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imflyingfish · 1 month

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Finally finished this massive piece with my OCs! this took so much time. Reblogs appreciated

Tag yourself with which middle schooler you were. I was definetly a Pillow lmao

OC info below cut!

Okay so these characters are p much my only OCs. they're a gang of kids (Aged 12-16) who are caught in a zombie apocalypse. Since most of their families have been lost, they decided to reject their old lives and replace their identities with their chosen objects that they use in battle. They call themselves the Knick Knacks. These characters don't have set genders, so pronouns will be thrown around wherever in description.

Backpack - The emo of the group. Backpack's bag acts as a shield, heavy weapon and storage making them the tank. Recently discovered Hatsune Miku. Can be prone to getting down in the dumps (Who wouldn't) but still cares a lot about her friends. Is best friends with Pillow, and the two balance eachother out well. Likes edgy humour and so gets on well with Metrestick

Pillow - The pastel weeb of the group. Watches a lot of anime and DEFINETLY wishes she was a catgirl. The majority of her efforts go to healing her friends using her pillow, which does low damage. She's very emotional and quite high-strung but overall wellmeaning, even if she can come off blunt or jarring. They definetly try their hardest to reduce conflict in the group and promotes unity (or the power of friendship), which can sometimes be too much. She definetly will no longer be a girl in a couple of years. Is the best friend of Backpack and the two balance eachother. Looks up greatly to Megaphone for her ability to support a group and her genius.

Jacket - the shy roadman. Jacket is a bit of a weird character. He wears a large puffer jacket in order to look larger and more imposing, wants to be seen as a roadman, but is overall too quiet and non-threatening for it to work. so they look homeless instead (they all do, its the apocalypse). He has a close connection with animals, and will stuff birds into his jacket to release as one large, powerful attack. They then have to gather the birds again. He was bullied before the apocalypse by classmates (somewhat including Metrestick) which is why he has tried to look more imposing in recent times. Gets on well with Watergun and especially Backpack as they can relate to her more quiet presence. Metrestick has made an effort to get on with Jacket now that there's no longer the pressure of peers around to impress, feeling remorse. The two still clash occasionally, but for the most part work together very well.

Watergun - the sporty "bully". Watergun deals ranged attacks. Metrestick replaced the container of the watergun with carbonated drinks bottles for more power, held together with tape. She can be harsh and hot-headed, but usually means well and can often act as a team motivator. Occasionally though, he can give in to pride and often takes control of the group even if the others disagree with them. He's strong and has a love for sports that he will passinately share with anyone, knowing a great amount of trivia (Sometimes to the annoyance of others) They like to hang out with Megaphone, Jacket, and Metrestick, but is a good friend to the rest of the group.

Metrestick - The hot-headed art kid - Metrestick was in DT (Design and technology) class when the apocalypse started, and grabbed the metrestick on the wall. His specialty is in close range fighting, giving out quick attacks. Despite being generally uninterested in school, she did have an affinity towards design and technology, finding it a good creative outlet for her emotions. Now she shares that outlet with fighting. In school he was also a bully, picking on random kids such as Jacket to impress classmates. Nowadays he instead destroys zombies in combat in order to impress and support his group. Enjoys crude humour, much tto Pillow's dismay. Despite his differences to Pillow, he still gets on well with her and they will often hang out. He enjoys showing his softer side by making gifts for his friends of fixing machinary, such as the wires on Megaphone's wheelchair. Although he generally tries to keep being sappy to a minimum in order to preerve his image. Is prone to fits of anger in which he can be a right dick (But who wouldnt in the apocalypse) Is likely to be an engineer in the future, and may also be a girl in a couple of years idk.

Megaphone - The preppy genius - Megaphone's disability means that she is unable to partake in combat due to difficulties in moving around cluttered battlefields and a general lack of strength. Instead, she has a megaphone that she uses to direct the group, playing support. Her compliments and strategies power up the Knick Knacks and her insults and taunts weaken the opponent. Megaphone is the group strategist, and is usually trusted to make the correct decisions in battle. She's also the oldest, which makes her the defacto leader anyway. She does often get frustrated and has to pass leadership onto someone else, and her disability does mean that she occasionally has to miss battle. She's confident in her intellect, (which can sometimes lead to conflict as she assumes that shes correct, especially with Watergun) but her age makes her more mature than the others meaning that she's trying to work on this. She has an interest in fashion and reality tv, and will often watch anime with Pillow when they manage to find a way to. She also loves chaos, and finds the thrill of battle to be one of her greatest passions. Her love of chaos also means that she loves watching petty drama. She gets on best with Metrestick and Pillow but makes constant efforts to be friends with all of the gang, knowing how pivotal it is in battle.

#imfish #art #original character #ocs #spotlight #illustration #drawing #digital painting #guys im going to need ur help on this one for any reach lmao #anyway yeah welcome to the Knick Knacks #these characters have been super fun to work on #also yeah i didnt say it in the descriptions but most of them are also neurodivergent but i wont say who and how #fun fact Backpack and Jacket are meant to be blue and purple! but i had to change it lol #but no lemme know what u all think yeah

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indigoelegy · 2 years

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everything i know about lunatic circus from being a silly white girl with less than a toddler's comprehension of japanese

hi its me let me just preface this by saying uh the ONLY THING i'm able to properly read are their names because they have furigana and i can read that. everything else is a sort of Guess based on looking at the pictures and trying to piece it together in my mind. also ive only had a brief look at both the volumes (not so much volume 2 i havent actually looked through all of that). basically dont take ANYTHING i say at all as fact. please. im going based on VIBES alone. THIS IS GUESSWORK. ok so speaking of vibes first of all i get a bad feeling somehow. i dont know if its bc im traumatised from OTHER THINGS (stares) set in a kind of circus........ circus-like setting........ freakshow perhaps....... IF YOU GET WHAT IM SAYING but i get a bad feeling. LIKE I MEAN probably i'm wrong, right? because furuya isnt usually. like that. especially not nowadays but JUST IN CASE i just have some kind of weird feeling about it being set In A Circus

im just going to bulletpoint my assumptions based on the pictures

kujaku is a major asshole and i get the impression he's money hungry? there's this one panel which could be money next to him so im assuming that's what that means. nothing going to go wrong with that one im sure

hes also a major asshole because the troupe members line up before him and he WHIPS RANPO IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY. he also smacks one of the clowns and strikes a woman member to the ground and whips her as well (kizumaru tries to protect her, i think?)

ryunosuke spends a BUNCH of time on top of the tent talking or singing? to the weird creepy moon thing

i think ranpo and ryunosuke are going to be the boys who kiss in this one

no basis for this except they seem to be rivals and they get pictured together all the time

i think ranpo resents ryunosuke for being their poster boy while he's presumably an underperformer (thats the only reason i can fathom kujaku whipping him like that in front of everybody)

ranpo performs one of the things that i ASSUME only ryunosuke was able to do before (trapeze blindfolded) and he lands it and is excited about it??? maybe he gloats

and ryunosuke has a whole. whole issue about this. he goes into his room and screams (it literally says あああああああああああああああ which is pretty universal. even i know what that means!)

he does this shirtless and nagi peers in his window obviously wondering whats wrong with him but when ryunosuke sees him he gets embarrassed bc he has no shirt

i get the impression that its going to be like. ranpo has a jealous hateboner for ryunosuke because hes well loved and talented but the pressure of being their poster boy is driving him up the wall and theyll bond over the feeling of not being good enough for kujaku's money hungry little fingies no matter what etc etc

i havent had a solid look through volume 2 yet but i think ryunosuke is like. seriously ill. theres a panel or two in there that looks like he could be HALLUCINATING? while on the trapeze (PLEASE DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR THAT. I DONT KNOW. IT MIGHT NOT BE THAT) but either way even if that's not the case i get the impression hes very very troubled

nagi is a sweet little baby guy and i love him so much

also kujaku is even sussier in volume 2 bc in the beginning hes getting cosy with what looks to be like. a little girl. he is 74 years old (it says this). i'll get a picture of this one bc i cant believe my balls about this one to be honest

the little girl (idont know if she is actually a child or whether she just looks like one) is my pfp : ) i like her but i think kujaku should stop it

hotaru is like the troupe father???

or hes like. the responsible older brother type. either way he seems very kind and cool hes like he and nagi are best friends

btw hotaru and kizumaru are in their 20s but everybody else is 15-17 (nagi is 15 (and he goes to school before coming to the circus!), ryunosuke, ranpo and yuumi are 17 (not 100% sure abt yuumi its been a while since i looked) and karen and ikkoku are both 16)

there are a lot of panels which just linger on like

Man Attributes. this is a very gay affair

ok i only just noticed this in my sleep deprived haze RIGHT NOW but it maybe lends a little more weight that ryunosuke and ranpo are the only two who have names that might be derived from japanese authors AS FAR AS I KNOW. as far as i know. i dont know a lot about japanese literature except the absolute pop culture toddler basics (as usual) but i only Just Noticed. i havent checked if its the same kanji or anything YET but i will get back here when i do

anyway thats it i'll update this if i think of anything else but AGAIN PLEASE. PLEASE. i am JUST SOLELY looking at the pictures the ONLY THING I KNOW FOR CERTAIN are their names. its ONLY their names. i just bought them because i was curious and also physical books make me foam at the mouth like a rabid little doggy. i dont know if theres any other Better information out there about this manga but i couldnt find ANYTHING so i was like hm! my job now even though i, again, have a 3 month old's understanding of japanese please do not take any of this seriously im just guessing.

love you bye

edit btw if you want to see any of this you can just like you can dm me or send me an ask or whatever : )

#lunatic circus #usamaru furuya #ONCE AGAIN IM GUESSING #IM SORRY IF THIS IS WRONG #I HAVE VERY LIMITED COMPREHENSION #i am naturally suspicious of circuses

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liege-of-nerd · 2 years

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Okay, hear me out. What if we applied the themes of Yuri!!! on ICE to Asian classical/folk dancing?

First of all, let me just clarify that I think it would be risky applying the theme of romantic love in this instance (whether it’s queer love or not) because... well, unless the guru and their student were around the same age, it would not only be weird, but it’d be downright horrific. Actually, honestly, even if they are the same age that would definitely go against the whole role of the guru to a student. Because, well, the relationship between a coach and their mentee is very different than a guru and their student (and believe me, I say this from experience). While the coach is there to motivate and guide their mentee, the guru is elevated to more of an idol for the student to strive towards. Hence, I don’t think the theme of romantic love would work here. (Not to mention that I feel like it’d just look waaaaaaaay too extreme to especially older Asian audiences...) But there’s so much more that could. I don’t think anyone talks much about the stuff that goes on in classical Asian dance schools. I took Bharatanatyam classes under three different instructors, so I have experience there, but I’ve heard of similar experiences in other art forms too. Experiences of the guru showing favoritism to students, specifically only those that will pour every single last minute of their time towards them, having harsh expectations that their students have to act in xyz manner to be successful, the moms of the students berating the students when they go home because their guru pointed out that they made this mistake, and they are inferior to this student... I could go on and on. All of this usually results in two outcomes. The first outcome is that the student somehow pushes through and is able to complete their passage showing that they’re essentially now a “black belt” of their art form (for lack of better comparison). So, for Bharatanatyam, it’d be an arangetram. The other outcome would be the student becoming so demotivated and feeling so incompetent that they’ll never catch up to their own peers or receive the liking of their guru/their parents that they burn out and drop out and carry the trauma of their incompetency with them. (I was, unfortunately, an example of the second case - which is why I’m typing this now.) But set the scene. A 16-year-old student cries on the way home from their dance class as their mother berates them for struggling to have their hastas in order. Not only that, but they aren’t nearly as emotive as the star student dancing next to them that their guru pours all of their effort into. This student has been dancing for eight years - and while they would have loved to drop out due to not being able to withstand the intense pressure from their guru, peers, and parents, they’re unable to because of that same pressure. They always felt guilty for doing so because they loved seeing the meaning behind each piece. Eventually, the student finally goes to a college too far from their old guru, resulting in them stopping their classes. But they regretted that they never stayed and were never good enough to complete their arangetram, and that they could never live up to the vision their parents/old guru envisioned them to be. Now, in comes another much older newly-minted guru who completed their arangetram years ago and went through the same trauma as the first student (with the only difference being that they ended up making it to the end, of course). The new guru is very well recognized by their dance troupe and the dance community as a whole for their beautiful abhinaya and flow in their performances. And now, they are looking to pass on their learnings to a new student.

The two end up crossing paths somehow, and the new guru sees potential in the student that the old guru never even cared to see. Specifically, the new guru notices the passion the student has to learn the stories behind each piece, as unable as they feel to learn how to express them through dance. The new guru asks the student if they’d want to get back into Bharatanatyam again. At first, the student refuses believing the outcome will be the same as it’s always been. But as the two share their experiences in classical dance with each other and grow closer together as friends, the student eventually agrees to begin practice again, and their relationship grows even closer. After a lot of hard work and effort (and maybe some relationship ups and downs), the student is finally able to perform their arangetram and show the old guru the potential that they never saw in them. Having found their passion, the new guru takes on more students, but with the same amount of love and care as they had when they took on their first. And I’d like to think that the student ended up doing the same. (Or, yanno, they could take the confidence they gained into something completely different. That’d be cool too.) This new storyline would emphasize how important it is to have a loving relationship between a guru and their student for the student to thrive and be able to pass on their experience in a healthy manner to other students. In Yuri!!! on ICE, we see this through the growing romance of Yuuri and Viktor. In this new storyline, we see this through the growing respect and platonic love of the guru and the student. I’m done rambling now, but please tell me I’m not alone in thinking this would be a good idea. (Or maybe I’m just being crazy as usual, lol.)

#dance #bharatanatyam #yuri!!! on ice #yuri on ice #yoi #classical dance #classical indian dance #classical asian dance

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hi-i-vent-here · 8 months

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Today we will talk about me and school. Tw: self harm. Tw: Vent and abuse.

I hated school, I could do the subjects at the time but no one knew how to actually teach me. I could do the exams and get enough to pass, but it was hell.

One of my happiest memories is me skipping class to go to my abuser's house when he wasn't there, eating popcorn and watching south park, and coming back to my house while it was raining. I would do anything to not be in school, but funny enough I was known for being smart (and also insane). Yes, some part of me takes pride in that even if I dropped out.

I was known for being unstable because of how I spoke, for being short tempered, physically fighting my peers, and for self-harming.

