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#it’s that he has no real impact on her as an actual person/slayer with interests and complexity and depth

alicemitch09writes · 3 years

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Hello ! I was wondering if we could have some series recs ? I’ve really been into reading series lately. I love the author reader interactions and just the sheer talent of writers like yourself blow my Ming like whattt? howw do y’all make drafts, plot lines , general timelines of events , well rounded personalities etc it’s so amazing.

I also have some recs of my own. @saintobio has some amazing angst series like some real tear jerkers. You will love her suna one and she’s currently working on a gojo one, I am hooked, just like with unloving miya atsumu. Hope you enjoy

I also read @saintobio's works, too. Especially wastelands? Wow, I felt a lotta emotions and I'm so jealous of how she created such an amazing work. (my only issue and gripe are the names, bc y’know, it’s in Japan and all but that’s me) She really crafted a world so desolate that you can feel it from a macro scale down to the micro - which are the characters and all.

I’ve actually gave out fic recommendations which you can check here and here.

Buuuut, here’s a new list on some new fics I’ve loved for a while, and some very recent:

Disappear by @sebbys-girl. (Marvel, Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x Reader) This was just FULL of angst from the start, where everybody was against the reader and she just took it in, for a half-assed reason. The action is just as good too (which I’m really jealous about) and the new characters, which were flesh out interestingly but didn’t take over and weren’t OP compared to the already existing characters.

the fire’s out but it still burns by deeppoeticgirl. (Naruto, Sakura Haruno x Sasuke Uchiha) I’m a SasuSaku fan, and I’ve actually been following this art blog @dymx and she has these amazing art and would link artists that she inspired works from. Also, this fic has everything I want in an angst fic with these two :”>

Beastly Possession by Whild Rhov. (Fairy Tail, Lucy Heartfilia x Natsu Dragneel) Fair warning, this is really detailed, has themes you might be uncomfortable with, but is a hell of a ride. Rhov went hard on this fic, delving into certain things regarding Dragon Slayer magic Hiro Mashima won’t give us (lol)

Forgotten Flame by Little Falcon (Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Haru Miura x ???) One of my favorites when I was younger, because I was so intrigued by the premise of that mysterious person of a mysterious undiscovered faction (i dont know the name of this trope haha). The mystery leading up to the other pair had me gnawing and the ending was so worth it all.

The Long Way Home by the general girl (Naruto, Sakura Haruno x Sasuke Uchiha). Sooo, this one has amnesia au, a troubled Sakura, and an annoying side-character. It’s really fun because Sakura is a mess with her feelings but just wants to see Sasuke well, even though he doesn’t know her.

make me complete once again by dandelionpetals. (Genshin Impact, Kaeya Alberich x Diluc Ragnvindr) I just read this recently and oh my god- OH MY GOD YES THE ANGST. I love this kinda angst, to be honest. Y’all will have to read to find out why I love it so much.

Changes by nerdymama. (Pokemon Sword/Shield, Leon/Dande x Sonia). Okay, to be honest, I shipped them so hard when I was playing and I’m a sucker for childhood friends-to-lovers trope. BUT! As the title suggests, there’re changes that happened in the fic that testified not only their relationship, but on each other’s psyche for the better. It’s also the fic that really helped inspire me to work on my Sakusa fic.

The Story of Us by thesweetnerd. (Haikyuu!! Atsumu Miya x Kiyoomi Sakusa) Another amnesia au that just stings and stings with each chapter, I was bawling in a few of them to be honest. Such a satisfying read to the end.

In The Dark Of The Night, I Long For The Light by StarTears. (Genshin Impact, Diluc Ragnvindr x Lumine/Traveler) Ehe, this was my first Genshin fic that I read, because Diluc piqued my interest. It’s really deep and delves into immortality’s complications, one’s dignity, one’s mission, and the fact that there’s someone for them that they have to choose against everything.

Subterfuge by @bunsterjonez. (Marvel, Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x Reader) My god, this was one of the early MCU fics I’ve read that really made me fall in love with Bucky Barnes. It’s a slow burn, mind you, but it’s just sooooo goooooooood! I aspire to reach her level of creativity, honestly.

I have a hard time getting to focus on fics I’ve been dying to read, because I almost always find myself going back to these.

Also, writing can be that much work and all, but at the end of the day, the most important key element to it is: just have fun :) It’s more than writing for an audience, you’re writing for yourself :)

#alicemitch09 answers #fic recommendation #i may or may not expand this list #i had to dig deep into my ff.net faves

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nyanberri · 3 years

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I've finally finished the first set! It's the same kids again tho, lol. But next time will be never before seen characters! So I wanted to get everyone drawn in the Omniverse style so I could visualize it all properly and it also made for a good opportunity to tweak designs as needed. They're all heavily referenced from official art so I could get it perfect and it made for great practice too! Of course I added some personal touches to the art style too cuz if I didn't it would have bothered me too much, lol.

Anyway, below the cut are finally proper profiles for all the kids and some additional info as well!

M'kay, so before we get started on the kids' bios, it's important to specify this is an alternate universe. And I don't mean it's an AU of the Prime Dimension. This is quite literally another universe within the omniverse. It's a mostly untouched one that even Paradox, Eon, and Maltruant have never been to and therefore a lot of things are different while a lot of things are still the same tho. It's unofficially called the Feniverse cuz Fen is the main character, but it does have a more official name. I'm just, uh… not aware of what that name is yet, lol!

Anyway, the Ben in this dimension branches off from the development of Prime Ben. Anybody remember the fact that the very first Ben 10K episode said Ben became the way he did in the future cuz he killed Vilgax by ripping him to pieces? Yep! That's what this Ben did too! But obviously he doesn't end up exactly like that Ben 10K. But so this dimension's Ben is therefore officially labelled Slayer Ben since some people refer to him as 'The Vilgax Slayer'. And that experience did definitely screw him up pretty bad, which is why he's so different from both Prime and 10K.

