Basically, the part of the series thats a episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror series.

For RWBY that would be the first three Volumes, also known as the Poser-Era. Back then it was just kinda an action series that took place at Anime Warrior Academy (also known as Beacon) with some pretty bare minimum worldbuilding, character-driven plots and developments but now its more of an epic high-fantasy story with more of an emphasis on plot as opposed to just action.

The themes and messages in Early YGO are kinda vague, very confusing to me and if you were to follow any of it literally that would be pretty bad. For now Im just gonna say the main themes are Friendship and Identity and mostly focus on the Identity aspect.

Now, it took me a little while to figure out RWBYs deal but I think the main themes for Volumes 1-3 are also Friendship and Heroism. Once again, I'll mostly focus on Heroism and touch on Friendship more briefly later.

I dont have much more to add to YGOs themes right now, so I'll briefly go over Heroism in RWBY.

In RWBYs setting there are these man-eating monsters called Grimm that have basically infected the planet. In order to deal with that, they have people called huntsmen and huntresses that kill them and protect people. Theyre trained at special academies like Beacon and go on missions there and stuff like that. Our four main characters, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang, are training to become huntresses and one day they go on this mission to clean up a grimm infested city block with one of their teachers. Obviously, that takes a long time so they have to camp out in one of the empty houses. Weiss, Blake and Yang cant sleep because theyve been thinking about this question that their teacher asked them when they were fighting grimm: "Why do you want to become a huntress?"

They have a heart to heart and we find out about their motivations; Weiss wants to bring honour back to her family, Blake want to distance herself from the White Fang (that terrorist organization I mentioned earlier) and as an extension from Adam, Yang wants to have a life of adventure. They also talk about why Ruby wants to be a huntress and it turns out that she judt wants to help people. Unlike the others, she has no motivation besides that. We're meant to listen to that and look at her as a sort-of personification of Heroism: kind, but not naive, strong and most of all, selfless. The others on her team are not portayed as bad for not being like Ruby by any means but we are clearly meant to admire her the most out of all of them.

Okay, now comes the part Ive been looking forward to the most:

3. How did these themes evolve in the Modern Series'?

Alright, before we can really delve into the way they evolved in YGO I'll have to give you a brief summary of the character progression. At the start of DM, during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yami Yuugi is just that; A darker Yuugi. Hes more confident, bolder, his voice is deeper, hes somehow taller, more ruthless, all that good stuff. Notably, he doesnt actually seem more skilled than Yuugi even at the start of this story, but he's still dependent on Yami. Yami on the other hand, has no identity of his own or even hints at one at this point. He's just The Other Yuugi.

Then during the Battle City arc, they find out that Yami was actually a pharao prior to being sealed in the puzzle, he just didnt know because of amnesia, I guess. So now they need to find out his real name and then send him to the afterlife because hes meant to be dead, but not before saving the world from being swallowed by darkness, which is also a thing they have to do now.

Then we finally get to the Memory World arc, where Yami, Yuugi and the rest of the gang astralproject to ancient egypt via puzzle magic. Yami is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and who all these familiar people are, while Yuugi & Co are trying their best to help him. Then some weird shit happens and it turns out that all of that is not just Yamis sealed away memories, but also a giant D&D Shadow Game that will destroy the world if Yami loses. So now theres Pharao!Yami who is still clueless on the metaphorical and literal playing field and Player!Yami, who is kinda controlling himself now? I guess?? Yamis opponent, The Spirit of The Ring, has something similar to that going on where hes both controlling and properly participating in the game. So Player!Yami is now fighting against Player!TSoTR, Pharao!Yami is now fighting against Thief King Bakura (who is like, the human, ancient egyptian version of the Ring Spirit) and Yuugi is now fighting against Yami Bakura (who is like, the human, modern japanese version of the Ring Spirit). Yuugi gets Yamis real name, he and the gang go over to Pharao!Yami and tell him his name, meanwhile Player!Yami is also somehow helping as well and they defeat the Ring Spirit, thus saving the world. Then they travel to modern Egypt, the Ceremonial Duel happens and Yuugi wins, sending Yami to the Afterlife where he can finally rest and that was the series!

I originally wanted to recount the stuff that was going on with the Ring Spirit and his host as well because they parallel eachother, but this summary is already far too long and I think youll get the point without me needing to explain any more.

My point here is, that the story went from being vaguely about Identity, maybe? to being very clearly about Self-Discovery and Learning to Be Independent. I think this is a very good way to evolve the messaging of your story. How does RWBY track on that?

Well, uh... its not great. I will acknowledge that they have tried to introduce new themes and ideas since, even though I wont really be talking about them in this post. But yeah, the whole Heroism thing really regressed.

Like, I didnt explicitly say it when I was explaining grimm earlier, but theyre not going away. The grimm have always been there and people who sign up to become huntsmen and huntresses are effectively signing up for a job that will never truly be done, no matter what they do. Characters like Ruby and even more minor ones like Phyrrah have shown us that that doesnt matter when youre a hero. No life isnt worth saving, no grimm isnt worth killing, no criminal isnt worth arresting. Then, in volume 6 they find out about Salem. Salem is the Big Bad of the show, shes immortal, controls the grimm and is supposed to be very powerful.

What do our heroes do? They give up. Sike! They were just mindcontrolled by monsters or some shit, of course they didnt give up their mission (which is to bring an Important Macguffin to a city called Atlas, sorry I didnt mention it)!

But then they arrive in Atlas (which is llike, a city thats floating over another city called Mantle) and yknow, they do some plot stuff thats not really important right now until the city gets invaded by Salem and this big grimm army she has.

What do our heroes do? Well, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and some side characters are chilling, drinking tea in a mansion and Yang and the B Team were actually trying to do something, but even those efforts seem incredibly minimal.

Oh wait, I also forgot to mention that Ironwood (a fairly minor, vaguely antagonistic character up until now) wanted to lift Atlas even higher to save Atleasian civilians from danger while leaving Mantle vulnerable to Salems invasion.

What would be the most heroic thing to do?

A) Let Ironwood lift Atlas, get as much support as they can down to Mantle and save as many Mantle civilians as they can from the invasion

B) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas but then split up in order to protect both Atlas and Mantle civilians

C) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas and then dont do anything else

Congrats! If you choose C, you think exactly like the writers!

And I just

This is so mindboggling to me, I feel like I shouldnt even have explain how this is bad. And like, it wouldve been so easy to actually make them seem herokc through their actions, to make it seem like they did try but no.

I have never seen a central theme be this botched, how in the world did they do that? Why did they think it was a good idea for Ruby "The Embodiment of Heroism" Rose to sit in a mansion doing nothing, no planning, no organizing just ..... God, how are they this bad? Like, this doesnt even have anything to do with it being planned in any way, this is just straight up incompetence

4. Very briefly touching on friendship

The friendship is awful and its not solely because they all have the same opinions. They barely interact with eachother outside their designated pairs which leads to it all feeling incredibly hollow. Theyre also practically indistingushable from one another now, which is a shame because it wasnt always like that. Like, I dont think the characters were that well-developed in earlier volumes but they were very well-characterized. But now we've gotten to a point where you can literally copy and paste one characters dialogue onto another and literally nothing changes, it really sucks.

5. Some closing words

Damn, this took way longer than I thought it would and now Im pretty exhausted. I have no idea how yall always write these but props to you! I feel like this ended up a bit rambly but overall, Im pretty proud.

Please let me know what you think of the points I brought up! Id also really appreciate some tips on how to get better at these longer posts because I am planning on writing more in the future (not the near future, probably but yknow).

