#is the exact same as a different system that is literally called MAGIC
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** warning drama ahead **
Regarding plagiarism and @lettersfromvenus:
I definitely did not envision this to be my first post back from the break that I’ve been on from posting but after my lengthy exchange with her last night I’d just like to clear the air and explain the situation from a different point of view as I believe lettersfromvenus has been dishonest to her audience
** but before I even get into all of that I would like to sincerely apologize if you have messaged me, replied to one of my posts or sent in an ask, I am going to start working on getting back to everyone as soon as possible- I cannot even explain how much I have missed being active on here and I’d like to give a huge thank you to all the elvis fans and blogs out there because y’all have been keeping my moral high 🫡
my immune system decided to quit a little over a week ago and what I thought was a normal cold/flu turned out to be pneumonia of all things. even though I lowkey almost died from it when I first got it as a kid, I don’t remember it being this exhausting?? I’ve been bedridden like a victorian child and have been reminiscing on all the times that I had an appetite and could stand up without losing my breath
literally me since last thursday
** as for the situation regarding lettersfromvenus **
a few days ago it was brought to my attention that some accusations were being made against her after I saw an ask that was sent to another Elvis blog on here. She was being accused, by the original author, of copying a fic (word for word) from wattpad (including the title and cover-art) and posting it on here as though it was her own work
here is that post from the og author ⬇️
I always try to be as neutral as possible but after reading posts from both @ladiilokii and lettersfromvenus, I ultimately decided that the latter was clearly in the wrong and that her explanations made no sense and did nothing but pivot the blame
and so I left this exact comment on ladiilokii’s post to show support ⬇️
** “at first I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt but her responses to your messages are just insane, I’m so sorry this happened!! I’ve unfollowed her and reported her post, I can’t believe she is refusing to take it down after being caught red-handed 🤧” **
“insane” was a harsh word to use but that is the only word that came to mind after reading lettersfromvenus’ responses to being called out
she claimed that she was sent prompts/scenarios by an anonymous person and that she then wrote the fic based on those prompts, which just magically happened to be the exact same, word for word, as ladiilokii’s og fic. not only is that impossible, but it also doesn’t account for the stolen cover-art as an anonymous person cannot send a photo through the inbox, their username would have to be public
letterfromvenus then admitted to the og auther (pictured below) that she got the cover-art directly from the original fic on wattpad
** “all I did was steal the title and the picture because it had fit so well with what I thought my fic”-lettersfromvenus ** im sorry but how do you “think”something is your fic? you either wrote it or you didn’t…
lettersfromvenus’ full direct message to ladiilokii ⬇️
these explanations made zero sense to me and the lack of accountability on her part is astounding- she basically said “your work was amazing, they meant for it to be copied” ?!?
Much like the og author, I don’t believe that lettersfromvenus was sent any prompts by an anonymous person. I think she found the original fic and posted it as her own work thinking nobody would know where she got it from as it was originally posted in a vast collection of one-shots
I can’t speak to experience of being a writer but I could imagine it would be incredibly disheartening to have someone else take the credit and reap the rewards of all the hard work, effort, and time that goes into writing a fic
and so that was my involvement in the situation. like I mentioned I did decide to unfollow her because I thought it was unfair/dishonest how lettersfromvenus was making ladiilokii out to be the aggressor even though she had every right to call out the person who was stealing her fic
but nonetheless I didn’t say anything to lettersfromvenus and I just hoped that she would learn from her mistakes and offer a more sincere apology and explanation in the future
flashforward some days later to yesterday, when around 5:40pm, I got sent an anonymous ask which had a link to a new post from lettersfromvenus. obviously there is no way to prove who sent in the ask but I had my suspicions that it was her as she directly addressed the og comment that I made on ladiilokii’s post, in her new post⬇️
(https://www.tumblr.com/lettersfromvenus/730026135806722048/okay-so-i-swore-right-down-to-not-waste-my-time-on?source=share)
in retrospect I shouldn’t have engaged but I just couldn’t believe that she was trying to twist the situation and make it seem like she was getting all this unwarranted hate when in reality this was started by her when she consciously decided to steal another person’s work, and then refused to accept any blame. I still stand by my reasonings to unfollow and report her for the stolen fic
and so I commented on lettersfromvenus’ new post (linked above) to clarify again why I decided to unfollow her, as she questioned why I did. I wanted to be as frank as possible and so I wished her the best, but I maintained that I wouldn’t support her work in the future and that I thought the og author deserved a better/more truthful explanation
unfortunately I was blocked by her after our back and forth so I can’t see all of my og comments but here are some of hers and mine that I was able to sc beforehand⬇️
may or may not have had a friend send me more sc of the convo after I was blocked ⬇️
“I did not plagiarize the fic” are you sure about that?
courtesy of @ladiilokii ⬇️ (lettersfromvenus is left, og author is right)
some other screenshots⬇️
“you’re literally blaming me for shit out of my control”- it wasn’t out of your control, you purposefully did what you did and instead of openly admitting to it, you’re pivoting the blame onto an “anonymous” sender (which she has still shown no proof of)
and even if someone did send you a complete fic in your inbox, you are still obligated to say that it is not your own original work if you post it, it is still plagiarizing even if the author is anonymous
** btw this was the caption of the fic she posted that she stole from ladiilokii- “Writing takes a lot of time, so please make sure to support us writers” writing does indeed take time… copying and pasting does not **
and please the irony of saying this fandom is toxic for calling you out for stealing another fan’s work- like ma’am take a look in the mirror before calling other people toxic 🤧
my patience is now non-existent regarding this person so I’m sorry if I’m crass but if her idea of “hard work” is copying and pasting a fic and stealing the title/cover-art, then yeah that deserves to be discredited, like what do you expect??
since I was blocked I can’t see my comment anymore but I mentioned how she admitted to stealing the cover-art and that she should have given credit for that, and she then replied that her stealing was essentially justified because the author who made the cover-art didn’t credit the photographer that took the photos of Elvis ⬇️
she also went on to say that everyone who writes the word “Elvis” is plagiarizing Gladys because she created Elvis- I hope she stretched before she made that reach
we only went back and forth for like 15 minutes but my head still hurts from it. she was just impossible to reason with, she had zero accountability, and at times I felt like I was speaking to an actual toddler… she even told me to go back to elementary school to get common sense 💀
me engaging with her on that post proved to be futile, but I can’t say that I fully regret it because this clearly shows her lack of a moral code as a writer (thou shall not plagiarize)
I hate for this to be my first post back and I do know that I am contributing to the drama (for better or for worse) by making this lengthy ass post but that whole exchange with her truly shocked me and I just couldn’t keep quiet about it, especially when she has gone to her followers and made herself out to be the victim, and made others out to be the aggressors… my brain cannot compute the fact that she is trying to garner sympathy from this
** however, I by no means, wish for any hate sent to her about this. some of my comments and rebuttals have been snippy & I definitely lost patience in all of this but I don’t know how old this person is, she could be 12 for all I know, and I think we have probably all been guilty of doing dumb things on the internet. From my understanding she did end up deleting the fic at the og authors request **
I made this post in hopes that it provides some clarity to the situation and in hopes that I could show the conversation with as much transparency as possible as since I’m blocked I’m slightly worried that she is making me out to seem like I instigated this when I only directly spoke to her once I saw that her post mentioned my comment
to me this situation wasn’t even really about who was involved, it was about the principle of it because no matter who the person is, plagiarism is wrong on all of counts. if someone plagiarized lettersfromvenus’ original work in the future, I would still speak to her defense because no one deserves to have that happen to them
if there is anything you would like to do, please show some love and support to @ladiilokii , the original author of “Welcome to Detroit, Baby” <3
anyways- I cannot wait to get back to my original schedule of posting, I’ve been on a break for only 11 days but my god it has felt like an eternity 😭
#idk why this whole situation struck a nerve with me#but it got me heated on a Sunday night#I just don’t understand how someone could steal another persons work and not feel any guilt#again the lack of accountability is astounding#elvis presley#elvis#elvisaaronpresley#elvis fans#elvis fandom#elvis x reader#elvis fanfiction#elvis imagines
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hey chicken! what can i do in the dry periods in which there is nothing really bothering me? as in, how can i further my practice with spirits and witchcraft if i am not actively needing to do a spell?
What a great question! This is a problem that plagues many practitioners. Here's a few ideas in no particular order:
Take a break and do nothing. IMO, a vital part of growth in witchcraft is growth of the witch. Just by living life, you develop yourself and therefore your craft. Your witchcraft evolves at the exact same pace as you evolve. It is in lockstep with you; it is you, it comes from you. It is never separate from you.
So do literally anything - relax and steep yourself into a tea of nonaction, learn a new hobby, watch that Netflix series, go for a walk. Do anything, including nothing.
Learn a new creative hobby, by the way. A significant portion of my practice these days is making things. My beliefs advise that the act of physical creation is very powerful and a very good way to bind magic into our physical world.
Christmas is coming up and it's the perfect time to learn to crochet coasters, paint watercolor bookmarks, calligraphy for fancy cards, and so on. Knowing most of us, we probably have expensive and barely-used craft materials in the closet from last summer's hyperfixation! Pick something up again and learn to use it for small projects.
As you hobby away, ask yourself how the skill you're learning might translate to witchcraft.
When it's time to do magic again, you'll have extra tools in your toolbox. Hand-made bags for spell sachets, devotional artwork, stunning sigils: by learning a skill and meditating on its mystical uses, we unlock new doors in our path that may lead to mysterious and winding hallways of possibility.
You can also do drills. Whatever sort of magic you do, you can break it down to its composite parts and practice it. Suppose you like to do a lot of candle magic where you charge the candle. Well, practice that. Get a pack of 100 tea lights and practice charging each one. Fill it with a specific sort of energy. Come back the next day and fill it again. And again. Carve a symbol on top. Do you perceive that it is easier to charge the candle when a corresponding symbol has been carved into it? Put it away. How long does it stay charged for?
Learn a new method of charging. Maybe you like to do visualization + willpower charging. Now, try something new: charging through offerings. Charging through sacrifice. Charging through prayer. Compare the results to your original method. Is it less draining? More? Does it stay charged as long? Is the quality of energy different? What about when you carve a symbol and then pray over it, does that make a difference?
(the benefit of this is ending up with a hundred pre-charged candles ready for spellwork when the time comes)
Of course, you may work over substances specifically meant to be worked over ahead of time. Oils, waters, potions, and powders may be prepared ahead of time, especially at opportune astrological appointments, and accumulate a great deal of power before they're needed. Many traditional recipes call for an incense or oil to steep for months before it is used.
What kind of magic do you often end up doing? Are you regularly blessing, generating good luck, or drawing prosperity? Perhaps your practice would benefit from careful preparation of a blessing incense, worked over for a few months before it's put into use.
If you're in a creative mood, maybe there is some big project you've been putting off - building of spirit houses, making of fancy altar cloths, crafting of special ceremonial masks - that you could finally get started on.
Moving away from mundane creation, perhaps there's some magical skill you'd like to adopt. Astral travel, new methods of divination, new methodologies of spellwork, and so on. If there's truly nothing for you to cast on, learning about a system is better than not learning about a system. You'll still take away more than nothing.
A healthy period of self-examination may also serve. Try giving a name to your practice (something very cool and 90s, like Path of the Golden Crow) and writing a handbook for hypothetical novices who want to join this path. What are the foundational skills of your practice? What are your core beliefs? What spell or ritual formats must people be able to work if they want to be a Golden Crow?
Pouring energy back into spiritual relationships is always a good option. It's my experience that spirits don't like feeling like vending machines, and relationships may turn sour if we only show up when we need something from them. Spend a lot of time talking to the spirits. Ask them what you should be doing.
If your skills with spirit work are limited, actively practice psychism, divination, astral travel, or other methods of spirit contact.
Of course, you can also just do spellwork regardless. Why does something have to be bothering you before you cast on it? Wouldn't you like to get a pay raise, or have more ideal hours? Would you like your blog to have more followers? Would you like a very expensive tool or crafting supply on the cheap? Maybe you'd like to meet similarly-minded folks in your local area. The list goes on.
Now, I will say something to wrap this up: plateaus are good and necessary. There is a difference between a plateau and a rut. I started this list off with "literally do nothing" for a reason. Periods of rest are not periods of stagnation, and things are often going on behind the scenes without us realizing it.
A few years ago, a witch friend of mine said she felt she had plateaued and asked me for a reading on how to get to the "next level." The reading was very bizarre and recommended that she basically implode her own life by making horrible decisions.
"Judy," I said, "isn't it true that all your periods of growth in witchcraft have been because something horrible happened, and you had to adapt to survive?"
"Yes," she said.
"Then enjoy your plateau," I advised, "and don't try to get out of it."