So from left to right:

Name: Fenrick Fih Rook-Tennyson

Age: 13

Height: 5'1

Voice: Todd Haberkorn

Bio: Fen is Ben and Rook's son. He has always been known for being quiet, surprisingly wise for his age, and quite the troublemaker. In actuality, only two of these things are true. Fen is more calm than he seems and as a young child he wasn't much of a talker, giving people the perception that he's quiet. Unfortunately, Fen also has many great ideas that end up badly. However, his ideas always come from the desire to help someone or solve a problem, but he always gets caught when his plans fall apart, making it look like he causes trouble. Some people even accuse him of trouble he didn't start, not helping his reputation. And as the son of Ben 10 of all people, he tends to be held to higher expectations. His wisdom never ceases to amaze people either. Even Ben and Rook get surprised at the wisdom he recites, wondering where exactly he learned it all. Due to that, he tends to put up a fight whenever himself or someone else gets wronged. He especially defends his friends and fellow alien kids in town. Although his only true friends seem to consist of his childhood friend, Millie, and his cousin, Sven.

At the age of 13, Fen discovered his ability to transform into a couple dozen of Ben's aliens. He quickly aspired to become a hero like his parents, much to Ben's disapproval, who worries about his safety. Despite that, Fen wants to form a hero trio with Sven and Millie and become the next generation of heroes in the galaxy.

Developer's Notes:

Fen's almost always been the same since I first created him, with just a few design and character tweaks done to him. He used to have a talent for jewelry making but that was switched out for him being wise for his age. He was also a bit more generic as far as the upbeat and reckless young male protagonist with famous parents archetype goes, but he's been adjusted enough that he now stands out from that archetype. Or, at least I hope, lol. Also, funny thing to note, Fenrick is not a real name! The closest name there is is Fenwick and iirc, that's a last name! I considered changing it to Fenwick or even Fenick but Fenrick is too special to me. His, uh, unfortunate name even has an impact in-universe with him being embarrassed by it and some using it to make fun of him. Also in-universe, I chalk it up to Ben having a dumb moment by misremembering the name Fenwick and Rook not knowing any better to catch Ben's mistake. Also, if you think his hair style is stupid, good. That's the point. He wanted it like that when he was seven and Ben and Rook were like 'sure' and it's been like that ever since.

Name: Millicent

Age: 13

Height: 5'0

Voice: Jennifer Paz

Bio: Millie is Ester's daughter. Her biological father is a human who decided he didn't want to be a father and Antonio soon stepped up to fill the father role when he and Ester got married. She has been friends with Fen and Sven since they were all babies. Millie is the level-headed one of the group and has been noted as being oddly emotionless. Her tone of voice is almost always flat and she usually keeps a straight face when not looking nervous. She never intends to be rude, but she will bluntly say whatever comes to her mind to her peers. At the same time, she can be nervous about making bold decisions and hates being a part of any decision making. She either refuses to do anything, or apologizes profusely for making a decision even when nothing bad happens.

Due to being more human than Kraaho, Millie is perfectly capable of handling the temperatures of Bellwood. However, she is still a bit sensitive to cold temperatures and needs to bundle up more than others during the winter. She sadly cannot handle the heat in the Hot Spot for very long either. Much to Millie's dismay, she was not born with the Kraaho's stretching ability. No one can figure out why, but it's simply something she can't do. As a result, she considers herself a normal human and has resigned herself to the fact that 'normal' is simply all she will ever be. Despite this, she has taken up quite a big secret that contradicts her decision and expresses who she wishes she really was.

Developer's Notes:

Millie only ever had one design change with her outfit and slight adjustment to the way her hair works and she's been the same ever since. Since the beginning she was always calm and stoic and I've always worried that she doesn't have much of a presence or purpose, but now I feel like she plays off Fen and Sven well enough that she stands out thanks to them. I've always flipped back and forth between Fen and/or Millie having a crush on each other, but I've finally settled on them both just seeing each other as near and dear loyal friends. It ultimately works out better that way and doesn't cause conflict with Millie's personal story or Fen's real love interest(and the one other character with feelings for him). Her name also used to be Mina, but since I've now taken that as one of my own names, it felt really awkward to keep her as that. I used to have a habit of naming characters with names I wanted before realizing I could change my name in the future, lol.

Name: Sven Elijah Levin

Age: 12

Height: 4'8

Voice: Wally Wingert

Bio: Sven is Gwendolyn and Kevin's son and Jenny's older brother. Sven is a rather unfortunate boy. He is constantly terrified of everything to the point of running millions of 'bad ends' through his head. He can barely talk most of the time without being a stuttering mess and always thinks he's going to be in trouble for anything and everything he does. Everyone is certain he either has severe anxiety or paranoia, or likely both. Perhaps even more. Who knows. Sven tends to cling to his cousin, Fen, who he looks to for guidance and advice, most of which isn't anything Sven should actually be following. Because he is a grade below Fen and Millie, he's often left alone to deal with problems in his own classes, or really just panic about them. He does, however, have a close relationship with Zed and likes to be the one to take her out on walks in the afternoon. And not many people know it, but he's actually a pretty decent artist.

Even though he is an Osmosian thanks to being Kevin's son, no one knows what ability he may have. It doesn't really matter though, since he wants to stay out of any potential trouble that having powers could bring him. Regardless of that, he has an interest in magic thanks to Gwendolyn's expertise in it. He even sneaks peeks at her spellbook and the strange bag she keeps in her office that he can hear a voice coming from at night.

Developer's Notes:

Now Sven is a character whose personality has always been pretty much the same while his design was never consistent until reaching his current one. He was originally very anime looking and in a gaudy orange outfit that I regret even thinking about, lol. He looks much better in neutral colors. I guess there's not much to say on him though, which makes me worry he's a tad unremarkable, but perhaps it's just since I'm leaving out the things about him that are better left discovering on your own… if I ever get to finishing that fic that is… ahaha.

Name: Saki Boulais

Age: 13

Height: 4'11

Voice: Stephanie Sheh

Bio: Julie and Hervé's daughter, one of the more popular girls in school, and the most deceptive in town. Saki has gone her whole life, since the first time she told a successful lie, tricking people into thinking she's a completely innocent little girl who's never done anything wrong. This allows her to get away with anything she wants, and she especially enjoys getting Fen in trouble when they butt heads with each other. The two have even been enemies since they first met at age three and Saki pulled Fen's tail, he pulled her hair in return, and she managed to get away with claiming he started it. Their feud has even turned into murderous intent, which Saki refuses to hide.

On a lighter note, Saki always has the company of her two best friends, Rachel and Diane, who will gladly join her in her tormenting of others. Saki even greatly admires the most popular girl in school, Fiona, and whoever the mysterious new hero girl, Miracle-M, is.

