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tortilla-of-courage · 3 years

Note

Describing it as being like home is actually pretty accurate yeah.

And YES! I am totally willing to talk about my modern AU.

I've been calling it the Adoption AU because Time ends up adopting all of the boys. It mostly started as, I saw an edit for a tweet someone did with Wars and Wild that involved Taco Bell (cannot remember the blog or post for the life of me though), and so I wrote a thing about Warriors sneaking out of his university dorm to pick up Wild, who snuck out the window despite his broken arm, and then got extorted by Legend in exchange for silence at 3am.

This was followed by a fic where Groose decided spray painting a public building was a good idea and got himself and Sky arrested, set earlier in the timeline.

So then I made a timeline. Twilight is Time and Malon's biological son, and he found Wild on the side of the road one day (Wild's backstory involves a bad car wreck and an underground hospital, but no conspiracy bullshit. Yet). Wild has no memory, so they keep him. Wild brings home Legend, who was told his uncle died at school before a holiday. They then also keep Legend. Malon finds Four in her barn one morning for complicated reasons, and they keep him too. Twilight finds Warriors, who is in his class, hiding in an alley one day after he ran away from an abusive home and brings him home too. SS Impa (who I've nicknamed Shield because there are enough prominent Impas here that they should get nicknames too) is a social worker who's trying to find Sky a home and has run out of options, and turns to Time, who has a record of successfully housing 'unhousable' youths, and asks if he can take one more. He can. Wild finds Hyrule and brings him home because 'Rule needs a shower even more than Wild does. Hyrule stays. Wind's grandma ends up with Wind and his sister but can't financially take care of both and so Wind ends up with the boys and everyone is +1 Grandma.

Twilight has a fic detailing how he knows Midna and Dusk and I ended up shooting him (oops) but at least their social project gets handed in on time.

Then I started hashing out Time's backstory and suddenly this AU had plot. And organized crime. And a conspiracy. And secret societies.

The summarized version is that the gems from OoT are like, Idk what they do yet. Haven't gotten to a point where I need to figure that out yet. But they are Important and have to be carefully guarded. The Great Deku Tree (just called Deku because he's not a tree here) was Time's foster father before Ganondorf killed him. Also, Ganondorf is Deku's half brother. Because. However Time 'stole' the Emerald and he and Navi ran until OoT Impa (Sage) and Lullaby found them. So Time got adopted into Lullaby's family. Ruto inherited the Sapphire from her mother who also died from mysterious circumstances, and Darunia has the Ruby. Lullaby got the Ocarina from her late paternal grandmother.

Then Ganon finds them and tries to steal the Emerald from Time, so Lullaby goes looking for help and thus finds the sages. Saria is an anonymous hacker who uses the screen name 'Kokiri'. Time reveals he didn't steal the Emerald, he was Deku's heir, and then Navi goes missing. Time is home worried enough that he's physically sick, and Ganon decides to try and attack the home. Only Lullaby's family is Olde Money, and they live in a big, old manor, so Lullaby as Sheik decides to play 'Home Alone' with the secret passages in the walls and they piss off Ganon because when did that brat get a sheikah bodyguard??? Sage and Rottla (Lullaby's mother, who is fully sheikah as well) rush home from a thing and Kokiri is running a play by play watching the security cameras.

I pull in my headcanon that Time was killed in the Downfall Timeline by getting impaled on Ganon's tusk and Ganondorf stabs him with the tusk of a mounted boar head and then Sheik shows up to protect his brother, and then Mama gets home and is not happy to find this man in her home attacking her kids. Time is fine, but Navi stays missing. (She's alive tho.)

Also, Time's foster dad was the last leader of a secret society known as The Order of The Lost Woods, and Time learns this upon meeting Tatl, who gets him sucked into another event that would probably make a good action movie. I have thought too much about the Order and it's hierarchy, but what's important here is that Time ends up with a standing job offer and Tatl and he remain friends and we find out how I fit FD into this AU. It's not pretty. This is where Time loses his eye too.

The AoC came out and I added that Link in as Wild's twin brother and he shows up during the main plot.

Which starts with Twi getting kidnapped. (I'm not really meaner to him than the others, I swear, he's just the most logical choice to be Time's heir. Which he is. He doesn't know this though.)

So he's kidnapped by Ganondorf, who broke out of jail, Zant, who shot Twi in highschool, and Ghirahim, who has some history with Sky I haven't fleshed out yet and a very public rivalry with Warriors over twitter. About six weeks later Sage finds him in an abandoned warehouse (because of course) with a shackle on his left arm and a lot of new injuries. He ends up fine, but he tells Time later in the hospital what happened and he's both message and messenger and Time is this close to just committing murder. Tatl talks him down.

Somewhere here is the half finished fic where I introduce AoC Link as Luke/Knight, and this is as far as I've plotted thus far.

Other tidbits: Wild and Lullaby/Sheik are both genderfluid, Lullaby/Sheik married Ruto, Wild has a very popular YouTube channel, Twi does drag racing sometimes, Sky has a pet bird, Four has DID to explain how the Colours are here too, and Wolfie exists in the form of a random wolf-dog Wild found and brought home that Legend somehow convinced half the family was Twilight. Also, Warriors has somehow befriended an entire sorority and he doesn't know how this happened.

This... got long. As you can see I have a lot of thoughts about the Adoption AU. It's gotten a bit away from me, I'll admit. This went from 'Wild does stunts on his motorbike and keeps breaking bones but somehow not the bike' to 'Twilight got kidnapped and Time is the target of a mafia that Ganon runs and also maybe killed a man once' and I don't know how that happened. Also, this is the condensed version of the summary. My actual summary/outline is much, much longer than this. So if there's any detail you want more on, feel free to say so and I'll happily go into more detail (there are so many things I didn't even mention....)

And yes, Robbie having a bong is very important to my best friend, for some reason. He has one in a modern AU and he probably invented one in canon. I happen to agree that this makes sense for his character, if anyone would invent a bong in LoZ it's Robbie (this is such an anticlimactic end to this ask after the stuff about the modern AU...)

Also, sorry for the long ass ask. I genuinely don't know how to condense the Adoption Au down any further. There's a lot of important plot beats to cover, and I still skipped things.

-Attllhak

oh my GOD???? if you ever write and post this somewhere id love to read it, the level of "crazy" conspiracy/action movie elements implemented sound sosososo cool, from Ganondorf being Deku's half brother to trying to "send a message" via Twi and- just- all of this is SO good.i sat here and reread this ask like 3 times as if that would magically spawn more info about it ahaha

there's so much to unpack here but it's honestly so worth it i love every single detail!!! i can imagine the actual outline being way longer, nad honestly that just makes me the more excited/curious about all that might be missing from this ask - i cant believe it started with Wild and Wars going to Taco Bell of all things

also i can totally see Robbie making a bong, no matter the setting or AU. fits him a lot I'd say

and dont worry about long asks!! i adore opening up my askbox to see one ask take over the entire thing, it makes me really happy aha

#attllhak #im once again rendered speechless (in a good way) by your creative mind attllhak #tortilla asks #long post #linked universe #ask to tag #injury mention

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geges · 3 years

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I hope this isn't too rude or assuming, but I also wanted to know, if u had any favorite moments in any media u've liked that you're okay with sharing? (just asking since this also appears to be a fandom(??) / anime(??) blog and if u're ok with answering something really offtopic)

ANON I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU…. I WOULD LOVE TO INFODUMP ABT MY INTERESTS. PLS. sadly yes i’m mostly a fandom/interests blog, mostly cnovels and manhua, so this ask is pretty on-topic for my blog. obligatory disclaimer a lot of these things have Problems and Issues so this isn’t me saying i am an uncritical fan of the media this is just a list of scenes that make me incredibly hhghgnnneennn. some of them made me cry in the chicken feed aisle in a Tractor’s Supply once and im still upset abt that one. a lot of these have spoilers for various cnovels so i put it under a cut :)

additional warning that um. there's a lot of mentioned death/suicide. most of these are characters dying honestly

so, Media Of All Time favourite scenes:

(tgcf) legitimately every scene with qi rong im not joking i go crazy over him. notable mention of that scene in the Final Battle with gu zi……….. i’m insane

(liu yao) um. i don’t remember the main character’s name. but yeah him dying <3 jiayou! that one drives me insane i read it like once a week

(nan chan) mr human magikarp fucking dying and jin ling just….. losing it

(nan chan) jin ling’s subsequent imprisonment and isolation :)

(nan chan) JIN LING MURDER SPREE!!!!!!!

(huang jin tai) yan xiaohan getting drugged and immediately going to stab himself so that he doesn’t “betray” fu shen

(qian qiu) yan wushi hiding shen qiao in that buddha statue and running off to die

(teio) THE FUCKING EARTHWORM CRYING. GOD

(teio) everything with bai ruoyao. i love him im so homophobic

(mo du) fei du suffering for five entire books straight

(mo du) that scene near the end where he has to grasp the trigger handhold and his Immense Certified Trauma kicks in

(mo du) luo wenzhou NOT pokemon evolving into a big red flag the second he got one glimpse past fei du’s walls. Like that man saw Fei Du: Genuinely Unwell Extraordinaire, and not only did he not jab fd with a horse tranq, he just went and made the man dinner. what the fuck

(twwtadsl) the betrayal scene <3

(tsomd) sui zhou almost dying for tang fan like 2302984 times but notable mention of the First Time when he tried to die for tang fan in the fight against the tomb guardian

(missing sect leader) wei jiangyue going “I JUST CANT STAND IT WHEN HE’S NOT ALRIGHT……………..”

(missing sect leader) wei jiangyue making a bet with ye you that hinges the fate of the world or whatever and his terms for if he wins. instead of using the chance to ask for something large. he asks yy to just tell him something. anything at all. just tell him something

(missing sect leader) wei jiangyue telling ye you he will die for him to repent for his father’s mistake but hiding the fact that his willingness to die for yy comes from his love for him, not his guilt

(missing sect leader) that scene where yy reveals his identity and wjy realises that no matter what he has to leave yy alone and cannot even approach him again. and just sinking in shame and regret to spend his entire lifetime in pain from the fact that his presence causes yy pain

(missing sect leader) in front of the entire jianghu. wei jiangyue giving himself up to the threat of being brutally killed be ye you if it meant yy was given some sort of closure. jesus christ i don’t even like this book this much and yy/wjy isn’t even canon why do they have so much on this list

(tong qian kan shi) the insect cave scene <3

(tqks) xuanmin closing his eyes as he is put through incredible pain and torture, being literally killed, in order for xue xian to enact his revenge against the great priest

(tqks) the great priest forcing xx to recognize that his revenge will also kill xuanmin as collateral, xx not recognising xuanmin, and xuanmin just. closing his eyes and accepting his death

(tqks) xuanmin using his last dying action to dig out his own bones and bury them under the mountains to free xue xian.

(tqks) xuanmin making his way over to the unconscious xue xian, kneeling in front of him (really falling lmao), and dying while never looking away from his face :)

(tqks) xx regaining his memories, remembering xuanmin, and looking up to see xuanmin laying dead in his arms. then feeling fear for the first time in his life. man. man. ok

(qqgk) “MY DEAR, IF I LEFT MYSELF BY YOUR EAR, WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO HEAR ME? MAY WE MEET AGAIN IN A WORLD WHERE THE SMOKE IS GONE” THIS QUOTE MAKES ME INSANE. IM INSANE. JESUS CHRIST

(qqgk) the recurring imagery of snow. the snow. its about. it’s about. The devotion. oh god

(hsav) xiao yuan trying to die like. 6 times for yan heqing. also xya being tortured to save yhq. and then him trying to kill himself earlier . and then him killing himself for real later to make life easier for yhq

(tgcf) just. everything honestly. the “i am god” scene. the getting demolished by a ridiculous amount of swords scene.

(wushuang) cui buqu in the maze trying to die for feng xiao

(wushuang) feng xiao in the maze trying to die for cui buqu

(zhongji lanyin) su qing almost dying under the cave-in

(zhongji lanyin) hu bugui protecting su qing from the thorns

(谁动了我的骨灰坛) jiang xichu seeing chen man kill herself and not being able to do anything about it. literally the only scene i care abt from that book i ate that shit up

okay typing this out made me realise there is a very noticeable theme here. well. i really like tragedy so honestly i don't know know what i expected from this. if i re-read all my favourite books i would probably be able to give you a list of scenes i loved that have legitimate literary importance, value, and beauty, but sadly i have the memory of a goldfish and cannot remember most plots unless im Actively Looking At Them. so instead here is a list of scenes that are all candidates for making me cry during my next visit to a Tractor's Supply. thank you sm for the ask im in love with you

#ask #anon

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the-insomniac-emporium · 3 years

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thoughts on Bela///Donna?

What a lovely can of worms you've placed in my inbox, dear nonnie. I cannot wait to open it and lose followers (regardless of what I actually say).

Since this is, uh, a subject of some debate among RE8 fans, I will be inputting my thoughts on the idea of the ship (and the possible controversy), as opposed to doing HCs or something for it (which I recognize might be what you were asking for, despite the excessive /s).

This is all based on my playthroughs of the game, as well as what I've managed to double check on the fandom/wiki for it. I know that a lot of people who read fanfic for the game haven't actually played it, likely having been lured in by Tall Vampire Milf, and so I hope that some people will be open to a reminder of, like, canon vs fanon? I've mentioned in a previous post that there's a lot of details for RE8 that are not made clear, and I feel the need to reiterate that in this post. Capcom left a lot of stuff up to people's imaginations, or kind of just hinted at in game or in concept art.

But more importantly, regardless of what game we're talking about, regardless of the conclusion I come to (and the one you come to) at the end of this post, I want to say that I absolutely understand the need/desire to have your own perspective/take on the characters from the game, as well as their dynamics. If a ship makes you uncomfortable because you see the characters as being family members, it's totally okay. Block the ship tag, or filter it out when you look through fandom stuff, don't follow people who post for it, etc, etc.

If you think of characters as being family-family (like, not just "we got married and are now a family" but, like, "we're siblings/parent and child") and still ship them? uh. sorry, bruv, maybe think of hitting that unfollow button. No, seriously, hit that unfollow button. This blog is anti-incest, thank you very much.

The last thing I'll say before putting it under a read-more (for both length and major RE8 spoilers) is that I recognize that I might have missed something, either in game or developers talking about things on social media, and so if you read through this and go "god, J, you're such a dumbass for forgetting *critical piece of media*" or even just "okay but have you seen *small but meaningful piece of media*?" please. Just. Please. Tell me. Link me to that shit. I WANT to know if I'm wrong. I've literally avoided talking about this for as long as I could in order to TRY and make sure I have all the context I need.

With that said, let's examine what context we are given for Alcina Dimitrescu, Bela Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, and their relations to each other. I will be leaving my personal thoughts on Bela///Donna at the very end of this, as somewhat of a conclusion, somewhat of just a "hey, this is what you technically asked me about".

Firstly, let me begin by explaining what I consider to be the 3 tiers of "canon"

In-Game/Direct: The highest, truest tier, the definitive canon. This is everything that takes place in game, excluding certain hallucination scenes (ex: Mia was not really in House Beneviento, but we can infer some things from what Donna made Ethan hallucinate about). Things either happen, or are directly stated by characters. There's some wiggle room for dialogue, as characters can lie, but overall we, as the audience, assume we are being told the truth. At the very least, games usually eventually make it clear when a character has been dishonest. Examples of Direct Canon include the following: Ethan is infected with the mold, Lady Dimitrescu drinks blood, Heisenberg wears sunglasses, Mother Miranda can shapeshift.

Concept Art/Developer's Notes/Indirect: Mid-tier and debatable, the "we think, but we're not sure" of canon. Resident Evil: Village contains lots of concept art that the players can browse through, all of which include notes from the developers about the game, characters, environments, and story. Sometimes the notes make something "direct", but oftentimes they do not specify whether the listed idea is still canon or if it was removed during development. This tier also includes information that is implied/can be inferred from tier 1 information, but is not directly stated. Examples of Indirect Canon include the following: Donna's mother died by suicide, Moreau was going to have his lover fused to his back, Duke was originally a fifth lord, Heisenberg was going to have a twin. As you can see, not all of the concept art ideas made it into the final version of the game, so it can be hard when some information seems like it might still be true (such as the matter of Donna's parents).

Fanon/"False": Sometimes collective ideas in a fandom become so widespread that people start interpreting them as actual canon. Sometimes it gets hard to remember what's just obscure lore and what's fanon. When we get a piece of fiction as overall vague as a lot of Resident Evil: Village is, there's bound to be some confusion over time. That's one of the main reasons I waited to talk about Bela////Donna until after I had recently replayed relevant sections of the game, as I wanted to remind myself of what we're actually told. Examples of False Canon are difficult to pinpoint, but might include things like: Hufflepuffs are good at finding things? The Avengers got along for awhile and all had their own rooms in the tower? There's a number scale for the danger level of ghosts in Danny Phantom?

For this post, I will be limiting the majority of my notes to the first two levels of canon, and will do my best to mark them as such. Now... let us... begin.

Alcina Dimitrescu:

Born no later than 1914, Alcina Dimitrescu was 44 years old when she was granted the Cadou by Mother Miranda. (1st Tier: Canon. Source: A note in the castle basement from a servant is dated 1958, and mentions both Alcina and her children. Secondly, Miranda's experiment notes state that Alcina was the 181st subject, and was given the Cadou at age 44. By doing math, we can then determine the earliest Alcina could have been born.)

Alcina refers to the other Lords as her family once without any disdain (when Ethan first arrives at the castle and is caught, Alcina says "you've escaped my little brother"). In a private journal (located near where she threw the infamous vanity) she insults the other Lords, and expresses anger that she is "treated like a sister to them". She argues with Heisenberg without any hesitation, and seems honest in her hatred of him (per Maggie Robertson's wunderbar performance). (1st Tier/2nd Tier: Canon with a sprinkle of interpretation for the last line)

Alcina openly refers to Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela as her daughters, and wrote in her experiment journal that she felt instantly connected to them (as mother and daughters). (1st Tier: Canon).