Thats all I have to say for now, thanks for reading!

movie post for AR @alien-romantic !! ✨

okay i feel like my movie taste really does come down to what did i see in theaters that made me define my personality around them for the rest of the week, and i usually have Allergic to Watching Old Movies Disease so most of these are p recent! my movie taste is Also defined by what i saw enough on tumblr that eventually i broke down and watched it and it was actually amazing lol

✨favorite horror movies✨

Jennifer’s Body: THEE movie of all time, it literally has anything i could ever want in a movie: excessively campy dialogue, a plot around making a deal with the devil, a town that’s slightly fucked up, extended metaphors about gender violence but in a palatable PG-13 non-graphic format, Megan Fox going feral and eating boys, a homoerotic friendship where they also kinda hate each other but its mostly bc neither of them can deal with their feelings in the world they were brought up in, and a soundtrack that slaps. Seriously i could probably quote this movie word for word at this point, and like technically its horror but its also really funny and theres not really any jumpscares or anything. Im gonna stop talking about this one bc if i keep going i could write a whole essay but its so good (also i wont elaborate but Jennifers Body and Heathers are sisters, spiritually)

Us: hhhhhhhh this is so good, ik Jordan Peele’s only directed two movies so far but he never misses, like this was genuinely terrifying for me but also raises a lot of Questions and made me think about the implications of it for weeks afterward. It’s about this family vacationing in Santa Cruz, CA at the same time that there’s this planned uprising of doppelgängers all around the US (i cant remember if its the world or just the US? But it makes a lot of commentary about the US in particular so im guessing its just the US). I’ve still only seen it once but the aesthetics are so good, its definitely more on the violent side than Get Out was, but its not too bad (like idk if you’ve seen Midsommar but like. its nowhere near as gory as that lol). I swear i didnt have a fear of doppelgängers before this but between this and tma i sure do now

It (chapter 1): this one is so close to my heart omg 🥺 i associate it super strongly with watching it with friends so thats at least half the reason its a favorite. Also i love horror-comedies so much as a genre, mostly bc i scare easily so its nice to have jokes in between to break the tension and this movie’s hilarious

Cabin in the Woods: i cant say what this one’s about without spoiling it but i’ll say it definitely goes under the same category as It for me, in terms of horror-comedy. Its such a fun deconstruction of horror movie tropes and it gets so insane at the end, like when you watch it you can *tell* it was made in 2011 but like in a good way

Also honorable mention to The Love Witch for sending me into a spiral about what truly is the female gaze/if there can be one definition of that/the relationship between love and violence etc etc basically it’s Extremely Gender. Also not v bloody and doesnt have any jumpscares, and its an aesthetic masterpiece omg

✨favorite comfort movies/romcoms✨

Juno: i dont normally have favorite actors but Elliot Page is my emotional support favorite actor, like idk how to explain it but all of his characters just scream comfort character somehow. Juno has the same screenwriter as Jennifer’s Body so it has a really similar sense of humor, but altogether v wholesome plot about a pregnant teenager and her bff, michael cera. Also highly quotable, and i dont think ive ever watched this without crying, like this is one of those movies where im like love is real actually 🥺💕

Easy A: this movieee!!! Oh my god this movie, its so intensely californian and thats def part of why i like it. Also realizing now a major factor in movies i like is how quotable they are bc this is another one i feel like i quote all the time. Plus theres something so fun about baby Emma Stone living her 80s movie protagonist dream AND doing the “you think i’m a villain? I’ll show you a villain!” trope bc thats always fun

All of twilight but especially the first one: i mean idk what to say, i got brainworms when i was 11 and made twilight my whole personality for like 3 years, then grew out of it, then the twilight renaissance happened and im Back on My Bullshit 😂 i also just like having a purpose for me memorizing everything possible about twilight in middle school so like.... if you ever want any fun twilight facts hit me up (this goes to AR but if you’re not AR and reading this too this also applies lmao im down to talk about twilight any time)

And honorable mention to Scott Pilgrim (okay not a romcom but def a comfort movie), to be fair i havent seen this one all the way through in a looong time but i go back to the most iconic parts a lot

also okay theres def more in this category that i like but my brain is turned off now so i cant remember them 😂

✨ and the best category: movies i hate ❤️ ✨

i feel like i tend not to like movies that feel like they’re trying too hard? Like if i watch something and *instantly* know its trying to be Oscar bait, or if its trying to be camp but like,,., pretentious high end camp. Like anything by Wes Anderson is a hard nope for me, also i saw Gravity in theatres on a whim whenever that came out and it just didnt click for me at all. (Also okay The Love Witch kiiiind of checks the boxes for this but its still a fave)

Also okay this movie isnt any of those things but i still dont like it: It Chapter 2! I feel so bad cause It chapter 1 was so good and created this huge hype for the sequel for me, but the plot just went off the fucking rails. Sure we got bill hader being in love with his childhood best friend which spawned the whole Reddie craze on here for awhile..... but that came at the price of naked old ladies being used for shock value and whatever the hell was going on with Pennywise being an alien/god/something??? Like if the book is like this i know i couldn’t get through it, i was laughing my way through the whole movie but like, laughing (derogatory)

I feel like this section just became a reason to dunk on It Ch 2 but honestly the only other sequel i can think of that betrayed me like that was Endgame 😂

Also unrelated but while im still on the topic of movies i dont like/my hot takes: 10 Things I Hate About You was too sexist for me enjoy, i see it hyped on here a lot and im like ??? yall that did not age well 😭 but tbf i still like Mean Girls so we all have our things 😂

Dolos

Megane's home planet

!!Warning!! This post will contain some dark themes.

So its time for me to ramble again! So im not going to talk much about megane but I will talk about where she came from and talk about the lore/history of Dolos (megane's home planet).

Not many know about Dolos' origins or how it became so dark and twisted but all we know is bad shit just decided to happen. Dolos is one of the fastest, futuristic, civilizations that has ever been developed in the universe, along with some other planet civilizations and solar systems. Like I mentioned in megane's story post, the high ups of Dolo has some very very questionable practices and how they handle things. For the most part Dolos has a weird job system they strictly go by. Higher ups choose who works and who can't, what jobs some citizens will have and which they cannot etc. Most of the jobs are reparing spaceships/spacecraft, engineering, military, armorer, a helper for the higher ups, etc. Dolos may take a big pride of their military size and such but the way they created it is unhuman to say the least.. Higher ups usually pick children at random who may have potential on the military field and take them from a young age. Sometimes as teenagers and sometimes when they are just a kid from around 9 or 10 or even younger. They take them from a young age to educate them and to train them into future troopers (they actually do this for whatever important field they choosed for them to work on. They call each job a station. Most of them are of course separated from different buildings or sometimes different floors of a building if the stations are able to help each other).

Citizens of Dolos don't know anything about the outside world of their solar system. They are usually lied to by their overly controlling leader. Citizens were still granted with the knowledge of how to fight and basic knowledge but were never granted the right to learn anything outside of the planet unless they worked for the higher ups (they also cannot leave the planet unless its requested by the leader/higher ups). For example, only troopers were allowed to learn about the outside world because some of the missions would've taken place outside of the planet, either to do a outside experiment, taking a escaped citizen back to Dolos, getting resources from other planets, etc. Citizens never knew about the leader's twisted plans and practices he did to those innocent citizens. Citizens believe they are safe, a endless cycle of false sense of safety and pride.

Not only were some jobs and trying very dangerous/risky. Most of the unfortunate citizens had to be used as test subjects for experiments. However only troopers or troopers in training mainly participated in these unhuman experiments. They use these experiments to test drugs that can possibly help them in combat or test anything that can be harmful to their enemies as well. They also did experiments that would damage a lot of the troopers such as noise experiments, vision experiments, anything related that can be sensitive and harmful. Most of these experiments caused a lot of trauma, damage, and even death to many test subjects. Most of these experiments lead to most of their test subjects to have hallucinations and extreme pain in most cases. These hallucinations were extremely terrifying to most test subjects to the point they hide in fear or try to escape, not wanting to do the experiments. And the extreme pain is so unbearable most test subjects can't walk for a couple of hours and can only just curl up in pain.