Developer's Notes:

Yes, Saki was always meant to be That Bitch in the cast. I feel like it's unrealistic to have all next gen kids be friends and get along with each other. It's perfectly believable to have some of them dislike, and in Saki and Fen's case, even hate each other. It makes it more interesting with them being Ben and Julie's kids respectively too. Adds good drama, lol. But anyway, really the only thing that's changed about Saki is her hairstyle and some other slight design tweaks like her necklace, shorts, and shoes. I also just recently changed her colors from purple and blue-ish purple to just blue so that isn't not all three girls here wearing purple. She also looks better in blue and it contrasts nicely with Julie's pink imo. I suppose I do worry about her being disliked since she's so antagonistic and with her being Julie's daughter, I really hope her character doesn't send the wrong message since I genuinely love Julie a lot. It really is just For The Drama Of It All. I think it's really fun to watch her go into full 'Murder Fen' mode too. Very fun to write, lol. Oh right, also Boulais is my headcanon last name for Herve. I just wanted her to have his last name but he doesn’t have one! So I had to pick one for myself.

Name: Jennifer Elizabeth Levin

Age: 10

Height: 4'6

Voice: Brina Palencia

Bio: Jenny is Gwendolyn and Kevin's daughter and Sven's younger sister. She is surprisingly serious and stoic for her age. She gets annoyed by her family's constant 'abnormal' status and wishes everyone could just act normal with no weird events happening. She throws herself into school work as a means to keep herself out of it and tries to keep her personal life at school with friends far away from her life involving family. She seems to have a quick temper, but really she just acts that way to get what she wants since she knows it works and in the hopes that she can use it as an opportunity to vent her frustrations. She hates getting involved in her brother and cousin Fen's antics, but sometimes her no nonsense attitude is needed to resolve a situation. She has a strange obsession with eating bread, finding it the perfect food and almost always exclusively eating something with bread involved. Gwendolyn definitely worries about her diet, but Kevin finds it harmless.

She may not have the spark like her mother, but she doesn't dare confess that her status as an Osmosian became very apparent just recently. As a result, she has a stash of broken objects stuffed under her bed and cracked floorboards that she covers with her rug.

Developer's Notes:

Jenny went through a decent redesign. Character wise I feel like I still don't have some things etched in stone for her as I still haven't gotten to the point in my writing where she does anything of interest. She could honestly probably end up pretty different from her bio here if I'm not careful, lol. The characters write themselves as they say after all! But I definitely prefer the newer Jenny compared to the previous way I envisioned her character, which was designed to fit a character type I actually hate just cuz I felt it worked for her. Thankfully I can avoid it tho with the big overhaul I did after returning to these characters. And I do like Jenny cuz I like writing her dialogue, but it still feels like her character is still that of a person I would not wanna be around, lol.

Name: Bevel Tennyson

Age: 20

Height: 5'9

Voice: Dee Bradley Baker/Yuri Lowenthal

Bio: Bevel is the youngest of the Big Chill offspring born twenty years ago. They were in an accident involving a passing spaceship on their way to Kylmyys that damaged their right wing to the point they could no longer fly. It's suspected the wing has severe nerve damage, making Bevel unable to unfold it as well. Their siblings helped them make it the rest of the way to Kylmyys, but over the years, the dangers of Kylmyys left the siblings with only Bevel and the eldest two, Emboss and Curve, remaining. As they got older, Bevel could never forget their only memory of their parent, who the others didn't remember. A desire to reunite with their parent caused Bevel to make the lone decision to explore the universe in search of their parent.

Bevel is a very cheerful and sweet person, but their secluded upbringing and lack of knowledge about Earth makes them very naive. They will believe anything they are told and have a very black and white moral view due to not understanding nuance. They have strange habits that appear unnatural in their attempt to act human and have an intense craving for Earth candy. They have also taken up being a mercenary to get by after leaving Kylmyys and once they join the Tennyson family, Rook suggests they use the skills they've picked up to become a Plumber, but that's an idea Ben isn't fully onboard with.

Developer's Notes:

Right off the bat I want to shout out that his old human design used to keep the Necrofriggian antennae. I still think it's a cute design even tho it wasn't canon compliant with the antennae. The only things that have changed about him too are just that, his hair style, and his shoes. Plus I stuck bunny ears on his hoodie recently as a shout out to those antennae he used to have. Otherwise he's always been the same. And I guess I haven't explained why he has a human form, but that's also an answer to discover later. I didn't draw his Necrofriggian form tho cuz we should all know what the UAF design looks like(and yes I am screwing with art style difference bullshit cuz OV Big Chill is not real and you cannot convince me otherwise). And I also just realized his pronouns aren't matching up in this section so I should add his official pronouns are he/they, but characters refer to him by he/him and narration uses they/them. He is still a Necrofriggian and therefore doesn't do the whole gender thing after all. Which is why he's fine with anyone viewing him as whatever they want to too. He just goes with it. That's also why he doesn't get what's weird about him calling Ben 'Mother' after he learned the word, lol.

#staff so help me if this disappears from the tags EVER we will have a problem #ben 10 #ben 10 oc #fenrick (oc)#Millie (OC)#Sven (OC)#saki (oc)#jenny (oc)#bevel (oc)#my art #artists on tumblr

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aros001 · 3 years

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First time read through light novel vol. 7. Random thoughts.

Through some kind of mistake, Rem had completely accepted Subaru, but he knew all too well that the Subaru Natsuki she saw was an ideal far removed from the real thing. Compared with the man she envisioned in her mind, the cards that the real Subaru held were few in number, and poor in quality—

But he learned, now that he stood at the playing table, no one cared about his personal problems.

All anyone in his position could do was try to win with the cards he was dealt.

This is sign I think Subaru has grown a little bit, though he is still growing. It's not about him, and Ferris later seems like he's trying to drill that into him a bit more later when Subaru wants to help with the battle preparations. It's good that he wants to help but sometimes he's unintentionally making things too much about himself, just to ease his own feelings. There are places where he would be getting in the way if he tried to help and Subaru's learning to accept that; to be patient and give his services where he can actually be of use, not just to help himself feel better. And damn, does he put that new maturity to good use in the big battle.

Originally, these negotiations had been Rem’s appointed duty. He could easily imagine how being unable to divulge her task to Subaru and having to speak with Crusch day after day had whittled away at her spirit.

Subaru had continually rotted by himself while the future of the Emilia camp had been entrusted to her—she must have suffered under that burden.

