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hajihiko · 2 years

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do you have thoughts on izuru post sim? ive seen a few headcannons here and there where he disappears, or hajime develops a sort of alter ego/DID situation. im curious how he would play into the survivor dynamic you've got

Ok this is gonna be based on absolutely nothing but bear with me

1. Ideally, I would WANT Hajime and Izuru to be pretty merged, but still separate? Seperate, because I just think the concept of talking to the seperate entity in your mind is such a cool trope (in a fantasy/sci-fi setting, no real logic behind it, dont wanna be insulting towards people with actual DID). Merged, because I like the idea that Izuru would have some of Hajime's thoughts and feelings and he could re-learn what it's like to have feelings and friends 🥺 BUT that could potentially mean Hajime shares some of Izuru's lack of life luster, which is fittingly sad but.....haji....

It's like the best scenario for both of them I think, they sorta blend into each other but they can still be more this guy or more that guy, but they're pretty content

2. the other idea is that they sorta, fight to pilot the same vessel sometimes? Mostly Izuru doesn't much care about it, and Hajime is Player 1 by sheer force of will (which he has a lot of!!) But Izuru jumps out in moments of panic of where Hajime loses control, and it can be a little hard to get them to switch back. Which is a little scary bc Hajime may be pretty superhuman but it's all muddled into his shitty little normal human brain, and Izuru is 100% power 100% of the time.

(sidenote, Hajime having shit like super strength and super intelligence, but sometimes he forgets?? Like he needs to focus to apply talent and still remain himself, and sometimes it slips and he drops an entire car or something.)

This lends way to a fun "learning to live together" narrative and some drama!

Maybe first situation 2, then situation 1? Happy ending?

As for how it fits into the group;

I like the idea that Hajime might hide how much Izuru is still around, because drama, but he can't hide it for long because FRIENDSHIP. obviously his friends will love him regardless, but it might be a little scary to see your friend blink away and a blank slate of immense power pop out.

Akane would be on him right away because she can just tell there's something more to him. Her gut doesn't lie! But no one fully believes her at first :( she gets to have a great I Told You So moment. She kind of catches on that Izuru isn't...a SUPER huge threat, so she's chill (maybe too chill. If Izuru chose to do something bad, she wouldn't notice because of how non-emotional he is and it'd really fuck with her confidence in her senses.).

Souda wooooould probably be very distrusting of the whole thing. Like he's supportive of Hajime ofc but he does not like that there's a whole seperate guy (not really) who can spy on them. Souda is already such a suspicious guy, and I think at the end of FTEs hes like "ok don't make me suspect you tho hahaaa" but he comes around eventually. Probably loves that Izuru-side can do basically anything, great help with carrying heavy machinery!

Fuyuhiko is a very loyal dude and might take it a little far tbh? He's like "I wanna talk to HAJIME my friend HAJIME and no one else" and Hajime is like "ok I appreciate that we're still friends but I can't..make him leave. You're just yelling at *me* right now." I think he'd be the one to treat them the most as seperate people, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad (might relate Izuru to Peko and insist he's his own person lol). But bless his heart he tries real hard to let Hajime know he's in his corner.

Sonia is always a little hard for me so I have no idea about her tbh. I guess maybe she'd relate to Izuru a bit for being made into something he's not, the whole "useful first, human second"? She might actually think the whole thing is really cool and grill both Hajime and Izuru about the details of their situation.

Ok talky over I have no idea if this is gonna make sense I woke up like an hour ago lol

#Hajime #Izuru #Fuyuhiko #Kazuichi #Akane #Talky talky #Sonia

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devitalise · 5 months

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omg imo I could've sworn there was at least one full week left of november for some reason but dec 1 is on friday BYE locking myself up to finish my books 🏃‍♀️ HOW WAS YOUR NOVEMBER READING!! are you already in the holiday spirit are you planning on reading/watching some holiday related things to get you there? this one's rando, but do you have any favorite holiday foods/desserts/drinks you're excited to indulge in during this last month o 2023 ☃️

november being 30 days always goes by SO quickly she knows we're ready for the main event. november was a very good reading month for me let's get into the

november book wrap up

Small Island by Andrea Levy

i finished this pretty early on in novembr, my thoughts are along the same lines as my goodreads review: Great piece of historical fiction. I found parts of this so funny and I'm not sure if that was the original intention but I did have a giggle! The humour was found moreso in Gilbert and Hortense who are just so, so different to each other and Hortense's wilful misunderstanding and naivete as she tries to be a Model Minority was just so funny it was a much needed brevity compared to the heaviness of the rest of the story. Such foul racist thoughts that can be burdensome after a while, though. Yeah! I don't need to read the POV of a white British man stationed in India in the second world war ever again, actually! I enjoyed reading though.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin

reread this because I hadn't picked up a high fantasy book I'd actually enjoyed in a little while. Great! I love ASOIAF as a series love returning to a known entity. I can't find my copies of A Storm of Swords or A Clash of Kings so continuing my reread is on pause until those unearth themselves.

Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Brilliant! So, so atmospheric. Incredible translation to me, obviously I won't know for sure until there ever comes a day where I can read Polish, but I got so much of the story out of this. It was just so cool and not what I expected at all going into it. I've never read anything like it before so getting to grips with all of the quirks of the style, subject and character was its on experience.

Butcher's Crossing by John Williams

Stoner was one of my top 2022 reads, so I saved this knowing that I'd like it. Rachel Cusk coded. It didn't blow me away like Stoner did, but I appreciate these are two very different books with completely different approaches. Where Stoner is so insular, things are kind of bursting in Butcher's Crossing. William isn't a complete active character, but he's participating in his life. Really cool setting, one of the most tense books I've read which I find can fall short in books with more action but the way tension builds and builds and builds in these fraught interactions between the four men on the mountain is fucking incredible. Immediately watched the film after this, and I love Nicolas Cage as much as the next person, but it fell short for me as an adaptation and as a film, sadly! Will be reading Augustus very soon as the last novel Williams' acknowledges as his own work.

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

Another Western! Apparently I couldn't get enough! Not long finished this, so bear with for complete thoughts. Realised that I haven't read a book with such a sinister character in a while. Phil is sinister and strange and he's complicated, and I just really liked this book! Took me a while to get through because it is so dense at parts, but I think playing the long game definitely paid off. I love books that can make life so dramatic, all of the small stuff builds up to this big moment kind of thing. Netflix removed this film??? Will be making time to watch it this weekend for sure!

Outlawed by Anna North

3/3 with Western's which is so out of left field for me I feel. Finished it today, but on my top 2023 shelf, for sure. I think reading these back-to-back has made me appreciate the difference in style and storytelling so much more. I was a bit nervous because I've found previous Reese Witherspoon book club picks really juvenile, and whilst this is way more accessible than BC or TPotD, there's still a lot of complexity that I was able to enjoy. I love communities and found families, and it just really got me reading this book about these "women" ostracized from society making something of their own at risk of imprisonment and hanging. Thought it was really neat :)

December Reads

I'm on the Kindle through to the end of the year (10 days to New York!) so I'll be getting a couple new titles to diversify my options more. I don't have anything set in stone but I did download pdf's of The Hunger Games series which I've never read before so I might do those.

My Christmas mood started on November 1st! Multiple plays of Ariana Grande's Christmas & Chill, and I've already watched a few Christmas films. I watched The Holiday for the first time recently and found it boring :( I'm not a Jude Law enjoyer sorry.

Oh I love a hot cider! Ferrero Rocher's, stuffing, anything Christmassy really! I'm also so excited for a Christmas in New York! I have an itinerary going and many pictures to take!

#book talk #djservo

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ravenstargames · 1 year

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Now asking the Ravenstar team: When did you come to the idea "Yeah lets do a visual novel"? What was the inspiration for the Limbo theme? Do you have some favourite VNs?

This is a funny one! (I say that about every ask, please bear with me) Beware long post!

I have been a huge, huge fan of visual novels since I was a teenager, especially romantic ones. Making one has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember, and for my final project for college, I did a small study and a prototype for one. Rachel and I enjoy romance a lot so we ended up playing tons of visual novels/otome together, and obviously we pestered both Astro and Kayden about it (specially me because I'm not able to shut up about things most of the time, I love you guys).

We have been wanting to make a game together since forever, but it was like a silly little dream at first. Then, after we all got our degrees, we said: wait, why don't we actually try and make one? And I suggested a visual novel. And everyone said yes.

And that's how my master plan to convince all my friends to make a visual novel came to fruition.

The inspiration behind Lost in Limbo comes from a lot of places! We all love fantasy and building worlds together (mainly thanks to Dungeons and Dragons and a lot of videogames, books and movies) so it was easy to sit down and say "alright, fantasy world, magic, monsters, gods, etc." The first idea that later would shape Lost in Limbo was related to the seven deadly sins and the afterlife, and it soon evolved into what LiL is today (which you'll find out in the demo! yay!). You can tell those were our inspirations at first and those basic ideas are still related to the "final" version of the story/game to a degree!

I could list all the things that have influenced me as the writer, but I'm sure you all would get bored :') I wanted to explore a lot of topics that are important to me like family, love (not only romantic) growth and forgiveness (to name a few), but in a fantasy setting. The dilemma of immortality is something that fascinates me, so I wanted to write about that, and explore the idea of how different a god really is from a mortal.

And favourite VNs...God I have so many (so I will try to keep it short), but as in right now I would have to say Bustafellows!, Collar x Malice, Even if Tempest, The House in Fata Morgana... and from fellow indie developers, Our Life: Beginnings and Always is very dear to me, like Blooming Panic! (I had the privilege to have my art featured in the game and to this day I sort of can't believe it) and Seduce me: The Otome saga, a VN that has a very special place in my heart as the first indie VN I played during my teenage years. I have been lately obsessed enjoying Made Marion, Alaris, Trouble Comes Twice...to mention a few. Because I'm trying not to write a whole novel every time I answer an ask and I'm failing.

#Lost in Limbo #Asking the team

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catboyolli · 7 months

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Omg I love DnD and I love this concept 😍 Can you share any more details? Like have you settled on specific character classes for everyone yet? And have you already created some art for the story?

hiiiiiiiii thank you so much for the ask!!!! I love talking about this stupid concept that has been rotting in my head since 2021 😬💖 and oh well, this one is gonna be long but if you also have any ideas I would love to hear them 🥰💘💕💖💕

But okay, I lied because I have two concepts related to high fantasy ( I am so normal about this lol)

For the "main" project I went with Pathfinder 1e because it has so many classes to choose from, that I didn't have to rely on homebrew stuff (and because I had to learn how this system works and after 5 years I still don't get some of the stuff 😅), so I settled on:

Joel as a haunted spiritualist looking to get rid of his phantom (spellcaster with occult magic and a "pet" aka phantom)

Niko as an urban skald who pledged to retake his family's ancestral land (d&d's bard/barbarian multiclass, probably will change the backstory because it feels too meh).

Joonas as a flamesinger bard, he's just some lucky guy and nothing bad has happened to him (yet), other than some tasteless patrons disliking his music

Olli as a stargazer oracle searching for many answers in the stars (kiiiiinda like a cleric, but not devoted to any or to a single god)

Tommi as an aspect of the bear shifter whose druidic circle succumbed to corruption (melee shapeshifter, kinda like d&d's circle of the moon druid)

Aleksi as a universalist arcanist tasked with paying back a heavy family debt and no, it isn't related to money at all (d&d's sorcerer/wizard multiclass, he gets to summon a familiar and ofc it's Rilla 🥰)

If I go with that, I'm going to use Paizo's Pathfinder main campaign setting because I really don't want to come up with the worldbuilding lol (tbh that would imply creating a lot of everything from scratch, unless I actually go 100% insane and do it........)

The 2nd one is another fantasy AU where they are tieflings because who doesn't love tieflings???? I used d&d 5e and assigned one ability score to each of the boys:

Strength: Tommi as a Zariel bloodline tiefling, Path of the Totem Warrior (bear ofc) Barbarian (he strong)

Dexterity: Aleksi as a Mammon bloodline tiefling, Arcane Trickster Rogue (he's a rich little shit who loves to steal for fun)

Constitution: Joel as a Levistus bloodline tiefling, Blood Hunter from the Order of the Profane Soul with an Undead patron (I know it's mouthful but yeah.....)

Intellect: Olli as a Mephistopheles bloodline tiefling, Artillerist Artificier (and before anyone says oh but Olli is a dumbass, why intelligence? Listen. He's actually smart, but he's sooooo forgetful that not all his creations succeed...)