Bela Dimitrescu:

Likely born in the 1930's or 1940's, in order to be an adult by 1958 (the first dated appearance of the Dimitrescu daughters). (2nd Tier: Based on inference)

Dialogue shows that all three of the daughters do love their mother, and reinforces the bond Alcina's journal mentions. (1st Tier: Canon)

We are not given any information about how Bela feels about the other Lords, or even what she knows about them. Once can assume that she shares the ideas of her mother, either because Alcina tells her things directly, or because Bela (who is eager to please her mother) picks up on them over time. (2nd Tier: Based on inference)

Donna Beneviento:

No idea when she was born. If you've read one of my recent posts, then you know that it's almost entirely a matter of 2nd and 3rd tier canon.

Of the four lords, Donna seems to have the most story within the 2nd tier, and has very, very little in the 1st tier. Duke says she's somewhat isolated, and that her "playmates" never leave the house. Miranda's notes state that Donna is mentally ill, and the gardener's diary states/implies (bit of both) that Donna has severe social anxiety. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly canon)

Supposedly, her parents committed suicide while she was still a child. This is indicated in concept art/the attached developer's notes. However, the only part that's also directly stated in game is that her parents (specifically her father) died while she was young. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly canon)

While Donna only has one voice line in the game (and it's sad), Angie talks a fair bit. Angie seems to disapprove of the other Lords, or at the very least enjoys mocking them, as well as enjoys watching them fight with each other. As Angie is connected to Donna, and Donna has some level of control over her, one can assume that the two have similar (if not the same) opinions. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly Canon)

Donna was adopted by Mother Miranda as an adult. It's unclear exactly how old Donna was, or what exactly Miranda did as her "mother", just that Donna was excited about it. (1st Tier: Canon)

Other Relevant Information:

Heisenberg refers to the other Lords as his siblings a minimum of 1 time. Similarly to Alcina, however, he openly insults them and seems to hate them. He just, you know, hates Mother Miranda the most. (1st Tier: Canon)

Mother Miranda does not actually give a shit about the four Lords, intended for them to die before the ceremony, and has been manipulating them for her own gain this entire time. Her notes and dialogue make it clear that she only cares about getting Eva back. Somehow mother of the year and worst mother ever. At the same time. (1st/2nd Tier: Mostly Canon)

It's unclear who treats Alcina "like a sister" to the other Lords. Were there cut lines of dialogue that cemented the idea of them being a "family"? Did Miranda call them a "family" as part of pretending she cared about them? I've done my best to dig around, but there's very little in game that treats them as a family of any sort.

As each Lord ruled their own section of the region, they don't have any mentions of interacting with each other outside of meetings with Mother Miranda. None of the notes for any Lord (and their relevant experiments) mention what the others are doing. In game, their environments are very separate, very well divided, though this is likely as much for gameplay as it is for story.

Conclusion:

I do not not believe there is enough in game evidence to suggest that Alcina and Donna consider themselves to be siblings. There's the possibility for a large age gap, Alcina was a fair bit older than Donna when she met Miranda, Donna is a social recluse whose closest bonds were with dead blood relatives and dolls, Alcina openly dislikes (if not hates) the other Lords, they seemingly lived very separate and distanced lives, and Mother Miranda does not enforce the idea of "family". Furthermore, the sheer contrast between how Alcina interacts with/speaks of the other Lords compared to how she interacts with/speaks of her daughters says a lot about her feelings. Even if Heisenberg takes the brunt of her anger, Alcina never once says anything remotely positive about anyone other than Miranda and her daughters.

As Alcina/Bela and Donna are not blood-relatives, the definition of what would count as "incest" does vary depending on who you ask. Personally, I do count non-blood relations as potentially incestuous. For example: Alcina "dating" one of her daughters would be incest, regardless of the fact that she's a mutated human and her daughters are weird swarms of flies.

Now, I do understand how popular the idea of the four Lords being a real, chaotic but still close family is. And as I mentioned above, it's totally valid to not like the Bela///Donna ship, whether it's because you think they're family or some other reason. I don't personally see them that way, even in my definitely-not-canon stories.

Do I personally ship Bela///Donna? Nope. Have I liked art for the ship? Admittedly yes, even if I thought some of it was, like, maiden x Bela because Donna didn't have her veil and I'm a DUMBASS who doesn't always remember to read tags. Would I ever write for it? Yeah, probably, assuming I didn't miss anything in game/that I don't eventually change my mind.

#*incredibly deep sigh*#*incoherent screaming*#it's 6 in the morning #i spent too long doing research #again feel free to send me links if you think I missed something #what do I even tag this as?#asks #anonymous #meta shit #i'm procrastinating on posting this because of anxiety #I'm worried 2 specific followers are going to unfollow me #and possibly one mutual #somebody just kill me already

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deans-haunted-baby · 3 years

Text

The Ones Left Behind

Alrighty time for some truth bombs. I’ve had almost a week to absorb the end of Supernatural and season 15 as a whole. And I think this is the moment where I need to throw in my two cents. For all intents and purposes I won’t go in-depth into 15x20 seeing as that conversation will just open up a whole other can of worms and I don’t need that headache. I have my reasons for being less than indifferent with how the Winchesters’ story concluded. So I won’t go there.

Instead I’ll be focusing all my energies on the unsatisfying conclusions of 4 particular characters. Two of which were main cast members (one that was on the show 12 years and one 4 years) while the other two (played by the same dude) were brought back after a decade long hiatus for a much-anticipated comeback only to be wasted and mangled unfairly by Dabb and his hack horde of a writing staff. Call this a follow up to my last post. If I sound bitter I am because these people don’t have a single clue on how to helm these characters, their relationships or their storylines 😠 Nor do they deserve them.

And yes I’m well aware of Kevin Tran, Rowena, Ketch and several others who got the shaft on this show. Those could be future posts for another time.

But I cannot stress this enough; ADAM MILLIGAN, JACK KLINE, MICHAEL AND CASTIEL ALL DESERVED FUCKING BETTER. There is no arguing these facts, none whatsoever. Not one of these characters deserved that exit to be the final chapter in their story. I won’t do an entire analysis of each character’s arc and role in the show as I’ve already done that in my rant about 15x19. But I will highlight how much season 15 royally screwed over these characters and tossed them aside like trash; as if none of them were ever part of/contributed anything to Sam and Dean’s history/world building of Supernatural’s universe.

*WARNING* This is going to get heated.

Before I dive into the heart of these issues I want to state this is not a “shipping post”. I don’t ship anyone on Supernatural, hopefully this blog has been pretty self-explanatory. So I have no arguments/opinions in those areas. I’ve been a fan of this series for 15 years because of the characters, the familial bonds and relationships formed between characters throughout its run. And I’m well-aware that the Winchesters are the lead protagonists of the show, no need to remind me. These are purely my own thoughts based what I’ve obtained from show canon. Let me just say I can’t get over just how much these writers contradicted and ignored what they put forth in the journeys of these four individuals. its a real headscratcher.

You mean to tell me that after TWELVE DAMN YEARS of Castiel being a rebellious warrior angel, searching for his own identity and meaning in life; making that promise to Kelly Kline about raising Jack as his own/risking his life for him. After sacrificing himself for his son a year ago, acknowledging he was satisfied with his role as a father which restored his faith; that it was all because of/for Dean Winchester?

You mean to tell me that after Michael, THE PRINCE OF HEAVEN and PROTECTOR OF HUMANITY, was locked away in a cage with a human whom he emotionally bonded with for thousands of years (10 years our time); who was abandoned, betrayed and manipulated by his neglectful/abusive father. After choosing free will and aligning himself with TFW for humanity’s sake, just sided with the Earth’s destruction because his little brother called him names?

You mean to tell me that Jack, A THREE YEAR OLD CHILD, who’s barely just beginning his life and spent his entire duration on the show wanting to be normal and not wanting to be special. Connecting and being integrated with humans; a child who’s biggest fear was outliving everyone he ever loved. Is suddenly ready to walk away from his family, his home and his teddy bear; to give up being a kid forever and run the universe?

You mean to tell me that Adam, SUPERNATURAL’S MOST INNOCENT CHARACTER and FORGOTTEN THIRD-WINCHESTER BROTHER, after being eaten by ghouls; pulled away from his mother out of Heaven, manipulated by angels, trapped in Hell for thousands of years because Sam and Dean left him there to rot. After coming back and helping his neglectful siblings save the world only to be ripped away from his best friend and THE ONLY OTHER PERSON who gave a damn about him; is sentenced to a life of loneliness, homelessness and turmoil until he dies and ends up in Hell where he’ll mostly be tortured and turned into a demon?

NO. I DO NOT AND WILL NEVER ACCEPT THIS BULLSHIT!

Season 15 not only manages to contradict itself where these characters are concerned (while assassinating them before the final curtain). But the writers deliberately discarded them before giving us that *sarcasm inserted* epic solo-Winchester conclusion. Regardless of how you feel about Adam, Castiel, Jack or Michael, ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS are connected Sam and Dean’s story and part of Supernatural. And when you throw them away like they mean nothing, you’re essentially throwing away a part of the show’s history. You’re ignoring 15 years worth of story building.

As I said I’m not going to go into 15x20 for reasons, it doesn’t offend me as much as what was done before that finale. Because I think those other show exits really affect 15x20 even worse than people realize. You want to know why, I’ll explain.

Lets start off with Castiel and Jack, OH BOY! We know where they end up; running Heaven and the Earth together which is all fine and dandy. I love my Dadstiel father/son duo being an endgame family unit. But here in lies the problem, we never saw it. Not even a cameo. And technically their onscreen storyline ends at 15x18 and 15x19 which is an ugly, anti-climatic bookend to an incredibly deep relationship that had 4 years of development. First you have Castiel who completely forgets why he made that deal with the Empty to begin with. HIS FUCKING SON. Not to mention it wasn’t about true happiness it was about giving himself permission to be happy; there is a difference. And then you have Jack wandering around next episode, vacuuming up power cause suddenly he’s a machine now, acting like he doesn’t give a shit over losing his dad to an entity HE’S BEEN DREADING ABOUT FOR A FUCKING YEAR.

Towards the end of season 15 I noticed neither of these characters were acting like themselves. Their motivations, their personalities and strong ties to one another had mysteriously dissolved. Castiel became less concerned about the danger his son was facing after 15x15 (what the hell was that in 15x17?) and more about speaking when spoken to by either Sam or Dean. Does he know how Dean truly feels about Jack; proclaiming the child is “not family”? I doubt the in-character version of him would let Jack leave with Dean after that insult. Castiel’s not even worried whether or not his son is alive or safe before he makes the big confession later. And for some reason Jack (who’d become heavily suicidal) was more concerned with clinging to the Winchesters, willing to die for them, instead focusing on himself and the one person who’s shown him nothing but unconditional love and given him strength since birth. Both of these characters are canonically depressed and suffer from low self-esteem that was never resolved which makes me furious.

When Chuck killed Jack at the end of season 14, this devastated Castiel in the first half of season 15. He actually got to grieve that loss throughout the episodes and deal with his anger over it, allowing the audience to anticipate the day they’d be reunited one last time. This part of Castiel’s S15 arc also ironically mirrors Jack’s S13 arc of mourning Castiel’s death until resurrecting him. And when this son finally returned to his father, who got to rescue him, it was such a poignant moment between the two. It was a cathartic payoff after witnessing Castiel in so much pain over Jack. There was so much building up between that Dadstiel reunion in 15x11 and the Empty’s pact in 14x08; this was suppose to be a tragic yet pivotal plot-point in both Jack and Castiel’s stories. And with SPN wrapping up we all expected something BIG. Yet somehow the writers retconned the whole thing by making it all about Dean, which is such a gross disservice to these characters and 4 years of storytelling.

For instance, since 15x18 was Castiel’s exit episode, why wasn’t he allowed to hug his son or Sam goodbye one last time? Why didn’t he have more of a focal role instead of standing around majority of the episode with barely any dialogue as so much precious air time was wasted on frivolous things? Why didn’t he get one last badass fight scene with someone like Death instead of being choked out and tossed around like a powerless mortal? Why did the group need to be split up to begin with when it served no purpose either than that *ugh* moment? Why wasn’t Jack allowed to call Castiel “dad” once before the show ended? He deserved to hear his son address him as dad!

AND WHY THE HELL COULDN’T JACK FEEL CASTIEL’S DEATH THE MOMENT IT HAPPENED?

The show already established to the audience the significant cosmic bond these two characters shared since before Jack was even born. It was so powerful it boosted Castiel’s grace. Jack could remember who Castiel was from the womb and that he’d protected his mother. Not to mention HE FUCKING RESURRECTED CASTIEL OUT OF THE EMPTY ONCE WITHOUT GOD’S POWER. You’re telling me Jack couldn’t feel his dad being taken away forever despite how far apart they were? No, he’d feel it in his heart. Had we’d been given a scene like that at the end of 15x18 (something of substance) with actual grief shown in 15x19 maybe the episode would’ve faired better for them.

That said it wasn’t, because Jack was treated the exact same way in his final exit. Hardly any lines and just a bunch of scenes of him standing/walking around until that pathetic reveal at the lake. HE DOESN’T EVEN GET TO INTERACT WITH JAKE ABEL’S MICHAEL/ADAM which would’ve been a great follow-up to the AU!Michael storyline in seasons 13 and 14. I swear these directors didn’t give Alex and Misha any motivation during their last three episodes and it’s evident in their hollow performances. But why would they when the scripts are basically telling their characters to quickly fuck off so the brothers can have their final outing. Jack doesn’t even behave like himself after he becomes the new God. His personality is apathetic, cold, alien, stiff and way too mature for the 3 year old child so closely connected to his family/the human world. In that moment I saw Alex Calvert not Jack Kline. It’s bad enough he doesn’t get a meaningful farewell but again Castiel, HIS DAD, is a complete afterthought to this kid 🥶

And that’s what we’re left with. Forever. A frigid, hollow ending to one of Supernatural’s most healthy, touching, family dynamics. It makes you wonder what was even the point. I can’t even fully enjoy the fact that its canon Jack and Castiel are together fixing Heaven because of what the show presented onscreen as their last hurrah. It’s not sitting right and it makes 15x20 even less appealing to me.

Moving onto Michael and Adam. Get ready for this. I could rant forever about how dirty my boys were done by this show. How they were discarded in the SPN series finale recap etc. just as they were FOR THE LAST TEN FUCKING YEARS. Was there even a plan going on here or was this just everyone making things up as it went? Their ending is the most unsatisfying and cruel thing because its INCOMPLETE. There is no real closure or resolution with them thanks to the monstrosity that was 15x19. AND NO ONE CARES ENOUGH ABOUT THEM TO GIVE A SHIT.

Much as I’ve enjoyed this show for many years, it NEVER deserved Jake Abel, his talent or his time. I keep seeing so many anti posts about Dean Winchester’s final fate in Supernatural and all I can think about is “try being an Adam Milligan fan for the last decade”. I’ve had to watch this boy go through hell with nothing to show for it either than years of memes. ridicule and the show’s mockery in forgetting him. Actually he’s the ONLY CHARACTER in this series you’re encouraged not to remember 😡 Also quick question: why give us this really interesting and healthy relationship between an archangel and its vessel if nothing was ever going to become of it?

At this point I don’t know why Adam or the idea of him was even introduced way back in season 4 let alone revisited in season 5. Because the only thing I see when I look at this character now is SAD WASTED POTENTIAL. Storylines never explored. Relationships that never got off the ground. Backstory we never got to see (like for instance his past with John Winchester and his time in the cage). A character’s birthright (Men of Letters) that was never actualized. AND the unexplained factor that Adam could look directly at Michael’s true form without his eyes burning out (making him a special case). And the thing is he could’ve been a really great character, both him and Michael. They could’ve easily reached popular status just like Castiel given the chance since Jake is a freaking acting-powerhouse. We were given a taste in 15x08 just how awesome these characters could be and how they could’ve contributed so much to the story and its core group. But unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.

Michael will never redeem himself after years of scrutiny and being made out to be some kind of unhinged monster. This show constantly enjoyed pounding into our brains how fearsome Michael was. Warned us via Lucifer (LUCIFER, PEOPLE!) that he wasn’t rational, compassionate and didn’t care about anything except war, death and destruction. And that he was incapable of feelings and emotions. This is how Supernatural saw Heaven’s Prince and guardian of the Earth. Christ, they actually did a two-year storyline about an evil Michael from the AU world who enjoyed torturing and killing while trying to destroy the universe. I want to know WHAT THE HELL THIS SHOW’S WRITERS HAD AGINST THESE CHARACTERS? Why they felt the need to bring back Jake Abel, AFTER A DECADE OF FANS WANTING THIS, if it was simply to piss all over his characters one last time before the show wrapped. This is absolutely unprofessional and childish; the fact that Jake is taking this bullshit in stride makes it all the more shameful 😡

We could’ve learned so much more about Michael’s past and his present relationship with Adam. These characters didn’t need to sit in the cage for a decade they could’ve easily been incorporated back into the show as far as season 8 or 10! And been an asset to the Darkness storyline in season 11.There were characters and storylines introduced that served no purpose. Why did we need to keep seeing characters like Charlie Bradbury or (as much as I like him) Crowley or Garth (love him too) or Lucifer or Abaddon or the Wayward sisters? I would’ve much preferred having Adam and Michael around and got to know them instead; especially after 15x08. I would’ve wanted to see what their dynamic with TFW could’ve become had they been long-time allies. Did John ever tell Mary about Adam’s existence? I’d like to see what her reaction would’ve been like had the Winchesters remembered him during that damn 300th episode. I guess that’s another loose end untied.

