#feels more like extrapolation and less like inventing shit

[utilitycaster]

Whoaaaa holy shit something just snapped into place reading you mention the concept of creating a shape of negative space bc i've been thinking so long abt the "unspoken things/quiet part" of characters. I've often had this feeling that fandom will go a million and nine yards to red string board an ocean of depth for their favorite blorbo over.... what comes down to what's technically extrapolating based off of xyz canon, but said canon will be like "this character fidgets once, half his dialogue is quoting an in-universe play he tries to recreate (by ruining ppl's lives), and he doesn't understand why someone wouldn't want to be called a monster, therefore he is AUTISTIC and that drives his logic," or "this character has xyz vague background and is TRAUMATIZED because of WAR" inventing an entire character and it's like. Oh boy. This might be a matter of not being invested enough in these characters to TRY and delve so "deep" but I keep thinking that none of this is actually. written or feels purposeful in the context of How Storytelling Works/the Narrative to MAKE me invest or think that it's worth doing so. I always wonder how many people are trying so hard to project a better story onto something without understanding that the story actually needs to BE THERE and ADDRESSED, even subtly, and token moments aren't enough. But then that gets me thinking about how Thereness needs to exist for something to be subtle but written as opposed to Conspiracy off loose projection.

I was kinda thinking abt Laudna and how to use her as an example, because she's one of those characters for whom like, yeah I as a person totally understand the cycle of being upbeat and normal and everything and then having a random spiral of Bad Upstairs before being normal again, but narratively how do you portray that and why does everyone do it so much better than her. With equal screentime, everyone feels like they have so much more meat to their motivations and psychology despite some being significantly less fraught backstory wise. What's happening here because things just feel like they come out of nowhere with her with "oh so that matters all of a sudden?"

Hi anon,

Yes to all of this! With regards to your first paragraph - I feel that a lot too. It's a tricky situation because I think it's completely valid to project things onto characters and imagine them to have specific qualities that either you have or simply that you wish to see in fiction. It only becomes difficult in a fandom sphere when people insist that this is a fully evidence-based endeavor and not a personal interpretation (especially because a lot of that evidence is, as you say, either very much open to interpretation, or else totally spurious. The number of times I've had to shoo people off my posts for talking extensively about how an immensely self-absorbed character who never thinks about others unless forced to clearly has ADHD...but I digress). And as for the conspiracy element, especially when works aren't as good - absolutely. If you haven't read this, which I reblogged a few weeks ago (has Good Omens 2 spoilers) I highly recommend you do because what you're saying resonates a lot with OP's post, both in terms of our need as fans to project or find similarities with characters, and the fact that when people are disappointed by a work sometimes they try to create a better one, but instead of just writing fanfiction and calling it fanfiction they go full conspiracy theorist and assume there's some secret twist, and fall so hard into that all-crumbs-no-schnitzel (to borrow a metaphor from that post) fanon echo chamber they forget it is, in fact, only fanon.

Which brings us to Laudna. Before I go deeper I want to cover three things. First: for me at least, this criticism comes because I know Marisha is capable of doing this negative space work. It didn't come up much with Keyleth since we kind of knew her whole deal very early (which, to be clear, is valid; not every character needs this), but it's present with both Beau (her relationship to her father is masterfully done; the hallmark of good negative space work is that when the reveal comes you say oh of course) and to a lesser extent Patia, who, like all the Calamity characters, conveys a story much greater than the one that unfolds over a single night. Second: I think part of why a number of us in the fandom are so frustrated is that we have been doing that work of generously interpreting Laudna since the beginning, but nothing ever sticks, so it's becoming less and less worth the effort.

I'd have to go back through my archives pretty extensively, but early on, the going expectation for Laudna was that she would explore the idea of being one of the bystanders in a larger story as someone killed simply because of a passing resemblance to someone the Briarwoods wished to send a message to; that we'd get insight into Whitestone during the occupation from someone who wasn't freed by Vox Machina but rather killed, indirectly, because of them. However, not only have we not gotten that, but she also was chosen for being special: Delilah chose her as a vessel because of her inherent sorcery. So then it was perhaps about that tension between finding power in her sorcery vs. warlock levels - Pâté seemed like a clear setup for Pact of the Chain, after all - but then Marisha admitted she had no intention of taking that third warlock level, and always just planned to play Laudna as exclusively leveling in sorcerer, until FCG attacked. And meanwhile, there's no exploration of those sorcery powers, either.

Speaking only for myself, I've been interrogating "hey, why is her backstory that she was chased out of everywhere but for the most part everyone is mostly fine with her?" and "in 30 years she did nothing about Delilah? Really?" for quite some time. There's a number of questions that are not just unanswered, but lack the hints that this negative space work would provide. And to be clear there are ways to explain those things! This meta does a good job of talking through why she may have been chased out, and I've floated, in the past, that even Delilah's unwelcome presence was better than the absolute silence of being truly alone. But the work to support these fandom theories, again, is not really being done at the table, and moreover, even if it starts being done...it's episode 70. It should have come up in some capacity.

Marisha said (to be clear, somewhat jokingly) in the 2022 ComicCon panel that "Yeah. I don't want to think anymore. I'm tired," re: Laudna but the thing is...honestly, in my opinion? A character with Laudna's premise requires far more work than Beau or Keyleth to do well. Not only is she tied into one of the most famous events and entwined with one of the most famous villains of Campaign 1, but she's got 50 years of backstory! Beau and Keyleth are in their early 20s! (I could make a whole other post about this but character intelligence does not equal how hard they are to play; Imogen is an immensely tough concept that Laura's doing a good job with and she's lower INT than Laudna. I'd rather play a wizard than a character like Grog any day of the week because I genuinely believe that the acting burden for making a character like Grog sympathetic and believable without going into cheap mockery and parody is immense).

Going back to that statement, it really does feel as though every 4-Sided Dive episode or panel, when Marisha talks about Laudna, it's always just that she was envisioned as being over her trauma, and the premise was always just "make that creepy girl from her nightmare". And even then: it's fine if she'd done that - simply made a creepy character who was here to be creepy and cheerfully macabre - but through gameplay it's become clear that Laudna is not over that trauma (her arrested development being one of many options), and has acquired new traumas to boot, and for that matter never was really over it given that she displays intensely but they come up so inconsistently that there's never any follow-through. I agree with you completely that the idea of her often seeming fine and happy and then having spirals is believable and true to life, but one does need to actually follow through on the spirals - I think a lot of us finally threw up our hands when Laudna's believable, well-played, and justifiable anger and resentment after being thrown across the world away from half the party, essentially pushed into a fight that isn't her own, being betrayed by Bor'Dor, and feeling Delilah's return melted away without resolution. If you want to make a character who's over their trauma and go-with-the-flow, I feel as though step 1 is to not have an eternal reminder of one's trauma permanently stuck in one's head. "Warlock who dislikes their patron" is actually a premise that requires quite a lot of thinking and effort, and we are consistently not seeing it.

I think what's most telling is that the defense of Laudna for the weird freakout this past episode is both vehement, and in conflict with itself. Is Marisha just making a joke (that didn't really land with anyone at the table nor much of the fandom, and was taken at least semi-seriously by both)? Or is it actually great and good that Laudna is incredibly traumatized and clingy and we should all hope she becomes even more clingy and codependent? When even the people who are shielding Laudna from even a whisper of criticism can't agree what Marisha's doing, it's pretty dire, especially when that criticism is "this character feels directionless and incoherent."

So getting back to negative space: It's my hunch that there just...wasn't a lot of clarity to Laudna's motivations, and the questions in her backstory weren't answered. She's creepy and she's kooky, Sun Tree corpse, Delilah in her head, met Imogen two years ago, was friends with a little girl at some point (which we only know from 4-Sided Dive, which is, to be clear, bad that it's never come up in-game). We don't know how she feels about her sorcery powers other than a vague enjoyment of their creepiness...but she also sees them as a way out from Delilah...but she also barely engages with Delilah and hasn't done anything to get rid of her. We have no sense of how she got to "the worst thing that's happened to me already happened" because while it's completely fair to play her as feeling that way 30 years later, I highly doubt she felt that way as she cut herself down from the Sun Tree. So as a result, it's hard to pick a direction because that foundation is lacking.

The thing about that negative space is that to do it well, you really need to know what you're trying to convey. Which is also why, as you say, characters with much simpler backstories are fine; Fearne was basically hanging out at her grandmother's place until EXU and her parents left when she was very young; she is curious about her parents and loves her grandmother and is a chaotic fey entity who was sent into the Material Plane with the Weave Lens, and mostly she just wants to explore and have fun and hang out with her friends. Ashley just needs to...play Fearne like that, which she does with aplomb. The complex setup for Laudna demands a huge number of answers in the backstory, and my guess is that Marisha does not have them. I think the problem isn't with the acting (in fact, I'm fairly confident it isn't, because, again, I know from past characters Marisha can do this); it's that Laudna's concept prioritized the aesthetic, mechanics, and facts of the backstory, and didn't adequately fill in her beliefs and motivations, so she's just flailing. I also suspect from the most recent 4-Sided Dive and the most recent SDCC panel that Marisha is specifically looking for interparty conflict, and to be clear that's valid...but again, to do that believably and well, Laudna's philosophy and motivations and characterization need to be much more clearly established than they are.

#answered #Anonymous #cr tag #long post #critical role spoilers

[myassbrokethefall]

xf rewatch: ghost in the machine

This one was interesting to watch in light, obviously, of the current AI moment. Like, Deep Throat goes "how much do you know about ''''artificial intelligence''''?" and Mulder says "I thought it was only theoretical." You did? And then a minute later DT describes "a learning machine….a computer that actually THINKS." like hold up there fella! There's quite the gulf between THOSE two things but I suppose we don't really know that yet back now. Even Mulder saying "could someone have ''''''''hacked'''''''' into the system?" like this is the most out-there idea of all time, and instead of going, duh yes, hacking into the system is indeed something that someone could most certainly have done, Brad says "not your average phone phreak, that's for sure." remember phone phreaking?? neither do I because I'm old but I'm not THAT old. I heard an interesting podcast ep about it semi-recently though. Like you could make a noise with your VOICE that was the same pitch as some note the phone plays and it tricks it into connecting you to a long-distance line or something. neat stuff. anyway.

The computer stuff wasn't AS ridiculous as I remembered, but I also wonder if the farther we get from the time period the more I'm like, sure that seems like it could have been true back then I guess. At least, it seemed to more or less follow from a story perspective (but maybe that's what makes it so unrealistic in a tech way). Things that DID stick out to me included the following:

1. all those security cameras seem so RICKETY. They're all just stickin out there servo-ing jerkily around out in the air, just hit that shit down with a shovel and be done with it. Mulder dramatically covers one with a cloth and I was like, great now you only have to do that 9,000 more times in this building.

2. the superintelligent AI is courteous enough to jingle Scully up on her landline at 1:31 am to screech modem noises at her in order to give her a heads up that it's hacking into her computer at that moment (for what purpose? how is reading her reports on Mulder any help to it…ehh whatever).

3. Gordon/Gansa really running through the scifi "homages" with Conduit being very heavily Contact-by-Sagan-based and this one developing a voice solely so it could say things like "program……. EXECUTED GET IT" and "sorry Dave Brad, I can't do that."

