#and then consider why 'humans are special' is not a very good trope

[ystrike1]

Dark Castle - By faun_me (8.5/10)

This one is a rich and heavy story. Slow burn. Alot of lore. The love interest is an 8 foot tall half human rat man. Memory loss. You've seen some of these tropes before, but they're done well. The art improves steadily as well, and the creature design is well above average. No generic dragons here

Our nameless heroine has no memories. She knows so little that her common sense is gone. She isn't afraid of demons. She has been dragged into the demon realm for unknown reasons. She's being stalked by a friend that looks human, and his demon master desires her. Luckily, she is captured by another influential demon.

At first he seems very nice. He doesn't welcome the stranger warmly, but he doesn't throw her to the wolves. She would die for sure out in the open. The ruler of this castle, Nemalla, doesn't know she's someone else's prey. He really becomes her protector by accident. He even investigates the cloud in her memories, out of pity. It's....a refreshingly normal reaction. Our confused heroine doesn't get special treatment right away, BUT the male leads personality gets established. He's not unreasonable, for a demon.

His kindness is not too good to be true. We see his life outside of his conversations with our protagonist. He's a feared and fearsome leader that doles out capital, cannibalistic punishment with his own hands. He is weighed down by loneliness, because he never expected to rise so high. He was trying to survive, but success left him alone with many enemies.

He is never overtly awful to her, even though his daily life demands a manly/harsh attitude.

The lore is a ton of fun.

Our heroine is ugly. Her features are hideous. She has no tail. No soft fur. Her white skin is gross and unseemly. She does not elegantly blend into the dark, the way a sultry demoness would.

We get hints.

Nemalla is attracted to her, even though her looks are repulsive to any demon.

It starts out very innocently. Nemalla likes her company. He's used to fear and hate, but having a friend is a precious new experience. It soothes his mind. When he shoos our protagonist away to focus on work he regrets it. He muses over how to invite her back over for...him.

He doesn't just want her to regain her memories.

He wants to hang out.

Our protagonist must regain her memories on her own. Nemalla can only help her so much. That's the rule binding her amnesia curse together.

She remembers her name when he takes her to his gorgeous personal garden, to impress her.

Simona.

He tells her to stop.

Names are power in the demon realm, but she gives it to him.

He does the unthinkable.

He shares his name with her too.

He explains the gravity of their exchange.

Knowing a name means you can influence that being, in this particular realm.

Nemalla knows many names, because he is powerful.

Simona has nothing, and she has foolishly given her name away.

He considers...showing her. Punishing her to give her a reason to think. To be less innocent, but he doesn't do it because of his perverse attraction and his loneliness.

Nemalla was imprisoned before. He was at the bottom, with less than nothing. There's an extremely creepy scene. It kind of comes out of nowhere, and it's a red flag. It is why I'm reviewing this series.

Nemalla sees himself covered in blood, back in his chains.

Simona appears, glowing with ethereal light.

He looks at her like she is his only savior, and the illusion snaps away.

Nemalla isn't dreaming.

He had that visceral vision as soon as she touched his hand.

Simona has a friend named Alter.

He kisses her while she's asleep.

He grabs her while he's wearing a mask, and he torments her. He tells her nothing. He lusts over her in the shadows, and his master wants her too. I don't care if he's hot he made a terrible first impression, and the way he treats Simona screams "annoying yandere". You know what I mean. The kind of persistent guy that exists to be slapped around by the real male love interest. He's not that intimidating.

Hopefully his master will be better.

Boom.

Lore drop.

Nemalla was born a prince. The son of a queen. That queen...became lovers with a demon outside of her marriage. The bastard prince was eventually thrown in the dungeon, with his mother.

She died there next to him.

It's implied that she loved her half demon son, and he loved her, and that makes their story even sadder.

It also explains why Nemalla is attracted to Simona neatly. (He likes demons too)

It's nice that it's clear he likes HER, not just her body.

The master who wants her has not revealed himself yet, but I have no doubt. I have total faith in Nemalla. He is absolutely going to tear the other men after her into shredded demon beef.

(Important note: Nemalla can probably change shape. His real body most likely is the rat demon body, but I do think he'll try to seduce Simona with a hot humanoid form at some point. He's already done for. He thinks about her whenever they're apart.)

#yandere #male yandere #yandere male #yandere boy #recommendations #recs #rec #recommended #webtoon #Dark Castle

[ineffable-endearments]

The Crow Road and Good Omens: Further-Out Thoughts

Here are a few more thoughts; they're more interpretive yet than the ones in my original post about The Crow Road.

I see some similarities between Prentice and both Aziraphale and Crowley.

Prentice feels this need to believe there's something beyond this life, in large part because this life can be ended so quickly and so easily, and it isn't fair. Throughout the novel, he is never very interested in organized religion; his interest in spirituality is truly about the feeling that there has to be a deeper meaning to existence than this one life.

Likewise, I tend to interpret Aziraphale as willing to consider that the people who make up his institution are fallible, but still stuck on the idea that Heaven is performing an essential role: someone should be up there Doing Good, or, more accurately, encouraging people to Do Good. He has reservations about the existing spiritual establishment and how reflective of truth it is, but he still has this feeling that there has to be a greater power and a greater meaning that can be given to people, himself included, because otherwise, what would be the point?

Then again, there is a nonzero amount of Crowley in Prentice, too (and I know the point is that everyone has a little of each). Prentice is a college-aged young man trying to figure himself out in a world that can be profoundly unfair, and he wants to be allowed to experiment with the idea of life after death. Considering perspectives different from one's parents is part of growing up, after all. Kenneth is determined to steer his sons toward a specific worldview, and as much as Kenneth's perspective on spirituality is supported by the narrative, his stubbornness is also ultimately the thing that gets him killed. Prentice observes his mother's hands-off approach to ideology may have ultimately been more effective.

Doesn't this sound a little familiar? Prentice wants to be allowed to question, and he isn't willing to just shrug and accept unfairness without an argument. When he can't find satisfactory answers, he also tends to drown his anxiety and depression in alcohol and other substances.

All in all, I feel we may have seen the conflict between Crowley and Aziraphale playing out in Prentice's character development; they are the angel and demon on his shoulder, as usual. But the conflict was resolved in the way that I think and hope Crowley and Aziraphale's will be on a grander scale. Prentice ended up having to surrender his philosophy, especially the life-after-death stuff, but then his deep need for a sense of meaning was satisfied much better by finding that meaning here on Earth.

There's also an interesting interaction between the two stories in relation to the afterlife. Namely, The Crow Road takes place in a universe that presumably works just like ours, while we know for sure that in Good Omens, there is an afterlife of one kind or another. We can't be sure how it works, but we've seen human characters in both Season 1 and Season 2 maintain their consciousness after death. I wonder if maybe in the world of Good Omens, human mortality is somehow being exploited by the higher-ups?

Anyway, as a result of this difference, Good Omens also has a special opportunity with the "death doesn't give life meaning - life gives itself meaning!" message. Its main characters are immortal. The book already subverts the whole "oh, being immortal sucks, everyone eventually wants to die" trope by portraying Crowley and Aziraphale's motivation to maintain their Earthly lives instead of starting Armageddon. Season 2 added depth to that, and Season 3 has an opportunity to fully flesh out why exactly life on Earth is where meaning is created even when there is no time limit, even if people don't have the inevitability of death looming over their heads.

Another thought: something a little ironic in The Crow Road is that the incident that led to Kenneth's death "should," theoretically, have made Prentice believe in higher powers, if it was really about that. It certainly convinced Hamish. However, the whole conflict between himself and his father was more about the meaning Prentice sought, so instead, it pushed Prentice toward Kenneth's ideology.

I am wondering if this points toward an event that Aziraphale "should," theoretically, take to mean that Heaven is right or all-powerful or otherwise can't possibly be defied, but which will be the very thing that convinces him the entire system is wrong.

Finally, @loverdosis brought up the great point that memory and history are also major conceptual themes in The Crow Road. In The Crow Road, memory and history give the characters their sense of identity. Prentice also mentions it as one way people can achieve a kind of continuity that doesn't infringe on the importance of life itself. And all of that meshes with Good Omens. So far, Gabriel's plot has involved a very strong focus on memory issues, and through that, we've seen that there is something going on with Crowley's memory as well, although exactly what it is - how much of his memory is missing, who took it, whether he can or wants to get it back - is uncertain. Beelzebub described Gabriel's memories as "All your...you," implying that memories are the majority of what gives Gabriel his identity. The memory wipe punishment is very much a death sentence.

After consideration, I would not be surprised to see memory make a roaring comeback as a theme in Season 3. It could even bring themes of identity and purpose with it.

#good omens #the crow road #go3 speculation #s3 speculation #go 2 spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #go s2 spoilers #good omens book club

[witchthewriter]

𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

⤷ gender neutral, ambiguous race, and any size reader. Requests are open, thank you for reading!  

ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ

SFW🌿

▪️  You had met both Bucky and Druig during a mission. 

▪️ Although you weren’t considered an Avenger, you hated the term ‘hero.’

▪️ You preferred anti-hero, if you had to put a label on it

▪️ Your powers had appeared during a freak accident, that you still didn’t like to talk, or even think about. 

▪️ But the end result; you could manipulate the natural world

▪️ Air, Earth, Water, Fire - 

▪️ It made you a formidable opponent

▪️ And the best teammate 

▪️ Although sometimes it was difficult to reign in your power. That made you really insecure... but that was before Druig & Bucky.

▪️ With their help, you were able to control your power, truly make it your own. It was a deliriously happy moment - when you were able to completely integrate you and your power

▪️ It was in those hours that Druig and Bucky seemed to take to each other, like they formed a background crush on one another

▪️ Where it was obvious that they both had a thing for you. A deep thing. 

▪️ So yes, it did start off as a love triangle, with both men having a competition to gain your favour. 

▪️ But the world is crazy and you never know what will happen next, so you said: 

  “I’m not going to choose. I either have both of you, or neither.”

▪️ And damn, that was a boss moment, because both men looked at each other and shrugged

▪️ “Together then,” Druig had said, breaking the silence 

▪️ From then on, the three of you were always grouped together. Whatever happened before you got together was never talked about. 

▪️ Your relationship was the start of your story 

▪️ Druig’s favourite thing to do is piss off Bucky, and at the very least - tease him relentlessly

▪️ Although he can’t go with the old man jokes because ... he’s older than Bucky 

▪️ You all work because Bucky is the backbone of the relationship, but can become very depressed, Druig has humour and mischief but too can become grumpy with too much outside human interaction, and you’re their hope. Their light in life. 

▪️ It really works because you’re all introverts

▪️ You’d rather be at home, reading, writing, or watching tv with the guys

▪️ And they feel the same way

▪️ Druig has seen the world, the best and worst of it

▪️ Bucky has sacrificed a lot for the world

▪️ And you have endured a lot of trauma

▪️ So you all live in your own little bubble 

▪️ Bucky is actually a pretty good cook

▪️ But Druig hates cooking - he doesn’t want to waste his time making anything too complicated 

▪️ So you and Bucky are usually in the kitchen, cooking up a storm, while Druig makes sarcastic remarks from across the room 

▪️ Oh and you have two cats, one black and one white

▪️ Their names are Sam and Magnus

▪️ Yes one is named after Sam Wilson, and when he visited your place and found out, all he did was laugh

   “You know what Buck? I’m flattered!” 