But because of what Supernatural did to these two characters, it forever taints Sam and Dean. I don’t think Dabb or purist fans realize this. But when new viewers come into this show about two brothers preaching important things like “saving people”, “family first” or “family don’t end in blood” they’re going to see how badly the main protagonists treated their innocent half brother. How Castiel and Jack were treated. They’re going to see the heroes of the story abandoning this kid in Hell forever with no intention of EVER rescuing him. And that’s why their final appearance leaves such a bad taste going into 15x20. Cause as much as Dabb and co didn’t give a shit about Adam and Michael they also didn’t give a rat’s ass about protecting Sam and Dean’s integrity. That’ll be a stain they can’t undo.

So through all of it, we’re stuck with the abomination that is 15x19 aka the eye-soar to an unfinished/unpolished story of two horribly disregarded characters. Michael gets the pleasure of being character assassinated right before he’s stupidly killed off instead of going out a hero or becoming the next God (as it was his birthright and the setup was there in the narrative). And Adam gets killed off-screen, OUT OF HIS OWN DAMN BODY, then brought back by Jack only to live a miserable, isolated existence since his brothers have nothing to do with him (the dog and car are more important); his best friend is dead, he has no job or money or a fucking home and he’s legally dead! Really what is there left for him besides the brutal fate awaiting in Hell when he dies?

SERIOUSLY THEY COULDN’T GIVE US ONE SCENE WHERE THE WINCHESTERS CHECKED IN ON ADAM TO MAKE SURE HE WAS SAFE?! 🤬 His last scene pretty much sums up this shit for what it is. Tragic. I feel like crying for this poor sweet boy.

Congratulations Dabb, BL and co for giving us these much deserved broken story arcs of characters you destroyed and made OOC before leaving the airways. You did your show’s protagonists justice by doing this *sarcasm inserted* after 15 years of being onscreen. I doubt these idiotic decisions are going to age well in the long run. They certainly don’t look good on the Winchesters. Anyway that’s my hot take for the day.

ALL THESE ACTORS AND THEIR CHARACTERS DESERVED BETTER.

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strangertheory · 4 years

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Will Byers! :)

I meant to answer this Ask an eternity ago, and you have been so incredibly patient with me! (Thank you!!!)

I think because Will is my favorite character, I started to fuss over my answer too much, and before I knew it we were here: a few months later, and a long while after I offered to answer these specific questions for character Asks. Today, I want to finally answer your Ask for my favorite character: Will Byers.

Will Byers

Favorite thing about them:

Will loves and appreciates his friends so much, and you can tell that he would do absolutely anything for Joyce or Jonathan too. My favorite thing about Will is his love and devotion to others. I think that since Castle Byers symbolically represents a safe place for Will, it also reveals what Will deeply cares about and chooses to protect within that safe place, and one of those things is his friendships. “Castle Byers: All Friends Welcome.” Castle Byers represents Will’s desire to welcome all friends with open arms and unconditional acceptance. While I think that Will would be kindhearted regardless, I think that because Will knows how painful rejection is from facing the bullies at school and his father’s insults, Will puts forth an extra effort to make sure that everyone in his life feels appreciated and loved. Will shares his secret safe-place in the woods with anyone willing to be his friend. Castle Byers is like a secret shrine dedicated to everything Will is passionate about (comics, D&D, art) and is also dedicated to those he loves and to those who love and accept him in return. He has photographs of his friends, drawings on the walls that he made about their D&D campaigns together, and comics that they’ve probably all shared. In spite of his limited means, Will is very generous with what he offers to others: he gave the little girl that was crying in the sandbox his Tonka Truck (even though Joyce cautioned him that they couldn’t afford to get a new one), he’s given Mike dozens of drawings (if Mike’s decorated walls and his binder full of Will’s artworks are any small evidence of this) and Will has given his mom a good number of drawings too that she cherishes. Will wants everyone to feel loved and to be happy, and is grateful to those that are there for him. Undoubtedly some of this stems from his deep insecurities and his lack of self-worth and his desire to be loved and appreciated back, but I think most of it is still rooted in Will’s genuine desire to make sure that other people are happy because their happiness makes him happy too.

Least favorite thing about them:

I appreciate all of the characters for their strengths as well as their flaws because it’s what makes them so very human and relatable. But Will definitely has some traits that I hope, for his own sake, he’ll learn to manage in a healthier way. Will’s weakness is that he often places the wants and needs of others before his own, and he seeks to avoid conflict at all costs. These are arguably admirable traits that are directly related to Will’s love and affection for other people (which I said was my favorite thing about him!), but they can also be self-destructive and unhealthy habits and I think they are, at least in part, the result of Will growing up in a combative and abusive home environment. I admire Will for his selflessness and for his desire to avoid conflict, but I list his excessive selflessness and his excessive desire to keep the peace as two things that make me worry about him. I hope he will learn to balance these two impulses in a healthier way over the next few seasons. I think that learning to deal with these two bad habits in a healthier way will be part of Will’s personal growth over the next two seasons.

Favorite line(s):

“Yea. Crazy together.”

brOTP:

Jonathan and Will, of course! I was sad that we didn’t get more scenes with them together in season 3, but I appreciate every moment in the series that we’ve gotten so far. Jonathan’s effort to reassure Will that it’s ok to be “a freak,” and that being different is preferable to being just like everybody else, was really heartwarming and is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire series.

OTP:

As you have probably figured out if you have been following my blog for even a few days: I’m convinced that Will and Mike are meant to be together by the end of the series, and I am eager to talk about it some other time in another post.

nOTP:

I cannot bring myself to imagine Will and El ever dating. But I look forward to them hopefully becoming very close, and teaming up platonically!

random headcanon:

Hmmm. So this is actually the part of this post that had me delaying responding to your Ask for so long, because my head-canon for Will is incredibly specific, unconventional, frequently controversial (from what I've noticed when this topic is discussed), and a bit complicated to explain. But I do want to talk about it! And I want to clarify that I actually don’t think of this as a head-canon: I solidly consider it a theory that might account for what is happening to Will, and what also is happening to other characters based on specific evidence within the series so far.

I won’t get into all of the evidence and layers in this post (because there is a lot), but I strongly suspect that Will Byers is being written as a character with dissociative identity disorder and that much of Stranger Things is about alters learning to work together as a System while confronting and resolving trauma that is manifesting itself in internal worlds and dreams various symbolic and fantastical ways (as well as in some very humanly monstrous ways too, unfortunately.) Whether the entire story is taking place within an internal world or whether everything has sprung out of the mind and into the external world is definitely a question I think about a lot, but my current interpretation is that a good amount of the story takes place in a liminal space between our external world / reality and a mental space that the characters are sometimes exploring.

Stranger Things follows characters that are canonically dealing with PTSD, significant levels of memory loss (Will couldn’t remember who Hopper was in season 2 while at the Lab), suddenly shifting from being mentally present in the world to being in a different perceived place (is the Upside Down an internal world?), perceived changes in personality and identity, traumatic visions and experiences (flashbacks? memories?) that often parallel one another in an eerie way, and many other specific details. Add to that Doctor Owens’ preoccupation with Will’s brain scans and Mr. Clarke’s lesson in season 2 in which he discusses Phineas Gage’s changed personality following Gage’s brain injury (which is not an example of DID but is still thematically relevant, and an oddly specific topic to feature in the series) and the clues just continue to add up. Even if this theory isn’t correct I look forward to continuing to discover more about the established rules of the Stranger Things universe and what is going on with Will, El, Hopper, the Numbers, all of these horrible father-figures (notably Dr. Brenner, Lonnie, and Neil) and the mysterious Lab.

(One last important note regarding this theory: please do not base your knowledge of DID on any fictional representation of it in popular media. A lot of misrepresentations of DID exist in Hollywood and pop culture. If you'd like to learn more on this topic, please read about it in medical publications and resources with verifiable authority on the topic.)

unpopular opinion:

I think that the theory I mentioned above is probably my most unpopular opinion/thought regarding what I think Will is dealing with.

songs I associate with them:

The songs that they chose to feature on Will’s official Spotify Playlist are all songs that I associate with Will at this point. I’m so impressed by the attention the creators of Stranger Things devote to the music not only in the show but to the characters’ official playlists. One track that definitely jumps out at me from Will’s official playlist is Afraid by The Neighborhood. The lyrics of the chorus are eerily specific: “When I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will take my place / when I wake up / I’m afraid / somebody else will end up being me.”

favorite picture(s) of them:

#will byers #stranger things #stranger things theory

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fencesandfrogs · 3 years

Text

cloudtail’s daughter: jayfeather

alright, strap in, it's time for jayfeather. i've been holding it in on him for what feels like forever now; he's ya boy's favorite character

also, aside from dove and ivy, he's the character with the highest volume of changes to canon. even above cloudtail and brightheart, because they continue their lives, it's not a big deal. and lion and cinder go to the tribe, but like, that's it. (i'm figuring out if jay goes with them over the course of this essay. i think i said he did in holly? but he literally hasn't been mentioned once in that arc because there's a lot going on.) anyway lion and cinder don't get up to anything. but jay's priorities shift and we see that in his books. i'm really excited to write him but i need to finish arc 1 lmao.

but first, same deal as always. this is part of my cloudtail's daughter au, where dovekit and ivykit are born to cloudtail and brightheart. i don't know how well this will read preemptively, but i suspect it will be rather dependent on the others. cloudtail's daughter: dovewing and/or the long post that explains it are both good places to start, see the cloudtail's daughter tag on my blog.

[2.5k words, 14 minute read, one of the last warriors essays on this blog. i'm going to finish out with my character essays and then everything will be on new sideblog. so check out @mallowstep for more.]

section one: the leafpool business

at the beginning of this series, leafpool and jayfeather are on bad terms. they will stay on bad terms for basically the entirity of the book series. while one of my main complaints with po3/oots is the lack of acknowledgement of adoption, jayfeather has been lied to by his mother and his mentor, something neither hollyleaf or lionblaze have to contend with, and then his sister kills herself over it. obviously she doesn't, but from his perspective. so he blames leafpool because he was really close to hollyleaf and now she's gone, and it's his first real loss, and there's so much going on.

and so he's a grouch and he's unhappy and he's just trying to function when his whole support system has been dismantled over the course of what, like, a quarter moon? yeah so dovekit and ivykit are like "wow what a grouch he sucks" the same way they don't realize prey is dying of thirst & etc.

for the most part he's j chilling and then hollyleaf comes back and man is it some family drama. unfortunately it's postponed til book 4 because hollyleaf and jayfeather have journeys but anyway i'm getting ahead of myself, because this section should end and unlike the hollyleaf essay i want to actually have decent organization.

section two: hollyleaf is away (but jayfeather doesn't get to play)

holly, cinder, and dove go to deal with beavers. we only get jayfeather through lionblaze in the books, but jayfeather is...conflicted. he got his sister back and lost her again and oh i should say. i think jayfeather and hollyleaf are the closer pair of the siblings. not that they don't love lionblaze the same, but you know how cats pair bond? like, it's usually a trauma thing, but even in feral cats, you see very close friendships. anyway yeah so for other au's i've been sorting siblings n denmates into pairs for this purpose (mostly jaywing au because there's a lot re. dovepaw and jaypaw and remember they are reincarnated siblings they've got a close bond going.) and it's kind of...i don't know my point is jayfeather misses his sister because she's like, his best friend too. or she was. and then she died and now she's back and she left again, and lionblaze is more concerned about cinderheart, so jayfeather just comes off as grouchy all the time. but really he's lonely and sad.

so yeah, jayfeather is kind of moping around camp and then the tree falls and whoops now briarpaw/light is parapalegic.

and uhh this goes more or less as in canon but we don't get pov which is fine bc u can sub in canon. but jayfeather? he's still a sad boy but now he's a sad boy with purpose and that makes all the difference

yeah he's close with her. they're sweet. it's sweet. he's pressured by brambleclaw to take an apprentice. he's bristly and angry and "you're not my real father" you know?

beaver crew gets back. jayfeather, who had missed holly, is back to being angry for...angst and plot purpose, really.

but you know, when you love & miss someone and they leave and they come back and somehow that's worse because now they can leave you again? and you can't tell them you want them to stay because you're angry and hurt but you want them to stay? god i'm excited to write these chapters i love emotional turmoil.

he's protective of briarlight, he's trying to keep dovepaw from being a medicine cat, hollyleaf is apologizing but he's not ready to hear it and lionblaze and hollyleaf are beginning to reconnect and it feels like betrayal. so when cinderheart and lionblaze go to the tribe, he tags along. everyone, uh, strongly encourages he go. he is the big grouch.

section three: time travelling times

okay so the timeline for these books is...messy. if you track the chronology of my writing, it's messy. which is to say, i was thinking i could put forgotten warrior and distant whispers over the same time span, but that actually doesn't work, as i review my notes for FW because a big part of it is ivy and holly's relationship. so. fake news. whoops. that sucks.

or maybe it doesn't? idk i don't usually tell linear stories. i like messing with emotional impact of events. so writing 600k of very linear story telling is very not easy for me. but i'm trying.

right so basically the official order of events until i change my mind again is as follows (names abbreviated as DIHLJC because they're all unique): DCH returns from beavers, DILCJ go to tribe with some other random warrior undecided, J + rando return, JH start awkwardness (beginning of TFW, middle of DW), DILC return (end of DW), time travel stuff (middle to end of TFW). hopefully that was intelligble, but it is admittedly 85% for my own benefit.

alright so we've covered during beavers, now jayfeather and hmmmm let's say, uhhhh, let's say they go with, literally any interesting background character, uh, bumblestripe! he doesn't do anything in this au bumblestripe goes with them. also since his name starts w b i can still write DIHLJCB and have things be unambigious. and it means there are fewer bs in thunderclan and trust me you don't know how frustrating the existence of like 6 b characters is.

alright so we really have 3 sets of two pairs of cats here. maybe i won't go w bumblestripe, bc he doesn't have an existing relationship w jayfeather. i dunno. i'm a big fan of jay & briar, whether as a ship or just besties, but that's just out, and hollyleaf can't come a) because i said so and b) honestly maybe she can? actually wait hold on that solves my problems. hot damn so 6/6 of the pov cats go to the tribe and this will be one of the only times all six characters are plot relevant at the same time. but i'm going george r r martin on it and seperating the books not by time but into DICL + JH because they're two completely separate character arcs that happen to take place at the same time. (don't worry i'm going to resolve the fallen leaves thing. in this essay ig bc i've already covered hollyleaf.)

okay so yeah hollyleaf is sent bc jayfeather isn't planning on staying w tribe for long time. just short time. and he's all "firestar why"

"well jayfeather," firestar says, "you don't talk to your family."

"i talk to dovewing," jayfeather says

"you're not related to her," firestar says

"there's a whole prophecy about how i'm related to her," jayfeather says

"you know about that?" firestar says

and that's how the cat gets out of the bag.

so anyway. jayfeather and hollyleaf are sent because...hold on, spinning the wheel of reasons for a character to go on a field trip...because...because...because...because...jayfeather had one of those dreams. i don't know. rock or something. now he's going.

they get there, and this is where the books get a lil time wonky, bc jayfeather and hollyleaf stay for like a moon, during which jayfeather goes back in time. i think.

i haven't worked out the details and probably won't until i do an updated au synopsis because it's hard to keep track and i'm more concerned about character through lines. like, jayfeather does this and he feels sad, and hollyleaf is sad about her ghost boyfriend, and they're travelling back together, and hollyleaf is his sister and she doesn't make him feel like he needs protection and lionblaze is bad at that, and they start to talk again.

and yeah, they bond. again. it's kind of, on top of their old bond? like they don't repair anything, they bond like strangers. but it's not nothing, and that matters.

so jayfeather gets back, and we're moving into book five, and i don't remember when the last time i made a section break was or what number we're on, so...sorry.

section ???: old man yells at cloud

alright it's finally jayfeather's moment. you know, he's one of my favorite characters, and he only gets a book and a half. "but mateo," i hear you saying, "doesn't every character get a book and a half? and more importantly, 6x1.5 is 9, so how does every character get a book and a half?" well, yes, every character does, but dovewing and ivypool are relevant in books 1-3 and 6, cinderheart in 1-3 and 5, lionblaze in 1-3, and hollyleaf in 2-5 (and has a critical role in 1 and 6, just no character development), while jayfeather is just really essential to books 4-5, and has a background role in 3. that means he's about equal to lionblaze. he's equal to lionblaze. as far as the numbers go, i cannot tell you. it's a mystery.

right so the reason for this is because (a) jayfeather doesn't do that much in oots. i love him, but he's not, like, super important, and (b) he's going to work better in these books if he's concentrated. because his big theme is his relationship with hollyleaf and the past. they're both kind of stuck in it but in different ways. and that prevents them from ever properly healing. so jay never has a full arc in this. i mean he has a full arc, it's just not a satisfying one. and that means he's sort of got to be put in the containment units.

so anyway, he gets his real big moments in the fifth book, when he's reuniting starclan. i think this is one of the riskier decisions on my part: we'll see whether or not i can deliver on him the way i plan to. but i think i can pull it off so that his arc is more meaningful condensed as such.

right. so. jayfeather is decided. he is going to fix starclan. because dead cats need to get thier shit together and he dgaf.

he spends a decent amount of time arguing with yellowfang and bluestar, because basically no important cats have died. at least we're in omen of the stars so it still makes sense? i have no idea why yellow/blue are still so important. please kill more important cats. it makes us feel things.

but feathertail is also probably going to be involved, i don't know. i haven't read these books (specifically, books 4 and 5 of oots) in forever so i don't really remember what happens. but he's kind of, super done with everything. i think he'll probably try to get the support of mothwing and kestrelflight (which is canon i believe?) and try to work as a team. i feel like there's weirdness w shadowclan too i should sort out.

so yeah, there's some medicine cat bonding, everything is OK, sol is happening? but cinderheart is dealing with that. jayfeather is naturally very upset about disconnects with sol but like he's also dealing with stuff i...i really need to reread outcast and sign of the moon. well, they're on my list after "all of these fucking riverclan novels like why they don't show up in the main series but i still have to read a bunch to be able to write them that's not fair."

alright, well, with that very vague description of what happens, moving on, the prophecy gets revealed to the clans at a whole in like...the ending eighth of this book. trying to maximise the amount of exposure to other clans without messing with the pacing.

so jayfeather and undecided warrior B (definitively not hollyleaf) go to windclan. jayfeather is...very unhappy about this. he does not want to leave. thunderclan is his home, and he's blind, and it's really hard to adapt to a new space and he thinks everyone is going to treeat him badly.

and well, if you've read my culture posts, windclan is....very pro-medicine cats and pro-prophecy cats. funerals. mourning. prayer. is probably the best place to start, but to get to the meat of it, start with general clan culture. to summarize, windclan: religious. but kind of like catholics, they don't believe in an individual connection with starclan. only leaders, and medicine cats, and very rarely members of prophecies have a connection. so. jayfeather. he's twice over. that's very cool to windclan.

so cats are kind of falling over themselves to help him, and like. i mean jayfeather is a grouch and he hates that he needs someone to help him through the territory, but at least they don't treat it like a chore, or like he's pitiable. this is a desirable task. apprentices want to know about his powers. and kestrelflight is a respected part of the clan, arguably more important than onestar, and jayfeather has never really gotten over being shoved in the healer hole as a child like it was lesser or easier to be a medicine cat, and so it's a big change.

and yeah. so i mean. an unobservant reader might say jayfeather has sufficient ego. he does not need stroking. they, of course, would be wrong.

jayfeather has a complex, but it's not an ego issue. he's...he's been denied everything he's wanted, and he's jaded, and weary, and he's never really believed that his clan views him as able and equal. in canon, at present, he's lost almost every cat he's every cared about. alderheart is his strongest remaining tie, and his fear at losing him, but willingness to let him leave, is very telling.

so yeah, jayfeather enjoys being accepted. anyone would. he doesn't really have confidence issues, but....argh. i know why this is good i swear it'll come out in the writing.

anyway, that's...that's pretty much it. jayfeather? done.