He hoped that in some small way, this victory repaid the girl whose feelings had supported him for so long; if so, then for the moment, that was enough for Subaru to be happy.

I really like this part. Again, it's not all about Subaru. He's acknowledging how much Rem's had to deal with while he was having his breakdowns and indulgences during his prior loops, and how much she still did what she could to support him in spite of it all. We're getting a little more that she does have a life outside of just Subaru and a little more added on to why he feels he's been so selfish. It really feels like he is now doing this for her. It's not like Subaru was completely self-centered before but I imagine there were times, especially with Emilia, where he wanted to help, but he wanted to be the one to help. He wanted good things for her but part of him cared more that he was the one giving them to her, verses her just getting what she needs in general. It's like how he couldn't feel happy that Otto was in support of Emilia first time he met him, though of course that was when he was at one of his lowest points.

And, of course, I'm absolutely reveling in all the sweetness of Rem supporting Subaru through his negotiations. Even if it's just holding his hand and reminding him she's there, he clearly appreciates the strength and courage it's giving him. Obviously they're not a romantic couple but this is the kind of stuff I love to see in romantic relationships. Just the basic comfort and support they find in each other's presence.

“...If I am gone, will you remember me just as long?”

“...I don’t wanna answer that. It’s bad luck.”

Speaking with a voice of dismay, Subaru gave Rem’s forehead a little poke.

When he touched Rem’s forehead, she smiled with a happy expression, almost as if she’d received the reply she had been hoping for.

Given something I believe I've been spoiled on for what happens later in the story (after where the anime leaves off), this feels like a very cruel monkey's paw bit of foreshadowing.

“Subaru.”

“...What?”

“I am fine with being your second wife.”

They were words to make a man unwittingly halt in his tracks.

When Subaru, unable to resist, looked toward her, Rem made a face like that of an adorable puppy, seemingly wagging her tail as she awaited Subaru’s reply.

Oh, good grief, just how far is this girl gonna—?

“If Emilia-tan’s a very generous first wife...”

“Well then, when we get back you must convince Lady Emilia. I shall try hard as well.”

Rem clenched the hand not grasped into a fist, very animated as she spoke with a smile.

Speaking jokingly like that broke all the tension, driving home to Subaru how weak he was. He truly couldn’t hold a candle to the girl.

I'm...going to have to see where the story goes from here, and how truly joking/serious Rem was with that second wife line. Just to put it out there, I don't really have a good view of polygamy. I'm always going to think that, 1st wife or 2nd or 3rd or wherever, someone is always going to be treated like second best and second priority. What they're receiving doesn't feel like real love and that's not fair to them. The only way I can see myself supporting a polygamous marriage in this series is if it's made clear Emilia and Rem are attracted to each other as well as Subaru and want to bang. Then it at least becomes three people who love each other as opposed to just "the guy and his two prizes".

So, first time you read this part in the novels or watched it in the anime, was anyone else afraid of the White Whale not showing up where and when Subaru told everyone it would? Like the world would just want to gut punch him one more time and have everyone think he's a fraud? I remember I was.

One theory I have for why the witch's scent grows stronger, not just when Subaru RBD, but also when he tries to talk about RBD is that maybe the witch likes when he acknowledges her "gift" to him. But she's also quite screwed up and doesn't like it when he tries to "share" what's between them, thus why she punishes him or those around him for doing so.

In front, behind and up above, he saw yet another whale-shaped figure high in the sky, scattering mist all around.

—The infinite mouths of the three White Whales laughed together, drawing out the despair of men.

Subaru, Crusch, the soldiers, everyone, etc.

Though pests had interrupted it, the White Whale’s mission was to cover the world in mist. This, too, was the command of its instinct, and doing so was the purpose of the White Whale’s existence.

One thing I've enjoyed about the various light novel series I've been reading is that, compared to their anime, I get a better idea of various characters' and monsters' mentalities. The best example I could give would be the goblins in Goblin Slayer (that they are not mindless creatures; that they know EXACTLY what they're doing to people and they enjoy it) and this bit with the White Whale is another good one. It seeks to cover the world in its mist and thus destroy/consume/erase everything (maybe?) And it doesn't know why it seeks to do this. It just does, suggesting there is something else, possibly the one behind its creation, driving it.

It's also interesting that, to the White Whale, the witch's scent is described as foul, despite the stories that she's the one who created it. This brings to mind a couple different theories.

Satella didn't actually create the whale. Someone else, perhaps one of the other six witches did or one of the archbishops.

Satella did create the whale but maybe used one of the other witches to do it. Puck did mention something about Gluttony when he sensed the whale approaching in the last loop.

Satella REALLY cannot tell the difference between positive and negative emotions, even more so than we were already led to believe.

Kind of cruel of Rem to trick Subaru into thinking she was dying, but at least we do get Subaru's completely true feelings out in the open. Back to the polygamy matter, I don't have a problem with Subaru being indecisive between Emilia and Rem or being in love with them both. It's not just that they've done so much for him, in which case the relationship would feel just like how Emilia described, just the two of them repaying debts to each other. Both women have been a hugely positive influence on Subaru's life. They've impacted it for the better and helped push him into being more of a man he can live with being, and it works the other way around too. It would be hard to imagine his story without either of them in it. I feel the same way with Code Geass in regards to CC, Shirley, and Kallen in Lelouch's story. It was the only "harem" series I've ever watched where I had trouble saying who the MC should end up with, because all three were irreplaceable in his life and story. Take any of them out and it loses a lot. Emilia and Rem are a similar case.

As Rem looked back at Subaru, now beside her, large tears filled her blue eyes. It was not being left behind that she feared. No, what she feared more than anything was—

“When you are in distress, Subaru, I want to be the one offering my hand faster than anyone. When you hesitate along your path, I want to be the one pushing on your back. When you challenge something, I want to be at your side, stopping you from shaking. That is—that is all I wish for. So please...”

Again, more great parallels between Subaru and Rem, as this isn't dissimilar to what he wanted to do for Emilia.

Wilhelm might just be the biggest example of a tsundere I've ever seen. Married a woman he loved from the bottom of heart for what was assumedly a decent amount of time...never freaking told her "I love you" until he finally killed the beast that killed her.