Test subjects who have hallucinations usually have it pretty bad, they hallucinate some of their peers as these twisted and creepy creatures. Whatever happened to the person the test subject is looking at, the damage the person has can effect their hallucination monster form thing. Not all test subjects have extreme hallucinations but most do. This can also make test subjects become aggressive and fearful because of these hallucinations. They only see it as having the choice to fight or flee. Most of the staff/doctors didn't know how to handle these kind of situations which lead to bad choices and trauma for both the test subject and some cases the staff. Most staff weren't the best with dealing with the test subjects and troopers in training, they mostly treat them like complete shit but still teaches them what had to be teached and still do their job. Just not in the best way possible I guess I should say.

Sorry for the shitty doodles haha- im not good with explaining so I think drawing it helps to get my point across <:D

More about the normal citizens of Dolos. Everyone must wear uniforms at all times unless you are in your comfort of your home. Normal citizens have to wear clothes that mainly represent the colors of Dolos' colors. Even people with jobs had to wear a specific uniform. (Sadly I only drawn the uniforms for the troopers and normal citizens but in the far future I will draw the uniforms for the other jobs I promise!). Thankfully normal citizens and even those with jobs are allowed to have weapons. They just cannot use it against the higher ups and not on each other. Citizens' weapons are weaker than military weapons in Dolos. However, citizens weapons can still do damage and are mainly used for self defense. If they try using it on higher ups, the citizen on question would be punishment with murder. (Most punishments are either murder or 20 years in jail depending the crime. But most crimes including hurting the higher ups are a instant kill).

Please ingore the names in the bottom of the doodles. This is just to give off the main idea I mean in the post. Also keep in mind the one eye trooper is not how normal citizens nor how troopers look like.

You may be wondering, hey why is the leader of Dolos so scared of the word getting out about their inhuman ways of life and abuse of power? Well theres a bigger higher up in the universe thats control by someone who is more kinder. This bigger higher up usually checks peoples backgrounds before letting them claim a planet or solar system if they have the money for it. Of course the leader was grated with Dolos but it can be taken away from him if he dare hurt he's citizens or did more than just inhumane crimes. So he usually tries to keep citizens in and keep them ignorant about what's going on so they won't tell them what has been going on. Which is why the leader does not allow citizens to leave the planet. Once you get in you never get out. The leader always immediately takes action to find missing citizens that have been reported by troopers or any citizen because of the paranoia of citizens escaping the planet and finding "help".

_____________________________________

Woah- that's a lot hehe. Im sorry for the extreme dark theme in this one bois <:c I hope this gives a better idea of what kind of environment megane use to be in before the leader fucking became cheeto dust 😔. I have been wanting to talk about where megane use to come from but I didn't want to add it in her main story post because of how much lore it has. I hope you guys enjoy it and if you have any criticism or have any questions, please ask away and let me know! <:D

How I accidentally wrote 20 page paper on Boromir for one of my Final Ever University Papers PART 2

So this took me 5ever because I had to go through my actual paper again to find the sources and the citations I had, and then throw out the academic fluffer I had to speak with. But anyway just be prepared for a long ass read because we gotta touch on nearly every source I argued with in this post before getting to the good stuff. If you haven’t read Part 1 well here it is

Okay Okay where was I?

I said that academics were wrong with how they were judging Boromir right? Is that where I left off? Well thats where I’m starting

So before I go further I need to explain that the main premise for my paper is an argument to characterize Boromir with loyalty and fear, instead of power hungry and whatever the hell used, and then throw out this good vs. evil binary that’s often used to describe the lord of the rings- because lets be real, it looks like that on the surface but everyone has their ups and downs at least once or twice, and if not within the Lord of the Rings, it comes from books that are set in previous ages. 

ANYWAY

Keep the fear and loyalty things in mind alright?

Fear sounds like an odd choice for a character I’m supposed to be defending right? I know.

We’ll get to that just bear with me. 

So in order to say that academics were wrong, I first had to look at where they were coming from and try to see what textual evidence they had. Because if you’ve done academic research, you know how important textual evidence is. 

So while finding literally nothing that focused specifically on Boromir, I found  J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia : Scholarship and Critical Assessment by Michael D. C. Drout, which I still have questions about but hey it was a good starting point. You would think that a whole Encyclopedia dedicated to Tolkien would have more than a handful of entries dedicated to Boromir. I mean mentioning him in Gondorian politics or relations with Rohan or even Boromir I instead of just Boromir II but heres the thing, IN THE WHOLE IN ENCYCLOPEDIA HE WAS ONLY MENTIONED 8 TIMES.

THE NAME BOROMIR (which in this document only refers to Boromir II) ONLY APPEARS IN EIGHT ENTRIES.

You know what those entries are? 

‘double of,’ - okay what the fuck does that mean?

 I honestly don’t remember what it means I think it had to do with character foils, you know like how Neville is a foil for Harry in Harry Potter? If I remember correctly, it identified the common foils, Gandalf v. Saruman, Frodo v. Gollum and Aragorn v. Boromir. I could be totally wrong about this, its been exactly a year and I didn’t focus on this entry.

 ‘Faramir and,’- yes we know Boromir is Faramir’s older brother. What else ya got?

 ‘herosim of,’- Ah yes sounds promising

And you think it would shed some positive light on our boy right? RIGHT? Heres what the entry said per the quote in paper “It is in fact Boromir’s desire for the victory of Minas Tirith and his own glory there in that motivates his own grasp for the ring: the heroic motivations of fame, reward, and revenge (in this case on Sauron)” ( Drout 270 ).  

LIKE EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK- sorry wait, let me show you how I rephrased that for academic purposes:  This description does not actually describe Boromir as being heroic, but later explains why these descriptions of heroism are actually evil compared to characters like Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli and the rest of the Fellowship.

 ‘penance of,’- Yet another character who achieves redemption through death. Great. I hate it. Shut up. Kill this trope.

 and finally,  ‘tyranny of.’- yes because Boromir was obviously a tyrant, but I say again SHOW ME TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

AND I’M TALKING ONLY ABOUT THE BOOKS HERE REMEMBER ALL OF THIS IS INFORMATION ON THE BOOKS. like there were entries on things from the movies, and even fanfiction, but THESE ENTRIES WERE BUILT ON RESOURCES THAT BUILT ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE BOOKS

I’m getting off track here

SO 

ANYWAYS

At the end of each of those entries were list of sources that the author used to create those entries. So guess what that meant- Ya girl was hand delivered sources to search for and hopefully they had some specific pages references for me to look up within the actual book series. At least you would think thats what I found, but NOOOOOOOOO, what I actually found is that EVERY SINGLE REFERENCED SOURCE CHARACTERIZED BOROMIR ONLY BY HIS ATTEMPT TO TAKE THE RING FROM FRODO.

Thats like living your whole life and having people who say they know you intimately (not in the romantic sense in the knows you to your core sense) BUT the only thing they really know about you is that one time in pre-school you tried to draw a rocket on the wall but actually it looked like a penis thats the only thing anyone will remember you for. I didn’t do this by the way, nor know anyone who did this but some kid somewhere probably did

But you know me at this point I had to check the sources and see what they were saying. So I took up Patrick Grant’s  “Tolkien: Archetype and Word,” where he talks mostly about Frodo. I know its a stretch BUT he talks about loyalty specifically Sam’s loyalty to Frodo, and remember we want to establish that Boromir is incredibly loyal, so we have to see what he’s actually up against according to the critics

“…Sam Gamgee, whose part is least publicly acclaimed of all, but who in the sense in which we are now using the word, is especially heroic. His unfailing devotion to Frodo is exemplary, and here again Sam is a key link in bring the meaning of the book to the reader, the everyman who admires great deeds but wonders what his own part might be in important events which seem well enough wrought without him” ( 180 ).  