#warrior cats #warriors au #warriors #hollyleaf #jayfeather #q #mine #txt #13th #March #2021 #March 13th 2021 #cloudtail's daughter #essay #long

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mallowstep · 3 years

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talking about my oc because i want to

so my blood sugar is doing a Thing and while i wait for that to regulate itself, i figured i'd ramble about my boy mallowstep for a while!

mallowstep, i.e. the title of this blog, is my warriors...oc? he's...not quite a self-insert, but he was the oc i made as a child, altho his backstory has been reworked many, many times, including very recently with inclusion of lore from the sisters.

anyway.

i figure if i type out some words i'll be distracted while i wait for the Good Food to sort itself out. (i'm fine btw. i don't talk about Personal Stuff here mostly but rest assured, i'm fine. just a lil shakey until i eat.)

on that note, my spellchecker is off because hands shakey means i do not want to navigate any way but typing.

right. mallowstep. key points:

he's got a white front left leg. i change the side a lot when i draw him but it's supposed to be left, and all of his paws are white.

i don't want to rework him bc i love him but also his whole deal is very much Impossible i was like eight when i thought of all of this

his vision is shit. he's not blind, but uh, somewhere around 20/400 vision. roughly. he can't see shit, is what i'm saying, he can't see shit.

or okay, so he's blind but in the sense of being "legally blind," not what people think of as blind.

this is because cats don't have opthamalogists. eye doctors. he has no glasses.

he's got a younger brother named deerpaw. same mother, different father. their mother is not around, so mallowstep is stepping in somewhat as a parental figure for deerpaw, but not fully.

he's a medicine cat? did i mention that? by choice. he chose this.

he sees the Ghosts. it's a whole thing with his backstory. but he sees the Ghosts.

his best friend is named kestrelwing (altho i'm considering kestrelsong), and her mate is mossytail. they've got three kits: eaglekit, kitekit, and dawnkit. (whose eventual warrior names are eagleclaw, kiteflower, and dawnstorm. i change those a lot rn tho it's just what i'm feeling at the moment.)

they're skyclan cats.

uhh there's a running joke about how mallowstep could have sired kestrelwing's kits and no one would know.

(he did not.)

deerpaw's eventual warrior name is deerleap.

okay, so...uh, idk?

mallow is born to the sisters, probably in a litter but his story Begins when he's left. he's not born with as bad of vision as he ends up with, so he does okay at first. he meets a cat named jag, who he grows close with.

(this is also in my about page, btw.)

jag and mallow are around the same age, and they're...they've got tallstar/jake vibes, is what i'm saying. (i'm not avoiding saying they're gay, here, but that's the vibe. tallstar and jake are gay in a different way to ravenpaw and barley, is what i'm saying.)

right, so anyway. jag is...fuck i forget his backstory, but he ends up meeting a different traveling group of cats. he falls for a she-cat named violet, and when her group gets ready to leave, he follows.

mallow is pissed. mallow basically writes off jag immediately. his vision is getting worse and worse, and he's pretty convinced he's going to end up blind. jag is like, "but i said you could come with us!" and mallow is like "bruh! i can't! for a very clear and obvious reason, i need to stay in an environment i know!"

so they part ways. they never meet again, this is all like, exposition.

mallow is pissed, but he also is kind of convinced jag is going to come back for him. so he stays where he is, because he just...in a way, he needs to believe that jag will be coming back for him.

the ghosts start talkin' to him, being like, "you should move on," and he's like "fuck no," but eventually they persuade him.

in part because it's becoming obvious he can't take care of himself.

(before you @ me, the most self-insert-y part of this is mallow's disabilities, and i'm not really listing what's wrong with him, because part of his story is figuring out his own limitations.)

anyway, he's a trash hunter, and he's got problems, and the ghosts are like! you know! there's some other cats you can live with. go live with them.

and because this takes place in a weird combination of canon and noncanon lore (the ghosts thing always was a part of his backstory, but when i discovered the sisters, i reframed it as that, and so on. basically, his backstory has been tweaked many, many times, so parts of it don't line up with canon and parts do. just keep that in mind.)

right because this takes place in a weird combo of canon and noncanon lore, mallow ends up w/ skyclan but a completely different set of skyclan cats than canon. i think the leader is dovestar? or rosestar? i don't remember, they're not super important.

so mallow shows up, like, hi! i can see ghosts, and passes out. the medicine cat, oakfrost, takes care of him, he meets kestrelpaw, mossypaw, aspenpaw, and birchpaw (i liked tree names okay?), and they're all good friends.

(aspenpaw and kestrelpaw are littermates, mossypaw and birchpaw are adoptive littermates. aspenpaw and birchpaw don't have much relevance in the story, because they don't.)

okay, mallow agrees to train as a medicine cat, he resolves some ghost issues, he's about a year and a half old, and deer shows up and oh i forgot to explain something, mallow leaves trail markers in case jag follows him back. it's four white stones bc mallow can see white p well and he has four white paws.

right, so deer doesn't know this, but he does know where mallow was left, and he actually is young, he runs away from the sisters because they're moving on, and he wants to find his brother. he's like four moons old. in an mostly unexplained manner, deer figures out the trail, and yeah.

this happens maybe like, two weeks after mallow becomes mallowstep. and the clan is kind of like...another one? but they take him in because well they don't really approve of the sisters and at least deer (now deerkit) is not blind.

(they don't say that part but it's on their mind.)

deer btw is adorable he looks kind of like a fawn. he's a dilute chocolate (which is called fawn but i didn't know that when i named him) ticked tabby, and he's got a white underside, and a white tail tip. they both have that, actually, but mallow doesn't care about his.

(mallow is a silver tabby? did i ever say that part. you can get an idea by looking at my icon, but he also has a lot of browm markings that aren't really shown.

woof okay sorry, you guys can't tell but i can i had to remind someone that no, i very much Need to Eat and you cannot unexpectly change dinner times on me.

right. but i am running out of time, so i'll wrap this up.

deer comes, and becomes deerpaw, we have a bit of a timeskip, kestrelwing is in the nursery, etc...

skyclan needs to leave. the villain was never specified, it can be darktail. the important thing is! they send a scouting party. the plan is, crew one will go, and the rest will leave in three moons. that gives crew one enough time to turn around. they leave a trail behind them a la mallowstep (who doesn't go with them, because, blind. oakfrost goes, she dies before the groups reunite, mallowstep is very sad.)

right, deerpaw goes! he leaves, it's all very symbolic, bc this time mallowstep does follow the trail and he does come back to the one he loves. with also a cute scene in between when skyclan is on its way and mossytail, mallowstep, and kestrelwing are each carrying a kit.

alright, and that's pretty much that. lots of me rambling for no reason. there's a lot of other stuff that happens, kestrelwing is a fun character, etc., but that's the main body of it.

#mine #txt #16th #May #2021 #May 16th 2021 #essay #oc talk #long #mallowstep #as in #mallowstep oc

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scottspack · 4 years

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My Wife Has An 18 Hour Drive Fic Rec Roundup

I wanted to make a fic rec post for the insane amount of Untamed fic ive been reading anyways, and Chi @got2ghost is driving halfway across the country tomorrow, so there’s no time like the present to put all of the really great fics ive read over the past couple of weeks in one location! Let’s get it poppin!

Ones That Chi Already Read:

A Lot of Edges Called Perhaps by hansbekhart (Wangxian, E, 21k)

The funny part is - and it is a little funny, even if Wei Wuxian has no one left to share the joke with - they never have. Not anything. He has never kissed any part of Lan Zhan besides his slim hands; never been even partially undressed with him anywhere besides a miserable, xuanwu-infested cave. It’s always been like this between them, this simmering need, this desperate understanding: a knowledge so deep that it lives somewhere in his bones, that if he wanted to have Lan Zhan he could have him, and if Lan Zhan wanted Wei Wuxian he could have that too. But they never have.

I found this fic on someone’s blog when they said that it was the definitive fic to read directly after finishing the series so i saved it, read it directly after finishing the series, and felt completely and wholly fulfilled by the resolution found in this fic. 10/10 cant recommend enough.

One Rouge Spark In My Direction by hansbekhart (Lan Wangji/Xiao Xingchen/Song Lan E, 5k)

He’d thought, in Yueyang, that they’d seen something in each other, something familiar. That maybe they’d recognized something in him. But it’s been many years, and many things have happened since, and he’s guessed wrongly at other people’s hearts before. Lan Wangji looks back down at the table, at his steaming, bitter tea. He’ll beg if he has to.

In “A Lot Of Edges Called Perhaps” Wangji mentions that he has had sex before and this is the in-universe story of that time and WHEW BABY!!!! AHHHHHH!!!

Gathered Herbs & Sweet Grasses by hansbekhart (Laz Sizhui & Lan Wangji, G, 19k)

Later, when he’s older, it’s this that A-Yuan will remember most: the stretch of silence, the two of them both dirty and shaking with fever, as he looked at Brother Rich, and Brother Rich looked back at him.

This is a fic about Lan Wangji raising Sizhui from when he brings him back from the Burial Mounds until they bring Wuxian back to Cloud Recesses after he’s resurrected. It made me cry about 18 times and I consider it fully canon in relation to the show. I reread this fic at LEAST once a week. *chefs kiss*

Seldom All They Seem by Fahye (Wangxian, E, 25k)

or, one hundred and thirty-three principles of the Gusu Lan, pertaining to the state of marriage

***

He bows to Wei Wuxian, sword in hand, sleeves falling properly. Wei Wuxian bows in return, and the sect leaders begin the opening courtesies, and for all of ten minutes Lan Wangji is under the impression that he is betrothed to a boy who is perfectly normal and acceptable apart from an unfortunate tendency to fidget with his clothes.

That impression does not last.

A canon-divergent fic exploring “what if Wangji and Wuxian were betrothed from when they were young like Yanli and the peacock?” It’s extremely good and very compelling and also made me cry multiple times. (The confrontation in the rain doesn’t get any easier even if they’re betrothed!)

Half Cloak & Half Dagger by Fahye (Lan Xichen/Meng Yao, E, 13k)

Jin Guangyao lifts his head and smiles. "I'm considering a problem."

"Can I be of any assistance with it?"

He drops a kiss on Lan Xichen's chest. With the nail of one finger he lightly traces the characters for irony on Lan Xichen's side. "Not this one, er-ge."

In the “Seldom All They Seem” universe but focused on xiyao. Has hands down the best written characterization of meng yao in any fic ive read so far. I continuously come back to this fic just to read the absolutely genius way this author writes the Head Bitch In Control of the cultivation world.

Hurricane by gdgdbaby (Wangxian, E, 6k)

"Haven't you heard?" Nie Huaisang replied, clicking his tongue, though he was clearly pleased that he could be the one to break the news. He leaned in to announce with a dramatic flourish: "Lan Wangji just took emergency family leave this past weekend."

WANGXIAN AS SPIRK STAR TREK PON FAR AU!!!!!!!!!!!!! WEEWOO WEEWOO WEEWOO!!!!!!!! This was actually recced to ME by CHI and I have not stopped thinking about this fic for a full month. It’s like author gdgdbaby sat down one day and was like “Tumblr user Liv Scottspack deserves everything she wants in this life.” and then wrote this fic. Thank you author gdgdbaby, I love you.

Ones That Chi Has Yet To Read:

My Age Has Never Made Me Wise by idrilka (Wangxian, E, 63k)

“We hear that His Excellency might be married by summer’s end,” the merchant’s wife says and Wei Wuxian freezes, his heart in his throat. “The Gusu Lan sect has been buying enough red silk and brocade that the merchants in Caiyi can’t satisfy the demand.”

He feels himself grow brittle inside, like a flick of a finger to his temple might make him shatter. His ears are ringing.

“Who’s the lucky bride?” he asks despite himself. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

Or: The story of a marriage.

I LOVE THIS FIC. The absolute best kind of slow burn and I think such an extremely accurate representation of the canon material. I’m always surprised by the authors in this fandom’s ability to write shit that is so concretely grounded in the universe. This could and should be a real companion novel. Amazing. I love it.

The Year of Drought by idrilka (Wangxian, E, 24k)

Wei Ying could not be contained by the walls of the Cloud Recesses, alive again and overflowing with it, bursting like a dam in spring with the force of two lives unspent. And so he had to go. Lan Wangji understands that—he understood it when Wei Ying told him of his plans, looking at Lan Wangji above the rim of his cup with an apologetic smile, like craving freedom was something to apologize for.

Wei Ying would go, and Lan Wangji would see him off; this has always been the only way it could be.

Or: In the absence of Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji waits.

The previous fic but from Wangji’s perspective. Absolutely required reading if you read the other one. Wangji baby.......i love you.....

A Civil Combpaign by Ariaste (Jin Ling/Lan Sizhui, T, 20k)

“And,” said one of the pompous ministers, “there’s the matter of a marriage to consider as well!”

Jin Ling, who at the beginning of that sentence had expected to slam into the very last wall of his patience and lose his temper entirely, paused. “A what?”

Thing was… it wasn’t such a bad idea.

Jin Ling gets it in his head that as sect leader he should get married and sets his sights on Lan Sizhui. I cannot stress enough how FUCKING CUTE this fic is!!! Sizhui being the best boy! Jin Ling having more uncles than he knows what to do with! Jiang Cheng being the worst at relationship advice! It’s so fucking good it love it so much.

Anyway, Here’s Wuji by kakikaeru (Lan Jingyi/Lan Sizhui, T, 18k)

The melody gets a little clearer when he breaks out of the trees, and Jingyi changes course with certainty, barreling down the back hill and through the Cloud Recesses, dodging scandalized disciples left and right. He throws open the doors to the Receiving Hall without announcement and bows nearly double, eyes on the floor instead of on the shocked faces of the Mei delegation and the impenetrable gaze of the Chief Cultivator.

"Forgive this disciple," Jingyi shouts, because he's going to get punished for rule breaking regardless. "From the back hill, Hanguang-jun, there is a song in the wind!"

Lan Jingyi comes of age.

A Jingyi-central fic about Jingyi growing up and falling in love and being a hero and being the second best boy of my heart right after Sizhui. Not only is this fic sweet and romantic but it’s another one that explores a lot of interesting things within canon and all of the supporting characters are written very well and are just as interesting as second best boy Jingyi.

Ok, JiuJiu by kakikaeru (Jin Ling/Ouyang Zizhen, T, 16k)

Uncle's jaw works in the way that suggests he's about to say something irredeemable. Jin Ling, in a move of diplomacy he hopes the Chief Cultivator appreciates, distracts him with spicy food and his favourite subject: the incompetence of his own officials.

"I hear the lakes in the south east are having drainage problems?" he asks nonchalantly, sticking three big slices of braised pork belly into his Uncle's bowl.

Jin Ling just wants to get through the Discussion Conference with his Sect, his dignity, and his heart intact.

A follow up fic to “Anyways, Here’s Wuji.” I LOVE the Jin Ling/Ouyang Zizhen dynamic of Jin Ling having been raised by Jiang “I keep all my emotions right here and then one day I’ll die” Cheng being hopelessly charmed and smitten with Ouyang “President of the I Love Love Romance Novel Book Club” Zizhen! I LOVE IT! EXTREMELY CUTE!

This Side of Paradise by greenfionn (Wei Wuxian/Wen Qing, E, 3k)

Wei Wuxian does some very quick math in his head that goes something like this: He is pretty sure he’s in love with Lan Zhan - Lan Zhan is not here and likely never will be here - Wen Qing is here, not to mention very hot and let us not forget, actually interested in sex with him - there’s a solid chance he goes genuinely crazy or dies, or both, in the next few months and really, who wants to die a virgin?