4. I did certainly feel that the computer was "thinking" QUITE a lot more outside the box than seemed even marginally realistic (and per what I have read about machine learning, not that I am remotely close to being an expert on any of that). It sure got a LOT of info from filming people with its analog(?) security cameras and like, extrapolating from what it observed. The way it halted the elevator so Scully would call security and identify herself when she did so, so that it could learn her name and start googling (forgive me) her? I mean now that is some high-level strategizing. I feel Janelle Shane would not approve.

Other notes from my "notes":

Penny Northern as the lady congratulating Jerry on his profile that he stole from Mulder.

Scully's hair is slowly getting unfortunate. That swingy little Deep Throat floofy bob remains my favorite so far.

Nancy Spiller forensics instructor at the academy, "we used to call her the iron maiden!" Every time Scully mentions or interacts with a professor now I wonder if she fucked them. Heheh (EDIT: I just realized Penny Northern IS Nancy Spiller. !!! Still wonder if Scully fucked her)

This ep contains the iconique moment of Scully emphatically circling something on a computer monitor with a physical writing implement. (Also that whole mapping the voices together situation was very goofy and also pointless — if the system had a voice why wouldn't it be Brad's voice; he invented it.)

This is the first ep thus far that I've found Scully's Scullying kind of irritating. It seems very obvious that Brad did not do it so her being like "mulder I'm sorry you're so sad about your shitty friend dying that you can't think straight" feels condescending instead of sympathetic. "maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if you talked to someone." "you're probably right." *leaves* "where are you going?" "to talk to someone." yeah you deserved that, sculls.

Failed mulderisms: "open sesame." I'm not offended by it or anything it's just so weak as to barely rise to the level of joke. Also, it has ALWAYS and I mean since the 90s grated on me that he scoffs "a politically correct elevator" because the elevator is being so outrageously, offensively woke as to… announce the floor numbers??? ok boomer!!! lord

Scully's got this book in bed with her. analyze as you will.

Pretty impressive how Mulder knows how to whip open a car hood and immediately rip the correct wire to get the horn to shut up.

Greatly enjoyed the This echo of them climbing stairs and yelling out numbers while doing so. Also, they are so young and athletic; sure they can go up 30 flights of stairs and then Scully is totally game to be hoisted into a ceiling vent and crawl around up there. J. Edgar's finest, at the top of their physical game!

I got so mad when Mulder goes "he apologized. in his own way" about Jerry. he literally did not even come close to apologizing! he said fuck you I stole your notes because you were gonna help me anyway so who cares, shut up, and then he stomped off. In no universe is that an apology of even the worst sort. Jerry sucks.

this house:

(literal photo of tv taken from couch, too lazy to even get up)

is ugly as shit, and I was making fun of it saying that it looked like a suburban convention center and bar mitzvah venue instead of a rich tech guy's sleek futuristic mansion and wondering if they filmed it at like, a Days Inn, but I was informed it was actually the home of a star Canucks player?? well he had terrible taste.

Finally, I remain FASCINATED with watching Mulder and Scully Work In An Office and interact with other people in the office and do office things like eat pastries off a cart! and hang out in what looks like the FBI archives! This set:

is so endearingly normcore-office to me. The library cart with archive boxes and also some other loose crap on it. All the haphazardly sized shelves from Staples with random mugs that no one wants so someone just sticks them on a bookshelf. Stacks of copy paper. A whole bunch of plants, some of which are dead, and also featuring at least 2 empty vases. The industrial tissue box. Someone did a very good job with this set dec is what I'm saying. Ok, the "INVOICES" folder is a little funny.

This is almost a workplace drama at this point in its life and I am a little bit obsessed with that. What is Fran gonna say about M&S smashing up that car. Smh.

#xf rewatch rambling #gitm

[tediousdelusion]

🎶🤩 and 🤲

🎶 - Yes! Generally I listen to music while I write (and while I do literally anything else, tbh). Lately, I’ve been listening to This Year by the Mountain Goats, because it’s where I took the title for my current WIP (stuck in second gear). But I also listen to a lot of indie mixes or to songs I think have the right vibe for what I’m writing. A frankly embarrassing amount of Crane Wives for a lot of the boat-themed media I write for. I also like to turn on like, chill beats if the lyrics are throwing me off my game. Sometimes lyrics are just... too many words while I’m trying to think of words.

🤩 - God, this is such a hard question. On the one hand, I really like to write for Izzy from OFMD and for Thomas from Black Sails (I’m having a great time in my forever WIP, haha), in part because they get less screen time and so it leaves me with more room to invent and extrapolate. But I also adore writing for Flint... I generally don’t write about/from the POV of characters that don’t interest me - probably an obvious statement.

I guess the closest I have to a real answer is that my favorite characters to write are one who are either well read or well spoken because even though they are harder to capture, they give you a lot of fun opportunity to play with allusions and word games. Even if I don’t always succeed, I do enjoy playing around with those things (and since this is just a hobby, I’d argue my fun in all this comes first, haha).

🤲 - So, here’s a snippet from the next chapter of stuck in second gear. This was in my notes as under the section “I love you, Ed, but you do have the shower PBR kinda energy. Which is remarkable for a man approaching 50.” As an aside, writing a modern!au is both freeing and terrifying. I feel like I can do so many more word crimes when I’m not restrained by historical pseudo-accuracy, haha.

Ed shuffles over to the fridge and opens the door to appraise the contents. Izzy would have normally done the shopping, but he seems to have neglected that duty the past week. There’s not much left except for the takeout leftovers that Ed has scattered across the shelves and a few beers tucked between the condiments.

Ed grabs a beer, opens it with one hand, and heads back up to the bathroom. He washes back a few ibuprofen with a swig of PBR and lets the shower heat up while he brushes his teeth. Then, he strips and steps under the water, nestling his beer amongst the shampoo and conditioner for easy access. He can’t believe he hadn’t thought of bringing beer into the shower until Jack had brought it up. Honestly, someone should patent this – it’s genius.

Which reminds Ed, he really should text Jack. Jack had wanted to see the boat. And besides, he’s a great friend. He probably knows exactly what to do about this Izzy divorce business.

Ed sticks one hand out of the shower to send a quick text.

want 2 c boat??

A minute later, while Ed is shampooing his hair and thinking about how they should really make a bigger shampoo bottle – he goes through this shit too fucking fast – his phone dings in response. Ed washes the suds off his hands and reaches out to tilt his phone enough to read the message.

fuk yea be there in 25

Twenty-five minutes in Jack time means at least an hour by anyone else’s watch and so Ed finishes his shower and wraps himself in a towel. He gives his body a quick pat dry and then uses the towel to tie his hair up on top of his head, walking around the house naked as he decides what to wear. Really, being able to walk around naked is at least fifty percent of the appeal of having a house, and not an apartment so close to their neighbors that Izzy will be up Ed’s ass every three days about “getting us kicked out for indecent exposure again.”

He loses track of time when he finds an old magazine left on top of the dresser and lays out on the bed to flip through it. Next thing he knows, he hears Jack honking in the driveway and yelling out the window for Ed to come down. Ed tosses the towel off his head, pulls his still wet hair into a messy bun, and grabs a pair of jeans off the floor. He hops into them as he pulls out an old t-shirt from the back of his closet.

Huh. That’s odd. Ed pulls at the shirt, trying to get the hems to meet, but the shirt keeps springing back to just above the waistband of his jeans. He looks in the mirror to see the way that the shirt clings to his shoulders, more than a bit too small for him. Must be Izzy’s, but it’s purple and color has always been more of Ed’s thing than Izzy’s, so he tosses on a pair of flipflops to complete the ensemble, contented to claim the shirt as his own.

#ask game #asked and answered #divorce!au #stuck in second gear

[hiccanna-tidbits]

5, 6, 7 & 8 for OTP asks with Hiccanna!!

HELL YEAH BRO

Soulmate AU: Who is eager to meet their soulmate? Who absolutely does not want to meet their soulmate?

Anna, hopeless romantic and “true love” fanatic that she is, is incredibly down to meet her soulmate. One of her biggest fears is being inherently unlovable and that no one will ever love her for who she is (parents dying and sister shunning you has to leave some abandonment issues babyyyy), so she takes a lot of comfort in the idea of a soulmate--at least one person is basically certain to love her, right?

Hiccup, meanwhile, is apathetic at best and annoyed by the idea of a higher power dictating who his girlfriend is at worst. Unlike Anna, he doesn’t really fear no one will ever really love him for who he is--rather, he just accepts it as fact. Growing up with no friends and an emotionally-distant father, Hiccup came to believe that he was never going to feel the kind of deep, boundless love he’d seen between other people--and he made his peace with it. Being a more introverted scientist and inventor-type, Hiccup tends to spend a lot of time alone anyways and believes (maybe not fully accurately) that he prefers it that way. Besides, the logician in him thinks the whole “magic cosmic soulmate” thing is probably bullshit, and he just can’t figure out how something like soulmates could ever be backed or supported by modern science. Ultimately, Hiccup figures he’s going to date who he’s going to date (if he can even find any girls who are interested, that is), and he really couldn’t care less what the stars have to say about it.

When Hiccup and Anna do finally meet, and eventually start dating (knowing how shy and awkward they’d both be about confessing, it would take months to years after them meeting to actually get together, even in a goddamn soulmate AU), it isn’t revealed that they’re soulmates right away. Maybe it’s revealed by their hearts glowing a certain color when they first realize they’re in love with the other person? Idk. 

When Anna finds out they’re soulmates, she’s absolutely stoked. Like the girl probably runs around their home for a solid 15 minutes planning a soulmate reveal party or something. Hiccup, meanwhile, is just kind of like “Oh! Neat!” and then immediately goes back to whatever he was doing XD

Anna is a bit hurt that Hiccup is so, ah...unconcerned about them being literally destined to be together. She’s mainly worried that it means that he doesn’t like...cherish their connection enough and whatnot. After he picks up on the fact that she’s kind of upset about his definitive lack of a strong reaction to the whole thing, he explains to her that he didn’t really care because he’d 100% date Anna whether or not she was his soulmate. Saying their souls were deeply connected was basically just putting a formal title on what he already knew.

And Anna has to take a minute, because honestly? Hiccup confidently saying he’d be with her in any reality, even one where he risks angering cosmic forces to do so, is actually much more romantic than them being supposedly “fated for each other” since the beginning.

Single parent AU: Which one is the single parent? (Alt. if they’re both single parents: Which one is open to starting a new relationship from the start? Which one is never planning on finding love again… Until they meet the other and are instantly smitten?)

I think I’ll have Zephyr and Nuffink be the single parent kids because I Just Think They’re Neat! That, and I honestly can’t bear to make lovechildren for Anna with anyone but Hiccup XD (those of you who know me will know making Krist/anna lovechildren in any context is RIGHT OUT).