▪️ And no, Druig doesn’t use his mind-control, you and Bucky have forbidden it. 

▪️ But he can do it to assholes when you’re out and about. Especially drunk ones 

▪️ After a while, you guys would go and do vigilante stuff

▪️ Because you felt bad that awful things were happening and the police were doing nothing about it 

⭑ Relationship Tropes: 

  ✧ Asshole (Bucky) x Also An Asshole But It’s Hard To Tell Because Of Their Cute Exterior (You) x Even More Of An Asshole (Druig)

  ✧ Just a bunch of anti-heroes, bickering about when/why they should help

  ✧ This Probably Shouldn’t Work But Hey, It Actually Does

  NSFW🔞minors dni!

▪️ Druig is a sub, and he gets into that headspace quite easily. He wouldn’t normally be so easy to let others control him, but he feels safe with Bucky and yourself. 

▪️ Bucky automatically takes control; knowing what he wants and what he wants the both of you to do. 

▪️  And on special occasions, you have both men tied up, begging for you to touch them. 

▪️ Druig likes to be kissed on his chest, especially his nipples 

▪️ Bucky likes when you pull his hair and bite his earlobe 

▪️ Bucky likes to be pegged, and would most definitely take it from Druig. 

▪️ Druig isn’t a bottom though, only a sub. He likes the teasing, the edging and nearing orgasm. 

▪️ Bucky was against the sex toys at first, feeling somewhat hurt that his body alone wasn’t enough. But you both had to explain to him that that was not the reason at all

▪️ And now he’s a sex toy fiend 

▪️ He’s constantly *slyly* suggesting to go to the sex store 

▪️ Druig barely gets embarrassed, seriously, about anything. And at the beginning of the relationship, he took great pride in getting Bucky as red in the face as he could 

▪️ They both love playing with your chest, sucking on your nipples 

▪️ Oh and they both adore giving head

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes headcanon #bucky barnes x reader #bucky #bucky barnes x you #druig #druig headcanons #druig x reader #marvel #mcu #marvel headcanons #mcu headcanons #marvel fanfiction #mcu fanfiction #bucky smut #druig smut #bucky x druig #bucky x druig x reader

[cookiesupplier]

A Friend Down In Hell - Part Three

pairing: Nick Folio x ofc (Ishtar)

warnings/tropes: slow burn, pining, idiot in love, language, drinking, mentions of violence, mentions of torture, mentions of religious mythology. (potentially more to be added)

summary: Folio can't quite tell you how long he's been dead, but it doesn't matter when he has friends like his, and Ishtar. Ishtar, with whom he fell in love the moment he met her. The problem? She doesn't know it. How does he convince a demon, who is practically immortal, to date him when he's dead? How did Ellie do it so easily?

author’s note: Unbetaed.. Enjoy!

tags: @spicywhenspeaking @tearfallpixie @cncohshit @nyxthedestroyerofworlds @lyschko666 @bngurngheart @lacktoesandtoddlerants @sorrowsofsilence @collapsedglasshouses @vinyardmauro @dsireland86 @4rtificialfolio @emmmm127 @badomensls

Tag lists are open, please let me know if you'd like to be added to this story, the Hell-Verse as a whole, or Everything.

Ishtar’s night was not going as well as she would like it to, Tony was being extra vulgar. From the vile things she’d heard about them from some in the human world, you’d think being demons and vulgarities went hand in hand, but it didn’t. They were as normal as anyone else, at least she supposed it really depended on what one would consider normal. In some cases, normal was tormenting souls day in, and day out to teach them lessons that they hadn’t managed to learn during their previous life cycle. Not that she thought that was a bad thing, it was just another job here, it was a means of living in the Afterlife. Tony, though, made a habit of bringing vulgarity into their job where it didn’t need to be, she was not part of the merchandise to be sold, thank you. The fact that he was human didn’t matter, it was almost as if working in a demon-friendly bar, gave him license to be as crass as he desired to be.

Yes, her mother was associated with love and fertility, but he sometimes forgot that the woman was also very closely associated with war. This meant that when he suggested that Ishtar could use her body to sell more, she might also just have no problem beating him fucking senseless for it. They didn’t even really exchange money, the man was ridiculous. Thankfully, she liked her job too much to get fired because her manager was a pig who told her to pop extra buttons on her shirt and expose her cleavage a bit more.

She was drying off a few freshly washed glasses when Folio came up to the bar, having seen him walk in, she brightened as she saw that cute smile approach.

“Well, hello there, Sunshine. Fancy seeing you tonight, it's been a while.”

Setting the glass down, winking to him as Folio grinned, she used the nickname, because she did her best to try and keep her distance from her customers and not using their actual names was one of the ways she did that. Nicknames she recycled over and over were a given, even if Folio was something special, Sunshine was just for him, but there was a hope that he hadn’t picked up on that, or anyone else. As yet, no one had said anything.

Folio beamed when Ishtar came to him, thankful he didn’t have to wait long for her, had he timed it to get to the bar so she could serve him, ah, hell yeah, Tony was a butt face, the dude was just an ass-hat that liked to leer at girls and made Folio want to ask Ellie to borrow her bat sometimes, but, he didn’t, because being banned from the bar would mean not coming back to see Ishtar. Seeing the way her face lit up after how frustrated she looked moments ago, made it all the better right now,

“Everything has been a bit up in the air, with Ellie officially joining the dead-as-a-door nail squad and all.”

Folio’s wry smile came then, he knew his sense of humour wasn’t the kind most agreed with, but come on, he was dead, if he couldn’t make fun of it, what good was it? Did he really have to mope about all the time because he was dead? He didn’t feel dead, why did he have to be sad about it? He wanted to live every day to its fullest, even here, in hell! Thankfully, Ishtar had never been one of those who gave him flack whenever he made a joke about it, instead she just laughed and shook his head at him.

“Well, I’m glad she didn’t take all your heads off, it’s good to see you guys are back after all, who else is going to give the demons a run for their money at the shot challenges.”

Ishtar winked at Folio with that, he was kind of notorious for doing that to Sebastian after so many years, not that he’d ever won, but he kept trying. She’d give him that, he was beyond determined at the very least. It was admirable. It was adorable. Even when he was passed out drooling on the floor, it shouldn’t be, but it was. Ishtar knew she should be more firm about not serving him as many shots, but when he smiled at her, how could she say no?

Folio couldn’t help but chuckle.

“You bet I’ll be back for those shots later, but for now, our starter round please.”

She smiled brightly and Folio grinned, the soft gleam of Ishtar’s amethyst eyes as she turned to fill his order, she was so beautiful, he’d never met anyone more captivating. Anyone who assumed that she was nothing but a pretty face and a bartender didn’t see beyond the demoness that stood beyond the bar pouring drinks. Folio saw more. Once she had finished their drinks, she set them in front of him, he smiled at her,

“Thanks.”

Folio carried the tray of drinks back toward their table and found the guys chatting among themselves, Ellie had a knowing smile on her face,

“So, that's the girlfriend.”

He rolled his eyes as he glared at Jolly, knowing he was the one who was most likely to give him away. After all, he was the one who was always trying to give him advice about how he could actually do something about what he wanted, which was to actually date Ishtar instead of just sitting and flirting with her. He’d never get it.

Ellie just laughed,

“Oh don’t look at Jolly, he didn’t say a damn thing, you're the one that was standing at the bar with hearts in your eyes Folio, it was easy to put two and two together.”

Right, now that she’d been given hints, that there was a girl on the scene that he liked, and why not Ishtar..

“I should have seen it the first time we came here.. I remember her, seeing you flirting with her that day.. Remembering how gorgeous she was.. Damn.. wait..”

Ellie looked from Folio to the bar, and then back, and he was quick to drink some more of his bar as he could hear the other guys start to laugh around him while Ellie was looking at him with deeper scrutiny.

“How long, Folio?”

Swallowing down the gulp of his beer, pretending like he hadn’t heard the question,

“What?”

“How long?”

“What do you mean? How long what?”

Oh, he was happy to play dumb as long as he needed to, he really didn’t want to answer this question. All the guys knew the answer, and they were laughing at him. They all thought he was an idiot, Ellie would think he was an idiot, but it wasn’t like he had a time frame okay, he had forever, and he was dead alright. They weren’t mortal or anything… he had plenty of time, he was fine!

“How long, Folio?”

Oh, fine, he’d tell her,

“Fine fine fine, pretty much since I met her after I got out of punishment…”

She looked at him with raised eyebrows as if to say, how long ago was that…

“It doesn’t matter, a few years, I have my reasons, but it's going to work, she’d got to ask me out okay, I am not going to be one of those creeps that give the bartender my phone number.. I used to be the bartender, okay.. You know what we called those people? Barflies, and we just shooed them away, I refuse to be nothing but a barfly! One day, she’s going to ask me out. One day.”

There, there, he said it. Downing the rest of his beer,

“Now, Noah, since you want to laugh at me, I suppose you’re all good for some shots?”

Folio grinned wide and Ellie groaned,

“Folio, you promised!”

Nope, no he had not, she just asked if they could skip the challenges, and he’d pointedly not answered, maybe letting her think he agreed when he had no intention, the shot challenges were the best way for him to get more time with Ishtar for him… so, here they went.

Ishtar watched as Folio and Sebastian were at the bar, downing the shots. One after the other. She might have added some extra kick to some of Sebastian’s shots, half to help Sunshine, and half to spite Tony. The likes of Noah Sebastian distinctly getting tipsy drunk over a few shots, and he knew she was giving him the extra strong stuff, the good drinks, and he was pissed, she could tell, but he couldn’t do anything about it because technically, she wasn’t doing anything wrong. Tony however like to stretch the booze further by giving the crappy stuff, which she would never understand considering they weren’t charging money for it anyway. They looked after each other in here, and Tony, he only looked after himself, so to her it was no wonder he was he had been in the job he was doing twice as long as anyone else before him. She felt no guilt in throwing him under the bus at that moment, he was a horrible manager of the bar, horrible.

Smiling, she giggled as she poured another round of shots for the pair at the bar, making sure the demon’s shots were suitable for him, watching as he was swaying on his feet. Her lips pressed together with a slight smirk. Go on Sebastian, enjoy getting, how did some of the humans come through put it, drunk as a skunk? She did not envy that poor human Ellie, putting up with that giant demon hung over and all that. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. He was probably one that was a baby about it, and would magic it away.

As it was, Ishtar, slid the shot to Folio now, whose smile had turned, for lack of the better word, fuzzy as he looked at her. His eyes were still so bright, blinking to her as if he stars in his eyes,

“Oh Ishhy, thanksshh you.”