Some weird part of me also takes pride in physically fighting my peers at a young age, because in my ill head this is a good thing and I was protecting myself (they were kids like I was), but I consciously know it wasn't a good thing that I was beating other kids until they cried, still. (A very odd episode that I clearly remember was me threatening a girl with a razor because she said something about my hair. I was 12)

About how I spoke, I sometimes say things that don't connect, so I might sound like I'm saying gibberish but in my head they make sense, sometimes it was funny, sometimes it wasn't.

My short temper was difficult, I would constantly fight people, it didn't matter if they were teachers, I would throw things, fight and get mad at them for no reason.

My mother would have to go to school because of the fights I would get into. But this was when I was like 8 years old, when I got older she didn't cared that much anymore. She would only get called in my school if I was self-harming in class or skipping too much, and the "warnings" that I got, I would just sign her name. /my abuser found that out and it was fucking hell, like it always was with him./

I was really into theater and ballet as a child, but I abandoned it.

I grew isolated of almost all my peers, for obvious reasons. I wasn't bullied, like BULLIED, I knew how to fight back, I was just isolated from everyone. It's funny how relatives told me that I was so happy and talkative as a child but I grew quiet and isolated, I wonder what happended...

This is elementary/middle school, highschool was a whole different can of worms.

I already mentioned it but I didn't mentioned how my abuser would put so much pressure, so much pressure, I was having panic attacks thinking about the future (15 years old) I had an awful mental breakdown in front of him because I couldn't hold it until I was alone. HE would do this to me, he would constantly mess with my head and when I had breakdowns he would pretend like he didn't mean it or he didn't said nothing. ( I remember a specific case of one of his girlfriends seeing me having an crisis while they fought and saying "Do you want me to end up like THAT? Do you think this is normal? Look what you did to your child!". I believed I was going to die, I even said goodbye to people and said that I loved them in case something happended to me. I was 15 years old, I was 15, I was 15. This wasn't even close to the worst things he did.)

The time I dropped out, was almost the same time I cut ties with him at 16(which also I have a lot to unpack about this). He manipulated me into going to that school, he knew I couldn't do it, everyone knew. I stopped going slowly and I became homeschooled/would study at the library. I studied my HEART out, I studied sooooo hard sooo sooo fucking hard, like I had never studied before, and no one was forcing me to do so. I studied because I wanted, because I want to get my GED. At this time I even learned french, read books, studied, (learned chess to impress my mother) watched a billion of lessons used a billion of books from the library, then I burnt out. At the time I wanted to study abroad. I'm poor, that is impossible for people like me.

I stopped studying all togheter after march of this year. Btw all this time I was studying and I would tell my mother everything I studied and she didn't gave a fuck, she never gives a fuck. I was never enough. I left school because I wasn't learning, they didn't knew how to teach me. I taught myself but I always would be a disappointment. I'm simplifying things but I would be everyday fighting people in my house because I dropped out.

That's enough for today.

#tw vent #Spotify

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ms-m-astrologer · 2 years

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The Week Ahead: April 18-24, 2022

Void of Course Moon

Monday, April 18, 23:55 UT (Scorpio) - Tuesday, April 19, 02:16 UT (Sagittarius)

Wednesday, April 20, 20:56 UT (Sagittarius) - Thursday, April 21, 03:52 UT (Capricorn)

Saturday, April 23, 03:53 UT (Capricorn) - 06:17 UT (Aquarius)

Monday, April 25, 00:33 UT (Aquarius) - 10:15 UT (Pisces)

US followers: Monday is your last chance to file those income taxes on time.

Lunar Phases

Wednesday, April 30, 03:04 UT - Disseminating Moon, 15:01 Sagittarius

The key phrases for the Disseminating Lunar Phase are to “teach, share, and communicate;” and to “ease up on our efforts.” This is a particularly garrulous Disseminating Moon, very talkative and wind-baggy and, dare I say it, preachy. And forgetful. Except at meal times. That, we’ll definitely remember. Don’t talk with your mouth full.

Saturday, April 23, 11:56 UT - Last Quarter Moon, 3:19 Aquarius

The key phrases for the Last Quarter lunar phase are to “turn away” from our efforts, and to “tear down old structures” that no longer serve us. And with the Moon in Aquarius, we’re just emotionally cold and ruthless enough to get rid of everything. If you have too much clutter, here’s a chance to rid yourself of much of it.

Retrograde/Direct/Etc.

Pre-retrograde shadow: Saturn/Aquarius

Retrograde: nothing until April 29

Post-retrograde shadow: nothing until June 3

This section has been rather inactive, hasn’t it? Next week it’ll start to pick up, and in May it’ll be very busy.

Ingresses

Wednesday, April 20, 02:24 UT - transiting Sun enters Taurus

When I was thinking about this ingress, the first realization I came to was that the Sun will spend practically all its time in Taurus in “the shadow of the eclipse.” What does that mean? (Besides the obvious “eclipse season is upon us again.”) I’m in hopes it will mess with all our laziness, complacency, and attachment to our own personal comfort and convienence - in other words, to the more negative Taurean traits.

Wednesday, April 20, 15:51 UT - transiting Juno enters Pisces, pre-Rx zone

Only 3 1/2 weeks after her ingress into Pisces, Juno enters her pre-retrograde shadow (Friday, May 13, my, how auspicious). She won’t be up to a whole hell of a lot before then, which may make it for us a choice between “going with the flow” and “drifting” - on the surface they may seem to be the same thing, but they are very different beneath what we can see.

Et Cetera

There are two Opportunity Periods this week, yee haw!

Monday, April 18, from 16:40 UT to 23:55 UT. “Seize this opportunity to connect with your intuition and accomplish goals.”

Thursday, April 21, 03:52 UT to Saturday, April 23, 03:53 UT. “This productive OP is good for ambitious projects, especially if you’re familiar with strong Pluto energy.”

To summarize the main points for the week: Taurus season begins April 19/20, but at the same time we begin to be in “the shadow of the eclipse.”

There is also a “peak moment” this week, on Thursday - Saturn/Aquarius has been square the Nodes (in Taurus/Scorpio) for several weeks. We’ve all felt kind of frustrated and baffled (square) in trying to let go of our resentments (Scorpio South Node) and achieve some peace and quiet (Taurus North Node) - for whatever reason, peer pressure, or intellectual resistance, but also not taking any responsibility for ourselves or our communities. Maybe we’ve felt emotionally isolated and “misunderstood” - or the fear of that happening keeps us apart. Or maybe we’re snobbish and keep ourselves aloof that way.

This ongoing square is exact on Thursday, April 21. After that, it will gradually diminish in strength over the rest of the year. Perhaps something we can “do” is find a community to be an active part of, while there is still a little freedom of choice we can use?

#Astrology #Weekly astrological forecast #18-24 April 2022 #Ms M astrologer

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runephoenix6769 · 3 years

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Why Netflix aging up the Characters could spell disaster.

Ok, so I’ve tried to find confirmation that this is true and kinda found bubkiss so far. But.... Zuko being aged up by two years does not bode well his motivation or Azula (or Sokka for that matter), narratively speaking and will massively change how their stories/character arcs hit. It’s my belief that by aging up the characters they’ll kinda lose some of the soul of the show AND the poignancy of just how much pressure has been laid on the shoulders of Gaang and Azula's trio. The nuance of Children fixing a world broken by adults. (I shall preface by saying that anyone under 18 is a child and therefore even joining the military at 16 is still awful, but this post is being written within the context of the avatar universe, its societal norms and customs.)

Hear me out. Within the show, all the main cast of children are supposed to be outliers and exceptionally skilled, even surpassing many of the adults in that world in terms of mastery of their elements and ability to execute strategy. At 16/17 Rangi had her first commission after graduating from the Junior Corps in record time, to eventually become one of the youngest Lieutenants in Fire Nation Army service, during peace time. 400 years later we are in the midst of a global war, meaning the goal posts within the various societies would have shifted considerably. (Apart from the Earth Kingdom, they seriously need to get with the times.) Zuko is the heir to the throne of an imperial expansionist country, where military service is expected of many of the aristocracy. (If not every citizen doing something towards the war effort.) And has been since the reign of Sozin. Being the heir, he would naturally be expected to take a military commission at 16/17, as precedent has been shown to us via Rangi. This would serve to foster loyalty from his soldiers, train him in ways of command to prepare him for taking over the Nation, etc etc. Lets say that Netflix keep the rest of his story the same, so he is still ousted at 13 sent on a mission of folly as a cruel punishment. Well that just casts his 4 years at sea and his behaviour towards his men in an awful light. In four years he has not learned regard for the safety of his men? It makes the treatment of his men look callous instead of being a child who doesn't quite grasp how much his crew do for him, that they too have been ousted and separated from their loved ones! Four years of shite treatment would surely land a mutiny on his hands? If anything, it serves to make him look whiny, and incompetently oblivious to the needs of others. And what does it mean if they move the timeline of the Agni Kai up by two years, to 15? It doesn't have quite the same impact. Remember what sits at the core of this show. It is ultimately about children trying the fix the world that the adults broke, violence, cruelty, child soldiers and the effects of war upon them, under intense pressure to succeed. Zuko is supposed to be a child who hasn’t even begun to figure out what he wants. His character arc in the show is supposed to be that journey!

Which brings me to Azula! A child prodigy, who took down Ba Sing Se in a relatively bloodless coup at 14! Its meant to be an awe inspiring Herculean feat! A top notch military strategist, she is meant to be unmatched by any of her peers. Her age in the OG show certainly explains her behavior, her not being developed enough in many ways. This contributes towards the deterioration of her mental health when she cannot reconcile the heavily cultivated sense of self with the reality culminating in the tragic and heart wrenching mental breakdown at 14! At 16/17, it makes it look like a huge ass hissy fit! OG Azula’s inflection moment begins in The Beach episode. She is begins to ask questions of herself in the form of small experiments. It takes the form of her hiding their identities on Ember Island. It is as if she is trying to feel out if she is as witty and charming as she believes, but she comes to learn that she is woefully socially inept, people don’t like her for her, beginning the spiral of insecurity and self doubt. We are also told that Azula’s mother thought her a monster and she is massively hurt by that, though she plays it off as nothing. This insecurity is blown wide open on the Boiling Rock cemented by Ty Lee’s betrayal and culminates in Azula, who is truly terrified that he might burn her in a way similar to Zuko, seeing her being sidelined by Ozai. She takes as a form of punishment for her ‘failure’, a form of banishment, that she has been discarded like Zuko, when she had imagined being by her father’s side as they burned the world in celebration of their mutual victory rather than for what is truly is which is Ozai being a glory hog and reaping all the benefits from Azula’s hard work. Which brings me to the suggestion by Azula to burn the world in the first place. A child suggesting that you ‘Burn the World’ smacks a whole lot differently when you think of it as a kid not quite grasping/understanding the ramifications of such a suggestion, but a 16 year old? Such a thing tips her from confused mentally unwell child with a crippling fear of failure raised without a lick of compassion to full blown villainy with nothing remotely sympathetic about her! The way the last Agni Kai is framed you are supposed to feel sympathetic towards her! Which makes me wonder if they are gonna paint Azula as unhinged straight from the get go? Her unravelling at the seams is supposed to be her journey!

Sokka.... at 17! In the OG show, Hakoda does the right thing by telling Sokka to remain behind to look after the village because at 13 he is too young to go to war. Why leave him behind at 15? Would that not serve to feed into feelings of inadequacy, that he was deemed too weak to leave and fight with the other men and boys of the tribe? Now, I would argue that Sokka’s OG arc rivals Zuko’s redemption. He does feel inadequate and overcomes it. He also unlearns a shit load of misogyny! What 17 year old doesn’t take responsibility for his own clothes, in a tribe were adults are few and far between? What 17 year old expects his little sister to be his mother and bear the brunt of the domestic? How obtuse and unfeeling would that make Sokka? It would propel him to the side of boorish, lazy and entitled rather than the sweet teenage boy who grows to realise he has a lot to learn. OG Sokka is humble as hell and not afraid admit when he is lacking! He will go and openly admit his flaws and learn from others who he had previously written off. Suki gives him a glass of respect women juice and he keeps on chugging, only adding to the Sokka we know and love. This is supposed to be his journey!

OG Sokka is just as much of a genius as Azula! They are both supposed to be exceptional. Having them sit at 16/17 figuring this all out within a war torn world were it would be totally normal for them to participate in the generational war machine kind of robs them of this. Their more child like behaviours, grappling with concepts and truly understanding their consequences is supposed to remind us that they are children, being asked to do something no child ever should! Aging them up casts these things in a whole other light, skewering the what makes this show so beloved! If you change the core characters to the point their journey’s don’t make sense within the world they inhabit, or they become unrecognisable to the audience you’re trying to milk then really.....what’s the point?

#avatar last airbender #atlab #atla #avatar the last airbender #prince zuko #princess azula #sokka #zuko #azula #rangi #rise of kyoshi

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ladylynse · 3 years

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Chapter 16 [FFN | AO3] of The Trouble with Ghosts: Lancer hadn’t realized how closely young Mr. Fenton’s school troubles–and the secrets he surely wasn’t telling his parents–were tied to ghosts until after that encounter with Phantom.

(beginning | previous)

Warnings: Torture and near drowning until the dialogue starts, more threats afterwards

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Despite his distorted view, Danny saw the three figures enter the lab before Vlad did. Vlad was too busy watching him. Smiling. Waiting.

Danny’s heart thundered in his chest. He couldn’t kick or thrash. He couldn’t scream, at least not without burning up the last of his oxygen. He hoped Vlad would take his widened eyes as panic or pleading instead of surprise, but—

There must have been some sound that Danny didn’t hear. Vlad turned, flicking intangible as a blast from an ectogun shot through him and hit the door of Danny’s chamber, fizzling out into a shower of green sparks. It wasn’t enough to crack the door, unfortunately, but now he could hear yelling above the blood pounding in his ears, and he knew they must’ve seen him.

Black started to swirl in front of his eyes, and something within him tried to spark to life.

Danny pushed it down, trying to focus, but all he could see now through the encroaching black was glimpses of pink and green. Vlad wasn’t holding back, then. He wasn’t pretending.

Of course, he couldn’t, not with Danny right there in his lab. Considering he looked like Masters and not Plasmius, he’d have to play at being overshadowed to even try to get away with this. Not that it would work now that everyone knew the truth. They weren’t going to take Vlad’s word over Danny’s.

Danny’s chest ached.

Every heartbeat seemed like it was building up pressure, threatening to burst out of him—

That same something sparked again, white light filtering through the black, and he pushed it down.

His vision closed off completely, and he tried to listen, to follow the fight, only to start as something banged into the door of the chamber, sending a reverberation through the entire thing.