Wisdom: Niko as a Baalzebub bloodline tiefling, War Domain Cleric (originally I wanted to assign him the strenght attribute and Tommi would have the wisdom one, but I feel it works better this way. Niko seems to be a very wise dude IRL and not as physically strong as Tommi)

Charisma: Joonas as an Asmodeus bloodline tiefling, Wild Magic Sorcerer (I really really wanna homebrew a devil bloodline for this)

I haven't thought of any backstories or a storyline for this AU, I'm just vibing with the concept 😅 a lof of inspiration for the designs (that are in my mind ofc) comes from Pointy Hat's tiefling video, which please go watch if you haven't, it's an amazing channel.

I have a complicated relationship with art due to Not Having Enough Time And Skill. I tried to make some art back when I was choosing the horns and skin tones for tiefling!Olli, but I got frustrated and left it there to rot lol (+ i didn't like the style + took too much time)

For skin tones + eye color variation: red / purple / blue

Zoom of the two concepts I "finished" 😬 (smooth vs ribbed horns)

But yeah, that's mostly it! I wish I had more to show you, but I'm hoping to have enough time work on the tiefling!AU around December or early 2024😊

Again, thank you for enabling me to ramble about something I really really really love 🥺💕💖💘💖💕💖

#asks #smolpieceoftoast #any additions or questions or anything are obviously welcome 💖#how the fuck do i tag this #long post

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fortunegambled · 1 year

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ironically, my luxord theorizing ultimately gives me very little about luxord himself. i feel i have everything surrounding him worked out in a way that i am pleased with, but he himself... is a mystery.

what we know about luxord:

he is supposedly connected to an ancient keyblade legacy, but we have yet to see him as a keyblade wielder

he gets sent after the black box by xigbar, which is what makes him finally start questioning orders above when he has never done so

he shares a “the game isn’t over until it’s over” quote with an unknown author associated with eraqus

there is a chauffer in yozora’s world that bears similar hair and an identical voice to luxord

“gambler of fate” is not an accidental title

luxord’s true name could be lodur, a possible alternative and seldom-used name for loki, who was known to have had issues with bragi... who was a face of luxu at one point. however, another name could be ludor, with roots from the latin word ludo with relation to play, which may tie him to the player character of missing link. the usage of these meanings as references may not be mutually exclusive, although obviously both cannot be his actual name.

theorizing about the box:

based on this video, as well as some information in this video, i do not believe it was luxu who ended up hiding the box. i believe luxu made a deal with brain and handed over the box and no name to him. brain hid the box in such a way that it remained hidden until the tear in time, when it appeared in reality buried under the crossroads in the keyblade graveyard. this is why luxu had someone searching for it, because he didn’t know where it was. this is also why he withdrew himself from the war via faking his own death when he did, around the tear in time. it’s possible something happened to make him realize the box was in reality again.

brain’s eventual foray into unreality, bearing no name, is how the master of masters discovered unreality.

theorizing about brain’s legacy:

now, we know eraqus is descended from one of the dandelions. we also know he looks a lot like brain, and i do believe brain is who he is descended from. eraqus shares brain’s critique of how things must be because it’s how they’re written, and he seems to be aware of the eventual tear in time as shown by his fantasy chess battle with xehanort in the past. if the tear was a part of brain’s plan as the virus, it would make sense that eraqus would be aware of it — as well as how he’s aware of the old masters himself, when that information seems to be meant to be secret.

luxord also bears a similar critique of the concept of fate being unchangeable, stating in 358/2 days that: “Only a fool bends to the cards. We shape our fates through action.” we also know that he states aloud that the game isn’t over until it’s over, which is something that is stated in one of the keystagram posts that shows up in connection with eraqus depicting the tear in time.

if eraqus is descended from brain and luxord is connected to that legacy in some way, it would make sense. brain’s entire plan is to be a virus in the system, working against this future set in stone. it would not be an illogical leap for those associated with his legacy to bear similar ideals.

painting some sort of cohesive picture:

personally, i’m tired of [x] is [y] reveals and i hope we do not get another. it worked very well for luxu, giving us a fun twist on a theory that was common in the fandom that i never agreed with for a few reasons. doing so again would feel lazy to me.

but the word legacy is used, and i hope that is what is played with here. i do not think luxord is brain or someone we know, but he is a part of that legacy. viruses multiply, and if nomura is going to run with the virus metaphor i think it would make sense to run with it multiplying.

here is the picture i am painting, although it still lacks some specifics: brains’ legacy has had some familiarity with unreality and the concept of fate not being set in stone. luxord is a part of that (possibly starting during his life as the player character of missing link). knowledge of the old masters and the black box has been passed down throughout that legacy as the “virus” has spread. when told to seek the box by xigbar, luxord finally started questioning things to figure out who the order truly came from because he knows the history of the box.

i also believe luxord is, in a way, from unreality: xigbar’s element is space but he’s from a different time, and in turn luxord’s element is time but he is from a different space. the two are foils, and i believe luxord will end up very helpful to sora and company going into this next saga. but despite being from unreality, i do not think that is his initial home location — it’s possible that, instead of time travel or body snatching, brain and his legacy have worked out how to hide out in unreality in order to play with their positions and time in reality.

of course, i’ve typed all this and we could very well get a “luxord is brain” or a “luxord is sigurd” reveal that will ruin my life. whatever.

#ooc. ☓#theories. ☓#long post //#anyway. that's what i have so far.

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walden-media · 2 years

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A Kid Interview with Chris Rylander, Author of The Hurricanes of Weakerville

We’re so excited to have an interview with author Chris Rylander on the blog today! Chris nicely agreed to sit for some hard-hitting questions from a budding journalist about his new middle grade novel THE HURRICANES OF WEAKERVILLE. Jack is a 10-year-old whose two favorite things in life are baseball and books, so he seemed like the perfect candidate to step in as a guest interviewer. Jack had a lot of questions about the plot of The Hurricanes of Weakerville, the writing of the book, as well as Chris’ baseball preferences in his own life. Read on to find out how The Hurricanes came to be, and which MLB team Chris loves so much he got a tattoo in their honor.

⚾️ The Hurricanes of Weakerville is on sale now! ⚾️

Hi Chris! Thank you for answering my questions about The Hurricanes of Weakerville. First up - How did you first come up with the idea for this book?

It came from talking to my editor, Jordan. We both love baseball and I particularly love fantasy baseball, and he was saying how he always thought the idea of a kid managing a real semi-pro baseball team could be a lot of fun. Almost like a Bad News Bears with the roles of manager and players reversed. When I heard that idea, I loved it!

How did you come with Tex's crazy stories?

They all came from somewhere different. It would take a while to explain each one, but one example is a story Tex tells that ends with a law making it illegal to change the weather in Texas. That came from a magazine article I was reading about absurd real-life laws. So, it’s actually true: It is illegal to attempt to change the weather in Texas. When I heard that, I knew it’d be a perfect story for Tex. I love that I was able to make his great grandpappy responsible for that law existing. And I even borrowed a little bit of the real-life story behind the law, too. In the end, I just love absurd stories with either multiple meanings or possibly no meaning at all.

Do you have a favorite baseball team? Do you have a least favorite baseball team?

My favorite team is definitely the Chicago Cubs. I even have a Cubs tattoo, which means now I have to be a fan forever, no matter what! Haha. And of course, as a Cubs fan, it is obviously my duty to root against the St. Louis Cardinals in every way possible.

How did you choose the town name Weakerville, and why did you set it in Iowa?

One of my favorite bands are The Weakerthans. So, it was kind of a nod to them. Also, I liked the idea of the main character, given the struggles he faces in the book, having this looming label of being “weak” literally attached to his name for rest of time. I chose Iowa because it’s a good baseball state, in the heart of the Midwest, with a lot of small towns the rest of the country has never heard of. I’m from North Dakota originally, so I can really relate to the small midwestern town experience.

Why did you choose the name The Hurricanes?

I went through a few different team names while writing/revising this book. They were originally the Mighty Pheasants, because nobody thinks of pheasants as actually being mighty. It was later changed to the Hurricanes to fit with a tale about Weakerville’s past.

Was the "potty sauce" based on something from real life?

Sadly, no. But now I sort of want to try and make the recipe as it appears in the book just to see if it really is that good…

Do you know how to score baseball games, like Alex?

Yes, I do. I even used to keep fake scorecards for a baseball video game I played. I still have several notebooks full of baseball stats for totally fictional baseball games that occurred only on my PlayStation.

How did you come up with Flumpo?

Alex as a character, struggled with his confidence from the very first draft. I knew I always wanted to present this idea that Alex has that some kids (and people in general) just seem to be inherently likeable, while some don’t. And, after a few revisions, it just became clear that this belief needed a concrete label/name, something that could literally be one of Alex’s worst enemies throughout much of the book.

How did Tex get so rich?

You know, like Alex, I have spent many hours Googling his name and trying to figure that out myself. Alas, in many ways, Tex seems to just be a man of mystery.

Do you have a favorite baseball stadium? Do you have a favorite game that you attended?

As a Cubs fan, my favorite stadium is of course Wrigley Field, and my favorite game was getting to go to a World Series game there in 2016, even though they lost that game. It was still unforgettable. Some other favorite stadiums I’ve been to: Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Oracle Park (which was AT&T Park when I went), and I’ll always fondly remember the very first one I ever went to: Kauffman Stadium (which was called Royals Stadium back then).

Did you play baseball growing up? What position did you play?

I played until about 5th or 6th grade. I wish I had played longer. It’s definitely a regret I have, even though I wasn’t very good. I played second base and outfield and despite hitting many singles and doubles, I never once hit a homerun.

Did you have a favorite baseball player growing up? (I love Mookie Betts and Kiké Hernandez.)

Ryne Sandberg, hands down. Then later as a teenager it was Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. (Mookie Betts is great, though!)

The Hurricanes of Weakerville Synopsis:

Middle grade star author Chris Rylander brings his signature sense of humor, a compelling and original baseball story, and tons of heart to the story of The Hurricanes of Weakerville.

All his life, Alex Weakerman has had one passion: baseball. Specifically, the Hurricanes of Weakerville, Iowa—the scrappy independent-league team owned by his Grandpa Ira.

Even as team and the town have fallen on tough times, there's no place Alex would rather be than at the ballpark—a hot dog in one hand, a pencil and scorebook in the other, keeping track of each and every statistic. Alex has never been all that great at playing baseball, but that doesn’t matter. For someone as painfully awkward as Alex, being a fan—and a wiz with baseball stats—is all he needs.

When Grandpa Ira passes away, though, Alex is crushed. He's lost his best friend, and he doesn’t see any way that the team will survive. But Ira, it seems, has one last trick up his sleeve: his will names Alex the new manager of the Hurricanes.

Alex is as excited as he is terrified at the chance to finally put some of his fantasy baseball genius to use. But as he sets to work trying to win over the players, he soon learns that leading them to victory is about more than just stats. Will he be able to save his team, his hometown, and his family legacy?

From the author of The Fourth Stall, a SCBWI Sid Fleischman Humor Award winner and multiple state-award favorite, The Hurricanes of Weakerville is sure to appeal to middle grade readers looking for a funny book about real kids.

About the Author:

Chris Rylander is the author of the acclaimed and bestselling “Fourth Stall” saga, the “Codename Conspiracy” trilogy, and co-author of book three in the New York Times bestselling “House of Secrets” series. He lives in Chicago, where he eats a lot of raspberry jam and frequently tries to befriend the squirrels on his block.

#chris rylander #hurricanes of weakerville #middle grade #middle grade fiction #middle grad books #middle grade interview #baseball books #book birthday #walden pond press #walden media

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kittensartswriting · 2 years

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Happy STS! What is a formative media that inspired your WIP and/or you?

Happy STS!

One of the most formative media for me was Lord of the Rings. It made me fall in love with fantasy and it has inspired me time and time again with it's writing and worldbuilding. (Sauron is even the name of my very edgy first OC I made as I kid when I was getting into writing and I just talked about it in another STS ask.)