She giggled, shaking her head at him, he always got like this during the shot challenges, Ishhy, Ishtar shut down anyone else that dared try to call her that. When Tony had laughed and called her that after the first night that Folio had, in return, she’d flipped him off and told him where to go shove it. He had never much liked that she hadn’t been very receptive to his advances, but the fact that she’d not rebuffed Folio just as intensely as she did everyone else, seemed to rub him the wrong way, but she didn’t care what he thought. Tony was inept at best.

“You’re welcome, Sunshine, drink up, tonight is your night, I got a feeling.”

It wasn’t his night sadly, but it also wasn’t Sebastian’s night, they called the challenge before they both passed out on the floor, but what followed after the challenge well, drunk people didn’t make the smartest choices, and the girls that always followed Sebastian around. One of them made the mistake of trying to drunkenly flirt with him.

In front of his girlfriend.

Scratch that, they didn’t just try to hit on him, it was so much worse than that.

Jolly had just agreed to take Folio back to his apartment because Ellie was going to need help getting Noah home this time. He didn’t always get this drunk, Ishtar might have felt bad for that, but technically as she saw it she’d just evened the odds on Folio’s behalf.

Before Ellie, Noah might have laughed off how drunk he was, he might have just stumbled out with his arm slung around Nicholas’ shoulder to head home. There was even a time, though that changed a few years back when Noah would be walking out with any number of random women. Ishtar hadn’t been working here long when he was doing that, but apparently, those groupies of his had been a popular choice. Always hanging on his every word, so easily enamoured with him… and tonight it seemed one of them hadn’t forgotten, or was willing to give up on trying again.

Before they left, Ellie went off to the bathroom, and Nicholas was sitting with Noah, making sure he didn’t fall flat on his face mind you, when the girl walked her way over to him, the purpose in her step was obvious. Ishtar from the bar couldn’t hear what was being said, but she could tell from Nicholas look of disgust, reluctantly stepping back, crossing his arms with a frown, and Noah’s drunken stumped look of confusion, that plainly said, what-the-fuck-is-this-bitch-doing with the way her ruby nail claws trailed along his shoulders down his tattoo exposed arm from his tank top. He said something to her, and Ishtar’s eyes narrowed as she dried the glass from behind the bar when the girl just giggled, what was she playing at, she could see from here the way he wasn’t having what she was putting down. He was drunk though, and he looked it, so his movements were sluggish at best.. So, as Ellie was coming out of the bathroom, just in time to see the stupid little demon girl leaning into her boyfriend as he tried to push her away from him, Nicholas arguing with her about being too close, and Ellie saw just in time to shriek across the bar as she went to rush over.

Chaos erupted.

Divider by @saradika-graphics

#nick folio #nick folio x ofc #original female character #original character #demons #bad omens #fanfiction #bad omens fanfic #folio #hell au #hell verse #fic: a friend down in hell #bad omens cult #bad omens band #bad omens fanfiction #bad omens fic #nick folio fanfiction #nick folio fanfic #joakim jolly karlsson #noah sebastian #nicholas ruffilo

[juliettedunn]

Gus Porter: An Appreciation and Analysis

I loved Gus when he seemed to be a fairly simple comic relief character, but very quickly he shows himself to be more than that. He may not get as much screen time as the main characters, but he does have two episodes where he is a main focus, and he reveals a lot of depth.

Gus has the common trope of a nonhuman obsessed with human culture and thinking of humans as interesting animals to study.

His obsession with humans is very intense: he founded a human appreciation society, he collects human artifacts, dreams of traveling to the human realm, and memorizes as much information about humans as possible (even though most of it is incorrect). If it wasn’t obvious, humans are clearly his special interest.

Gus is very poor at picking up on other people’s manipulations. In Through the Looking Glass Ruins, he is instantly trusting of Bria and fails to notice several warning signs that she has less than pure intentions.

He is also incredibly eager to be accepted into the group. The whole time, he is basically completely blinded by excitement at getting to hang out with “cool” kids. We learn more about where this stems from in the second Gus-centric episode (and one of my personal favorites), Labyrinth Runners.

In a flashback, Gus doesn’t notice a kid is exploiting him until he happens to overhear the kid admit it. He fully believes the kid genuinely wants to be his friend, just like he does later in his life with Bria.

Both times, he takes what people say at face value, the thought not crossing his mind that they could have ulterior motives.

One of his lines in Labyrinth Runners really struck me. “Everyone thinks I’m the smart one. So why do I act so dumb?”

Gus is what is considered a gifted kid; he’s two years younger than the rest of the Hexsquad because he skipped grades.

And the way he is portrayed in the show is very true to the typical gifted kid experience.

Gus is praised for being smart. He’s been bumped up grade levels, he’s considered a prodigy, he very clearly does amazing on tests. So like all gifted kids, he takes that on as part of his identity.

But someone can’t be smart at all things. And Gus is poor at reading other people. So despite being academically adept, he misses social cues, cues which are very obvious to everyone else.

He doesn’t notice when other kids are pretending to be his friend only to exploit him. That’s something that a lot of autistic people have a problem with.

And in Labyrinth Runners, he fails to recognize Willow, his best friend of many years, as an illusion, whereas Hunter does, despite only having met her once. She was definitely acting out of character, but in a way that would require an understanding of her mannerisms, something Gus doesn’t have a good instinctual grasp on.

His attempts at cheering people up aren’t always the best either. Though Luz did end up getting admitted to Hexside, he prepared for her to fail, and got consulting messages ready. This took the form of giant blue letters saying “Better luck next time.” Obviously, these words are very blunt and come across as quite cold. It is not something that would have made her feel better, but Gus clearly thought that it would, further showing that he doesn’t quite understand how best to comfort someone.

Same with Willow, where he sends her a bunch of illusions to console her and just ends up making the situation worse, unable to figure out the right ways to comfort someone in need, even though he has a huge heart and really wants to be there for his friends.

He’s the best at being there for Hunter. He teaches him the breathing technique, and gets him involved in the Cosmic Frontier fandom. Hunter is also bad at reading social cues and also is autistic I believe, though that’s a whole other discussion. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that’s who Gus is best at comforting, someone who is also rather unconventional with emotional issues.

Gus’s failure to see through people trying to manipulate him, and his failure at knowing how to comfort his friends, leads him to believe he is “dumb,” which greatly hurts his self esteem.

Notice, also, that Gus is always trying to entertain his friends. He’s funny, and he knows this and is actively trying to be. Why? Because if he isn’t smart, at least he is funny. He wants to be liked, wants to be seen as cool. And he’s just starting to enter the age where most gifted kids start to falter, where the lack of studying abilities really starts to catch up.

When I hit that stage, I definitely also tried to be “the funny one.” Autistic people are almost inherently funny to neurotypicals, and if people aren’t praising you and admiring you for being smart, at least they’ll like you if you’re funny.

If he’s not fulfilling his “value” as either the child prodigy or the comic relief, then what is his purpose? Such is the crisis many gifted kids go through when they go from being far ahead of their peers, praised as geniuses, to still being above average but certainly not the absolute one in a million wonder that many people told them they were.

Now for another amazing part of Gus - he has shut downs. When he gets overwhelmed, he hits a breaking point and curls up, completely unable to function any longer. Because his magic is so powerful, it impacts his surroundings too. In Labyrinth Runners, he is so overwhelmed he casts a spell over the entire school.

Shut downs and panic attacks feel like this. Of course, they don’t involve real magic like in the show, but the way the school appears as a trippy, foreign landscape they have to navigate is true to how it feels to be overwhelmed as an autistic person. Even though there is no illusion magic, the familiar quickly becomes foreign, and places I’ve been a hundred times before feel wrong.

Willow teaches him a breathing method, and I actually use that breathing method too. I don’t know if it inherently works or if it’s because it’s connected to The Owl House, which is my comfort show, but I actually move through panic attacks and disassociation episodes much faster ever since I started using that technique.

Finally, Gus stims! You can’t tell me that him grabbing the bubble wrap, knocking over items due to lack of spatial awareness, happily shouting “Look at all this human stuff!” and then intently focusing on popping all the bubbles until it was over was not the most autistic thing you’ve ever seen.

Gus is a great portrayal of an autistic gifted kid heading into burn out, academically intelligent but far too trusting, believing everyone acts at face value, and falling very easily into exploitation because of it. Adopting the identity of child prodigy and witty entertainer, and taking a serious blow to his self esteem when he can’t live up to those ideals.

Happily, he now he has real friends, most of whom are neurodivergent like him! As I said before, the almost instant understanding and bond he and Hunter have is largely a result of them both being autistic; they read each other very well and instinctually know how to help each other. I love their relationship so much.

This was a lot longer than I anticipated, but I just had a lot to say about him. He’s getting a lot more appreciation form the fandom recently, but he still is fairly underrated as a character. I love him so much even though I don’t talk about him as much as I talk about other characters, and I do wish he would get confirmed as autistic on screen (though the most I can ever hope for is Luz getting confined to have ADHD, and even that I really doubt). Still, I know he is autistic, and he is amazing.

#gus porter #the owl house #toh #gus toh #gus the owl house #autistic #actually autistic #the owl house gus #julietteanalyzes

[niuniente]

It's very refreshing how you depict positive masculinity in your work. The men are imo very masculine looking, yet somehow warm (like Grimm, Alrick and Furmann). I feel like men have been shown as clownish characters like Homer Simpson, as Hypermasculine Action-Dads from 80's films, or as nerdy underdogs in all sorts of media. Nothing really wrong with those tropes ofc, but they just feel something that I have seen time and time again.

I always speak very warmly about Ken Kitano from Sun-Ken Rock when we speak about the positive masculinity in media and why it's also present in my comic(s).

We do have some positive masculinity appearing in men a bit here and there at times, like you mentioned, but Ken is GENUINELY kind 24/7. Like DHD, Ken leads the biggest mafia in South-Korea and has absolutely no limitations (so he's equal to Kahamet). He could do ANYTHING he ever wants without consequences - but he always chooses to be kind and gentle and generous. His enemies Ken beats up are genuinely bad guys, like music industry's men abusing young women or human traffickers forcing women to sex slavery. Not once does Ken use his resources for bad or selfish intentions.

Another wonderful positive masculinity series for men in Sláine, a British comic from the 80's and still running. It's literally a feminist barbarian comic! Sláine has some bad traits in some stories, but like 90% of the time he's in positive vibe. Like Ken, he respects women, uses his strength and resources as a tribe leader for good, and also serves the old Goddess that has been replaced by men by their male Gods. He's like "Take that bullshit away! I follow the Goddess only!"

Nemesis from Nemesis The Warlock gets partly on this list because at the middle of the series the author clearly ran out of ideas and decided to turn Nemesis into a selfish brick from a positive masculine hero... Before that, Nemesis was very kind and gentle.

Then there's DIO band's mascot Murray who has a little bit of lore of him. He is so, so sweet and a huge positive masculine role model! Murray is most kind, gentle and sensitive. He looks after children and oppressed people, and is conscious for people finding him scary, which makes Murray sad. Murray is definitely one of those guys you get the best genuine hugs from.

Then, of course, I have to give a small special mention to Guzma, who is very kind and considering when you scratch his traumatized Bad Boy facade.