So in this AU things didn’t work out with Astrid and Hiccup is pretty heartbroken over it :( I imagine she ultimately left him because she wasn’t really feeling the spark anymore, and they have joint custody of the kids. Meanwhile, Hiccup and Anna were neighbors growing up, and were pretty close friends as kids until Anna moved away and they lost touch. She eventually comes back to their hometown as an adult, and she and Hiccup reconnect. They’re also both like “ah shit, my old buddy got HOT” XD

I actually think Anna and Zephyr would really hit it off, mainly because Anna sees a lot of what she loves the most about Hiccup in Zephyr. Zephyr has Hiccup’s anxiety, cynicism, inventive streak, overall social awkwardness--and because Anna knows Hiccup so well and knows how to best accommodate all of his quirks and oddities, it’s not hard for her to extrapolate how best to befriend a younger version of him XD Zephyr, meanwhile, has had trouble befriending kids her age due to her bluntness and general “nerdiness,” so she’s always happy to find someone who accepts her unconditionally and takes a genuine interest in her wacky inventions--even if it’s her dad’s new girlfriend, who by all accounts should be a weird person for her to get close to XD Zephyr also devours science books like they’re going out of style, and is very pleased that Anna is more than happy to listen to her ramble on and on about random science trivia. Zeph still loves her biological mom, for sure, but she starts thinking of Anna as a second mom. She brags to all the kids at school that she has two moms, which leaves them very confused and wondering if Astrid ended up marrying another woman after she divorced Hiccup (which, to be fair, wouldn’t be entirely out of character).

Nuffink, meanwhile, is a little more unsure about the whole situation, if mainly because I headcanon him as a bit of a mama’s boy. He doesn’t dislike Anna so much as he’s just...wary of her, and doesn’t know how to feel about his dad falling in love with someone who isn’t his mom. He also can’t help but feel out-of-place when he, Zephyr, Hiccup, and Anna go out on “family outings” because he kind of looks like he doesn’t belong. With her reddish-brown hair, her blue eyes, her aundance of freckles, and her fondness for wearing twin braids, Zephyr could definitely pass as Anna’s daughter (I’ve even seen Anna used as an older version of Zephyr in video edits, which is hilariously ironic). Although Nuffink has his dad’s eyes, he very much has his biological mom’s hair and doesn’t look like he’s related to Anna at all.

I think what helps them finally bond is that they both have a love of combat! Nuffink definitely does some kind of martial arts or fencing training if he can access it, and Anna is more than happy to teach him some swordplay and spar with him if he wants! Because Sword Anna is best Anna, fight me. Nuffink is also open-minded enough that hey, if his cool big sister likes someone that much, she can’t be that bad. Hiccup is just...continually super impressed with how much Anna knows about fighting--and it makes him fall all the more in love with her, because he loves that in a woman XD Once Nuffink warms up to Anna, he’s constantly trying to impress her ith how tough he is--mostly shown by him ramming his head into walls. Poor Anna worries about Nuffink a lot XD

I imagine there’s a little bit of tension between Anna and Astrid in this AU. Not really because Astrid resents Hiccup moving on--she’s actually pretty happy for Hiccup that he found someone better suited for him than her--but more because she worries Anna is trying to replace her as the kids’ “true mom” XD Anna, meanwhile, can’t help but resent Astrid a little for breaking Hiccup’s heart and doesn’t get why they kids can’t just have two moms! The more people who love them, the better, right???

I don’t imagine Anna and Hiccup having any biological kids in this AU, because I think two stepkids would be plenty for Anna! Of course, since Zephyr and Nuffink are Hiccup’s, she loves them with all her being and tries to be the best stepmom she can be. But I think having more than two kids would stress Anna’s ADHD ass the fuck out, and she doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would feel a need to have biological kids with Hiccup if she already had Nuffink and Zephyr to parent. Our girl is perfectly happy adopting!

Doctor AU: Which one is the longsuffering doctor? Which one is the patient?

Hiccup is the long-suffering doctor, although not entirely by choice. Often he wonders if being a doctor is actually what he wanted, but his dad was like “WELL SON! YOU’RE SMART, SO YOU GOTTA BE A DOCTOR SO YOU MAKE BIG BUCKS!” (I’m headcanoning in this AU Stoick is a professional athlete of some kind, and has made BANK since he was young. He can’t really conceive of his son NOT pursuing a well-paid profession). Hiccup doesn’t really want to disappoint his rather intimidating dad, so he goes along with it.

It’s not that he dislikes it, when all is said and done. He does care about people and wants to help them, although he hides it underneath about 10 layers of snark. Still, it’s stressful and thankless work, and often he worries about whether he took the right path. Too late to pursue something else now, he supposes.

Then he meets Anna, rushed to the ICU with a collection of third-degree electrical burns. She tried to plug all of her Christmas light strings into the same power strip, and uh...it did not go well. Hiccup is there monitoring her vitals when she wakes up, and she just kind of wearily sighs and admits to him that living on her own wasn’t nearly as fun or exciting as she thought it would be. As it turned out, Anna had insisted she could be trusted with putting up her apartment’s holiday decorations, and she very much should not have been.

Anna ends up having to stay a couple weeks. She needs a small skin graft (yeah, she fucked herself up THAT bad), and then needs a bit of time for the surgery wounds to heal. Hiccup is assigned to do checkups on her regularly, and starts to look forward to it. Her perky disposition (despite being stuck in the hospital with burn wounds) is contagious, and she never fails to make him laugh after a long, draining shift. As stressful as his job is, Anna becomes his one respite.

He has to admit, it’s nice to have at least one thing to look forward to.

Hiccup is a little sad to see Anna go. Of course, bumbling, socially awkward foot-in-mouth fool that he is, he doesn’t have the courage to ask for her number so they can keep in touch. That would, uh...probably be unprofessional or something. Besides, it would probably crush his heart and soul if she was weirded out by his soft spot for her so like...maybe best not to even open himself up to the possibility.

Then, not two weeks later, Anna shows up at the hospital again--this time having broken three bones in a hiking accident. Apparently she got too excited about a particularly nice view, and toppled right off the top of a very steep bluff. He, once again, takes on her care, and is delighted (albeit guiltily) to have her back. He, once again, has something to make work not suck as much!

Oddly enough, this turns out to be the first of many hiking accidents. Anna comes in next month claiming to have nearly burned her arm off in a rogue campfire, and then again the next month claiming to have been mauled by a bear (although Hiccup is pretty sure those bleeding gashes were just left by a very big dog, and Anna is too embarrassed to admit it). Odder still, Hiccup distinctly remembers talking to Anna during her first hospital stay about how much he loved hiking and the outdoors, and now all of her new string of injuries just happen to be hiking-related. He can’t help but be baffled about how her insurance even covers all of this, but apparently having a family lineage distantly related to Norwegian royalty has its perks.

On roughly her 7th hospital stay, Hiccup finally gathers up the courage to ask Anna for her number, if only because he figures it would be nice for them to see each other without Anna having to nearly get herself killed first every time XD

Bodyguard AU: Who is the bodyguard? Who are they protecting? Which one is secretly pining for the other?

OMIGOD SO

I HAD AN IDEA FOR THIS

What if Anna was sent to bodyguard Hiccup in an AU where Arendelle is a lot more militaristic???

Basically what I'm thinking is that this is in an alternate timeline, Hiccup didn't injure Toothless's tail when he shot him down. The beginning of HTTYD plays out the same, but Toothless can still fly and just yeets off after Hiccup frees him, supposedly never to be seen again. However, this still leads Hiccup to believe he may not be dragon-fighting material after all. The poor boy still yearns to find a way to prove his worth to Berk, though.

As Hiccup gets older, his strength doesn't really improve, and it becomes clear to Stoick that he's always going to be pretty scrawny. Because of this, he's hesitant to put Hiccup in dragon training for the sake of his son's own safety--and hey, Hiccup seems to have lost interest in dragon-fighting anyhow, so it's not like Hiccup will fight him on it. Nonetheless, the dragon raids are getting worse, and Stoick worries about Hiccup being able to protect himself at all. Knowing most of the older villagers are busy with dragon-fighting and other jobs, and honestly doubting any of the village's teenagers would protect Hiccup if push came to shove, Stoick sends out an appeal of sorts to neighboring villages and kingdoms requesting a bodyguard for his skinny disaster of a son.

Back in Arendelle, shut-in princess Anna is surprised yet intrigued when a messenger from the Viking village of Berk shows up at Elsa's coronation. In a timeline where Hans and Anna don’t have their chance encounter, Hans sets his wooing sights on the newly-crowned Queen Elsa (and fails), and no push ends up being strong enough to make Elsa lose control of her powers at the ceremony. Anna, however, still feels hurt by her sister’s seemingly reasonless rebuke earlier in the evening and finds herself aching to explore the world outside her castle and be close with someone--anyone--again.

When the Viking messenger requests a bodyguard for the Chief of Berk’s son, Anna is quick to volunteer. The messenger scoffs at first, but to his surprise, the soft-looking princess isn’t entirely unqualified. She filled many of her long, empty childhood hours training with the Arendelle guard, and her swordplay is admirable. To prove her worth, Anna faces off with one of the Berkian warriors in a duel--and holds her own shockingly well. While Queen Elsa is hesitant to let her sister run off to a faraway nation, Anna vehemently insists that Arendelle doesn’t need two monarchs, and this will be great for diplomatic relations in the long run. Of course, she also longs to explore and get away from the place she’s been trapped her entire life, but Elsa doesn’t need to know that part.

When Anna arrives in Arendelle, Hiccup has absolutely no idea what to make of his new bodyguard. On the one hand, a girl who’s good with a sword is hot, and he’s long since given up on Astrid anyways. On the other hand, Hiccup is definitely irked that his dad sees him as so weak and incapable that he’s the only Viking in the village who needs a full-on bodyguard, and he hates feeling like he’s being babied and coddled (not that this is Anna’s fault). Still, his bodyguard is essentially the only person who’s ever seemed to actually want to be friends with him in...well, his whole life, and honestly? He’ll take it.

Anna, meanwhile, still aching for love and connections of really any kind, is nigh-instantly smitten. His brains, his creativity, his constant snide jokes, his snark-coated good heart, his weird, messy hairdo--all of it has an 18-year-old Anna completely over the moon. Hiccup, feeling hopeless in the world of romance after being rejected by Astrid, is honestly just relieved to finally have a friend--to the point that it doesn’t even occur to him that Anna’s a girlfriend option.

Not long after she arrives in Berk, Anna is put into dragon training to prepare for raids. She does a bit of training of her own with Hiccup, teaching him some swordplay to try and boost his confidence. It’s not hard to tell that he has mixed feelings about having to have a protector, and Anna hopes that by teaching him some basic fighting skills he can at least feel a little better if he’s ever in a situation where she isn’t there to defend him.

As she gets deeper into her dragon training, Anna asks Hiccup why he never gave dragon training a go. Granted, him being as physically small as he is would be a disadvantage, but he could still learn to hold his own decently well using speed and stealth. It would help him be able to protect himself, if nothing else. Hiccup seems very reluctant to talk about the whole subject, but he says Anna needs to trust that he knows he can’t kill dragons. He tends to give the shortest answers possible to her questions, and nigh-instantly changes the subject. When Anna presses too much, he gets snippy.