Listen.......the fic premise is “Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing, noted bisexuals, figure life sucks enough at the Burial Mounds, they might as well have any fun they can before they die” and........I Am Looking Directly At It. It features Wen Qing bossing Wei Wuxian around and Wei Wuxian’s canon he-wants-to-be-pregnant kink. It’s........I liked it.

To The Act of Making Noise by words-writ-in-starlight (Lan Sizhui & Lan Wangji, G, 19k)

His father in white plays the song late into the night, and when A-Yuan wakes up confused and afraid, the guqin lulls him back to sleep.

Lan Sizhui hears his father play the same song every night for his whole life, and never, ever get an answer.

Another very moving and heartwarming fic about Lan Wangji raising Sizhui and Sizhui figuring out Wangji’s past and then eventually reconnecting with Wei Wuxian. It’s cute and soft and Sizhui is my best boy!

History (Proud To Call Your Own) by words-writ-in-starlight (Wen Ning, G, 5k)

“A-Yuan? Um—Lan-gongzi,” Wen Ning corrects, trying to set a good example. The children are young, seven and eight, exactly a dozen of them lined up in two crisp lines of tiny blue and white robes. Wen Ning can feel them staring at him, even though most of them have already mastered that Lan trick of neutrality. The smallest, a little girl with liquid dark eyes, is clinging to her nearest shijie’s sleeve and half-hiding. “Can I—what can I do for you?”

Wen Ning gets himself recruited for services, while he and Sizhui are visiting Cloud Recesses. Wei Wuxian gets a fan club.

Set in the same universe as “To The Act of Making Noise,” a very cute fic about Wen Ning finding his place in the post-canon world and being proud of his cousin Sizhui and being the world’s best substitute teacher. As the official Wen Ning Fan Club President, I had to include this.

Lan Sizhui's Guide to Courtship by Kimblydot (Lan Sizhui/Lan Jingyi, T, 23k)

In which Jingyi is a little oblivious, Sizhui is patient (and should have said something in the beginning), and everyone else is resigned to watching them dance around each other for far longer than necessary.

(Or: five things Sizhui tries to do in his courtship, and the one time Jingyi realizes there was one happening in the first place.)

I’ll stop describing fics about the juniors as being “cute” when they stop being SO FUCKING CUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Grow by cafecliche (Lan Sizhui & Wei Wuxian, T, 14k)

“Okay,” Jingyi says, as Sizhui puzzles this out aloud. “Okay! So the demon has been turning its victims into children.”

“I think so,” Sizhui says.

“To make them easier prey,” Jingyi says.

“Yes,” Sizhui says.

“So—” Jingyi’s voice cracks here, “this kid is Senior Wei.”

Wei Wuxian, still tangled in his own massive robes, blinks politely at them.

(Or: Wei Wuxian is cursed on a night-hunt, and the junior quartet rapidly finds themselves in over their heads.)

What I expected to be a goofy, silly fic turned out to be extremely emotional and made me FULLY CRY! It’s a very moving fic about Sizhui coming to understand himself and Wei Wuxian a lot better AND features all of the juniors arguing over who’s turn it is to hold 6 year old Wei Wuxian. A true win/win of a fic.

Your Name, Safe In Their Mouth by astrolesbian (Lan Sizhui & Wei Wuxian, G, 10k)

“You’ve got a fever,” Wei Wuxian says soothingly. “You just keep still as well as you can. We’ll have you fixed up soon.”

Lan Sizhui recognizes his tone—this is the voice that Wei Wuxian uses on hurt people and young children, a very calm and no-nonsense voice that has none of the mischief and cheer of the way he sounds the rest of the time. Lan Sizhui looks up and meets his eyes, and they are dark, stormy gray, muddled and concerned.

“I’m all right,” he croaks.

“Hush,” Wei Wuxian says, in a low croon, like someone quieting a baby. Then he blinks, and looks away, awkward. “I mean—you shouldn’t speak. You’re tired. Rest if you need to.”

or: lan sizhui gets sick on a night hunt. wei wuxian comforts him. they both have a lot of feelings about it.

The Wei Wuxian and Sizhui bonding fic that I so desperately desperately needed to read. Scratched the very particular itch of “but have they REALLY talked about what it means that they’re reunited after 16 years???”

Stainless by Fahye (Wangxian, E, 6k)

"I'm starting to feel," says Lan Xichen, "that this was a counterproductive suggestion."

Wei Wuxian looks down onto the pristine, tranquil cold springs of the Cloud Recesses. Sitting in the water, their bare shoulders rising like dumplings carefully spaced in a steaming-basket, are a large number of Lan disciples.

"They seem to be doing better," he says, encouragingly. "If they--oh, no, I see what you mean."

At the near bank, someone has pressed someone else against the rocks and is kissing them frantically.

It’s smut! What is getting into a new pairing if not an excuse to read sex pollen in new and exciting ways!

Sweet Night by thejillyfish (Wangxian, E, 10k)

It was like coming back to life again, like being restitched into existence, cell by cell, nerve by nerve. From the surface of his skin to the marrow of his bones, everything new and purposeful. Like being pulled back from oblivion into an embrace of pure light. A feeling of absolute asylum.

That’s what it felt like, to realize Lan Wangji was in love with him.

In-show au of “what if they just admitted they’re in love and fucked during episode 43?” Soft and romantic and hot!

Shadows In The Sun Rise by Yuu_chi (Wangxian, E, 25k)

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, voice slow and a pitch too quiet. A second later Wei Wuxian understands why. “I cannot hear.”

Or; Lan Wangji is cursed into internal isolation. Their ability to understand one another remains as unwavering as ever.

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. I have been thinking about this fic nonstop since I read it. It is.....fucking incredible. One of the best qualities of wangxian is that they’re so in tune with each other and able to work so cohesively with little communication and this fic is like “what if we take that and DIAL IT UP TO ELEVEN” and i was like AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

WHEW OKAY that’s enough for right now!

I’m constantly reading new fics all the time so maybe eventually I’ll make a second one if Chi actually reads/likes any of these (they’re picky!), or if anyone else likes this list and wants updates.

TO CHI: Thank you for getting me into The Untamed! I love you! I had the best time texting you every thought that passed through my head while I watched it. I’ve loved all of the content you’ve sent me from the book and the comic. I’ve loved making fun of Yibo with you. I’ve loved being your fic taste tester. Life sucks right now but at least we have wangxian!

TO EVERYONE ELSE: If you read any of these fics please come to my DMs and talk to me about them! I have a lot of feelings and love to cry over fics! Thank you!

#the untamed #fic #WHEW BABY THIS IS A LOT #i did in fact just spend two full hours making this #i dont regret it at all bc im bad about bookmarking things so im glad this forced me to go back through my ao3 history #and actually make a record of the fics ive read and loved #theres SO MUCH talent in this fandom #just a crazy amount #from the fan artists to the fic writers to the gif makers #i forgot how fun being in a fandom is when the canon is good and the fans are creative!#i said it on my sideblog but this has been the first time ive EVER read fic for a fandom #where i wasnt exclusively reading fics about a certain pairing getting together #i literally just want to read any and everything about this universe #regardless of pairing or rating or whatever else #which is not at all my usual style #shout out to the untamed for being a good fucking show and for having like four other canon adaptions #theres just so much to work with and the fic writers absolutely kill it #ANYWAYS I LOVE YOU CHI #HAVE A SAFE TRIP TOMORROW

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janiedean · 5 years

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I really, really love your metas! In "Why a Jaime/Brienne Endgame in the Books Makes More Sense Than One Might Think, Based on Previous Works of GRRM's" you wrote, that you have endless reasons to assume that both, J and B, will survive the whole series - can you please name some? Aside from this mentioned meta I've only read an explantion of the weirwood dream, which can be interpreted in both ways. Or can you link a good meta that explains other reasons? Thank you very much!

hey!

first of all thank you so much, glad that you appreciate my rants. ;) that said, sure I can go in-depth. in order (btw @ginmo has written also some excellent meta about this, just check on her blog), and also counting the weirwood dream which I’ve ranted on at length in that specific meta:

now, the first thing is how grrm strategically placed these two in the narrative, in the sense that:

brienne has spent her life being passed for a joke and she desperately wants for someone to see her worth as a person and she’d about kill herself for the people who manage to get as far as to gain her trust/love, jaime has spent his life loving people without getting much in return and with that trust being used/abused/thrown away and everyone taking it for granted... and we’re assuming they’re not set up to be together when as stated grrm has written them as romantic from the first moment?

(also, jaime’s entire first chapter in asos is basically ‘I find brienne attractive but since I never considered that I could be attracted to anyone but cersei I can’t understand I’m attracted to her so I’ll stare at her and think she’s ugly all along even if I really am attracted to her. brienne’s issues are also rooted in the fact that no one sees her as attractive. jaime does. hmmm?)

both of them start from a miserable situation from which they’re finding their own way up, not down - jaime is more obvious but brienne is too because she starts at the point where she’s so starved for recognition she would die for someone who just was nice to her but didn’t really gaf about her and now she’s... well, becoming a knight because sure af that is happening, I’m sticking with the theory that the knighting is book canon too -, and if they both end up miserable or one of them does it doesn’t work;

both of their chapters have heavy foreshadowing concerning possible marriage/having children/finding love - jaime wants to father his kids and at some point resents that other men are husbands and fathers but not him because he was always the warrior and he doesn’t say it happily, brienne is half-glad her first betrothed died because she thinks she’s not suited to typical feminine things/to fit into a woman’s role in society but she’s also sad at thinking she will never have children, these two are going to get together very soon, and I’m supposed to think they’re set up for failure? k but I can respectfully disagree;

also, this goes back to that meta I wrote in which I said that grrm does not do grim for grim’s sake and he’s actually way less cruel than it seems, likes a good love story and has more than once finished his other books with satisfying resolutions to that kind of storyline, but adding to that: in comparison to whatever calvinist crap message hbo wanted to send, I have to inform y’all that grrm is a currently agnostic lapsed catholic and it’s exceedingly clear in the way he explores/deals with redemptive themes.

now, let me break the jb narrative for a moment to inform you of a few things that as an atheist born and raised in a 99% catholic country whose literature’s funding works are heavily based on catholic themes/on stories rooted in catholicism:

the ‘you need to die to be redeemed’ narrative is 100% bullshit according to catholic morals and on top of that it’s opened to anyone at any time;

like, the basic distinction between catholic and calvinist approaches to the topic (and I can’t believe I’m defending catholicism but nvm that) is that calvinism preys on a narrative where your negative qualities define you and you cannot escape them (which is because calvinism accepts predestination ie the idea that seeing your lot in life you can deduce if you’ll go to heaven or hell, so if you’re poor/unsuccessful/you committed mistakes/a crime and so on you’re not redeemable and it’s proof you’re damned) and that meant that in societies with calvinist background the death = redemption narrative is extremely popular because it’s seen as ‘hey this person is wretched and they suck so they couldn’t have lived anyway and they did something good with it for once and it’s the best they could hope for’. catholicism, at the contrary, works on the basis that as we all have free will we can change for the better and if you repent for your sins/past wrongdoings/mistakes then that’s enough to be redeemed and if you do it on your deathbed.... you can still go to heaven, you’ll just have to atone for your wrongdoings (that’s the entire point of purgatory’s existence ie making people who repented near death or too late to gain heaven atone for their sins before they can enter heaven). and the moment you repent then you’re free to start your new life and do better and gain your place in heaven, which you’ll obtain in virtue of having turned a new leaf;

(again: not to be that person, but in luke’s gospel one of the two thieves crucified with him is like ‘can you save us since you’re the son of god’, the other thief is like ‘please he has done nothing and we have sinned we don’t deserve to be saved just please remember us when you go back to your father’ and jesus tells the second thief I won’t need to remember you because you’ll sit at my right. also, in dante’s divine comedy there’s a guy who had been excommunicated in the middle ages waiting to get into purgatory for having repented on his deathbed and in manzoni’s the betrothed ie italy’s funding novel the character who’s objectively better written is a dude so heinous for his crimes that he’s called THE UNNAMED and the moment this guy gets doubts and wonders if there’s any hope for him left the local arcibishop leaves everything saying that the moment someone like that is in need then they’re more important than his own parish, goes to receive unnamed guy, tells him that just wanting to be better is enough as far as god is concerned and he’s saved as far as he cares. like, as much as catholicism sucks for the entire rest of it and for how much the catholic church is the worst ideologically the fact that everyone can be redeemed is the basic staple of the entire thing.)

now, given the ^^^, this is where I tell you that most lapsed catholics/people who left catholicism for whichever reasons usually grew up catholic and if you grow up catholic you spend your first twelve years in church at least and if your parents/people around you are also catholic you will absorb it, good and bad, so if grrm grew up catholic, he grew up with that background. (I could again rant for hours about how atheist writers who grew up catholic differ from atheist writers who grew up protestant/calvinist because if you compare grrm and idk kurt vonnegut it’s glaring but this isn’t the place for it so nvm let’s go on)

now that I’ve told you this, I’ll get back to jaime and brienne’s canon survival chances. I needed to tell you that because...

all of the stories with redemptive themes in asoiaf (jaime, theon, sandor, whoever) are not by nature calvinist. whatever d&d think or hbo thought, none of them are written in a way where death is their best option/their only way to achieve redemption/to finish their story with dignity. theon has gone through hell and back and left and regained his sense of identity, he’s not built to die now, sandor has freaking gone to rehab and I’m 100% sure he survives the series and gets closure, while jaime is exactly a poster child for the above stuff I described. like, jaime is someone who’s fundamentally good who had the misfortune to spend his entire life jumping in different kinds of abusive situation one to the other (tywin’s parentage in general, his relationship with cersei throughout at least from the moment they were *experimenting* and like hell I’m going back on that sorry not sorry, guarding aerys, being with cersei at *her* terms and being forced to relieve his trauma all over and not having his needs met etc., tywin potentially ruining his only healthy relationship [with tyrion] and so on) who in turn has done exceedingly bad things/taken bad decision/committed heinous deeds that he regrets having done out of his bad reaction to all of that, not treating his ptsd and basically deciding to stop giving a fuck and embrace being the horrid person everyone thinks he is... until he meets brienne, remembers who he wanted to be because she’s posing an example of it and decides on his own to try and be better, which is... exactly... the entire fucking point. the moment he decides to try and be better and reclaims his dreams/the person he wanted to be/tries to do good he has automatically achieved a narrative status where he chose to be better and therefore the narrative is giving him a chance to be that, and usually those stories are meant to.... have the message that you can be better than the bad things you did and you can turn back the page at any point. like. jaime is written to show you that it’s not too late to get your shit together and not letting others/your surroundings define who you are;

on the other side, brienne is presented as extremely sympathetic from the beginning. also, grrm is very good at describing how shitty is your life if you grow up a woman who is not standard attractive, that everyone laughs at and who has endless insecurities for it.... and she’s the paragon of knighthood/everything good about chivalry in the goddamned series. brienne is legit one of the best people in these books and it’s not because I stan her - she’s kind, she’s just, she’s brave she’s everything a knight should be, she’s willing to change her mind when she misjudged people, she’s forgiving and life threw her crap all along and she’s still persevering from it. brienne is written in a frankly painfully objective way to eventually succeed at what she wants. if in affc she’s crying because she feels like she’s too much of a freak to be her father’s heir and she’s not woman or man enough for anything, the entire narrative point is that she has to succeed at both being a knight and a lady otherwise grrm can’t plant hints and believe me he can;

this means that jaime is headed on a redemptive path which in that kind of story when written by catholics or former catholics never ends up badly (also, aside: redemption is good for everyone and it can’t be just ONE character having it, you don’t buy it at the supermarket, so saying that if jaime has it then tyrion or theon or sandor or whoever can’t have it is just poor reading, people change all the time irl and in narrative you aren’t obligated to redeem one and kill everyone else) or in death, brienne has been written to succeed in her endeavors after she suffers a shitton and I think stoneheart has to be the worst and the end of it (in the sense that after that situation is resolved the way for her is down, not up). which if I do the math and we have stated they’re headed for romance, means the both of them should have a chance at a future together;

also, I can go and tell you that their asos road trip ending with harrenhal is bursting with symbolism that includes death and rebirth - not going into the weirwood dream and sticking to the basics... guys, jaime starts as a prisoner, then ends up losing a part of herself he thinks define him but in truth only defines what he thinks he is (and he’s not ie cersei’s double, the kingslayer, the person who has to drive himself crazy to protect everyone else), then ends up almost dying and sitting in the middle of his own filth for the entirety of the trip (and even then he does good things ie saving brienne from being raped *cough*) and then ends up in a scalding hot bath where he confesses his most well-kept secret and source of 50% of his trauma to someone he trusts regardless of how much he likes it or not, faints and then wakes up again when everyone thinks he might be dead. symbolically, I think it speaks for itself. thing is, during the entire thing *brienne* is there alongside him and while she’s also getting her own share of trauma/ptsd (I mean brienne has totally bloody mummers related ptsd and I’ll die on that hill) she physically is the reason he survives it - she cleans him up, she gives him enough pep talks to convince him to live, she hears his confession, she changes her mind about him for it (but imvho she had after he saved her from being raped because that’s where she calls him ser for the first time) and she catches him in the bath when he faints which is.... fairly symbolic in itself, and she is the one who puts him back on his feet after. like, while jaime’s choices after are all his own, his symbolic journey through his own physical/mental filth he has to go through during asos succeeds because she helped him even if she didn’t know she was doing it, and like... guys, there’s a reason why in the weirwood dream the brienne in jaime’s head which he has conjured and who is basically what jaime sees brienne as in that moment, not necessarily the real one..... keeps on telling him all the time she’ll keep him safe/protect him and she basically tells that to anyone he feels threatened by (or his subconscious feels threatened by), and as stated before, jaime lannister has never, until that point, assumed that *he* would be in the position where someone else gives a shit about him to the point where they will defend him rather than in the position where *he* is the person that has to protect everyone else regardless of how much appreciation he gets in return. like, excuse me but if I was writing my own book I wouldn’t put this much work and care and this symbolism in these two’s history if I meant to kill one of them off or to not have them be happy in the end.