These series and these men are what I keep in mind when I work with DHD men. I treat male characters as humans with human emotions, nothing more or less than that. There's no setting that says that men are automatically less capable of love and kindness and tenderness - our men just get trained to be like that.

Anonymous asked: "I also like that Grimm is childfree, because if feels like fatherhood is always the only source and reason for depicting positive masculinity in tv, films etc."

Yes! This is important! I hadn't even realized that in so many cases the positivity in men is tied to moments with kids or fatherhood. Childfree Grimm is important also because we don't have intentionally childfree couples in media.

#positive masculinity #ask niu #grimm #DHD

[itisthefunpolice]

How the Personal (Pronoun) becomes Political

(I will be using English in my examples however quite a bit of this critique will apply regardless of what language you speak.)

You are likely familiar with the media trope where the characters happen upon a person or item that tells them "it's/they're coming!" in a very ominous fashion as the characters then declare "what's/who's coming!?" or perhaps the classic "they're here" as something spooky happens, like a silhouette appearing behind a window.

The intention of these ambiguities is to cause tension to rise due to fear of an unknown threat, though the viewers tension might more realistically be rising because they're very tired of this trope. This is possible due to vague pronoun usage.

Pronouns are words that communicate who or what is being spoken about without having to use the entire noun, for example TheFunPolice would be "I" (1st person), and whoever I am speaking to would be "you" (2nd person). Jane Goodall would be "she" (3rd person singular female) and Terry Prachett would be "he" (3rd person singular male). The Amazon River Basin would be "it" (3rd person singular non-human) and group of people, like Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, would be "they" (3rd person plural).

Pronouns are more complicated than that on a grammatical level, for example I didn't mention "us" or "we" or how "it" can be used multiple ways, as in "it's me", but that's not important to our discussion today.

What is important is that pronouns are used to communicate simple information about a subject of discussion. That is why 3rd person pronouns are often sexed while 1st and 2nd person are not. If two people are standing across from each other speaking then the sex of each is obvious and doesn't need to be communicated, I and you suffice. If someone not present is being spoken about then their sex is not obvious and needs to be communicated via "he" or "she" pronouns.

So, when someone uses the singular "they" or a neo-pronoun like "fae" instead of "he" or "she" you get the same effect discussed in the above "they're here" trope; information about the subject remains ambiguous which means one can't make a fully informed assessment.

There is another media trope similar to "they're here" which illustrates another issue with improper pronoun usage: misleading pronouns. If you've watched a mystery show and they make a strong point of saying "he" or "she" for the potential criminal only to be shocked as it is relieved that this was a misdirect and the criminal was the opposite sex than expected then you've seen the misleading pronoun trope.

Again, when someone uses "she" for a male or "he" for a female this means information about the subject isn't just ambiguous but downright false which also results in one being unable to make a fully informed assessment.

For why this is an issue consider this: Let's say I am a disabled woman. I am statistically at high risk of abuse. My family is looking to hire a caregiver for me to help with my personal care and go through a local care service. The care service says they think Alex would be a good fit for me and "she" or "they" can start next week. Next week comes and Alex shows up to my home only for me to find out Alex is actually male. This puts me at even higher risk of abuse, especially sexual abuse. This is a very bad situation for me to be in. If I refuse care then not only do I not get my needs met today but the care service could refuse to send another carer at all. If I don't refuse care then I would be unsafe and uncomfortable and possibly be abused.

There are lots of other situations where this applies because there are lots of situations where sex is relevant, for example when a medical professional needs to know what dosage of medication to give a patient, which can vary based on sex.

Even outside of that, there are more intricate social issues at play here, specially the right of others to have their own perceptions and express them. Sexed pronouns are mostly used outside of conversation with the person they're referring to because they're 3rd person pronouns. That means when someone has "preferred" pronouns and requires you to use them then they are regulating how you talk to other people about them.

So, if someone female asks me to refer to them as "he" and I do so in a conversation with other people then those people will assume the person I'm speaking about is male and use "he" for them as well and so on and so forth when they talk to other people. All of these people will form a false perception of this person that likely won't be corrected unless they happen to meet in real life.

This kind of control over other people's perceptions is dangerous. It makes it so one cannot assert basic obvious factual information about a subject, information that strongly effects people's perceptions of said subject. This means one is effectively told "you can't believe your own perceptions of reality, I define reality for you", a tactic commonly utilized by abusers or other people with ill intentions.

A man who wants to earn the trust of someone vulnerable might go by "she" knowing most people are going to assume a woman is less of a threat. A woman who wants to avoid being held accountable for a crime may go by "he" to lead people to believe someone else was the perpetrator. Someone wanting to misdirect conversations about themselves so people can't call out their past behaviors may go by complicated neo-pronouns so the conversation is always focused on policing oneself to say the right thing and policing others who use the "incorrect" pronouns instead of what happened.

This can also work against people who are vulnerable. Using "he" for a woman could end up getting her frisked by a male police officer who is more likely to abuse her. Using "she" for a little boy may make him more likely to be targeted by sexual predators. Using "they" for someone who's missing will make them harder to identify and therefore harder to find.

I can sympathize with those who feel they don't want to be defined by their sex, but sexed pronouns aren't an insult, they just communicate if one is female or male (not feminine or masculine), which shouldn't be any more controversial than saying the color of one's eyes or the length of one's arms. It's simply a facet of your person, one should not feel limited by it. The texture of my hair certainly doesn't define my personality or interests, why should my sex?

The fact of the matter is that sex is important, knowing the biological sex of a subject is relevant to other information about them and colors our perceptions of them. Not being able to communicate that information makes people more vulnerable all around and reinforces the idea that sex does define who we are as individuals rather than letting who we are speak for us.

#original

[amarriageoftrueminds]

something i’ve been thinking of lately is how we always associate peggy & her actress with white feminism, but when you actually think about it it’s not even white feminism. white feminism isn’t even the bare minimum and yet it still fails the quota to be considered white feminism. it’s just me feminism. she doesn’t even support white women as a collective lol.

like there’s an interview of the actress where she talks about the 2nd season of ac & her comments about the female antagonists made me violently cringe. she was like (paraphrasing), “oh yeah they’re ambitious women like peggy but peggy is a good person and they are just power-hungry narcissists”. i watched both seasons and i can tell you if her only takeaway from whitney and dotty is that they’re narcissists, she’s either not very intelligent or too self-absorbed to really think about the characters not played by her. like what’s narcissistic about being brainwashed in a spy program which you were forced into as probably a baby, or about wanting to be respected for the human genius you are?

the female sidekicks are ridiculous too. again, all good-looking able wasp women but they both have 5 minutes of screentime each + always playing the silly awkward best friend trope. & the woman playing peggy never ackowledges them or their actresses, unless of course it is to conveniently say that s3 would’ve included a peggy x angie relationship after the show was canceled, despite the fact that when asked about it months ago she’d said “we can’t do everything”

like she’s not even nice to able-bodied able-minded upper class wasp women; how do we expect her to support the interests of women who are actually marginalized??

Excellent points, 'nonny.

Funny, isn't it, that there isn't really an extant term that sufficiently describes just how egocentric she is?

(What's even whiter than white feminism? Albino feminism? Leucistic feminism?!)

And- christ, what an absolute staggering failure of self-awareness, for Atwell to call other peoples' characters narcissistic! 🤯

It's as if (she? Peggy?) lacks the capacity to see anyone beyond herself as... a real, entire person. She and the writers seem to think that merely not criticising other women is the same thing as actually supporting them.

.

Funny how the villains of AC have somehow achieved both competence and rank, despite this insurmountable misogyny that Peggy keeps telling us is the reason she hasn't amounted to anything at the nepo-job she's flaking out on.

Interesting (but not at all surprising) that the villains are also the only other WASP women / of her SEC in Peggy's show.

Connect the damn dots, writers! Your Lil Miaow Miaow is an entitled villainess!

Because if a working class woman looked as good and was as important as Peggy and was competent as well...

Well, what would there be left for Peggy to be? How would she distinguish herself, at all? She would cease to be Special in any way.

.

My mind always goes back to Pepper Potts.

Hyper-competent, classy, beautifully-dressed red-headed woman?

Who can afford to have a whole other hyper-competent, classy, beautifully-dressed, red-headed woman in the same movie as her, and even flirting with the same man, because Gwyneth Paltrow is not so easily threatened. 💅

Imagine if they couldn't have Thor in the same movie as Steve because being handsome and blonde and muscley and good is his thing. Or were only allowed to have handsome actors if they were playing villains, so as not to undermine Steve's heroic Specialness. Would be pretty pathetic, wouldn't it? 😬

.

In AC -- perhaps intending to retcon CATFA Peggy's indifference to her fellow women and failure to pass the Bechdel Test -- they try to set up token 'Peggy Supports the Women!!' moments.

But her other actions belie that.

Example: stabbing a guy with a fork for pinching Angie.

But it just begs the questions:

Why does this protectiveness only start after Angie has ass-kissed Peggy?

Why does that random fat guy get stabbed for annoying women, but sugar daddy Howard Stark merely gets a telling off?

(J/K! We know why -- she'll need his penthouse!)

And why are we supposed to see Peggy as protective of women, when it's Peggy herself who's the idiot putting their lives in danger in the first place?

(And for no better reason than because she wants someone to pay attention to her, or because she wants to show off and overestimates how clever she is, in a way that disastrously backfires -- not on her but on those lower down the foodchain, of course.)

She gets Eileen fridged murdered because she wore a blonde wig despite knowing she had a blonde civilian room-mate at home.

Pretty stupid, no?

And what's worse, then she goes out and immediately befriends yet another blonde civilian woman!

Why does she persist in putting innocent women in danger?

By her own admission, there's an entire floor full of female agents whom she could've easily struck up a friendship with at any time. Why not one of them?

(Answer: because having other female agents around reminds us Peggy isn't special... unless they're an unthreatening fat girl there for comic-relief, of course!)

Is Peggy that desperate to only be around those she can condescend to? Waitresses and housekeepers? She doesn't want equals, she wants servants? (So the writers can play with their Downton Abbey fetish?)

Then there's the way that, every time Actual Feminist Daniel Sousa tries to say something feminist in the office, Peggy shuts him down and treats the very attempt as if it's a personal insult.

These writers are so ignorant of what feminism is and how it actually works that they think a thing can only be feminist if a Woman does it.

The hypocrisy of Peggy stopping Daniel speaking up for women's rights generally because -- as you said -- she knows her value and only this one particular white woman matters.

.

(And then Atwell, in classic clueless tin-eared style, quotes that line out of context on her IG for her Pride Month. 🤦‍♀️ Is her message meant to be: 'hey folks, if you hear someone speaking up for gay rights, do what Peggy did and tell them not to! Let the oppressors carry on as they are, because... hey, as long as this one white person loves themselves?? no one else's opinion matters...' 😌

#Girlboss #Super-humble-about-it)

.

In s2, they tried to walk back that silly line (which... y'know... Peggy casually destroying any chance of career advancement those women on the other floors could've had? For a pithy soundbite? Great job!)