As they get closer, Hiccup finally opens up to Anna about the time he shot down a Night Fury and couldn’t bring himself to make the final kill. He admits to cutting the creature free, and how the dragon nearly killed him--only to spare Hiccup just as Hiccup had spared him. “I saw more than just a ruthless killer when I looked into that dragon’s eye,” Hiccup tells her. “I saw myself. I think there’s so much more to them than anyone knows, but...you’re the only person I feel like would actually give me the benefit of the doubt on that.”

During the next raid, Anna pays closer attention to the dragons than before. She watches how they interact with the villagers, and notice that they never seem to go out of their way to go after people. They only fight Vikings when Vikings initiate, and the dragons’ main concern always seems to be taking sheep and fish. Left to their own devices, they don’t seem to want to hurt anyone.

Unfortunately, Anna standing off to the side and trying to watch what all the dragons are doing leaves her distracted--and vulnerable. She’s not prepared for a camouflaged changewing to melt out of the wall behind her, whipping around and backing her into a corner. Anna grabs for her sword but can hardly move, frozen in terror as the massive dragon stares her down.

She holds up an arm, bracing herself for a wall of fire, but none comes. There’s a swish of wings and a gust of wind blows her back. When she looks up, the dragon is gone.

It would’ve been beyond easy for the dragon to kill her. The creature clearly saw her--could have taken advantage in her moment of frozen stupor and burned her to a crisp. And yet...the dragon spared her. Just like the Night Fury had spared Hiccup.

Anna realizes Hiccup might be onto something.

Together, Hiccup and Anna decide they’re going to get to the bottom of what dragons are really like--and why they’re stealing the village’s food. While claiming to go out for “battle practice,” Hiccup and Anna track down dragons and study them in secret--observing them, writing about them, seeing how they behave and how they interact with one another. They’re surprised by what they see: left to their own devices, dragons are good-natured and compassionate, and they take care of their own. Strangely, they never seem to feed the stolen food to their young. Hiccup predicts they’re not actually keeping it for themselves, and taking it somewhere nigh unreachable for humans. For what actual purpose is anyone’s guess.

Anna starts using the info she gathers observing dragons with Hiccup in dragon-training. She finds ways to sooth them and calm them down in the ring by using things they seem to enjoy in the wild. Scented grass, bits of fish, soft touches, slow, gentle movements. The village marvels at her newfound skills, and can’t help but wonder where she developed such a knack for controlling dragons despite spending basically all her time around “Stoick’s little runt.” She couldn’t be training with him, of all people...could she? Astrid, for one, is definitely none too pleased about her spot at the top of the class being threatened.

Meanwhile, Anna and Hiccup can’t help but grow fond of the dragons they watch. They start becoming more bold, and leaving snacks of trout and mutton for the scaled creatures. Anna is delighted when the food ends up attracting none other than what she’s pretty sure is the same changewing who spared her, as well as a curious snaptrapper. She’s never gotten to see a snaptrapper up close before, and is completely undeterred by the triple-jawed four heads. Rather, she is far more preoccupied with coming up with the perfect name for each head.

“Omigod, he’s so PRETTY! And he smells like CHOCOLATE!”

“...you know they probably emit that scent to lure in prey so they can slice it in three, right?”

“CHOCOLATE, HICCUP!!!”

With each new meal, the local dragons grow more and more comfortable with Hiccup and Anna. After a while, the changewing and the snaptrapper even let Anna touch their noses. Anna falls in love with watching the changewing seem to melt around the forest as she camouflages, and rolling in the mud with the snaptrapper after a summer storm. Hiccup starts catching what seems to be glimpses of the Night Fury he freed, and it appears that the curious creature has come back to investigate him.

The Night Fury appears more and more, drawn in by Hiccup’s trout feast. Hiccup notices the dragon’s wing is injured, likely shot by someone from the village. Although he’s not completely helpless, he’s having trouble. Hiccup sets to work on his most daring project yet--making a “brace” of sorts that can mend the ripped wing.

When Hiccup and Anna attempt to distract the Night Fury long enough to climb up and put the wing brace on, something unexpected happens. The dragon shoots up to the sky, both unwitting passengers clinging onto his tail for dear life.

Once they get their bearings and clamber up to his back, the Night Fury (who Hiccup has nicknamed “Toothless” for his retractable teeth) takes them on a flight through the clouds. Unable to help herself, Anna laces her arms around Hiccup’s waist--if only so she can supposedly “hold on better.”

Hiccup, of course, still doesn’t get it.

The flight takes a sinister turn when Toothless takes them to the dragon nest, and Hiccup finally gets his answer about where all of the villages food has been going--to their queen. Unsure what to do or how to free their new friends from the Red Death, Hiccup and Anna promise each other one thing or sure--none of the rest of Berk can know about the dragon nest. If they attack it, it spells disaster for both dragons and Vikings--not to mention the question of how they got there is sure to dig up their secret dragon-related activities as of late.

With each dragon raid, Anna finds herself more and more reluctant to fight dragons--especially now that she knows what’s actually going on. She only does the bare minimum to protect the food and the village, never going out of her way to attack a dragon or landing a killing blow (although by this point, she’d definitely be skilled enough to). During one particularly intense raid, Anna is finding it harder and harder to fend dragons off without doing lethal damage. While driving out a particularly tenacious monstrous nightmare, Anna happens upon the same changewing she’s befriended in the forest, limping to safety.

It would be incredibly easy to finish the dragon off, but Anna refuses. The dragon knows she’s beat, and so Anna lets her leave without so much as a swing of the princess’s sword.

Unfortunately, Astrid sees.

After the raid, Astrid storms up to Anna and chews her out in front of the whole village, yelling about how weak she was to not go for a dragon kill when she had the chance. It turns out Astrid’s also been noticing Anna going intentionally easy on the dragons, and how much the Arendelle princess seems to hold back when fighting him. Astrid knows it’s not physical incompetence, or a lack of skill--she’s seen Anna subdue plenty of dragons in training.

No, it seems to be the princess’s heart that’s weak. Her kingdom must be nothing but a bunch of bleeding-hearted morons, and she’ll never be tough enough to really belong in Berk.

As he watches Astrid yell and the Berkians all turn to sneer at the scene, Hiccup feels a sudden rush of protectiveness for his friend. Tears are starting to form in the corners of her eyes, and something gives in him seeing her subjected to the very ostracization that left him completely alone for so many years.

He walks up beside Anna, and suddenly he’s shouting like he’s never quite had the courage to before.

“You’re wrong, Astrid! You’re all wrong!”

Before long, he’s spilling everything--how dragons are intelligent and caring creatures, how they’re only stealing food to feed a ruthless queen, how he’s sure humans have killed far more dragons than vice versa. The village stares, horrified. When Stoick storms forward, Hiccup and Anna know it’s nothing good.

Stoick is disgusted. The very bodyguard he had brought all the way out to Berk to give his son strength did nothing but fill Hiccup’s head with softness and dangerous lies. He banishes Anna, warning her never to set foot in Berk or speak to his son again.

Hiccup will not have it. He says if Anna’s leaving, he’s coming with her. He’s made his choice, and he’s standing by the only person who ever really treated him with unconditional love and kindness.

“Fine,” Stoick says simply. “We’ll be rid of two traitors, then.”

Cast out from Berk, Hiccup and Anna find themselves with a new mission: Find the nest before the rest of Berk does, and take out the Red Death once and for all.

With the help of Toothless, the Changewing (who Anna has nicknamed “Flicker”), and the Snaptrapper (whose heads Anna have very creatively named Leafy, Greeny, Spiky, and Badbreath. It’s beyond Hiccup how she tells all of them apart, but she’s very adamant about which is which.), they find the dragon hive again, and attempt the impossible--attacking the queen. It seems hopeless at first, but once more and more malcontented dragons see what they’re doing, they join in and rebel.

It’s a tough fight, but the two humans and the revolting dragons come out on top. Not before the Red Death has one last hurrah, though--letting out a final, massive blast of fire that knocks Hiccup askew and sends him tumbling down into the flames. Toothless, Flicker, Anna, and the Snaptrapper dive after, and are quickly engulfed in red and orange.

Meanwhile, the Berkians have sent out ships following Hiccup, Anna, and their dragons, guessing the nest is where they were headed. By the time they get there, the fight is over--and Stoick and Gobber just manage to catch a glimpse of Hiccup plummeting into the flames.

Anna screams Hiccup’s name until the smoke burns her throat so much she can’t anymore. She remembers swooping underneath him and just managing to grab hold of his limp body before everything goes dark.

When she comes to later, it’s still dark--but she feels something soft and warm in her arms, and feels scales pressed against her back. Her arm is searing with pain, but she barely notices it as her eyes adjust to the darkness. Hiccup is curled up against her--groaning, but alive.

Not sure she’ll ever get another chance, she puts a hand on his cheek and finally tells him the truth. “I love you.”

He opens his eyes and looks, gaze shocked until a slow realization washes over him. He smiles. “I love you, too.”

They both pass out, still wrapped up in each other.

When the flames clear, Stoick sees what looks like a pile of dragons, all pressed together with their wings folded in. Slowly, they lift their wings to reveal two humans--charred in places, but alive.

Wracked with guilt, Stoick realizes he was wrong. Hiccup’s new bodyguard helped his son become stronger and braver than the chief of Berk ever imagined.

It turns out taking down the queen saved the dragons and the humans, and thanks to Hiccup, Anna, and their dragon friends, Berk will never have to worry about dragon raids again.

It turns out Hiccup’s leg and Anna’s arm didn’t quite make it out of the fire. Luckily, Gobber has always been handy at prosthetics--and Hiccup manages to make a fairly dextrous and functional metal hand for Anna. Anna is utterly delighted with how cool it looks.

After the whole Red Death incident, it’s decided that Hiccup is probably competent enough that he doesn’t need his own bodyguard anymore. Nonetheless, Anna is welcome to stay in Berk as long as she likes. And with new dragon friends and an incredibly cute new boyfriend, she’s not going anywhere anytime soon!

***

This is in reference to this post! I’ve already done these questions for Moanida. Theoretically still willing to do any questions I haven’t yet for Hiccanna and Moanida, although these were exhausting to write out so I might not give as long of answers XD

#hiccanna #hiccup x anna #anna x hiccup #hiccup #anna #otp questions #hiccup haddock #princess anna #hiccupxanna #annaxhiccup #rotbtd #rotbtfd #httyd #frozen #crossover

[painted-crow]

Hello. Can I ask you to give an example of your bird primary analizing and thinking, and changing it's mind and rethinking it's system about something? When you'll have time of course.

Overwork

I used to fall into the trap of glorifying overwork.

The various communities I belonged to as a teenager had this tendency to hold exhaustion as a status symbol. The general base of the idea was that if you were really dedicated and pushed yourself to your limits (read: long, long past your limits) then you could accomplish incredible things. It's usually flavored with individualistic ideals of achievement, and holds a very specific type of goal in high regard. It's also very American.

As a teenager, I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was going to start a startup, code some kind of app that would do something pretty basic in a really well designed way, and everyone would end up using it. I hyperfocus on things I'm interested in, and I thought if I could harness that, I might be able to have a stable income doing something cool and inventive.

This isn't an inherently bad idea. It's just that the startup world, the tech world, the local culture in my area, and the national culture of America all send a very focused message that working yourself to burnout is very cool and dedicated and great.