As for Theresia, it's definitely a case of why context is so important. She never wanted to be the Sword Saint. She only did so because she found purpose in saving as many lives as she could with the insane power she had (the whole "great power, great responsibility" chestnut). If Wilhelm is strong enough to protect and save people, to where her absence would make no difference, then she doesn't have to be the Sword Saint anymore and can live the life she wants. It's what makes it an actual kindness vs. some chauvinistic BS. Probably helps too that she'd already helped put an end to a long war, so she wouldn't have been needed as much anyway.

“So it is said. The existence and origins of demon beasts are mysteries to us. Some propagate in the same manner as ordinary living creatures, but some suddenly appear out of nowhere like the White Whale. Though, properly speaking, the only exceptions on par with the White Whale are the Black Serpent and the Great Hare.”

Oh...I'm so not looking forward to meeting those two. After how much tragedy just the White Whale caused, what the f**k are those things going to do? My money would be that whatever it is, it will hurt Subaru quite horribly.

This book potentially answered a question I had in my last post. The Witch Cult is after Emilia because they see her as an impostor of the Witch of Envy, or at least so the characters in-story are speculating.

Not sure how many people here are fans of Rising of the Shield Hero but after this I kind of want to see the White Whale and the Spirit Tortoise duke it out. That sounds awesome. Mountain Turtle vs. Witch Fish.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Re_Zero/comments/gub735/novels_first_time_read_through_light_novel_vol_7/

#re:zero #random thoughts #reddit repost

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justimajin · 4 years

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In the Imajining of: A Lone Wolf’s Howl

If you’ve read my stories before, you know the drill. I break up the story into pieces, talk about what my thought process was like and basically describe what was happening behind the scenes.

Alright, let’s get it!

The Idea

The Characters

The Plot

Difficult Parts

The Overall Series

The Idea:

I’ve had the idea for this story for a long time and in fact, it was originally supposed to be only 3 parts long. I was thinking about just making it a mini-series with the same storyline, except the events would happen much quicker and be shorter. In a way this could of worked, but all of the important parts would have been omitted (Y/N being a wolf and her entire backstory) since Y/N would find out Jungkook was a werewolf, hate him and then come back to realize she was wrong.

This seriously could have worked, but the story itself wouldn’t have been so complex and Y/N’s character would have been an on and off switch (happy in Part 1, mad in Part 2 and then happy again in Part 3 lol). This would have rushed everything so I decided to throw away the idea of a mini-series and went with the full fleshed out story we have now.

The Characters:

Y/N: The process of making the main character was a little different for this time around, because I wanted to experiment around and give her a noticeable personality. I originally thought I would make her more scared of her abilities, in the sense that she’s been trained to become a slayer but it’s not something she’s ever wanted to do. She would have been against doing hunts all together and would almost work like a “puppet”, aka doing everything the Elder told her to do and have no real control over her fate. Sounds really bad, but I did end up retaining some of this with how she’s terrified during her first hunt, believing deeply in what she thinks is right but horrified by its outcomes.

So Y/N ended up being much different, she was a lot more strong-willed and tactful, and instead of being against her people, she was in full support of what they did. I thought this was nice to see in a challenging perspective for her character as well, from her cruel reaction to finding out Jungkook was a werewolf to understanding him and realizing where she went wrong and then eventually mating with him. She grows a lot (I literally sound a proud mom right now lol) and by the end, you’ve seen her come full circle with everything that’s happened.

Jungkook: Jungkook’s character was interesting to write in this and I think it’s because I’ve never attempted to write someone like him. This is because Jungkook is what I like to call, a “back-seater” character. Basically he’s the lead in the story but this isn’t his story, it’s Y/N’s. So he ends up taking the backseat to many of the situations since Y/N is the one struggling and he doesn’t have the same attachment to his people like she does. He still does have attachment to them, just in a better and healthier way.

Jungkook’s also very similar to Y/N, in different ways. He’s very protective of people he loves and he reacts to everything right away, not really processing things before he does. Namjoon has helped him with this and usually acts as the voice of reason through the series, because he’s dealing with two very strong willed and emotionally reactive characters and he doesn’t let them barge into anything without thinking it through first.

The Plot:

The plot came from where most of my idea’s come from: excessive daydreaming lol. Basically I was thinking about different relationship dynamics and I thought back to one I had created in one of my previous series, Catching a Case of Doctor Blues *SPOILER ALERT* That series explored reuniting two best friends that had fallen apart because of drastic circumstances. They started off as enemies but eventually became closer as time passed.

So I started to think what would happen if the two best friends couldn’t recover? If you had two people who thought they knew everything about each other when they really don’t? I played around with the idea for a while, thinking about what situation could really emphasize the problem when I stumbled onto a werewolf au someone else had posted.

From there everything just clicked in right away - a werewolf and a werewolf slayer, best friends that think there’s no secrets between when really they’re living two complete different worlds away. I had my story and I was ready to write.

Difficult Parts:

This is a new category I’ve added from before and that’s because I’d like to note that this series was perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever written. Although I did try my best to work with everything I laid out, there was definitely some challenges I had with it:

The Tone:

This series had a very odd mix tone-wise and it was a mix that at times wasn’t too hard to write, but at other times I kind of felt like yanking all my hair out lol. Basically Part 1 serves to introduce Y/N and Jungkook’s relationship. It’s fun and comedic, giving you a real good sense of what these two characters are like and what the relationship between them is. They’ll poke fun at each other, understand and listen to each other, and are extremely comfortable around each other. They’re the ideal best friends lol. However this tone completely changes when you get to Part 2, which serves to introduce Y/N’s character in more depth and make you take a whole 180 to go like “there’s much more to this character than I had originally assumed”. The tone takes a drastic change by the time you get to Part 3, with Jungkook and Y/N discovering their on opposite sides and there close friendship suffering tons because of it. The rest of the series follows what I call, a mixed tone. It fluctuates between the angst the storyline is set in, along with Y/N and Jungkook trying to repair what they’ve lost along the way to that same comedic element the first Part has, and then eventually with them getting closer as time goes on and realizing they have feelings for each other. By the end of the story, the tone is very similar to the one they had in the beginning of the series, with the reader left thinking if the events in the series actually even happened. However, Jungkook and Y/N are much closer than before, poke fun at each other’s abilities and have a much better understanding of each other than they started off with - so the stories events did take place, but the impact it left wasn’t as huge since these characters already started off strong in the beginning.

A great deal of this tone mixture was due to my part, I really wanted to experiment and change things up. I believe having different types of stories doesn’t make things boring and always keeps me challenged in a way where I have to think differently compared to before, even if it’s a huge pain to do so.