By having Peggy mansplain to Daniel, Rose's employer, why he should employ... Rose... his employee... 😕❓❓❓

When Rose is only there because Daniel believed in her enough to take her with him and give her a job.

(Unlike Peggy, who just took her servant and her sugar daddy. Oh and her giant wardrobe.)

And Peggy doubts Rose herself. But then -- hypocritically -- pretends to Daniel's face that she didn't. And she has the audacity to scornfully compare him to Jack Thompson, for seeing Rose that way.

(That's you, Peggy! You just described yourself!)

There's also the... very weird vibe about Peggy, when she goes to visit Violet, the new fiancee of Daniel.

Daniel, who... wasn't even dating Peggy, but nevertheless moved to the entire other side of the country to get away from her.

(Hmm... is it just me or is there a definite pattern of ESCAPE in the men Peggy battens onto? 🤔 It's giving You / Crazy Ex Girlfriend).

Anyway, Peggy put on this super weird chummy 'I'm SO super nice and Totally NOT bothered about him moving on so quick!!!' persona with Violet, which she never had with anyone else at any other time. Kind of creepy? Like an aristo trying to pass for a peasant, or something. And her idea of being Hip and Cool and Relatable to the working class was to... share a story of her triumphs at English public school? 😬 Oyvey. Read the room, Camilla.

#long post #antisteggy #antipeggy #toAyourQ #dat's me #hey nonny #cynthia glass #p*ggy meta #mcu critical #steggy is hydra trash party #meta #mcu meta #ac meta #what's whiter than white feminism? ALBINO feminism? LEUCISTIC feminism? #my meta

[limpfisted]

while wyll is a very well intentioned person part of the game is about subverting tropes, and to ME hes MY special princess. he is by no stretch of the imagination “perfect” n hes not SUPPOSED to be perfect, n he has glaring flaws present in the text in subtext that make him very interesting narratively

while wyll trying to fight monsters and devils to save people is objectively good

in dnd, monsters, devils, goblins, even animals in the context of this game. theyre still literally people. theyre capable of language and complex thoughts and motivations

while im not about to be like (fire emblem vc) DIMITRI. KILLS. WOMEN. wyll’s quest to be a generic lawful good human warrior male is not as black and white as he wants it to be

and he can be a hypocrite and a liar

and he can be dumb and needlessly vicious. he stands in the middle of the room with priestess guts and to her face goes “tav lets just kill her. lets kill everyone here lets blow this nasty wench to smithereens” and u have to go priestess guts i am so sorry my friend would fucking say that to you. while we are. trying. to be SNEAKY, WYLLIAM!!

he DOES try to kill karlach. he probs killed other innocent prisoners of zariel. he thought it was the right thing to do, its reasonable. but he still did it. n he never faces tbe consequences or even the guilt.in fact he only faces consequences n guilt when he does the RIGHT thing

wyll IS a very kind and tolerant person to a point but its interesting to see like. who deserves second chances to wyll. and why

like obviously being a generic goblin killer doesnt make u a bad person or anything. its good to kill momsters that are hurting ppl. but hes eventually going to hv to look back on the things hes done for mizora and the devils hes killed, and go “hm.” bc even tho he HAD to do it. he also justified it. and that makes it worse

its honestly kind of interesting he doesnt hv anything to say abt freeing 7000 hungry vampire spawn. n when ascended astarion mentions them, wyll asks how many ppl astarion has killed. “dozens, hundreds?” bro it was 7007 ppl, u know the exact number. he cant even wrap his head around it

like everything else in his life—i dont think he really knows how to weigh the burden of that decision bc he can really never let himself feel the full severity of anything without going “ok moving on” or “let my next action prove my worth.” (ie when he tells karlach hes been a beast but he still wants to prove himself, when u tell him hes a monster, he will still prove himself to the sword coast n be tbeir protector.)

its a very rich thing, hes going on his own little narrative journey here where hes realizing what kind of man and hero he wants to be, same as all the rest of them

n a part of that is coming to terms with things like balduran being a lie, n baldurs gate being so much less than he remembers

something i really enjoy abt the game as someone who considers themself an existentialist is. the burden of freedom. we are condemned to be free. despite the facticities and realities of the world n other ppls reactions to our decisions—we alone make our choices n deal with those consequences

wyll is always, always making the best of a bad situation, hes always doing the best he can, hes always doing what he thinks is right, he always tries to be kind and good and gentle to the people “who deserve it.”

but hes only human, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions

when it comes to morals and “goodness”—sometimes being guided by fairy tales and legends is…. lazy moralizing, that will lead to more pain for everyone, wyll included

wyll DID do good things for the people of the sword coast. and that matters. but u know what. everybodys got something to atone for, pobodys nerfect

again this is not a wyll hate post this is actually a WYLL IS AN INTERESTING CHARACTER AND INTERESTING CHARACTERS HAVE FLAWS post lol. hes really not as goody goody as people think. he loves murder and blood tbh, just u know, the murder and blood of evil doers

#ooc #hc

[ofmermaidstories]

Hello!! Not so controversial, but personally, I think the wave of villain!Deku absolutely ridiculous. Sure, the story might be good and I'm not saying these authors are doing a bad job, it's just that Izuku as a character would never think of becoming a villain, despite his quirklessness. His whole character revolves around helping people and being kind, especially because he knows how cruel the world can be. So, those villain origin stories will never make sense, unless you practically strip him of his core and beliefs in the first place. Considering that, the vigilante!Deku fics make much more sense, especially if you want him to be morally ambigious but still Izuku at his core, helping people despite going against the law.

And tbh, I understand that fanfics are supposed to show an alternative to multiple situations, but I think there's a boundary within that, because getting rid of what makes that particular character interesting/special is just taking that character wholly out of the equation, and rather making an OC with the same name.

To add to that, someone should absolutely change the plot or minor characterizations to fit into whatever you got planned, this is why AU's are popular. And as long these variations stay true to the core of that character, it only can turn out amazing!! Sadly, that's what a lot of villain!Deku fics miss, and in turn I never can enjoy them without feeling the sense of grief and wrongness.

Man, I'm sorry for this, it turned out longer than I wanted it to be hahaha

No! I love it! And I agree. 🥺 Like, I can appreciate a Villain!Deku AU as something fun to explore a really popular what-if—but how they handle Izuku in general will make or break it for me. 😕 What I have always liked about Deku is his selfishness, when it comes him wanting to be a hero—he wants to be a hero! Quirkless or no! He wants to be like All Might—to reassure people and tell them he’s here, that he’s reaching out to them! Vigilante!Deku honours that a little, like you say, because he’s still Izuku at his core. But I think Villain!Deku fics tend to fall under the same umbrella that any kind of revenge (bakugou/consequences for example) fic does, for me; in that it’s kind of missing the point, LOL.

I will fight tooth and nail for people to be allowed to write or characterise whatever and however they want; but I agree with you in that at a certain point you, as a reader, will come to a threshold that you have to decide if are you reading fanfiction, still, or just fiction (that’s vaguely familiar)? And!! Here’s the thing!!! Humans are pretty forgiving readers, I reckon. And we also like things to be familiar to us (like tropes! cliches! fanfiction in general!!!). Villain!Deku is fun in his own way—all that violence and anger, packaged up in a character that otherwise would be repulsed by it. I can see how he’d be popular for like, yandere tropes, or other dark content.

I just—I like it when Deku has his goodness. 🥺 His self-sacrificing need to help others. Villain!Deku inherently involves a lot of sadness—being cast aside, neglected, hurt, whatever is used to push him there. 🥺 And I think it’s very much a matter of, “your mileage may very” when it comes to wanting to read/engage/write that, and what that does to his characterisation.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #disco disco discourse #i will say—i like it when villain deku is like an alternative deku that meets goodie goodie one because then the shenanigans are top tier

[psychewritesbs]

See. This is why I love Jujutsu Kaisen.

It’s absolute and utter ridiculousness.

Chapter 200something: This fandom cannot be normal about Choso and I’m there for it

This time for real, no sign of intelligence beneath the cut.

And this week Gege went for the cheese.

Enough cheese for some nachos.

Yum I love nachos.

Hi, I am V, I am the Mental Gymnastics Girl Anime Psychologist whatever that means, and I love Choso and can’t be normal about him.

Honestly, anyone who can get this reaction out of Megumi has got to be really creepy because Megumi doesn’t strike me as someone who is easily spooked. He’s also super psychic so I wonder what vibes he’s picking up from Choso since he’s a half curse.

But anyways, that’s why I love Choso, Gege is always reminding us that he’s a little weird in the best way possible, and I love him all the more for it.

But my favorite part about the chapter was how Gege showed us that Choso basically powered up thanks to the power of broship--just simple, unadulterated power of friendship with a twist, your bros.

Typically this variation of the trope is used in a moment of major despair just when you think everything is lost and you could really just use that one special friend whose power you can rely on.

Like this...

Or this...

And with this trope, as per usual, the power of friendship that you borrow from your friends (who are there in spirit) saves the day.

Cheese.

I love cheese!

Oh God. 

This chapter was so cheesy and that’s kind of what I loved about it because it was so in character with Choso.

And, honestly, Choso really did need the power of friendship to help him power up, because Kenny just looks utterly unimpressed the whole time.

Consider him unimpressed. That’s how powerful Kenny is.

But none of this matters because Gege gave us this beautiful panel of a shirtless Choso proving yet again that JJK is less about Buddhist monks and more about sexy two-dimensional shirtless men.

And JJK Twitter just cannot be normal about Choso and I’m there for it.

She likes dramatic entrances

I love her dramatic entrances and I’m looking forward to seeing her kick ass.

Also, Yuki calling Choso onii-chan is........... 

Am I the only one who thought that she looks like she sure as hell is enjoying playing the “imoto” role a bit too much?

Gege is so weird and I love him all the more for it. 

I also think I get why Yuki and Choso are shipped now.

Am I becoming a Kenny apologist?

Of course I hate him!!!

But with this chapter, he kind of piqued my curiosity. I just love me a compelling character with a fascinating backstory and motivation.

If you think about it, Kenny is basically a 1,000 year old, bored as hell, enlightened brain. 

I am not sure that it’s canon that Kenny is “bored” but... 

He’s been trying to experiment at mass scale for at least 1,000 years, and he’s been waiting for the exact set of circumstances in the JJK-scheme of things for who knows how long. 

I just get this impression that for someone who’s super powerful and has seen all the human drama there is to be seen over the last 1,000 years, Kenny needed a way to amuse itself. 

And what better way to do so than by becoming a mad scientist?

ALSO.... enlightened brains that seek to control humanity is so Psycho Pass.

And the art...

OH EM GEE.

The art!

Do you remember when JJK used to look like this?

I love the artistic journey that Gege has gone through because his art has always been good. 

But recently it seems like he’s hit a sweet spot and polished his very own unique art style. 

In JJK the strongest characters are those who have an overwhelming sense of self. And I feel like there’s something in Gege’s art about how he is discovering and embodying his sense of self more deeply--which ultimately translates into his art changing and improving along the way.