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also hot take (?): but vampires DO have souls. the creation of a vampire in btvs lore is literally that a demonic essence/spirit/spiritual energy (in this instance a vampiric one and not some other kind of demon) enters a human corpse and parasitically latches on, altering the human corpse to better suit it with an initial burst of spooky evil demon magic (which is part of why i never think any lore that says vampire can't do magic makes sense like, how do you think they even function fam?). it then uses the info and identity of the former inhabitant that's all still locked up in those dead synapses to help it acclimate to the new dimension and build a sense of identity. you can argue that the vampire is not your dead friend but what is a person if not their memories and thoughts? all of which the vampire now shares too. so that's a fun little thing to puzzle on in philosophy class.
vampires in the buffy world are pretty explicitly a manufactured creature built of a demonic essence/entity grafted into a human cadaver which merge to make a new species which is why they're so low on the demon hierarchy. they're the most mongrel-y of all the half-breeds. what is the soul if not a spiritual essence that fuels and motivates the body? the metaphysical component that makes the system complete? what is the vampire of not a perversion of the human condition? does it not then stand that the vampire soul is the twisted mirror of the human one?
the thing is that while this is Kinda Common Sense when you sit down and just look at objectively how the vampire is made it's a dangerous concept in universe and we fall pray to believe the same propaganda built to ensnare our characters.
the slayer was made in almost the exact same process as a vampire only with a living subject-- a demonic essence grafted into a human host. there is no magic leash on a slayer, there are no words that can be chanted to bring her to heel, the watchers have to use standard psychological manipulation to control her. a slayer who realizes that she has more in common with vampires on a fundamental level than she does humans (tho not on a moral or motivation level obvs) is very dangerous to their control and to the concept of "slayer as sheepdog" as a whole. conditioning them to see vampires as animals and not sentient humanoid beings with thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams, who have souls that while demonic are no less valid in their existence then any human one is integral to keeping the machine working and keeping your young emotionally/mentally vulnerable weapon from having a nervous breakdown because she just you know, massacred a whole bunch of people. fangy people, but people none the less.
btvs and the watcher council mentality the main btvs cast is tainted by is incredibly human centric, watch even a little of ats and it becomes glaringly obvious. ats is extremely flawed but one of it's strongest points was letting us see the expanded world of demons and non-human culture. the issue is then that buffy and co come off as rabid human-centrists because of how they talk about vampires and demons as a whole. there's a reason tara didn't want them to know she was half demon when she thought that line was true. the scoobies spout anti-demon rhetoric like it's their jobs. the way they treat anya is horrendous and it's because she has the Taint of demon and neurodivergence coding (which is a whole different kettle so).
the continued talk about spike like he's a subhuman while he's either at their mercy or on their side is galling. you cannot be called the good guys and then treat other sentient creatures like animals and vermin to be killed or mocked for your amusement. full stop. you cannot claim a moral high ground and behave like this which is what the scoobies consistently claim. they believe they are in the moral right and have the moral high ground consistently. when in reality they are pretty fucked up and have done repugnant immoral shit multiple times (hello all the various scoobie caused invasions of personal autonomy!). you can be a protagonist and have uh... Dodgey Morals™ (ex. the punisher) but when you claim you are better because you have better morals but also refuse to see the other side as even worthy of being seen as a truly living creature with like feelings and shit now i'm treating you with contempt.
there are people who will say that buffy was the sole victim of the toxicity that is s6 spuffy but if you believe that you also are tacitly agreeing that her belief that spike is an "it", an animal with no bodily autonomy to respect or feelings to hurt or be manipulated is true. and why? because he's a vampire? he has a soul, a demonic soul. he literally would not exist if a metaphysical entity/force hadn't entered william pratt's fucking corpse and make it theirs. this is an inherently repugnant act and even if we all sit down and agree she did nothing else to contribute to this toxicity she still looked another sentient being who she knew had some kind of feelings for her, used his want and his desperation to abuse herself with and spent the entire time considering him as something between cattle and a lamp. i'm sorry but that's wildly fucked up at it's core and if you can't see that i worry for you.
what if she was dating a nice half-bracken guy and she did all that shit to him? if he tried to stop her from turning herself in for a crime she didn't commit and then beat him bloody and called him an it, a thing, not a person, not real? are you still okay with that because he's a demon? are humans the only species in your eyes with the right to personhood in this universe? do you, like buffy and co, prefer to take the words of a group known to manipulate everything and who treat girls like buffy as things themselves over the evidence you see before your eyes on screen and the actions and words of the demons themselves? buffy's actions towards spike from s4 to s6 are repugnant because they're no longer enemies and she's no longer the council's attack dog but she still refuses to give him the basic decency of personhood.
and you can get into all kinds about shit about how vampires are evil and he's done terrible things and i will not respect you for using any of that to try and say it's okay to treat someone who you relay on or are in any kind of relationship with like they're a thing. otherization and depersonification are tools used to make it "okay" to commit atrocities. for every spike who you say it's "okay" to treat like an animal, there's a harmony who isn't really all that bad and happily switches to bagged blood and integrates pretty peacefully into human society when given the chance. and she will get put right next to spike as an animal to be killed because she doesn't matter. using his past actions to deny him the right of personhood is a lazy tactic to divert the discussion and absolve buffy and co of moral failings.
the nazis are also evil, but i will not deny they are people. doesn't mean i wouldn't take the shot if i had one if i was put in that position. it just means i acknowledge i ended a life that probably meant something to someone. and that's my issue with buffy and co. that's my issue with "vampires are soulless" and buffy's treatment of spike in s6 and how people talk about it. regardless of literally anything else either of them did, denying another sentient being the right to be acknowledged as one while still demanding things from them is inherently a core repugnant act. she is willing to use his feelings and body for her advantage but also refuses to respect them as real and just as valid as hers. again, how would you feel if she treated lorne like this? if she demanded things of him but didn't respect his basic right to be seen as a valid sentient being just like her?
in btvs vampires have souls, demons have souls, and they all deserve the basic decency to have that acknowledged. even by the slayer. especially by the slayer frankly since she is also in her own way One Of Them and if she's going to hunt them down and kill them she can at least acknowledge that she ended a life and didn't just flip an off switch. if you can't get with this whole concept of the validity of non-human life in a universe where the MCs humanity is frequently questioned and the Other and Otherism is frequently a theme then i really am not interested in talking to you.
#meta#gOD THIS IS SO MUCH LONGER THAN I'D PLANNED#but i have VERY strong feelings about this#vampires have souls argue with the wall#no cut we die like men
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You not passing is not a symptom of not having access to hormones or having dysphoria, it's a symptom of your behavior. You can certainly pass without hormones, many people do it. To imply otherwise is a disservice to them. It is not just some magical quality people have, it is something that you work on and improve, like a skill. A skill, which you have an issue in. The intersection between transphobia and misogyny is *transmisogyny,* it's right in the name. *Transandrophobia*, if such a thing were to realistically exist in any meaningful way, would be the intersection of *androphobia*, the fear of MEN, also known as MISANDRY, and to imply that it is a form of prejudice against women that you also suffer from speaks volumes. There is no doubt in my mind that you are a man. I respect your identity. It is because I am treating you exactly like a man that I am holding you accountable for when you speak over women.
Hey there, dipshit, have you ever heard of something called the fact that not every human body is the exact same?
I am short. My body happens to have many feminine features. Can many people pass without hormones? Sure. Do many people need hormones to pass? ALSO YES!!!!
Passing isn't a skill. IT'S LITERALLY PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. Me not passing is a symptom of my body naturally appearing feminine, me not being on T, and the fact that I have no interest in passing at this moment. I should not have to pass in order to have people not discriminate against me.
If the intersection between transphobia and misogyny is transmisogyny regardless of who it is directed at, how would you feel about us transmascs using the word when we do experience an intersection of transphobia and misogyny? Or are you going to go back to denying that transmascs do experience misogyny?
Dumbass, transandrophobia is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that is weaponized against transmascs. While not every transandrophobia person will agree with that definition, that is how I define it and how I use it in my discussions of how it directly affects me and all other transmascs.
I do not speak over transfems when it comes to their own issues. Now, if you think that transmascs have the systemic power to speak over cis women, that is an entirely different issue. An issue, I think, that you have.
Asshole, stop harassing random transmascs on the internet because we speak about the misogyny we face and the erasure of violence against us a little too loudly.
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Class-Action Lawsuit!!
“Thanks for helping me work through the alchemy lab today,” your classmate Twiya says. “I’m really sorry for troubling you...”
“Don’t worry about it!” you say. “I may not be magic, but I can follow a recipe, and you looked pretty lost.”
Twiya’s pale diamond ears, sprouting from higher on his head than a human’s, twitch with embarrassment. He puts his face in his hands to hide his growing blush. Even hunching over like he is, Twiya is much, much taller than you.
“Reading can get really hard for me sometimes,” he says, his voice muffled by his hands. “I try to read slowly but then all the words get jumbled up, and...”
“Seriously, it’s not a big deal, Twiya.” You try to change the subject so all the blood in their gangly body doesn’t rush into their face. “What are you doing once you get back to your dorm?”
Twiya groans. “Leona is gonna make us do more magift practice. I’m not even good at magift, I can’t get my legs to work right whenever I play...I’ll probably just hide in one of the storage rooms and do my homework in there until dinner.”
Well, if that ain’t the saddest thing you ever did hear, and you’re literally trapped in a different universe. “You can always hide out with me, if you need to. No one ever comes around Ramshackle.”
“I wouldn’t wanna cause you any more trouble,” Twiya says, shaking his head. “It’s fine, I’m used to it.”
You reluctantly wave Twiya through the portal to Savanaclaw, watching until his thin tail disappears through the rippling glass.
Poor Twiya always sounds like he’s having a tough time in his dorm. He’s clumsy and unathletic, and one of the nicest people you’ve ever met, twisted or otherwise. Basically, he’s the exact opposite of most of the kids in the “Sports!” Dorm. The only things he really has in common with his dorm-mates are his raspy voice, his homeland, and his furriness.
In fact, all of the students you’ve seen here with ears on top of their head and tails on their backsides sport gold and black. And something about that strikes you as…racism? No, it’s definitely racism.
You can’t put all the furries in Savanaclaw, and you also can’t bar non-furries from being in Savanaclaw. What if there’s a human that’s super into body-building? You can’t just throw them in Heartslabyul and call it a day. And what if there’s a half-donkey that’s the best hacker out there? You’re gonna make that kid suffer with the jocks instead of putting him in Ignihyde where he belongs?
Poor Twiya’s a victim of The System, and you’ve got to rescue him from Its awful clutches. And, as everyone knows, the first step to bringing down an ancient and flawed form of classification of individuals is research.
There’s a few people you’ll need to go to for this question, but let’s start on the ground with your wolfy tsundere Prince Charming.
Jack is a Good Boy who doesn’t have any social media, so you can’t contact him that way like you can your other two besties. You really don’t want to go back onto Savanaclaw turf to find him, either, even if you proved yourself an honorary sports furry during Azul’s contract fulfillment. Fortunately for you, Jack and Deuce are both in track and field and it’s easy enough to get Deuce to pass on a message for you.
You meet Jack in the library after classes let out for the day. It’s easy to spot him looking for you, on account of the fact that he’s 6’3. That is, 6’3 not including his ears, which you can see twitching from where you’re sitting. You can’t yell for him (libraries are the same, regardless of the alternate universe) so you whisper his name and depend on his superhuman hearing to pick it up.
Your quiet beckons might actually have worked, because it doesn’t take long for his face to appear from around a bookshelf. You wave him into the study area you’re sitting in.
“Hi, Jack! Thanks for meeting me.”
“Whatever,” he says dismissively, before immediately destroying his apathetic façade by continuing, “What’d you need my help with?”
“Just wanted to ask you some stuff about Savanaclaw’s student population.”
Jack’s brow creases. “I dunno if I can help you with that kinda stuff, but I’ll do what I can. Since I still owe you, and all.”
For what, you don’t know, but you don’t have a problem with Jack being tsun again if it means he’ll do you a solid. “Thanks! I’m thinking about filing a class action lawsuit, and your testimony will be super helpful.”
“A what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” you say, waving his befuddled look off.
You look at your list of questions, written in shorthand.
⚪︎nAS → SC?
⚪︎AS → nSC?
⚪︎nF → SC?
⚪︎F → nSC?
Right at the top, red and in all caps, is the big money question: SAVANACLAW = RACIST?
Well, nothing to it but to do it. Slipping into the role of an upstart journalist, you start with your first question.
“Is there anyone not from….that Savanna place, who’s in Savanaclaw?”
“You mean the Afterglow Savanna?” Jack’s face becomes, somehow, even more confused. “I’m not from there.”
‘Afterglow’? Are you serious? Whatever, you’re not going to dispute the weird names these people have for their countries. Most of the places where you live got their names from people, weird language misunderstandings, or other, older places. “Where are you from again?”
“Pyroxene.”
Oh, yeah, that’s right! He did say something about going skiing during winter break, which you definitely couldn’t do in the middle of a savanna. Plus, even in your universe, gray wolves aren’t native to, like, Africa. You wonder if it’s hard for Jack to live in Savanaclaw’s dorm land when he’s used to snow.
“Is there anyone from the Afterglow Savanna that’s not in Savanaclaw?”
“Uh, I think….Rook-senpai is from there.”
That’s where he’s from?
…it would explain why Rook is so weirdly good at cornering people. If you’re used to sneaking around someone with the brains of a human and the senses of an animal, getting the jump on a normal person would be a piece of cake. Kind of creepy that Rook’s from the Land of the Furries and is obsessed with hunting them, though. Is that legal? That can’t be legal. That’s got to count as murder.
You almost feel bad for Leona knowing he can’t escape Rook, even at home. Almost. And Rook doesn’t have animal ears! There goes your theory of everyone in Afterglow Savana being a catboy-slash-catgirl-slash-nyanbinary person.
“Then, is there anyone else like you who’s not in Savanaclaw?”
“Like….” Jack squints at you. “Really tall?”
Bless this poor stupid dogboy. His tail is fluffy, his teeth are sharp, and his head is so, so empty. “No, like—” You point your hands up and put them on top of your head. Jack (bless him, truly) imitates your action and runs into his own ears. He cocks his head, and you nod slowly.
“You mean beastmen?”
You’d better write that word down, if that’s the socially acceptable term for them. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone while you’re trying to get this lawsuit together.
“Yeah. Do you know anyone outside of Savanaclaw who’s a beastman?”
“Hmm.” He really thinks about it. “I don’t think so.”
Score one for you and suing Night Raven College! “And are there any kids in Savanaclaw who aren’t beastmen?”
Jack shrugs. “Maybe one or two? Not really sure.”
An inconclusive answer, but one you’ll take nonetheless.
You thank Jack for his time and send him on his way, watching his tail sway back and forth behind him.
Now to decide on your next course of action. You could certainly try to infiltrate Savanaclaw (again?) and see if you can spot one of these few humans in a sea of furries. You could even search every other dorm to see if you could find a furry in a sea of humans, if you hated yourself. Or, you could get a quick and concise answer, by going directly to the source of all these problems.
✂︎———————————————————
“I am not the source of all these problems,” Dire Crowley says, looking at your list of questions and answers.
Crowley is known to flit from place to place while school’s in session, which makes it difficult to catch him during the day. That’s why you’re forgoing a nice evening dinner with your friends to meet with him in his office instead.
Clicking his golden claws on the table, Crowley lays your paper on his giant desk. It’s still tiny compared to the rest of the office. “No, there is nothing I can do about the problems you’ve brought to my attention. It is simply not my place.”