For Bear Castle Chronicle, which is my oldest WIP, the very first inspirations were Pride and Prejudice and Assassins Creed (it was p&p vibes with badass assassin plot). It has gone through some major iterations thorough the years and it has very little left of the original inspirations (though the world still has Regency aesthetics). Perhaps the biggest influence for it's current version was GoT/ASOIAF (though for example Fullmetal Alchemist also had a huge influence on it). It inspired me to focus more on political intrigue, lean into moral grayness and gave a lot of worldbuilding inspiration. (For example Dir'ahin came in to being as a sort of response to Valyrian, because I was like why are these people clearly albinos in appearance but not actually albinos because they don't have sight issues etc.? So then I made Dir'ahin where there's higher percentage of albinism than irl and the society is kinda built for blind people, and they are far in the north.)

In The Name Of Violence wasn't directly inspired by any specific media, but influences from media thorough my life. Some of them were again Fullmetal Alchemist, Inspector Montalbano (Italian detective series set in Sicily with a lot mafia related stories), Millenium trilogy, gangster films and tv I used to watch when younger, Sherlock Holmes movies (those with Rupert Everett and the newer ones with Robert Downey Jr.) and books, The Night Angel (didn't even like enough of it to continue the series but I like a lot of the ideas in it) and The Magnus Archives.

Golden Maiden, Silver Bride is very directly inspired by the myth of The Forging of The Golden Bride (Kalevala version). It at first started as a short comic (which I never finished) from the perspective of the Golden Bride, but then it became a whole fantasy trilogy from her perspective with the idea "what would she do if she survived?" A huge influence for it is Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (especially the manga).

Be All My Sins has three very direct influences: Crimson Peak, Dracula (especially Coppola's adaptation but also the book) and Penny Dreadful. There's also to lesser degree influences from some of my other favorite vampire media, namely Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Hellsing (the manga). A literary influence is definitely Sinuhe the Egyptian.

#sts #storyteller saturday #writeblr #bcc #itnov #gmsb #bams

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bao3bei4 · 3 years

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fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom

there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”

people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to⁠—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?

the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all.

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fans served a primarily utilitarian purpose throughout chinese history. of course, most of the surviving fans we see⁠—and the types of fans we tend to care about⁠—are closer to art pieces. but realistically speaking, the majority of fans were made of cheaper material for more mundane purposes. in china, just like all around the world, people fanned themselves. it got hot!

so here’s a big tipoff. it would be very difficult to use a fan if you had an elaborate language centered around fanning yourself.

you might argue that fine, everyday working people didn’t have a fan language. but wealthy people might have had one. the problem we encounter here is that fans weren’t really gendered. (caveat here that certain types of fans were more popular with women. however, those tended to be the round silk fans, ones that bear no resemblance to the folding fans in the graphic). no disrespect to the gnc old man fuckers in the crowd, but this language isn’t quite masc enough for a tool that someone’s dad might regularly use.

folding fans, we know, reached europe in the 17th century and gained immense popularity in the 18th. it was there that fans began to take on a gendered quality. ariel beaujot describes in their 2012 victorian fashion accessories how middle class women, in the midst of a top shortage, found themselves clutching fans in hopes of securing a husband.

she quotes an article from the illustrated london news, suggesting “women ‘not only’ used fans to ‘move the air and cool themselves but also to express their sentiments.’” general wisdom was that the movement of the fan was sufficiently expressive that it augmented a woman’s displays of emotion. and of course, the more english audiences became aware that it might do so, the more they might use their fans purposefully in that way.

notice, however, that this is no more codified than body language in general is. it turns out that “the language of the fan” was actually created by fan manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century⁠—hundreds of years after their arrival⁠ in europe—to sell more fans. i’m not even kidding right now. the story goes that it was louis duvelleroy of the maison duvelleroy who decided to include pamphlets on the language with each fan sold.

interestingly enough, beaujot suggests that it didn’t really matter what each particular fan sign meant. gentlemen could tell when they were being flirted with. as it happens, meaningful eye contact and a light flutter near the face may be a lingua franca.

so it seems then, the language of the fan is merely part of this victorian imaginary we collectively have today, which in turn itself was itself captivated by china.

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victorian references come up perhaps unexpectedly often in cnovel fandom, most often with regards to modesty.

it’s a bit of an awkward reference considering that chinese traditional fashion⁠—and the ambiguous time periods in which these novels are set⁠—far predate victorian england. it is even more awkward considering that victoria and her covered ankles did um. imperialize china.

but nonetheless, it is common. and to make a point about how ubiquitous it is, here is a link to the twitter search for “sqq victorian.” sqq is the fandom abbreviation for shen qingqiu, the main character of the scum villain’s self-saving system, by the way.

this is an awful lot of results for a search involving a chinese man who spends the entire novel in either real modern-day china or fantasy ancient china. that’s all i’m going to say on the matter, without referencing any specific tweet.

i think people are aware of the anachronism. and i think they don’t mind. even the most cursory research reveals that fan language is european and a revisionist fantasy. wikipedia can tell us this⁠—i checked!

but it doesn’t matter to me whether people are trying to make an internally consistent canon compliant claim, or whether they’re just free associating between fan facts they know. it is, instead, more interesting to me that people consistently refer to this particular bit of history. and that’s what i want to talk about today⁠—the relationship of fandom today to this two hundred odd year span of time in england (roughly stuart to victorian times) and england in that time period to its contemporaneous china.

things will slip a little here. victorian has expanded in timeframe, if only because random guys posting online do not care overly much for respect for the intricacies of british history. china has expanded in geographic location, if only because the english of the time themselves conflated china with all of asia.

in addition, note that i am critiquing a certain perspective on the topic. this is why i write about fan as white here⁠—not because all fans are white⁠—but because the tendencies i’m examining have a clear historical antecedent in whiteness that shapes how white fans encounter these novels.

i’m sure some fans of color participate in these practices. however i don’t really care about that. they are not its main perpetrators nor its main beneficiaries. so personally i am minding my own business on that front.

it’s instead important to me to illuminate the linkage between white as subject and chinese as object in history and in the present that i do argue that fannish products today are built upon.

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it’s not radical, or even new at all, for white audiences to consume⁠—or create their own versions of⁠—chinese art en masse. in many ways the white creators who appear to owe their whole style and aesthetic to their asian peers in turn are just the new chinoiserie.

this is not to say that white people can’t create asian-inspired art. but rather, i am asking you to sit with the discomfort that you may not like the artistic company you keep in the broader view of history, and to consider together what is to be done about that.

now, when i say the new chinoiserie, i first want to establish what the original one is. chinoiserie was a european artistic movement that appeared coincident with the rise in popularity of folding fans that i described above. this is not by coincidence; the european demand for asian imports and the eventual production of lookalikes is the movement itself. so: when we talk about fans, when we talk about china (porcelain), when we talk about tea in england⁠—we are talking about the legacy of chinoiserie.

there are a couple things i want to note here. while english people as a whole had a very tenuous knowledge of what china might be, their appetites for chinoiserie were roughly coincident with national relations with china. as the relationship between england and china moved from trade to out-and-out wars, chinoiserie declined in popularity until china had been safely subjugated once more by the end of the 19th century.

the second thing i want to note on the subject that contrary to what one might think at first, the appeal of chinoiserie was not that it was foreign. eugenia zuroski’s 2013 taste for china examines 18th century english literature and its descriptions of the according material culture with the lens that chinese imports might be formative to english identity, rather than antithetical to it.

beyond that bare thesis, i think it’s also worthwhile to extend her insight that material objects become animated by the literary viewpoints on them. this is true, both in a limited general sense as well as in the sense that english thinkers of the time self-consciously articulated this viewpoint. consider the quote from the illustrated london news above⁠—your fan, that object, says something about you. and not only that, but the objects you surround yourself with ought to.

it’s a bit circular, the idea that written material says that you should allow written material to shape your understanding of physical objects. but it’s both 1) what happened, and 2) integral, i think, to integrating a fannish perspective into the topic.

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japanning is the name for the popular imitative lacquering that english craftspeople developed in domestic response to the demand for lacquerware imports. in the eighteenth century, japanning became an artform especially suited for young women. manuals were published on the subject, urging young women to learn how to paint furniture and other surfaces, encouraging them to rework the designs provided in the text.

it was considered a beneficial activity for them; zuroski describes how it was “associated with commerce and connoisseurship, practical skill and aesthetic judgment.” a skillful japanner, rather than simply obscuring what lay underneath the lacquer, displayed their superior judgment in how they chose to arrange these new canonical figures and effects in a tasteful way to bring out the best qualities of them.

zuroski quotes the first english-language manual on the subject, written in 1688, which explains how japanning allows one to:

alter and correct, take out a piece from one, add a fragment to the next, and make an entire garment compleat in all its parts, though tis wrought out of never so many disagreeing patterns.

this language evokes a very different, very modern practice. it is this english reworking of an asian artform that i think the parallels are most obvious.

white people, through their artistic investment in chinese material objects and aesthetics, integrated them into their own subjectivity. these practices came to say something about the people who participated in them, in a way that had little to do with the country itself. their relationship changed from being a “consumer” of chinese objects to becoming the proprietor of these new aesthetic signifiers.

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i want to talk about this through a few pairs of tensions on the subject that i think characterize common attitudes then and now.

first, consider the relationship between the self and the other: the chinese object as something that is very familiar to you, speaking to something about your own self vs. the chinese object as something that is fundamentally different from you and unknowable to you.

consider: [insert character name] is just like me. he would no doubt like the same things i like, consume the same cultural products. we are the same in some meaningful way vs. the fast standard fic disclaimer that “i tried my best when writing this fic, but i’m a english-speaking westerner, and i’m just writing this for fun so...... [excuses and alterations the person has chosen to make in this light],” going hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with authenticity or even overreliance on the unpaid labor of chinese friends and acquaintances.

consider: hugh honour when he quotes a man from the 1640s claiming “chinoiserie of this even more hybrid kind had become so far removed from genuine Chinese tradition that it was exported from India to China as a novelty to the Chinese themselves”

these tensions coexist, and look how they have been resolved.

second, consider what we vest in objects themselves: beaujot explains how the fan became a sexualized, coquettish object in the hands of a british woman, but was used to great effect in gilbert and sullivan’s 1885 mikado to demonstrate the docility of asian women.

consider: these characters became expressions of your sexual desires and fetishes, even as their 5’10 actors themselves are emasculated.

what is liberating for one necessitates the subjugation and fetishization of the other.

third, consider reactions to the practice: enjoyment of chinese objects as a sign of your cosmopolitan palate vs “so what’s the hype about those ancient chinese gays” pop culture explainers that addressed the unconvinced mainstream.

consider: zuroski describes how both english consumers purchased china in droves, and contemporary publications reported on them. how:

It was in the pages of these papers that the growing popularity of Chinese things in the early eighteenth century acquired the reputation of a “craze”; they portrayed china fanatics as flawed, fragile, and unreliable characters, and frequently cast chinoiserie itself in the same light.

referenda on fannish behavior serve as referenda on the objects of their devotion, and vice versa. as the difference between identity and fetish collapses, they come to be treated as one and the same by not just participants but their observers.

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese?

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finally, it seems readily apparent that attitudes towards chinese objects may in fact have something to do with attitudes about china as a country. i do not want to suggest that these literary concerns are primarily motivated and begot by forces entirely divorced from the real mechanics of power.

here, i want to bring in edward said, and his 1993 culture and imperialism. there, he explains how power and legitimacy go hand in hand. one is direct, and one is purely cultural. he originally wrote this in response to the outsize impact that british novelists have had in the maintenance of empire and throughout decolonization. literature, he argues, gives rise to powerful narratives that constrain our ability to think outside of them.

there’s a little bit of an inversion at play here. these are chinese novels, actually. but they’re being transformed by white narratives and artists. and just as i think the form of the novel is important to said’s critique, i think there’s something to be said about the form that fic takes and how it legitimates itself.

bound up in fandom is the idea that you have a right to create and transform as you please. it is a nice idea, but it is one that is directed towards a certain kind of asymmetry. that is, one where the author has all the power. this is the narrative we hear a lot in the history of fandom⁠—litigious authors and plucky fans, fanspaces always under attack from corporate sanitization.

meanwhile, said builds upon raymond schwab’s narrative of cultural exchange between european writers and cultural products outside the imperial core. said explains that fundamental to these two great borrowings (from greek classics and, in the so-called “oriental renaissance” of the late 18th, early 19th centuries from “india, china, japan, persia, and islam”) is asymmetry.

he had argued prior, in orientalism, that any “cultural exchange” between “partners conscious of inequality” always results in the suffering of the people. and here, he describes how “texts by dead people were read, appreciated, and appropriated” without the presence of any actual living people in that tradition.

i will not understate that there is a certain economic dynamic complicating this particular fannish asymmetry. mxtx has profited materially from the success of her works, most fans will not. also secondly, mxtx is um. not dead. LMAO.

but first, the international dynamic of extraction that said described is still present. i do not want to get overly into white attitudes towards china in this post, because i am already thoroughly derailed, but i do believe that they structure how white cnovel fandom encounters this texts.

at any rate, any profit she receives is overwhelmingly due to her domestic popularity, not her international popularity. (i say this because many of her international fans have never given her a cent. in fact, most of them have no real way to.) and moreover, as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people?