Okay that seems fair from how Tolkien himself has talked about Sam right. And you’re probably like okay, but what the fuck does that have to do with Boromir? Literally just further down the page  he says:

“…. The fellowship breaks only when the bond of obedience is broken, as it is by Boromir, whose pride and lust for personal power are evidence of false heroism” (180).

LUST FOR PERSONAL POWER???? PRIDE?????

SHOW ME THE PAGES SIR

GIVE THEM TO ME

I know you’re probably thinking, ‘but wait he’s actually kinda right-”

WRONG

Its anxiety, I’m telling you

I counted 

its fear and anxiety

but again I’m getting a head of myself. Basically Grant just took a shat on Boromir to make Sam look good.

EXCUSE ME SIR SAM IS A GODDAMN MASTERPIECE ON HIS OWN THANKS. DON’T TRASH BOROMIR TO COMPLIMENT SAM. Also be wary of people who do this in general, if they put someone else down instead of just out right complimenting you take it as a warning

Oh and did I mention that because Grant says Boromir is technically being selfish, another critics analysis makes Boromir Evil, because acts done out of selfish pursuits are seen as evil and a “perversion of human will.” But you know, thats just how it be sometimes when you’re putting literature in conversation with one another.

Just know I pick on Grant a lot, mostly because he says shit like this:  “…the most blinding love derives directly from such obedience,” (180). when it comes to Sam, and then takes a shit on Boromir. Like we’re going to come back to the obedience thing in a little bit, but just know that Merry, Pippin, Faramir, Eowyn, Even Sam at one point, and I mean I guess by some extension movie!Arwen take a big ‘ol shit on the idea that the only way to be heroic is to be OBEDIENT.

I get it, its another Catholic thing. I’m Catholic, I know what its getting at. But consider- no

Basically I boil this shit down to one thing

Sam Only Owes Loyalty To Frodo.

Literally his main concern throughout the book is Frodo and then the Shire and what that encompasses. So yeah its easy to be loyal and obedient to someone who shares all the same ideas and values as you and has a pretty similar lived experience right??? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY And before anyone says Sam was loyal to the fellowship, Sam would literally cut a bitch for Frodo. He woulda fought Aragorn in the Prancing Pony if he thought he had to. He gave a second thought to Merry and Pippin when they left the Fellowship, but it wasn’t a “we should go back for them all or wait for them” It was “i’m gonna support mr. Frodo, even if Idon’t much like the gollum creature he decided to drag around but fair i guess cuz none of us know the fucking way into Mordor.” 

So I made a chart to demonstrate why comparing Boromir and Sam is a big no no, and what kinda things Boromir was working with the whole time he was part of the fellowship.

Did I forget to mention that this was supposed to be a visual research paper?

So Sam and Frodo had a lot of the same Fears and values.

Our Boy Boromir over here has to deal with being a political/military figure, meet the demands of his father, he’s gotta try to be a good brother, he’s gotta learn to get along with the fellowship, and then each of those new or old loyalties has different responsibility and expectations he’s supposed to meet. And because I had to include Aristotelian ideas as part of the class, to quote myself: Despite the Aristotelian concept that it is impossible to be a virtuous friend to many, Boromir’s actions throughout The Fellowship of the Ring show him attempting to do this ( Aristotle 9 ). Like thats literally why he ends up a member of the Fellowship, he’s a little unsure of this plan, but hey its the best one he’s heard and if everyone thinks its going to work then by golly he’ll see it done. But again Aristotle (just in your head pronounce it like chipotle for me please) wants to try to establish a structure that I think is stoopid, he’s got a thing that says  “it is a more terrible thing to defraud a comrade than a fellow-citizen, more terrible not to help a brother than a stranger, and more terrible to wound a father than any one else” (15). 

So remember those loyalties in the little blue squiggles up in the picture, we already know that Denethor, and Faramir bump heads a little, and then the soldiers serving with Boromir probably have their own ideas about how Gondor should be defended, and then he goes to the Council of Elrong and they’re saying something completely different from what he’s heard- theres a lot of threads pulling the Captain in different directions. He’s got a lot hats to wear and demands to fulfill and living under the shadow of Mordor with all of those responsibilities is bound to give anyone anxiety. 

But don’t just take my word for it

The movie actually reinforces this. I know the book says Boromir was “...pierced with many black feathered arrows” But the movie specifically makes it 3

Now I’m sure Mr. Peter Jackson didn’t intend for what I’m about to say, but I think its a pretty cool notion to think about. Because you can summarize Boromir’s conflicting loyalties into “family’ ‘country’ and “Fellowship’. Like his father would have him bring the ring to Gondor, his role as a military/political figure for Gondor means he should be doing whatever he has to in order to protect his country, and the Fellowship is like nah man we destroy this thing and everything else will fall into place, and Boromir is left having to decide whih of these things to act upon. Family, Country, and the Fellowship are the competing signs that make up is character arc, and his grapple with these three things is ultimately what leads to his death.

Now if your thinking family and country should be lumped together- theres a reason for it, just trust me, bare with me please

But basically what I’m trying to get at is given all these factors, you can’t compare a character like Boromir with all these responsibilities hanging off him to be comparable to Sam whose only responsibility is Frodo. 

But you know who does share all these same demands

Faramir

Like take a look at their character arcs- if you can the text on this next pic is super teeny

If thats too small for you don’t worry about it because we’re gonna get into why Faramir is a better foil for Boromir, and how this should affect the way we as the reader come to understand his character. So fun stuff in the next part! Sorry for dragging this out, but just like my original paper, this turned out to be WAY longer than I expected. 

can you explain what's going on right now? i keep seeing big IT blogs talking about some discourse or something but i have no idea what they're talking about other than it involves you lol

alright i like. i truly do not like having diScOurSE out in public because i’m not one to air out my dirty laundry 24/7 but seeing as how it was brought into public against my will i feel like the least i can do is clear up the situation for those who’ve been seeing the posts. 

i’m putting this under the cut bc it’s long. tws for some biphobia, brief mention of transphobia and, at the end, a rape mention. 

so if you don’t know: hi, i’m migz, i’m an it fandom blogger. its okay, i know, its really cool. part of my shtick here is that i like to turn normal thirst tags into works of art for the sake of comedy. perhaps you’ve seen some of my highlights from my “fhg” tag - perhaps your brain has been spared. either way, it became kind of “my thing” around the third or fourth week (mid nov) of me having this blog. at first, i tagged just about every ask i got mentioning the thirst tags with “bill hader” - they had to do with him, so why not tag him? it would draw more like minded people! about two days into that i got a message asking me to tag my nsfw. i am a big dumb idiot, and apologize for not initially doing it. i havent had a following bigger than like 10 in several years and completely spaced on basic etiquette. so by the end of november i was tagging everything applicable  with “notsfw” and “bill hader”. 

now you’re caught up.

on december 1st i got this message from user billhaderanti:

now i want to start by saying i absolutely was in the wrong here. i didn’t even think about how many people were being subjected to the asks i was getting - especially ones who had no idea they were all jokes. i don’t track the bill hader tag, so it just didn’t even occur to me - that’s ignorance on my part, and to anyone who was subjected to the terrors of me before my tagging system: i am genuinely sorry. i relay the same sentiment in my response, though you can tell i’m on edge.

and they replied:

clearly they Were offended by it but thats.. not the point. at this point, im feeling Really weird about the whole interaction, but still understanding, because again - i GET it. i know my posts are gross - that’s the point. it doesn’t make it excusable, though, which is why i understand why people are offended. so i responded with the only solution i Knew would keep us both safe and happy posting on our own blogs. 