Liquid flooded into his mouth and filled his lungs, and Danny choked, spluttering and trying to move—

The spark came again, and he didn’t have the strength to stop it.

After the change had washed over him, his body didn’t protest the lack of oxygen. The fogginess lifted from his mind, and he could see with clear eyes.

Meaning he could see the snarling expression on Valerie’s face as she attacked Vlad, flanked by his mom. Not that attacking Vlad did much good, seeing as he simply stayed intangible. Valerie’s momentum from her punch sent her stumbling through him, and the rolling desk chair lying on its side in front of his chamber didn’t seem so out of place once Valerie grabbed a beaker from the table she’d hit and hurled it at Vlad’s head. Maddie danced out of the way—Valerie really wasn’t used to fighting with allies—and swept at Vlad’s feet with the Fenton Utility Weapon, but he still wasn’t tangible, and whatever setting she had it on wasn’t enough for shock him back to tangibility. Danny saw her changing the settings, spinning the dial on the side in between hits, but she hadn’t had success yet.

Most ghosts couldn’t stay intangible for very long.

It was incredibly draining.

Thinking back on it, Danny really should’ve realized that Vlad employed that tactic more than anyone else he’d ever fought. All those years of breaking into places, maybe. He wasn’t fighting back anymore, though Danny wasn’t necessarily sure that it was a good thing. It was Vlad. Having no scruples was kinda his thing, and—

Wait.

Where was Lancer?

It shouldn’t have been difficult to lose sight of a giant ball of green energy, but to be fair, Danny hadn’t expected Lancer to ever turn off the portable ghost shield. (Once Danny had realized that must be what Lancer was using, he really couldn’t see it being anything else.)

Of course, a ghost shield was only effective against ghosts.

Danny’s heart sank a little when he spotted Lancer a mere five feet from him, half-hidden behind an examination table but held in place by a second Vlad.

A duplicate in human form was still in human form. Truthfully, Danny wasn’t sure how that worked, but it was something he’d tested with Sam and Tucker once he’d gotten the hang of actually creating a duplicate. Vlad had had twenty years to test out his abilities, so he knew perfectly well that he’d only needed to drop his intangibility and invisibility at the last second to pass through the ghost shield.

For a moment, Danny didn’t know why Vlad wouldn’t just overshadow Lancer. A scalpel to the throat was a little much, even for him. Maddie and Valerie were too focused on the first Vlad to notice, and Danny couldn’t hear Mr. Lancer making any attempt to get their attention. It just didn’t seem like an effective tactic, so Danny couldn’t understand Vlad’s game. If it were just to keep Lancer from reaching him—and he had clearly been Lancer’s goal; Danny had no doubt Valerie and Maddie had agreed to something like that beforehand, letting Lancer do the rescuing while they did the distracting—there were easier ways to do that.

Holo-Maddie reappeared at that moment, causing the real one to freeze in place and stare as the hologram chirped out, “Sample processed, sweetums!”

Valerie was the first one to recover—unless you counted Vlad, who was already flying towards the computer console. The version of him who wasn’t holding Lancer captive, anyway. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” Valerie shrieked, her words even clearer to him now that he was Phantom. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the hologram, but Maddie had the moment Vlad had begun to move. She was taking aim with her weapon, and—

Vlad screamed as the blast hit him in the back, throwing him forward into the console. His suit was smoking slightly at the edges, distinct despite Danny’s watery view. Maddie took another shot, this time hitting the computer in a flurry of sparks.

It was only once the Maddie hologram flickered that Danny realized that might have been his mother’s intention all along. Had Vlad let himself be hit? Had he been trying to protect the computer?

Valerie had her ectogun raised again, too. Except— It wasn’t the one she’d held earlier, the one Maddie must’ve given her. It was definitely Dalv tech, the same one he’d faced down only yesterday. She wasn’t in her suit—at least she knew enough not to trust that—but he knew that look on her face. She was a split second away from pulling the trigger, and Danny was sure that it was only Vlad’s voice from behind her when she could clearly see him in front of her that had her freeze before she could take her shot.

“I’d hold your fire,” the scalpel-wielding Vlad said, effectively drawing the attention of the others.

Holo-Maddie reappeared by the first Vlad at the computer console, but neither Valerie nor Maddie gave any indication that they’d noticed. Valerie took two steps towards Mr. Lancer and the Vlad who was holding him captive, still aiming her gun at them, but Maddie stopped her. She started trying to bargain, but Danny could recognize the distraction for what it was, and he looked back to see if he could figure out what Vlad was doing at the computer.

The angle wasn’t great; Danny couldn’t see the screen, let alone make out what Vlad was typing. Still, he could see Vlad pocket something—a flash drive, maybe?—before he keyed something into the computer. Holo-Maddie disappeared, and one of the large buttons on the console started flashing red.

Vlad changed into Plasmius, catching Valerie’s attention once more, but she only got off one shot before he flew through the wall.

It had missed him by less than half an inch, the tiny little dart embedded in the wall instead.

The remaining Vlad smiled before dropping the scalpel and vanishing himself.

Danny couldn’t make out Lancer’s gasping words, but he waved off Maddie and Valerie and pointed towards Danny. At a word from Maddie, Valerie nodded and moved towards him anyway, but Danny couldn’t see if Lancer had downplayed his injuries because Maddie was all he could see as she came over to examine the chamber.

“Hold on, Danny,” she said. “I’ll get you out of there.”

Either Vlad’s work was incredibly intuitive or he’d based it off an old invention with which Maddie was familiar, because the water was draining in less than thirty seconds. Danny might not strictly need to breathe as much in ghost mode (or at all? He always got really uncomfortable whenever they tried to test it, so he wasn’t wholly sure if it had a time limit), but he still sucked in huge lungfuls of air the moment he could.

“Thanks,” he whispered, just before the door’s seal released with a pop.

“Don’t thank us yet,” Maddie murmured as she pulled the door open and peered at the contraption sticking out of his abdomen. “Do you know what this is?”

“Vlad was trying to get…got…a mid-morph sample. Like, a DNA sample or something from the moment I changed.” Danny glanced down at it. “You can probably just pull it out without killing me.” Vlad didn’t know if the sample was all he needed, after all. At least, Danny hoped he didn’t. That doubt would keep Vlad from pulling anything worse right now.

“Let’s get you out of this first. Then I’ll take a better look at that.”

A detached part of Danny knew most mothers didn’t carry around lockpicks, let alone know how to use them. It wasn’t one of the things he could ever remember Jazz rolling her eyes over—being able to chase ghosts past the first locked door or gate or whatever was rather essential to a successful ghosthunter, and his parents didn’t exactly have a life of crime on the side like Vlad—but it was something he’d gotten used to long before his parents had ever opened the portal. He could still remember the look on Mrs. Foley’s face the first time he’d asked her where she kept hers if she didn’t have any pockets in her clothes. He’d been five or six, maybe, and she’d been too stunned by the seemingly random question to speak.

Tucker had been too busy laughing to realize Danny hadn’t been joking like he’d assumed.

Still, it didn’t take very long for Maddie to free his wrists, and by the time she dropped down to work on the lock at his feet, Lancer was hovering anxiously in the background and Valerie had gone to glower at the computer console.

“Thanks for coming,” Danny said, trying not to focus on the thin line of red where Vlad had scored Lancer’s skin. He really hadn’t thought Vlad would kill anyone—it was more his style to utterly discredit them—and seeing that this might not have been an empty threat on Vlad’s part made Danny’s stomach turn. He was fine with the danger being focused on himself, but everyone else, especially someone like Mr. Lancer….

“The others are headed over,” Valerie said without turning around, and Lancer closed his mouth without speaking. “Good thing, too. I think Tucker’ll need to figure out whatever Mr. Masters did, because I definitely can’t.”

“Come on, sweetie,” Maddie said as she eased him free, keeping his torso straight even as she turned him, pivoting him out of the chamber without pulling free whatever was stuck inside him. “Just hold on a few more seconds while I look at this.”

Danny nodded and didn’t breathe, letting her work.

He felt like he’d lost. Mr. Lancer, Valerie, his parents— They all knew and accepted him, and now they all knew the truth about Vlad, too. That should have been a victory. Maybe it still was, of a sort, but if Danny had won that battle, Vlad had won the other one. He’d gotten the mid-morph sample. His play with Valerie had worked. He’d…he’d be able to create stable clones….

Would he even be satisfied with a clone? He might create the perfect half-ghost son that looked exactly like Danny, might be able to brainwash him or program him or whatever he’d done to Danielle to make the clone as like Danny as possible, but a clone would never be as good as the original, however perfect a replica it was. How far would Vlad get before he realized this wouldn’t make him happy, either? How long would it be until he came back? Tried to capture Danny again, tried to split his parents up and win over Maddie? If he did manage to create perfect clones, he could use them to his advantage—

“He won’t get away with this,” Maddie was saying. “He won’t simply lose his position on the city council; his estate—his entire empire—will come under scrutiny. I know he kept residences here and in Wisconsin, and there are all those hunting cabins, too. He won’t be easy to track down, but we’ll find him, even if he tries to hide in the Ghost Zone. In the meantime, we’ll make sure he can never come back and never hurt you like this again. It’s going to be okay, sweetie. He can’t fool us now that we know the truth, and he won’t be able to keep his political power, either.”

“We should perhaps focus on the most immediate problem—” Lancer started.

“I’ve almost got it,” Maddie said without looking up from her tinkering, but from the look on Lancer’s face, that wasn’t what he’d meant.

“Uh, guys?” There was a note of panic in Valerie’s voice that hadn’t been there before. “I think Vlad sealed us in.” Danny looked over at her, and she had her phone to her ear. “Jack’s outside in the office, and Jazz is headed back to school to pick up Sam and Tucker, but apparently this place is blast proof.”

“There should be a control panel on the wall where we came through,” Maddie said. “Get it open and I’ll come when I’m finished here.”

“I can bandage him up,” Lancer said with a touch on her shoulder. “First aid is within my skill set.”

Danny had felt the poking and prodding and pulling around his abdomen, of course, but he hadn’t realized his mother had tugged out the device—long and sharp with what might be electrodes hanging off of it for all Danny knew—until he saw it in her hand. She set it on the bench beside her and pulled his own hands to press against the wound before removing her own and straightening up. She pulled out a sample bag from one of her many pockets and put the device inside before tucking it away. As she stripped off her green-stained gloves and pulled another pair from a different pockt, she said, “Thank you.” Pointing with her free hand towards the wall with the portal, she added, “I saw the first aid kit over there.”

As she walked over to join Valerie at the far wall, Lancer dropped to a crouch to examine the wound for himself, gently nudging Danny’s hands out of the way.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Danny said after Lancer sucked in a sharp breath.

“I think I’ll be the judge of that, Mr. Fenton.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

Lancer closed his eyes briefly before standing. “No, I daresay I still don’t, but I do know it is not something I would wish on someone as young as you. Come along; I’ll see what I can do.”

“If it’s bad enough that you need to stitch me up, you don’t have to be that good at it for it to be good enough. Sam didn’t know what she was doing when she started, and all Jazz and I knew about sewing when we began doing this was whatever Dad had shown us, and that never involved stitching up people.”

“You are not making the situation sound any better, I’m afraid.”

“It’s just….” Danny bit his lip but let Lancer guide him closer to the portal and didn’t protest when the teacher bent to pick him up and sit him down on an examination table. Well. Dissection table, going by the bindings. He decided not to think about that, something that wasn’t hard to do when his wound was throbbing after the jostling, and instead changed back to Fenton before Mr. Lancer asked. The change, at least, came as easily as it always had. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be once it started.”

“Should that not be cause for celebration?”

Danny wasn’t sure if Lancer was trying (and failing) to be facetious, so he shrugged and then hissed as the movement stung, stabbing into him with more ferocity than he’d expected from such a slight movement. “I don’t think it’ll be as easy as Mom thinks it is.”

Lancer was quiet for a moment, busying himself by grabbing the first aid kit from the wall, setting it down beside Danny, and looking through the contents to find what he wanted. Finally, “Things rarely are as simple as they should be, but you needn’t take it all on by yourself any longer—and, rest assured, I am not referring to your friends. I strongly suggest the matter be left primarily to your parents, with my assistance wherever I am able to help. If there are any legal proceedings—”

“Are you serious? We can’t take Vlad down using the proper channels. If he can’t buy people off, he’ll just overshadow them or get some other ghosts to do it for him.”

“Mr. Fen—”

“This isn’t something you can just fix. It’s not that easy.”

“I understand, but—”

“No, you don’t. You can’t or you wouldn’t be standing there talking about legal proceedings.” Danny started to sigh and then coughed as the pain spiked again. His healing was still too slow. How long was this thing supposed to last? He couldn’t remember Vlad helpfully monologuing about that little detail. Too bad Technus wasn’t likely to know.

“I’m sorry.”

Danny blinked and looked up at Mr. Lancer, who was still focused on disinfecting Danny’s wound. Danny hissed through his teeth as a new sort of stinging took hold, but Lancer didn’t pay that any mind.

“I should have done something before,” Lancer continued as he reached for some butterfly stitches, something that Danny knew from experience would hold well enough until he could get stitched up properly. They were better than nothing, anyway. Lancer held the wound closed as he put them in place, and Danny did his best not to wince. “I knew something had changed in your life, and it took me entirely too long to find out what it was. I allowed myself to be distracted, to neglect you in favour of the school—”

“What?”

Lancer had pulled out the gauze now. No big surprise there. When in doubt, cover it and deal with it later. It would not be the first time Danny had pulled that trick. With his usual healing rate, he typically only needed stitches and splints and stuff to make sure he didn’t heal improperly; he’d never had to worry about infection.

“Let’s just say seeing Mr. Baxter appropriately punished for his actions has been an ongoing fight, one I have not dedicated myself to as much as I should have, as you are not his only target.”

Oh.

Being Dash’s favourite punching bag wasn’t even on Danny’s radar right now.

“That’s okay. I’m used to it. But you—”

“You being used to it, as you say, is part of the problem—and, quite frankly, yet more evidence of my failing. Thankfully, that is a fight I am better suited for than this one has been.” The hand that had been tracking towards to the first aid kit—probably for medical tape to hold the gauze in place—jerked towards Lancer’s neck instead, no doubt pulled by the reminder of what had happened and the realization of what could have been, but it resumed course before it could make contact. “Just because you are used to something does not mean it does not need to be addressed.”

“I mean, I guess, but priorities, y’know? Vlad’s definitely worse than Dash.”

“And your parents will focus on that problem with the help I can give them, as I’ve said.”