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

i think a lot of people get the relationship between ideas (the superstructure) and production (the base) confused. oftentimes they will lob in response to criticism, that look! this fic, this fandom, these people are so niche, and so underrepresented in mainstream culture, that their effects are marginal. i am not arguing that anyone’s cql fic causes imperialism. (unless you’re really annoying. then it’s anyone’s game)

i’m instead arguing something a little bit different. i think, given similar inputs, you tend to get similar outputs. i think we live in the world that imperialism built, and we have clear historical predecessors in terms of white appetites for creating, consuming, and transforming chinese objects.

we have already seen, in the case of the fan language meme that began this post, that sometimes we even prefer this white chinoiserie. after all, isn’t it beautiful, too?

i want to bring discomfort to this topic. i want to reject the paradigm of white subject and chinese object; in fact, here in this essay, i have tried to reverse it.

if you are taken aback by the comparisons i make here, how can you make meaningful changes to your fannish practice to address it?

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some concluding thoughts on the matter, because i don’t like being misunderstood!

i am not claiming white fans cannot create fanworks of cnovels or be inspired by asian art or artists. this essay is meant to elaborate on the historical connection between victorian england and cnovel characters and fandom that others have already popularized.

i don’t think people who make victorian jokes are inherently bad or racist. i am encouraging people to think about why we might make them and/or share them

the connections here are meant to be more provocative than strictly literal. (e.g. i don’t literally think writing fanfic is a 1-1 descendant of japanning). these connections are instead meant to 1) make visible the baggage that fans of color often approach fandom with and 2) recontextualize and defamiliarize fannish practice for the purposes of honest critique

please don’t turn this post into being about other different kinds of discourse, or into something that only one “kind” of fan does. please take my words at face value and consider them in good faith. i would really appreciate that.

please feel free to ask me to clarify any statements or supply more in-depth sources :)

#x #-__- another fandom essay sorry

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tainbocuailnge · 3 years

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fgo criticisms have been flaring up in the wake of dw’s sakura wars mobile game quitting after only half a year but I have a disease that makes me get defensive when people try to rip fgo apart as this uniquely terrible game with uniquely terrible devs so i’m going to complain about people who are complaining for a bit.

i hadn’t heard of the sakura wars game before it shut down but from what i’ve been able to find it suffered from a lot of the same problems as (launch) fgo, terrible gacha rates with no pity, slow ap recovery rates, barebones repetitive gameplay. so i guess seeing how fast sakura wars was shut down people feel like it’s only the fate name holding up fgo and in the early launch days of barely playable fgo that was definitely the case but I don’t think it’s fair to fgo to act like people only continue to play it because it’s fate, and “being like fgo” wasn’t the only problem with sakura wars either. sakura wars is a vn/dating sim series that attempted to revive the series with a mobile game that featured none of the original cast that fans cared about while fate was already a series with new characters and a new setting every instalment and the thing that stood out in this new game was actually that it DID have characters from previous fates available. hell, it’s not fair to sakura wars to claim that its series name is simply weaker than fate’s when there were other factors involved in its failure beyond “being a delightworks game”

fgo DOES improve, launch fgo is unrecognisable compared to current fgo in a good way. events have become more streamlined (events have mid- to lategame enemy hp scaling but feature damage ce’s to let newer players keep up, mission events are set up so that they basically clear themselves just by farming the most recently unlocked node), they experiment with new game modes and gameplay mechanics on the regular, they’re taking more care to make viable permanent servants and buff the older ones, and the past few months there’s also been a noticeable effort to throw out random banners for minor things as an excuse to rerun old limited servants more often. I’ll admit the bar is on the low side (strengthening quests are a ridiculous model, there shouldn’t be this many limiteds to need reruns in the first place, etc) and progress is slower than many people are willing to put up with, and I’m not saying anyone Has to put up with it or they’re a fake fan or whatever, but like, granblue fantasy is seven years old and still doesn’t have the ability to uncap a weapon multiple stages at a time when its entire gameplay loop centers around farming and uncapping weapons and they’ve buffed heles like 7 times but she’s still shit, none of fgo’s problems are exclusive to fgo.

i LIKE playing fgo. i like tapping the cards and watching my little guys go and coming up with different teams to make them go harder or just look good together or even lean into the Themes. and this is going a little bit on a tangent but i have this post window open anyway i was talking with friends earlier that one problem that a lot of mobile games seem to have is that they use “making the game play itself” as substitute for “making the game fun to play”. the only game with autobattle functionality (out of the ones I play, i don’t know everything that’s out there of course) that I feel DOESN’T do this is arknights, where you solve the puzzle that the stage presents in order to earn the right to not have to solve the puzzle every single time you play the stage and coming up with different efficient or perhaps ridiculous ways to solve the puzzle is part of playing the game. the worst case I know is dragalia lost which upon realizing that playing it sucks implemented an item to just let you skip playing stages altogether. “this game is good because you don’t have to play it” is not the selling point some people (and devs) think it is, and fgo refuses to fall into that trap - something I believe is an intentional decision because of their explicit refusal to implement NP skip.

one big advantage that fgo has over the other mobile games i’ve played is that it’s entirely turn based with no real time elements beyond start and end times of events. fgo doesn’t NEED to continue playing itself when you look away because looking away has no bearing whatsoever on your ability to clear the quest, fgo doesn’t give a shit if you look away for six hours and then close the game and only reopen it another ten hours later, you can continue right where you left off. the problem is not that you have to manually play the quest, because as far as the system is concerned you can take as much time as you like to clear that quest, it’s that the greater structure of the game wants you to repeatedly manually clear the same low-stakes quest for disproportionately small rewards. this one’s easy enough to solve by just increasing material droprates across the board. repeat clearing a low level quest is much less frustrating if you actually get drops every other clear.

but that’s a bandaid solution, because related to the issue of having to manually farm low-stakes quests is the lack of high-stakes quests to do when you want to do something a little more engaging than routine farming. outside of event challenge quests with their time limited availability, certain main story chapters that you can’t replay, and recently on JP the permanently available kiara challenge quest in the main interlude, there simply isn’t any difficult content to play. you could argue about fgo’s merit as strategy rpg in the first place i suppose but if you ask me it does have that merit and there is a clear effort from dw’s part to improve the depth of fgo’s strategy elements, the issue is that there is simply not that much content available to unleash those strategies on. of course you’re gonna get bored if all there is to do is either brainlessly repeat the same quest for minimal rewards or play the specific challenge quest that the game hands you right this moment regardless of whether that’s the kind of challenge you feel like facing right now. the solution to this one, although it’s likely going to take some significant effort on dw’s side to implement, is to make main story quests replayable.

you want to flex your brain muscles but there’s no challenge event right now? you stomped on a boss by using overpowered servants the first time but want to challenge yourself with some 3* this time? or the other way around, you beat a boss by the skin of your teeth the first time but want to stomp all over them now that you rolled some bitching 5*? you rolled a servant that’s not that suitable for day to day farming but would really shine in more difficult content and you want to try them out? you have a silly strategy in mind that would only work against certain story enemies? you’re like me and just really crave the shimosa duels? all of this involves content that already exists and is available in the game, dw would just have to figure out a way to let you access it again after clearing the chapter. and of course ideally this extends to event story quests once they’re added to the main interlude

i guess another way to put it is that i think the reason a lot of people say fgo has bad gameplay is not that its gameplay system is actually bad, in fact it has the potential to be very engaging, but rather that it’s a system that is set up to respect your time through the ability to put down the game absolutely whenever you want without being penalised, only for the game around it to go and penalise you for putting it down anyway. if you don’t diligently spend all your ap farming this quest you won’t get single damn material drop, and if you don’t play the event while it‘s happening you’re going to miss out because you can’t be sure when if ever it’ll return. so the number one way to solve the problem of fgo’s “bad gameplay” is not to make the game play itself whenever it tells you to play, but rather to make content more easily available so you don’t have to play if you don’t want to and CAN play if you do want to. thank you for coming to my ted talk i suppose

#anyway i love cuchulainn

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tanadrin · 3 years

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Dev Patel and the Green Knight

I finally got around to seeing The Green Knight. Overall, I enjoyed it--David Lowery does a good job capturing the essential weirdness of the tale, which is very much about taking a mundane circumstance (a Christmas feast) and suddenly catapulting the reader into a mythic otherworld through the intrusion of the alien and monstrous, and the fantastical costumes, dramatic lighting, and dissonant score all contribute very well to a sense of otherness that permeates the original story.

But I find it interesting--and, I'll admit, a little frustrating--that no modern film adaptation of medieval literature is really capable of taking the story it's adapting on its own merits. This isn't an objection to modifying the source text, or taking it in new, non-literal direction. I can think of plenty of adaptations of work that play with the source material in interesting ways, and are better for it. Even very faithful adaptations like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings are inevitably going to alter the source based on the need to adapt it for the screen and the whims of the director. But when it comes to medieval classics, texts like Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight are always held at arm's length. An ironic layer is always interpolated into the original story, and even in modified form the story is never allowed to stand on its own.

Contrast, for instance, modern retellings of Arthurian legend; or Wagner's Nibelungenleid; or something like Neil Gaiman's book of Norse mythology. These are all adaptations of much older stories, all medieval; and the authors typically happy to let the stories operate on their own terms. In fact, that is often a selling point: dipping into these tales is a way of sampling an alien culture, one that is remote from us in time rather than space, and part of the sense of heightened drama is the understanding that these stories do not necessarily depict the world in the same way that modern realist prose does. They are fairy-stories, in the Tolkienian sense, and something not quite even like "high fantasy," which, although it is a genre which owes much to the mythic tradition, is usually *told* in the same manner as other realist fiction. And you could take these stories and re-cast them in a realist mold--that's definitely been done with Arthurian legend, either via anachronism or trying to place them in an era-appropriate historical context, and even that yields something quite like the original in tenor, even if the language used to relate the story is often very different.

Watching this movie, I was *strongly* reminded of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, in that this did not feel like an attempt to adapt Gawain and the Green Knight for the screen. It felt like an attempt to tell a story *about* Gawain and the Green Knight (the text), a story which does not stand on its own. You don't have to have read the text to understand the movie (although I think some directorial decisions would be a bit mystifying if you hadn't), but the movie definitely situates itself *as a response* to the text. Which is an odd choice! Actually, another good point of comparison is Spike Jonze's Adaptation. It started life as an adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, but Charlie Kaufman sort of gave up writing that halfway through and wrote a movie about the difficulty he was having writing *that* movie, and the result is something very weird (and very good) that is full of metafictional elements that depend on the existence of this other work, in a way that a straight retelling of The Orchid Thief for the screen obviously would not. And while The Green Knight isn't that extreme, it is definitely playing on the structure of the medieval poem, and replying to it.

The core of the movie (as I understood it) is a tension between young Gawain's aspiration to knightliness, his ambition which is born at least in part from his mother's encouragement, and his own failure to live up to the heroic ideal of greatness. Not chivalric--this is a movie in which the ethos of chivalry makes not even the briefest of appearance, which is weird given that it's nominally an Arthurian romance, and that the chivalric ethos is extremely important to the original text. Instead we have a generic greatness being described, one which is associated with renown, with taking part in mythic events, and with achieving high rank and honor. In the service of seeing her son obtain all this, Gawain's mother seems to cast some kind of spell, whereupon the titular Green Knight appears at Arthur's Christmas-feast; and as in the poem, a game of beheadings is proffered. Gawain accepts the challenge, beheads the knight, and the knight rides away, promising he'll meet Gawain a year and a day hence at the Green Chapel. So far so straightforward. When Gawain sets off a year later to meet the knight, his mother gives him an enchanted belt to keep him safe from harm. Gawain goes on to have a couple of side-of-the-road adventures and mishaps, the kind of thing that's par for the course when you're telling an Arthurian romance, until he arrives at the house of a mysterious benefactor, just about a day away from the Chapel, who grants him hospitality until the day of his challenge.