“What do you mean? You’re the headmaster of the whole school! If you’re not behind this, who is?”
From behind his mask, Crowley gives you a look like wow, sometimes I forget that you’re from another universe entirely, because if you weren’t, you would sound real stupid right now. “The Mirror of Darkness is the device that sorts students into their houses based on the shape of their souls. I’m far too kind to my students to group them simply on homeland or physical appearance.”
The kindness part is debatable, but you do recall standing in front of the mirror and being publicly humiliated for not having a magic-shaped soul. The headmaster might be kiiiind of a manipulative asshole, but he’s not lying (at least, not this time).
There is a clear path before you. But it is not a path you want to take.
You set your jaw. “So I’ve got to confront the Magic Mirror, then.”
“No, no, no, no!” the Headmaster says, waving his hands around dramatically. “The Mirror of Darkness’s decision is final. Besides, it can only be awoken in the most specific circumstances and by a certain phrase!”
You hold up a finger instead of raising your hand for your question. “Doesn’t this school allow students to transfer to other dorms?”
“The Mirror of Darkness can only be awoken in the most specific circumstances and by a certain phrase,” Crowley repeats, sounding a bit like he’s sulking.
“Ooookay, well, what are the circumstances and what is the phrase, then?”
“I, of course, cannot tell you that,” Crowley sniffs. “You must understand, the Mirror of Darkness has been a part of the selection process for this school since its inception. Without it, the quality of our students would drop considerably. In addition, the Mirror is a tool, not a person. It does not make decisions the way that you or I would.”
“I see,” you nod. So the corruption goes deeper than you thought. It’s been embedded in the very technology of this school, right since the beginning.
Crowley is saying something — you catch a few words and figure he’s probably threatening not to send you home if you don’t take your nose out of school business — but your righteous quest for justice will not stop here. No one ever made history by listening to their crow principal, so it’s time to start breaking some rules.
But really, that’s nothing new for you.
✂︎———————————————————
“Hey, Mirror!” you whisper-yell, darting into the mirror chamber. The locked coffins, glowing green the last time you were in this room, are now dim and bobbing silently.
You’ll have to be quick. Whether or not you’re allowed to be in here (probably not), what you’re about to do is definitely forbidden. Even the air in the room is pushing you back towards the entranceway.
You approach the mirror in the center of the room. It’s large enough to be intimidating, with an ornate frame dulled by time. Its dark face reflects your own back, instead of that weird theatre mask with the fire behind it.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” you whisper, “why the fuck are you being racist to the NRC students?”
The Magic Mirror does not respond, not even to tell you to fuck off. Hm.
The middle of a Thursday night definitely isn’t the “most specific circumstances” Crowley had mentioned, but perhaps you can come up with the “certain phrase” and get something out of the old thing. You have a feeling the secret password isn’t going to be “abracadabra” or something equally cute and obvious, but maybe it’s that level of generic.
You clear your throat and channel your inner Vil.
“Oh, dark Mirror, awaken and serve me!”
Still no response, even after that powerful delivery. What, are you not intimidating enough for it? Is it because you’re not magic?! Because that’s another -ism that you will be suing for!
You wrap your fingers around the thick frame and throw your whole body weight backwards. The thing doesn’t even budge. You shove forwards. Nothing that direction, either. It’s like the mirror is bolted to an invisible wall.
With a frustrated yell, you shake back and forth as hard as you can. Under your hands, you feel the frame shift the slightest bit backwards. Before you can keep working it out of the air, a sharp sting on your right hand makes you hiss and pull back.
Your head snaps up to see Crowley in the doorway, his golden eyes slitted through his mask. He’s brandishing a long, dark whip, with a handle the same fuschia and blue as his cloak. The frayed end of the whip trails on the floor, until he jerks his arm and snaps it to his side.
You can see a light red welt forming on the back of your hand. For him to hit you in such a small spot from at least 15 feet away…he’s got to be really fuckin’ good with that thing.
You stop your thoughts from straying to how much practice Crowley has had with a whip and why. “What was that for!?”
He shifts his incredulous gaze from you to the frame of what is no doubt a priceless magical artifact and cornerstone of this school, now tilted back about half an inch.
Ah. Right.
You slowly place your hands up, backing away from the mirror. You’re not worried about being expelled — not after you’ve saved four different people from overblotting, what would this school do without you — but detention and menial labor are very much on the table!!
Your surrender, though gracious, is not accepted. Crowley’s arm flies out in the space of a blink and your leg jerks up. You hop on the other, rubbing the burning spot on your shin.
“Dude, seriously? I’m sorry, okay? I made a mistake and I’m willing to accept my punishment!”
Crowley lowers his whip arm and steps further into the room. “This is a serious violation of the rules.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I should have listened to you instead of going off on my own.” You hang your head a bit.
When Crowley’s stepped close enough to you to reach, you enact your impromptu plan. Your hand closes around the whip and pulls, but he doesn’t let go of it. His grip might be stronger than you’d planned, but the move throws him off-balance, which gives you an opening to get out of there. You dart past Crowley into the hallway, picking up speed as you go.
Your headmaster isn’t far behind. “You can’t escape from the whip of love!”
“Leave me alone, I didn’t even manage to do anything!” you yell back, hiding behind columns to avoid the snap of the whip.
You manage to get back to your dorm, but not without a couple more welts on your arms and legs. It’s perfect. Now you might be able to get away with suing Night Raven for abuse of a student!
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FUCK IT here's the stupid dilf twinks + their adoptive children + context to this nobody asked for
The idea is their plural asses were raised in a superhero city but at a time that plurality was demonized (not that it isn't by the time Amethyst and Remix exist tbqf),
We kind of half-ripped parts of the powers Empathy from The Aspects (book two) has where if they're around people for any amount of time their general physique starts to shift and an overlay occurs where they're still themselves but like...identity crisis because they have a "veil" of anyone and everyone they see even if it's just on television down to their skills, which can kind of be handy but also suck a lot sometimes
BUT BUT BUT
Because they're plural they can just stabilize themselves. So Black Star (left) actually looks like Bright Dawn (right) to the outside world and it causes all of this dysphoria not to mention when they were nineteen they could've been hatecrimed!! Murdered!! You see!!! So they had to also figure out various ways to pass as singlet while maintaining their secret super hero stuff on top of that, try not to get institutionalized at best, etc etc etc
So what happens is like
One day they see this little homeless kiddo in the middle of the street basically just becoming a massive amalgamation of everyone's face and/or rapidly changing faces because Halycon is a Massive Fucking City so Black Star and Bright Dawn kind of go "Oh Shit we should probably take this kid in" thinking she's just a singlet and that they can just teach them simplified methods of their own thing that's going on and everything will be fine and dandy,
they can continue pretending to be singlets and whoever is doing the saving the day thing will depend on who's fronting and they can just...switch to the "default" guy or whatever when interacting with Amethyst, stating the reason they look so different when in their super-powered magical boy form is because they have a mental representation in their brain that does the work for them to keep them stabilized, nothing much really —
Alas, this was never meant to be
Because
Amethyst (left) has a secret sibling. In her head. Called Remix (right).
Amethyst took this advice very literally, and that is how BS/BD now have a "oh, double fuckshit" situation on their hands. Black Star and Bright Dawn share the literal exact same body elasticity powers as this other system and didn't even realize they were a system until the moment they learned to stabilize their face and entire body basically just a little too fast.
"What do you MEAN the self-representation isn't supposed to be autonomous?!" And so it's like. Their own faults because they're the ones who advised, and then asked how Amethyst learned as fast as she did.
And they're absolutely convinced it is much safer for Amethyst and Remix to keep their multiplicity on the downlow so they also at least have somewhat of a chance to make it until 40 years old.
Amethyst and Remix, obviously, do not like the idea of pretending they're anything but a system and at the time the game is being played, they're reaching a bit of a breaking point with BS/BD where there's all of this tension
Because Amethyst and Remix hate any advice BS/BD has to give now regarding how to do anything and they think BS/BD are being overly harsh
But Black Star and Bright Dawn literally are like "these are our children we understand this line of work is dangerous, but it's going to be even worse if they keep doing this and being open about their existence," and are really seriously convinced what they are trying to say/do/etc. is in the best interests of this tiny system they've basically raised since like, elementary school or whatever
NOW UH
THE PART WHERE BS/BD ARE DILF TWINKS
The "twink" part of that is because Black Star chose magical-boy-esque costumes to fit the more unique facet of their system's superpower (impossible fighting skills/superhuman physique...we think it was the latter?) when both of them were like, 19 years old, thinking it would just work out and they'd look different enough from their civilian clothing. And just....neither of them realizing they would be stuck with those uniforms forever. :'D
These MFs have been heros long enough they are. Mentoring. Another not-even-19 year old system.
We imagine the superhuman physique aspect of this plus their body elasticity (the definition of which we stretched to hell and back to justify how we plan to play this Masks RPG game for both this NPC system and our PC system) would make it fucking unusual but entirely possible they look waaaaay younger than they actually are as a result
And to add insult to injury they have a magical boy transformation so like, even the like one or two people who would even know they're a system would have no fucking clue which one of them is Black Star and which one is Bright Dawn because the flashing pretty lights or whatever would just fuck with a normal person's senses. :D It's perfect for them. :D
We imagine, if it gets approved by the rest of the players, BS/BD are like those MFers who are like, super strong and like they're super well-known for that mostly but also, for some godforsaken reason, they absolutely slay in their outfits so they have these groups of fangirls or whatever (even better and much funnier in our heads if the groups are like, "rivals" or whatever) that fuckin' can't stop talking about them, so Remix and Amethyst keep getting clocked as asexual because of shit like:
"Omg did you see Bright Dawn's latest appearance???"
"...fighting crime is a very serious job you know..." *Amethyst trying not to tell this person/friend/whatever BD is literally their impromptu parent....and also that is BS, not BD, so she's now trying not to drop anything about their multiplicity per their request...they might both be annoying but they still raised her y'know*
"OH so you're more of a Black Star fan??? That's fucking ridiculous he's way too edgy and what is with that fucking hat, fighting style is soooo ugly too like who even taught the mothe —"
*at this point Amethyst just fuckin' tunes it out, she's heard it ALL at this point* Mate, I'll tell ya what, I'm just not into EITHER of them.
It would probably do literally nothing to the plot for the RPG we think but would add some very funny flavoring to the game we would appreciate haha.
"Why are these twin headmates so fleshed out and not your player characters Rusanya," well, we're glad you asked — you see, these two are called backstory characters and we NEED them fleshed out for the purposes of the RPG and that means we need to know how they think, especially if they're the mentors to our player characters Amethyst and Remix.
Amethyst and Remix, on the other hand, their purpose is literally to be fleshed out as we play our game with our friends, so like, of course they won't be as fleshed our currently. They're like literal teenagers if that and also our player characters.
AND YES ALL IMAGES WERE MADE IN A PICREW. THIS ONE AND THEN THIS ONE.
We tried to infodump about all of this to our braindbody's 55 year old mother, who somehow caught the word "twins" from all of this even though we think it's pretty clear it's not QUITE twins. Which. On one hand that is sad, but on the other hand Thank God.
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Actual Witch Tips
I'll be honest: It’s getting more than a little annoying to see everything get called a “Witch Tip” now a days- even completely mundane things, no matter how helpful they are; it feels almost as if the phrase “Witch Tips”, at this point, has basically gone the way of the concept of “Life Hacks”.
“Life Hacks” were supposed to be legitimate "corner-cutting" methods that made a task easier- especially for impaired or disabled individuals who struggled with normal tasks on a daily basis (we're going to ignore the fact that its cooption was ultimately abelist for this exact reason) ... But eventually it got to the point where now, people are literally just making nonsense up left and right. Half of it didn’t even work (sometimes intentionally by creator design), and the other half is almost always far more complicated than just doing it the normal way; the entire idea of a “Life Hack” became completely meaningless because no one was “hacking” anything anymore.
“Witch Tips” are going much the same way, in that “Witch Tips” are supposed to be things which are directly relevant to actually doing, performing, or otherwise improving your Witchcraft itself. They’re not supposed to be completely normal, non-magical, or mundane things that are only vaguely related to it by proxy of either being done by a Witch, or to some kind of Witch’s tool, or “through intent”.
So in the spirit of Witch Tips that will actually help you grow in your practice, and mature into a better Witch, I present these three tips about "Witch Tips", and some tips to correct them a bit:
⮚ 1/3rd of “Witchcraft Tips” like “put homemade wrapping paper dusters on your hardcover books” aren’t “Witchcraft Tips” at all. They’re just mundane actions; most of the time they’re “good vibes” spiritual romanticism (bad). At most they will probably brighten your day and improve your general mental health (which is good) by making you tune into the small joys of life (also good, too).
When practical they can definitely be legitimately useful things that can preserve materials, and so on. This is absolutely true, and it shouldn't be discounted as useless advice. But at the end of the day they’re still completely mundane things that have literally nothing at all to do with Witchcraft in the slightest.
Flat out: Something as mundane as putting homemade wrapping paper dusters on your hardcover books- even if the books being covered are Witchcraft Books- may be good advice which can help improve the longevity of your books on your shelves, and it may be good practice as a result ... But something being done by a Witch (you) doesn’t miraculously make it magic or Witchcraft. To legitimately progress you need to learn to tell the difference and stop treating them as one and the same.
⮚ 1/3rd of “Witchcraft Tips” like “Stir Honey into your Tea Clockwise to Sweeten Your Day” aren’t “Witchcraft Tips” either, so much as they’re halfassed excuses for putting any kind of legitimate effort into one’s magic. And these are ideologies that were ultimately born out of a complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of both technique and of the meaning of "magic" and "ritual".
Yes, you can get some minor magical results out of things like this. But any results you get are typically going to be minuscule at best compared to something that you actually put real effort and time into; the actual benefits of these sorts of actions are far more in line with the first 1/3rd of so-called “tips”: Mundane over magical.