“But it’s Vlad. It’s not just…. I mean, yeah, he’s one person, but he’s not one problem. He can create a whole bunch more problems really easily, especially now that he has a mid-morph sample from me. That’s what he needed to stabilize his clones. He can create a perfect clone of me now, at least once he gets a lab set up or overshadows someone in charge of one that does have the right stuff, and—”

“I am not saying that you are incapable of handling the problem—or problems—Vlad poses,” Lancer said delicately as he finished taping the gauze into place, “but you need to understand that you aren’t alone in this anymore.”

“Sam and—”

“Did I not tell you that your friends and your sister should not be the only ones facing the danger alongside you? You know that isn’t what I mean.”

Danny frowned. “You’re still seriously underestimating Vlad, even though he threatened you and you’re standing in his secret lab.”

“Which is one reason why I am not trying to say you should sit out all of this while the adults take care of the situation,” Lancer said, not looking the least bit surprised when Danny bristled. “You have more knowledge and experience than we do—even, I daresay, than your parents do. You may have fewer years of ghost hunting under your belt, but your perspective and the intensity of your, ah, training, for lack of a better word—”

“Experience is the best teacher.”

Lancer raised an eyebrow at Danny’s glib interruption but otherwise didn’t comment on it. “You should not be sidelined, but neither should you continue to be the one leading the charge and taking the heaviest fire. One of the reasons your parents fight ghosts is to protect you and your sister, is it not? Is throwing yourself into the most danger possible not against everything they are fighting for?”

Danny shifted and tugged his shirt down to cover up Lancer’s patch job as the teacher packed away the supplies. At least that meant his previous wounds must not look too bad; otherwise, Lancer would’ve insisted on redressing them. Of course, the one in his side was near enough to the one in his abdomen that Lancer could’ve done it at the same time. Danny had been paying more attention to what he’d held in his hands than where he was putting them, mostly because thinking about what Lancer was doing would just make it hurt more.

Still.

If Lancer hadn’t continued talking, that meant he was waiting for an answer. Danny took a careful breath, and it didn’t hurt this time. “Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“It is not necessary right now, and I am quite sure your parents will do everything in their power to ensure it remains unnecessary for you, your sister, or your friends to do that.” He glanced over his shoulder and added dryly, “And I am very much including Miss Gray in that assessment.”

Danny glanced towards Valerie. She was still hovering by the door, watching Maddie work on the panel. “Val’s a good fighter.”

“I never said she wasn’t. I’m trying to say that none of you should fight, but as you have the most knowledge of the situation, it is prudent that you help the adults—”

“But don’t you get it? Yeah, we’re kids, and it sucks that we have to risk so much to do this—but we aren’t the only ones in situations like this. Well, not like this, dealing with ghosts, but with high stakes. And it’s great that you care and want to take care of us, but we don’t need taking care of. Maybe you think it’s a shame we had to grow up fast or whatever to deal with this, but we can’t just pretend what we’ve gone through never happened. We’ve already had to learn to fight, so we did, and we’re good at it. It doesn’t make sense for you to just up and stop us and make us into, I dunno, consultants or something instead of fighters.”

Lancer blinked.

“We always knew there was risk. We accepted that, just like Mom and Dad did. Just like you did. We might not be legal adults but that doesn’t mean we don’t know what we were getting into with this. This whole thing with Vlad is messed up. We know. We know better than you do. He has what he wants, something he’s been trying forever to get, which is scary because it means I don’t know what he’s going to do next. And neither do you.”

Danny stared at his hands, not wanting to look Lancer in the eye after he’d let his tongue run away with him. “It’s just…. I can make a better guess of what this means than you or Mom and Dad can. And if you guys try to block us at every turn and insist it’s too dangerous to be directly involved ourselves just because we’re kids, we’re never going to stop him, and things will get worse.”

He pushed himself off the table, landing on his feet and wincing but holding in a whimper of pain. He’d get through this. He had to. Vlad’s drug had to work its way through his system and wear off soon, and then he’d be back to normal in no time. “I’ve picked up some things from Tucker, so I’m going to check out the computer. You can go through Vlad’s files or something and see if you can find the formula for whatever Val shot me with. Mom can probably make an antidote once she has that.”

Lancer made no move to follow as Danny strode off, and when he called Danny’s name, Danny pretended not to hear.

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#danny phantom #danny fenton #vlad masters #mr lancer #phanfiction #dp fanfiction #fanfiction #my writing #ladylynse #snippets #dp snippet #fic: the trouble with ghosts

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tallyovie-writes · 3 years

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Arsonists's Lullaby R.A.B.

SONGFIC

Summary: Regulus finds a soul like his in a person he would have never guessed

Author's note: unedited, after 3 exams, 1 am, please be kind I know it starts slow but there will be more parts

1.6k words

When I was a child, I heard voices

Some would sing and some would scream

You soon find you have few choices

I learned the voices died with me

At 5 years old, Regulus Arcturus Black learned that family did not always mean blood. He had yet to figure out the true meaning of the word, but he knew what he had was a dark echo of an utopist dream.

His childhood was dominated by a gray filter, muffling the sounds, numbing the emotions, stretching the minutes forever. On certain days, the lights grew darker, shadowing the world into almost black. Black like his name, black like the soul he will grow up to have. The ticking of the clocks were too loud, the walls too high, his mothers steps on the creaking stairs too firm in a world of doubt and uncertainty.

When I was a child, I'd sit for hours

Staring into open flame

Something in it had a power

Could barely tear my eyes away

Sometimes, for split seconds, burgundy took over the darkness. The lifelessness in the manor disappeared, and compensating for life's previous absence it channelled all of its heat into hate. Hate for an empty mother from Sirius, hate for a son who did not fit traditions from his mother.

Hate from Regulus, who possessed the survival instinct of laying low and keeping to himself but his brother did not. And Regulus resented him in these moments. For all the plates in million pieces, previously broken on the wall, for all the harsh words leaving their father's mouth, for all the clever little punishments their mother put them through. Them, because getting caught in the crossfire of a traditional Black "family" argument meant everyone's suffering.

It was a flame barely extinguishable. It meant the only display of emotions aside from the rare brotherly moments he shared with Sirius.

Emotions lead to addiction. And if anger is the only feeling fuelled, darkness starts to grow.

All you have is your fire

And the place you need to reach

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

That fire burned a self preservation so deep in him, that Regulus recognized he needed power in order to make it in this world. Power to stay strong, make it through between his ambitious peers and most importantly to guard himself. The blatant, headstrong bravery Sirius took upon arriving at Hogwarts made school holidays a hellish wartime at home.

Regulus learned not to engage. The moment the edges of his self-made cell threatened to break, he carefully tucked in his emotions once again. He didn't want to cut out feeling at all, he deemed that too dangerous for his liking. No. He just didn't let his emotions get the best of him. A man ruled by his feelings is a terrifying sight. He mentally injected himself with an anaesthetic in public, and behind four walls he let himself carefully examine them. It wasn't easy. The tangled web of emotional strings, numbed most of the time, screamed for air. Screamed for understanding, for letting go, for caring. But he cut those last remaining ties with love the moment Sirius got sorted into Gryffindor.

When I was 16, my senses fooled me

Thought gasoline was on my clothes

I knew that something would always rule me

I knew the scent was mine alone

At 16 years old Regulus Arcturus Black saw a way in the darkness. He didn't dare call it a glimmer of hope. Hope was a privilege only offered to the good and divine, to the pure and just. He was neither, he thought.

Perhaps he was right. For now. But fate has a way of changing the tides and replacing the figures on the chessboard.

He has long lost the map to his emotions. They were carefully tucked away in a forgotten pocket somewhere around his heart, but as one man, he couldn't untangle them alone. Not like he wanted to.

His salvation arrived in the face of a charismatic leader. He had answers to Regulus's questions that he long sought to find. Ever since he was a child he associated power with stability and control over one's life, and this stranger offered power on a silver plate. He couldn't have been worse. Of course in hindsight, everything seems more clear.

But as he was shrouded in darkness, he chose to become a part of the dark as well.

All you have is your fire

And the place you need to reach

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

One of the main problems in Regulus's logic was that he thought that being a Death Eater would solve all of his insecurities and instability. At first it seemed to work, building a new world by idealistic wishes and getting rid of the dangers life proposed helped setting his nerves right. But as the curls of the smoke threatened to suffocate him, his decision pressed hard on his shoulder.

He knew there was no out of this. The Dark Lord's silver tongue has lost its magic, he could detect the empty lies, the manipulation, the sinister force. He could detect it, because it takes one to know another, and he was a master in the arts of manipulation and lying. Why wouldn't he be? He spent all of his childhood perfecting the image of the pureblood son his family wanted him to be. And he did not fail. Keeping it up during Hogwarts has become a natural instinct, but also demolished his true self.

What was the true soul of Regulus Arcturus Black?

When I was a man I thought it ended

When I knew love's perfect ache

But my peace has always depended

On all the ashes in my wake

He thought he would never find it out. But then you came along and wrecked his carefully planted walls. At first he hated you for that.

You were obnoxious and the true image of what a pureblood offspring should be. What he should be.

He would have never thought that someone could be a better liar and manipulator than him. Regulus needed years of careful examination to see the cracks in your armour and the rare slips in character. At first, he was sure that his mind was imagining things that were not there. After years of reading his slytherin peers, your occasional un-slytherin-like behaviour peaked his curiosity.

One day he was sitting at the Slytherin table when an idea struck. You didn't sit far away, so you had to be pulled into the conversation too.

"Snape!" Regulus called to the oily haired seventh year. "Heard He recruited you. You finally pulled your head out of your ass?"

Of course he has seen the err of his decision by now, so Regulus asked him this for two reasons.

One: he had to keep up appearances.

Two: he wanted to see how you reacted.

He had been spending the last few weeks noticing your subtle icks regarding certain subjects. So far his theory seemed to prove true.

On the outside an appraising look sat on your face.

But Regulus learned to discover the signs. And he was once again right as he noticed the tip of your ring finger hardly pushed against your thumb nail, leaving a mark. Subtle, but still a tell tale sign of someone who is not fully on board with the subject.

One day he decided to corner you.

"I know the game you are playing" he didn't mean to sound so threatening, but it came out like that.

A snake doesn't crack under pressure, so you looked him in the eye and let a sly smile spread across your face.

"Please, do enlighten me. What game am I playing? Or is it better if I ask which game of mine you are referring to? I am a busy woman."

He let your comment fly.

"I noticed the tip of your ring finger is bruised. I would bandage it. The past few weeks you must have been careless and cut it. Wouldn't want any infection, would you?" he looked deep into your eyes, transferring the other meaning of his words.

You knew what he meant. Lately, you spotted the Black boy's eyes on you. In the Great Hall, during classes, those grey orbs never left you. You thought he harbored a silly little crush on you. Now you realized your mistake. The question however remained. What will he do with this information?

You are getting careless, if I noticed, someone might too. Someone you wouldn't want to notice. His eyes said.

Your House was not meant for easy friendships. The rising of The Dark Lord supported a lot of back stabbings for meaningless praises, so you had to be careful.

With a last nod he turned his back on you and walked away, leaving you with only frustration and more questions. Could the Slytherin Silver Boy share your views? Maybe when Hell freezes over.

Regulus knew, he should have said; I know the game you are playing, because I am playing it too.

All you have is your fire

And the place you need to reach

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

Fate sat on her chair and watched the two young snakes step on their shared path. Neither of them knew yet what this little encounter will set into motion.

But Fate knew and mourned the loss of another great story that has not even started, but was already told.

She sipped her wine and caressed the head of one of her demons.

#regulus black images #regulus black fanfiction #regulus x reader #regulus black x you #regulus black x y/n #regulus black x reader #regulus black x oc #regulus arcturus black #sirius black #tom riddle #the noble and most ancient house of black #hozier #arsonists's lullaby #true hero of slytherin #slytherin aesthetic #harry potter #fanfiction #songfic

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familiaanteomnia · 2 years

Text

somebody about xav to nate: that unhinged creature seems the sort to do at home body modifications nathan knowing his twin just like: ..... i’m not going to tell you how incorrect that is but that’s one of the things he takes very seriously ironically -which like, some senior trying to peer pressure nate into getting a stick&poke at a party when he’s a freshman and him being like- as much this could earn me some belonging i’ll accept coming off as a stuck up rich kid because i value my health -those sort of antics are disallowed at vortex parties once he becomes fairly in charge (of course nate is like i really have no say in it- if they are going to nothing’s changing that but i will actively kick them to the curb because no thanks) not for like preservation of the club or risk control but him just really not wishing to remotely be in proximity to those choices -you would think xav given his being reckless,etc has been in those situations but it’s one of his no go’s which can be a struggle for him because of how much a people pleaser he is/his mental health issues so when it’s 3am and he really wants a new tattoo sometimes he’ll be like I could do it, properly sanitize and not be stupid about it to which he usually counteracts by texting his go to tattoo artist/or doing a mockup, doodling the design etc till he falls asleep -nathan finds tattoos cool but isn’t hit with the actual motivation to get any personally/does have his health issues,etc (certainly wouldn’t mind getting a horror tattoo of some nature, actually has quite a few he’s seen that were like “cutesy” horror that he was like wow that’s fucking cool style- naturally would consider getting a whale related one too maybeee as cliche or nerdy a camera) piercings are even more unlikely for him- meaningful would be the drive for a tattoo *as funny it’d be for him to get like comedy/tragedy for the lols* -xav is just a connoisseur of tattoos, piercings to the extent of hardcore passion naturally especially regarding piercing jewelry/theming stuff,etc (though his body tends to not allow piercings very easily, will heal things up too well/like if he forgets to wear a piercing for x amount of time it’s like that spot never got pierced so that tends to be a complicated matter) -like with many things xav has also managed to get ink when he was underage (due to the crowd he hung out with plus the ability to seem older than he is+a really good fake id etc) which he’ll admit was probably not the smartest or like morally right but as if it’d been like ‘ah yes i will take my 16 year old to the tattoo shop, pay for me to get one of my concepts like ~arson is romantic~’ *tbh in his adopted verse he likely did go to his parents like take me plz cuz that’s one difference* -regarding the style of xav’s tattoos/wanted one’s its a lot of he is down to genuinely mean “have fun with it” because really respects the persons art style, wants them to have fun *does also communicate very well in general plus sometimes back forth art nerding* some have meaning, others not so much (he finds colored ink really cool+uv ink as well but also a typical sucker for black outlined designs etc) plus sometimes he just wants “dumb” tattoos like he won’t take shit for getting like a vampire c.are bear if that’s what he feels like getting -related, xav is actually pretty picky sometimes about certain things like carefully painting water on a envelope seal to activate it because “my tongue can only get destroyed by salt&vinegar chips, sour candy, and dry cereal” which is pretty amusing -both genuinely kinda shiver when like passing by c.laires or whatever especially if somebody they are with goes ‘i should go get pierced lol’ depending might be met with ‘no no no plz if you’re serious i will pay for you to professionally get what you want’

#brotp: prescott boys #unsafe body mods mention #(not like the act- and like a big no no but seems a taggable thing)#(this is probably some obscure lore and brain rot)#(... but as somebody who actively consumes such stuff because one day i will be able to get tattoos plus maybe piercings Thoughts Formed)

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the-ghost-king · 3 years

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time for me to share a good™️ headcanon: will and nico love to steal each other’s clothes but their massive size difference makes it so obvious that they’re doing it. nico’s shirts are almost croptops on will and will’s sweaters are practically a dress on nico bc will is like 6’2 and nico’s like 5’5

Anon! Anon! Yes, you. You get it.