Now, in the original story, this is where Gawain gets the magic belt, and it's hugely important: Gawain and his host promise to exchange anything they might receive at the end of each day, when the host has been out hunting all day and Gawain has been in the house recuperating from his travels. During this time, the host's wife repeatedly tries to seduce Gawain; and Gawain is trapped between the imperative not to sleep with his host's wife (a major violation of the rules of good chivalric conduct!) and the imperative not to offend the woman (also a violation of those rules). He succeeds, for the most part; he is forced at one point to give his host a kiss at the end of the day, since the wife kissed him; this is shown as him holding nothing back and acting in good faith on the vow he made to his host. When Gawain finally rebuffs the wife for good, she insists that, even if he won't sleep with her, he should at least take a magic belt she has woven that will keep him from harm. He does; but he does *not* give this to his host. When he finally goes to the Green Chapel, the Knight returns the original blow as promised--but only nicks Gawain lightly. He reveals himself to be none other than the host who was sheltering him; the nick was his reprimand for withholding that final gift, but because of his good conduct he is otherwise left unharmed. The whole thing was a test of sorts, one which Gawain passed. Despite flinching at first from the blow, and keeping the belt secret, he shows himself ultimately to be a man of good (albeit not perfect) conduct, and *that* is why he wins honor from the whole affair.

The movie takes this basic narrative and alters it in key places, completely changing the valence of the whole thing. First, Gawain gets the belt at the beginning of his quest, as mentioned; he loses it on the way, but when he reaches the castle, the wife of his host (who succeeds in seducing him with a handjob) presents it to him as if she had woven it herself. He does not actually engage in the game of exchanged with his host, who is *also* not the Green Knight. And we're treated to a monologue about the color green from the wife that feels beat for beat like it's been ripped off from someone's undergraduate essay about Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a little weird even in the context of the rest of the movie. Finally when Gawain reaches the chapel, the knight goes to return the blow--and Gawain completely chickens out and flees. We are then treated to an extended sequence of Gawain returning home; being feted as a hero; earning his knighthood (presumably by lying about what happened); succeeding Arthur as king; him abandoning his low-class beau once she bears him a son, and marrying a princess; going to war; his son dying in a war; and finally, as an old man, being trapped in his throne room as a besieging army breaks its way inside. Just before they do, he removes the magic belt from around his waist, his head fall off, and bam--we're shown this has been an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge thing this whole time, and the Green Knight has not yet landed his blow.

Gawain finally takes off the belt, throws it aside, and tells the knight to go ahead--and the knight bends down and congratulates him. In context, the reading seems to be this: the belt is a talisman of Gawain's mother's influence, of external expectations for what kind of man he is. The Knight is Arthur or perhaps an agent of his, and the test in *this* case is whether Gawain can be his own person. All the events leading up to this point are perhaps a part of the original magic Gawain's mother cast, an effort to Lilith Weatherwax her kid to greatness by putting him into an epic story. Implicitly, then, the Gawain and the Green Knight we all know is the false version of the tale, the tale as Gawain's mother would have it told.

This is all very clever. But I'm afraid it's so clever it falls apart in the end. Because the structure of the original story that this depends on is dependent in turn on taking the whole notion of chivalric virtue seriously, which this movie plainly does not. Gawain is shown as irreverent and lustful and a bit of a party animal--lovable and good hearted fundamentally, but definitely not an Arthurian hero. That's fine, but that's a very modern sort of character, one that feels out of place in a movie that is trying very hard also to be tonally unmodern, firmly embedded in a mythic otherwhen of Arthurian legend. Moments of slice-of-life mundaneness, while charming, strain mightily against the epic tone the movie tries to take in other places, and strange events like a ghost seeking her lost head or immense giants striding the landscape. We are jostled: are we in the land of myth? Or are we in historical Britain? We cannot be in both!

And this is a movie that was definitely made by people who had read the original text; not just the original text, but also a great deal of criticism *about* the original text. The movie namechecks the theme of fivefold symmetry that's incredibly important to the structure of the poem; there's the aforementioned undergrad essay about colors about 3/4th of the way through; and there's the fact that the structure of the original plot (down to Morgan LeFay in disguise as an old woman in the host's castle) is present in altered form in every detail. But none of these details add up to much. There's a weird homoerotic kiss with the host that implies that in fact *he* wanted to sleep with Gawain, in addition to his wife; the ghost Gawain encounters early on tells him the Green Knight is in fact someone he knows (and therefore *can't* be the host; I think it's implied to be Arthur, like I said, but this is never quite confirmed), and while all these things *about* the original poem are shown, none of them ever get integrated thematically into the plot.

I think as a result, whatever Lowery was going for, the whole movie kind of falls apart in the end. And that's a pity, because somewhere in there is just a really weird, visually striking, really gripping, embellished-and-polished-for-modern-sensibilities-but-also-thematically-true-to-the-source retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight. And that would have been a much better movie! What are we to make of this, a movie that purports to be telling a story-behind-the-story, but one that leaves no room or context for the original? After all, Gawain in the end does *not* flee, does not return home a coward and a liar; presumably, he earns his honor, and can be honest about what happened. But if he is honest, none of the rest of what we have been shown makes a lick of sense, or has any point.

One feels a bit as if modern directors, when confronted with medieval texts being a bit weird, a bit alien in their worldview, instead of realizing that's actually something people like some of from time to time, feel like they have to construct an artificial bridge between the Middle Ages and the present day. But because it is invariably metafictional and self-referential, as if to say "don't worry, we know nobody REALLY wants to watch a bunch of boring medieval shit played straight," it comes off as cringing and ashamed of its source material. This isn't a plea for historicity! Gawain and the Green Knight is not history. But one does occasionally want to see an adaptation of one's favorite works without directors being ashamed of the text they are adapting! And since most people will not have read the original, I am rather confused about what the director intends for the audience to get out of all these references that are dependent on it, but don't stand on their own merits within the narrative of the movie itself.

The acting was good, the set design and costumes were terrific, I loved the slow and measured pacing and the weird score, and the design of the Knight himself, and the landscapes and almost everything else about the movie. So I don't think it's a waste of time, especially if you have read and enjoyed Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original or in translation. But it's definitely a pity to see a movie that was, well, *almost* great, but ended up merely OK.

#gotta put that undergraduate degree to work from time to time #we spent a *lot* of time on this poem

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maverick-werewolf · 3 years

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Vampire Fact #3 - Fangs

Time for something incredibly important - something that, today, most people immediately associate with vampires and will think of first the moment you say “vampire,” maybe even as quickly as or before actual blood.

Fangs! We all love fangs. Well, I do, anyway. But did vampires actually have fangs in folklore? The answer will surprise you - and it all comes down to the story behind vampire bats.

The answer is... No.

In folklore, vampires did not have fangs.

Although there are many elements to what we think of as vampires today that were popularized by pop culture but have their roots in folklore (more on those in later facts!), fangs stand out incredibly as something that came 100% from pop culture, not from folklore at all.

Vampires in fangs did not always physically drink blood: many folklore vampires take ethereal forms instead of corporeal: mists that drain the life-force or blood from their victims. Others, it is not really specified how they retrieved the blood, only that they did. Still others bite the neck/throat, but they don’t have fangs, they just use their teeth. Still others were a little more like cannibals than what we think of as vampires today.

So where could the fangs have come from?

The vampire who popularized fangs was, of course, Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897.

There are several instances where Dracula is specified to have “sharp teeth,” though the word “fangs” is never actually used in the book. “Sharp white teeth,” in particular, is a very common phrase...

The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips [...]

The Count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long, sharp, canine teeth showed out strangely; he answered:— [...]

noticing his quiet smile, with the sharp, canine teeth lying over the red underlip [...]

I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there.

When Lucy is described as turning into a vampire, her teeth too become sharp...

In particular, by some trick of the light, the canine teeth looked longer and sharper than the rest.

Lucy, after becoming a vampire, is continually described as having such sharp teeth, like Dracula. So where did he get the idea?

Vampire bats. Another passage from Dracula...

Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins; how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them, and then—and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?”

Something to bear in mind: vampire bats are not native to Europe. Vampire bats were discovered in the New World in 1810. Bats in Europe did not include any “vampiric” species.

The newly-discovered bats were named “vampire bats” because of the fact that they drink blood, not because they have fangs. Thus, while the bats got their name from vampire legends, the vampire legends got their fangs from the bats.

Something else interesting: although Dracula certainly popularized vampires with fangs, it’s debatable if Bram Stoker was the first to have the idea. In 1819, John William Polidori published The Vampyre. In it, the vampire is not actually specified to have fangs, but someone does see the mark of the vampire on the victim’s throat, from “teeth opening the vein,” and we do know that Bram Stoker took great inspiration from this book when writing Dracula. There was also Varney the Vampire, but he’s like the weird cousin, and he didn’t come before Polidori’s vampire, though he did exhibit almost all the same popular modern vampire tropes that Dracula does.

But Dracula was the more successful (and better-written) novel, so it is the one that became incredibly famous and timeless. It is to Dracula that we owe the overwhelming majority of our concepts of modern pop culture vampires - and greatest among those aspects is the fangs, which originate from pop culture alone.

Now, you may have heard that vampires in folklore do in fact have fangs - because so many modern books that claim to be on folklore about things like vampires and werewolves have plenty of false information in them and will make claims like werewolves that are weak to silver - and vampires that have fangs or some other relation to bats. Why is this? Because they don’t do good enough source checking and they believe whatever they read.

The trouble with these is that they are simply inaccurate. This really shows when you go back to older sources that were published well before these concepts arose in pop culture - and you find that, back then, even just a little bit closer to when people had many more widespread and truly believed concepts of these things (and certainly in the primary sources: the actual stories about them at the time of their belief), they didn’t talk about things like silver in relation to werewolves or fangs on vampires at all. Why? Because it was conceptualized entirely by modern or relatively modern popular culture, not folklore.

So there you have it! One of everyone’s favorite aspects of vampires comes from pop culture alone, not from folklore. Hey, I’m not saying folklore is always better. Just usually and in most aspects. Pop culture has some good ideas, too!

(If you like my blog, be sure to check out my other stuff! And please consider supporting me on Patreon - not only will you help me keep this blog running, but you get access to cool stuff in return!)

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#vampire #vampires #vampire friday #vampire fact #folklore #mythology #monsters #vampirism #vampire facts #fangs

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kjack89 · 3 years

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An Agreement Between Gentlemen (Chapter 3/?)

Continuation of the E/R Bridgerton AU that’s honestly more aptly described as a regency-ish era fake marriage fic. Because ~shenanigans~ (Chapter 1 tumblr | AO3, chapter 2 tumblr | AO3)

It appears to this Author that the most discussed couple of this season will end up not being a couple at all. And no, this refers not to Baron Pontmercy and his latest object of obsession, a handkerchief that he claims belongs to the woman he met at the Thenardier’s ball, though it is perhaps as unlikely a pairing.

The Marquess of Enjolras and Mr. Grantaire have continued spending an inordinate amount of time in each other’s company, and no one, it would seem, is as surprised as their mutual friends and acquaintances. Mr. Combeferre was overheard in discussion with the Earl of Courfeyrac on more than one occasion lamenting the unlikely union. He seems to be skeptical on the nature of this deepening friendship, a skepticism one can only assume he shares with the other important people in the marquess’s life.

Namely, his mother, who has been keeping a low profile after their shouting match was recorded in this paper. Alas, her efforts will almost certainly be in vain if her son continues cavorting with the most unlikely of allies. And it appears he shall, as he is apparently set to accompany Mr. Grantaire on a visit to his country estate this week.

One can certainly speak of the restorative benefits of country air and time spent away from the city and the season. But proceed with caution, Lord Enjolras – scandal is not confined by geography.

Nor, for that matter, is this Author. LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 2 MAY 1831

“I still cannot believe that I agreed to this,” Enjolras grumbled as he followed Grantaire into the carriage set to take them out to the country to visit Grantaire’s home.

“Honestly?” Grantaire said cheerfully, settling in the far corner of the carriage and stretching out luxuriously across the bench. “I am as well. I half-expected you not to show up this morning.”

Enjolras scowled slightly as he sat down across from him. “When I make a promise, I usually see it through,” he said stiffly.

Grantaire just laughed. “Leave it to you to take it as an impingement on your honor to suggest that you might have had misgivings about this particularly harebrained idea. And before you somehow take umbrage on my own behalf, surely if anyone is allowed to call this endeavor harebrained, it is myself.”