Whether you like it or not: Magic is much more than just the skin deep “intent” and “good vibes” promoted by the New Age movement and its influence on Eclectic NeoPaganism. And in order to progress you have to understand the difference, understand your particular system and how it works, and learn when to actually apply what rather than treating it all as the same ... Because while little daily rituals of intent can have some good impact at times? Overall you're often still better off saving your energy for a handful of slightly more complex actions less often that will get you better, broader, and more realistic results- rather than wasting your energy and stretching yourself thin through dozens of constant small ones that won’t.
⮚ 1/3rd of “Witchcraft Tips” like “Layer your Wards” and “You Don’t Need A Guidebook to Read Tea Leaves”, again, aren’t “Witchcraft Tips”, either ... They’re bare minimum, bare basic, complete 101 / beginner things that you’d’ve actually been taught anyways if you’d actually have paid any legitimate attention (and read better teaching materials) --- instead of spending all your time locked into your own echo chambers listening to people who are effectively other “Baby Witches”, and actively sneering at practically everyone whose ever tried to tell you better (like so many people often do).
Full offense, no offense: The foundation of The Witch’s Pyramid of the modern Witchcraft Revival is set with the stone “To Know”, and “To Learn” is our most fundamental spiritual command, for a reason; in order to truly progress you need to stop white-knuckle gripping your ego and pride, and letting your studies be as shallow as your interactions with others (but especially with your Elders). You also need to be more discerning with the materials you learn from- and more importantly, you need to start paying better attention to the material within them in the first place.
⮚ The tiniest number of “Witchcraft Tips” out there- like “If you can’t use freezer spells, then write it on a piece of toilet paper and flush it down the toilet instead”- are legitimate tips ... If you listen to anything, or share anything, then it should be these ones.
Again: The entire purpose of "Witchcraft Tips" is to be directly relevant to actually doing / performing / improving your Witchcraft in a legitimate way that wouldn’t otherwise have been considered or possible, or which potentially makes it easier in generally difficult or abnormal circumstances.
This is an opinion piece based in 20+ years of experience. If you found this helpful or interesting, please consider Tipping or Leaving a Ko-Fi; even $1 helps
This account is run by a Dual Faith «(Converting) Masorti Jew + Traditional NeoWiccan» & «Ancestral Folk Magic Practitioner» with 20+ years of experience as a practicing Pagan and Witch. If that bothers you, don't interact.
#Witchcraft#Religion and Magic#Old Blog Reposts#Original Content#2023#Traditional Wicca#Original Witchy Content#Witches of Oklahoma#Oklahoma Witch#Oklahoma Witches#Pagans of Oklahoma#Oklahoma Pagan#Oklahoma Pagans#Magic#Witchblr#Paganblr#Wiccablr
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Why does a Rabbi own PornHUB?
DO YOU UNDERSTAND the core of Rabbinical Judaism yet? The REAL Hebrews, lineage of Abraham, had a divine assignment to BLESS ALL THE OTHER NATIONS.
Yes, that has to do with embracing Yeshua as Messiah. And it has to do with a dictinct (peculiar, radially different) people who are NOT IN SYNC with the lost and damned peoples of this world to LEAD by word, by testimony, and by example people TO THIS MESSIAH. Jesus / Yeshua is the one and only source of all real blessing. God it?
In total contrast, the fake Jews, the Rabbinical Talmud USES the word "Jew", in the exact same way the Catholics USE the word "Christian" but are Anti-Christ, just as the so-called Jews occupying the land of Israel in modern times are actually Anti-Hebrew and Anti-Messiah.
It is a deception. Rabbinical Judaism is NOT about blessing all the other nations; it is about TAKING from them. It is about FLEECING the sheep, not being a good leader that shepherds people into clarity and blessing through knowing God directly and intimately as God instructed.
IF YOU KNEW YOUR BIBLE, you would already know that it directly and explicitly addresses exactly how God feels about this! God flat out DAMNS the false shepherds. They are condemned as enemies of God Himself. See Ezekiel 34 (too long to quote here) so read it for yourself.
They use terms (like what a Christian is, like what a Jew is) to CONFUSE the people. To TRICK well-meaning people into doing the WRONG thing for all the RIGHT reasons. Babylon literally means confusion. The terminology bait-and-switch tactics is just more Babylonian word magic.
The BABYLONIAN TALMUD that is at the core of Judaism, the most Anti-Hebrew, the most Anti-Messiah fakery that ever was, is there saying in the actual Talmud to DO EVIL. Not good.
THIS SAME TALMUD and the rabbinical Judaism "inspired" and radicalized Paul to go kill the followers of Jesus of Nazareth., right up until Jesus had to personally confront him! Do you understand and connect the dots?
Americans are still very dumb about this reality. I'm trying to "yell" at you, so to speak, to wake a few up. They get fooled by the PAGEANTRY, the RHETORIC, the TRAPPINGS of supposed virtue that has no real virtue inside it.
They are all too easily led. They are unwise to the schemes of evil. They are compliant with mass deception.
When you really UNDERSTAND rabbinical Judaism, you then realize that the corruption agenda built into PornHub is in TOTAL ALIGNMENT with being a rabbi. Rabbis exist to deceive their followers into fake goodness, dead traditions that will DAMN THEM. Only the completed self-sacrifice of Messiah, Yeshua, as the Lamb of God can provide real and permanent ATONEMENT for your sin.
No Rabbi can provide atonement - the CORE thing you need most of all is to be RESTORED to relationship with Father God... THROUGH the righteousness of GOd's only begotten Son, Yeshua/Jesus. Without embracing Messiah, you are still dead in your sins and in total bondage to the Kingdom of Darkness. I did not say that; GOD said that.
Only Jesus, who won, for you and as you, the Keys of Hell and Death (you have a Bible, so read all about it) to RESCUE you out of the Kingdom of Dakness (that the whole Talmud, Judaism, Rabbi systems are based in) and into the Kingdom of Life in the Son of God - the LIGHT of the World.
JESUS RESISTED THESE EXACT SAME EVIL CREATURES: it is recorded right there in all 4 Gospels. And if you do not resist them too, then you simply are NOT IN CHRIST. To be friends with fake goodness is to evict yourself OUT of the Kingdom of God. I don't know how to make it any more clear. Got it?
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Age of Reason - A Response
I appreciate and respect Paine's openness and freedom to let those believe as they will as the divine is and should be a personal experience, unique to its nature. He sees the church as inventors and scoffs at the incredulity of the christian mythos. A typical frame of intellectual unbelievers, and necessary as I myself inhabited such a purview before becoming more redolent with the Lord as I discovered him out of church and in the book on my own terms. Its funny as Paine does believe in a God but one resembling the Demiurge of the Gnostic church, one who, is weak and foolish and a subject to heap upon all of humanities hypocrisies and shortcomings. Paine calls the stories ridiculous and they certainly are, the only difference being I take them in their ridiculousness, as living long enough to see how our world truly works stories of talking snakes and magic tricks are more believable than the hypocrisy and malice that actually thrives in our political system and by extension culture. I take these stories as if new, where metaphors suffice for due explanation than literal incredulity - as the Lord said to Peter he speaks in themes so that they who listen will understand the message but not the details. Paine talks, as many proud smart men (my past self included) do about things they have made their mind up upon and look for further validation rather than genuine investigation, which frankly is something I feel I should excuse (I should not deprive a man of his indulgence so long he carries a fair awareness of its costs and alternatives) after all my revelation with the Lord has been a personal journey and boon and I have made unto myself and find it impossible to share to others in the exact same quiddity. My counter to Paine's critique(which seems oddly modern) is the simplicity of Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith, and if I must, even Pascal will do. Which brings me to a conflict of my own thoughts, should I chastise those frankly unintellectual souls who leap all too freely unto Christ, who’s hearts are bigger than their minds? My journey was arduous and cyclical as I arrived back to the simple salvation of the book and while I share that ideal with these folk I find we are estranged from one another, which is perhaps just the nature of things. Changing someone's belief is like melting lead with a toothbrush, and better left alone, as I already said it is a personal sojourn and I can only ask that everyone intellectual or not that anyone come to Christ in the way that feels right in their hearts and minds and I not impose my own path. Perhaps the reader is rallying in their head how I came from a position like Paine's to the bible and I will try in summary to say practicality first, literary investigation second, and frank textual authority third - as the price of the protestant reformation has been the gross openness of ANY person to interpret the word, which I think is still better than having it used as occult moral mace used by charlatans in a gradually corrupted universal church of the late medieval era - we traded an intentional malicious evil for an unintentional stupid one. On practicality the philosophy, morals, and history of the text stand on their own not to mention the unique and (so far?) uncopyable style of the text which has served as inspiration from Dante to Dostoevsky, any writer worth their pay must've at some point partially read THE book, if anything out of sheer layman curiosity. Perhaps the difference between my past self (Paine) and my believing self now is my recognition of coincidences and their direct causations, and the maddening complexity of the human world/nature and its functions, its as if one must swim out of the crowded shallow pool we grew up in and walk along its outskirts, looking down on the childish masses. For there is the only spot we can begin to see the deep end, and if willing, dive into the deep to find the heavy truth, reserved for those strong enough for it.
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Did not claim that you hate Hatch but ok, everyone has bias when it comes to players they do or don't like.. You must be confusing me with different anons, because I am not the one saying that she steals the spot over Mal, I just noticed the way you replied to previous anons saying that she doesn't fit the system which is what I'm confused about. I'm also confused why Lynn is in the conversation when she actually fit into Vlatko's desired system and somehow performed better than some of the other forwards at the olympics last year. It's true not every forward from the nwsl magically fits into the national team but so far Hatch has proved otherwise with the minutes she was given. Not starter material but also not one to completely count out, that's all. Not sure why that answer was a little on the hostile side either.. it wasn't meant to attack you.
Anyway I already know this ask will get thrown your block list but just thought I'd clear up some areas that seemed to have been misinterpreted on your end.
Dude, if you respond to an ask you may want to make clear you're not that same anon. You can't expect me to just know that, not when you sent anonymous asks. You can't just come in saying things like "suddenly stats don't matter anymore", in other words, show a shocking lack of common sense and expect me to pat you on the head and give you a lollypop.
Lynn is thrown in because the Hatch stans are literally copying the exact thing Lynn stans did 2-3 years ago. I don't know if you were around 2 years ago or even just the last year, but it was ridiculous.
You're basically now blaming me for giving the wrong kid your grade because you didn't put your name on the test. Either call yourself 'fruitcake' and sign off your asks with that or stop being surprised you get lumped with others.
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Transformers Analysis: Folklore and Folk Magic in the Mines of Kaon
thinking about Miner Megatron again, as always. here we goooo
So I've been doing some folk magic, as I usually do, and it got me thinking:
Surely, the lower class/caste bots wouldn’t feel welcomed into the more organised Cybertronian temples etc., or might even be outright banned from joining in shared spiritual spaces or rituals.
So it’s time to teach y’all some working class magic history and how we can apply that to Cybertronian spirituality:
Working Class History: Casting Spells on the Job (Just Call it Prayer so the Boss Doesn't Find Out)
Here's a quick history of rural Appalachian folk magic, for some context:
1) The Christian Bible has been used for spellcasting all up and down the rural East Coast in the USA from day one of colonisation.
In Pennsylvania you have Hexenmeisters and the Pennsylvania Dutch practices, for a well-documented example.
2) The working class has done spellcasting with the Bible from the very first day shitty bosses started
This is for several reasons, but primarily because Bibles were common and cheap, you didn't have to know how to read in order to follow along with or change the lyrics of popular hymns and prayers to fit your own needs, and it was very easy to sneak what is essentially localised witchcraft under the radar when it just looks like you're reading the Bible to everyone else.
Catholic materials were used a lot for this, because they were often provided for free by any local churches, and a lot of working class people in Appalachia were Italian (Roman Catholic) or Eastern European (Eastern Orthodox Catholic), which meant there was no shortage of all sorts of votive candles and the like to utilise for what we would now identify as spellcasting.
It's important to note that it wasn't called spellcasting outright by anybody; Sometimes it was called "hexing" or "sweet talking", among other terms, but if you called it spellcasting it was heavily frowned upon.
A lot of people were uncomfortable (and are still uncomfortable) with verbalising it or identifying it as such due to stigma from the more mainstream religious communities or their own religious backgrounds, and of course, historically if the boss found out that all the workers hated their jobs so much they were doing fucking witchcraft about it, it would not have ended well for the workers.
So, stealth it is. And that's why there are so many specific folk practices in a lot of historically working class rural regions/communities-- Not just in Appalachia, but similar things happen in similar communities around the world.
What does this have to do with Megatron?
Everything we know about the lower classes on Cybertron, the lower caste members, and the mines/industrial regions in Tarn and Kaon suggest that a similar folklore likely existed within these working communities.
And any local folk practices likely developed for the exact same reasons that this type of folk practice developed in the real world:
Workers are fucking miserable, "mainstream" religion isn't satisfying their spiritual/emotional/social/material needs or concerns, and close-knit people in small communities spending most of their time together naturally start to sort of do their own thing based on their collective situation.
People get desperate, there's nowhere to turn and nothing to do, so spirituality becomes a lifeline in that it builds solidarity and creates a more appropriate sort of support system.
For example: If we aren't allowed time off work to mourn our friend who was killed by heavy machinery, and we aren't allowed any time to process that or deal with it or take care of each other, then we will invent a ritual that allows us to grieve on the job.
This was, and still is, a common thing.
Which brings us to...
St. Barbara and the Mines + Solus Prime
St. Barbara's backstory can be summarised, roughly, as such (based on the version of this story that I know; keep in mind the details can vary):
She was kept isolated from others by her father, who became furious that she refused an arranged marriage. When she fled, he chased her; She ran into two people working in a field, the first who helped her, and the second who gave her path away to her father.
She was captured, and brought to a prominent local figure (the title varies based on different versions of this story), who had her tortured for escaping and disobeying her father.
However, when imprisoned, they tried to kill her again and again, and every morning she was healed. Fire intended to be used to burn her would cool the second it got near her skin, and daggers used to cut her would go dull when brought near her.
Snakes thrown into her room intended to bite her would then die the instant they went to approach her, and ropes intended to be used to bind and choke her would spontaneously fray and snap before they could be tied.