I don’t really know what you wanted as a response to this but I felt inspired for the first time in some 10 months so I gifted you a one shot below the “read more”. I’ll also upload it to Ao3 with a link in the notes...

Anyhow Anon, I hope you enjoy it! I got a little off topic but reflective fluff is always good!

If you would have asked Will what he wanted out of life as a kid you probably would have gotten an answer that was something like “a chance to actually go and live life as it was meant to be” or maybe “to be happy, pretty, and stupid”.

He didn’t dare to hope for more, demigods didn’t live long lives, and being involved in a major battle at thirteen didn’t do wonders in regards to establishing confidence in your survival. As for the “pretty and stupid” part of his answer, it wasn’t that Will had ever hated being smart, he just hated the disconnect different intelligence levels caused in peer groups and society; being smart was hard, sure for school purposes it was nice, but that intelligence means you’re constantly thinking and so often so much of the world seems so dull and petty. Will had been lucky enough to be blessed with decent looks, moving through the world was made easy in at least that regard, but he wished he could live without thinking so much because so often he could only see so much awful in the world.

Thirteen year old Will wouldn’t have dared hope for anything more, he wouldn’t have dared hope for anything else more than a decade or so of normal life beyond camp and a chance at an easy life for those few years. When fourteen year old Will got a depression diagnosis he wouldn’t say he was surprised, he would have been annoyed but he hadn’t really felt much of anything in years. (”Atypical depression” The doctor had said, “likely clinical”) A few different types of anti-depressants and a few months of therapy things started feeling okay, better at least. Fifteen came and went, he tried to go off the pills and didn’t quite get there, but his dose got lowered which Will supposed was nice.

In the months of early 16, Nico di Angelo stumbles into his life; exhausted and melting under the pressure of the universe, he makes friends with death. It isn’t much, but Will remembers him from when they were kids back before any major fights. He remembers hearing about Nico running off and he felt bad for not having made a continued effort to get to know him. He felt bad when he left after the Battle of Manhattan too, they’d prepped bodies for their departure together and Will had gotten hung up in the infirmary (he had been one of the last Apollo campers and he was the only one with medical training). In some ways, Will supposed he was making up for those lost years when he didn’t have time to befriend Nico as he would have liked, it made him feel like he was at least trying.

In the beginning things were undeniably rocky, Nico was constantly hooked to machines just so Will could guarantee he wouldn’t die overnight. Even on Nico’s first night in the infirmary he had struggles with sleep, the bed wasn’t comfortable enough and after trying a large variety of options Will had hauled Nico and all of his equipment out to the porch on the back of the infirmary and they slept there for those three days (which turned into two weeks), wrapped up in jackets and in a pile of blankets beneath camp’s fall skies.

Within a few months, they fell in love.

Okay listen, people can call Will ridiculous all they want- but love at first sight is real and he experienced it. He didn’t know it but the day he met Nico and looked into the dark browns of his eyes, he thought something about how his eyes looked like ash from the fireplace at Mama’s house, or how they looked like the soil that his windowsill plants grew from. If you would have asked Will what he thought of Nico the very first time they’d met, he would have told you something about how his eyes were “big, dark, and round like a baby cow”. What Will really meant is that Nico reminded him of the family ranch house he grew up in, he meant he looked like home.

At the time Will just hadn’t known that was what love felt like, but when he figured it out one day teaching Nico how to play Hold ‘em on the back porch of the infirmary with a light breeze and setting sun as they settles down for bed; he knew one thing, he didn’t want anything more than to make Nico happy and he hoped that he could be a part of that more than anything.

It took a little longer for Nico to come around, he had his own demons to battle. Internalized homophobia, even in small doses, is a real downer to say the least, let alone when you’re fighting demons you’ve manifested for some 15 years. The biggest struggle however, was probably in all honesty the fact that Nico was so goddamned oblivious. After spending years alone with limited human contact at best, and having spent so many years desperately wanting Percy to notice him, and being met with negative reactions, Nico didn’t know what love looked like anymore. How had he been supposed to know he was in love with Will?

There was a lot of subtle back and forth, would the other even be interested in a guy? It ended one day with an unplanned kiss followed by a declaration. Will called it the best mistake he ever made, neither of them really thought it was a mistake.

It was days like today that only proved that.

Will had woken up to Nico’s face on a pillow next to him. He’d fallen asleep with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, and some of his smaller hairs had fallen loose in the night and now framed his peaceful face. The first rays of golden sunlight fell through accidentally left open curtains, and Will reached out to brush a stray piece of dark hair and place it behind Nico’s ear.

He woke up to a morning more beautiful than he would have ever hoped for at 13, and he would always be glad for that. He would always be grateful for how far he had come in not quite a decade. At just twenty-two he was 4 years into medical school, and three years married to Nico and he truly believed he was one of the happiest men in the world simply because he made Nico happy.

In time, Nico too would wake up.

First with a huff, and then a grumbling noise of annoyance as he rubbed his face with his arm as though trying to block out light before half-asleep Nico seemed to accept his fate and wake up fully.

“Good morning”

“How long have you been up?”

“Awhile”

Nico made a knowledgeable humming sound, perhaps he was just acknowledging Will’s response or perhaps he was saying ‘of course’.

A few kisses, a short conversation, and a couple of “I love you”’s later, they got out of bed.

Nico's was wearing Will's high school hoodie that was a bit too short on Will anymore like it was a dress on him. The hoodie went down to Nico’s knees, he's got his own black shorts on because Will's just fall off unless he ties them really really tight. He's got black socks pulled up almost to his knees, there’s a little gap between the end of Nico’s shorts and the start of his socks. The hoodie goes down an inch or two past his short pockets, and he goes outside to grab the mail with a pair of unlaced combat boots on his feet. He's got his skull ring on his middle finger of his right hand, and his left hand holds a simple wedding band which glint in the light as he opens the front door. His hair is pulled up into a messy ponytail, some of it is up some of it is down, there's tons of flyaway hairs which frame his face since he hasn’t fixed it sense getting out of bed.

Call it a cliché, but Nico looks like Heaven personified without even trying.

Sure, everyone looks nice in a suit or a dress, but how many people can roll out of bed without doing their hair wearing a decade old hoodie and look like they belong in a magazine spread?

Will is wearing one of Nico's looser shirts, on Nico it comes down past his hips and a little onto his thighs, on Will is he so much as lifts his arms a centimeter it reveals his hip bones. He doesn’t really mind, he kind of likes it to be entirely honest. Will can remember being just a few inches shorter than he is now and fitting fairly comfortably in Nico’s clothes at the time, they had never worried whose clothes they grabbed back then. Nico had finished his growth spirt and Will had thought he was done only two inches taller, it didn’t matter whose clothes were whose because everything fit well enough.

That wasn't quite the case now, Nico had stayed at his casual 5"5 while Will had shot up and extra six inches to 6"2 and ruined his own chances of sharing clothes. Such as right now he was sure he was wearing his own sweats, because he had specifically had to get a pair last night despite Nico's having been more accessible. Anytime he's actually managed to get a pair of Nico's pants comfortably on in the last few years, result in him wearing pants that are more like compression shorts or capris than pants.

Will was just happy he could wear some of Nico's larger shirts and hoodies still, the fact that Nico preferred to sleep in lots of clothes and typically baggy clothes meant Will had some options when it came to wearing his husbands stuff.

Will has also managed to steal a pair of Nico's socks, they're a taller pair on Nico (he buys winter wear so often because he's cold always) but on Will they gather a little awkwardly around his ankle. Will doesn't usually wear socks but they had gone to bed without the heat on and apparently the cold had set in over night and you could definitely feel it on their apartment floors.

The clothes would be a bit stretched out from him, it was something Will can remember being worried about after his second growth spurt, but Nico doesn't mind, He's assured Will of this time and time again, he says something about "aesthetic" and "alternative". Will doesn't really know, he's never cared much for fashion but he'll take Nico's word on it.

The truth, although it's something Nico would only admit in their bed late at night when it was so dark you could barely see his face, and arguably a little drunk as well, was that he actually enjoyed the way the clothes fit better after Will wore them. He found some sort of comfort in the way the shoulders of his shirts would be just a little too wide on him, it was one of those small acts of love, it wasn't one Will entirely understood but both of them got their own sort of enjoyment out of Will stretching out Nico's sleeping clothes some so they went with it.

Will turns his attention from Nico walking out the door to the coffee pot on the countertop.

Will doesn't like coffee much, he likes the social aspect of getting a cup more. Nico had introduced him to it, he’d been drinking it for years by the time they’d left camp. It reminded him of home and he grew to like it for such reasons, and although Nico would consume just about anything with enough caffeine in it Will needed creamer to enjoy coffee to any amount.

They were both honestly probably more tea people, but they never seemed to remember to buy any. Will will try to remember to write it down on the grocery list later, but Nico has walked back into the kitchen, climbed up on the counter next to Will and now he is looking at him; and Nico is always a distraction that's worthy of taking, Will will definitely forget to write down tea for their grocery list and the week will start over with more coffee in the house and no tea.

Nico’s fingers grip the countertop and he swings his legs a little bit back and forth from where he sits on the black granite, his white gold rings set against the counter in contrast. Will's worn out blue hoodie looks grey with age, the little printed letters are cracked and peeling on the back of it, his last name can still be read in white though.

Will knows the cliché about your lover wearing your name is often unhealthy and overly possessive, but he likes seeing Nico with his name because it feels like a gift. It’s like he’s given Nico a part of himself and Nico accepted it with pride, and Will loves that, he loves him and Nico being little pieces of each other.

Nico is smiling at him, and leans just so, Will turns in acknowledgment of the gesture, and moves so he’s standing to the left of Nico. Nico crosses his legs at the ankle and leans towards Will laying his head against Will where his neck and shoulder meet. Will leans forward and buries his face into Nico’s hair, comfortable and a little sleepy still.

"Coffee?"

"Mhmm."

"Good."

Will isn't the best cook, for fucks sake he's not even someone who could be considered a good cook, but he can handle this. Nico taught him the basics when they were still living at camp, Will failed every time, he ended up going home for a short period for Christmas break and begging his mom "teach me how to make eggs" he left off the bit about impressing Nico but he knows she knew. When he came back Nico had just smiled at him, "you practiced huh?"

Will hadn't gotten better at making much else, some eggs, toast, coffee and he could boil water now too! He had burnt lots of stuff over the years, plastic containers in the microwave, a plastic ladle they had on the stove top, at least 100 failed attempts at grilled cheese. Will was honestly just happy he hadn’t blown up any microwaves since he was a kid...

Nico had come home to many of Will's failed attempts at making him various things, sometimes the food was underdone other times it was bits of inedible char. Will did try, he really did, but the heat was always too high or he would end up distracted, or he would use sugar on accident instead of salt. Will did actually try, but his best attempts still often left something to be desired, so he often was the one doing dishes.

Most notably one time Nico had come home to him attempting to pan-frying some fish.

It had been supposed to be a surprise, it was Nico's birthday, and Will had had the day off of class even though Nico hadn't. He figured he would have surprised him; it had been back in their first apartment, not quite as nice as this one. A cheap tiled cream counter top that Nico had literally cringed at when seeing it the first time, the cabinets had somehow been cheaper than a set from IKEA and it had become an inside joke to them.

He had walked in the apartment to see smoke coming off the pan with a bit of flame still coming off it, and a large piece of charred fish stuck to the bottom of one of their frying pans.

"Hey dumbass, what did you do in here?"

People thought they were an odd couple, Will could see that. The whole parallel people drew between light and dark and optimism and pessimism and such between them, none of those people were really correct though. Will and Nico were more similar than they were different. At the end of the day it didn’t really matter what people said, Will liked Nico, he loved him in all honesty- he'd never heard the word "dumbass" said with so much affection.

Nico was hard for most people to read, years along had left him struggling emotionally in some manner; he did his best to hide most of his emotions, cloak them so heavily that sometimes they were even unrecognizable to Nico himself.

The most obvious example of this in regards to Nico was how "shut up" often meant "I love you", "idiot" was synonymous with "darling" in some ways. Don't get Will wrong, Nico could be very affectionate, but pet names came with hesitation for him in the early days; Should he use Venetian, Italian, or English? Masculine words that were romantic had been hard for him to say as well... But everyday he grew and got better, and Will was proud of him every time he called Will “dear” and didn’t hesitate before or after.

Nico had started masking his emotions at some point during his time at Westover, whatever he had done there hadn’t been much more than how much the average person masked their feelings, but when he started training with Minos Nico had doubled down on keeping his emotions secretive. Minos hadn’t been kind or safe in any sense of the word, emotions were what he used to manipulate Nico all that time, it was no wonder Nico developed such a strong sense of apathy towards anything overtime.

Nico could be affectionate, he could be the most loving person to ever exist. Nico’s emotions were sort of like secrets, if you stayed awake late enough into the night you would only come to know him then, such was the nature of him. He often whispered so quietly his wants and needs into the dark, there was some sense of fear tied to Nico’s vulnerability and he handed off his worries each night to the stars soft glow. Nico often refused to talk openly during the day, but at night apologies and truth always came, he had known what he had wanted earlier he had simply been to afraid of the rejection to acknowledge it, Will is glad that with the years the worst of such things is over; it is unlikely to be something Nico will ever fully grow out of, such is the nature of humanity, but progress is a virtue.