so i thought this would be the end of things! i’d been pretty anxious lately already since i’d started to receive anons telling me i was gross and whore-ish for thirst posting in this way (i delete all of those, so if ur thinking about sending one, i guess no one’s stopping you but it won’t be seeing the light of the dashboard). i’m unsure if it was immediately or a few hours later, seeing as how i have a bad concept of time and the post-dates are right on the edge between nov 30 and dec 1, but i went to their blog - because anyone who has been on the internet knows the opportunity to vague post is near irresistible. and...what do ya know

fair! it’s their blog. however i am an emotionally fragile egg girl and immediately got freaked out. the odds that they were the only one who thought this were low. and, again, i’ve been very open on my blog about how important it is to respect boundaries; my posts are absolutely prone to breaking those boundaries people have created for themselves. 

so i made my own, semi-vague post, letting my following know (and i’m pretty sure i’d answered asks about it before, but this is going to be long enough w/o me searching those up too) that i understood if they wanted to block me or unfollow or whatever - people need to create their own safe spaces. the tension is pretty clear in the tags, i’m not trying to hide that. i felt that the way this woman slid into my dm’s was pretty abrasive (just my opinion/how it made me personally feel) and i let myself be a lil emotional about it in the tags of my post.

alright! maybe this is the end. maybe we both go our separate ways and post happily on our own blogs... except it’s not the end. later in the day (some of this was happening like 1/2am, so now its Day day, i believe - again, not good w time passage lol)

clearly, i’m upset. my groupchat double checked that i didn’t get too emotional in my response - did i mention im anxious about discourse lol - and apparently.. it did the trick. she didn’t message me again. great. it was over. 

at this point, i decided i needed to make an even bigger change. so a few days after i’d calmed down i created an entirely new tag for my thirst posts so if people hadn’t already hidden the notsfw posts or just blocked me outright, they’d have a third option to escape the madness. at this point, id had my blog about 6? weeks, but there were still 2k posts for me to sift through - some of them were completely untagged. i also had to do it post by post, because one of xkits features - the mass re-tagger - was getting blogs deleted for some reason, and i wasn’t going to do that. so i spent a few days going through all 2k+ posts, adding the “fhg” tag. 

YEEHAW! a brand new tagging system, no more hopping into the bill hader tag (minus one or two really funny, not super explicit asks, like the bill hader farquaad meme), and, tbf, i’d completely put this woman out of my mind. i don’t seek out drama and do my best to stay in my lane. yesterday, i checked my activity for the first time in awhile since id put out a couple new original posts that had started to get traction and i Love reading tags. i noticed a mutual had @’d me, and realized i havent checked my @’s in...ever, maybe. i see a post from my good pal billhaderanti. 

since i dont follow them and never check my @’s, i’d completely missed it. however, once i did see it, i was horrified. id gone through all that fucking work to keep my blog My Blog and also respect everyone’s boundaries and it still hadn’t been enough. i’d been awake for almost 24 hours and went. a little crazy. and i didn’t reply immediately because i just had no words. i sent it to my friends because i... i just wasn’t going to be able to figure it out myself. 

there’s a lot to unpack in this post alone, but whatever, i’m gonna put my own grievances with the immaturity of 1. making a callout post to begin with when i’d been nothing but civil 2. making a callout post about something as (in the grand scheme of Life) minor as some tags where i refer to a someone’s genitals as a “whack pack” and 3. making a callout post in such a rude way - aside. at the end, she calls me (and whoever else!) a demonic mlw (man loving woman, we assumed, and then later confirmed with a post further back on her blog). 

which - yeah, we started scrolling. at first we were looking for more vague blogs, and then we just...started finding things. billhaderanti is a self proclaimed lesbian separatist, which... fine. but it’s already pretty clear that this woman hates me on some level simply because i am a bi woman (demonic mlw, remember!) which is just. damn man i can’t believe we are still fighting the biphobic fight lol. so the more we scrolled, the more we uncovered - and not just the biphobic / vaguely mtf transphobic things they posted (or put in tags), but we also found that they had their OWN thirst tags. certainly not as hyperbolically comedic as mine, but they were there, talking about his body and his person the same (and, frankly, a bit creepier for other reasons) as mine. 

there’s one post in particular that snatched my wig in it’s creepiness - and i say creepiness in the sense that it feels personal. like this woman feels like she knows bill to some degree where she can say these things. my tags have always had a sense of distance, as they’re written for humor. and maybe this particular post was written for comedic purposes, but it doesn’t read that way, and if it WAS, then she has no right to call ME out for MY comic tags and posts. 

i’ll let it speak for itself, mostly because i don’t want to read it again. 

i also won’t be going through her blog again to find the posts with biphobic and other Interesting:tm: tags because there are plenty and i just really! want to be done with the whole ordeal! her blog is public and i’m sure you can all find it and look to your heart’s content. 

feeling a bit feral and a bit pissed off now that we knew the depth of how rotten this woman’s vibes were, a couple of my pals made a post or two similar to what my tag’s are like except turned up to eleven (if possible) - and tagged them with “bill hader” (and notsfw!!). yes, a bit childish, but at this point, the entire situation was childish, and making jokes was truly the only way we were going to get through it. another vague post went up on her blog soon after.

talking down to us, calling us children, and then for whatever reason calling us virgins... whatever, weird post. around this time most of us (est) went to bed, because it was nearing 3 or 4 in the morning. 

and then today happened. i woke up fresh and ready for the day after a wonderful 4 hours of sleep and found that jane had made an incredibly intelligent post in response to the situation. i won’t ss it, but i’ll LINK in case you missed it. attached there in the reblog is my own response. i think they can speak for themselves. 

after that, things were kind of jumbled, since i wasn’t online a lot and when i was i was Not checking my activity simply because i was afraid of what i’d see. for the most part, it ended up just being support (which i am very grateful to all of you for - it means a lot that you all enjoy my content to any degree). 

there was some more vague posting from both “““““sides”””””” of the “““““argument”””””” - mostly just people restating the fact that this is a public space and we should All be aware of how we effect others. i still hadn’t heard directly from billhaderanti, so i assumed we’d all be dropping and disengaging and moving on. i still wasn’t blocked, though, so who really knew what would happen. 

eventually, it culminated in this last post. tw for mentions of rape

i’m going to start by saying that 

1. there are nearly no teenagers that were involved in this. im turning 23 in january and most of my friends are 20+. maybe one or two are 19. 

2. none of us sent any sexually violent asks - most of us didn’t send asks at all. i believe one or two of my friends admitted to sending asks however they assured me their nature wasn’t bad; as far as i know, everyone remained civil in whatever went on (again, unclear to me as to what was being sent; no one was actively posting or talking about it. if billhaderanti wishes to elaborate, they can, but i don’t have anything to put in). 

3. before i finish this, i would like to apologize to billhaderanti. as a comedian - not just my stupid tags, i mean in real life, too - i know that humor can hurt. it’s not always funny, it’s not just stupid hahas. sometimes things that are supposed to be jokes just hit people differently and cause bad things. i recognize that. i never meant to trigger you (if you’re reading this) or cause you any severe mental/emotional harm. i apologize for my humor bringing up your trauma, and i never meant for that. regardless of my own thoughts and opinions about the nature of my posts/the thirst tags themselves, they hurt you, and i’m sorry. 

anyway, i’m going to wrap this up (i’m bad at endings, what can i say! steven king and i took the same writer’s class!). if you read all this... sorry. i probably won’t be taking any asks about it, because i find the whole “drama” of this to be stupid and rooted in some seriously biphobic issues this fully grown woman has. 

tldr; i attempted to contain my blog so this woman could exist and function safely on her blog, but it wasn’t enough for her, so she called me out, and then some of the fandom called Her out for being biphobic and mean and overall just immature about the situation. as of now, she’s yet to block me, though her and her wife have blocked a few of my friends. her wife continues to clown on my friends. this post was made for clarity’s sake. the end, i’m getting a drink. 