“Then am I allowed to take umbrage at the idea that you cannot even bring yourself to believe in your own schemes?” Enjolras snapped.

The carriage jolted suddenly as the driver spurred the horses into motion, and Enjolras pitched forward, reaching out to brace himself against the far wall of the carriage. Instead, his hands landed squarely on Grantaire’s chest. “Careful,” Grantaire said, his voice pitched low, and Enjolras flushed as he struggled to right himself.

“It seems this venture may very well be cursed,” he managed when he was finally settled back in his own seat, still flushed and avoiding Grantaire’s eyes. “Or at the very least, off to the most inauspicious start in most of human history.”

Grantaire shrugged, glancing out the window of the carriage. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’s not every day one finds oneself in a compromising position with a marquess, after all.” He smirked at Enjolras. “Pity one of us isn’t the proper sex, or this entire thing would be settled already.”

“Be serious,” Enjolras snapped, but Grantaire ignored him.

“I mean, caught in a scandalous embrace with a marquess, unchaperoned in the back of a carriage…it would be the scandal of the season, if not the decade.”

Grantaire sounded strangely wistful, and Enjolras gave him a look. “Forgive me,” he said curtly, “but I have the mental capacity for only one fictional scandal at a time, and I believe what we’re planning with your deceased sister takes precedence.”

His tone brooked no argument, not that this had ever once stopped Grantaire, but for once, Grantaire let the topic drop. “Very well,” he said instead, settling back into his corner and rapping his knuckles in a staccato rhythm against the side of the carriage. “But it is a long trip, and if I don’t have fantasy to entertain myself with, you’ll need to provide a more suitable topic.”

Enjolras blinked. “I assumed you would spend the trip sketching or painting or something,” he said, a little awkwardly.

“In a moving carriage?” Grantaire asked, a little incredulous, and as if to prove his point, the carriage swayed dangerously before righting itself.

Enjolras shrugged, feeling himself blush again. “You just seem to have the ability to sketch through anything,” he muttered. “Namely my every speech.”

Grantaire smirked. “Can you blame me?”

“For not paying attention to a word I’m saying?”

“Now, that’s not entirely fair,” Grantaire said mildly. “I almost certainly catch about every fourth or fifth word.”

“Perhaps that’s the reason you can’t find it in yourself to believe in anything,” Enjolras said sourly.

Grantaire just laughed. “Perhaps,” he agreed with a lazy smirk.

Enjolras rolled his eyes and glanced out the window, dismayed to see that they had not even left the city yet. “Fine,” he said abruptly. “Then tell me about your sister.”

To his surprise, Grantaire’s smile disappeared and his shook his head. “No,” he said. “While I certainly cannot blame you for curiosity about your bride to be, now is not the time to speak of her.”

Enjolras looked closely at him. “You must have loved her very much,” he said quietly.

Grantaire shrugged again, looking uncomfortable. “She was my best – and for longer than I care to think about my only – friend. And that is all that I will say on the topic.”

He said it quite firmly and Enjolras inclined his head. “Very well,” he said. “Your father, then – if Lady Whistledown is to be believed, he is out of the country, correct?”

Grantaire had made a face as soon as Enjolras mentioned his father, and he shook his head. “Must we ruin this sojourn with talk of my father?” he asked plaintively. “Certainly you would not wish to speak of your mother, would you?”

Enjolras scowled. “Indeed I would not,” he said. “But need I remind you before you bring my mother into this, it was you who demanded conversation, so forgive me for trying to start one.”

Grantaire sighed, and to Enjolras’s continued surprise, actually managed an expression that at least resembled genuine contrition. “No, it is I who must ask your forgiveness,” he said. “I am not used to speaking of my family.” He managed a wan smile. “One of the benefits of not being noble – no one much cares to whom I am related.”

“They’ll certainly care a bit more after this,” Enjolras murmured.

“Well, you’re probably not wrong there,” Grantaire said with a snort. “But that is a problem for the future, so do not think you will somehow use my hesitation to get out of this arrangement.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good,” Grantaire said, hesitating before adding, “But I apologize for stymying your attempts at conversation, so to make up for it, a promise: ask me any question, and I swear I will answer it.”

“Anything?”

“On my honor,” Grantaire said solemnly with a nod.

Enjolras considered it for a moment. “Fine,” he said. “Then answer this: why are you doing this?”

“Anything but that.”

Enjolras frowned. “Grantaire—”

“Anything but that,” Grantaire repeated, his expression and tone both as serious as Enjolras had ever witnessed. He paused and seemed to force his expression into something more approximating his normal jovial appearance. “Come now, you out of everyone should know that my honor is worth very little.”

“To you, perhaps,” Enjolras muttered. “Very well, then…” He trailed off, casting around for a somewhat neutral topic. “Tell me about your home, I suppose. After all, I should know something about where we are traveling, and besides, it’s not every day that I get to visit a new money estate.”

He said the last words teasingly, and it had his desired effect: Grantaire half-smiled and shook his head. “I always knew you were a secret snob, looking down your nose on the landed gentry,” he said, equally teasing, and Enjolras relaxed, glad for reasons he could not quite articulate that they were back on their usual footing. “But there’s not much to tell. It’s a nice enough manor, just outside a small village. My sister and I were discouraged from going to the village much as children, so I doubt any there would even remember us, which works to our advantage, of course. But there was a wood on the other side of the house, and that’s where she and I spent most of our time…”

His words washed over Enjolras like a warm blanket. Despite usually being the one giving long speeches, Enjolras was quite surprised to find that for once, he was content just to sit back and listen as the carriage ride continued, bearing them both towards the house that Grantaire was describing with considerable enthusiasm.

So vividly did he describe it that Enjolras knew without Grantaire saying anything when they approached, the winding stone drive just as he had described it. But Grantaire had perhaps undersold the manor itself, which was massive, towering over them as they disembarked from the carriage.

“Impressed?” Grantaire asked, with a sort of put-upon boredom, shooing the driver away and offering Enjolras his hand instead to help him down.

Enjolras just made a small, neutral noise. “As my mother would say, you have done well for yourself.”

Grantaire barked a laugh. “High words, coming from her,” he said with a grin. “Though don’t think that I’m so new of money that I didn’t recognize the veiled insult in there.”

Enjolras laughed lightly. “Like I said, it’s what my mother would say,” he reminded him. “As for myself, it looks as noble a house as most I have seen in my life.”

“A mighty compliment,” Grantaire said, making a mocking leg. “Now please, my lord, let me offer the finest hospitality in at least the surrounding several acres.”

Together, they crossed to the door, where a man and a woman waited for them. Grantaire greeted both as if they were family, kissing the woman on the cheek and shaking the man’s hand. “My lord, if I may present my butler, Le Cabuc, and my housekeeper, Madame Hucheloup.”

Madame Hucheloup bobbed an awkward curtsy, her eyes wide. “Lord Marquess,” she said, and Enjolras couldn’t find it in himself to correct her on the title.

Le Cabuc gave him a stiff nod, clearly not as impressed as the housekeeper. “My lord,” he said. “You must forgive us, we are not used to entertaining gentlemen of your standing.”

“I am certain whatever arrangements you have made will more than suffice,” Enjolras assured him with a tight smile.

“In more ways that one,” Grantaire murmured in an undertone. “I have already filled Le Cabuc in on our plan, and intend on letting Madame Hucheloup know this evening.” He nudged Enjolras in the ribs, smirking again. “She shall likely stand in for my sister during the fake wedding.”

Enjolras frowned. “I didn’t realize there was going to be an actual wedding,” he hissed, following Grantaire inside. “Surely the town vicar will realize that Madame Hucheloup is not your sister!”

“The town vicar drinks more wine and whiskey than I do,” Grantaire informed him. “He will not recognize anyone, I promise you that. And we need this to look real, do we not?”

“I suppose,” Enjolras said reluctantly.

Grantaire clapped him on the shoulder in what he clearly thought was a bracing kind of way. “Chin up,” he said. “It will all be over soon enough. In the meantime, I am certain that Madame Hucheloup will have laid enough food to feed a small army. Do you wish to change before dinner?”

Enjolras looked down at his clothes, which were rumpled and dusty from the trip. “I won’t if you won’t,” he said, and Grantaire grinned.

“Deal.”

----------

After dinner, Grantaire showed Enjolras to his room, a large, airy chamber that was adjacent to Grantaire’s, and Enjolras went to bed early, determined to get a good night’s rest.

Instead, he woke early the next morning, a force of habit that was not helped by tossing and turning for most of the night at the thought of what they were about to do. He and Grantaire had not yet discussed exactly how the scandal was to unfold, but he imagined that they would figure that out sometime that day.

He woke so early that most of the staff was not up yet, and rather than inconvenience anyone by ringing them ahead of their usual wake up time, he instead slipped out the front door, taking the well-worn path down to the nearby village. It was a beautiful spring day, and despite himself, he found himself enjoying the walk.

Even though he tried to spend at least a little time in the villages that part of his family’s lands each time he visited, he could not imagine any time that he spent there would ever be like this, slipping down the winding streets as an anonymous stranger, watching the comings and goings of the townfolk.

He had just purchased a delicious-looking handheld pie from the baker when he felt a hand on his shoulder and immediately tensed. He turned, relaxing when he saw it was Grantaire. “Oh,” he said, relieved. “I thought—”

Out of nowhere, Grantaire’s fist connected with his jaw, sending him reeling backwards, his pie splattering to the ground. “What in the bleeding—”

“I do not know who you think you are,” Grantaire shouted, “but if you think that you can take advantage of my sister, sir, you have another think coming.”

Enjolras rubbed his jaw, blinking up at him as he tried to piece together what the hell was happening. “I don’t know—” he started, but Grantaire cut him off.

“You know perfectly well,” he growled. “Meeting with her in the middle of the night with no chaperone? Impugning her honor, with nary a marriage proposal in sight? I will not stand for it, my lord – on that, you have my word.”

The passersby had all stopped to stare, some openly gaping, others whispering to each other as they watched. “Your sister’s honor remains intact,” Enjolras said, slowly catching on to where this was going, but wondering why Grantaire was doing this here and now. “I give you my word—”

“Your word means nothing to me,” Grantaire said coldly, his expression flinty, and for the first time, Enjolras realized what it must be like for any who had crossed Grantaire. It was a formidable sight, and one he hoped not to be on the wrong side of for real anytime soon. “You will marry my sister, and before the week’s end.”

“And if I refuse?” Enjolras asked.

Someone in the crowd gasped, but it was the only sound anyone made as they stared between the two men. For a moment, it almost looked like Grantaire was smiling, just slightly, but it disappeared so quickly that Enjolras could not be certain that he did not imagine it. “Then it shall be a duel. First light on the morrow – guns or swords, your pick.”

This had absolutely not been a part of their plan, and Enjolras gaped at him. But before he could stop himself, before he could end this ruse with a few simple words, his idiotic pride got the best of him in the worst way possible at the worst time possible. “Guns,” he heard himself say. “First light on the morrow, and we shall see whose honor is left standing.”

Now Grantaire did smile, an almost feral grin. “I look forward to it, my lord,” he said, his voice low, and he turned and swept away without uttering another word.

Enjolras stood still for one long minute before realizing that every eye was still on him, and the whispers were starting to grow in volume. He flushed beet red and quickly hurried away, heading back toward the manor, his head reeling at what had just happened.

About halfway back to Grantaire’s house, the man in question fell in next to him, his cold expression replaced by a genuine grin. “Well, that went well,” he said cheerfully, and Enjolras gave him a withering look.

“Did it?” he asked sourly, wincing at the pain still radiating from his jaw. “Because I was just about to ask you what in the bloody hell you were thinking.”

Grantaire clucked his tongue. “There is no need for that kind of language,” he scolded, still abominably cheerful.”

“Says the man who just publicly challenged me to a duel!”

Grantaire stopped so suddenly that Enjolras ran straight into him. “Yes, you idiot,” he said, but despite his words, his tone was soft, patient even. “I just very publicly challenged you to a duel. If you think that the townspeople won’t be telling everyone they know about that—”

Enjolras shook his head slowly. “And what if I had just agreed to marry your sister?”

“Honestly, I was mostly expecting you to,” Grantaire said with a shrug. “After all, it’s not necessary for the ruse that we actually have a duel, just that the challenge and scandal is made known.” Enjolras flushed and opened his mouth to apologize and explain, but Grantaire didn’t let him, continuing thoughtfully, “But in honesty, this lends a certain...verisimilitude to the whole affair. After all, no one would believe that you would so quickly agree to a marriage.”