What do all y’all think? 

I write these rambles because I love writing, I love overpsychologizing everything in case it wasn’t obvious, and I love JJK. But I admit I share the rambles to interact with the fandom. So I always look forward to your thoughts too.

I try not to be online too much nowadays because I am actually a workaholic and if I’m scrolling mindlessly all the time then I don’t get much work done. 

So thanks for your patience if you do write in. I still have one juicy ask to get through!

Thank you as always if you’ve read this week’s mental gymnastics and see you in about two weeks time when the next chapter drops.

#jjk ch 204 #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #jjk spoilers #god I love jujutsu kaisen

[yanderefairyangel]

*sigh*

Ok so I have two rants about two of my favorite character of all time Alear and Rafal.

I'll start with dragon blorbo first. I get that people are still sad that F!Alear wasn't choosen as the protag of the manga but I cannot help but laugh at people saying that "the manga would have been better/more popular with her" or "that Ivy getting captured would not have happened with F!Alear" because in case you missed it : THEY ARE LITERALY THE SAME CHARACTER WITH DIFFERENT GENDER. Like yeah, I could get it if it was the Robin because those two have been written with kinda distinct personality. But the Alears ?! Their dialogue is word for word identitical, Male Alear even use the same dialect as his female counterpart which none of the male avatar before did. "But the voice acting" The voice acting is the voice acting, Rafal too sounds pretty different from japanese to English even though both are the same character. Heck English Etie and Japanese Eite have more distinct personalities then the Alears.

What happened with Ivy would have happened anyway because it's not tied to Alear's gender, you are the only one reducing Alear to his gender, it would have happened because Alear is literaly Hope incarnated. And now I wonder if people would even mind that change had F!Alear being the one helping Ivy instead of M!Alear cause again, it didn't happened for M!Alear to look heroic, this is the manga where M!Alear constantly gets turned into a silly wet cat falling into cartoony gag and getting beaten up by a 14 year old girl into gothic lolita fashion !! Engage's writers always wanted to make Alear a down on earth protag that is nothing special except for their birth and whose whole journey is about to prove themselves, they even claimmed that they made Alear into such a coward that Nintendo stepped in and told them they overdid it... but apparently Dimitri's rampage are ok.... anyway. I think the manga so far has been respecting this concept as well I see 0 reason for it to try to make Alear suddently a giga chad. I did noticed that in the manga Alear got more heroic moment then in the game such as the fact he doesn't wanna run away unlike in game or the fact he goes to help Lumera instead of leading to her death, go to save Alfred, kill Nelke himself, encourages Alcryst and then defends Ivy. I stress it defends because Alear only helped her gain some time alive, they only delayed the inevitable because I bet you that the Brodian nobility will make it as annoying as can be. Alear didn't saved her since she still is gonna have a trial. And tbh I wonder if the mangaka didn't try to make it end on a cliffhanger to encourage more people into buying the manga since it was right after that that he admitted he needed more people to show their support to the manga.

Male Alear isn't a "male fantasy trope" at all, in fact, his sweet personality that he shares with his female counterpat gets him to be seen as "effiminate" or "weak" or " whim" because "this is a woman's personality to be a coward crybaby, not a man's". I quote. The Alear's strengh as a character comes from their kindness and undying determination that lead them in never giving up and even defying death thirce !! Trying to make something as natural as them defending someone they sensed wasn't evil about "harmul trope to female and male fantasy" just shows you don't get what is considered sexist about said trope and why. Again, it's not "female character gets help from male character in time of her being weak is sexist". It's when the female character gets nothing more then that. When her entire character is reduced to just that, that it's not explored/developped in a meaningful way. Women are humans, saying they should refuse help from anyone or help from someone if that someone is a male is completely insane. It's also reduing strengh as being good at everything, superior to anyone in anything and needing no help which is very ironic considering this mean you suscribe to... Sombron's philosophy. Engage's theme is that it's through connection that you gain true strengh, that strengh rely on compassion for other and in having a strong mentality of always been hopefull for tomorow and overcoming your difficulty and never giving up on dream, this is something that both Alear illustrate perfectly.

So by suggesting that Ivy is weak because in a situation where she herself told Morion to kill her Alear steps in and therefore blame it on M!Alear being male... you are showing you completely missed the entire point the game was trying to make.

Male Alear being the protag is literaly just because the manga is a shounen, he is the same character as his female countepart.

Now unto the other one, manslaughtering blorbo.

Ok, remember what I said about how I was worried that there would be 2 tips of the extreme in reading Rafal's character ? Yeah... it happened... Now, marks my word, I am not saying you have to like Rafal, I can understand why you wouldn't considering the crimes he has committed but... seeing some takes about him rubs me kinda the wrong way....

Some people seems to believe that he is a spoiled brat raised by Sombron as believing he is the superior of his children, having a superiority complex, having completely traumatized Nel, not understanding how Alear and Nel can forgive him, that he is a bloodthirsty monster... well, to put it short that he is pure evil. Which he isn't. That goes completely against the point of his character.

Rafal was never raised by Sombron with the idea that he was the best of his children, that never happened. What happened is that Rafal lost his twin when he was very young and grow up believing that he was a defect. I know I joked about him having superiority complex, I know, but that's what it was. A joke. In reality what Rafal has developped is an inferiority complex that manifest in him pretending to be or feel superior, he is just acting arrogant and cunning but in reality how he feels inside is inferior and incomplete. He always wished to be the person to make someone else happy and complete it. He wished it for Nil and then Nel. Rafal isn't a "spoiled brat", he was just as much as Sombron's victim as Nel was, in fact, I realized how much Rafal and Lyon had in common because it was precisely the fact that Rafal was much more weaker psychologicaly speaking then his sister that made him an easy prey for Xenobron, taking advantages of his own self acceptances issues and other to cast a spell on him and bribe him in promising him the acknowledgement he always sought. As for the fact he is a bloodthirsty monster... ok look. Rafal did kill all the people of this other world that weren't already dead, I am not gonna act as if he didn't do something horrible by doing this. But not only does he actually sincerely regret his action and desesperately tries to make amends for it, but he didn't do it out of bloodlust, it's not Valter. He did it because he was manipulated by Sombron into believing that he could finally end his sufering if he did that. I already showed it in many post I made but Rafal in the Xenologue isn't the real Rafal, Gregory too point that out. The face he is pulling in chapter 5 of the Xenologue is very different from the one he pulls when he fights. Rafal enjoys competition, that doesn't make him a sadistic monster

In fact there is several instance showing that he has a heart. The fact he literaly break into tears and speaks like a child when Nel offered her life to save his, the lines he has in Somniel about how he regret what he did, his line if Gregory dies about him hoping he will get something fluffy, about how Madeline died to young or him missing Zelestia's presence because it's too quiet now. His cold facade is what it is just a facade which he admits to Camilla he put in front of Gregory, Alfred and even a bit with Alear because he feels as though he doesn't deserves forgiveness after what he did and thus doesn't deserves to befriend others.

As for why Alear forgave him... remmeber that Alear offered him to come to Somniel after Rafal declared he would try to bring back Nel. Which means that otherwise Alear would have accepted to let Nel and someone who shown that they regretted their actions all alone in a world full of dead people. What did you wanted Alear to do exactly ? To kill someone for whom Nel gave her life to freed and that showed that he was clearly sorry and ready to change his way ? That is absolutely not how Alear is and you know that. The only reason why Alear cannot forgive the likes of Sombron and Zephia is because they showed they were ready to change. Sombron was gonna repeat the same mistakes over and over again because he is unable to learn from his past and become a better person while Zephia is so stubborn that only when it was too late to repair her mistake did she realized the extent of her sins.

As for Nel, the reason why she forgave him is so obvious... she said it in the DLC herself. It's because without Rafal's presence by her side, she might have gone mad. She knew he wasn't Nil but the fact that he was by her side no matter what and even pretended to be her twin just to not make her sad for 1 000 years was very important for her and she also sensed that Rafal wasn't truly evil nor was he being entirely himself in that moment.

And then there is the other tendency that is to go : "oh my adorable blorbo who did nothing wrong and is pure and innocent what do you mean he is messed up NO HE ISN4T!!" is... yeah, look I love Rafal too but I am not gonna act as if he was the purest angel who did nothing wrong. Rafal is a disaster, he is a mess of a character, his got 1000 of problem and commited several attroticities, after all he lead an entire world to doom and killed his own siblings. Yeah he was manipulated and his traumatized and all that but those are just explanation as to why he did what he did, that doesn't excuse him. I am not gonna lie, of course if you see a traumatized child that lost at least 2 important person to him and is in the middle of an identity crisis and all that and you shouldn't be surprised that he becomes this easy to manipulate. You can't really say that it's not easy to convince a starving kid to use the baseball bat you lend him and try to break the glass of the bakery shop you just pointed at and steal all the bread and pastries it sell. But does it change the fact he did what he did ? Nay. If even the character himself is saying he wants to own what he did and pay for it, you know that this mean he himself is aware of how much he screwed. In fact, I am the one person who insist he already was aware that what he was doing was wrong and would lead him nowhere but he still did it anyway because he was this far gone and hopeless. That's even what made him developp those suicidal tendencies and lead him to feel even worse about himself. People who suffer from deep trauma that goes unhealed or unspoken for years are very complex, and Rafal has been dealing with this for 1 000 years. Unlike Nel who had his support, Rafal always though he was all alone because he though Nel's love was directed at Nil rather then him, acting as if his trauma wasn't a big part of why he did what he did is ignoring a very important aspect of his character.

"But in the Xenologue he told Alear to kill him because else he would committ the same mistakes again !" You know who else said that to Alear ? Ivy. In chapter 9, Ivy who was captured by Alear and Diamant after losing, told them to kill her, to which Alear refused to which Ivy told them that they should else she would go back to her country to attack them again. She said that just so that Alear would kill her. Likewise Rafal said that because he wanted to be killed since he kept alluding to it when he said he wanted the pain in his chest to finally go away. Besides it was literaly inevitable because what other punishement was left for him exactly ? Considering how many people I saw saying he would be better off dead, you and Rafal seem to agree on that, that death was the only punishement he could have. While imo it would have broken Nel to have killed someone she held as dear as Rafal that she would sacrifice her own life to free him from her father's influence.

Rafal is not a demon nor an angel. He isn't a good person, but he isn't evil either. He is in the "grey" zone one would say, I would say he is just a humane character : he is someone who did awful things because he felt awful about himself and decided to atone for his crimes. Like Ivy, like Hortensia, like Mauvier, like Veyle. And even like Alear. Case you forgot Alear had to kill many people and even member of Lumera's family because of Sombron. That's how real life works. No one is perfect, everyone commits mistake but no one is irredeemable. The only people who are irrdeemable or unforgivable are the person who refuses to admitt that they are in the wrong and to learn from it and grow as a person like a certain man with purple skin walking bare chested.