Eventually, she was condemned to beheading, and a special sword was used to cut her head off, which finally killed her.
Her father is the one who beheaded her, and as divine punishment, he was hit by lightning-- A single bolt that lasted so long that his entire body went up into flames, and his ashes disappeared.
Her gravesite became a place of veneration, where people prayed for protection and safety.
She became known as the patron saint of all people with dangerous jobs or jobs where the bosses don't care about the worker's wellbeing or safety, for obvious reasons: Nothing but the hands of her own father could ever harm her.
(The imagery of St. Barbara being slain only by a special sword is very reminiscent of Solus Prime being slain only by a special sword...)
Workers, especially those with particularly dangerous or shitty jobs but also just anyone working class in general, can interpret this story in several ways which can make it additionally relatable:
Her father = A controlling and aggressive boss who abuses or neglects their workers to death.
The field workers = A pro-union worker (a helper) and an anti-union worker or scab (a betrayer).
So you can see how St. Barbara became immediately adopted as a common worker's saint, and was used in a lot of regional working class folk magic practices (where such folk magic developed within local working communities).
And this is still going strong as a tradition; Crossrail tunnel borers in London consecrated the drilling site in the name of St. Barbara in 2013:
"Several hundred contractors and senior management attended the St Barbara's Day ceremony at the Thames Tunnel (pictured) which will link Plumstead and North Woolwich when completed. The site was so large, that sound engineers put in place an amplification system for the ceremony." - Article here.
"As a long-standing tradition, one of the first tasks for each new tunnelling projects is to establish a small shrine to Santa Barbara at the tunnel portal or at the underground junction into long tunnel headings. This is often followed with a dedication and an invocation to Santa Barbara for protection of all who work on the project during the construction period." - Article here.
And here's a related example of a worker's prayer for St. Barbara, from here:
So this is very much a tradition that is still going strong, and it isn't just Catholic workers who engage with these types of things!
To accommodate more diverse groups and communities of workers, folk practices (including what eventually becomes folk magic) increasingly develop even further away from any one specific religious origin, in order to become more inclusive for the majority of people who can be from all kinds of different spiritual or cultural backgrounds.
Hence, more folk magic is made-- And I believe something like this could absolutely have evolved in a similar way in working communities on Cybertron.
Cybertronian Spirituality: The Primes, The Knights, The Titans
My personal theory/headcanon, and there is not much in canon to support this particularly so please keep that in mind, is that given the average type of manual labour working environment in Tarn and Kaon (dangerous, dark, and deep), it would make sense for the legendary Titans to become worked into some kind of folk practice.
We have this concept of the Titans as these giant and very particular beings, which reminds me somewhat of the Jewish Golem of Prague, in that the Titans are made from raw materials in some kind of mystical or cosmically spiritual manner, then eventually ally themselves to at least one respective Prime who then acts as a director of their actions to achieve victory over cosmic evil(s).
The Titans then go forward and act as guardians of Cybertronian life by combating the origins of these cosmic evil(s) as protectors of their respective polities and regions and eventually colony worlds, called into action by what is essentially a metaphysical and possibly outright spiritual pull of the need of their Prime(s) and later on the needs of the Cybertronian and colony world populations in times of threat or desperation.
These details are peppered throughout canon and vary based on media/franchise, but most recently Titan lore was covered again in IDW’s Optimus Prime series, issue 10, literally titled Origin Myths.
What is interesting is that while the Golem association could be reasonably made, you could also reasonably say that the Three Original Titans (Metroplex, Chela, and Metrotitan) could be associated just as easily with the Catholic concept of the Holy Trinity.
Lots of different interpretations could be applied to this stuff!
Class Stratification Within Cybertronian Religious Institutions
No matter how you may interpret it, we know that the Titans have a similar mystical presence in Cybertronian history and cultural lore to that of the Primes and Knights, and it would make sense for those spurned and disparaged by "mainstream" spiritual practices (which were likely just as stratified by class and caste as everything else was on Cybertron during Megatron's youth) to go ahead and create a folk practice based more around Titans.
This is because the Primes would like be associated directly with their oppressive rulers and upper classes, and the Knights, who are said to be the first Cybertronians to come from the Well, thusly represent a very high class onto their own which may have repelled working class bots who were very likely sick of essentially worshipping those venerated in their class stratified society solely due to the conditions of their creation; The Knights were "born with silver spoons", essentially, and it's hard to sell that to people who suffered due to the conditions of their own creation.
Therefore, the Titans are the other most likely Cybertronian figures of historical lore that could reasonably be adapted into a sort of folk religion for the working classes and lower social caste bots.
The imagery is strong, and relatable: In Megatron's case, the manual labourers and miners all have large frames compared to the average Cybertronian, they all toil invisibly and in relative silence, and they are kept away from the end products of their labour and yet without them, Cybertron planet wide would instantly struggle to sustain their raw material demands.
They are critical workers, yet many of them have no names/designations; It is noted at least once in canon that some Titans are so old or so little known that their designations are not recorded. Yet without these unseen/unknown Titans, it could be the case that cosmic evil could have achieved victory.
While the Titans are critical, they are largely a mystery and unknown in any real detail. They do not normally engage with average Cybertronians, and when they do, it is usually indirectly-- Even though their actions actively impact the lives of nearly everyone.
And though the Primes and Knights are generally never physically present, at least not within living memory, there is real and physical proof of Titans. I feel like that aspect alone may well appeal more to people who are very physically oriented; We also see a stark realist mentality from many of the lower class/caste bots, who are sometimes realistic to the point of nihilism (which is part of why Megatron's writings were so revolutionary, in that they re-introduced hope to people who had previously concluded that there was no realistic possibility of ever rising up).
The Titans being a known, tangible physical reality may well have endeared them as a more interesting folkloric or spiritual focus to this particular cohort of bots.
Just like with St. Barbara in real life, you can see how the Titans may have been interpreted in certain ways by the lower class/caste working bots which may have made them more appealing or more easy to structure into a framework of sorts for their own practices within their local cultures.
A Little Meta: There's a Lot of Various Religious Imagery in Transformers
Like with all media, especially Western media, inevitably some Jesus sneaks in there.
Which usually sucks, because it can be alienating for literally anyone who isn't familiar with Christianity in some way (as some references or parallels are inevitably not going to be as obvious or even detectable at all to people who didn't grow up with all this sometimes very specific shit, resulting in missed thematic elements and so on due to no fault of the viewers but rather the tendency for Western shows to overwhelmingly be written and designed by primarily Western white middle aged cis straight men who tend to throw some Jesus in there when there should not necessarily be any Jesus in there, but I could yell about this all night).
Transformers as a franchise altogether is not immune to this; As with all media, it is made by people, and people are influenced by their social/cultural upbringing, and that includes religious influences.
We could read some of this into the TFP/Aligned Continuity, in regards to the idea of the Thirteen Primes and how that concept is interpreted in TFP.
Transformers Prime: Alpha Trion is Essentially Paul the Apostle
The TFP Primes resemble both the Apostles as well as various Saints, and especially the Fourteen Holy Helpers; These fourteen Saints in particular are elevated above the others in many cases and contexts-- Similar to how the Primes are held up as elevated over other Cybertronians and other figures in Cybertronian history and presumably within certain Cybertronian spiritual practices as well.
For example, Alpha Trion is strongly reminiscent of the Christian figure Paul the Apostle, who was a writer/scribe known for documenting early Christian concerns of faith in his letters, which became extremely important to theological historians in regards to determining early Christian discourse and attempting to create a timeline of early Christianity.
His letters are included the New Testament in thirteen (!) sections called epistles, which are archived forever in various iterations within the Christian Bible.
Now, let’s take a look at the symbolism, using the TFP main illustration of Alpha Trion as featured in the Covenant, and a popular Icon image of Paul the Apostle:
Beard, cloak, book-- Even the pose they are in here is very similar, look at the feet and the way they are both standing. Even the halo of Cybertronian glyphs around Alpha Trion’s head resembles the gold filament of Paul’s halo.
And much like Alpha Trion's questionable ability to write/re-write history and determine events through some kind of cosmically divine power of foresight, the timeline of Paul's letters will likely never be fully verifiable, and of course, there are so many translations and interpretations of these letters along with the rest of the New Testament that while key points remain fairly consistent, there is still no "true" version or exact outline of events or discussions as recorded by Paul-- Primarily because in at least a few cases, Paul's letters are the only allusion to certain events or conversations.
This is extremely similar to how Alpha Trion states outright in the Covenant that he himself doesn't know if what he writes is actually factual anymore, or if he has changed things so many times to try to construct a more favourable narrative of actions and events that reality itself may have been warped by his Quill, either forwards or backwards in time...
You could also argue that Alpha Trion is presented as a God-like figure in TFP (especially when he appears to Optimus in the form of an echoing voice and shimmering spectral figure in a vision caused by what is essentially the equivalent of a holy relic), and Orion Pax would then be comparable to Jesus pre-Crucifixion, with his reformatting into Optimus Prime post-Matrix heavily resembling Jesus in the eyes of his followers post-Resurrection.
The main cast of Autobots in this comparison would then roughly correspond to the Apostles, of whom there were twelve, with Optimus then making Thirteen... And of course, canonically, Optimus is the resurrection of the Thirteenth Prime.
You can also see visual similarities in the depiction of Thirteen in the Covenant; It reminds me heavily of the Divine Mercy image of Jesus:
Both have their right hands raised, their chests emitting a holy/cosmic light.
I'm just saying, it is totally possible to make connections between fictional lore/spiritual figures and real world ones, and TF is loaded with content that can be re-contextualised in this way.
(I also want to point out at this time that it is not my intention to offend anyone with any of this analysis; I am writing from the point of view of someone who grew up with folk spirituality, and I am also a Quaker Attender, just so you are aware of my own personal background. I would love to hear any other interpretations of any spiritual imagery in Transformers media, because there’s a ton of possible ways to read into this stuff!)
In Conclusion: Cast a Hex on Your Boss by Calling Upon the Titans
Just for fun, as someone who has actually done folk magic for my entire life, I've adapted a hex against bad bosses to fit this headcanon. I think this is something that lower class/caste bots would absolutely engage in; It's common in real life as well.
The original I'm basing this off of was actually something I found in one of our old family Bibles before I moved out, and was written in Girard, Pennsylvania sometime between 1920-1930. I believe it was written by a relative of mine who worked either on the farm or on the railways.
Remember that folk magic like this is for and by working class people, so there are no fancy supplies needed; Don't ever buy shit to do magic, you can do it with anything laying around you. No need to spend money.
If you have a shitty boss, please let me know if you hex your boss with this. I always encourage witchcraft, fictional or otherwise.
Here's what you do, if you want to actually try this:
1) Using any old paper that you have lying around, cut it roughly into a square (doesn't need to be perfect.) It doesn't matter what type of paper it is.
2) Grab any pen you like, it can be any type of pen, any type of ink.
3) Draw a square outline on the paper, making a border on the page. This can be big or small as you like, and you can decorate it if you want; Just leave enough space to write inside the square.
4) Fold this paper into a square, any way you'd like as long as it's a square, and take this paper while it's still blank to work in your pocket.
Carry the paper with you for at least one full day at work. If you can, place it in a chest pocket or a pocket where the paper will be fairly close to your body.
It doesn't matter if the paper gets dirty or smudged or torn; In fact, that's even better.
(Some people who do variations of this spell in real life even use the paper to wipe dirt off their hands etc. throughout the day, to really get the energy of a work day settled into the paper. As long as it can still be written on, you can do this if you'd like.)
5) At the end of the work day, take the paper out, and write the following:
Where I have put [X], the word "Lord" was in the original version of this hex which was in my family Bible, but to contextualise it within the fictional headcanon lore here, you can replace this with the word "Titan". (Or you can replace it with anything else that may be appropriate as well, if you would like to actually use this hex!)
"Give us pay for our work, or the poor will plea to the [X] against you, and you will be struck down, cast down.
If you do not give to those who give to you, you will be cursed coming in, and going out.
Just as the [X] can raise you up and lead you to prosper, so too can the [X] turn away from you, and you will be left to have your walls destroyed, your fortress ruined.
Us servants will rejoice, but you will cry out in anguish, you will be put to shame.
Without the toilers, the land is made desolate, the haunt of jackals.
[X], turn your gaze to us, we labourers of all kinds, see our tears and our sweat.
Lay curses upon those who use their hands to hold us down; Kept below water, our tears lost in the flood.
Raise the waters, and surge the shores of their ill-owned kingdom; Bring forth to their memory that the [X] stewards the land, and that all among the land are equal in spirit.
The [X] will cast fury upon the unrighteous and conniving, cast rage and stand among us mightily, each motion casting winds against the oppressor who weakens like fractured stone under the onslaught of rain.
The [X] will make a storm from our anguish, which brings us higher, raises us from desolation. Our tears, become the rain that withers the false tower looming high above us.
Our hands will raise from our tools and duties, and offer high praise to the [X], who guards the disparaged and lowly, who enacts justice against those who have done wrong against us.
Let us be brought high, and those who revel in our struggle, may they be cast down."
6) You may flip the paper over once the ink is dry, and on the back, put three Xs in the upper corners of the paper. You may also add three more XXXs to the centre of the paper, where the crease in the paper is from folding it.
7) Re-fold the paper, and put it in the bottom of your right shoe. If this is too uncomfortable, carry it in any pocket on your right side.
You can also place it in your wallet for safe keeping, as your wallet contains money and possibly a work ID or something similar, which are all tied to work and working.
And there you have it! Fuck shitty bosses, both fictional ones and real ones. Join a union, do some witchcraft.
This post was long as always, but I hope it's interesting to someone out there! <3 Thank you to anyone who actually reads through all of this! <3
#megatron#transformers#tfp#transformers prime#alpha trion#transformers meta#transformers analysis#long post#idw transformers#idw 1#miner megatron#young megatron#maccadam#tw religion#working class history#witchcraft#spellcasting#hexing#solus prime
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once bitten, twice shy
(3.5k, rated T, complete; asexual!eddie)
read it on ao3
@911week day 5: "can you keep a secret?" + comfort
Eddie is fifteen the first time he thinks maybe he’s not like everyone else. It’s around the time his friends start discovering girls, and when Eddie listens to them talking it sounds like a foreign language. He’s misplaced his dictionary, can’t parse their intonation. Half the things they’re saying make no sense to him. He tries to join the conversations, but the words don’t come easy; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.