“I suppose not,” Enjolras reluctantly agreed, before adding, a little sullenly, “Though speaking of verisimilitude, I don’t think you needed to punch me quite so hard.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes. “Oh, do not be such a baby,” he scoffed. “I pulled my punch.”

“You could have fooled me.”

Enjolras knew he sounded like a petulant child, but he didn’t much care. Grantaire rolled his eyes again. “Believe me, had I punched you with my full strength, you would have a broken jaw.” Enjolras was tempted to tell him that he wasn’t entirely sure his jaw wasn’t broken, but Grantaire glanced at the look on his face and sighed. “Oh, come here.”

He reached out and Enjolras automatically flinched. “What are you—” he started, breaking off when Grantaire cradled his jaw gently between both his hands, prodding gently with his fingertips, his touch almost feather-light.

Enjolras knew he was blushing, but if Grantaire noticed, he didn’t say anything. “See?” he said instead, his voice quiet. “Nothing broken. I doubt you’ll even have much of a bruise.”

His fingers skimmed lightly over his skin as he traced his jaw, and Enjolras swallowed, hard, realizing for the first time just how close they were standing. If anyone happened upon them, standing like this, the scandal in question would not be in relation to Grantaire’s sister. He cleared his throat. “You can let go of me now.”

Grantaire’s hands fell to his sides, and Enjolras wished he didn’t immediately miss the warmth. He shoved his hands into his pockets and they both started walking back toward the house. After a long silence, Enjolras cleared his throat again. “So what now?”

“Now, we make sure that one of the townsfolk’s accounts of what happened gets into the right hands so that it gets to Lady Whistledown,” Grantaire said.

“And after that?”

Grantaire smirked at him. “After that, we have a duel to plan.”

#enjolras #grantaire #exr #enjoltaire #enjolras x grantaire #les miserables #fanfiction #lady whistledown #bridgerton au #regency era #ish #canon era #fake marriage #hijinks and shenanigans

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aggressive-positivity-network · 3 years

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So I (A white cisgender heterosexual woman who likes pumpkin spice lattes and Animal Crossing, so yeah) grew up in a very, VERY LGBTQ+-phobic household, and that translated into me having basically no knowledge on the LGBTQ+ community. Could you do me a massive favor and just lay out straight the words and phrases and generally help a dumbass out?

Oooh, no problem! And believe me, you aren’t a dumbass. I knew next to nothing for a while, and I grew up in a very supportive household. I just didn’t have the means to learn about it.

Here’s a phrasebook for some common phrases you might hear:

TERF: Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist; they believe that trans women should not be included in their fight for gender equality, and that because trans woman “used to be men” they shouldn’t be allowed in women safe spaces because they might rape someone. Sooo yeah. Keep away from them. They are pretty nasty and misguided. Also known as radfems.

Pansexual: Attracted sexually to anyone of any gender identity.

Panromantic: Attracted romantically to anyone of any gender identity

Bisexual: Attracted sexually to two or more genders.

Biromantic: Attracted romantically to two or more genders

Pan/Bi Discourse: Some people think pansexual and bisexual should become one or the other because they’re very similar to each other, but whether you identify as either of them is a personal choice, and you shouldn’t let anyone dictate your identity - ever. You can even be both at the same time, if you choose to identify that way! Honestly, it isn’t that big of a deal which one you choose, as long as you feel comfortable between them!

Demisexual/Demiromantic: Needs to form a strong emotional bond with someone before pursuing a romantic or sexual relationship. They probably wouldn’t enjoy speed-dating or sleeping with someone they just met. They might not experience sexual attraction for someone unless they knew the person very well.

Asexual: Does not feel sexual attraction for anyone; however, they still might like to have sex, may be neutral about sex, or might even be repulsed by it. Most people confuse this with chastity (not choosing to have sex, usually for religious reasons) or abstinence (choosing not to have sex until married). However, they still might get horny, or want to pleasure themselves. The usual difference is having it with another person. If they see a hot guy, for example, the immediate thought may be, “Wow they’re attractive,” rather than, “Have my babies.”

Aromantic: Does not feel romantic attraction for anyone; this may mean that usual romantic relationships don’t appeal to the person, or that shows of romance (flowers, dates, etc.) doesn’t appeal to them. However, they can still have very strong platonic relationships, and still do enjoy sex, but might not develop crushes or want to go on a date with someone. They might marry platonically, or marry romantically on certain terms.

Grey/Graysexual: Anyone who is in that “gray” space between being asexual and being sexual. They might like the idea of sex, but hate the product. They might have fantasies they’d like to live out in the bedroom, but not actual sex. They might like sex, but under certain conditions. People have their own names for the different facets of graysexuality, but are all under this umbrella.

Grey/Grayromantic: Anyone in that “gray” space between romantic and aromantic. They might like huge shows of romance in novels, but wouldn’t be a fan of it happening to them. They might have a crush on a person, but would never be in a relationship with them, even if asked. Graysexuality also has different names for different facets, but it’s still all under this umbrella.

Queer: Usually used as a temporary or even permanent label for when someone is still trying to figure things out. They know that there is something inside of them that’s different - but they’re not quite sure yet.

Non-binary: People who are neither male nor female, and are outside the gender spectrum. A few have androgynous (gender-neutral) styles or body types, but no matter what they wear or what they look like, they are still non-binary!

Trans: Someone who was born gender, but knows in their heart that they are another. Someone may be born a boy, but always feel like a girl, vice versa, or both genders may change to non-binary, bigender, genderqueer, or genderfluid. Being trans simply means you are making the physical and/or mental transition from one gender or another.

Transmasc: A trans person that presents as masculine, with both clothes and manner.

Transfemme: A trans person that presents as feminine, with both clothes and gender.

Bigender: Someone who identifies as male sometimes and female sometimes.

Genderfluid: Someone who drifts from one end of the binary spectrum (male on one side, female on the other) and may have several sets of pronouns. They may feel more feminine one day, more masculine another, and somewhere in between later that week.

AMAB: Assigned Male At Birth; this has no bearing on current gender identity, but it’s medically useful and can help trans people talk about themselves before they transition.

AFAB: Assigned Female At Birth; this has no bearing on current gender identity, but it’s medically useful and can help trans people talk about themselves before they transition.

Two-Spirit: A Native American who identifies as the traditional third gender, with both a masculine and a feminine spirit inside of them. It’s a pretty new term, and not all Indigenous people choose to label themselves or others that way.

Femme: A woman who dresses and acts in a traditionally feminine way.

Butch: A woman who dresses and acts in a traditionally masculine way.

Beard: Describes a partner in a relationship that exists for the purpose of keeping someone’s true sexual attraction status a secret. A gay man might have a relationship with a woman, who would be considered his beard.

Queerplatonic Relationship: A relationship that is a mixture of the traditional platonic relationship and the traditional romantic relationship. People included in this relationship can raise children and own a house together, but most likely won’t participate in sexual and/or romantic activities.

Polyamorous Relationship: A relationship that includes three or more people at any given time. This may look like a couple having an open relationship, where they can date others as they please, or it may be a set few people that stay together. Two people can be attracted to one other person, three people can all be attracted to each other, two couples can have sexual or romantic relations with each other’s partner - there are infinite combinations, and, as long as it’s healthy, they’re all valid!

I hope this helps! This is not an exhaustive list, but these are pretty much the basics and a little bit more. If you have any specific term you’d like me to define, I’d be more than happy to! Also, if I got any wrong, please feel free to correct me, and I’ll edit the post as soon as I can!

Also, who’s your favorite Animal Crossing character? I like Blathers a lot! Nerds and professors have my entire heart.

#lgbtpeople #lgbtq rights #lgbtq positivity #lgbtq+#lgbtqiia+#lgbt representation #lgbtq community #lgbtq #lgbtqplus #send asks #send anons #lovely anons

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jupitermelichios · 3 years

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On a more possitive note, I’ve started watching Sword Art Online. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen (and the last film I saw in cinemas was Cats to give you context for the scale i’m working on here) and I kind of adore it in much the same way I love garbage like Smallville or Twilight. It’s so stupid on so many levels. You could challenge someone to write the worst anime, and it would almost certainly be better than SAO. It’s almost hypnotic how terrible it is.

No one should watch this terrible terrible show so I therefore don’t feel at all bad that I’m about the spoil absolutely everything, but honestly if you do also hate-watch this please come talk to me about how terrible it is. I don’t know anyone else who watches it.

Highlights of Season 1 include:

everyone is trapped in an MMO, and if you die in the MMO you die IRL. but if you were a beta-tester you’re probably fine because they just let them keep all their levels and items from the testing, so they’re all massively OP and everyone just accepts this as a normal and non-game-breaking thing

it’s a fantasy MMO but there’s no races, no magic system, no weapons except swords and maces, and not even an option to dual wield - literally all you can do in this fucking game is stand in front of an enemy and mash the attack button. I’m pretty sure they’re trapped there because the devs realised no one would play this post launch-day otherwise because it’s boring as shit

when the villain traps everyone he also just changs all their avatars to look like they do IRL for absolutely no reason, like actually none, he doesn’t even say he thinks it would be funny, he just does it and no one questions it and it is literally never mentioned again because this is the worst TV show ever animated.

in the second episode the main character deliberately witholds information about how to defeat a boss, indirectly causing multiple deaths. there is absolutely no reason for him to withhold it, he was just being a jerk because he doesn’t like people

in the third episode they reset his entire personality and he’s now a selfless hero pretending to be a lower level than he really is so people will find him more relateable and be his friend because all he wants is to help people. this is not a consequence of episode 2, they just decided they didnt like the character as he’d previously been written.

he makes some new friends who are all objectively terrible people who have decided for no season that the twelve year old who doesn’t really know how to play and keeps having anxiety attacks about the very real possibility of death has to be the guild tank. the MC is high enough level to be functionally immortal in like half the levels, but doesn’t tell anyone this he just lets them go on bullying this child

none of his friends survive that episode, in the game or IRL. which is also a christmas epsiode. a child dies in battle because she’s a terrible tank and then a man commits suicide out of guilt, so then the main character murders santa to try and bring them back from the actual dead but it doesn’t work because again, this is a video game and they are dead IRL, so then he walks off into the snow alone. Christmas!

we meet the best character in the entire show in episode 4, Rosalia, who has gone evil and started just straight murdering people because she’s sick of being an attractive adult woman who can’t get a date because she’s surrounded by lolicons who are only interested in the preteen characters (not a joke, that comes up, the show is firmly on the side of the lolicons)

in the same episode we get an extended bra and panty sequence staring an actual fucking child, like canonically this character is maybe 13 at best. this is one of only 2 occaisions when they feel the need to undress a character and it’s the fucking 12 year old, it’s so gross it reads like a parody of itself

literally every single named female character aged over 8 who talks to the MC falls in love with him after like 5 minutes (and in season 2 this includes his actual sister). he shows absolutely no interest in any of them (including his sister, thank god) until...

the main character gets engaged to a girl he only knows from an MMO after a virtual single date (he doesn’t actually win her in a PVP match but only because he looses the match, he 100% canonically tries to win her in a match, which she is apparently fine with). he then doesn’t bother to ask for her real name until the final episode, he just calls her by her screen name

(that’s okay though becuase it turns out that this moron of a love interest used her real name, on a local server, in a game where your character looks like you do IRL, because apparently getting doxxed is her hobby)

they then get in-game married off screen. there’s not even like a still of a wedding photo. nothing. the main character proposes and then the show immediately jumps to the honeymoon, it’s fucking bizarre.

they find a creepy child dressed all in white with no memory alone in the woods a week into their honeymoon who starts calling them mommy and daddy literally seconds after they first meet her, and they don’t suspect anything suss is going on and adopt her

for hilarity bear in mind the main character may only be 15 at this point (he says he’s only just turned 16 in the last epsiode, but his actual birthday is never mentioned), and his virtual wifu is 16, but no one ever questions the marriage or the adoption, even though ‘hey marriage in a video game is as important and meaningful as marriage in real life’ is an actual conversation people have multiple times. also they think the child they adopt is an actual IRL 8 year old who thinks these randos she met in an MMO are her mum and dad and everyone just goes with that like it’s a totally normal thing

a character called ‘Thinker’ agrees to meet an enemy faction leader for peace talks. the “peace talks” take place in a high level dungeon and he is told to come alone with no weapons and no fast travel. he does this. no one ever comments that his name is ironic, and in fact they seem to think that being betrayed and trapped in a dungeon with a boss is a totally unexpected turn of events Thinker could never have planned for

they take their new baby into the dungeon to rescue thinker, because they went to the jean grey school of baby rearing, and she imediately reveals that she’s actually a magical maggufin with infinite power, murders the grim reaper, and then dies. In literally the second episode she’s in

after she dies the MC hacks the admin account of the game, converts her corpse into an in game item, and saves to the local storage on his console, with the intention of bringing her back to life as a robot once they’re saved from the game. I’m not joking, that’s an actual thing that happens.