Writing Action:

Now this was a challenge I didn’t even anticipate. All I had in mind was that I wanted to write a badass main character along with some epic wolf fights. However when I started writing, I realized that it was potentially going to be a harder than I had imajined hoho.

Writing action is a little weird because it’s not so much about what the character is feeling but rather all the movements they’re doing. Basically if it’s properly written, it can get real boring real fast. I also had to think a lot in how wolves would fight with each other and with humans so that lead to a whole array of problems I didn’t expect.

The Overall Series:

I would say I’m pretty happy with the end result of the story. It was hard and complex to write, but it challenged me to work with it and piece everything together along the way. I’m most proud of being able to take the werewolf genre and doing something different with it, so in a way I could bring something unique to the table that readers wouldn't have anticipated.

#one other challenge i forgot to mention #was how i had to understand how wolfs work #their powers #their packs #how they transform etc #but the real hard part was #creating a new type of people with slayers #because in a way i didn't want to confuse anyone #but i wanted to leave that mystery of something new #something intriguing #since when you see werewolves you already know what they're like #but slayers allowed that ability to show something you couldn't really predict #if that makes sense #anyways #in summary folks #a hard series but it was worth it #tons of blood and sweat shed but it created something good #i'm happy with it

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relishredshoes · 5 years

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Interview taken from The Severus Snape and Hermione Granger Shipping Fan Group. (Admin approved)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/199718373383293/

Hello Loten and welcome to Behind the Quill, thank-you for letting us get to know you a little better.

Many of our members will know your works with Post Tenebras, Lux and Chasing the Sun being considered classics for the SS/HG pairing.

Thanks for the invitation, hello everyone.

What's the story behind your pen name?

There's a werewolf novel, Bareback by Kit Whitfield. In one scene a character is looking at the moon and mentions that in Old English poetry they would use the term loten to describe a night when the moon was bright enough to see by. I haven't been able to verify it since the author may well have invented it, but I love nights like that and I liked the word, and the rest is history.

Which Harry Potter character do you identify with the most?

I get asked this a lot, actually. There is no one character, I don't think - I identify to some extent with most of the characters that feature more frequently in my fics, or I wouldn't be able to write them (the exception is Lucius, as far as I can tell he's truly fictional and not derived from anything in me). I probably have more in common with Hermione than the others, at least my version of her, but it's hard to say for sure.

Do you have a favourite genre to read? (not in fic, just in general)

Fantasy all the way. My mother nagged me into reading The Hobbit when I was around seven or eight, and that was it. I do read other genres but a good 85 per cent of my reading material almost certainly has magic or dragons somewhere in it.

Do you have a favourite "classic" novel?

I have a few. I like all of Austen's works, my favourite is probably Sense & Sensibility. I've just finished re-reading Jane Eyre. I like Elizabeth Gaskell's novels as well.

At what age did you start writing?

My mother is one of those parents who hoards everything her offspring do, and among the boxes of paper is a short story I wrote and illustrated when I was maybe five, about a flying shoe (imaginatively titled The Magic Clog). And when I was six I had a poem published in an anthology of children's verse (I don't remember how that came about; I think my school was asked to get involved, had a competition and picked out a few that ended up in the book) - my contribution was a piece of free verse about a dripping tap. So it's something I've always done, though I started taking it more seriously as a teenager developing roleplay characters.

How did you get into writing fanfiction?

My best friend when I was around thirteen was into fanfiction, she wrote Stargate SG-1 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fiction at the time. I don't know how she got into it herself but she introduced me to reading it, though it was a year or two before I found the courage to try writing any. My early stuff was... not very good, and I will never admit to being the author of any of it now!

What's the best theme you've ever come across in a fic? Is it a theme represented in your own works?

Oh, that's a hard one. I like seeing consequences being explored - often authors will give a character the backstory or motivation they need them to have for the sake of the plot, but if it's not one of the main characters they won't pay it any more attention after that. When it's done well, I do like stories exploring the realism of just how a character would be affected by what happens to them. It adds a new dimension to their personality, and the psychology behind it is interesting in its own right. We're a product of our experiences, and so are fictional people. I try to show it in my writing as well - why a character does something is as important as the thing itself.

What fandoms are you involved in other than Harry Potter?

I read fics from all sorts of fandoms, but Discworld was where I first started writing (badly). It's a pretty small fandom despite the legions of fans worldwide, so I got to know a few writers there and learned more about what I was doing. Took a break for a while due to personal reasons, and when I returned under this name I started off in the even smaller Tamora Pierce fandom, trying my wings before entering the madness of Harry Potter. These days the Potterverse is still my first love along with the other two, but others include the Wheel of Time, Good Omens and too many smaller ones to list. I don't write for them or anything so active, though.

If you could make one change to canon, what would it be? Do you have a favourite piece of fanon?

Snape surviving, and the HG/SS ship, naturally! Do you listen to music when you write or do you prefer quiet?

Music, or Youtube videos (I watch a lot of Let's Plays), or just having the TV on. I can't concentrate in complete silence, my mind wanders to other things. I also talk to myself if there's no other source of noise and I'm trying to break the habit.

What are your favourite fanfictions of all time?

This would have been far easier to answer a few years ago, but I read less and less fanfiction as time goes by and I don't read Potter fics at all any more. My personal headcanons have developed more and more over the years, and nobody's headcanon is the same as anyone else's, so I end up disagreeing with fics these days because it's not how I would have done it and it makes it difficult to enjoy them.

The best fic I ever read was also the one that introduced me to HG/SS, but at some point, along the way, it was deleted and the author removed their account, and I've never managed to remember the title or pen name to look for it elsewhere. I don't remember the plot either after so long, but the characterisation was absolutely superb and the ship just made so much sense that I never looked back.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? How does that affect your writing process?

A plotter, definitely. I always have a first draft mostly complete before I start uploading anything. Initially, it was just because I realised I was writing longer stories and didn't want to risk hitting writer's block or real-life delays and having to go on hiatus in the middle of uploading a story, but later I realised I preferred it. I don't have to worry about writing myself into a corner or contradicting myself, I can take the time to make sure things are coming across the way I want them to. And it means I never have to force myself to write 'the next chapter' to a deadline - if I don't want to work on whatever comes next, I can jump ahead and write something later in the plot that I do want to work on. I also find it a lot easier to plan a story around a timeline to get the overall pacing right.