like, the point is: grrm is an extremely meticulous writer with an astonishing attention to detail and who put in book two shit that made extra sense when reading book FIVE, see theon saying he wouldn’t go to his death wearing dirty clothing in acok which makes you go like ‘....... why’ the moment you read his adwd chapters. no one, unless they have a penchant for sadism, would put that much work with those themes in that specific kind of story if then it doesn’t deliver. or, in different words, using a character I love as well so no one can accuse me of being impartial: when grrm put the same kind of work in catelyn’s chapters from got to asos and then you read them knowing about lady stoneheart and the red wedding, it’s obvious that he built her up for being an extremely tragic character and that she was destined to die regardless of all her efforts to save her family (same for robb but we’re talking pov characters). but catelyn’s storyline doesn’t have redemptive themes. it’s about regret, loss, loving your children but being imperfect/not being able to be there for them, and so on. catelyn’s storyline never promises you a happy ending from the moment ned dies and probably even before then. catelyn’s storyline promises you endless suffering and that’s fine because that’s her point in the narrative.

on the contrary, brienne’s tells you ‘hey there’s this girl who has had it like shit all her life without deserving it and whose worth no one sees because she’s ugly and who at the same time is actually a genuinely good person who’s trying her best and okay, she’s gonna suffer but she’ll come out on top while getting what she wants which is recognition as both a lady and a knight’ and given that brienne is also an extremely rare rep (say what you want, cishet unattractive women with her issues and her backstory are basically only less rare than unicorns in media) that I’m 100% sure grrm knows speaks to a lot of people (because he writes her too well to not know), if brienne doesn’t get that after all that shit, the narrative would not deliver on a fairly huge promise.

even worse, jaime’s tells you ‘hey there’s this guy who has been an abuse victim to at least three different people who doesn’t even realize it and whose life is so fucked up you’d need fifteen psychology textbooks to even start grasping it and that everyone sees as the worst person ever and who has ended up believing he is out of not managing his trauma well and hey look at him going through an insane amount of extra suffering but coming out of it wanting to be better and sort of succeeding and hey he has setbacks but he’s starting to see himself as his own person and he’s out of his #1 worst abusive relationship and he can decide what to do with his life now and you should root for him’, which means that if he dies or worst of all dies like in the show (but that’s not happening) the narrative doesn’t deliver on a huge promise and gives you the message that you can’t escape your mistakes and the abuse you received...... which is not the message grrm likes/wants to pass. like, I’ll die on that damned hill.

and to finish it, that was for them as single characters, but going back to the beginning: love is a fundamental part of both their storylines. as I said in the beginning, brienne suffered because she wasn’t loved enough and would die for anyone she loves herself without even expecting anything in return because she thinks no one will love her like that, jaime suffered because he loved too much without getting anything in return (or better, getting cersei’s abusive crap for his entire life) and he turned it into something toxic that’s not what he thinks it should be (he sees his and c’s relationship as the best thing ever where they’re soulmates because she sold him that narrative, but that’s not the kind of rship where you *turn your partner’s blows into kisses* which is actual text). at this point, the narrative is telling you ‘oh hey here’s two damaged people who actually would be very good together because their personalities match in that sense [as in, brienne would thrive with someone who loves her that much openly and finds her attractive and respects her for all that she is and jaime would thrive with someone who would appreciate that tenfold and who’d love him back just as much and who’d die for him - canon! -, and it wouldn’t be the kind of rship where anyone’s blows turn into kisses unless they were friendly sparring before] and oh hey look at that they’re in a storyline where they both influence each other greatly and oh wait he’s attracted to her and she thinks he looks like half a god and she’d die for him and he was willing to get mauled by a bear for her and they’re obviously meant to hook up’, which automatically promises a resolution where they both get what they want or you basically spent all your time rooting for it.... for nothing. which would not give anyone reading it satisfaction unless you hate jb that much, but I’m 100% sure that most people reading asoiaf casually would not hate it that much and grrm likes that trope that much to not deliver on it.

so, tldr: if one of them dies or if they aren’t endgame with a reasonable happy-ish ending for the both of them, the entire narrative fails to deliver on the promises of their individual storylines and their shared one, and there’s nothing in grrm’s writing that suggests that he would not deliver on it. I mean, if it was stephen king I’d hold my breath because I love steve but imvho his endings suck 85% of the time and he manages to do 180° turnarounds that have no sense whatsoever, but it’s grrm, not stephen king, and everything of his I’ve read that actually had an ending ended in a way that was coherent with the overall storyline and maintained its promises, so here, the above is pretty much the summary. hopefully I haven’t exhausted you. ;)

#jaime x brienne #jaime lannister #brienne of tarth #valyrianscrolls #asoiaf meta #janie writes meta #sorry for the lack of quotes but I'm on limited internet and I wrote this offline ops #long post for ts #abuse cw #anti-lannincest #anti-jaime x cersei #Anonymous #ask post

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wholetmewrite2020 · 4 years

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1, 2, 8, 9, 14?

1) what is your favorite “problematic” ship?

Ooof depends on the fandom I guess? like, Toothcup is my OTP in httyd, tho I guess Lightcup is more “problematic” since she tried to kill him. I’m unsure what could be the most problematic of all of my ships; like some of them are some flavor of problematic but idk what is the “most.“ I would leave in Toothcup/Lightcup since this blog is mostly httyd anyways. Dzamie if you are curious, I could tell you my ships of other fandoms in dm.

2) what is your favorite “problematic” polyship (ot3, ot4, so on)? Lmao, I guess in this category for default goes lightoothcup and lightoothcupstrid.

8) a character you think did nothing wrong but fandom demonizes?

...Ok this is hard, because I don’t think I had seen this happen in any fandom I have? Well back to httyd, I guess the Light Fury. Don’t get me wrong, she did some bad stuff; but in general critical people say she is to blame for the separation of Toothless and Hiccup, saying that she manipulated him, when in reality is none of that. Toothless decided all of this by himself; hell in less than 5 minutes of them meeting each other, LF attacks Hiccup and Toothless let her. Toothless could had put his foot down any time, and he did nothing. Let alone the fact that LF was willing to meet Hiccup before the Climax of the movie; and Toothless and Hiccup took the decision to stay separated, she didn’t make that decision, those assholes did it.

She did some stuff wrong, but the critical side of the fandom demonizes her way too much.

9) a character that did a lot of things wrong in canon that you think fandom woobifies?

Hmmm, perhaps Valka? This is an odd choice because Valka is my favourite, but a lot of people (and the fucking narrative) justifies her bullshit without holding her accountable enough. Ok perhaps this is mostly in the narrative of the story than the fandom, but idk is the only example I can think of. Like, even before she decided to never come back; Valka was still a terrible mom. There was a fucking invasion of dragons in the Island, and Valka left Hiccup in a fucking tower without anybody taking care of him. I know mothers shouldn’t stay as wife and mothers forever, but hey if your son is literally months old and you see dragons attacking, shouldn’t your main concern be him? Let alone that she left him alone in a fucking tower; she really didn’t have anybody else to let him be with somebody? Or at least let him in the Mead Hall (since is inside the mountain it makes sense dragons would have a hard time getting there)?

Not to mention that the “You and your father almost die that day, all because I couldn’t kill a dragon” makes 0 sense. Think about it; why Cloudjumper attacked? Because an axe suddenly appeared in front of him. If Valka had tried to really harm Cloudjumper, Cloudjumper would had killed her right there; Valka most probably than not has no idea how to fight dragons since she never wanted to, and Cloudjumper is massive; there is no way Valka could kill Cloudjumper like that. If she attacked, it would had ended with her being killed, and Hiccup perhaps dying on the cross fire.

Neither Stoick or Hiccup would had been in more danger with her around, sure she cannot protect either of them, but she being out of the picture leaves them with no protection anyways.

Plus, she learned that dragons weren’t bad, how come she didn’t get curious why the dragons were attacking Berk, when it became obvious they naturally don’t do that? She never got curious what the fuck was happening back there?

Listen, my biggest fantasy since I was 11 was to one day move to another place, and never talk to my family ever again. Since Stoick and Valka are so different, plus the age gap (Valka was in her 20s in the flashback of Baby Hiccup, while Stoick was in his 30s; it would not be a surprise if they got married while Valka was a teenager or so); I really don’t think Valka or Stoick were so in love, most probably Stoick was head over heels with Valka; and Valka, who was ostracized by everybody and had somebody finally looking at her like she wasn’t a pest, feel something for him solely in the fact that he was the only one threating her nice, and the fact that she could be pressured to say yes because she is already almost an outcast, imagine if she has the nerve to reject the Chief. Combine that with having a child in your twenties and I firmly believe Valka was not happy with that life; even if she loved Hiccup; that live wasn’t the one for her.

But she is not a good mother, neither a good wife; is okay if she isn’t, but the narrative and a big chunk of the fandom says the contrary, and that drives me nuts.

I remember one fanart of Astrid admiring Valka like she was a legendary hero; and then after the analysis of someone, I realize that if somebody could be pissed at Valka, could be Astrid.

Astrid life was the war, if you consider the series canon you will know that Berk was incredible important to her, her family was important for her, and she wanted to be a great warrior and help to protect the island she loved. Valka literally said “fuck off” to Berk, she left for them to live a war, despite the fact that she hold the key to stop said war; heck if Valka came back perhaps her uncle could still be alive. How many bloodshed would had stopped if she tried to check on them? Astrid considers family and Berk the most important, Valka is the opposite; that alone should leave some conflict.

Ok this got extremely long, but you get the idea.

14) favorite “unproblematic” ship?

...Heather and Astrid count? Is the only thing I can think of. Thanks for asking Dzamie! I would be sure to leave you some questions as well.

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bakudekuficlibrary · 6 years

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hi there!! I love the blog, it’s so helpful when I’m in a fanfic mood. I was wondering if you had any bkdk royalty au’s? preferably completed! thank you so much! :)

Hello! Here are some Royalty AU’s 😊 I’ll separate the ones that are complete and the ones that aren’t!

-Ellie

24 Works.

Completed

the last dragon-blood king by claimedbydaryl ( E | 107,009 | 13/13 )

Katsuki Bakugou was the alpha heir to a forgotten throne, reigning lord and warden of the Fyre Isles, a famed warrior of vicious repute in the Western Seas, and he would be wed to Izuku Midoriya by the day’s end.

Ignite Me by Kreativekilljoy ( M | 2,249 | 1/1 )

The flames steadied and warmed them both.

An Oasis for You and Me by SecretKiwi ( E | 5,309 | 1/1 )

A prince and his retainer form a bond and grow closer than expected.

Don’t Threaten Him with a Good Time by Philander_Jack ( M | 7,031 | 1/1 )

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

The thought crossed his mind at a million miles a second as the Berserker Prince Bakugou looked down on him, in the most literal sense. He was just supposed to deliver a message to the prince but if the prince kept on glaring down upon him like a rat under his boot he was sure that he’d meet his doom soon. What happened to the saying “DON’T kill the messenger”?

Well, he’d learn from the prince himself that the he does have the decency to take heed of the saying, but there’s no saying stating you shouldn’t or couldn’t fuck the fiery messenger boy with green hair and eyes.

SeriesPart 1 of Caught by a Red String

I Like You Deku, damn it by AjhayLee ( T | 8,364 | 1/1 )

Bakugou Katsuki dreams about his past self as a prince and liking his attendant childhood friend. The thing is, he couldn’t confess his feelings and he wasn’t able to tell him. Upon realizing that he also like the present Midoriya in the process, he does what his past self couldn’t do the fourth time he woke up from the dream.

[Major Character Death]

silk by holdingoutforahero ( G | 669 | 1/1 )

Katsuki is anxious, Izuku can recognize that even from the slightest signs. He is going to snap any second and this time Izuku has to let it slide instead of letting out a weary sigh and a sharp “Kacchan”. Katsuki’s hand is slightly trembling as he ties the obi of his inner underrobe. Izuku steps closer to him and pulls the narrow belt out of his hands.

“Here, let me.“

Katsuki-hime(dere) by TouchofFever (UntappedChaos) ( M | 661 | 1/1 )

Prince Izuku is a total deredere and it’s why all the kingdom of Yuuei adores him.

Grand General Katsuki is a total himedere, and they’re still working on that.

SeriesPart 2 of AU Tropes: BNHA

WIP/On Hiatus/Abandoned

[On Hiatus] And He Was Magnificent by Skaii, SugarbabyIzuku( E | 4,134+ | 1/? )

Midoriya Izuku is an omega slave, born into a life of subservience. He’s trapped, never to reach his dreams of something more; until he’s thrust headfirst into the world of Bakugou Katsuki, the crown prince of Incendium Kingdom. Now, Izuku must adjust to a new life as Katsuki’s slave—while a war that threatens to shake the land looms on the horizon.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

Remember Me by Blue_Writer ( M | 59,287+ | 22/? )

It had been years since Bakugou was exiled from his home and became the savage dragon king, but one good thing finally came to his life when he met Izuku again. The only issue, is that he doesn’t remember him.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

Eyes on Fire by glamour_weeb ( E | 11,020+ | 3/? )

Izuku is the ruler of a peaceful city, a city that stands no chance against the Dread King Katsuki and his barbarian horde. In order to save his people, Izuku hatches a dangerous plan to seduce the King. What he does not know is that he is exactly what the Dread King Katsuki has been searching for this whole time.

The Rarity by bittybitt39 ( E | 29,111+ | 8/? )

Midoriya Izuku had been promised at the age of four to his once dear friend, Bakugou Katsuki. Their mothers thought it smart to betroth the two in the hopes that Izuku would be protected and taught in the safety of the guards Mitsuki could provide until the day he was old enough to come to the south kingdom. After all, it was not everyday that the rarity of a male omega was born within these times.

Izuku grows up knowing he is promised, and has vague memories of his alpha from his younger days. He is also gifted, in more ways than one when his teacher Toshinori confronts his mother with Izuku being named as his successor. But a war breaks out between the kingdoms of the north and east, and the betrothed are separated far longer than the royal family would have hoped. But the war raging keeps them separated besides a few letters that are received from those that were brave enough to run through the war lands.

For the Sake of Peace by MochiUs ( T | 38,922+ | 9/? )

Some marry for love. Some marry because it was arranged for them. And some marry for the sake of peace.

Forsaken by FeatheredKit ( E | 28,393+ | 4/14 )

While on a journey in the forest to find a magical herb, Izuku becomes entangled in a less-than-ideal situation and is forced to accept help from none other than his old flame — the warrior king.

Needless to say, today isn’t going as well as Izuku had hoped.

Selected by Currently_Underrated ( E | 3,229+ | 1/? )

The day that the letter came was the day that Izuku’s life changed forever. Prince Bakugou Katsuki was finally of age to take a mate and a queen, but this Selection would be different because the rare male Omega’s could finally participate in the selection process.

But what if Izuku didn’t want to be a royalty?

SeriesPart 1 of BNHA BakuDeku Selection Ft. Omegaverse

Death of a Berserker by Philander_Jack ( M | 26,033+ | 3/? )

It had been three days, three days since he had met the berserker prince, three days since he lost his virgin status to said prince.

He was pissed yes but he’ll find out soon enough that he has bigger things to worry about when the might of the Black Alliance rises like a black shadow across the Dragon Liege’s land of Sagevsal. He’s going to have to fight his hardest alongside the desert people with the help of his comrades and All Might himself to fight off this calamity.

Toss in some mention of the fact that he’s also found out to be the soulmate of the Berserker Prince Katsuki Bakugou and yeah, life from now on is going to be one hell of a ride for him.

SeriesPart 2 of Caught by a Red String

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

[Abandoned] Uneasy Lies the Head by Valainistima ( T | 2,808 | 2/? )

They say a crown bears the weight of the people. Wearing it alone is a challenge itself, but two heads are better than one, right?

Papa said to knock you out by kewltie ( G | 7,270+ | 1/? )

Midoriya Kasumi may be only eight and a quarter year old but here are what she already know: one, she’s the prettiest and most charming little girl in the world; two, her Papa is the best and deserves only the best so that’s why the gods blessed him with Kasumi in the first place; and three, the constantly scowling man that often appear on their TV screen is her other father.

SeriesPart 8 of Gravitation

[On Hiatus] drabbles and drabbles by Agent_Fluff ( Not Rated | 4,977+ | 9/? )

A collection of writing prompts sent to me on my tumblr! Typically gonna be BakuDeku prompts, but other pairings may pop up as well. Not all will be canon compliant either!

[Underage]

Tearstained Petals by FeatheredKit ( E | 10,370+ | 2/? )

Upon returning home for the first time in years, Izuku expects things to be the same as when he’d left, but they aren’t. Not only has the village he once knew so well become an economic wasteland, but now the entire kingdom is under the rule of his childhood best friend—who no longer seems to give a damn about him.

Handful of Courage by ChestnutPatronus14 ( M | 5,035+ | 2/? )

Izuku Midoriya is one of the rare few who cannot use magic, but he had always wanted to travel. Ever since he was little he was always exploring, and when he is finally able to travel to the capital city, he is beyond excited. His plans are thrown away when he meets the prince of the Dragon Lands, Katsuki Bakugo, laying injured by the side of the road.

Izuku makes him a promise, that he would get him home no matter what, but Bakugo is having a hard time trusting an outsider. What neither of them expects, is what happens once they return to the Dragon Lands.

SeriesPart 2 of Into the Dragon Lands

His Kingdom by ElopeToTheSea ( M | 6,038+ | 2/15 )

"The kingdom or him?” Ochako asked. Her voice was low, full of disdain. “What will you chose?”