Truly evil people are people who cannot redeem themselves because they don't want to. The sole fact that Rafal wanted to pay for his crime and then vows to atone and better himself shows that there is at least some little tiny good in him. Again, if Rafal was just evil, he wouldn't be here at Somniel honoring his promise to Alear...(I am literaly quoting Alear, oh God)

If you don't like Rafal, I can respect that 1000%. You don't have to agree with me, but the main reason why I love him as a character is because he isn't someone you can sum up as being either pure evil or just a pupper of Sombron that in reality did nothing wrong and is just a tsun-tsun who likes sweets. This is erasing all the complexity he has as a character. What makes him fascinating is that he is not truly evil but not truly innocent either. Reading him only in one side of the spectrum is a great disservice to his character, when he is being much more complexed and nuanced then character evil just because. And woobiying him just because he is hot is even more unfair to his character. I repeat what I like about Rafal is that he committed 1000 of attrocities but that he still tries to atone for his crimes and that he cannot be reduced to any of the tip. In short, because he is a well written character and an interesting one.

The reason why I dislike comically evil character that have as much personality as a carboard is because they have as much personality as a cardboard, not because they did evil things. They are character, not real people. I can hate a character for being evil and like another for also being evil depending of how much appeal he has aka how well written and complex it can be. If Rafal was just " super evil guy who became good just because" he would be boring and also his narrative would make 0 sense... in short he would be Aversa. Likewise Rafal being this very innocent lad who did nothing wrong when he commited 1000 of attrocities is just as boring.

I am not asking you to like him, just to not reduce his character.

#fire emblem engage #fire emblem #fe engage #alear #fe alear #alear fire emblem #rafal fire emblem #fe rafal #I might have to gatekeep Lyon #seeing how people are about Rafal

[faerywhimsy]

I know that we are well into the 21st century and this means we can no longer talk about Buffy but… I’m gonna talk about Buffy. Or, more precisely, Anya.

Just gonna drop off my my official “death of the author” disclaimer and now we gonna proceed.

Part of my Personal History with [media] series

A Personal History of Anya Jenkins

Anya Jenkins is a character first introduced to the show in season 3 as a seemingly one off demon who the Scooby Gang must defeat to get back to the status quo of their senior year in high school.

As a teenager, I did not like this character, especially after she came back as a series regular from season 4 onward, after having lost her powers and becoming human. She became a love interest long before a character standing on her own two feet and I just... I just hated her honestly. She was annoying, overly literal, always asking questions and leaning on Xander far too much. None of the rest of the main characters seemed to like her or give her much time, and so neither did I.

The benefit of age and memory is the ability to reflect on media we've consumed at various points of our lives and consider how that interacts with updated views of ourselves.

At 16 years old, as I was the year this character was introduced, I was painfully aware of my growing need to fit in. I consumed bucket loads of media to help me understand how I might best do this as I'd realised that simply asking my peers was no longer an acceptable way to gather this information.

I hated my own social awkwardness and lack of understanding what seemed basic to others, but it was that much worse when I saw it exampled in characters who could be my peers, and whose behaviour I had no hope to control or effect.

This was especially true in a show that was my own special interest for all of my teens and most of my 20s.

The first time I liked Anya in a Buffy rewatch was as I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I myself was autistic. And I don't honestly think this was an accident. I had aged, but Anya remained the same: a 1000 year old demon, yes, but also stuck in the slowly aging body first of a 18 year old who only ever lived to the age of 22.

Why do I choose to break all this down now? Because I realised last night how much this depiction of a neurodiverse near ancient being surrounded by young people in the 21st century has shaped the way I've viewed vampire and other supernatural media ever since.

Unf, would you look at that physical recoil from the surrounding Scoobies (perhaps with the exception of Tara who herself has a strong case for a very different presentation of neurodiversity).

Homework today is finding any media involving vampires or demons that does not have this moment: Where the humans in the room are faced with the inability to avoid when someone doesn't conform to their view of how the world ought to be. Mostly this sense of oddness is shown through one of many well known existing tropes such as unexpectedly cold extremities, or blood where it ought not be, too fast healing, or how they speak/move. Anya, in particular, is off putting in two these ways (how she speaks always & blood where it ought not be in one ep of season 7).

Now we finally come to the point of why. And I believe that it's because characters who live as long as Anya must, at the core of their narrative, keep themselves separate from humans (because either humans are prey, or they grow old and die). It's this fact that has the knock on of forcing old demons to distance themselves from the contemporary and constantly changing/updating cultures of the present day world — cultures cobbled together by the very humans they must in turn avoid.

If you don't practice being part of something, how can you be good at it as those who are native?

The culmination of my TED Talk is: This always happens when an ageless character breaks the rules of their narrative and forms attachment with a human from whom they're supposed to remain distant. There is almost always immediately a sort of disconnect that comes between that character and their human counterpart. Sometimes it is merely the awkwardness / discomfort of something akin to uncanny valley.

And sometimes it looks a lot like autism. I'm not saying it isn't. Anya's portrayal offers that sense of belonging-slash-discomfort to many autistic people watching, depending on where they are on their own autistic journey.

Maybe the reason Anya was never officially acknowledged by the writers as autistic is because Buffy was a show that aired primarily in the 1990s. But it's also possible that it was never acknowledged because this outcome in media is something that looks a lot like autism, but it's not the only way it is intended.

In Anya's case, as with more than one of the immortal characters of the Buffy universe, being dropped back into mortal humanity actually is an achievable goal for these immortals (desired or not / where they belong or not) which only further puts a spotlight on how well they manage to sink or swim in this human dominated culture. And, imo, only makes the subsequent portrayal the richer for it.

** This post can be read as a continuation of the thoughts I started playing with back here in this post.

#buffy #anya jenkins #actuallyautistic #neurodiversity #theory also can also apply to: #vampire diaries #interview with the vampire #twilight #I'm looking at you Armand

[mysticstarlightduck]

Happy STS! We all know about the tropes, elements, and themes we love (and in some cases, use over and over again) in our WIPs! In The Last Wrath, which trope, theme, or element did you choose NOT to include, and why? Was it a deliberate choice or did it just happen that way?

Happy Storyteller Saturday! Thank you for the Ask, @clairelsonao3!

This is a very good set of questions, I'll try my best to give it a great answer too!

In The Last Wrath, which trope, theme, or element did you choose NOT to include, and why?

I guess I wanted to stay away from the obvious typical overdone tropes from the high fantasy genre and try my best to subvert them *

For example, the Chosen One trope, I try to give all my characters deep importance to the story instead of ever using this trope, and even those that could be considered to have "prophecied ancient powers" - looking at Julyan here - are not Chosen Ones. The path is not paved for them, and often their "gift/blessing" bears far too great of a price or toll for them - especially until they learn to control it, and even afterward. With Julyan's character - the most overt subversion of this specific trope in TLW - his arc begs the question "What is the line between a Man or a Monster?" as in, how far can uncontrollable powers push you and you can still be considered human? He was born with ancient powers, yes, but the powers are more of a curse than a gift, and he struggles with the fact that he is merely the vessel for this untapped magic that can both destroy or save. He wonders if he can still be considered himself and not a weapon after these powers, and the burdens it brings, grow. And even when he learns to control it, it isn't a prophecy that is ever going to save him, but his effort to be something more than the sum of his inhuman powers and use these abilities for good, he doesn't have an easy road to follow nor mentors to train him. He has to do it all by himself, with the help of friends that know nothing about the extent of his magic, in a world where all knowledge of such godly powers was already lost.

But I also try to avoid the smaller, more subtle tropes, such as the famous (which I despise with the entirety of my being) "In Medieval Times everyone wore dirty and dark clothing and lived in unhygienic cities with no sense of culture, in a non-diverse depiction of a very inaccurate Europe". We all know that is not true (while the Medieval Times were often convoluted, our "Dark Ages" perception of it is deeply incorrect, and heavily influenced by Renaissance scholars, who wanted to paint that era in a bad light to make their own time seem more enlightened. People will be people, always, no matter in what era we live in. There is color and diversity, and culture, and the Middle Ages/Medieval Times were no exception) To avoid that trope, I try to give the continent of The Last Wrath as much color and diversity as I can - I try to make all the kingdoms unique, with their own heritage and politics, color schemes and traditions to spare. (This is one of my most despised tropes of all time, so I actively try to avoid that godforsaken thing).

I refuse to add the "Cardboard Cut Out (a.k.a one dimensional) YA Heroine who is Not Like Other Girls and who is toxic to everyone around her." HELL TO THE NAW. My heroines may be unique, but they're humans above all things, they have their quirks, they have their strengths and weaknesses, they love their families (and the people around them), and most importantly, they don't go around shaming other girls for being girls or trying to make it seem like "oh I'm so special look at me, I'm such a victim of the world", NO. Also, a character can be strong and female while not being cliche and unbearable. A girl can be a leader and fall in love (those things shouldn't be "either one or the other." A girl can be both a strong warrior and a caring girlfriend. Just look at - my beloved - Annabeth Chase from the books).

Also, on the note of female character tropes in fantasy fiction, I refuse to write heroines who are "femme fatales" (especially if that sums up their entire personality). A woman can be seductive, and embrace her sexuality while being more than that, while being intelligent, brave, or both. Another reason why I refuse to write good characters (and even most villainesses unless that is the point of their character and they're multidimensional) as "femme fatales", is because often the role of the "seductress" borders WAY too close to glorified s3xual assault (especially female-on-male, or more rarely female-on-female) and no hero character should ever do that. Those are villainous actions suited only to the most twisted, perverse, and sadistic of villains. (It should never be something to admire in a female character. Dominance should always have a limit on both sides of a relationship and femme fatales oh so often cross that limit). It's a deeply problematic trope, and unless the character is properly portrayed as problematic, it bugs the hell out of me. A woman should be more than just sexy, even if she embraces it. A woman can be sexually empowered, without being an offender. (For example of badly done femme fatales, the female heroines in many Bond movies or Irene Adler in most Sherlock portrayals.) And this trope has taken a return on the YA genre, especially with "Not Like The Other Girls" kinds of leads, and I find that... disturbing, to say the least. I also despise the Bad Boy Trope (the male version of a femme fatale that you will often see in YA romance novels) for the same, deeply problematic nature of the trope. Just no.

Relationship Tropes that I openly avoid (due to their problematic nature) in The Last Wrath also include: toxic/unhealthy/dangerous Enemies to Lovers (a relationship, even if it is Enemies to Lovers, should always thrive on respect and love, and be something healthy rather than a twisted fairytale), One Dimensional Villains (all characters need to be well developed, especially the ones that will contrast with the protagonists, that is, the villains, as they are the source of conflict for the story), Problematic/Twisted Family Relationships (a.k.a The Lannister Twins from Game of Thrones. Sweet Home Alabama - NOPE. It gives me all the ick and it is deeply disturbing, to say the least.).

I don't like "grimdark, all hope is lost" worlds. The point of the whole world in TLW (and one of the main themes of the book), is that, while their world may be a truly dangerous and dark place, where many horrors await and justice is often denied, and wars tear lives apart, hope is not lost - and that one must not give up in their search for a brighter future, whatever that search may be. There is light in the midst of the overwhelming darkness. Even if Agrannor is dangerous and their rulers are corrupted, there are people worth fighting for, and there are wondrous things worth living to see! It may be a dark world, as it is a Dark Fantasy novel, but there is hope (even if just a spark of it). Having hope, and allowing oneself to dream of a better future, are one of the bravest things one can do in the face of great darkness and peril.