The Untamed episode 50 liveblog

Wow.  D: I can’t believe I’m almost done with this.  I will probably wind up at least watching some of the animated version, but for now this is the end!  Aaahh

So Jin Guangyao didn’t make a move, then.

Focus is squarely on Nie Huaisang now. He did it on purpose then?

‘Didn’t have a clue’?

Okay, but was the rest of it him, too? He seems pretty shaken right now honestly.

He pushed the sword further in??? D:

Oh that’s a horrible confession to make. That he didn’t want to hurt Lan Xichen, I mean. That’s absolutely going to hurt the guy after Jin Guangyao finally passes.

It’d almost be kinder to tell him that he was using him too, frankly. Almost. I don’t know. Yikes.

Oh jeez that background shot of Jin Ling D,:

I keep forgetting he’s here watching this too yikes

Wait what’s he doing

How the heck did he do that???? He’s been bleeding out for at least a few minutes already!

Is he breaking the seal thing!?

Uh oh

Is he going to stay? It looks like he’s at least considering it.

???? I thought he wanted him to stay!?

Okay now these are the dramatics I was expecting from Nie Mingjue

Jin Ling D,:

Where’d he go? Is he still in there?

I still don’t know what to make of Nie Huaisang

Oh! Was he the last person he had to get revenge on?

Well there’s literally everyone else

:,( at Jiang Cheng just watching him

He’s leaving!? D:

How many child actors did they have for like one scene each??

Oh Nie Huaisang was holding the hat?

Wait is that blood

Not sure what he was feeling there. It was interesting though. Huh.

I’m D,: at this entire conversation with Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling. It’s so good.

Oh flashback?

Did he get himself caught on purpose!? D,:

Ahhhhhh

Hahaha was that an interrupted confession? It sure felt like one.

Ahhh Lan Sizhui :,D

Oh good they’re telling him

Ahhhhhhhhh

they’re hugging ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

‘Sad but thrilled’ is a good description

Hahaha this is fantastic

Okay the leg hug is a little awkward but the sentiment is nice

Ahhhhhh

Oh! They’re going back to Qishan together! Oh that’s so nice.

There is a lot of ‘person in black and person in white walking off together’ in this show

WAIT WAIT is he not going too!??

?????

WHAT

?????????????????

is this a flashback or a time skip what is happening

I mean very pretty but what

Okay these are new clothes so assumedly not a flashback

Good they didn’t split up

Oh I recognize this shot

Several of these shots actually - they’re used in either the opening or the ending I think

Oh good Nie Huaisang’s here too. We might actually be getting an explanation.

Okay that ‘Thou shall not befriend the devil’ was very threatening please clarify.

They laughed but I’m not sure if it was actually a joke

...okaaaay

Oh good they’re confirming it even without him

More or less

?? Okay what’s going on now. I’m on edge after that whole-

Shoot they are splitting up!?

??????

Okay so it’s not forever but??

Oh he’s playing the song!?

Thank goodness they’re implying it’s not for too long.

Wow is he in another outfit already?

That’s very pretty

?? What prompted the pause in music??

Okay he turned around was that them meeting back up?

Oh.

Oh thats the end. :,(

End notes:

Okay I had to do something but I am back half an hour later and watching the ending and it is giving me very strong emotions wow

Okay so.

First off: very good series - I was confused a whole lot but it made me feel things and I love it.

The ending was really well done, I think - there was a lot of ambiguity but it wrapped up enough of the emotional threads in a very effective manner.

Wow, uh. Hmmm. What to say.

Thoughts on characters/plot threads as I remember them:

I found that the strongest emotional thread of this show was probably the family/grief aspect. Mainly the family aspect, but the two were often combined. It showed up absolutely everywhere - it was both Wei Wuxian’s driving factor and in a way Jin Guangyao’s? Moreso the lack of it in the latter’s case. And a complicated issue with both (especially with their parents). On second thought this may hold true for a lot of the cast.

It did kind of feel like Wen Ruohan was kind of not a character and was just there to drive the war forward (and thus the characters and plot). Which is fine? But it leaves me feeling like the driving force behind the war was a little hollow, which is eh.

The Wen remnants were super compelling, though. That entire arc hit hard and made sense as a logical effect of the war.

I don’t really know how to feel about the post-timeskip stuff as a whole. On the one hand, I enjoyed myself a lot? It was great fun. On the other hand a lot of it contrasted sharply with the mass death at the end of the last arc.

The characters themselves were mostly pretty great (with the exceptions of, like, the Wen antagonists, some sect leaders, Su She and Jin Zixun).

I always have a hard time talking about main characters (in this case WWX and LWJ). I think it’s because we know so much about them that it’s hard to pick a single subject to talk about with them??

Anyway, they were really great. They had unique dynamics with each other and with all the other characters that evolved as they did. Neither were static characters and each step they took made sense?

Jiang Cheng is a very flawed character and he made me feel a lot and he’s my favorite. After a certain point he just had so many strong emotions, many of which conflicted each other and it was just entirely compelling and relatable. I feel like he is the strongest character outside of the main two + Jin Guangyao, although that may be my bias speaking.

Jin Guangyao. I totally forgot to think about story structure with him, frankly - didn’t see why he kept getting so much screen time and was constantly developing as well. I didn’t realize he was going to be a full-blown antagonist, let alone the antagonist, way past when I should have. He’s a sympathetic character, and the audience is reminded of this even as he does all these awful things. Yeah, he keeps finding himself in terrible situations but he also causes a lot of innocent casualties. I don’t totally know how to feel about him fully, but I think that’s the point.

Lan Xichen is also very flawed, but like. In a gentler way? I’m not sure we really see enough to know him as well as we could, but we do know that he’s trying and he cares, and sometimes that sucks for him.

Nie Huaisang is frankly a bit of an enigma. Unlike Jin Guangyao, he doesn’t exposit or drop masks where we can see him. I think he’s very interesting but maybe too underutilized in the majority of the series for me to say much else about him. I did really like the banter he had with Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, though.

Not sure I have as much to say on the other characters. Oops.

Lan Sizhui! Best boy. I love him.

Wen Ning is also best boy. He’s adorable. And also terrifying sometimes.

Wen Qing was fantastic. I liked her character so much and was very sad to see her go.

I was very surprised by how much Jin Zixuan grew on me. Props to that.

Jin Ling was also great. I loved his interactions with basically everyone. Also I feel like with maybe the exception of maybe Lan Xichen the ending probably was the worst for him. Smack dab in the center of the family drama, if you can count multiple set-ups and murders that.

I kind of simultaneously wish Jiang Yanli was more and am kind of content with how she was? I mean some of her role is a little... overly-limited, but she’s still a fairly important aspect of the story and continuously makes her own decisions and the like.

Madame Yu was a more interesting character to me than her husband but was also much more antagonistic. It’s an interesting duality where I want to see more of her but also want her to not interact with the other characters much, which doesn’t make any sense.

Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan didn’t have much of an impact outside of the Coffin Town bit, but frankly that was painful enough that it’s fine!! It was well done and their situation was awful but that hurt enough already!

Xue Yang is a character. Very well-portrayed and I feel like the actor had a blast but I feel like he didn’t have a giant impact either? He was a cool and scary villain.

Overall, it was a great show with a lot of interesting characters! It was great at emotional storytelling, except for when there was whiplash. I loved the music and the costuming, and the actors were great. Some of the special effects were a little wacky (looking at Lan Xichen’s instrument and the Wens’ dog thing), but some of them were really cool (see: Wen Ning’s entrance into the temple). Sometimes the politics-talk grated my nerves a bit, but that may be mostly a personal preference thing. The fighting also took some getting used to, but was impressive in some areas.