Izuku smiled, there was no fear in him. There was nothing he could ever regret in that second.

“My answer hasn’t changed, princess,” he responded. “And it never will.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Pitiful.”

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

The Dragon King’s mate by twilightwings ( E | 16,765+ | 5/? )

Izuku decides to go after a rare flower that only grows, on a mountain in the Dragon King’s territory. She discovers someone from her past living with the dragon, she is plunged into his world where she fell in love with him all over again. however there a noble knight who wants her hand in marriage. But However, there something sinister in the wake, when is a threaten force from the past is threating to return.

[Graphic Depictions of Violence]

[Abandoned] flame of love by howitzerimpact ( T | 2,854 | 4/? )

The Dragon Kingdom has braved through decades, centuries even: reigning as formidable yet compassionate above all else.

But when the wars start, everything becomes a ticking time bomb - the kingdom, its peace and its young heir’s need to take action. Heavy is the head that wears the crown but the prince is not alone. What will he learn of his companion, and will he regain his world once lost to chaos?

Will Bakugou Katsuki and his army be able to withstand the race against time? Or will his kingdom fall with all efforts futile?

Ever Ever After by Agent_Fluff ( T | 1,265+ | 1/10 )

Izuku is from the enchanted land of Yuuei, where he spends his days chasing the happily ever after he saw in his dreams. After being rescued from a troll by a handsome prince, Izuku decides that maybe this could be it. However, King Endeavor is not yet ready to lose his crown, so he banishes Izuku to a place where there are no happy endings: New York City.

SeriesPart 1 of Enchanted AU

#BakuDeku #KatsuDeku #BNHA #bkdkfl ask #w:violence #w:mcd #w:underage #t:none #g:au #au:royalty #curator ellie

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tadmean-aa · 5 years

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YEP, HERE WE ARE FOLKS

so. this is a post i didn’t want to write, but here we are. if you’ve followed me for a while you know i don’t like drama / public discourse, but i genuinely have no other choice. i’ve tried to handle this privately to no avail. and while i’d appreciate the word being spread about this person, you’re welcome to block this post or blacklist the tags. i’m not here to tell you who to interact with or start a fight. i’m not here to discouse this or argue. the facts are the facts, and the facts are that this user has stolen from me repeatedly, even after being asked to stop, and has taken credit for intellectual property and an interpretation largely inspired by coping with trauma. massive drama under the cut. sorry folks. i’ve tagged it as ‘long post //’ as well for mobile users.

tl;dr? @cvffeinequeen (whats good?) ripped me off majorly. it’s driving me nuts. tw for ic abuse mention.

on one hand, i thought about not writing this because it’s literally just tumblr roleplay. on the other, writing coco this way, this very specific way, has been a way to cope with my own similar struggles, and the last straw was seeing this person getting credit for their “creativity”, aka the things they blatantly ripped from me. to see someone being praised by unknowing people for taking a story that i crafted from my own hurt, a story that they’ve gutted and repurposed so they can roleplay with it instead of coming up with something of their own, was the absolute final straw. not to mention that if they’ve stolen from me and gotten away with it, it’s not unlikely they’ve taken from other sources as well. maybe someone else will come forward, idk.

if any of the screenshots or links below are not conclusive enough, feel free to come to me and i will try to get you better ones / answer your questions. this is a long post, but i’m not about to call someone out for the first (and hopefully last) time without bringing some hard ass motherfuckin proof. my old blog (tadmean.tumblr.com, or tadmean-a.tumblr.com if the first doesn't work) is available multiple times on the wayback machine if you need to check some of these for yourself.

for context, i found this user in the coco adel tag through an edit. i always like to see duplicates (it gets lonely being the only coco), so i clicked the url to see what their blog was like and maybe follow if they were cool with that. immediately, something stank. on closer inspection, i realized their bio was ripped directly from mine and reworded—examples below. bear in mind that they have changed their blog background color since then, which is why some of the caps dont match the current blog; it used to be this shade of red (?), now it’s a brownish pinkish color. the bio has also since changed, but i’ve included the three different versions. i sent these screenshots to a close friend the night i found this blog, as well as to another friend a couple days later / a week maybe? so that’s why some of these are discord screenshots.

BIO POSTS: ( pt 1 ) ( pt 2 ) ( pt 3 ) ( pt 4 ) ( pt 5 ) ( pt 6 ) ( pt 7 ) ( pt 8 ) ( pt 9 ) ( pt 10 ) ( pt 11 )

screenshots in hand, i instant messaged them and let them know i saw what they were doing. screenshots below:

DM CONVO: ( pt 1 ) ( pt 2 ) ( pt 3 ) ( pt 4 ) ( pt 5 ) ( pt 6 ) ( pt 7 ) ( pt 8 )

NEW BIO AT THE TIME: ( pt 1 ) ( pt 2 ) ( pt 3 ) ( pt 4 ) ( pt 5 ) ( pt 6 ) ( pt 7 ) ( pt 8 ) ( pt 9 )

BIO AS OF NOW ( 11 / 29 / 18 ): ( PT 1 ) ( PT 2 ) ( PT 3 ) ( PT 4 ) ( pt 5 ) ( pt 6 ) ( pt 7 ) ( pt 8 ) ( pt 9 )

past this, we just agreed to be mutuals and that, i thought, was the end of it. sure, the bio wasn’t all that changed, but they’d seemed to realize the error of their ways and i was naively optimistic.

from here, it temporarily got better. then got way worse. whether it was formatting ( x, x ) ( x, x ), ( x, x ) the names of tags ( x, x ), ( x, x ), personalized tags ( x, x ), musings posts ( x, x ) ( x, x ) (these being just a few), etc. this user has mimicked my blog to a T. but this is all just context. the thing that i’m here to talk about, however, are headcanons. i started writing coco as a way to cope with my own trauma/abuse & personality disorders; it started from the thought that if a strong character like coco can manage it all, then so can i. and it’s not like we have a whole lot of canon content for coco that might lead people to the same conclusion about her life—coco is a character that has maybe? 30 mins to an hour (being very generous) of overall content? the things i’ve written about coco is not stuff you can conclude from her canon material. period. she’s essentially an oc based on five seconds of material. if you have any doubts, remember that: coco has essentially no canon content or backstory. almost everything on my blog is a headcanon. that said:

LIST OF A FEW STOLEN HEADCANONS:

stole coco’s troubled home life as an heiress ( x ) and how she runs away later in v4 ( x ). this is the biggest one.

coco’s father has been the main antagonist of her story (way before weiss’s bg was revealed, or jacques was really even a character). this person has not only ripped off coco’s bad home life, but ripped off her father being the particular antagonist ( x , x ). they’ve also mentioned the similarity to weiss’ story but i can’t find the post. however, because this is ripped off, there’s no reasoning for why he’s the worse of coco’s parents. this is a common theme with this person: they take a headcanon and remove the fat from it so it’s not as recognizable. this also removes the context and reasoning for the headcanon.

ripped off small bits and pieces off my page: like coco barely sleeping ( x , x ), often getting detention ( x, x ) (something that’s not mentioned in their bio), sweet tooth ( x , x ), scars ( x, x )

coco’s full name being something she only gives to people she trusts ( x , x ) or people who would have it off her record, since it’s a reminder of her family.

oh, the best one! i posted a headcanon post specifically to literally see if they would take anything from it, and they did! blatantly! here (hair hc: x , x ) and here ( x , x, x , x). a link to my post: x and theirs: ( x, x )

in their bio, they write that these are headcanons they’ve been writing for years. well, funny enough, lots of the things they’ve taken are things i posted and started writing about years ago. so i guess in a way, that was honest. throwback thursday!

let me be clear: if you’ve interacted with this person, or if you didn’t notice, or you noticed but didn’t say anything, you’re not the bad guy. in these situations, the bad guy is the thief. period. i realize to some people this might seem silly, but i’m extremely sick & disabled and cannot work or really do much of anything; writing coco convincingly and making her relatable has essentially been my job, my sole motivation, for these past 3-4 years. i’ve poured hard work into this interpretation, only for someone to come along, butcher it, and claim it as their own. to you, it’s not a big deal, but to me? it’s years of work, stolen.

i hate to make this post. i hate serious posts, i hate drama, i hate anything that might discourage someone else writing for coco. i love duplicates! i’ve never had any issues before! but this person isn’t roleplaying as coco; if anything, they seem to be roleplaying as a version of my blog. which, not cool but also, creepy.

so, yeah. please dont send anon hate their way, this person is still a minor. but being a minor doesnt make theft okay! apparently we still needed that said out here in the rpc. thanks for reading guys, peace

#call out post //#long post //#theft //#callout post //#ok to reblog #ooc.#drama //#is it ? idk

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trulycertain · 6 years

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Alistair’s Parentage, and why I go a bit Tru Smash

OK, it’s time to talk about why I aggressively dislike the “Alistair’s bloodline” retcons and how they come up in the comics. *sigh* I do try to keep this a positivity blog, but I thought as character arc analysis it might be worth saying. I’ll just thank @aphreal42, @celeritassagittae, @withthebreezesblown, @nanahuatli, a few others. I know we’ve talked about this.

*coughs, shuffles papers* Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Sorry again about the... everything.

On Maric

I was frustrated to see the centering of Maric in the comics, and mention of the hunt for him in Inquisition. It’s something that happens even if you’ve kept Alistair a Warden. And this is my question: Why?

I mean, why should Alistair be hunting for the father who couldn’t be bothered to raise him, when it’s not going to save Ferelden or Thedas? Yes, there’s some vagueness about it, an unrealistic dream of “maybe Maric can go on the throne and be better at it than me,” but that just makes it look like he hasn’t been allowed to learn anything or adapt as king, that he’s still desperately running from it, that he’s still reduced to his bloodline rather than his own choices and personal growth.

We’ve had this arc of him desperately trying to abdicate responsibility of any kind; we had it in Origins, when he was twenty and green. It’s been ten years. Often, smart, perceptive people like Alistair grow rather a lot in ten years, despite or even because of their own fears.

So we’re right back to the daddy issues. And back to the bloodline. Healing is not always a linear process, but it cannot, by definition, go backwards and plonk you right back to the progress you’d made ten years ago. That’s not healing, and it’s not an arc - it’s a circle. Narratively, it’s not a very interesting circle, either.

The frustrating thing? BioWare’s story folk can do realistic, beautiful “healing is not linear and sometimes people have days where they look back and want to undo everything because oh god what if they got it wrong” arcs about parentage. See Dorian’s or Hawke’s. Both of those have some big issues (I will never, for instance, be comfortable with how much you can hide from Dorian, or how heavily you can push him towards reconciliation, and have issues with that being a player choice at all), but they’re far more emotionally genuine and allow for nuance. More on that later.

Why do Maric’s growth and arc, considering he’s basically been dead for nigh-on fifteen years by the time of the Silent Grove comics, have to come at the expense of Alistair’s?

And why do we assume Alistair needs dragon blood to be awesome, when he’s been awesome pretty much forever for reasons of his own choosing?

(And OK, this one just bugs me for petty reasons: why does Maric have a less-fun version of Alistair’s self-deprecating humour in the novels? (Though all right, quite fond of the bit about falling off horses; forgive the nested brackets.) There’s a clear “like father, like son” thing there, but they met... what? Twice? Three times? I’m just fascinated by a fantasy world where there exists an “awkward quips” gene, because I must have it in spades.)

On Fiona

Fiona herself is a mid-tier character I don't mind. She has some interesting aspects but we don't see enough of her for me to have a strong opinion. Even the novels are a bit half-baked and inconclusive on her arc.

Fiona as a character with difficult choices to make and ambiguous, pragmatic motivations? Yeah, OK. She’s not one of my favourite DA chars, because she barely appears and unlike Maric, we’re not given much after-the-fact canon, dialogue and extra codices on her (*sigh*, because Daddy Issues are always more important), but she works. Fiona as a Very Special Warden Who Got Blight-Cured and another aspect of Alistair’s "well, he can't just be normal" story? Goodness no. It does both characters a disservice.

The only aspect that interested me with Alistair’s king-as-father relationship was the class stuff and the terror of responsibility. Other than “a fascination with magic” (which I find way more interesting as something he developed himself, as a non-mage but one with basic empathy and a curious mind), Fiona's motherhood hasn't really contributed much to his arc. The deep loneliness was there already. Yes, he has one more person who let him down for at the time seemingly justified reasons. OK. We’ve heard that... a lot of times already.

So Fiona, who already had a serviceable story arc of her own, ends up with it partly centred around Alistair’s for... reasons? I guess? in order to prop up his story, but not to do it in any way that really affects it or offers closure and just makes a hash of hers?

Narratively, I simply don't get why he has to be her kid, or be a half-elf. My interest is in how utterly bloody ordinary he is, because that's what makes him special. Both the "my bloodline is ultraspecial because Maric" and "my bloodline is ultraspecial because Fiona" stories bored me equally. He for all intents and purposes still looks human, and his story already has a pretty big focus on oppression. There’s no reason to pile “have we also mentioned half-elf and abandoned by one more person” on top of it. It’s just... overseasoning.

On Alistair

For me, the entire appeal of Alistair’s arc was that he made himself. His pain and his abuse were a major part of his story, but he chose strength. He chose to centre himself around being a Warden, around helping people. Someone who went through that could have easily wanted to watch the world burn, but he didn’t. He is not his parents, or his blood. That's not why his story is interesting.

Growing up, Alistair’s most formative influence wasn’t his parents; it was the lack of them. Or of family in general.

If you want to pick major figures in his life, I suppose Maric could be one of them. Fiona? No, he isn’t even allowed to know she exists.

The formative influences we’re given, ones he remembers and mentions and seem to have imparted lessons:

Duncan, the almost-father he idolises, and the first person to believe in him

The idea - rather than the reality - of his mother, a serving-maid whose death he blames himself for; he clings to the idea she would have loved him, hence the amulet

Eamon, who was the nearest thing he had to a father and left him, which clearly affected him, and who continues trying to use him, albeit maybe with some real concern in there

Isolde, who helped seal that he was a dangerous tool or leverage, not a person, and started the chain of events that led to the Chantry

Teagan, who was ultimately ineffectual but made him hope for more, and was one of the few sources of kindness in his life

The Chantry bullies, perhaps

Goldanna, who reinforced that “you’re nothing but an inconvenience” mentality and was his last hope of a loving family

The Wardens, who were the nearest thing he had to a family

The people he meets during the Blight, the Warden in particular but definitely Morrigan, Leliana, Zev and the dog, who all make him question different aspects of himself and broaden his horizons a little

There are a ton of stories to tell there, and certainly, the Warden and their relationship with him - good, bad, indifferent - gets the spotlight, as do Eamon and Teagan. Heck, even Cailan gets a look-in, and Duncan has his moment. So why, ten years later, are we back to the twin spectres of Maric and Fiona?

Look... making an abused, neglected kid still be defined and unable to get away from the parents that walked out of his life, and not letting him have his own story? I don't know, that... bugs me. To put it mildly. OK, I’m probably overstating it and drawing parallels where there shouldn’t be, but it does rather feel like that’s the case. This way, he's never allowed progress, growth or agency. And I just... can't. I can't enjoy a story like that, it's too bloody sad and cheap.

He was an neglected kid who was told, over and over, that he deserved the bare minimum. When you've had no love at all, even a half-hearted grain of it is enough. And that has defined his story so much, but there are other stories to tell with him; one of the reasons I like him is his complexity. I want it to stop defining his story. He shouldn’t have to be hunting that family spectre. It may be something that still hurts him, which would be realistic enough, but it’s not all he is, and it’s not what he is to Thedas.

We have so many stories out there where kids are defined by difficult parents. We have so many reconciliation storylines about the sins of families being forgiven, or accepted. (See also: Dorian’s story, depending on how you play it, and definitely Hawke and Leandra’s. I could write a whole meta post on those.)

How about some counter-narratives? Maybe the world needs more “Sometimes family isn’t a matter of blood, and sometimes your parents didn’t do enough and it’s OK to walk away from the unanswered questions. You’re not broken or static, you still have stories to tell, and you can still grow” arcs. Because life isn’t a Hallmark card, blood doesn’t equal love, and, to quote Dorian on this one, “Sometimes love isn’t enough.” That could be a healthier, more realistic kind of fiction, but also a more interesting one.

...OK, now I’m getting off-track.

tl;dr: I am totally with Alistair that his bloodline is the least interesting thing about him. You go guy.

#alistair theirin #maric theirin #fiona #dragon age #meta #ie me rambling #look i'm awkward and english #i always have to preface any hint of negativity #with at least three 'i'm so sorry's #bioware critical #i... guess?#i dunno?

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saintaugustinerp · 5 years

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Congratulations Alexandra! You have been accepted for the OC role of The Crestfallen with the faceclaim Blanca Padilla. Please be sure to check out the accepted applicants checklist! Also be sure send us a link to your blog within the next twenty-four hours. Welcome to St. Augustine!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name/alias: Alexandra

Age (18+) : 21

Gender/Preferred pronouns: she/her pronouns

Timezone: EST but PST when i’m home for holidays aka Tuesday when I fly home

IN CHARACTER

Character Label: So I really like ‘The Crestfallen’ because of how it ties into Poppy’s sense of hope and then sudden disappointment but since it does have ‘fallen’ in it, I get why it would be weird given her origins with the Fallen Angel, even though they have fairly different meanings, so I’d say maybe ‘The Pariah’? It’s really up to the admins, so whichever you prefer!

Character Name: Poppy Charlotte Northcott

Poppy was the choice of her mother: a Brit, through and through, she’d allowed her husband to choose the name of their first child, but insisted upon naming their second. Her father, naturally, had played up the flower name’s symbolism with regards to soldiers, claiming it was in honour of his daughter’s maternal grandfather, a veteran of the second World War.