I'm not entirely sure how I came to challenge that. Partly it was experience. When I was 18, I took a full college class load alongside an internship (with a company that had a toxic culture... it was exhausting on its own tbh) and ended up unable to focus during class and too tired to get anything done while at home. I ended up dropping one or two of my classes (I can't remember; possibly one of them was that one with the online professor who went MIA so it was effectively dropped for me).

Then I wound up learning a working knowledge of PHP and doing 75% of the semester's work for one of the classes I kept... all in four days. I passed the class. In fact, my professor knew what I was doing and why (he was one of the few people who suggested that maybe I shouldn't be burning the candle at both ends like that), and although I'd carefully calculated how much I needed to do in order to pass and done that, he fudged it somehow and gave me an A.

But I think a large part of what changed my mind was my mom trying to tell me that what I was doing was batshit insane. I don't know if she ever challenged me directly on this point (possibly she did and I brushed it off because: teenager) but every time I decided to step back from what I was doing and cool down, she supported me. She wouldn't let me beat myself up for not achieving ridiculous goals. She reminded me that I always think I'm doing worse than I actually am; I'm very self-critical and have a long track record of perfectionism.

Eventually I think the tipping point was figuring out that sometimes depression keeps me from doing stuff, and that I can't just smash my way through by brute force when I'm already burned out. I can't blame myself for not being able to do what all the other burned-out college students seem to be doing all the time, because actually they were all doing exactly the same thing I was.

And I think eventually I extrapolated this to: "...maybe you don't need to wait until you're deeply depressed and burned out before you stop blaming yourself for having limits or pinning your self worth on productivity?"

Really. No shit, Sherlock.

Note

This is an example that actually took years before I recognized it and changed it. The cultural prevalence made it very hard to identify and articulate, which is why it hung around unchallenged for so long. I'd like to be able to give less extreme examples, but the thing is that I don't really remember them! I have a very shitty memory for certain categories of things, and "stuff I decided wasn't true" is one of them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Plus, more minor parts of your system, the parts that change most, are kind of invisible to you until they come up (because you're either exposed to relevant information that's reminding you of them, or you're making a decision that involves that belief) and you're actively thinking about them. They're always there, your active memory just doesn't really have, like... object permanence for them lol.

Or if you do remember, then a lot of the time the change isn't very dramatic.

Oh. I just thought of an example of this, actually.

A less extreme example, about pollution

You know how people are like "drinking straws specifically are evil! Save the turtles! Outlaw plastic straws!" And at first I was like, huh, if this is that big of a deal then maybe they have a point.

But then I started to feel like it's a weirdly narrow thing to focus on. If you have the activation energy to campaign against drinking straws, why not instead campaign against the fact that many American cities have very limited recycling programs?

When I lived in an apartment, if I wanted to recycle trash, I had to put it in my car and drive it across town to the recycling plant. Doing means I have to drive my car and add whatever pollution it's putting out into the air. You're trading one type of pollution for another, and it's a cost to me in time and money. Eventually I just gave up and threw away anything that wasn't big enough to merit the effort.

And then I learned that actually, most pollution comes from corporations, and the focus on consumers is probably just to distract us from regulating industrial waste properly by making us feel guilty, and also to get us to buy "eco friendly" products like metal drinking straws (which, btw, take more energy to manufacture and break down a lot more slowly even than plastic).

So, sure. Ditch your drinking straws if you want, definitely don't buy those shower soaps with the stupid plastic microbeads in them, but don't get distracted shaming each other for tiny things when we have bigger fish to fry.

This is how most system changes go down: "I thought about some stuff and learned some stuff and changed my mind." It's not usually a big deal. Sometimes it is, but this low-level stuff is way more common and you don't even usually notice it as it's happening.

#ravenclaw primary #sortinghatchats #paint speaks #asks

[faunusrights]

Before The Dawn -- Preview Thoughts (ahoy rwde)

So if you didn’t know (or didn’t see [or didn’t hear {or are living the life of blissful ignorance that I, for one, wish I had}]), a preview for the next CFVY-centric novel, Before The Dawn, came out! It’s the sequel to After The Fall, which I liveblogged a while back and generally like… was ambivalent about. Some of it was okay. Other parts were weird. Some bits just plain bonkers. But whatever!

Well, a part of this preview also happened to contain a flashback of Velvet and her father, and I really wanna extrapolate on some reasons this has me bewildered and frightened for my wellbeing! Because what the fuck! Anyway, goes without saying this post contains spoilers for six pages or so of Before The Dawn, but I can’t imagine anyone really cares about spoilers? Probably? Anyway.

(A small aside: I’m not crazy interested in engaging in, like, any debate over anything I’ve put here. This is just a write-up of conversations I’ve already covered with other people for the sake of quick linkage, and not a bright flare arc of ‘somebody come debate this’. If you like what the book says: fine! I don’t. Let’s leave it there, kiddos.)

So, I’m opening this with a disclaimer: many people know I have some hefty headcanons for Velvet’s parents, and I wanna just make it, like, excruciatingly clear: never, at any one point, did I think my headcanons or my AUs or what-have-you would ever become anything even vaguely close to canon. I knew a day would come in which what I’d filled in would come to have canonical content (or, rather, I’d hoped they’d not touch Velvet with a ten-foot pole and I’d never get disproven), and that this was inevitable. Canon and I aren’t on speaking terms, and that’s okay! I didn’t want, nor expect, nor imagined, my stuff becoming canon. So everything I’m about to say isn’t a case of my headcanons were superior or I wish they’d done what I did. What I wanna talk about is how… bad the canon we got, is. Got it? Good.

The preview doesn’t grant me page numbers so I’m unsure exactly where we are in the book, but that prooooobably doesn’t matter so much as the content of the section I’m talking about, but anyway; somewhere in this book is a 6-page section of a flashback Velvet has of talking to her father, as well as some Velvet and Scarlatina family lore. Can I even call it lore? Probably not. But it’s there and it’s real, and I wanna just dissect it for a moment by covering the main points from this excerpt, in no real order, with no input on my half, just facts:

Velvet’s father is an Atlesian engineer.

He works for/under/with Ironwood.

Velvet’s own skills as an inventor and engineer stem directly from him.

His work in Atlas has divided the family, because Velvet’s mum hates that he prizes his work over his family.

Velvet has always wanted to go to Atlas as it’s the tech capital of Remnant.

Velvet’s father doesn’t see her often and that causes some strife.

Her father’s name is Will Scarlatina.

Her mother’s name is Meg Scarlatina.

These are probably our main points to cover, and I’m gonna go over ‘em probably in this order since this is more or less how the excerpt presents them. So let’s take it from the top.

1. Velvet’s father is an Atlesian engineer.

WOW what a start. What a START!!! So, someone pointed out to me that this definitely implies he’s a human, which has some in-text proof that I’ll show a little later in point three, but my god what a. bold beginning. Yes. That said, this point only gets egregious a little later down the line, so let’s hop to point two.

2. He works for/under/with Ironwood.

Okay, so, again. I don’t plan nor intend for my headcanons to become canon in any capacity… but GOD do I hate how we have someone else tied up to Ironwood in some way. This man pulls all the strings, and it seems like nobody can do anything science-y or invent-y without it getting all wrapped up with Ironwood, what gives? Also, probably further proof that Will here is a human, though I’m ready to be wrong. I SURE HOPE I AM. Either way, with Velvet being a Faunus and Will potentially being/having married a Faunus, this slaps in all the bad ways. Can we stop that? Right now? Thanks.

3. Velvet’s own skills as an inventor and engineer stem directly from him.

SO THIS WAS MY FIRST STICKING POINT. The way I explained this was that, in some ways, some people are just like their parents (I sure am in a lot of ways!) and others are totally UNLIKE their parents (such as a lot of my friends!), but it really bothers me that RT looked at Velvet, who they decided was a very competent inventor and creator, and said well, she must’ve gotten it from somewhere! No way she did that all by herself! Let’s have this masculine figure in her life be the reason she’s Like That!

You can say I’m maybe over-exaggerating and, hey, maybe I am. But I really hate stories when a person’s skill is attributed directly towards someone else as if they have no autonomy to learn things on their own. Wouldn’t it have been cooler to have had Velvet strike out and make use of a skill that she developed with the help of friends and family? Who weren’t responsible for this skill, but aided her improvement? It’s real annoying that they decided she’s basically a clone of her father, which is supported by that in-text quotation I mentioned:

“She might have her mother’s ears, but she was her father’s daughter.”

So, first off: what the fuck. Secondly: ?????? Thirdly: so I think this is proof towards Will not being a Faunus, since the reference to ears is so pointed, but GOD I HATE THAT WHOLE IMPLICATION? People aren’t always little mini-clones of their parents, and something really bothers me about a daughter being Just Like Her Dad. It smacks all wrong, and maybe it’s ‘cause I have my vision of the Scarlatinas being so matriarchal and all but it bothers me one hell of a lot. Jesus.

4. His work in Atlas has divided the family, because Velvet’s mum hates that he prizes his work over his family.

/deep breath

Okay. Again, not tryna inflict my own headcanons on this. But are we really gonna play ball with yet another heterosexual marriage on the rocks because the man of the house prizes his job over his family? Really? Really? That’s what we’re being given, hot and fresh, off the printer? Really?

I’m just. Deeply disappointed that this is the angle we’re getting here. Like… right now, the ONE family we’ve got with their braincells in a row is, like, the Belladonnas, and yet we can’t get ONE other out here??? Not one??? The hets, they’re at it again! And I just. It would be SO easy to toss in some good queer content with these flashbacks and we’re just Not getting it. I don’t know why, I shouldn’t have to wonder why, but this is that, I guess.

5. Velvet has always wanted to go to Atlas as it’s the tech capital of Remnant.

HAS SHE THOUGH… REALLY? We’re really gonna say the Faunus who canonically got bullied in Vale and like, is visibly concerned about asshole humans being assholes, wanted to go to Atlas? Asshole human capital city? Are we positive? ‘Cause I, for one, ain’t. Tech is everywhere! You can study and deconstruct and pick apart and invent shit anywhere on the planet! Why would Velvet put herself at such risk just to see the equivalent of Silicon Valley dipshits engage in a circlejerk?

6. Velvet’s father doesn’t see her often and that causes some strife.

Here’s a slice of in-text dialogue to chew on:

“Just another way I’ve disappointed you, huh?” he said.

“Dad. No!” Velvet paused. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she didn’t have much to follow that up with, nothing that would convince him, anyway. It was hard to argue with the truth.

Now, small tangent: if you’ve read, or seen, any of my writing on Arslan-as-Sienna’s-offspring AU (which is [are] good AU[s] and general idea[s] you should read my content on the matter), then you’ll know I hate the trope in which a parent who does wrong by a kid, then expects that kid to apologise in order to make themself behave better. For instance: kid has an absent parent. Kid apologises profusely to the parent in hopes they’ll come home and be more present in their life. Parent feels bad, and does that, validating the kid’s belief that they needed to apologise to get their parent to come home. It’s a garbage trope and a dangerous one, because you don’t have to apologise for someone else hurting you. Full stop.