What is your writing genre of choice?

I don't really know what you'd call it. Slice of life, I suppose? I like stories about characters rather than about plots.

Which of your stories are you most proud of? Why?

Most of them, in their own way. My Tamora Pierce series, even though they're nothing groundbreaking and even though I know I could write them far better now, because they were the first things I wrote that I felt truly pleased with and because the overwhelmingly positive responses gave me the confidence to keep going, to try for something completely original rather than a retelling, and to venture into a far bigger and much more terrifying fandom.

Post Tenebras Lux, because it's (almost) exactly the story I wanted to tell and (almost) exactly the way I wanted to tell it. Chasing the Sun because it's the best written of anything I've done and I can see how much I've improved over the years, although I prefer the content of PTL. And I'm incredibly proud of the thousands upon thousands of positive and constructive reviews both of them gathered along the way,

I never expected to attract much notice at all and it's been a tremendous help to me both as a confidence boost and helping me see more about how others view storylines and characters in ways that I'd miss. I think overall it's PTL I'm most proud of, with CTS a close second.

Did it unfold as you imagined it or did you find the unexpected cropped up as you wrote? What did you learn from writing it?

Talking about CTS and PTL both, they're more or less the way I imagined them. Sometimes I'd get a review showing me a perspective I'd never considered, and one or two of them ended up having quite a long-running impact. Sometimes I'd reach a point, particularly in CTS, and realise that what I had planned for that part of the story wasn't going to work and I'd end up writing something completely different.

During the writing of both of them I mostly learned about how my brain works and how to organise myself to write at my best - I think I've learned more after they were done; I re-read both of them every year or so and see things I could have done differently and things that work and things I no longer agree with.

How personal is the story to you, and do you think that made it harder or easier to write?

Back to PTL for this one, since most of CTS' plot isn't completely mine. I never planned it to be particularly personal to me; at the time I just wanted to write about my favourite character and give him a better ending than canon did, and enjoy myself telling the story. As I went along and started touching on different subjects it became more personal - I've experienced bullying and depression, amongst other things, though fortunately not on the same scale as the characters I write about. I think it made it both harder and easier; stirring up old memories wasn't particularly pleasant, but it meant less time researching and rewriting those particular parts because it felt more real, to begin with.

What books or authors have influenced you? How do you think that shows in your writing?

That's another hard one. Subconsciously I think almost everything you read influences you at least a little. I tend to divide books into three categories - ones I don't enjoy and don't finish (which is rare but does happen), ones that were good but ultimately forgettable, and ones that deserve to be re-read, and I've probably learned something from almost all of the latter kind.

If I had to name one author it would be Terry Pratchett. His writing spanned such a vast spectrum it blew my mind wide open from the first time I picked up one of his books (I think I was ten or so) and he's still the author I come back to time and time again and find something to enjoy and appreciate no matter what my mood is. He's known for humour but there's so much more in everything he wrote. As for how outside influences show in my writing, I really don't know but I can guarantee they're there.

Do people in your everyday life know you write fanfiction?

Not really. Some of my school friends did, but over the years I've lost touch with all of them. Of my family and current friends, the ones that would understand fanfiction don't share the fandoms I write for, and the others just wouldn't understand the concept. I'm not ashamed of it, I just don't know how to explain it to someone who has no overlap with this world. Some of my online friends know, but half of them I met via my fanfics in the first place, so I'm not sure that counts!

How true for you is the notion of "writing for yourself"?

Where fanfiction is concerned, there's no point doing anything else. If you're trying to make a career out of writing you do have to write for your audience at least to some extent, but one of the joys of something not for profit like fanfiction is that you can tell the stories you want to tell and don't need to impress anyone.

The whole reason PTL exists is that I couldn't find a fic that told the story I wanted to read, so I wrote it myself. CTS primarily exists so I could fix a lot of the parts of canon I had the greatest problems with. The fact that other people agree is amazing and I still get warm fuzzies from every review from someone sharing the same opinion, but that wasn't the point.

Starting out in small fandoms meant I had no expectations for reviews so I never felt the need to try and court them, and every piece of feedback was a pleasant surprise rather than a main motivation. It's also a lot easier and more enjoyable to write for yourself; my other fics are mostly small one-shots based on prompts from other people, and many of them were a real struggle to write.

How important is it for you to interact with your audience? How do you engage with them? Just at the point of publishing? Through social media?

I'd say it's pretty important. I try to answer every signed review where possible, and it's always surprised me when people tell me they weren't expecting it - it seems to be something most fic authors don't do. It never occurred to me not to at least thank someone for taking the time to leave a review, and for those who leave longer reviews with questions or observations or (constructive) criticism I like the chance to explain some of my reasons for a particular decision or to talk about something in the fic or the wider fandom or writing in general.

That said, I don't have much contact with readers outside review responses and FFN messages. I don't really use social media (hence the format of this interview). Nothing against it, but introversion and a lack of much free time (and, it must be said, a little laziness) mean it's not for me at this point in time. I do have a blog but it's not very active.

What would you most like your readers to take away with them when they've finished your stories?

Honestly? I'm happy if someone finishes and thinks 'that was a good read, I enjoyed it'. Anything else is icing on the cake. Sometimes I get lovely messages from people who've been going through rough times and they tell me something in my stories resonated with them and helped them feel a bit better, and that's an incredible feeling. Others tell me they've been inspired to work on their own writing or to read more about a subject I mentioned. Some just want to let me know they've checked out a song or book I referenced or quoted and they liked it. All those are great, but as long as someone likes the story and enjoys reading it, that's enough.

What is the best advice you've received about writing?

The most specifically useful was probably "when you're writing dialogue, read it out loud". Time after time I've done that and realised a piece of a conversation was very awkward and strange and been able to rewrite it. In a more general sense, the best thing I've seen was "don't force it". If you're not in the mood to write something, don't try to, because it'll be far lower quality than if you wait until you're excited to write it down.

What do you do when you hit writer's block?

That ties into the previous question. Usually, I leave that piece of writing alone and either work on something else or move away from writing entirely and give myself a break for a few days to clear my head. Sooner or later something will shake loose and I'll see my way past whatever the problem was. (This usually happens either in the shower or while driving, when I can't do anything about it, because the universe just hates people sometimes!)

Has anything in real life trickled down into your writing?