The show made me feel a lot and I am still feeling both the mixed bittersweet feelings from the show and that oh-shoot-the-story’s-over hole-in-the-chest feeling right now, but I don’t know how else to talk about that.

It wasn’t perfect but I enjoyed it a lot and am very impressed by it.

Let me know if I missed anything - there’s a lot and I am totally open for discussion.

Hi there! I just started following so sorry if this is a major repeat question. I used to keep fish and had dabbled in water snails, but I can't have a tank at the moment and was interested in a snail-terrarium (I'm into plants so I figured putting one together with the snail add in wouldn't be hard, but I don't really know how to go about it. What are the basics of land snail keeping?? Thanks!!!

Hi friend!!

i’ve never gotten this question before and you have no idea how excited i am to answer it. my time has come.

Oh, and if you’re looking for advice on care for giant african land snails, I unfortunately can’t help you. They’re illegal where I live so I can really only help in terms of native/garden snails :0( !

I’m going to sum things up easily since my own attention span is so short and paragraphs might be harder to read for this…

But I do suggest you read everything, as all of it is important. Sorry if this is a super long post!

Environment:

Ideally, acrylic house/container to live in. Must have breathing holes and a lid which can’t super easily be opened (snails are escape artists)

Substrate changes depending on the size of snail. For smaller snails I recommend using a damp paper towel (and change every few days) but for larger snails I recommend coconut shavings and sphagnum moss.

Enrichment is needed! Snails are curious and need places to explore, and places to hide. I’m using a recycled kinder egg capsule for Cube, which is even better since it’s reused (and basically free. And Cube, my snail, loves it!)

Daily water mistings are a must. Snails live in moist environments - why we often see them after it rains - and I highly suggest using rain water especially if your snail was feral/wild.

Environment must be kept clean! Clean out any snail shit you might find ASAP.

Food:

Pretty much anything a human can eat. It would be good to know the kind of snail though, because some land snails prefer “meat” (eggs, carcasses of other dead bugs and things) but almost all snails love vegetables. It’s important to note that snails can become addicted to one food easily if fed too much of it, so try to have variety. Although, snails can be extremely picky eaters…

And please be careful of what you feed your snail too. No pesticides or chemicals. All food gets washed well before feeding.

Before I continue: Calcium powder on everything. I paid 10$ for a bottle of it at petsmart and it will last me a life time. Brush calcium powder in the nooks and crannies of all food.

It’s also easier for snails to eat hard vegetables if you blanch or boil them before feeding it to them. But make sure it’s cooled off first!!

Vegetables:

Carrots (Cube’s personal fave)

Tomato

Lettuce

Cucumber

Mushroom

Green beans

Sprouts

Peas

Corn

Dandelion leaves (from outside)

Fruits:

Apples

Grapes

Mango

Strawberry

Raspberry

Other things to consider (yes, even for land snails.)

Snello (Recipe provided)

Algae wafers

Handling snails:

Human skin is salty, be sure to wash hands before setting your snail on your skin

Hairs are pokey, try to place your snail in a [mostly] hairless part of your body 

Smaller snails can be woken up by breathing (NOT blowing) warm breath into their shell. Sounds gross, but the warmth from your breath will wake them up. (I speak from experience)

Bigger snails can be woken up by gently stroking their tail/foot with your finger. (I speak from experience, it works every time, dont ask me why.)

Don’t try to lift your snail up if they’ve suctioned themselves to something!! Pulling their shell to hard can hurt them.

When you’re handling them, they may rasp (lick) you. This surprisingly kind of hurts, but they only do it because they think you’re food (and will quickly learn you are not!)

They may be deaf, but their skin can sense vibrations. Please don’t yell or make too many loud noises while you’re handling them, as this could cause stress.

Please no strong perfumes, lotions, hand sanitizers, etc while you handle snails. They navigate their world through touch, smell, and taste primarily. Anything too strong may cause pain.

No bright lights please! Snails have simple eyes which mean they can’t truly see, and can only really detect where a light source is. Nonetheless, bright lights are bad for their eyes.

When handling snails, getting gloves isn’t a bad idea. No snail skin hurts, and no rasping! I personally don’t use gloves, but I only really touch my snail if he’s pretending to be a race car. nyoom!

Be gentle in general. Broken shells can potentially kill a snail. This is also why calcium powder is very important.

Behavior:

They’re very curious and like to explore. They explore through touch, taste, and smell. 

Probably faster than you might think they are. Whenever you have your snail out of their home, which you should often since they can get depressed if they’re all cooped up (just like humans,) please keep a close eye on them!

If you’re keeping more than one snail, you’re taking the risk of having a clutch of eggs or two. Snails are hermaphrodites which means they possess female and male reproductive organs. They cannot self-fertilize, and do need a partner for it, but be careful!

Rasping, as mentioned above, is a thing they do. If you’re keeping other snails, they might do this to other snails on their shells - so be careful!

All snails have individual personalities and like different things, as well as behave differently and respond to stimuli differently. Keep this in mind as you’re keeping your snail(s)!

Most garden snails only live for about a year or two (sad face :0( !)

Extra tips:

Learn snail anatomy, even basic stuff! You’ll learn cool things like… How they shit through their nose. Yes. Thats actually true. 

Try to ID your snail based on your location, their individual behavior, and their “look.” This can also help you determine diet.

Copper hurts snails a lot. If you’ve been working with copper, sorting pennies (you know, as ya’ do.) or etc, try not to handle your snails for a while and be sure to wash your hands before you do, just to be sure.

This is very important, but please let your snails out of their house at least once a day for 30 minutes. Constant sleeping or inactivity for long periods of time is an indicator that your snail isn’t feeling their best. Let them explore things outside of their home. Just like humans, snails which are cooped up in a confined space (which may seem huge to them, still;) they can get - basically depressed. They’ll seem to only really sleep… all… the time… This is just their way of letting you know they’re feeling a bit down and would like some time outside. I keep Cube on the lid of his container (it acts like a dish) along with some food and a structure to climb on or hide in.

And I think thats everything. Wow, I’ll surely be saving this for another time. Any other snail owners, feel free to add onto this!

I hope this helps you friend! 

Midsommar; as reviewed by me, a Swede

Okay so! Finally got around to writing this. This might be a long post, but oh well. Obvious spoiler warning.

For those who don’t know, I’m a Swede, born and raised in Sweden, having celebrated Midsummer every year that I’ve been on this earth. So needless to say - I would dare to say I know a bit about Midsummer. BUT I will admit that I may not be the very most knowledgable about how it was celebrated in the past and the exact origins about it. But I’ll try my best.

SO IMPORTANT TO KNOW BEFORE WE START TALKING ABOUT HOW THEY HANDLED MY CULTURE IN THE MOVIE.

Midsummer (in Swedish Midsommar) is the celebration of the fertilization of the earth, or the world being reborn anew. The celebration is to ask the gods/spirits to bless us with a good year of harvest and to keep our animals healthy. And thats the rough explanation of it.

So lets get into the movie stuff and see what they got accurate, no?

When our main cast arrive in Sweden and get to... I forgot the name of the place they went to-- I have relatives who come from there. Anyway, they are greeted with people doing drugs, drinking mushroom tea (also drugs) and being greeted by the multiple day celebration and preparation for Midsummer.

I don’t know how it is in other countries, but yes some people do make tea on special mushrooms here, and you do get high on it. You get these mushrooms from cow or horse shit, cause they grow in that, and then you make tea of it. It causes mostly hallucinations. I have friends who do it and I’ve been offered it a few times as well.