the fact that the main character can just access the main admin account and make massive game-breaking changes isn’t used again in that game and he never thinks to try and use it to force log people out or give himself infinite life so he can just rush the game and free everyone. nope, convert a corpse into an item and then never think about it again.

there’s an entire episode where all they do is go fishing. its the only filler episode in the season, and it immediately follows the death of a small child. it’s the most tone-deaf beach episode in writing history

it turns out this game, this game where they didn’t bother coding in any difference races, weapons, or any kind of magic system, was intended to have fully sentient AI therapists, because why the fuck not at this point honestly

oh also the game has PVP and you can trick the game into thinking a sleeping player is in PVP with you in order to actually murder a real person without it flagging in-game as a murder making the crime impossible for the real life legal system to investigate even though you just murdered a person. and they expect us to believe this game had actual beta testers. at least cyberpunk wasn’t played on microwaves you connected straight to your brain (also not a joke, the VR consoles canonically work by sending microwave radiation into your brain, no wonder VR never caught on)

the set up for the show is that they have to reach level 100 of a dungeon in order to win. At level 75, the writers got bored and the show just ends.

it turns out the power of love allows you to just break the fucking game and the main villain literally has a line about how ‘love allows you to remove debuffs, huh, we didn’t think to plan for that’ because again, there’s no metaphors in this show, everything is 100% literal including the fact that falling in love with another player means you’re immune to the paralysis status effect

power of love also allows you to very briefly become a poltergeist after being killed, but only for like 2 seconds. again not a joke or a metaphor, main character is killed but then gets to hang around as a ghost for a little bit to enable him to defeat the boss. he also doesn’t die in real life despite that being the entire fucking premise of the show, again because power of love.

the bad guy literally has no plan, he’s just doing shit for the sake of having something to do. His actions directly cause the deaths of more than 4,000 people, and it’s not even in aid of anything. they ask him why he trapped 10,000 people in an MMO and allowed them to slowly die, and he’s just like ‘huh, i forgot i did that, random’ and then just fucking peaces out

the fact that he committed one of the largest mass killings outside of war never really comes up again, as far as we know he doesn’t even go to jail. i think the show actually kind of thinks he’s a good guy, which is a fucking WILD moral stance to take on the deaths of 4000 completely innocent people for absolutely no reason

If this sounds hilari-bad but you don’t want to invest the time to watch a show which is objectively garbage, it has an abridged series which is famously better than the show it’s parodying (i’m dead serious, people have character arcs, the getting married after one date thing is properly addressed, the mc has to deal with PTSD because of all his friends dying in epsidode 3, they don’t immediately follow the death of a child with an extended fishing montage, the villain has an actual plan). It’s mostly actually pretty good, but this is the internet and it’s an abridged series, so while there are a lot fewer yikes moments than most it still has enough that I’m not comfortable recommending it without the caveat. that said I still enjoyed it a lot, although possibly not at much as pointing and laughing at the garbage that is the actual show.

#sao bashing #kirito bashing #sao abridged #good bad shows #i love this garbage show so much #it's one of the funniest things i've watched all year #and none of that is intentional #sword art online bashing #if you also love hate this show please come talk to me about how terrible it is

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burningthemidnightcityoil · 3 years

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ON CLASSES

Classpects run on Irony, Puns, Wordplay, and each class has a secondary verb, in addition to the one they share with their pair.

Witch - Which. “Choose / Choice”. A Witch chooses power. Witches are the Powerhouse of the Session(cell). They are akin to Thieves, for a Witch takes power. But the difference here is that a Witch doesn’t need to take it from other people, a Witch takes back their own power from whatever Guardian (or “familiar”) has it. Its not like an Heir, where the Heir can just wait for it to come; a Witch has to grab it or be forced into its service.

Heir - Air/Err. “Inherit”. An Heir inherits power. While Heirs are akin to the Page, where they both inspire others to help them; the difference here is that Heirs will inspire others to Guide them (Literally inspire others to act as Seers), while Pages inspire others to Serve them (Inspire others to act as Knights). Heirs don’t like being Served (In fact, Heirs Homestuck-Historically have conflicts with Guardians because of their Service), and Pages don’t like being Guided. (Most Pages tend to talk smack about those trying to Guide them)

Mage - Magician. “Perform”. Mage’s are showy, in addition to being knowitalls. How you are Seen is Important. There are three Mages, two known and one HC’d, that give this. Sollux, inspite of his problems, is a Show Off and tries to play it off Smoothly. His performance is more important than his powers (Or Spells, if we’re dedicated). Meulin also tends to be Showy. Both by showing off her favorite couples, and by her Disciple self showing off her rommance on literal cave walls. HC’d Mage, Diamonds Droog / Draconian Dignitary, is all about the Show and the Class, and not about Flash Powers or Transformations.

Seer - To See. “Envision”. Seers See Seas. What you see is important. Unlike their counterpart, the Mage, A Seer’s visions are more important than their Spells. (This is inspite of the fact that both Mages and Seers are equally capable of both Visions and Spells, as well as Performance. It seems what what indicates if you’re a Mage or a Seer is if what’s important is How you are Seen, or What you See; A Mage wants to be Seen, a Seer wants to See).

Thief - To Steal / To Steel / Steel yourselves. “Enforce”. If Knights are the Law, Thieves are the Enforcers; because they literally reinforce themselves by taking what they want. Let’s take this a step further, and include all definitions of Enforce Thieves Strengthen, Intensify, Force, Drive and Urge whatever they set their sights on, to be what they want it. (After all, they Steal, or Take By Force / Violence)

Rogue - To Go Rogue / Haywire. “To Cross”. Rogues are pretty good about making connections, and making connections work; be it between people, or their Aspect. (Roxy between her Friends and her Windows; Nepeta with her Romances)

Knight - Night. “To Bare / Bear”. Bear hands? This may seem outlandish, but the origin of the word Night is “Bare” or “To be Bare of Sunlight”. And Knights tend to put on a kind of Mask, or Shield, or rather, Helm / Helmet as they feel their weaknesses (or what they think are their weaknesses) feel bare to the world (Dave and his Sunglasses; Karkat and his Temper; Latula and her Gamer Attitude).

Page - Chapter. “To Assemble” YOU BOY, EQUIP ARMS. This one took a bit, but what’s a Page without a Chapter? Be it a Chapter in a Book of Pages, or a Council to of all those they have called on to serve them. A Page is a Knightly figure that has a Round Table, akin to a Rogue’s Merrymen. A Page inspires others to play Knight to them, or to serve them. To call to Arms, or call to Action. So basically, if Robin Hood is a Rogue’s Mythic figure, King Arthur is a Page’s mythic figure. So literally, all those a Page calls on personally, makes them apart of their Round Table of Knights. (Wait, does this mean that HS^2 Jane is Morgan Le F--)

Maid - Made. “To Make” Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice. Maids are the Makers. They don’t so much as Maintain, though they do that too, as they create. Consider. Aradia is a prime example. She dies, so she makes Time for herself as a very powerful Poltergeist. She becomes a Robot, and makes Time for Herself by her many many Robot Time Copies, or as Time is Numeral, making Numbers. She becomes a Godtier, and suddenly, Time in the Dream Bubbles align perfectly with the Present. Notice how when we are first introduced to the Dream Bubbles, Time was a real nonlinear pain. But when Aradia took the Reins on this Time Management Stuff, and suddenly the Dream Bubbles were Linear and aligned with our Story. She did want to see the end, after all (And the more living Time Gods entered the Bubbles, the more Linear things became) For Porrim, its about Making Space for others in both her various views and her uh... Various Views. For the Dolorosa, this included making Space for herself, and for her son. She possibly even helped direct him closer to the idea of Freedom (And he did see visions of another space in time...)

Sylph - Sylvan / Wood Threshold. “To Matter” Okay, this one is like the Knight’s, if not more complicated (and likely gonna require more development in the future, cos this took waaay too much digging for my liking). Thing is, Sylph is a difficult thing to name from name alone unless you look into the word itself. Because its derived from Sylvan “Of the woods”. But we break that down into two things. Silva, the Woods, and Hyle, Matter. Hyle / Hule is already the Greek word for Matter or Wood in any case. And our word for Matter is already derived from Mater, the Latin word for Mother. (The original English word was displaced by Latin; Andwork was once our word for Matter). Unfortunately, I can’t quite make the connections here yet, so I’m not sure if “To Matter” is the proper verb. I can, however, describe some loose connections that at least tell me I’m on the right track: ... Sylphs are defined by their Environment; Such as Kanaya’s relations regarding Trolls (A motherly figure), Aranea defined herself by Information and giving Information (which ain’t healthy), Mindfang defined herself a Thief because the Troll Empire was lead by a Thief And HC’d Sylph of Mind, Snowman was, quite literally, the Universe (And its Multiverse, which is a Mind thing). So a Sylph defines herself by her “Woods”, or like a Nymph / Dryad, by her “Tree / Wood / Matter”. And when you kill the Tree / Wood, you kill the Sylph, and vice versa (Destroy the Matriorb, and Kanaya dies; Kill Snowman and you kill the Unvierse; Mindfang was murdered, and her Enlightenment about the Doc died with her).

Prince - Principle / Foremost. “To Postulate” Its the Principle of the matter. For Princes, Principle and Code are key, and they will follow these as a fundamental truth (and be damned to anything else). This is likely what it was meant when they were called a Destroyer Class, because they do tend to destroy all avenues when it doesn’t fit their Principle. A Group of Princes could be called an Argument. For Eridan, both the system he resided in, and his own internal narrative (his Hopes), were his fundamental truths. And in the end, it fucked everything up. For Kurloz, his Belief System and his chosen Lord were his Fundamental Truth (And Rage is about Truths; so this guy didn’t just have a fortified castle, he had an entire armored country) For Dirk, the Character someone presented was the Truth of the matter, and the Character he presented. He believed that all versions of him were Him, and that was his biggest flaw, because they weren’t. AR was no more Dirk Strider than Bro was. ... And unfortunately, one version of him took this very literally (HS^2).

Bard - Barred / Bar. “To Prevent” Bards are quite the Wild Card, because how the hell do you manage destroying stuff for other people’s benefit and it actually ensured that it is a benefit? But from our few examples, Bards do act as great barriers. They keep things on the path because if you didn’t have that barrier, you wouldn’t progress, or you’d go too far too quickly, or things could go out of hand. For Gamzee, he tends to invoke the idea of the Barrier Maiden (He does roleplay a fairy / maid). He can’t die cos he’s a Cosmic Keystone to things happening like they’re suppose to. Paradox Space, literally, cannot let him die because it needs him to complete the Alpha Loop [By extension, no Doomed Timeline ever has a Dead Gamzee, he’s just that important, the stupid fuck] / [consider the theory that he also absorbs his alternative selves to keep his keystone status; like how Rose absorbed her alternative dream self] (Though when you take him from his story / destiny / fate, he’s just another mortal shitty clown). Gamzee prevented Rage, for Homestuck to continue as its intended narrative. For Cronus, his little Hope Quest was a direct line to Lord English (being the evil wvizard in his little Harry Potter fantasy). But this blew up royally, because as it turns out, it isn’t up to the Beforus Trolls to do shit. So just as Gamzee’s crisis of Fate put things back on the Path to LE and prevented catastrophe, Cronus’s crisis caused catastrophe. He prevented Hope for the Beforus Trolls, because it wasn’t their Story. And now for my HC’d Bard of Doom, Clubs Deuce. He does exactly what it says, he Prevents Doom. Inspite of what it appears, he’s highly competent because that prevents things from going to hell. For CD, he prevented Doom, for his Crew, and the sessions he’s involved in. And any time CD tends to disappear from the picture, is when things go to hell fast (For the Crew, Cans showed up; for the Beta Session, he was a mere herald for the doom that was already coming and his death cinched it)

#homestuck #classpect

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