Such times not only resulted in Nico’s acknowledgement of his wants and faults, but also garnered the most affection from Nico. Nico couldn’t always communicate in an effective manner verbally, which was still a process they were working on, but he did his best. Nico’s act of love was like that of a small bird, he gave you small things that seemed insignificant until you realized he had only ever told you such things. Will fell in love with him for it, it wasn’t just about the way he would describe the wallpaper in his childhood bedroom, it was the fact that nobody knew anything else about Nico’s childhood bedroom.

Will had never truly understood the concept of “touch starved” until he met Nico, he had known the definition sure, but he had never truly witnessed it. Nico never asked for touch, but it was the way he leaned into it, the way he sought it out; pressing up against Will’s hand like a cat stretching trying to get a little more contact somehow, trying to make the touch last just a bit longer so he could savor it properly. It was literally starving in some manner, starving for contact that wasn’t a goodbye or a hit, just for wordless contact. When he grew comfortable he gave affection fully, there was a joy in holding Nico’s hand, knowing that he felt safe enough not to worry about the effect a few extra seconds of prepping for a fight that holding hands would add.

Nico didn’t show affection in big ways, and that was more than okay with Will; they were laid back in comparison to most, he’d have sought the comfort of placing soap bubbles on each others head in the tub a hundred times over a night on the town. Nico’s affection was something quiet and almost secretive, unknown to anyone it wasn’t directed at; it was the way he would lead Will out of a room to kiss him, or the quiet way he whispered “I love you” into Will’s ear when in public.

Will supposes in the early days “shut up” became “I love you” in order to avoid being seen as weak in some manner, in order to avoid acknowledging what he really wanted to say and having Will not respond in kind. Will didn't mind, they weren't an overly affectionate pairing- banter was common, almost everything they did was turned into some sort of game, the term "boys will be boys" definitely applied to their relationship of 3am pillow fights, late night discussions about what order the Christmas ornaments had to go up on the tree in, and whenever they wrote thesis papers for living room debates over the best Disney villain.

Will honestly preferred it that way, he preferred having the little moments reserved for solely them. He preferred the aversion to sappy clichés, the way a lover could say your name with exasperation and a smile that meant the whole world. He had seen what some other couples had, quick kisses in lines at cafes, holding hands across the table, and calling each other pet names they’d made up that were somehow ten times worse than the original- and Will didn’t want that.

It wasn’t that what those couples had wasn’t love, it just wasn’t love in a way Will could understand, it wasn’t love Will felt from those sort of exchanges. He didn’t understand the idea of “butterflies in your stomach”, love wasn’t nerves, love was like coming home after a long day, love was the way someone could say your name like it was divine, love was the way someone would smirk at you when you were missing the point, love was not being afraid to cry in front of them, it was knowing you could show up to them with any problem and instead of leaving you they would research the ins and outs of it in all their entirety.

The coffee maker makes a sound, Nico lifts his head of off Will’s body and the deep browns of his eyes are like the freshly turned dirt of fields in planting season, and Will feels like there’s a garden growing in his chest that Nico feeds. Nico sits straight on the counter and pulls his legs up and sits cross legged on the counter as he pulls out his hairband, and runs his fingers through his hair before pulling it back up without all the flyaways.

Will moves towards the coffee machine, pours it into two cups, and sets one on the counter beside Nico before making his way to the fridge to grab creamer. Nico’s watching him right now, but there’s no need for talking; there will be talking in a minute. Talking about Will’s schedule for the week, talk of whatever project Nico is working on right now, talk of what they should do for dinner the rest of the week, little sweet nothings, and eventually they’ll make their way to the couch to watch some tv and maybe later in the day they’ll play some sort of game or something as well.

So yeah, maybe "light" and "dark" were polar opposites and some people would have walked out on the word dumbass rather than immediately loving it, but Will liked it- everyday was a game of sorts, a new adventure, all with Nico who he loved. Coming home from work wasn’t necessarily about the place Will lived but knowing Nico would be there for him to see was the point of going home, home was wherever Nico was and some small part of Will hoped eternity was real in some manner.

Will remembered when Michael had died thinking nothing could possibly get worse, and in some ways he was kind of right; he had ended up with some sort of demigod style fairy tale ending with the man he loved, and that was ten times better than anything fifteen year old Will would have hoped for.

#solangelo #Nico di angelo #Will solace #pjo #hoo

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mightydragoon · 4 years

Text

Tiny Luke and Dad Vader fanfic recs

As of @silvereddaye request .

1 A Simple Twist of Fate By: TheRealThing

Destiny brings Darth Vader's twin son and daughter, who he has believed dead for ten years, into his life unexpectedly.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4292852/1/A-Simple-Twist-of-Fate

2. Force Bond 1: Orphan By: KittandChips

AU After Owen and Beru are killed by a mysterious stranger, young Luke ends up as an orphan on Coruscant. It's a race against time as Obi-Wan struggles to find Luke before Vader realizes the boy is his son.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/347383/1/Force-Bond-1-Orphan

3. Force Bond 2: Threat By: KittandChips

Luke finds himself moving in with a moody, secluded Sith Lord who is also his newly found father. Vader has his own set of challenges to overcome, as he struggles to come to terms with his fatherhood.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/388791/1/Force-Bond-2-Threat

4. Force Bond 3: Son By: KittandChips

Third in the series of an AU where Luke is raised by Vader on Coruscant. Luke is getting older and struggling to come to terms with what awaits in the future.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/562682/1/Force-Bond-3-Son

5. Force Bond 4: Jedi By: KittandChips

AU. Fourth in a series where Luke has been raised by Vader on Coruscant. Luke is caught between his loyalty and love for the man who raised him, and his desire not to become a Sith.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1037550/1/Force-Bond-4-Jedi

6. The Father By: frodogenic

Ten years after ROTS, tormenting nightmares of his unborn child drive Darth Vader to extraordinary measures with unexpectedly drastic consequences. Clearly, experience has taught Darth Vader nothing... L/V, the gang, and a few OCs for flavor. COMPLETE!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3092590/1/The-Father

7. Dark Father By: JoieMaris

Four years after ROTS, Vader is haunted by nightmares from the Force. His dreams lead him to two special children. AU.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10806023/1/Dark-Father

8. Silence By: Shy Snootles

AU story, set four years after ROTS. Darth Vader has become the Empire's very image of death and destruction. But a fortuitous encounter with a little boy will shake the until then rock solid foundations of his Darkness and hatred.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2946568/1/Silence

9. Free to Fly By: Mahina

Luke is nine and a slave in Jabba's palace when Darth Vader returns to fulfill an old promise. LV list challenge.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7045903/1/Free-to-Fly

10. Dissociative Identity Disorder By: T. Alana M

Formerly titled "The Good Son". DID: a condition wherein a person's identity is fragmented into two or more distinct personalities. Or, where Anakin Skywalker makes it his life's goal to drive Darth Vader to the brink of insanity. His four year old son spectates.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9706778/1/Dissociative-Identity-Disorder

(Note* Incomplete)

11. Darkness's Son One: But Light Was Always the Son of Darkness By: The Hope Lions

After getting caught at a rebel rally, ten year old Luke Skywalker is arrested and brought to Coruscant. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi will do anything to prevent Darth Vader from discovering his son's existence, but will the Jedi be too late?

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11850017/1/Darkness-s-Son-One-But-Light-Was-Always-the-Son-of-Darkness

12. Darkness's Son Two: The Darkness Is There By: The Hope Lions

Sequel to "But Light Was Always the Son of Darkness" Luke Skywalker has been living with his father for four years, but that doesn't mean it's gotten any easier. Now that Luke is no longer a child he has to deal with a whole host of new problems. Sooner or later he's bound to crack under the pressure of what it means to be Darth Vader's Jedi son. Updated daily!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12011466/1/Darkness-s-Son-Two-The-Darkness-Is-There

13. Far From Over By: Above the Winter Moonlight

COMPLETE AU, Eight years post ROTS. When Darth Vader learns that his son is still alive, he is determined to find him. All the while, Obi-Wan Kenobi is struggling to hide the young boy from his father's prying eyes…FS inside, R&R

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5445132/1/Far-From-Over

14. Second Time By: Brievel

Darth Vader finds a five-year-old Luke Skywalker wandering the dunes of Tatooine, lost, and realizes the child is his son. What is he to do with the boy?

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11326985/1/Second-Time

15. every planet, every star, every single grain of sand --- loosingletters

In which Darth Vader finds 9-year-old Luke on Tatooine, proceeds to have a breakdown, kills Palpatine and makes his preteen son Emperor, as you do. Otherwise known as the Adventures of Teeny Tiny Emperor Luke and his Royal Dad Guard Darth Vader.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22714810/chapters/54283174

16. In Which the Force Finally Becomes Proactive --sparklight

Better late than never, right? This has gone on long enough, and the Son of the Suns need some help to get out of that poisoned swamp he's stuck in. What better help than his own son, and the planet he was born on?

Luke starts out dreaming, first about his father, then about his grandmother. She wants him to help save his father, but his father is dead, isn't he..?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/9109462/chapters/20705959

17. Skywalker Family Values --Ariel_Sojourner

Camp Chippewa is proud to be the Empire’s foremost camp resort for privileged young adults. Located on the picturesque forest moon of Endor, your child will have the opportunity to participate in wholesome outdoor activities and socialize appropriately with their peers. We invite your offspring to join us for the experience of a lifetime and a bright future in service of the greater glory of the Empire.

On opposite sides of the galaxy, on opposite sides of a civil war, Darth Vader and Padme Amidala unwittingly send Luke and Leia to the same camp during school break. Chaos naturally ensues.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/14258124/chapters/32883750

(note* Comedy freaking gold)

18. The Necklace By: Ellisaed

What if Padmè's japor snippet hadn't been buried with her on Naboo? What if it had somehow been able to bring together the children that had been torn apart? And with her husband - now a notorious Sith Lord - on a endless search to regain the necklace back, will it end up being the galaxy's greatest mistake? *NEW: Chapter 10!*

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8765936/1/The-Necklace

19. Chiaroscuro -- SpellCleaver

A series of oneshots focusing on Luke and Vader's relationship, with other characters occasionally thrown into the mix.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/16363772/chapters/38293637

20. Visiting Shmi Skywalker’s Grave --Iva1201

Darth Vader decides to visit his mother's grave one last time to finally get rid of all his attachments. Can he succeed when there is one more person visiting the tomb at the same time, this person being his own young son? Or will Anakin Skywalker resurface when meeting the boy?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8239112/chapters/18881579

21. Glove --Superheronerd_1

It wasn't as though he wanted to murder the younglings, that he wanted to murder those around him that he had seen in battle. Those who have had his back, who have saved him and he then countless of times.

But sacrifice was necessary.

“-dodged a large rock-”

Yet this, this he could not sacrifice.

He will not sacrifice.

“-flew over, no Luke, don't nibble my cape.” Vader said, amused.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/6430528/chapters/14719456

22. Imperial Babysitters -Laivaaja

Star Wars Fan Comic: Luke Skywalker is raised by his father Darth Vader on a star destroyer. The young officers Piett and Veers are Luke’s awesome uncles who constantly end up babysitting him (and worrying too much when he gets into trouble).

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11621658/chapters/26131065

23. Between the Light and Shadows: Luke & Vader One-Shots -SilverDaye

One-shot collection focused on Luke and Vader. All AU.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15128117/chapters/48583628

(Note* Silver has a bunch of these so here we go, not all but godamn I would say the vast majority of these are. )

24. Sent Out for Safety-- throwawayflames

At the age of eight, Luke Skywalker and his sister, Leia, are split up for their safety. Leia stays with their Uncle Ben, and their mother, to learn how to be a Jedi. Luke, on the other hand, is sent to the Organa's, where he will pretend to be their adoptive son who was orphaned. Ben had only given Luke one rule to live by while he was away from his family, don't tell anyone his last name, and he followed that.

It wasn't his fault that Darth Vader sensed that he was a Force Sensitive and now he wants to train him, as a Jedi no less. That's the complete opposite of what Ben had told Luke. And after asking Darth Vader about his dad, Luke can't help but say yes to Darth Vader training him. After all, Luke's always wanted to be a Jedi like his father.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659655/chapters/54159751

25. For Want of a Skywalker --acuteneurosis

After the miracle of having survived Bespin, Piett does not ask why they are stopping on Tatooine. Or why Lord Vader suddenly has acquired a small child. Or why this child's name is Luke. Or how long they are going to keep him.

He probably should have.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22044874/chapters/52612567

26. Where Our Intrepid Hero Doesn't Get Away- sparklight

One-shots surrounding either AU situations of canon/legends works where Luke would normally have gotten away (or Vader is simply inserted into the action to come pick his child up) but in these instances doesn't, or completely new scenarios of the same. Any time an AU is mentioned to be based on a comics issue it's from the new Marvel Star Wars comics (2015) (unless otherwise noted).

There are no deep ruminations on consequences of the situations here, just our awful Sith dad picking his son up when he'd rather not be.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837094/chapters/11078918

(note* again not all include Little Luke but they do involve Luke and Vader)

27. Runaway SilverDaye

Imperial Prince Luke runs away from home to escape his overprotective father Emperor Vader. Jumping from planet to planet he finds himself creditless on Tatooine. While working for more money to leave the planet, Luke meets an old man named Ben Kenobi. But Luke knows he can't stay in one place for long for surely his father is hunting him down.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/14630196/chapters/33813027

28. Bring Him Home -- KeeperofSeeds

Vader is sent to Tatooine by his Master after a series of failures. While there he discovers the existence of Luke. He meets Luke, convinces him to come with him off planet, and manages to hide him away for a while. He knows his Master won't tolerate a powerful force sensitive like Luke running around as a free agent once he's old enough to be a threat, and he also knows exactly how horrible it is to serve Palpatine. He won't let Luke be taken and used like that.

Eventually though, his deception is discovered.