Charlotte was in honour of her paternal grandmother, a woman well-known in their community for being a staunch supporter of Connecticut Republicans. She died just after Poppy’s high school graduation, but she’d left a great deal of money to the girl she proclaimed loudly and often to be her favourite granddaughter.

Northcott, of course, was her father’s name, tying her to a family of rather politically-involved, staunchly Catholic Connecticuters, a line which stretched back rather far in the state’s history.

Age (18+): 20

Gender/Pronouns: cis woman, she/her

Desired Faceclaim: Blanca Padilla

Home Town: Greenwich, Connecticut

Three Positive Traits: Kind, faithful, charming

Three Negative Traits: Self-conscious (in the sense that she’s very overly aware of her actions and how she’s perceived, more so than in the sense that she’s not confident), repressed, stubborn

Major: History Major, Art Minor

Year: Second

Quote: “Is she a sinner, or is she a martyr? Some days she cannot remember the difference.”

Character blurb: For the briefest of moments, she is radiant. Clad in a perfectly fitting white sundress, dark hair escaping a bun in the softest tendrils, framing her face as if they’d been styled to do so, she steps off the train and onto the bustling platform. Her footsteps are almost instinctive, with little uncertainty as to their goal, and it is instead her eyes which hold reservations. As she walks, whispers follow her, not overtly, but as she passes, students cluster together, murmuring words you cannot hear — though you’re certain she can. As she draws nearer, making eye contact with what is certainly a familiar face, you can see a spark of hope grow, and then die out, in her expression. Her shoulders sink, almost imperceptibly, and as she draws close enough for you to see the exhaustion on her face, you understand: this is less of a homecoming, more of an ordeal.

Developed Head Canons:

family and youth — Poppy was born to Bridget Alston-Northcott, British socialite turned supportive housewife, and Phillip Northcott, former lawyer, current politician. She was not their first child: Eleanor, born ten years earlier, was a wild-child even at 10, but she adored her little sister, admiring her little fists as they waved in the air. Both girls were raised by their mother, taught to be polite, elegant, and quiet, always subservient to their father, and in the future, their husband. While Poppy, always the softer, gentler of the two sisters, did well in this domain, Eleanor was less of a fan, and it was rather unsurprising when, after a series of expulsions from boarding schools throughout the world, she ran away at age 17, choosing to live with Bridget’s mother, her grandmother, rather than fulfill her parents’ expectations. Poppy grew up with little knowledge of this, having only the vaguest childhood memories of her sister. She was always a perfect child, good at her schoolwork, obedient to her parents, and as her father transitioned from mayor to senator, she was always on display, a doe-eyed, polite little girl who learned how to smile and shake hands, attending church ever Sunday, and winning hearts for herself just as much as they were for her father. She never witnessed any hints of her mother’s frustration, nor any sign of her father’s occasional infidelity, and grew into a young adult that was as much a trophy as she was a daughter. Her parents were firm about their beliefs in theory more so than in action, and so Poppy adopted them, about the sanctity of marriage, about children and the responsibilities of women. From her mother, she learned always to present the perfect image, to stay skinny, to keep her teeth white, to exit cars in ways that prevent wardrobe malfunctions… Her image was everything, and she learned to protect it. Though her views changed a little, particularly in high school, she never questioned her parents openly, reserving physical intimacy for men, and only those she believed she would marry. Though she rebelled against their strict demands in the smallest of ways, attending parties and having fun as any teen would, she was careful to never go too far, never do anything overly wild or illegal, and always showing a smiling face to the world.

(tw: mentions of miscarriage and addiction-shaming in the next two headcanons)

the destruction of her reputation — First was her decision to go to a party in town, not something she ever would have done before she’d witnessed her boyfriend kissing another, but then, perhaps she was owed a little leeway for impulsive decisions, after everything. (It wasn’t like one act of rebellion could have any real lasting consequences…) It surprised her, if she was honest — St. Augustine students had a tendency to look down on the town’s resident youth for their provincialism, but really, they weren’t all bad. Difficult to understand, especially with her rudimentary grasp of Swiss German, and with abysmal taste in alcohol, but what they truly were was different, which was precisely what she needed. No reminders of him, nor of whoever he’d been kissing — god how it shattered her, that he’d cheat on her with someone else — and when she thought of either, the solution was another shot. It’s how she met him, on one of these nights, a scruffy blond, too-tall and awkward as anything, but the way he smiled at her made her feel as though the sun had emerged on a bitter winter day. And the way he touched her, well, it was magical and beautiful, and they both knew it wouldn’t last, but it didn’t matter.

Then was: forgetting to take her birth control a few days in a row, and then losing it in the chaos of a particularly paper-filled week, and then not replacing it — a recipe for disaster, under any circumstances. But that’s when they fell apart, Poppy and this local boy, and so it didn’t matter if she was on the pill or not, because she wasn’t sexually active and so what would be the point? Four months pass, and maybe she gained a little weight, but without her mother there to constantly criticize her body, with studies and internships and her missing classmate and her cheating ex to consider, it was easy to ignore, really, easy to lose herself in the routine of wine and cheese on Sundays and late-night study sessions and everything in between. Maybe she felt ill more than she ever usually did, maybe she had trouble sleeping, developing dark circles under her eyes that never seemed to truly go away, but that was just stress, right?

And lastly, well. It’s May, they have found Frederick’s body, finals are well underway, and so when Poppy began acting oddly during a morning exam, hands shaking and face pale, school gossip acknowledged it, but only just. Trembling, in pain, but incredibly conscious of the room full of her classmates, she finished the exam before going to the infirmary. She’d intended only to find the problem, take some pain medication, and return to her studies, but the nurse, recognizing the pain and bleeding and eager to rule out every possible cause, gave Poppy a pregnancy test, which came out positive. Confused and insistent that she wasn’t pregnant, that she couldn’t be, even in the face of the nurse’s certainty that it was a miscarriage, she simply took the strong pain medication that she was given, and returned to her room. There she lay, curled on her comforter, pale and sweating and terrified, ignoring all of her roommate’s concerns in favour of staring blankly at the ceiling of their room. All too soon it was the evening, and the candlelight vigil for their deceased classmate. Naturally she attended — even ill, with the possibility of something she refused to belief floating around in her mind, there was little question of missing it, and inviting the questions that would draw. In such a small school, Poppy was ever conscious about the way whispers spread, the way any little thing could draw attention, and in these moments she thought of her parents’ teachings on the importance of public appearance.

It would have almost been magical if it hadn’t been so sad, the woods filled with little sparks of light, rows of students illuminated with candles, tears in the eyes of so many, and perhaps flickers of guilt, or shame, in others — though there was little chance of Poppy even noticing any of it. It was as much as she could do to hold a candle, almost swaying, face tight. It was all she could do to keep from passing out, to hold on to consciousness in the face of the dizziness from missing lunch and dinner, and from the medication, and from the stress that threatened to overwhelm her. Chest tight, darkness all around her, and unable to even comprehend any of the words of grief being murmured, someone bumped into her, and that was it. She grabbed the arm of the friend nearest her and explained that she had to leave, that she didn’t give a fuck what it looked like. But her words were far too loud in the moment of silence, voice somehow strong despite the way the world seemed to spin, and when all eyes were drawn to her, Poppy realized she’d made a mistake, and threw up before fainting.

The hospital said, first, allergic reaction to the pain medication, and then, even worse:miscarriage — she’d lost the chance at a child she’d never even known she had, and not even the doctors could tell her why. The alcohol, maybe? The smoking she’d started only to keep from feeling ill in the morning? No matter how many times Poppy pleaded that she hadn’t known, that she hadn’t wanted this to happen, the result was the same: this could have been a child, this could have been… something, and now it wasn’t. Not a soul at Saint Augustine knew, beyond the nurse, and all they’d seen was a dizzy mess of a girl, being sick at a vigil and saying she didn’t give a fuck: it was a catastrophe. And with her stay at the hospital preventing her from returning to school before the end of the year, there was little chance of her preventing the gossip that made its way throughout her classmates. She was branded an addict, a trashy, tragic person who couldn’t even go to a vigil without getting high or being drunk (the rumours varied on substance, but were consistent with their condemnation of her actions). Poppy was pathetic, a joke, and as the hours passed, her reputation as the beautiful, untouchable girl was destroyed. Even her parents heard, kept from the true knowledge of what had truly happened by the privacy she was awarded as an adult, and so rather than return to their home in Connecticut, she was simply shipped off to her grandmother in London, ostensibly to detox before they would do so much as speak to her. Alienated by her family, condemned by her friends, and terrified to even admit to herself that she’d been pregnant, there was little Poppy could do to dispel the gossip, or to defend her actions, and so she, heart-sick and lonely, could do nothing but watch.

the aftermath — Unable to bring herself to tell her parents what had happened: that she’d had sex before marriage, that her wild actions with alcohol and cigarettes had caused her to miscarry a child, that she’d sinned, and sinned to such a horrific extent, she went willingly to London, withdrawn and silent in the face of their fury. Not only had she disgraced herself, she’d damaged their family name; more than one of Saint Augustine’s students had political or media connections, and in-school gossip soon made its way out into the world. Perhaps the seeming addiction of the daughter of a gubernatorial candidate was minimal in the face of a world filled with news, but in their Connecticut community, it was a scandal, and like her sister before her, Poppy was a thing she’d never before been: a disappointment. The implication, though neither of her parents ever explicitly said it, was that if she improved, if she took the summer and made better choices than those she’d made, it was possible for her to return to their family at the next Christmas. If not, well. Her parents would accept the damage done, and she would never see them again, though they’d naturally pay for the remainder of her university. After graduating, her disappearance from their family could be explained away as simply a busy, successful career, and so their image of a perfect family would be repaired, if only a little. There was zero acknowledgement of the possibility of her not returning to Saint Augustine, and distraught as she was, Poppy understood only that if she could not get her addiction under control, she must at least keep it secret: appearance must be everything, as usual.

Her grandmother, a rather severe British woman who disapproved of all of her daughter’s choices, from her parenting to her choice in husband, was also surprisingly more liberal in view than her daughter. She brought in a therapist to talk to Poppy, and though Poppy refused to talk to him, she faced no criticism from her grandmother, only love. She could sense her granddaughter had suffered, though from what (beyond, of course, terrible parental guidance) she was unsure; she knew, though, that Poppy needed love. And so she immediately facilitated a reunion between Poppy and Eleanor, the older sister, thefirst disappointment to the Northcott family. Her older sister was now an openly lesbian artist, her sexuality being the reason for her departure from the intensely Catholic family, and she was rather popular for her sculptures in France. She was also, unsurprisingly, far more accepting of everything Poppy had done. Though she spent the summer with both her grandmother and sister, who were incredibly supportive throughout the ongoing ordeal of gossip and familial expulsion, Poppy still struggled with all that had happened, and it was only towards the end that she admitted she was not an addict, but she was a child-killer. Even this, to her surprise, was met with nothing but love, with both reacting only with tears and hugs. She had done nothing wrong, they told her, only made mistakes that, though they had serious consequences, showed little cruelty or negative character or sin on her part. This, though, Poppy was unable to accept. She had done wrong, and so she was suffering for it.

At the only Saint Augustine’s party she attended during the summer, thrown by a fellow student, for all of the school’s finest who found themselves in the United Kingdom, she was asked about the her addiction, a question to which she responded with a resounding slap, to be documented on video on the private instagram accounts of other attendees, and one which also made the rounds of her classmates, essentially confirming the gossip: that this girl, once so perfect and polite in every action and word, had fallen, and it was undoubtedly a fascinating thing. Though she strove to ignore the gossip, it was difficult, and she dreaded her return to school nonetheless. A letter from her mother, explaining the love she and her father had for Poppy and the way their decision was for the best, only served to confuse her, and make the entire situation even more difficult. Even confession did little to quell her nerves: the priest advised her that she should tell the truth about her sins, and never commit them again, did little but add another conflicting idea to the many in her mind. She was unable to reconcile all these things, unable to decide if the truth, shameful as it was for her and her family, though on occasion, when her hope was the strongest, she wondered if perhaps at school things would go back to normal, if upon seeing her all her friends would return, if her parents would welcome her back to their Connecticut home with open arms. Other nights, she wondered if it would be better to give it all up, to live with her sister, to embrace everything about herself she’d ever denied and hid in order to follow by the rules of her parents. (And with that came the question of her attraction to those who weren’t men: just an added aspect of stress upon everything else, and one that Poppy refused to even consider in light of the already high list of her sins.) Even her return to school brought no reality, and no clarity, and Poppy is still torn between these two variations on a theme, these two potential realities.

her room — When Poppy ‘was ill’, as the school described it, at the end of her sophomore year, she didn’t return to her dorm room and pack up her things for her return home and subsequent move to a single room. An Augustine worker, along with her roommate, more than a little eager to be rid of Poppy’s things, did so instead, sending boxes of clothes with her, but with all room decor packed away for her return. This meant that when she did return, newly friendless and alone, what she found in her new room was boxes of photos. Polaroids, still with blu-tack on their backs, of her with people who now whisper to others when they see her, smirking in amusement. It cuts like a knife, but something in her cannot bear to throw the boxes out. Rather than deal with walls now bare of friends and parents, she has walls covered in art — with prints of Monet’s lilies or abstract tapestries on every wall. One remaining fragment of her life is a pair of photos from the summer, one of her and her sister, as taken by their grandmother, and the other a selfie of the three of them. Her bedding is all soft blues and whites, her bed is stacked high with pillows, and it always smells of vanilla. It truly is her sanctuary, where there is no-one to gossip about her, and there are no expectations but her own.

Plot Ideas:

Specific connection ideas:

a note: I know this sounds a little god-mod-y, but Kayla (Damien’s player) and I are actually friends + we planned this all out, so it’s def okay with them!

Misc:

For her Minor in Art, Poppy is focusing on photography, and while she does prefer still life and landscape photography, she does the occasional portrait. She’s recognizable for having a camera in hand, and this could either lead to a bond with someone else who enjoys photography, or perhaps her photographing someone who very much likes having their picture taken. (I speak from experience when I say it’s difficult at the best of times to get friends to pose for photos, and considering the state of most of Poppy’s friendships, I don’t doubt that she’d take literally anyone’s photo if they were willing to pose for her)

Sure, Poppy is relatively innocent and sweet, but her hopes as they pertained to her first relationship weren’t misplaced. They spent so much time together, and for her to lose her virginity to him, with the thought that they’d get married, wasn’t entirely ridiculous. Still, he did cheat, and it did break her heart, though that was less painful than everything that followed. I’m open to connections here both with her ex or with the person her ex cheated on her with! Poppy doesn’t hate easily, but I do think she’d hate both of them, and it’d be easy on either of their part to just dismiss her, given her overall image. I envision her ex as having been exactly what her parents would have wished for her: the perfect potential husband, in essence, but that doesn’t mean that his image can’t have been a facade of sorts. As for whoever he cheated on her with, I’d be open to really any genders, any personalities, and really any motivations for doing it! They don’t even have to have known that he was in a relationship. Maybe he betrayed them just as much as he betrayed Poppy, who knows!

Poppy is more than a little uncertain about religion right now, and really she could go either way: returning to her Catholic roots with full strength or going full atheist or agnostic. I could definitely see her having interesting late night conversations or debates about religion with someone else with strong beliefs one way or another, and that then influencing her actions.

Writing Sample:

Tendrils of smoke swirled around her hair as she breathed out, the last of the summer sun’s warmth tempered by the cold breeze off the mountain, making her long for a jacket. Taking another drag from her cigarette, Poppy leaned against the bell tower, posture casual, with shadows under her eyes betraying her late night. She’d been unable to sleep, first too restless to lie down properly, and then endlessly disturbed by a few girls in a nearby room. Not that they’d been loud — their voices had been soft, and Poppy was certain they hadn’t bothered anyone else, but their disruption of her had been more related to their companionship than anything else. She missed all of what they had, that close friendship, late night conversations about anything and everything, and that longing had kept her away, contemplating what she’d once had. At the sound of rustling in the long grass at the base of the tower, she crouched, hand outstretched and dark eyes curious. It rustled again, and Poppy, realizing she knew very little about Switzerland’s wildlife, pulled her hand back. A third rustle, and the head of what was very obviously a fluffy tabby emerged, looking just as curious about her as she was about it. “Meow?”It asked her, and she almost laughed aloud at her caution, dropping her cigarette on the ground and grinding it out with her heel.

“Hey, little buddy. You’re not going to nibble on my fingers, are you?” With little care for her clothes, she plopped down on the grass, all else forgotten in this adorable scene. The cat walked up to her, sniffing her hand with an aura of uncertainty before climbing into her lap. “Are you lost? There’s no way you live in the wild, and we’re not allowed pets…” Poppy, stroking it gently, felt for a collar, only to find nothing. It began to purr, and she smiled, kissing it on the head. They sat like that for a while, the girl and the cat, and Poppy found herself lost in a moment of perfection. The cat didn’t care who she was, it only cared that she was warm and kind, and very good at petting it. Cozy and delighted, it rolled onto its back, batting a lazy paw at her long dark hair, and making her giggle. “Why can’t I keep you? I wish I could.” She kissed it once more, and then became aware of an audience: a pair of sophomores she vaguely recognized, looking at her and whispering to each other. In that moment, Poppy felt something within her crumble, and she felt almost like crying. With a deep swallow, she straightened her back, making eye contact with them and raising a perfectly-arched eyebrow. Away they ran, and she sighed. The peaceful moment was officially over. Scooping up the cat — and ignoring its little mew of indignation at the disruption of its lounging — she strode in the vague direction of the cable cars. “You are going in my backpack, and then we’re going to find that animal shelter so you can have a home away from terrible, awful people, okay?” Her voice was soft as she spoke to the cat, but nonetheless there was venom in it, and a little resignation. “At least — at least one of us can have that.”

#accepted

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