It feels like the change happens overnight, like one day they’re trading Pokémon cards and the next day everyone’s comparing notes on first kisses and a base system that Eddie doesn’t quite understand.
And for a while, he wonders if maybe the reason he feels so out of place is that when his gaze wanders in class, it doesn’t land on a girl. The few times he lets himself look, he’s looking at Joseph McNamara. But then he listens to his sisters talking about boys, and their dialect is just as unfamiliar. When Eddie thinks about Joseph, he doesn’t think of the things his sisters talk about: the size of his hands, the shape of his ass, what his lips would feel like.
Instead, he thinks about sitting together under the wide Texas sky, tracing constellations with his fingertips. He thinks about going to the diner down the street and ordering milkshakes, switching glasses halfway through so they can both try both flavours. He thinks about having someone to call, in those moments where he doesn’t have anything specific to say, just wants to hear someone else’s voice at the other end of the line.
Eddie makes the mistake of bringing it up with his friends once—just the once. They laugh him off, and call him names that make him glad he didn’t mention who he wants all of this with. The next day Eddie sees Benny at the diner with his girlfriend, grinning like a fool into their shared milkshake, and he understands a little more: it’s okay to want the things he wants, but it’s not okay to talk about them. It’s not tough. It’s not manly. It’s just not what you do.
There are times he thinks maybe everyone else is just making it up. That maybe this is how it works, and everyone else is just better clued into that fact. But then he watches Hugo literally trip over his own feet when Stacy Connors walks past in a skirt that’s an inch or two short of the school dress code, and it certainly looks genuine enough.
Eddie doesn’t get it, so—that must mean there’s some big secret of the universe that he’s just not privy to. Or maybe there’s something wrong with him, something broken deep inside of him in the place where other people feel these things.
It starts seeping into every area of his life. Football practice gets awkward, because locker-room talk is a cliché for a reason, and Eddie lives in fear of someone calling him out for not participating. Going to parties stops being fun, because all anyone wants to do is play spin the bottle, and Eddie mostly finds the idea of kissing half-strangers stressful.
And at home, his parents start asking about girls, and he tries to find a way to say that he’s not all too interested without implying that he’s interested in boys. Because even if he didn’t like Joseph in the way you’re supposed to like people—with the urges and the desires and the constantly trying to remove each other's clothes—he’s pretty sure his parents would have things to say about it. And he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t be positive.
In the middle of senior year he meets Shannon, and his first reaction is relief. Because he likes her—still not the way the world is telling him he’s supposed to, but enough that he works up the nerve to ask her to the movies. Enough that when she says yes, he’s willing to try.
Their relationship, at first, consists of fumbling and faltering, as Eddie tries to figure out what he’s supposed to do. He plays it off as nerves, as shyness, and she must like him, because she lets him get away with it.
The few times Eddie’s tried to talk to anyone about all of this—always vague, always open-ended, always asking for a friend—everyone’s said the same thing. It’s instinctive. Just do what feels good. Give in to the moment.
But whatever moment is supposed to take over never comes, and every time Eddie’s with Shannon he’s hyperaware of his limbs, his face, constantly worrying about what he should be doing and how he should be reacting.
Sometimes he thinks it means he and Shannon just aren’t compatible, but that isn’t the truth. Because he loves her, as much as he thinks it’s possible for him to love anyone. He loves spending time with her, loves being near her. She’s the first person he wants to tell about anything that happens to him, and the last person he wants to talk to every night.
He just doesn’t know if it’s enough.
Prom approaches, and Eddie knows what’s expected of him. His friends haven’t stopped talking about it for weeks, and there’s a buzz of nervous energy in the hallway at school, because, well, prom night is cliché for a reason.
His friends are counting the days, and Eddie’s thinking about how weird it is that they’ve all booked rooms at the same hotel. Having sex for the first time is supposed to be this magical, life-changing experience, but—how magical can it really be when the captain of his football team is doing the exact same thing on the other side of the undoubtedly paper-thin wall?
Prom goes by in a blur, and Eddie spends the whole time stressing. A part of him hopes that some long-buried instinct is going to rise up and take over, but most of him knows that it won’t.
Sex is… fine? Well. It’s awkward and it’s messy and there aren’t any instincts taking over and telling him what to do, and he can’t get out of his head enough to figure out how they’re supposed to fit together. But Shannon just laughs—gently, kindly, lovingly—and reaches over to help him.
Eddie’s still not sure he’s doing it right, but it must be close enough because after prom, it’s all Shannon wants to do. Well, not all, but it sure feels like that sometimes, like she doesn’t want to see him without the prospect of sex.
He just… doesn’t really get it. This is what everyone is so obsessed with? It just doesn’t seem worth it. He’s heard people complaining about how long they’ve had to go without, but he’s pretty sure he could never have sex again and it wouldn’t be an issue for him.
But Shannon definitely wants to keep having sex, and Eddie wants to keep seeing Shannon. So he approaches it like he would a new sport, figures out the best moves and the plays that work. And Shannon is into it, but Eddie never stops feeling like he’s just going through the motions.
By the end of the summer, he enlists in the Army. It’s a combination of a lot of factors—like the fact that he has no idea what he wants to do with his life—but in the back of his mind is the ugly truth: by going eight thousand miles away, he can keep loving Shannon without having to pretend to enjoy sex all the time.
He’s running away.
And it works, for a while, and then it doesn’t; but by the time it doesn’t, he has Christopher. And he loves his son more than life itself, would lay his own life down for Christopher’s in a heartbeat. Christopher is his first priority in life, no questions asked.
But there’s no denying that there’s a convenience that comes with being a single father, and it is this: no one expects him to date. No one questions the fact that all he wants to do is focus on raising his son to be the best person he can be.
And for the first time he can remember, Eddie is happy with what he has. He’s happy with this life where he raises his son and goes to work and saves lives, and does it all with a team of people he comes to think of as family, a team of people for whom he is enough from the moment he shows up. A best friend who slides into his life so effortlessly, sometimes Eddie can’t tell where he ends and where Buck begins.
So when Ana Flores smiles at him, that day on the street when he’s treating her burn, and he feels a little flicker of something that could maybe evolve into something more, he feels confident to ask her out.
He doesn’t really know what he’s expecting—that it’s going to be different, this time? That maybe with Ana, it won’t matter as much?
As it turns out, neither of those are true. Things with Ana start off great, but by the time they’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months she’s getting frustrated, and he knows it.
Every time he goes over to her place, he tells himself tonight is the night he’s going to do it. Tonight is the night he’s going to sleep with Ana. But he can never quite make himself do it, can never bring himself to make the first move. Ana tries, a few times, but despite Eddie’s best efforts he thinks it’s probably pretty clear he isn’t into it.
When Ana breaks up with him, she doesn’t say it’s because of the sex—or the glaring lack thereof—but they both know it is. And he’s right back where he started, wondering what the hell is so wrong with him that he can’t just get it together enough to do this one thing.
He’s been sitting on this by himself for as long as he can remember, but it’s like Ana dislodges something inside him, and he’s suddenly desperate to talk to somebody—anybody—about it. And he doesn’t plan on it happening exactly like this, but it’s as good a time as any.
He’s sitting in a booth in the corner of a bar with Hen when it all comes tumbling out. “Can I tell you a secret?” he mumbles, mostly in the direction of the tabletop.
“Sure,” Hen says, and, inexplicably, glances across the bar to where Buck is playing a very intense round of darts with Chimney.
“I don’t get sex,” Eddie says, and keeps his eyes trained on the table, because he doesn’t want to see Hen’s reaction.
“Uh, you have a child,” Hen says. “Please tell me you don’t need me to explain how that happened.”
Eddie huffs a laugh. “Obviously, I understand how it works, mechanically,” he says. “I just… I don’t know, I don’t get why everyone’s so obsessed with it. Like, I think I could probably go my entire life without having sex again, and it wouldn’t be an issue.” He takes a deep breath. “I think that’s why Ana broke up with me.”
He looks up, finally, and Hen’s expression softens. She looks at him, considering, and then says something that is going to change his life, even if he doesn’t know it yet. “Have you ever looked into asexuality?”
Eddie hasn’t, but the word bounces around his head, non-stop like those beginning-of-the-millennium screensavers, and it’s not long before he’s making his excuses to the team, saying he has to get home to Christopher and ducking out.
Once he’s put Christopher to bed he sits at his laptop, fingers poised on the keys. Something as simple as a google search shouldn’t feel this momentous, but it’s a full minute before he can bring himself to hit search.
Eddie learns some things that night, about the world and at himself, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this free and this weighed down all at once. Free, because he’s lost count of how many years he’s spent thinking there is something broken inside of him, and now it turns out… there isn’t? It’s almost too much to process.
Weighed down, because it doesn’t change the fact that Ana didn’t want him, and he can’t imagine that anyone else will, either. He’s always been afraid that his disinterest in sex makes him unlovable, and he doesn’t really think having a label for it is going to help all that much.
Still, he goes to work the next day and pulls Hen aside, tells her she was right on the money, and she gives him a long hug.
Hen seems to think that this is good news, so Eddie tries to look at it that way. He tries to settle into his new identity, to be as proud of it as he is of being bi, but where bisexuality is a worn sweater, soft and comforting, asexuality is an overstarched coat, scratchy and poking at him in all the wrong places.
And he’s sure there’s a lot to unpack there, but instead, he hides the metaphorical suitcase under a bed in the attic of his mind.
And the thing is—it would probably be fine if all of this was abstract, a thought exercise the way it was for so many years between Shannon and Ana. Whether or not he is somehow fundamentally unlovable wouldn’t matter, if not for the fact that somehow, without him noticing, Buck has burrowed his way under his skin, and Eddie never wants him to leave.
He isn’t sure when it happens, only knows that he notices very abruptly one Tuesday morning, and after that, there isn’t a moment that goes by that he isn’t aware.
He’s almost painfully aware, in fact, after that. Aware of how every room feels a little brighter when Buck walks in, how his house feels empty when Buck isn’t there. How he turns to Buck when he sees something funny, even when he’s alone, because he’s just grown so used to the idea that Buck is always beside him, and how hollow he feels when there’s no one there.
Sometimes Buck looks at him, and Eddie gets the feeling that all he’d have to do is say the word, and Buck would be his. That the line they’re balancing on is razor-thin, and the slightest breeze would be enough to blow them over.
And god, if that thought doesn’t terrify him. Because Buck doesn’t know, and Eddie wants to keep it that way. He wants to stay in this limbo forever, teetering on the fence, full of potential but never actually taking the plunge, because if he never tries it can never go wrong. If he never tries, he’ll never have to put Buck in a position where he’ll have to lie and say he’s fine with it—of course he would say that, because he’s Buck, but how could he actually be okay with it?
But as long as Eddie lives in the maybe, he can sustain himself on the potential of it all.
Buck, apparently, can’t.
The night starts out like any other. They’re at Eddie’s, drinking beer on the couch and watching a movie to unwind after a long shift. Christopher is at Abuela’s for a sleepover, so the house is quieter than usual. Eddie’s sitting just a little too close to Buck, trying to leech his warmth and memorise the feel of their arms pressed together, so that one day when everything falls apart he’ll have something to look back on.
Out of nowhere, Buck pauses the movie and turns to face Eddie. Eddie’s heart starts racing, because he knows down to his bones that whatever happens next, it’s going to change everything.
And he’s really not convinced it’s going to change for the better.
“Are we ever going to talk about it?” Buck asks.
“Talk about what?” Eddie says, as if he doesn’t know. He’s pretty sure his voice gives him away.
“The fact that I’m in love with you,” Buck says, casual like he’s giving the weather report and not turning Eddie’s entire world upside down. “And I think you might be in love with me, too.”
For a moment, the only thing Eddie can hear is the rushing of his own blood. For a moment, he’s so tempted to just go with it, throw himself in whole-heartedly and damn the broken pieces of him, he’ll deal with that fallout when it comes.
But the rational part of him knows this approach has cost him his previous relationships, and that he can’t risk that happening with Buck. He has to cut this off at the root, now, before it has a chance to take hold and bloom. It’s the only way he’s going to survive it.
So he turns away, tries to make himself smaller. “You don’t want that,” he tells Buck. “You don’t want me.”
“Pretty sure I do, though.”
Eddie sighs. “No, Buck, it’s—we don’t want the same things. I can’t give you what you want.”
“And what is it that you think I want?” Buck doesn’t sound angry, mostly just curious.
“Sex,” Eddie makes himself say. “Buck, I’m asexual.”
There’s a beat, and Eddie doesn’t dare look at Buck. Then, carefully, Buck asks, “Wait, is that the big bad thing you’re so worried about?”
“It hasn’t exactly worked out well for me in the past,” Eddie mutters, still looking anywhere else except at Buck.
“Yeah, well, I’m not a fucking fool,” Buck says, and reaches out so he can turn Eddie to face him. Eddie goes reluctantly, looking down for as long as possible until Buck tilts his chin up so he can’t escape. “Eddie, I love you. Not the abstract concept of potentially having sex with you.”
“You say that now,” Eddie mutters. “But you’re going to get sick of it. Everyone does.”
“I’m not everyone,” Buck says, shrugging. “Look, nothing has to change, if that’s what you want, except I get to love you out loud.”
And it’s so guileless, so sincere and so entirely Buck, that Eddie lets himself consider believing it.
“Maybe… some things could change,” he murmurs, and reaches out to take Buck’s hand. Buck squeezes, quick and firm, and another piece of his resolve crumbles.
“Whatever you want,” Buck says softly.
“I want to love you,” Eddie admits. “I’m just—scared. I didn’t think this was something I could have.”
“But you can,” Buck says. “I promise you, you can.”
And the part of Eddie is still skeptical, still afraid that this is going to crash and burn spectacularly. But resisting is hard, and giving in and falling into Buck’s embrace is so, so easy.