Vader knows he isn't powerful enough to protect Luke on his own, and he isn't ready to overthrow Palpatine yet. He decides the only safe place for Luke is with the Rebel Alliance, the very people who've managed to stay out of his reach so far. So he takes Luke and defects.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15994967/chapters/37317818

29. Stranger Danger LadyVader23

When Vader is suddenly given custody over the five year old son he didn't know he had, he attempts to get his daughter, Leia to befriend him. But as soon as his back is turned, Luke runs away, hiding in the mall that Vader owns. Vader tries frantically to find his son while Luke enjoys exploring the mall on his own. Shenanigans ensue.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23010670

30. A Mother's Decision -- Valerie_Vancollie

What if Padmé had brought Luke to Vader when Luke was only nine months old?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915687

Other Links

Luke and Vader

Founder: Moyima - Stories: 198 - Followers: 573 - Staff: 3 - id: 5265Stories featuring the father and son relationship between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader a collection of fics inspired by the vivicious yahoo group: The Luke Vader Writers.

https://www.fanfiction.net/community/Luke-and-Vader/5265/

(Note these ones include Luke and Vader though not all are Tiny Luke. Good place to start though)

Luke and Darth Vader Tag

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Luke%20Skywalker%20*a*%20Darth%20Vader/works

#dad vader #darth vader #luke skywalker #luke #star wars #sw #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic recs #fanfiction recommendation #long post #luke skywalker and darth vader

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jazajas · 4 years

Text

okay so i finished love, victor a while ago and i saw some other reviews and thoughts about it here so now i've got a pretty good list on my thoughts and feelings.

tl;dr: it has some issues, yes, but im gonna hold out and hope it gets better later on because the same thing happened with the first few eps, i wasn't that into it but then it got good, and nothing is ever great with the first season, because at that point we're getting used to those characters.

⚠️caution: spoilers ahead (im on mobile, i cant get an under-the-cut)⚠️

1. while a leah on the offbeat movie would have been amazing movie sequel (even tho i havent read the book yet, im just here for the wlw content) i am kind of glad we got this instead. mostly because I've seen book series where one movie was good, so they decide to do the rest, turn out bad (hunger games? divergent? percy jackson? the hobbit?) because so much was cut from the book-to-first movie writing, that other scenes wouldn't make sense to future movies if they had those in while cutting others. however, i am sad that i didn't get to make the choice of deciding whether what was cut was wrong etc. about future movies, but i'll take what i can get.

2. LGBTQ+ POC as a lead! that's amazing! as a ace/bi lantina that's close to home (it also is great that victor's from texas and so is ya gorl) and even then it's a mixed latinx family! i think pilar mentioned that at least the grandmother left Colombia and i saw the Puerto Rican flag in victor's room. also the salazar's are definitely from small town texas, even without knowing the name. (church barbeques, the use of the words "such a diverse city" in regards to atlanta)

3. a lack of actual lgbtq+ main storylines (so far) is kind of sad for a show like this. i was getting serious bi/pan vibes (as a lot of other people) from victor from the beginning, and when it was implied that victor was actually gay (while great, not shaming) as it has been brought to my attention, there was a lot of looking at a lot of straight relationship problems (please let us know more about benji)- edit 6/18: upon further consideration, it very much is a show about questioning your sexuality, I'm speaking about the other straight relationship issues, not mia and Victor's, its just the first season.

4. let us talk about cheating for a sec. never okay, in any circumstance. i feel sorry for mia that she saw victor making out with benji and the fact that he was doing any of that in the first place. victor made a choice to lie about the espresso machine and then kissed benji at the hotel and then when benji was fighting with derek, basically confessed his love and mistakes, then proceeded to makeout with benji after he broke up with derek, he built that grave and now he must lie in it. i get having feelings for a guy when you are in a relationship with a girl, and not accepting yourself enough to end that relationship but you really want it to work so you can be "normal". really, he should have told mia after he got back from the trip tho. i get being in highschool and doing stupid stuff and making dumb decisions, but for a show aimed at teens i think we should also remind said teens to make good choices even if we have to lose some realism within the character choices.

4. pilar and her decisions based off her brother pissed me off. because i honestly think that if she'd kept her mouth shut about what she knew or confronted victor about it in the first place we could have avoided a LOT of mess. did she not learn from snooping around her mother's business about her relationships that going behind a person's back doesnt end well? i did, however, like the pilar/felix friendship and was really kind of hoping that they'd get together during their coffee hangout (although now im glad that didn't happen) because they had a deeper understanding of each other. same with wendy/felix, although they do seem to much alike to work out in the long run but i still feel bad for wendy.

5. i don't know how i feel about lake and andrew, as people separate from each other. both seem to be the way they are from their upbringing (not confirmed why andrew is such an ass, but if his comment about his dad is anything to go by i bet it's got something to do with attention) but andrew seems to be less, idk, superficial? like he turned down mia because he didn't want to be a rebound, he didn't out victor, he actually stood up to early teasing the other dudes in the lockerroom were doing at victor (with teasing of his own obviously but that interaction had him on my nice list until much later). lake? lake. i honestly don't have an opinion of her? not really. i mean after hanging out with pilar i was hoping felix wouldn't go back to lake. is her name laken? i feel like her full name is laken. but they also played the "im only like this because my mom is really superficial about stuff and i do like the geeky nice guy but appearances" to "actually screw the norms im gonna makeout with him infront of the whole student body". i honestly thought she was gonna be bi because she kept hitting on mia when she was helping set up for her "date" and "big night" and there was one point where i saw her face fall at something mia said in relation to her and idk i was hoping she'd be bi (i figured early on that victor/mia wasnt gonna work and was like "oh mia/lake would be cute" but now idk.

6. okay on to the "big night", i have one word. NO. i didn't like the peer pressure into having sex. i agreed with felix when he said "your body your choice" but im also disappointed that victor made out with mia and when lake was talking to felix after victor left he didn't try to stand up for victor.

7. on to age gaps because i hadn't really thought of this at first. we'll start with benji/derek: WHAT GRADE IS BENJI?! because that determines my thoughts. if he's a sophomore that meant that he and Derek started dating benji's freshman year and thats eugh, don't do that, don't care if its a gay couple that shouldn't be happening because the maturity of the two characters is DRASTICALLY different (this is also a reason i am not a fan of cmbyn) but that would explain why they were so rocky. hoping the event at the gay bar was open to anyone not just for drinking, but not liking that fact that not one of the adults with victor were like: hey, this is a 16 year old, that's kind of wack when that dude was hitting on victor. that made me question some stuff. although i figure it might be making up for the lack of a gay bar scene in love, simon. but even then, in svthsa it's a restaurant with a bar that some people go to just to drink at, it wasn't just a bar, simon could be there but should NOT have accepted drinks from college kids, not matter how attractive.

8. i loved how bram and simon and their friends helped victor out though. i like how bram was like: hey i know my friends are a lot so here's a gay basketball league becaue there's no one way to be gay. i like how Simon talked about needing help himself just to help victor and how he said his friends were cool with it because it's a community. i like of justin(?) mentioned how being what his parents wanted was putting on a mask and pretending, not him doing drag. my favorite lines from that ep are: "and before you ask my pronouns are they/them/theirs" "'they're all gay? even that guy? he's like [insert really tall number]' 'yeah. you should see him in heels'" "or in simon's case: really unathletic" "and also because bram said that if i wore [the jean jacket] one more time he'd burn it". also katya was there. and the group hug too!

9. the back hand homophobia in relation to family is sad, but realistic and i sincerely hope his parents are kind enough not to be too harsh on victor because of it. anything they say that isn't positive or supportive of victor is bad but i hope they realize that there is more to him than that and that they can come to terms with it because it's not always that hard to be a part of that community and super religious. i am biromantic and catholic. and while there are some things i wont agree on my mom with, i know that it's more of a strike against God for kicking out gay kids from families than it is to be gay, because those parents were given trust by GOD to love those kids no matter what, and be good parents. so in the end, the parents are wrong and harmful and in the case of christians against jesus's teachings to love everyone.

10. this is fan speculation but dont think simon/bram are going through a rough patch? i honestly think it'd be a little cruel to the characters to have on of their actors be producing but then not have that relationship stay. and while it's not set in stone and obviously things happen in the real world, we have no proof script wise about there being a rift. all we have are bad photoshopped ig photos and scenes where two characters are never standing next to each other probably beccaue schedules never link up correctly for minor characters. who knows, maybe nick robinson was filming for a movie where is does have an even more major role than victor's gay guru in a series about victor so his filming time was around that. im gonna keep hope that things are okay.

11. that being said: we need more mainstream wlw content, because someone said it earlier and it really does seem to be catering to straight girls. i'll admit i did freak out when benji played call me maybe which is something i associated with him and victor but then kissed a guy because who wouldn't? we get that serenade and sweetness and then it'a ripped from us. but i did mellow out. if i flipped later it was because victor was making dumb decisions and i had to give myself a moment of compsure before i continued.

in the end, i'd say that there is a lot of growth this series needs to go through, but i also know that some people just aren't going to like it and i get that. but i also know that sometimes the best of stories have rocky starts, nothing is ever perfect from the beginning. and besides, further seasons are on hold until we figure out this covid thing, which means that you bet they're gonna be looking at our feedback. they saw what we thought before, they can do it again

i really did like it but we need more ACTUAL lgbtq+ relationship stuff from this series and better decisions on what we are teaching the younger generations, as well as what we want to focus on and realism within characters. i'm giving it an 8/10, because there is always room for growth and i really hope we get better things out of this than what we have been given in season 2.

edit: someone mentioned it really seeming like it was meant for Disney+ and i felt that. also to anyone who reaches the tags agter reading ALL OF THIS: i am sorry

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rumandtimes · 3 years

Text

Does Cultural Appropriation Apply to Natalie Portman?

Sean Ezersky

Assoc. Fantasy Contributor

Does appropriation apply to the worst parts of European cultures?

Today, I want to discuss cultural appropriation. Yes, the issue of the times. But what exactly is cultural appropriation? Well, nobody knows. Starting at the first word, it claims to be some kind of appropriation. And it has something to do with culture.

Firstly, it should be said that this article has nothing to actually do with cultural appropriation. That is because cultural appropriation is essentially defined by racism. The term first appears, so it goes, as a description of how racist citizens of England marginalised and exploited the peoples of the Caribbean, and attacked sections of the working class schtick, for fun. Sounds evil enough.

The term cultural appropriation cannot be used as a mild term or played around with much, because it is by definition a form of misconduct. The term cultural appropriation is defined by the words “inappropriate,” “racist,” and “commercialist.” There is no redeeming quality to cultural appropriation because cultural appropriation is used to describe exclusively irredeemable activity, markedly opposite to cultural exchange or respect.

Consider the worst perpetrator in the United Kingdom and the United States: hip-hop / rap music, curly hair, or a summer tan. Racists always attack these music genres and human characteristics un-European, placing them into the same box on the fringes of their minds, but at the same time view themselves as ‘cultured’ for dipping into the same music, view themselves as ‘interesting’ for factory curling their hair, or view themselves as ‘unique’ for getting a spray-on tan. There is a murderous and delirious sense of bad irony, that racists altogether marginalise, demonise, and lust after perfectly normal traits and human practices, which the racist calls exotic, for fear of being labelled as freaks themselves. That is cultural appropriation.

Another bad actor is the billion-dollar yoga industry in Western nations as well, which attempts at every corner to steal Indian culture then mutilate the original concept, taking the yoga gurus off the cover and planting in some body-bleaching whores, or some wavy Italian guy, to appeal to the racist American, à la youth female target audience. All the while, Hinduism, inextricable from yoga’s origins while not necessarily the same as yoga in any way, is viewed as a false and inexpiable religion by most people in the West. Yoga was not learned from the Hindu, it was looted, and replaced with a shallow, cruel, commercial, and disgraceful attempt to Europeanise and trivialise the hobby while selling it the crude sex markets. That is a form of cultural genocide and religion-sacking. That is cultural appropriation.

But this article is not about cultural appropriation, in a way. The distinction was only added to please those offended by the comparison. This article is about movies, as part of a series of Star Wars critiques, and it’s about Natalie Portman.

Long have I harboured a question about Natalie Portman’s career, as it is so vapid yet so prolific, so vain yet so ubiquitous. This is just the opportunity. Natalie Portman got her start in acting as a 16-year-old leading actress on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. She returned three years later as a 19-year-old lead on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, where her character dies. After moving on from the Star Wars prequels, she used that resume to enrol at Harvard University to study psychology.

She has actually commented on this, as all Harvard associates eventually do, saying she and her peers felt she was only enrolled because she was in Star Wars, and this insecurity led her to push harder than her friends in her classes and challenge herself by picking ‘harder-than-necessary’ classes. Still, psychology is the most common undergraduate degree major among women, so hardly original. Whether or not Natalie invites the assessment or feels it is correct, this is undoubtedly true; She, as most people, never would have been looked at by Harvard if she did not have some kind of bank of riches or wealth of limelight that could be mined by the admissions board. Natalie might want to be viewed as a genius of “Hebrew literature” who stood out among the crowd, but that is just impossible parlour speak. Not that she deserves to go to Harvard any less than anyone else, no one deserves to go to Harvard, as Harvard in the 20th Century existed for the sole purpose of excluding people who were not rich, famous, or connected: not academics, so Natalie’s lie to herself merely parrots Harvard’s lie to the world.

But I want to go back just a second. Yes, Natalie Portman said she studied Hebrew at Harvard, even if not intensely enough to double-major in it. That is because her name is not actually Natalie Portman. Her name is Neta-Li Herschlag, and she is Jewish. So, studying Hebrew isn’t impressive knowing she speaks fluent Hebrew at home. That is not to undermine literature, as English-speakers still study English literature, but it’s hardly extraordinary. Hershlag, as I will now be exclusively referring to her, is using her association to Harvard, Judaism, and other, lesser, things to seem smart, yet all of those were gifted to her by either birth or Star Wars.

Now comes the question of cultural appropriation. Neta-Li started her acting footprint as an understudy for the part of Elle Woods in Broadway plays. Yes, that Elle Woods, aside Britney Spears no less. It hardly seems like the right role for a good Jewish girl. But lo, there are some who might point out that Hershlag is an Ashkenazi, and therefore not actually Jewish, that is, not a Semitic person. This is a touchy subject for the Jewish community, particularly since the establishment of Israel: Who actually is Jewish, by means of ethnicity or heritage, and not just language and religion? Is there a meaningful distinction between the Semitic Jewish culture that remained in the Levant, the Sephardic Jewish culture that emigrated to Africa and Iberia, the Mizrahi Jewish culture in Iran and Arabia, the Yiddish Jewish culture that stuck around in Germany, and the Ashkenazi Jewish culture that settled Eastern Europe? Really, who knows, and that is a deeper question; a question, perhaps, for a student of Hebrew literature, wherever we should find one.

Nonetheless, Hershlag is most certainly not British. That Israeli-American nuance is fine for the world of “Naboo” in Star Wars, which ideally would defy every concept of the term “ethnicity,” but works less congruously for Elle Woods. In Star Wars, Hershlag was a doppelganger of Keira Knightly, a dyad which has persisted the entirety of Netali’s 30-year-long career. Here too, we find questions.