So imagine my surprise to see the same thing happen here! What’s this guilt-tripping? What’s this weird focus on Velvet when he’s the one not coming home? As soon as I read this line, it felt skeevy, it is skeevy. I hate it. I am brimming with hatred. Why do this? Why bother? Why does she need this drama? Jesus christ.

Next two points are a two-in-one:

7. Her father’s name is Will Scarlatina. 8. Her mother’s name is Meg Scarlatina.

WHAT? WHAT??????????? HUH????????????????????????

Okay, I know this seems like a bizarre thing to latch onto when there’s already so much fucked up here, but huh?????? These are the names? You chose? Will and Meg??????????????????? Never mind that they do NOT flow into their surnames at all (Meg Scarlatina????????????????????), but also the fact that Meg makes me think of Family Guy (which is something I NEVER want to think about, thanks,) just makes this a fuckin’ TRIAL of pain for me. Will and Meg???????

Did they pick up a phonebook — or, like, an online one — and grab the first two names they saw? Did they get a dartboard and put on a blindfold and launch darts across the room? Was this a socially-distanced[1] conference call gone wrong? I’m BEWILDERED. I learnt these names from someone posting about it in my discord chat, and I thought it was them telling a shit joke to try and piss me off. Are we really serious?

And to me, the name thing really epitomises this whole section. These names — that don’t fit well, that don’t really make sense with the whole colour-name lore, that don’t sound like they should be within a 20-mile radius of RWBY canon — are like the excerpt itself: bonkers. Bonkers bananas. Where every page brings in a new and unprecedented level of huh???????? that I JUST can’t get over.

Now, again. I don’t want my take on Velvet’s parents to be canon. No, really, I’m gonna use them for an original fic, RT don’t touch them they’re mine and they’re going to be in a novel. A series, even. It may even be erotica! But that’s neither here nor there; when I made Ash and Taffeta, I spent a lot of time reverse-engineering (my brand of) Velvet to put the pieces together. How did she grow up to be who she is now? What influences did she have? What examples did her parents set? What were her family like, and how did she take that upbringing forwards? And I spent a lot of time thinking about who they were, the environment they fostered, and I spent so many hours googling names it doesn’t even bear thinking about. Point being: I put a lot of time and energy and love into the Scarlatina family because I wanted, so badly, to have a family people could be, well, jealous of! A family so big-hearted and kind and full of love and furious compassion that you couldn’t help but wanna be there.

To me, this… take. This version of Velvet’s parents being peddled as canon is just so… unreal. Never mind that it’s been so many years since Velvet was unveiled, so many years people have developed headcanons of their own that, honestly, at this point, why bother? But it’s so frustrating to have taken time to make a queer family built on the solarpunk and socialist and eco-friendly and green-thinking and sustainable ways of being to then have canon turn around and say, okay, what if her dad’s a bootlicker, Velvet’s a mini clone of him, and the marriage Velvet’s parents have is on the rocks due to a trope older than time itself! Why? Why bother? What can this possibly add?

I’m not mad that what I wanted isn’t canon. I’m mad that what canon has given is so… lackluster. So boring. So unoriginal. I feel like I’ve read this story a thousand times, but it would have been so easy to make something so much richer with just a smidgen of effort on everyone’s parts. I expect so little from canon and I’m still let down. This is somehow worse than anything I expected canon to pull. It’s wild. What a bonkers series of choices to make.

[1] I know that most of this book would’ve been planned/written before lockdown, but please bear with the joke.

#rwde #before the dawn spoilers #preview discussion #dont @ me fuckers im too busy being disappointed BUT NOT SURPRISED

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

ten character faves (fandom redux)

ten character faves (fandom redux)

rules: name ten favorite character versions from ten things (fanfiction you wrote, fanfiction another wrote, etc) and then tag 10 people.

let’s just look at my kids. it is important to me that characters stay recognizable. except for the GBU trio who are essentially OCs at this point. 

Courier Six (90% canon, 10% invention) the only thing that like Breaks Canon for her is bringing Christine back and romancing Veronica, since in the game you can’t romance any of the companions, which I think is a very good detail for this specific game. there’s a fucking war on and you’ve got too much shit to do there isn’t time for that. your companions’ lives do not revolve around you. other than that, she’s progressed through the main storyline roughly in order and did all the DLCs in release order, although she has taken a somewhat violent and hardline approach to certain factions. eg other people’s Couriers did probably not clean out the Strip in such an efficient manner.  

Veronica Santangelo (90/10) nothing really breaks canon for her except getting Christine back, you can persuade her to leave the Brotherhood in what I think is her “best” ending. my Veronica is covering up a very real fear of abandonment and loss with the game!Veronica’s cheerful happy-go-lucky sensibilities. still a melee fighter, still built like a brick shithouse. i don’t know that i’ve got a good handle on her voice and how it differentiates from Christine’s yet (or rather still, it’s been almost a calendar year).  

Christine Royce (80/20) again pretty close to canon I think, the game does not give you a whole ton to go off with her. has a pretty dry sense of humor when you’re playing charades for information with her, 100000% is dealing with PTSD. still a sniper, still very good at collecting information and getting jobs done. very hard to get a good handle on her voice bc she straight up doesn’t have that many spoken lines and doesn’t even have her original voice. i feel like i am extrapolating far more things with her than with Veronica.  

Blondie (30/70) not a whole ton to go on for him in the film. kept the paisley shirt, kept his signature guns, kept a starcrossed partnership with Tuco that ended badly, pining after Angel bc he only wants things that are bad for him, everything else is different i think. a little bit less of a rat bastard than his film counterpart. basically an OC. 

Angel Eyes (10/90) there’s so fucking little to go on for him in the movie. invented an entire backstory for the man whole-cloth that doesn’t exactly track nicely with the game’s timeline but who the fuck cares any more certainly not me. has his gun, but from the wrong movie. at this point in his life a little less murdery and cold blooded than his film counterpart. again basically an OC.

Tuco (50/50) i don’t like film!Tuco all that much, but he will pop up again in this fic and fnv!Tuco mostly revolves around his dynamic with Blondie, which is very uneasy/something went bad in a grift, which is basically the movie’s dynamic? fnv!Tuco is much more content as a person/has a job he’s good at.  Pablo is not here bc I can’t figure out how to incorporate him. 

Raul (90/10) cranky old man sardonically calls young whippersnapper “boss” at every opportunity, esp when he disagrees. doesn’t come to live in the Lucky 38 permanently, but why would he not??? his shack on the outskirts of the city is very lonely. come live in the cool casino with a million mechanical bits to poke at Raul 

Arcade Gannon (75/25) much more openly exasperated with Six than in the game, I’ve given him more surgical & family medicine skills whereas in the game he is almost exclusively a researcher with a terrible bedside manner. 

Rex (90/10) he won’t go out and find specific items, that’s a Fallout 4 thing, and he doesn’t have a cool slidey panel to store things in. other than that he’s just a perfect robot dog like in the game, complete with how his AI just doesn’t really acknowledge the player’s movements very much. exactly like many real-life big dogs he’s just constantly underfoot. 

Rex the human (100% OC) he isn’t in the game at all. the only Legion healer you meet is a slave and can’t help you with wounds/rads/anything, only sell you a limited amount of supplies. 

#ain't that a kick in the head #ty! #i do not have the brainspace to tag more people

[profanetools]

what draws/drew you to the tes series? most of your thoughts on characters and lore seem to be based on your rewritten universe and in general, it seems like you don’t care for the existing lore of tes/morrowind. i’m just curious if there’s a particular reason that you’re attached to the tes universe conceptually as opposed to taking your rewritten/headcanoned tes worldbuilding and applying them instead to an original story/universe that would inherently be more to your tastes from the beginning

i meant to answer this this morning (i received this at 6am) and i apologise for the delay but this deserve a full response. i apologise for the meandering nature of this reply.

i think this is a fair question but two things deserve to be considered:

1. what is ‘lore’?

2. what does being a fan of a series entail?

regarding the first question, i have just an atrocious memory for facts and figures. i regularly forget what is commonly considered ‘common knowledge’ amongst lore buffs; largely because lore buffs pride themselves on remembering facts - something i am just not skilled at. i forget the fiction beyond the general details and end up making shit up based on a presumption that turns out to be wrong - that’s something that happens all the time. it’s a demoralising experience to be constantly corrected on what is assumed to be common knowledge - even though i fail to actually retain that information 9 times out of 10 - so i largely post with warnings like ‘this isn’t canon compliant!’ because I can’t really be doing with being correct on minutiae when that isn’t the point of what i’m trying to express.

what i am trying to explain - badly - is that lore is often reduced to a recollection of facts without really a depth of understanding of other aspects of the fiction. for example, i think the strength of a lot of RPGs in particular is that it actively invites the viewer to contribute and complete the fiction by creating their own characters and narratives using the skeleton of the world. RPGs are not a fictional narrative with one authority figure - an auteur in cinematic terms - dictating  how things go (no matter what MK tells himself, lmao). that is as important as the history established (through second hand accoutns, no less) of the fiction. the player completes the lore with their own interpretation of events; it is not a one sided view of things. furthermore, i think people tend to view lore as a collection of facts and fail to acknowledge the themes and emotional ressonance that a selection of incomplete second hand accounts may possess. i am a big fan of the lore in so much as the first council is about themes of loss, themes of tragedy, themes of compromise, and what that entails, politically, and an exploration of betrayal and trying to do the best while under threat, while besieged by enemies, with the looming threat of colonisation and conquest by enemies is at one’s door. i adore  the themes of Morrowind - i adore the dreamlike narrative, i adore the questioning one is invited to do as a player when playing the game. i adore how much agency it gives you in figuring out an ending to the question it poses - are you nerevar? are you more than your past life? what does it mean to be ‘nerevar incarnate’? have you risen to standard? have you defied it?

i am a fan of the fiction. perhaps i am not a fan of the lore in so much as it is a set of facts but certainly, regarding morrowind i am a fan in how much it invites the reader to give their own input and contribution and really that is in large part what i am offering here. my own input and contribution. in fairness, this is based on the backbone of other headcanons others more knowledgable annd well versed in the facts have provided, but part of the reason i talk about the lore in the way i do is because i just do not think the actual facts of the fiction are not necessarily the most important thing. i think the feeling and the mood and the sense of mystery and the general ambience is as important to the lore. and perhaps i do not capture that mystery in my writing but i certainly try and capture that sense of tragedy at least.

referring to question two now:

2. what does being a fan of a series entail?

this isn’t the first time i have been asked ‘why don’t i make my own original universe?’. i used to be a big fan of the star wars series and i used to engage in a similar way; inventing my own AUs, playing fast and loose with canon, ignoring what i didn’t like, and so on. because ultimately, and this ties in with question 1, i think we have a tendency to try and... since the creation of copyright and the idea of writing as Property of One Author, we look down upon interpretations and perceptions of existing universes, we ask, ‘dude you have so many ideas why can’t you make your own universe?’ and creative response to existing fictional works has been discouraged because of copyright infringement, and it has been lowered to a secondary realm of fiction-making, fanfiction. there is a certain level of judgement there, in that fanfiction is almost certainly low literature, and that is unfair because previously there have been several creative responses to fictional unverses, taking elements of the fiction and completely ditching others and spinning them their own way, Arthurian legend perhaps being the most well known example in literature written in English, but hardly the only one.

what I am trying to express is what I am doing is not actually that novel, i am taking and choosing elements i like to create my own thing, and perhaps yes i will pick and choose and write my own novel from it, but why must i have to? is it not enough to exist in the same universe? is it not enought to grapple with the same themes, the same underlying ideas, about what it means to be mortal or not, what it means to be loyal or not, how much does a betrayal cost? even if i am working under my own framework that rejects some bullshit writing, why should i have tocreate my own universe, when there are so many references buried deep to different historical events in-universe, why should i have to extrapolate that? how the fuck do i explain Lorkhan outside of the context of the elder scrolls? why should i have to do that?

i think in part some of this comes from a lack of confidence in my own worldbuilding, if i am honest, i don’t know if i would be able to create a fully fleshed out world beyond some silly idealistic commie fantasy. a lot of my characters are an extension of me and lean in a certain way and i don’t know if i’d be able to create more than a personal story and i don’t knwo if i’d be able to create a whole world. in part that’s why i rely on fanfction. because it does that work for me and i can just focus on the parts i like.

but also like. i can enjoy the fiction thematically - and i adore morrowind, thematically, and i try to replicate that, thematically - without paying fervent attention to the facts. and the fact that i create what seem like to be whole fictional world offshoots does not mean i should translate that to an original setting.

i hope this answer isn’t too confusing and that this answer has clarfied some things for you anon.