They lie silently for a while, half on top of each other on Eddie’s couch. Buck’s face is pressed into the crook of Eddie’s neck, and his fingers are tracing soft patterns on Eddie’s arms. It’s comforting, and loving, and Eddie realises he can’t remember the last time someone touched him like this, without any expectation that it’s just a lead-up to something else.
“Wait, okay, but just so we’re on the same page,” Buck says eventually, “How do you feel about kissing? Because I feel like I’ve heard different things.”
“Uh,” Eddie says. “Kind of neutral, I guess?” Then he realises what Buck said. “Wait, who have you heard things from?”
Beneath him, Buck laughs. “I grew up queer on the internet. You’re not the first ace I’ve met.”
“We could… try it, maybe?” Eddie says, and wills himself not to blush like a seventh-grader on his first date.
“Do you actually want to?” Buck asks. “Or are you just saying that because I brought it up?”
“I actually want to, Buck, jesus,” Eddie says, shifting around until he’s facing Buck.
“I’m just trying to respect your boundaries!” Buck protests.
“Right now I’m trying to discover my boundaries.”
“Okay,” Buck says, “We can do that.” And then he’s reaching up, one hand gently cupping Eddie’s cheek, until their lips meet in a careful kiss. Eddie lets Buck take the lead, gives up all control to him. And it’s—he still doesn’t get all the hype, but he doesn’t hate it.
There are thoughts taking root in the back of his mind, thoughts about how maybe part of his general aversion has been the heavy weight of expectation that has been thrown at him from every direction. But that isn’t something he’s going to be able to think through in one night, and now isn’t the time, anyway.
Instead, he pulls back and grins at Buck. “Slightly above neutral now,” he says. “Open to further testing.”
“I told you,” Buck says, and the look in his eyes is so fond it threatens to take Eddie’s breath away. “Whatever you want.”
#911week2021#buddie fic#eddie diaz#evan buckley#911 fic#asexual eddie diaz#is something that can be so personal#honestly idk if this is really gonna resonate with a lot of people but that's okay#shush emma#emma writes#emma is ace
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Information as to Why Twisted Wonderland is NOT an Otome or Dating Sims Game
Hello Everyone! It’s been a while~ ヾ(•ω•`)o I finally found the courage to write Twisted Wonderland content after what happened a couple months ago, when I literally just came back, and while writing a couple of analysis I thought I would write this as an informative rather than an actual analysis of the game.
DISCLAIMER: This post is NOT by any means demeaning otome games or dating sims whatsoever. This was written to clear the misunderstanding people had on the genre of Twisted Wonderland and that anyone should be allowed to be play without feeling restricted or thinking it’s not something they want to try because of misunderstandings. Do NOT use this post as a source to offend people but please use it to inform others.
It’s no longer old news that Twisted Wonderland frequently gets called an “otome game” or dating sims by people who never played the game before. People on twitter, youtube, and even those that were trying to or supposed to advertise the game have often categorized it as such. This wouldn’t have been such a big deal had people recognize and acknowledge that the game isn’t after being explained to about it, but after hearing their arguments as to why they refuse to change how they think about it, the frustration pent up for nearly a year has finally bubbled over. Buckle your seats everyone cause today is the day this argument ends once and for all!
First off, let’s start off with what makes an otome/dating-sims an otome/dating sim. Both are very similar, where, according to Japan’s Wikipedia, Nico dictionary, Kotobanks, and many more Japanese dictionary sites, otome games (i.e. 乙女ゲーム) are games which includes a female MC who has the opportunity to attract the very attractive male characters in the game and enter a love route with each of them separately or harem-like. Dating sims are a bit different. Dating sims (i.e. 恋愛シミュレーションゲーム) falls into to two definitions with the first one being the exact reversal of otome: MC being male, the love interest characters being very attractive females. The second definition is the one many are familiar with – a romantic visual novel. Believe it or not the first definition is the original definition of what dating-sim games are, the second meaning derived from many attempts of using the term “dating-sim” incorrectly by the English speaking gamers to the point society now believes it’s the actual meaning.
However, this difference doesn’t change that both otome and dating sims are very close. Both genres include gender-specific MC(s) (there’s been games where a player can play either male or female), handsome/beautiful characters with their respective love routes, and a main plot to follow. In addition to this, when the game is in mobage format, there’s going to be showers of fan service in the form of events and gacha-cards, though, arguably, it doesn’t change the fact that the MCs would still be interacting with the characters romantically.
So, from the explanation written above, Twisted Wonderland falls into that category, right? Sorry not sorry, that’s wrong. Sure, Twisted Wonderland has many characters to swoon over since…I mean…they’re drawn and written by Yana Toboso and her staff and…there hasn’t been anyone so far who had the capability of saying no to characters she personally had drawn or created. But! It doesn’t mean that the game is a dating sim or otome.
One of the reasons Twisted Wonderland isn’t one of them is how the game is set up. There are no routes the MC can enter nor can the MC pick and choose which characters to focus on in general. Like FGO and Granblue Fantasy, the MC solely follows the main plot and has to interact with all the characters they’re introduced to whether they like it or not. The same logic is applied when playing events – the MC will be participating and talking to all the characters involved in the event. Not once does the game give the opportunity for the MC to choose who they can talk to and participate in the event with the person they chose. The only time it’ll be one-on-one is, most of the time, getting the desired character’s card through gacha or when the event sets the story where the MC has no choice but to talk to a character one-to-one. For the latter though, the MC isn’t going to be able to wish for the character they want to talk to – it’s completely random and up to the writers who they want the MC to interact with.
For otome and dating-sims alike, especially in mobage format, the MC has the opportunity to choose who they wish to focus on and interact solely with the characters they chose whether it’s the main story, event, and card story. It can even be arguably said that otome and dating sims focus solely on the MC and their love interest interaction more than anything else. As for Twisted Wonderland, again, that does not happen. Twisted Wonderland, in addition to progressing the main story and revealing more about the characters involved, focuses on everyone’s interaction with each other including the NPCs. The game shows the other characters that aren’t interacting with the MC talking to other characters and what role they were playing while the MC was busy with the group the writer had them interact with during that time. Even in the card stories, most of the card stories involve more character-to-character interaction rather than MC-to-character interaction.
Speaking of which, the MC in Twisted Wonderland, the game, is gender ambiguous. Not once did the game developers and story writers mentions the MC as a specific gender like the other romance games. Heck, most of the characters don’t even use a gender-specific pronoun such as 彼女 (“kanojo” = she) or 彼 (“kare” = he) when referring to the MC. They usually refer to the MC by their given position, 監督生 ( “kantokusei” = prefect). The only exception is when the game’s mascot and MC’s buddy, Grim (the blue-fire monster), who uses あいつ ( “aitsu”) which is a gender neutral pronoun that holds the vague meaning of “that one” or “that person”. There’s also the fact that the MC’s default name is ユウ (“Yuu”), which is name used by either genders in Japan and how the MC uses gender neutral pronouns when regarding themselves as 自分 (“jibun”) and others as 貴方/あなた (“anata”).
Even during the official advertisement, official summary, official game archive book ( i.e., Twisted Wonderland Magical Archives), and posts made by the staff on twitter, not once did they specify the gender of the MC. In fact, they never once even specified the gender of the audience they’re targeting the game towards nor say anything about there being romance or any hints of harem-esque situations that involves the MC in any shape or form. The most “direct” statement made by Twisted Wonderland’s staff was from an email a fellow Twisted Wonderland fan had sent to the staff after a magazine had advertised the game as “Disney’s first game for women”. The email from the staff mentions that they wanted the game to be enjoyed by everyone, REGARDLESS OF GENDER. (link to said post here)
If they had any intentions of making the game otome-like or dating sim-like, Aniplex, Disney, and Twisted Wonderland staff would’ve mentioned that the game has romance or the possibility for there being romance when releasing the story summary, game system set up, and their ads. Not only would they have done that to get the audience they wish to target but speaking of it legally, they are required to mention it since there’s liability on their part on informing their customers on anything they need to know in regard to the game they’re playing. Age restrictions, fees, game play, and the like – Twisted Wonderland also had to go through the same process like any other visual novel games to be developed and released.
In a way, Twisted Wonderland can be seen as another Touken Ranbu or KanColle, but with an actual main story plot to progress through. All three games’ MCs are gender ambiguous, great characters to throw-er-spend money on, and have fun game plays. Sure, unlike Touken Ranbu and KanColle, where their MCs continues to be gender ambiguous in their anime and manga adaptation, Twisted Wonderland’s MC in the manga adaptation ended up being male – however, a statement was released by Yana revealed that the MC in the game and the MC for the manga are not the same people. (Link here) Meaning, the “real” or “official” MC’s gender continues to be gender ambiguous for the sake of continuing to attract all genders to play the game.
All of this being said, Twisted Wonderland is a fun, visual novel game and supposed to be enjoyed by everyone – each to their own way and passion. No one shouldn’t be discouraged from playing it solely because of false advertisements or misconceptions made by others who haven't played the game yet.
I hope this clears things up and hopefully helps others persuade people into playing the game!
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u know what imma drop my silent princess symbolic headcanons because i can
So you know how we can find silent princesses all around Hyrule? Like, under fairy fountains, on Setori Mountain, even in the middle of Hyrule Castle? And you know how they die if you try to cultivate them but thrive in the wild?
The reason they can only thrive in the wild is because their root system is so much deeper and complex than most other plants. For normal flowers like a nightshade or violet, the flower, stem, leaves, and roots are the whole plant. You can dig it up and you have a Plant (you know, like how actual plants work wait i don’t actually know why im explaining how plants work to you when you know already).
But the silent princess is different. The real plant (think fungi) is the root system underneath the blossoms, and it’s MASSIVE. I’m talking there’s only one silent princess plant in all of Hyrule massive. The part of it you think of as the silent princess is really just its blossom, like the flower on a tree. If you dig up a silent princess flower and try to plant it, it will die. Not because it’s not trying to grow another plant, but because wherever you put it there is simply no room. A pot? A planter? A flowerbed? The silent princess needs an entire country’s worth of land to grow.
By the time of botw, the plant is just beginning to thrive enough to put up blossoms in certain places. Areas with strong magical energy are the best, which is why you see them under fairy fountains and stuff. Once picked, the flowers also grow back incredibly quickly, which is my explanation for why you can pick some and then come back and there are more in the exact same place.
In the hundred years since the Calamity, the plant was growing, and it wasn’t growing above ground, but below. There are roots in Eldin, in Gerudo, in Tabantha, because the Queen plant (that’s what I’m going to call the actual plant under Hyrule and not just the flowers) is SO HARDY that it can survive—even thrive!—literally anywhere. And yes, that means that Hyrule Castle has massive roots growing through its walls. Make of that what you will.
So, to sum it up, the silent princess is actually a huge and massively powerful (hint hint) plant that encompasses all of Hyrule (wink wink) and can’t be cultivated or controlled (nudge nudge) because the box one would try to put it in is far too small (waggles eyebrows).
#loz#legend of zelda#botw#breath of the wild#silent princess#princess zelda#this is one whole metaphor for her so i might as well tag her ;)#legend of zelda breath of the wild#the legend of zelda
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Part 3 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Transformations, Potions and Power-Up's
Welcome to my analysis of basic concepts in Miraculous. Let's talk about transformations, potions and power-up's. This one is going to be interesting.
Apparently, only child superheroes have a time limit and can use their power only once. And adults can use their powers many times and maintain their transformation.
I don't take Thomas Astruc's Twitter statements seriously, but he said that adults don't have to detransform because they can feed the kwami with their energy. What happens when energy runs out? Does it mean that holder of the miraculous dies and transformation drops? Or does transformation drops when the kwami grows tired enough? However, according to "Silencer", transformation can't be released until the holder says detransformation words or uses their power (applies to children only). Is that why Master Fu doesn't transform these days? Because he is old and doesn't have enough energy for Wayzz.
At the same time, Bunnix/Bunnyx held her transformation for several thousand years in "Timetagger" and she was still alive. Moreover, not only she was still alive, she hasn't aged a day. Alix still looked around 25 even after spending so much time in stone. Her sanity was also still intact. Does that mean that as long as people are transformed they are immortal and can't die of natural causes, can't get sick or be killed? Does the Miraculous pause all inner processes? Do people stop ageing when they are transformed? Does that mean that prolonged transformations essentially slowed down puberty for Marinette and Adrien because every Akuma attack (their transformation during this attack to be precise) acts as a pause for their growth process? Does that mean that transformed heroes don't need food, sleep or oxygen? And Alix doesn't experience any negative side-effects after prolonged transformation. A lot of questions must be answered here.
But apparently, the "adults can use their power many times without detransforming" rule does not apply to Gabriel. In "Heroes' Day" he turns Nathalie into Catalyst who gives Hawkmoth the power to "release as many akumas as he desires". Does that mean that he can't normally do it? On the other hand, in "Queen Banana" he creates another Akuma right after the fight with akumatized Chloe ended.
Do you remember this? In "Origins" we find out that akumatized butterflies can multiply. That's why Ladybug needs to purify them. So, does that mean that Scarlet Moth and Catalyst weren't necessary?
Hawkmoth's plan in "Heroes' Day" was actually very smart. However, it can fall apart when you remember that butterflies can multiply. How does that work? Why do they multiply? Could Gabriel akumatize Nathalie into Catalyst (akumatized object is something not very valuable, like a piece of paper), then break the akumatized object and release the Akuma into the world? Would that turn people only into copies of Catalyst? I wouldn't call this thing a plothole, exactly. I'm just curious because it's an unclear moment. Perhaps you could explain it as the element of a soft magic system with unclear rules. Because the magic system in Miraculous is a mix between the hard and soft system.
Adults without time-limited power have a serious advantage over children. Why does Master Fu give Ladybug and Black Cat to teenagers then? In the beginning, Fu doesn't know that Butterfly holder is an adult. Isn't it safer to give 2 most powerful Miraculouses to adults just in case? If Butterfly Holder is a child then 2 adults with more powerful Miraculous would win much faster. If Butterfly Holder is an adult as well, then the fight is more even.