Netali gave an interview, which I discuss almost on a daily basis among my social circle, where she firmly wanted to establish herself as a kind of British legacy. She said, of herself, “I iron out my Jew curls” and bleaches/dyes her hair, for no particular reason other than she wants to, and thinks it will make her fit in. Netali also went on to say that no one has naturally yellow hair — which is true, they don’t — implying that a non-Jewish, European actress would not face the same questions about her hair she did. Because the concept of hair straightening and hair bleaching are Nazi holdovers in British and American culture, and as someone who personally hates Nazis, this endlessly infuriates me. All the more so because Hershlag identifies as Jewish!

If Hershlag thinks modifying her hair to make it look ‘more European,’ or, more correctly (since almost all young Europeans have brown hair), to make it look more Hitlerite, more ‘Arianised,’ is acceptable, then she must either view herself as European first and Jewish second, or just care very little about the legacy of antisemitic racism. Why else would a person who calls herself Jewish want to alter her appearance so drastically, in order to look like a posterchild for one of the Hitler Youth?

Many Jewish-Americans feel pressures of Nazi antisemitism and colonial racism in the United States, and many Ashkenazim respond to that by changing their names, Nazifying their looks, and abandoning the Jewish religion. Netali retains a veneer of her Jewishness on the inside, within her own self-perception, while turning into the Arianised version of the Elle Woods archetype on the outside, for the world to see. Is she just playing a part? Is there a real difference in the personality and values of Netali Hershlag vs. Natalie Portman?

People don’t treat her as such. Keira Knightly, for instance, is an Englishwoman. Knightly claims she is ‘British,’ not English, but she is definitely English. Intriguingly, Knightly never went to school, reportedly a dyslexic, while Hershlag, in the Jewish stereotype, went straight to Harvard College. I wouldn’t say Hershlag seems like a nice person, she seems like an ordinary person. Remember that she is part of the Star Wars pantheon of small-time actors who were lifted by George Lucas to notoriety, like Mark Hamill (despite him being my favourite Star Wars actor, I can never remember his name), Harrison Ford, and of course, Sir Alec Guinness CBE.

Jokes aside, with all the classically-trained, upper-class, heavy-hitters from Britain — Peter Cushing OBE, Sir Christopher Lee CBE, and Sir Alec — not to mention the affable nobodies from Hamill to Ford, most Star Wars people are considered likable, especially by fans of nerdom.

That is not to say anyone was struggling, as every lead character in Star Wars was already documented as rich and famous by the time they were cast, but they were “nobodies” in the sense they were not household names until after the film became one of the first Hollywood summer “blockbusters” in history.

Most of all, it is undeniable that, other than Lucas, no one defined the Star Wars films as much as Carrie Fisher, if not for a want of contrast. Fisher was the only female character in all three of the movies, and both the predecessor and counterpart to Hershlag’s character in the Star Wars prequels. Does Hershlag meet the comparison?

The two are very different, both personally and on-screen. Fisher at the age of 19 had sex with numerous middle-aged members of the cast, often the only female and only teenager in a room of dozens of men, forbidden to wear a bra or choose her own hairstyle but allowed to partake in the rumoured plethora of drugs on the set. Hershlag, part of Star Wars from 16 to 19, was entirely unremarkable, both in life and profession, not a very impressive actor or much of a hoot. Again, the good Jewish girl. Some blame Netali’s poorly role on the weakness of the prequels compared to the originals, just as some blame Carrie’s bipolar diagnosis for her eccentricity. Both of these are half-truths, as personality and talent can never be substituted for anything other than what they are. Nonetheless, Fisher and Hershlag were both made rich and famous. While Hershlag is the lesser in terms of her performance, she probably got in the end a much better long-term deal.

A boring role meant Netali would not be immediately typecast, though she went on to play exclusively the girl-next-door leading female interest for a male protagonist, much the same as in Star Wars: Episode II. Coming into acting younger meant she could largely leave acting after childhood, then return to it later as an adult experience. Moreover, we never got to see teenage Netali chained to a bed in a gold bikini.

Our good, Jewish girl.

So, if Hershlag is playing roles given mostly to British, or Hitlerite, actresses, is she not taking away from the British actor? There are too many actors in the world. They are overexposed and over paid, seen too much and given too much, as they are in the same camp as clowns, entertainers, and comedians. But, people like to be entertained, and in the world of capitalism where only money is worship in lapse of dignity, anything people like sells, and anything that sells can make people rich, and riches are a substitute for class, if only a thin one. Just as the weak-minded can be fooled by the Force, so are they easily bought and sold. The British or American actor suffers for nothing, and there are too many of them as it is.

But, does Hershlag have a place in displacing them, or moulding in to become one of them? And would it be cultural appropriation? Undeniably, Netali is conforming to something objectionable when she plays simple roles as sex objects and Hitlerite women, embracing if not embodying the racism and problematic nature of Hollywood casting. But then again, it is with her very body that she represents this trend. One could defend Hershlag, saying she is made to do these things, that she is not so much appropriating Western culture for her ends, but more so that Western culture is stifling her true self, at least if she wants to continue to have a role in acting.

An interesting counter-point, but undermined by Hershlag’s particular brand of coy self-promotion, and eagerness in taking on such roles. And are the Jewish people entirely exploited by Hollywood? In many respects, so-called Europeans are exploited by powerful Jewish moguls in media more often than the other way around, even if they are Jewish Europeans themselves. Harvey Weinstein, a Jewish millionaire who sexually assaulted non-Jewish Western women in order to get them roles, his Jewishness hardly made a ripple.

The biggest names in Hollywood: Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Rudd, Marta Kauffman, J.J. Abrams, Scarlett Johansson, Harrison Ford, John Stewart, Louis Szekely, Mila Kunis, Daniel Radcliffe, Rachel Weisz, Gal Gadot, Roseanne Barr, Judd Apatow, Marcus Loew, Lauren Bacall, Adam Sandler, Amy Schumer, Larry David, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cassidy Freeman, Stanley Kubrick, Jennifer Connelly, Richard Dreyfuss, Samuel Goldwyn, Julia Garner, Elijah Allan-Blitz, Kirk Douglas, Ellen Barkin, Ingrid Pitt, Darren Aronofsky, Eva Green, David Geffen, Lesley Ann Warren, Paul Newman, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ben Stiller, Louis B. Mayer, Alison Brie, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chuck Lorre.

As Conan O’Brien jokingly stated: “The Cash-ews run Hollywood.” Almost every major production in Hollywood has a massive Jewish section of development. The United States, for whatever reason, is a majority “Christian-identifying” country, but Judaism plays a much more massive role in the culture than Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism combined. Even most of the agnosticism in ‘progressive’ Hollywood values comes largely from material secularism, or Jewish incredulity of Christianity, not an ideological pull towards atheism. Is this cultural reproachment why Jewish people are pulled towards media and entertainment, theatre being a known haven for outcasts and oddballs? The Judeo-Protestant alliance of the Hollywood ilk would seem to disqualify the established Jewish community — rich, interconnected, secular Jewish communities of New York, Los Angeles, and DC — from being an oppressed mass.

An important editor’s note is that the actors listed are: Jewish people who adopt non-Jewish appearances or non-Jewish values to a borderline-racist degree (i.e. Eva Green: Jewish actress who plays roles bookmarked for non-Jewish Europeans), thoroughly Jewish people who refuse to identify as Jewish (i.e. Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Jewish billionaire heiress who plays Jewish characters on TV), or regular observers of Judaism who are really, really famous (i.e. J.J. Abrams: co-director of the controversial Star Wars reboot).

More often behind the scenes than on-screen, but usually leading the show when taking a starring role, the Jewish imprint is inseparable from American movies, media production, television, the comedy scene, finance, and screenwriting. Is Jewish not the ruling order of Hollywood? And then would Europeans be the group on the margins? But why, if Jewish people write, pay for, and put on the shows, are there so few Jewish actors, and of those who are, why do they not look Jewish, or a better question would be, why do they try to avoid looking Jewish, and actively attempt to look Western European? That gives the impression that Jewish people are still marginalised in media, even if they are overrepresented in media, and generally more affluent, interconnected, and educated than those non-Jewish counterparts. Why do Jewish people go out of their way to appeal to racist audiences, and in the process erase their own Jewishness.

Maybe it is because the Hollywood Jewry isn’t actually Jewish. Nothing about their jobs or their behaviours embodies the Jewish religion. Most people in Hollywood in general consider themselves as nonreligious, yet that too, might be an influence of a markedly Jewish trait. Non-Christians in the United States are much more likely to turn to atheism and agnosticism on the one hand or fanatical extremism, likely due to being outcast by the mainstream Protestant dialogue, with liberal Jewish people often going agnostic and conservative Catholics often going supercharged while Muslims live on somewhere off in the shadows of public perception.

Yet nonreligious Jewish people still identify as Jewish, separating the religion of Judaism from the ethnic mark. Faith has nothing to do with appearance, and appearance is the base of antisemitism. Enter non-Jewish-looking Jewish people, usually women with heat-flattened hair, like Netali Hershlag and Gal Greenstein Godot. That is not to say they don’t look Jewish, as in an equal measure they all do and at the same time no one does, since what a Jewish person “looks like” is a narrow heuristic based on problematic cultural expectation. That is not to say they are or aren’t Jewish. But are Jewish people like Natalie Portman being forced to conform to racist society, or are they jumping on the bandwagon of racist society and using it to their advantage? Is there actually a difference between the two?

There is a deeper question lying beneath the surface here: The questions of “Jewish complicity in racism?,” “Jewish participation in neo-Nazism?,” and “If ‘Jew’ is a ‘race’ and ‘White’ is a ‘race’ then why are there ‘White’ and ‘non-White’ Jews?,” which other people have asked before. This article is not to address those questions, but they are acknowledged.

Certainly, there are some Jewish people who attach themselves to racist tendencies and Hitlerite habits out of personal advantage in the racist countries in which they might live. In this narrative, the notional collaborator Jewish community would blame the Europeans for racism and cast themselves as convenient survivors. That is not a uniquely Jewish trait, it is a flawed human trait, bystanderism, which defies religious teachings. Why there is such a prevalence among rich, secular Jewish people, of racism mixed with liberalism, is a concern. It could be as simple that, at a certain point, the trait “rich” might start to cancel out the trait “religious.” Old guard antisemites would be unforgiving regarding hatred towards ‘ethnic Judaism,’ and contemporary racist sentiments would reject Jewish people from the points of heritage and beliefs, but it is not immediately clear if Western neo-Nazis would target non-religious Jewish people who, quote, “pass” as Euro-Christians.

If Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahim join Western cultures, ideals, and appearances while abandoning the Jewish religion, are they functionally Jewish at all? In the absence of different brands of generational antisemitism, what is holding back an atheist Ashkenazi from becoming a Nazi themself? The Jewish community and Israel critics have been ablaze with debate about the Eurocentric, Ashkenazim-focused account of Judaism in the West, drawing attention to the issue of inter-Jewish racism and inequality among the diaspora of the Jewish faithful. This question is debated separately for Jewish communities because unity is their faith. Followers of Christianity have always cut one another down over heresies and infidelities, but discourse and diversity have defined the post-Rabbinic tradition. The notion of one Jewish diaspora being more powerful than another, based not even on secularism such as in Christianity, but based solely on racism and adjacency to Christian empires, causes non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities to question that proximity in values and appearance Western Ashkenazi populations have with the goyish counterparts. Even the terms Ashkenazi and Mizrahi have taken fundamentally racist connotations, particularly in the advent of Zionism, to separate the ‘European Jewish’ from the ‘Arabian Jewish,’ in a kind of wartime apartheid of academia; a conflict emblematic of larger paradoxes in modern Israel.

This is not the focus of this article. Obviously, Jewish people living in Western Europe and urban America are more “Western” than people who live somewhere else. And obviously, Western nations have a serious and prolonged issue with racism. However, welding those two facts together, then conflating them with Judaism in some sense, would be a mistake.

There are some racist people in Hollywood who identify as, or are identified as, Jewish. That is not the question. The question is: How does the concept of cultural appropriation contribute to that complex dynamic, of conformity and exploitation in Hollywood, even amongst the big names?

This all comes back to the perceptual balance of power. Just as the term cultural appropriation is defined as a group being in a oppressive position and exploiting something that that group itself has made derogatory.

Is Netali Hershlag appropriating Western culture? In a way, yes. As a rich, powerful Jewish actress, she could hardly be said to be put at a disadvantage to Keira Knightly (Harvard versus dropout, remember), or the millions of aspiring brown-haired actresses who are shunned from Hollywood castings. And yet, she decides to look more like them. Obviously, as an ordinary woman herself, she has been victim to the usual sexism and obsessive demands of producers and directors concerning appearances, but that is hardly so say she is a victim. At any moment, she could deign to take a different part or produce her own movies (I would balk to call them films), rather than be typecast as the sexy and innocent girl-next-door. She lives the life of the good Jewish, girl, but never takes on those types of roles, opting instead for Princess Amidala, ballerina Nina Sayers, valley girl Elle Woods, comic book Jane Foster, or Englishwoman Anne Boleyn. Hershlag could at any moment leave acting to climb the ladder a Harvard A.B. clears the way for. How could Harvard Law School, or subsequently the California Democratic caucus, say no? Who wouldn’t pay for a doctor’s visit with the woman from V For Vendetta?

This is not to say that Jewish people are appropriating or imposing themselves upon Westerners, but it is to say that there is a distinct group of Jewish people who draw from Western or Hitlerite practices while entirely avoiding ‘Juden-haus’ or ‘Euro-trash’ rhetoric that hampers people on both sides of the racist conflict. Portman is Netali’s grandmother’s name, so she does have some kind of loose claim to it, if her cousins are still go by that name and she is close with them, while Natalie is a form of the name Neta-Li, and plenty if not most actors use stage names. Many people do racist or questionable things because they are in fashion. But altogether, one must ask the question why the self ascribed curly-haired Netali Hershlag is appearing is French wig and makeup commercials. Is it raw, unidealistic money? Is it Maybelline? Or it is fake hair, fake lashes, and a fake identity?

Natalie Portman is hardly an inspiring figure for women, playing roles subservient to men, often murdered by her lovers or terribly afflicted herself. This is true in Star Wars, Black Swan, Thor, V For Vendetta, and when she played the wife of wife-killer Henry VIII. Where is the liberty in being bedded by an uxoricidal maniac, be it a tired British period piece, or the obsessive Anakin Skywalker? Body modification of any type is not the product or respect or exchange, and can only be looked down upon as unnecessary and insecure. Acting is lying, but that does not mean the actress must change their looks or change their self to read some lines to a camera.

#Natalie Portman #Hollywood #Judaism #Cultural Appropriation #Star Wars

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