I try to AVOID the trope that all fantasy heroes need to be one specific type of person. Anyone, if they really try, can be a hero and use their hidden strengths to achieve that goal! Raelen may be the heir to a lost Mageborn House, but she is not a great fighter (at first) nor an incredibly powerful mage, she's just a crafty and smart adventurer who tries to save her world despite many people hating her for her magic, and that she chooses to do so despite knowing she is not powerful enough to face the villains alone. But she is going to try. Ellinor may be the princess who had her kingdom stolen from her, but she chooses to become a warrior assassin and train to actively take back what is hers by fighting on the front lines and bringing justice to those she loves. Darian doesn't know how to fight or use magic, and his inventions often end in disaster, he is small and shy, but he chooses to venture into a warring world alone despite his overwhelming fears and blatant weaknesses, to save his best friend. Zephyr may be a sorcerer, but he has a deeply debilitating curse that makes using his magical affinity a living hell and which considerably weakens him, and yet he is still trying to find an anti-magic spell to reverse the attacks of the Secret Court - so that no one has to suffer like he does. Helios was framed for something he didn't do by someone much more powerful than him and had his whole life stolen from him, and yet instead of giving up and hiding away, he is still trying to find the truth. Nadinne is a delicate girl, a lady on all fronts, but she is not a damsel in distress, and her feminine traits never become weaknesses, and she would rather use her delicate and wishful nature to find a diplomatic solution to her friends' war.

The point is, anyone can be a hero. All it takes it to genuinely try your best, even if against all odds! After all, all we can do is try and hope for a better outcome.

I got very carried away with this post, but I hope I answered your question properly! (:

[tenelkadjowrites]

hello!!! i hope you’re doing amazing <3 i have two questions, cause i’m obsessed with ur blog and you’re the sweetest human ever to answer things, so i’m not scared of u (some blog owners just kinda gives me not so good vibes)

first, have u ever considered writing a best friend’s brother fic? i can picture it with anyone u write, but fr i think san would stand out more for the role iykwim

also!! u don’t rlly write about the other members, is it because u find it harder to fit in one of ur works? or anything else?

anyways, i hope u didn’t find anything i’ve said here offensive or anything. have a good week <3

this answer is gonna be long so i'm gonna add a cut.

first off, thank you so much for calling me sweet <3 it is really important to me that this blog feels comforting and welcoming (as much as a blog can be with the type of smut i post lol.) and that ppl can feel safe sending in questions or comments or even just random things about ateez or whatever.

as far as writing a best friend's brother, i haven't written that trope altho i've written reader sleeping with their brother's best friend with the idol taemin and my current seonghwa fic i am working on is also reader with brother's best friend. i just haven't gotten any inspiration to write best friend's brother yet, i just kinda go wherever my brain takes me lmao. altho that trope does sound fun! def a lot of promise for something smutty and enjoyable lol.

as for why i don't write about other members, it isn't anything against them. i love every single member of that group, they are my comfort and a source of great joy for me. but my brain leans into seonghwa because, when it comes to idols, he is just very special to me. i feel a kinship with him (as much as one can with an idol you know from a distance) in that he is oftentimes the caretaker (as the older sister, i relate.) he is extremely considerate, thoughtful, kind, and loving. i love that he is so open with his emotions that he isn't afraid to cry openly (not to get too personal on this blog but i cry a lot whenever i feel the need to since its healthy to do so) and his dedication to ateez and atiny touches me. on top of that, i think he is an incredible performer and he has an energy to him on stage that speaks to me. and of course, i find him just...insanely attractive.

because of all those reasons, he ends up being my muse and my inspiration for my fics. when my brain lobs me an idea for a fic, it is typically tied to hwa. if i swapped hwa out for another member, it wouldn't feel "the same" in my brain and therefore i believe the work would suffer for it if that makes sense.

i have gotten asked before, on and off this blog, about when or why i won't write for other members to the point where sometimes i catch myself debating if i should swap hwa out for someone else for a fic due to demand. but then i think that is a disservice not only to the member i'd swap with, who wouldn't be getting the proper treatment i give all my fics and characterizations, but also to myself as a writer who is now writing for the blog vs writing for myself and then posting it on the blog on the off chance others might enjoy what i write.

i've also said this before but it bears repeating because it is truly important to me but writing is me. writing is my heart, my soul, my joy and my passion since i was around six years old. it's saved my life, it's given me purpose, it's given me a happiness nothing else has. i write these fics because of the pure joy it gives me and i try very very hard to stick to that and share the stories to hopefully give others comfort and a place to escape to during moments of their life where they want to shut the world out. so i stick to writing mostly hwa because that is where my heart and creativity lies and my work is better for it! <3

i know this answer was soooo long and i hope that is okay if you, or anyone else, took the time to read this lol! but i really wanted to give this a good answer! thank you so much for taking the time to send in thoughtful questions and i hope i answered them in a way that made sense. <3 have a wonderful night/day!

#asks #this is long as hell omg sorry

[obey-me-apocalypso-official]

Character study: Apocalypso

Might as well cover all of them at once so you all get a general idea of how they really came to be.. mostly because there's some characters i haven't included that i want to tease

White horse/Conquest

Trope: Himedere/ 'main' love interest/ playboy/ best friend/ deredere/ kamidere/ oresama

He's a bit generic but honestly i think he's loveable anyway. He's the kind that you just can't help but support.. his confidence definitely one of his most attractive traits, i think. The fact he's just the right hint of manipulative might also spark some interest in some.. He's a bit of more lighthearted version of Lucifer. Instead of being all edgy, he's cheery. Also isn't it just refreshing that an OM character doesn't initially treat you like trash?? I mean seriously everyone either mocks you or disregards you at first.. not him!! You're a human?? Why would he treat you like you're worthless? You're cool! He barely gets to talk to humans!

Red horse/War

Trope: bad boy/ protagonist's best friend/ playboy n.2

Sigh. Generic... sorry. I do like him- okay, i do. I just don't have a lot to say about him. He's kind of just, there. The generic sort of punkish bad boyish love interest. The type that comes home all covered in bruises and cuts and grins at you because your existence alone just made his day worth it. Honestly, i do like him! He's adorable! And probably one of the sanest characters on here?? He's genuinely a pretty great guy if not for all the shit he keeps to himself. If you've done something, you'l never know. That guy's both transparent as heck and also like a locked gate! He knows everything about everyone, but you'l never know shit about him.

He's inspired by europe, and it's plenty crusades.. he speaks a few european languages, too.

Black horse/Famine

Trope: 'shota'/ aggressive/ short/ mayadere/ yandere

Short angry characters are cute. Nono, they are. I do like Famine a lot because he can actually back up his talk though.. (not really since the contract prevents him from initiating any worldwide cataclysm... but he COULD.) i just want to coddle him. He needs hugs. I do like how he can go from very cute and sort of clueless to an extremely confident and smug bastard. The contrast between his personality both as the king of a realm on the brink of death AND as a totally clueless foreigner to things so simple as a microwave?? Great. He's a delight to work on. He's by far my favorite. I like how i didn't cave and made him a tsundere. That trope felt overused in Obey me.. he's fully capable of admitting the fact that he likes or dislikes something. He's logical and honest about that stuff. He's aware that he's pretty much clueless to human living, too. He has a hard time changing, but he has no problems admitting fault to most things. Which i think is admirable. In fact, Famine is extremely straightforward about liking Mc. So is conquest, but that guy says it to everyone and it doesn't feel all that special yknow? Famine, he'l smile, confidently cross his arms over his chest and hum all smug 'at least i'm not in denial over liking mc.' Also i like how his style is pretty punkish, whilst remaining kinda simple. Considering all he wore for a while was just whatever he could find. (Which wasn't much in a DESERT REALM.)... i find it cute that his horse actually looks after him more than he looks after it. Back in his realm (where he would constantly be with it. No stables, and with the lack of roads, horses were pretty good traveling method), when Famine would be sick or depressed, his horse would pick him up by the collar and drag him around. Horse is a pretty good parent if you ask Famine. He's pretty sad he can't see it all the time now that he has all this stuff going on..

He's inspired by middle eastern stuff in terms of his realm design. Actually, fun fact, he speaks arabic, since when he first emerged on earth it was in the egyptian desert.

Pale horse

Trope: mysterious/silent/ tall/ dandere/ long hair

Cute.... would hug... if he would allow. LONG HAIR. MEN. OM didn't deliver so i did it myself. I like how he's youngest and yet he's arguably the most mature. I like how i didn't make him overly edgy just because he's death. Nor did i try to make him obnoxious like i've seen... he's just, there. Being soft. He's a disney princess honestly at that point. (War speaks to animals but Death speaks to objects okay). The way he practices conversations alone is cute. I think we don't see enough characters in otomes who genuinely don't enjoy interaction. They'l make some characters who are all 'nooo i don't wannaaa' and then later they warm up and enjoy it. Death never 'warms up' to social interaction. He's introverted, deal with it. It exhausts him. He spends time with others, but he'l try to keep to himself. I think he's relatable which might make people gravitate towards him. His non judgemental vibe is comforting.. he's the type that you want to comfort, and that you want to be comforted by. His style is casual-formal which i think is nice. It's simple.

Manager (?)

Trope: calm/ cool headed/ reserved/ kuudere

Ugh. I have a type. Kuuderes... kuuderes... i haven't talked about em yet, hm??? Well. Who else do you think orders these guys around?? They're certainly not knowledgeable on the subject of business to keep their brand afloat on their own!! He's quiet, he likes to stay professional. Not like Barbatos or Lucifer, he's not fancy. He's direct and to the point. He's practically soulless.. but, maybe MC can offer him the break he rightfully deserves, after an eternity spent looking after four manchildren... yeah he deserves one. He's sort of cute, in a way. He's never done stuff like this. Not work.. he's not stressed, or overworked. This is just his life. He doesn't know anything else. Nothing bothers him. Nothing interests him. Maybe it's about damn time he got hobbies or something????? Cmon man do something with your immortal life??

Who is he? What does he look like?? You'l see.. all i'll say is he's going to be either Ezekiel or Zechariah. Yknow, the books in which the horsemen appear.. i also am considering naming him after Dante (Dante's inferno, which describes the circles of hell..). (john of patmos's also mentions them but it's a newer version so i'm probably gonna ignore that-) i

#btw i'm not religious so idk what the fuck i'm doing with this :D #thx google for 3/4 of my research #obey me oc #apocalypso #obey me apocalypso #apocalypso ezekiel #apocalypso famine #apocalypso conquest #apocalypso death #apocalypso war #obey me conquest #obey me famine #obey me death #swd obey me oc #obey me war #swd obey me #obey me fandom #obey me x reader #shall we date obey me oc #shall we date obey me #apocalypso Zechariah #apocalypso dante