We know the out-of-universe reason for doing this. There would be no story then. Miraculous holders have to be kids since it's a kids show. But in-universe it doesn't make sense. In "Furious Fu" Su Han even says that children are not allowed to handle the Miraculous at all according to the rules of the Order. Fu knows that children have a time limit. It looks like he deliberately sets them up for failure. Why?
Is that because children are easier to manipulate as they are most likely to trust Fu's judgement no questions asked? This reasoning doesn't look good for Fu, who is supposed to be a wise and kind mentor. Is that because children won't abuse their powers? Find a trustworthy adult then. Give us some kind of in-universe explanation!
If you can't explain it then do something with the time-limit rule. It's an important plot device, which contributes to tension and raises the stakes during fights. So, removing it is unwise. Consider giving adults a time limit as well then.
Or you can create different rules. Maybe Black Cat and Ladybug can't be wielded by adults, unlike other lower-tier Miraculous? Maybe Miraculous and Kwami can choose the wielder in some capacity, and this magical bond can't be changed? Do Kwamis feel a pull towards several people and Guardian then chooses the final holder? If there's no pull whatsoever, then Kwami won't be able to grant powers to this person? How much weight does the decision of a Guardian have?
I actually like this last idea the most. It makes sense and avoids plotholes at the same time preserving the time-limit rule. I spent less than 20 minutes figuring this out.
This way Fu gave Ladybug and Black Cat to children because he didn't have a choice. Plagg and Tikki gave him suggestions but these people didn't pass his tests. Marinette and Adrien are the last ones and they do pass. It adds some tension and showcases desperation on Master Fu's part. Magical pull doesn't always mean that potential holders are good people. That's why Miraculous sometimes end up in the wrong hands.
Insert a conversation between Marinette and Tikki or Plagg and Adrien about this choosing process, have them wonder about the bond Nooroo and Hawkmoth share.
Then add more information about bonding. The magical connection can be formed just like people form relationships if human and Kwami spend some time together. It nicely adds up with the reason why Master Fu gave Ladybug and Black Cat to teenagers. He could have given both jewels to adults without a bond and waited for the connection to form but alas, there was no time. He needed active holders right now, and waiting for some adult to come around wasn't an option. But here's the catch. Only decent, kind people with good intentions can earn and create a magical bond. And this has the potential for a truly delicious scenario (more on that later).
It's a very tricky situation. But these rules must be stated and figured out in the very beginning. Because it can create plotholes down the line.
Unification
Combining several different Miraculous is an interesting concept and fusion of powers has been used for a long time as a storytelling element. It's important for the plot in several episodes of seasons 3 and 4.
However, there's "Kwamibuster", where the worldbuilding is broken one more time. It is awfully inconsistent within itself just like "Chat Blanc", "Timetagger" and "Furious Fu". (How do writers keep doing this? I have no idea. But then again even "Avengers: Endgame" contradicts itself numerous times. It's truly miraculous how they managed to do this with their budget, I'm impressed).
For a moment let's ignore all absolutely awful priorities that Marinette has in this episode as well as the rule "you can't know the identity of your partner or else you will have to give up your miraculous". This rule is literally never mentioned again before or after this episode. It's just there and it doesn't make sense. I know it's hard to ignore, but one must try. Instead, let's focus on this dialogue below.
Master Fu clearly states that you can't merge the Miraculous. It could make you lose your mind. The only more or less acceptable unification is that of Ladybug and Black Cat.
What happens next? Marinette puts on every Miraculous without any problem just "to free Kwamis" and transforms into Multimouse. The only sign of her discomfort is a moment of dizziness that's gone in a few seconds. Moreover, it never happens again, it's never mentioned. Then she does the exact thing that Fu told her not to do and starts merging Miraculous left and right. She continues to do so in season 4 every other day. What? Of course, how could I forget Shadowmoth? Gabriel merges 2 Miraculous every time in season 4. He doesn't lose his mind.
You can't tell us that merging can make you lose your mind and then in the next scene show us the complete opposite. That's bad writing. If you need the concept of unification to work then cancel the "lose your mind" rule and instead say that the merging process tires you out. There's no lasting harm, just that you will be very tired. If you want to raise the stakes, then say that wielding more than one Miraculous requires a strong will and practice. It's possible, but you can't perform unification just like that.
In this case, you lay the groundwork for the plotline of Marinette and Adrien for season 4 and 5. This plotline is about mastering unification. Show us how our heroes practice with different combinations of Miraculouses outside of Akuma battles. Show how they are improving. Maybe, Ladybug and Chat Noir nearly lose in the season 3 finale because the unification still drains them. However, in season 4 they put more effort into their training and by the time season 5 rolls around they are good at this. They became a stronger team and partners because of that. Their training sessions are also a good set-up for the development of the love square. Nothing like this will happen, but a girl can dream.
Look, I get it. You want Marinette to be special. Unfortunately, you have made her too special. She starts to break the laws of your magic system. We don't see the process. One moment she has 0 knowledge about something and then she is already an accomplished master of the thing in question and often it happens in the same episode. Marinette somehow just knows about the properties of every Miraculous on-screen, but her training happened off-screen. We as the audience are left confused and wondering. Wait, how does she know this? Was there a missing episode? Was this mentioned in some comic? The audience keenly feels the lack of plot-relevant content and explanations.
Potions and Power-Ups
They are a marketing ploy to sell more toys and merch with character transformations. That's it. Are they useful for the story? Yes, they are sometimes. Do power-up's make sense as a worldbuilding element? I'm sorry to tell you this, but no.
Miraculous Grimoire contains lots of potion recipes for Kwamis. I liked that Kwamis can't read the grimoire to avoid giving information to malevolent holders, which implies that they can't lie to their holder about their powers. I talked about this in my previous posts.
Let's start with Ice Transformation. Apparently, in-universe its only useful characteristic and the thing that sets it apart from normal transformation is skates. Maybe, this transformation also has additional protection from the cold. Maybe. Miraculous makes heroes nearly invulnerable and enhances their physical abilities. I find it hard to believe that protection from elements is not included in the package. And that's it. If we remember that Miraculous holders have subconscious control over transformation's appearance, we can also assume that a person can have conscious control as well. The laws of the magic system in Miraculous allow Marinette to ask Tikki to create skates for this particular transformation. Potions aren't necessary for this. This way you can still sell new toy, but in-universe this works better.
Our next stop is Aqua Transformation. It gives heroes the ability to breathe underwater and fins. That's all. In "Syren" it appears that this transformation also makes them more agile and fast in the water. However, Ladybug's yo-yo worked just fine before Aqua form when she tried to drag Kim to the surface. Her movements underwater weren't restricted either with normal transformation. So their fighting ability is not affected by the potion.
Kwami can live without oxygen. I mentioned earlier that Bunnix with normal transformation in "Timetagger" spent several thousand years in stone without oxygen and probably in some kind of stasis. Do transformed heroes need oxygen? No. Then their inability to breathe underwater doesn't make sense. Therefore, a potion isn't necessary for this.
Next, let's talk about fins. They could appear through the conscious desire of the holder just like skates.
Honestly, "Timetagger" and "Chat Blanc" completely destroyed worldbuilding in Miraculous. These episodes just shouldn't exist. They aren't even consistent within themselves, nevermind the rest of the show, which is why I still don't understand why fandom has such a weird hard-on for them and for Bunnix. Oh, wait. On second thought, I get it. They were just fanservice after all.
Cosmo Bug an Astro Chat. Space power-up give heroes the ability to fly and exist without oxygen. Ancient grimoire had the recipe of space potion, apparently. And humans got into space in the second half of the 20-th century. Ok. That totally makes sense.
If ancient people invented a space potion, that could also mean that back in Ancient Egypt Ladybug and Black Cat holders could use advanced technology. But Su Han in "Furious Fu" is surprised to discover that Ladybug can just call Chat Noir. He assumed she would send a bird with a message. That means that unconscious control over transformation extends to the weapons of heroes. For Marinette and Adrien communication means smartphone with navigation, messages, trackers and Bluetooth earbuds. That's why magic gives them smart weapons. Su Han's words prove that the invention of the space potion is not possible. Unless space potion was also subjected to unconscious control over transformation. People couldn't imagine the possibility of space travel in Ancient Egypt, but they could imagine flight. So, perhaps, for heroes back then space potion simply meant wings.
We've established that heroes don't need oxygen. So, a potion isn't necessary for this. The ability to fly also could be achieved through conscious transformation.
That's all for this part of analysis. Let me know what you think. Stay tuned for the next meta. See you!
#miraculous ladybug#ml#miraculous analysis#miraculous meta#ml meta#ml analysis#miraculous transformations#miraculous critical#miraculous ladybug critical#miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir#mt of lb and cn#miraculous potions#astro chat#cosmo bug
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Things really are this bad
Yesterday, Freddie posted an excellent piece titled “People of Color Have Agency.” It’s free and I encourage you to read it all the way through, but its gist is found in the title: contemporary anti-racism regards non-white people as having no control of their actions, nor any moral culpability for anything they themselves do. Why? Because white supremacy is such an all-encompassing causal force that it prevents non-white people from having human agency. Freddie points out, correctly, that far from being liberating, this conceptualization of race and racism flatly dehumanizes non-white people, and, in doing so, centers the actions and experiences of white people as having determined the entirety of human existence.
From the piece:
I suspect that placing all of the blame for historical crimes on white people is strangely comforting for white leftists: it advances a vision of the world where only white people matter. It says that the sun rises and sets with white people. It suggests that white people wrote history. It assures white people that, no matter what else is true, they are the masters of the world. That all of this is framed in terms of judgment against the abstraction “white people” is incidental. I think if you could strip people down to their most naked self-interest and ask them, “would you be willing to take all the blame, if it meant you got all the power?,” most would say yes. And of course in this narrative people of color are sad little extras, unable even to commit injustice, manipulated across the chessboard by the omnipotent white masters whose interests they can’t even begin to oppose. All of this to score meaningless political points in debates about inequality and injustice.
I don’t have anything especially poignant to add (you really should read the whole piece). He repeatedly assures his reader that some of the more absurd aspects of anti-racism being described actually are real and quite pervasive. This move is necessary because, although his descriptions are objectively correct and plainly obvious, they cannot be articulated with appropriate harshness without it sounding like the writer is exaggerating (a poisonous rhetorical milieu made all the worse by conservative critics who could have a field day simply describing wokeness as it actually exists, but instead understand it in the most idiotic manner imaginable.)
But no, Freddie was not exaggerating. Everything he describes I have seen in person and in print multiple times. There exists, believe it or a not, a sizeable faction of the left that does not believe Imperial Japan was an imperialist power, that expecting non-white people to adhere to basic standards of decency is akin to slavery or genocide, and that black people are so inimically traumatized by historical racism (that such trauma is even literally embedded into their genes) that they cannot follow rules or obey laws. This is the state of liberal antiracism in the early twenty-twenties, and it doesn’t become any less ugly by us pretending that it’s not as bleak than it actually is.
Basically, people belong to two groups: Non-whites are non-entities and therefore sympathetic, blameless victims. Whites, conversely, are all-powerful and therefore the horrors faced by most people all across this blighted planet are caused by the very existence of whites. This understanding is racist, chauvinistic, narcissistic, and dehumanizing. And it’s utterly dominant in anti-racist discourses right now.
I have made this point before, but it bears repeating: whiteness and white supremacy have become conceptually indistinguishable. The former was previously understood as a description of a people’s racial markings and was therefore fluid and inchoate and, progressives once believed, a complete social construct, a fabrication, something that we faced an imperative to stop taking seriously. The latter concept, white supremacy, was used to describe myriad aspects of a pervasive system of racial inequality. A small child can suss out how weakening the conceptual status of the former is an absolutely necessary prerequisite for addressing the urgent concerns posed by the latter.
Instead, however, the contemporary anti-racist left (call them what you want: corporate anti-racists, wokes, neoracists... it’s all the same stuff) has done the exact opposite. Racialization is calcified to the extent that we consider the presence of racial markers to be the sole driving force behind all human interactions. This makes malignancies unchangeable, but that’s beside the point. We’re not actually looking to reform systems and improve the lives of everyday people of color: we are, instead, concerned with burnishing the image of the Democratic party, helping dull grad students get their PhDs, and assisting the book sales of a small handful of the most cynical authors the human race has ever seen.
But this is just all so incredibly absurd. Like... Jesus fucking Christ people, fucking think about this shit for a second or two. Take this piece for instance. It’s not from everydayfeminism or some random tumblr: it’s from the New York Times. It describes an incident in which two black middle school girls were very badly harassed--even urinated upon--by 4 middle school boys. The headline reads “A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves.” The catch? The perpetrators of the attack were not white.
Just because the boys weren’t white doesn’t mean they weren’t doin’ some whiteness. Oh no. As the author explains:
While it’s tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens. Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions. They show race in the making, and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.
Herein, race is not only real but inevitable, all-pervasive, and unchangeable. And race does not correlate with traditional markings like dialect, place of birth, or skin color. Nosir. Race is behavioral. The stuff this writer dislikes (rightly or wrongly) are what constitute whiteness. The stuff this writer loves (victimhood, and also presumably the Marvel Cinematic Universe) are what constitute non-whiteness.
This idiotic conceptualization leads inevitably to all matter of malignancies--from petty inconveniences to world-historic atrocities--to be understood under the same umbrella, and emanating from the same magical force--a force which, it just so happens, we’ve already established cannot be altered or changed or even understood in a coherent manner. Whoops, sorry. But, hey, this is why it’s good that we don’t want to reform anything even though all we talk about is how bad everything is. Biden 2024, y’all: Keep America Entropic.
If this understanding of anti-racism had been explicitly designed to worsen and perpetuate racism, it could not have done a better job. But it wasn’t--maybe in the upper corridors of the liberal political and NGO sphere some people realized this was a great way to pretend to care about racism without actually changing anything, sure, but a vast majority of the people peddling and accepting this bullshit are earnest in their desire combat racism. They just can’t conceive of doing so in a manner that hasn’t fully internalized the deranged, neurotic mysticism that’s drilled into our heads from birth in order to make us accept the brutal inhumanities of neoliberalism.
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