I don’t really know how every single person in this country spends their days before Midsummer, some may very well be hanging out doing drugs. But thats not really something majority of people do (surprise surprise).

When it comes to celebrating for a longer time.

It depends on where you are in the country. Some people make a huge thing out of it, celebrating sometimes the entire month, while others (like me) only spend like two days preparing and one day celebrating. It really depends on the people, how many are attending each separate celebration, and if its a local community centre (hembygdsgård in Swedish) thats holding the celebration.

What you do during this preparing time is things like building the majstång (dunno the translation tbh), make the food, depending on where you are make the special clothes for each participant, and a lot of girls pick flowers (we’ll get into that later).

So.. The clothes?

Yes! So we see people wearing these special clothes in the movie, and in this case they’re completely white and have runes on them. Again this depends on where you are and how you celebrate Midsummer if you actually wear these clothes.

Many hembygdsgårdar have them, and a lot of people do wear these clothes. But they come in many variants!

As you can probably tell, we don’t wear just plain white, but dress pretty colourful for the occasion!

You’d also probably wear a flower crown if you celebrated. Me and my mom always used to make flowercrowns for Midsummer when I was a kid, although they always came out very bad lmfao

So the midsommarstång or majstång?

Ah yes, can’t forget the main piece of the event! And I’m so glad they got it accurate in the movie! Or... Accurate with minor changes lmfao

(I couldn’t find a better picture I’m sorry)

So in the other two images that are not from the movie, we also have this centre piece I guess I could call it. This is the most important thing in our celebration, and it comes in two variant. The classic symbolism one (I will explain don’t worry) and one thats just a leafy pole with ribbons coming from the top.

The version we see in the movie however is the most common and has huge symbolism. What they did change about it though is that they put runes in the rings, which to my knowledge no one has ever done in this day and age, nor in the past.

BUT ANYWAY THE SYMBOLISM, DAMN I GET OFF TRACK FAST.

Remember how I said Midsummer is the celebration of the rebirth of the earth? The majstång symbolises a penis and a vagina, going into the ground to fertilize the earth and give life anew. Yes. We dance around a massive dick and coochie, what do you do during your summer?

The majstång is made of wood and leafy branches and a lot of the time is held together with steel wire or other sticks that are more bendable. And in my opinion? They nailed it in the movie.

I mentioned the girls picking flowers.

Okay so the day before Midsummer (I’m pretty sure at least) the girls would go out to pick flowers. But you have to do it in a certain way (which I don’t remember honestly) and you have to pick seven types of flowers. You have to walk backwards, and climb and walk a roof, and jump a gärdsgård (type of fence), and... Thats about what I remember.

What you do with these flowers after that is you put them beneath your pillow, and go to sleep before midnight, and then you’ll dream of your future lover.

Did I do this even though I’m a guy? Yes. Did it ever work? Hm... Not sure.

So what do the guys do? I honestly don’t really remember. I’m pretty sure you just go about your day as normal and help with chores and stuff. I might be wrong though.

They do this weird thing with their hands...

So throughout the movie you see the Swedes doing jazz hands I guess you could describe it the best. I’ve given it some thought, and I’m pretty sure what they’re doing is doing a forest clap, or a silent clap. I don’t know how it is in other countries but-

So basically when you’re out in nature you don’t want to disturb it, or you just don’t want to make a lot of noise, you can clap your hands like that. It means the same thing.

How do I know? Cause we got to learn two types of forest claps in school when I was a kid when we were out looking at rocks that got fucked when the great ice moved across the land.

So it might look weird, and I do admit it IS weird, but they are essentially just clapping their hands at things.

Okay, so how about the runes and learning runes?

In the movie they talk about how all the kids learn runes and how they write in runes. This is not something we do, obviously. But we do learn runes in school! Believe it or not, there was a time when I could write fluent runes and translate Swedish into runes.

They also talk about the runes having a great power. And this is actually interesting!

Back in the days of the Vikings, when we wrote in runes for real, they believed that the runes had powers and that if you etched the runes in with a weapon, either the rune got power of the weapon did (don’t remember which one). Thats why the runes do not have curved lines, because it was both difficult to make curves with something you slash at a rock or piece of wood, and you wouldn’t get as much power out of the rune/weapon.

Some runes have specific meanings, but majority of runes you’ll learn or see are just plain out letter you use to create words.

Runes are not inherently connected with Midsummer in the sense they want it to in the movie.

They made two old people jump off a cliff and die.

Okay so me being ever so slightly uncultured didn’t really know what this was either until I watched the movie, however my mom did.

Ättestupa was a way of punishing people, more specifically criminals. Once sentenced to have committed a crime, you could be thrown off this cliff and people would gather around to watch this. Think beheading in France, but instead you throw someone off a cliff.

That’s what my mom knows about it, and we actually live pretty close to one of these spots. However I’m a bit unsure if that was the only thing, as Google wants to tell me otherwise. They may very well have made old people jump, or them deciding themselves to jump.

But I can guarantee this has absolutely nothing to do with Midsummer.

So... THAT scene...

You know what I’m talking about. That one scene that got the entire audience to laugh uncontrollably in my case.

First thing I have to mention about this is that they state she’s Byxmynding, which they did explain as of legal age to have sex in the movie. And thats exactly what it is. Its the age of consent, or rather when you turn the age of consent. You become Byxmynding.

This age is 15 here in Sweden, and it is not legal for someone above the age of 18 to have sex with someone who is 15.

I just wanted to throw that out there.

Now obviously here’s where we step away from what is true and what is fiction and just horror. But I will also say that I’m pretty sure somewhere I’ve read that in the past that during Midsummer there would be orgies to celebrate the rebirth of the earth.

Don’t take my word for it, I may be wrong. But I’m pretty sure that was a thing.

Nowadays a lot of new age people in this country do that however.

The dude hanging from the ceiling with his lungs out his back.

This was a way of torture during the Viking age. You could either do this from the chest or from the back, but the intention was to make it look like you had wings as you were slowly dying.

The dancing around the majstång and the food.

This is something we do, we do dance around the majstång to music. As for the whole dance until you can’t stand anymore because myth of girls dancing to their death thing, I can’t confirm it and I can’t deny it. Its probably something pretty accurate, and I want to remember actually hearing that as a kid when we celebrated in school.

When we dance, depending on where, the people, etc etc, you may have a live band playing things like the fiddle, accordion, guitar, flute, things like that. Or you may just put on a recording of Små Grodorna and jump around to that.

We dance around for a while to the music, maybe play games during it, and then we finish to go eat with our family/friends/other people (Depending how you celebrate)

What we eat is things like herring, surströmming, boiled potatoes, eggs, knäckebröd... Maybe other things too. Personally I’m no big fan of the fish thats served and I usually just eat smoked salmon that I brought myself so I won’t starve.

So... What are my final thoughts about this movie?

I actually really enjoyed it! I could tell they put in good amount of research to make this, and thats always appreciated. Of course Midsummer as a normal thing here is not scary or horrific like in the movie. What I would describe what we see in the movie is cultish, and almost mixed with new age in a way.

They did a great job of depicting it as something strange and twisted, even to an audience who has been raised with this celebration.

I also really appreciate that they hired Swedish actors and actually spoke real Swedish!! It did so much for the movie to me, unlike other films set in Sweden (cough cough The Ritual fuck you thats not Swedish). I don’t know if English speaking who don’t know Swedish get English subtitles on the parts they speak Swedish, but it still does so much. And the dialogue didn’t feel forced or strangely translated, it felt... Natural. Even in a creepy way. But I will admit that a lot of the line delivery was very stiff and robotic.

I enjoyed it. As strange as it is, I enjoyed it.

Oh also the singing you hear throughout I’m pretty sure is a weird mix of Joik, which isn’t inherently Swedish, but eh who cares at this point