#Anonymous

[garden-ghoul]

fellowship of the bloggening, part 1

I’m reading it here. I look at the table of contents and go “oh for fuck’s sake” because the prologue is “concerning hobbits... concerning pipeweed.” I’m. not reading the prologue. No I’m reading “concerning hobbits” because I really want to know how and when they happened.

This is really cute, hobbits are basically like... brownies, according to Johnald. And some of them are only two feet tall??? LITTLE

The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in the Elder Days that are now lost and forgotten. Only the Elves still preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom and Hobbits are not mentioned at all. Yet it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them.

nooooooo why must elves be so

like that

Anyway, we also learn that there are still Dunedain settlements in Eriador, including one notable one that’s actually at Bree! I love the. weird mismatch of naming seriousness here. You have your very olde Numenorean and elvish names like Eriador, and then most of the settlements in Eriador have names like Hobbiton and Bree and Brandywine. It’s very charming, like a hermit crab that has moved into an extremely fancy looking conch shell. An adorable transplant. It is here mentioned that the first hobbits appearing in historical record politely asked the high king of Arnor if they could move in, in exchange for road maintenance. Too cute!

To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to the aid of the king, or so they maintained, though no tales of Men record it.

::3

And with that it’s time for

A LONG-EXPECTED PARTY

We begin with an accounting of what everyone thinks about Bilbo Baggins! Everyone is kind of dubious about him because of his eternal youth thing, but he’s very free with his riches and consequently the less well-off hobbits love him. It says he didn’t have many friends until some of his young cousins grew up. He and Frodo share a birthday, so on Frodo’s coming of age birthday Bilbo will be 111 and they’re having a huge party! 

Holy shit. Sam’s dad is named Ham Gamgee. I’m so tickled. This next bit is a bunch of gossip and baseless speculation on Frodo’s family history by Gaffer & co. They keep calling everything and everyone queer, which is great, because it confirms Frodo is 100% not straight. I think he might be a bit old for Sam but I suppose we shall see.

Dwarves and a fire wizard have showed up a bit early for the party, and Hobbiton is getting stoked. Bilbo mails out invitations to everybody individually instead of just saying “everyone can come to the party,” and with that plus their replies (also by post) the post office is completely swamped for a week. He’s having fun with everyone. I do have to wonder how he got word to the dwarves, though. What kind of mail is there between Eriador and Erebor?

Oh here’s a cute tidbit about hobbit culture: at a party, both the hosts and guests give gifts, and so:

Actually in Hobbiton and Bywater every day in the year it was somebody’s birthday, so that every hobbit in those parts had a fair chance of at least one present at least once a week. But they never got tired of them.

I also like to imagine that Gandalf had a lot of fun designing firecrackers. Like, he does have serious wizard business to do. But also he has the firegays from his ring, and so. Anyway there is a Special Dinner that only 144 people are invited to. Good grief, how can Bilbo possibly still be rich enough to put on a party for like 1000 people? Bilbo makes a speech, with which everyone quickly gets very bored because they are all drunk, but the real point was to be an asshole and vanish mysteriously to make a point (Gandalf adds some pyrotechnics for effect, bless him). Frodo appreciates his joke, but is sad that he’s going to be leaving, and just can’t party any more.

Bilbo and Gandalf argue over leaving the ring to Frodo, Bilbo runs off with some dwarves (we never find out who!) and then people show up at Bag End to get presents Bilbo has left them with passive-aggressive notes on. Then everyone thinks it’s just a free-for-all take-Bilbo’s-stuff party and they swarm the house and poor Frodo has to lie down, leaving Merry in charge. The Sackville-Bagginses come to insult him by saying he’s a Brandybuck, not a Baggins!!

‘Did you hear that, Merry? That was an insult, if you like,’ said Frodo as he shut the door on her.

‘It was a compliment,’ said Merry Brandybuck, ‘and so, of course, not true.’

Cute. I like Merry’s sass. Frodo kicks out a bunch of people who are trying to dig up his cellar and collapses, just in time for Gandalf to come and say he is fleeing like a 

SHADOW OF THE PAST

Do you like my transitions? I’m polishing them.

Frodo continues to throw Bilbo a birthday party every year, instead of mourning as would be proper. I think he’s too embarrassed to throw a birthday party for himself but still wants to have a party, bless his heart.

he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times, as Bilbo had done.

Where are these elves? There are elves in the Shire? What?

WELL. Around Frodo’s 50th birthday, a lot of elves start passing through on the way to the Gray Havens, as well as the usual dwarves going to and from the Blue Mountains. Elves are leaving Middle Earth in rapidly increasing numbers because of some very troubling rumors about Sauron. Gandalf turns up to discuss this with Frodo, and during an awkward silence they hear “the sound of Sam Gamgee cutting the lawn.” Sorry, what?? This poor boy is cutting Frodo’s lawn by hand?? With like, a scythe?? WHY? Does Frodo really seem like the type of person who cares how well-shorn his lawn is? I fucking hate lawn culture.

Leaving that aside there’s some ring history I guess. Here’s a very interesting thing, though: Gandalf says the inscription on the ring is in “the language of Mordor.” Why does Sauron have his own language? ...what language did they speak before, in Angband? I can’t believe Mr Jolkien has been SO REMISS as to let us stay ignorant of an entire language and its cultural origins!! Anyway if I had to guess I would say the old language of Morgoth’s holdings would end up being some kind of odd Sindarin-Beorian-Quenya creole, given who lived and worked (in slavery) there. But the higher-ups would surely speak whatever language they were already speaking... Quenya? Is Quenya a language invented by the Ainur and then handed down to the Eldar? No it’s not, it has common roots with Sindarin. I have to assume there’s an Ainur language that Morgoth and Sauron knew, but they probably wouldn’t use it with their orc lieutenants and such... and thus I feel better saying that Angband Creole is the historical basis for the language of Mordor, although obviously it will have evolved a lot and mixed with the languages of goblins and such that Sauron ended up recruiting.

Listen. If there’s not an actual note in the appendix about this I’m going to be pisséd. Oh, I’m sure someone’s written a paper on it, though.

Oh! We also get to know about the seven rings--he managed to recover three of them, but the other four were eaten by dragons. Just the way they would have wanted to go. Gandalf also gives a... troublingly detailed account of how Smeagol came to possess the one ring? He adds that Smeagol’s friend came up from the river with weeds and mud in his hair. Which like, I guess you can extrapolate that from him being in a river but why add it?? He even comes up with specific terms of endearment... Smeagol calls Deagol ‘my love,’ which I can ONLY take to mean they were dating. This makes Smeagol’s imminent murder of Deagol all the more tragic.

Also we learn that Gandalf hunted down Smeagol and questioned him to find a lot of this out! Smeagol had been sneaking around basically everywhere, eating people’s children and the like (!!), and only failed to actually get into the shire because wood-elves were protecting the borders. Eventually years later when Aragon helped find him again, they realized he had been to Mordor and been tortured for information there.

Frodo is very frightened at this point, and almost makes himself try to destroy the ring, but instead realizes he has put it back in his pocket. This is terrifying!! Holy shit I would lose my mind with fear if this happened to me. Also I enjoy the ridiculously high specific heat of magic rings. So Frodo decides to keep the ring safe for now, and to go away from the Shire:

‘I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.’

It’s That Feel, back once again. This was something I was thinking a lot about wrt to the Lay of Leithian and Children of Hurin; how different Beren and Luthien’s outlooks are based on “feeling that you have a homeland” or not; how profoundly affected Turin is by feeling he has no place to go back to. I wonder if this is something Johnald thought a lot about during the war. It’s terrible here, so terrible, but there is somewhere peaceful to come home to. I haven’t felt that in so long, and I very much wish to again some day.

#I'm already getting a case of the feels from this book. RUDE Mr Jolkien #blog of the rings

[ncfan-1]

K, M, and P for the meme please :)

This got long.

K - What character has your favoritedevelopment arc/the best development arc?

Ibelieve that one of the last few times I played this meme, I answered LondoMollari from Babylon 5. I still standby believing he has a fantastic character arc (And if you’re curious about Babylon 5, it’s a fantastic show, and he’sone of the best parts of it). A lot of people, I know, would put Zuko down forthis one. But having replayed KOTOR 2 recently, I think the Exile (when youplay Light Side) has a great character arc throughout the course of the game.Granted, this is kind of dependent on player choices even beyond being LightSide, and is kind of dependent on my head canon, but me, I play that game andwatch a broken-down, apathetic woman regain her sense of purpose, refuse to letgo of it again, and save the galaxy in the process. The whole game is heremotional journey, and it’s incredible to watch.

M - Name a character that you’d like to havefor a friend.

IdrilCelebrindal, and also her husband, Tuor, from the Silmarillion would both make very good friends, I think. Idril iswise and perceptive, and Tuor is optimistic and determined.

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (wealways need more ideas).

(Thisactually happens to be a fic—or fics—idea I’m planning on writing eventually.)

Okay,after the events of KOTOR 2, the Exile—Kalani—goes looking for Revan. Atton’salong for the ride, because no matter what TOR or that novel have to say on the matter, the trajectory of the game wasdefinitely pointing towards him going with her. So it’s them in the Ebon Hawk, with T3-M4 and HK-47.

Theystop at Citadel Station to drop off everybody else, since as it happens,everybody else has other plans (Asides from rebuilding the Jedi Order, that is;it’s an important goal for them all—asides from Mandalore, and maybe Atton andMira—but secondary to their concerns right now). Bao-Dur’s getting back in withthe Telos Restoration Project. Mira’s heading back to Nar Shaddaa to settle oldaffairs there, and for other reasons that she doesn’t want to share with therest of them. Visas has hitched a ride with Mandalore and the Mandalorians backto Dxun; why, no one but her and Canderous really seem to understand. Mical isresuming his search of various Jedi Academies across the Outer Rim, and he’sbeen given clearance to enter the Temple on Coruscant, so he’s going to gothere and see if anything can be salvaged (He’s also planning on readying it asa base of operations for what admittedly is going to wind up being an extremely decentralized new Jedi Order).They’re also dropping off the HK-51 droids that showed up out of nowhere on theship after they were done on Malachor V, much to everyone (sans HK-47’s)relief.

Kalaniinsists on taking Atris with them in the EbonHawk. Atris isn’t really good to be left to her own devices right now—thoughKalani is more worried about Atris doing harm to herself than others—and needssupervision. There’s also the matter of getting her away from all of those Sithholocrons, and figuring out what to do with them (Kalani is seriouslycontemplating putting them in a box and letting them drift into the neareststar; it seems the safest way of disposing of them). Brianna is coming alongfor the ride, too. Atris had sent the other Handmaidens home to Eshan, buttheir family wouldn’t take Brianna, thanks to the stigma against children bornout of wedlock in their culture, and the fact that Yusanis is no longer aliveto shelter his youngest child. Brianna doesn’t really have anywhere else to go,so the Ebon Hawk and the search forRevan is her only real option.

Somebodyelse hitches a ride on the Ebon Hawk atTelos: Bastila. Carth can’t join the search, as much as he would like to.Revanasi is not part of my fic head canon, though I don’t mind the ship itself.Instead, I imagine their relationship as being rather like Marlin and Dory’s inFinding Nemo and Finding Dory, and a good quote for it would be Guinan’s from TNG’s ‘TheBest of Both Worlds’: “closer than friends, closer than family.” Carth ishorribly, intensely worried about Revan—whose post-brainwashing name is Jìngyī Yuen—buthis duties in the Republic fleet don’t allow him to leave to go looking forher. Bastila is also horribly, intensely worried about Jìngyī; she wants to findher, bring her home, and she feels that the bond the two of them share mightallow her to help Kalani in the search.

It’s…not a fun trip.

Atton,as you can imagine, is extremely tense with Bastila and especially Atris on board, worried of one or both of them digginghis past out of his head. He and Kalani have an understanding that what theyspoke of was between them, and Kalani agrees that it would be bad, really bad, if Atris found out, even asshe is now. Atton is okay with Kalani; he’s okay with Bao-Dur, with Visas andMira, even somewhat okay with Mical nowadays. But he is not okay with Atris and Bastila, especially as, to him, they’reboth the embodiment of the Jedi who could not give less of a fuck as the OuterRim burned during the Mandalorian Wars, but were more than happy to try to tearthe galaxy apart during the Jedi Civil War. He avoids Atris and tends to becool, bordering on hostile, towards Bastila.

(Thefact that Atris is his girlfriend’s ex doesn’t help matters. He knows thatrelationship is stone dead, but the fact that the two women still have suchstrong reactions towards each other, pretty clearly still have feelings for oneanother, well… Atton is both more than a little insecure, and more than alittle worried for Kalani’s well-being.)

Kalaniis still recovering from everything that happened with Kreia, and the idea thatshe is a Wound in the Force and may or may not be unconsciously psychicallydominating her companions is weighing heavily on her mind, even with Micaltrying to reassure her that the Council was full of shit and were so ready tochalk up every success of hers to her being a Wound in the Force that they didn’teven take into account that she is genuinely a very inspiring person withouttaking the Force into account. Her history with Atris complicates mattersfurther; all the old wounds there, the scar tissue slowly pulling open.

Andthere’s the fact that she’s dreading having to meet with Revan again. She knewRevan the legend much better than she knew Revan the person. They didn’t getalong very well, and there’s the fact that Revan basically set Kalani up to beeither killed or turned to the Dark Side at Malachor V; I feel like evenwithout HK-47’s comment about Revan ‘cleaning house’ at Malachor V, she couldprobably have extrapolated that. Kalani isn’t like Bastila. Kalani doesn’t knowJìngyī Yuen, redeemed; she only knows Revan, whom she once idolized, and whonow inspires mingled fear and loathing in Kalani. Kalani is trying to trackdown Revan because she believes that that’s what’s best for the Republic, butthat doesn’t mean she has to like it.She and Bastila, who was close to Jìngyī, after all, get into arguments aboutit from time to time.

I headcanon Bastila as having once been a student of Atris’s. I’ve noticed as I playthrough KOTOR I that she has some mannerisms in common with Atris—the way she gesticulateswhen she talks, for instance. Her tendency towards dogmatism, her (stronglyimplied) isolation from her peers, going far beyond what I would expect fromeven a Jedi, and the fact that Bastila is frankly the most tightly-wound personI have ever come across in a piece ofStar Wars media, have Atris’sfingerprints all over them. I imagine Bastila as having come under Atris’s careafter the Mandalorian Wars broke out and Kalani left to fight. Atris would havebeen a stern teacher even at the best of times, but after this happened, yeah,Atris was not the sort of person who should have ever been put in charge of a child, especially not a naturallyhigh-strung child like Bastila probably was to start with.

MyBastila actually left the Jedi Order a few months after the events of KOTOR I.She had a strong desire to proactively go good that she had no outlet for nowthat the Jedi Civil war was over and the Jedi were expected to file back totheir surviving Enclaves and Academies, withdrawing from the affairs of the galaxyat large. She had questions for the Council that they had no answers that theywere willing to give her, like why they’d been treating Bastila more like aweapon than a person over the last several years. And Bastila had noticed adifference in the way she was treated post fall and redemption, a differencethat made her feel even more isolated and alone than she already had.

Soyeah, Bastila left the Jedi Order, and proceeded to become the second personthat year to have a nervous breakdown/existential crisis in Carth Onasi’sliving room (I head canon Jìngyī and Bastila both as having crashed with Carthafter they, independently of one another, left the Jedi Order after the eventsof KOTOR I). Bastila’s feelings towards the Order are extremely complicated.She wouldn’t have left if she had felt like she had any real choice, if she hadeven the slightest chance for a life she felt like she could actually live with them. She has no lightsaber,and is no longer part of the Order, but verymuch still considers herself a Jedi. After a while of trying, to no avail,to find a job (life in the Order left her extremely ill-equipped for lifeoutside of it), she, with Carth’s help, gets involved with the planetaryrestoration efforts, and being able to do real, active good helps her come toterms, somewhat.

As forher relationship with Atris, Atris came down on Bastila pretty hard after herfall and redemption, but when Bastila actually left the Order for good? Then,the two of them had a truly horrific falling-out, nearly as bad as Kalani’sfalling-out with Atris was, minus the added complication of a previousromantic/sexual relationship. So for the two of them to have to be on the sameship at the same time is, umm, not pleasant for anyone.

Atrisis not murderous, and understands that what she did, regarding the Order,Katarr and Kalani, was wrong, but she is extremely brittle, extremelyshort-tempered, and just kind of broken. She rarely ventures out of the starboarddormitories, and just tends to sit on one of the beds, staring at the wall. Shecan be coaxed into speech, can be coaxed into ‘life,’ but something’s justsnapped inside of her—or, rather, something snapped in her a long time ago, andshe’s just now realizing it, just now feeling it. She’s not sure how to makeamends for everything she’s done, not sure if she even can, and this uncertainty leaves her paralyzed. She gets intobitter arguments with Bastila, into screaming matches with Kalani that leaveone or both of them in tears.

Briannais just sort of left to cope with her surrogate mother having completely fallenapart, and with her surrogate mother’s ex-girlfriend and ex-student being onboard and all of the messy baggage that comes with that. There’s also heremerging Force Sensitivity, and her desire to explore that clashing with thevows she swore.

Juhanimay or may not join the crew at some point. Yuthura Ban, too. This is really, really not a fun trip, and it’s only thedroids who aren’t dealing with baggage.

That’snot to say it’s unrelenting fear, tension and misery. There are a few softerspots.

Kalaniand Atton, with the events of their game taken care of, actually have time todevelop a romantic relationship. PDA freaks Bastila out like nothing else can,which is annoying, but it freaks her out in such an amusing way that they almost don’t care. Kalani and Bastila, whenthey aren’t arguing about Revan/Jìngyī, find common ground commiserating overtheir miserable relationships with Atris. Brianna gets kind of starry-eyedwhenever she speaks to Bastila and especially Kalani, and when the matter isbrought up, Atris is surprisingly okay with the two of them teaching Briannathe ways of the Force; Kalani and Bastila find further common ground inteaching Brianna. If Juhani’s on board, she and Bastila are of course friendlywith one another, and they support each other emotionally. If Yuthura is onboard, she actually gets on fairly well with Kalani and Atton both. Atriscan occasionally be persuaded to come out of the starboard dormitory and spendnon-miserable time with Kalani, Brianna, and/or Bastila.

Whenthey actually find Jìngyī, well… It’s a mess. Partially because Jìngyī is,herself, a complete, fucking mess of a person. Her memories are fractured; sheremembers that Revan found evidence of a Sith Empire beyond the Rim, but solittle beyond that that she’s just stuck searching worlds in Unknown Space fortraces of it. Her sense of identity is fractured. She remembers only bits andpieces of her life before being brainwashed and having the false memoriesimplanted; there are huge, gaping holes in memory. My Jìngyī basically fellapart after the events of KOTOR I, because with the Star Forge destroyed, therewas nothing to distract her from her crawling fears regarding Revan and her ownidentity. Her mental state can be best summed up by the phrase “afraid to sleepbecause every time she does she fears that she will never wake up again, butthat the shadow in the back of her mind will wake up and walk away wearing herskin.” ‘Revan’ feels more like a shadow to her than something, someone she actually was, once. It wouldhelp if her implanted memories had more substance to them, but they’re onlybare bones; they were designed that way, the better to avoid inconsistenciesshe might pick up on (And thinking about a life she never really lived ispainful and confusing anyways). She’s desperately trying to find traces of the SithEmpire almost more because she needs a distraction from her crawling fears thanbecause she’s trying to protect the Republic.

Kalaniwants to hate her. She is, when she finds her, genuinely extremely frustratedwith her, and loses her temper with her easily (Atton is genuinely surprised,but this is easily the angriest he’s ever seen her get). But she can’t hate Jìngyī, because she’s not theterrible, towering figure she remembers. She’s just a frightened, miserablewreck of a person who’s trying in her own fumbling way to do good. She can’tremember Kalani at all. She can’t remember using and using Kalani, and thenbreaking and throwing her away once she wasn’t useful anymore. Bastila has toexplain to Jìngyī who Kalani is and why she should know her. And it’s not goodbecause, oh, look, here’s yet anotherpiece of closure permanently denied to Kalani, but she just can’t bring herselfto hate someone so genuinely pitiable,and that’s just the story of Kalani’s life, having to find a way to move onwhen closure is denied her. Jìngyī is eventually wrangled onto the Ebon Hawk and carted back off toRepublic space. It’s easier than Kalani thought it would be.

#Ask meme #Star Wars: KOTOR 2 #KOTOR #you will be able to tell immediately #at what point I lost control of this post #chidorinnnnn