Oh, absolutely, though I can't give many specific examples. As I mentioned before, my experiences with bullying and depression definitely added an extra dimension to the way I write about those issues, but that's the only obvious thing. I haven't consciously included any specific incidents from my life anywhere in my writing, but I'm sure there are a lot of small things I haven't even noticed. And there are definitely some details that are me, such as certain characters' music tastes (or a preference for black forest gateau...)

Do you have any stories in the works? Can you give us a teaser?

I get asked this one a lot! Yes, I do plan on at least two more long Potter fics, if possible. I'm fairly sure at least one of them is going to happen. I have some concrete writing and a lot of notes. But it's difficult to avoid treading ground I've already covered in existing fics, I don't want to produce anything that feels too similar. I also wrote both PTL and CTS while I was unemployed and living with my parents, and now I'm living on my own and working, so I have much much less free time. No teaser, I'm afraid :)

Any words of encouragement to other writers?

The only way to get better at writing is to write, so write. Don't worry about not being good. That can come later. You can always rewrite anything. My early fics under other names range from thoroughly amateur to absolute trash that I've disowned, and there's plenty of original writing that will never, ever see the light of day.

If you write something down and hate it, leave it for a while and then go back and look at it and figure out why you hate it. Try not to be afraid. It takes real courage to let other people see your writing for the first time, and nothing hurts like your first negative review, but the world won't end. Criticism comes in three forms - misunderstandings that you can address; genuine criticisms that you can learn from; and, very rarely, flames or trolling that you can ignore. Most people will have a valid point, and most of them will genuinely be trying to help you.

And READ. Read everything you can get your hands on. Fics, books, blog posts, newspaper articles. If you don't like something, try and work out why. If you do like something, try and work out why. Exercise your imagination and the rest will follow.

Thank you so much for spending some time with us Loten, it was a genuine pleasure getting to spend some time getting to know you better.

#snape #severus snape #pro snape #snamione #hermione #hermione granger #sevmione #snanger #fanfic #fanfiction

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

When Harry Met Buffy

by Dan H

Thursday, 14 June 2007

Dan compares portrayals of childhood in the popular media. Or something.~

(This article contains spoilers for a TV series which everybody has seen, and a set of books which everybody has read. Just so you know.)

At some point during my university career, I had to make a choice between actually getting a decent degree and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Needless to say there was no competition, and I am now the proud owner of a 2.2 in Physics and a lot of information about Sunnydale.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the rails a bit in the later seasons. It went off the rails for a number of reasons - tensions among the cast and crew, Joss Whedon being distracted by other projects, Marti Noxon - but its biggest problem, in my opinion, was that it lost sight of its core metaphor.

The strength of Buffy seasons 1-3 was that it stuck to a very clear, very simple formula. You take a stock Teen Issue (I'm going out with a guy who isn't suitable, my mother is putting me under a lot of pressure, I'm trying to live up to my elder brother) and then give it a supernatural slant (I'm going out with a vampire, my mother is literally possessing my body, I've animated the dead body of my elder brother and am trying to build him a girlfriend out of corpse parts). That was the way it worked. It kept this formula more or less throughout series four and five, but it mixed up the formula a bit: Joyce's illness in series five is wholly mundane, and it's college life that causes Buffy's biggest problems in series four, not the cybernetic killing machine. Series six and seven went even further, making "Buffy never learned to live in the real world because she spent all of her time fighting monsters" a central theme, despite the fact that the "monsters" had always been placeholders for real-world issues.

To put it another way, the great strength of Buffy is that it tackles teenage concerns from a resolutely teenage perspective. When you're sixteen, after all, everything is the end of the world. Buffy's distorted, teenaged view of reality, where a bad breakup is an unimaginable horror and high school is doing its damnedest to kill you becomes literal reality. This works brilliantly for three series, and then they start to run into problems.

The thing is, Buffy grows up. The show covers seven years, and Joss felt that it was very important that she not stay sixteen forever.

The problem is that a big part of growing up is the development of your worldview. Learning that things don't really work the way you thought they did. Or, to put it another way, a big part of being twenty-two is realising what a pillock you were when you were sixteen.

But Buffy can't really do that, because she's a fictional character, and her sixteen-year-old worldview is the literal truth of the earlier series. Angel, her high-school boyfriend, really was the love of her life, and when things went wrong he actually lost his soul and started killing people. You can't get a sense of perspective on something like that. You can't look back on your youth and say "gosh, it seems so silly now to have worried about the Master rising and plunging the world into hell." Its early-season strengths become its late-season flaws. Buffy can never truly grow up, because she is trapped, forever, in a world where her teenage angst is physical reality.

Which brings me to Harry Potter.

Like Buffy, Harry Potter has a seven-year arc, over which his creator takes great pride in telling us that He Will Grow Up. And, like the nutrimatic machine, Harry's problems are Almost But Not Quite Totally Unlike Buffy's.

The Potter books are told exclusively from Harry's point of view: so much so that Harry has to spend half of each book skulking around under his invisibility cloak so he can hear all the plot-dumps Rowling needs to pass on to the reader. However, unlike Buffy, we don't follow Harry from a world inside his own head. We follow him around looking over his shoulder, but we are only observers. Buffy/Angel is convincing because, on some level, we feel what Buffy is feeling, and we are swept away in an overwhelming rush of teenage emotion. Harry/Ginny, on the other hand, feels lacklustre, because we see it from the outside, as two awkward teens fumbling through a parody of romance.

The Potter approach is not without its advantages. It makes the seven-year arc somewhat more consistent: we know from the start that it's Voldemort and the Death Eaters and the War in The Wizarding World which is important, and Harry's journey from two-dimensional eleven-year-old to two-dimensional-eighteen-year-old is essentially one of learning facts about his world. (On a tangent, it's interesting to note that Potter has a detailed, prewritten world with a large mythology, and Buffy doesn't).

an earlier article

, I compared the Potter books to the works of Enid Blyton and like Blyton, Rowling writes about children from the outside. She writes about childhood in hindsight, and seems to view it with a mixture of sentimentality and contempt. Your school days, she seems to say, were the most wonderful days of your life, because you were too dumb to realise how crappy the world really was.

All of this would be fair enough, a lot of Children's books do basically work like that: the hero starts out as a picture of youth and innocence, only to have it stripped away by exposure to Real World Issues. It's the To Kill a Mockingbird school of children's fiction: the child gradually learns about the complexities of the real world, progressing from a nave worldview to a sophisticated one over the course of the story. His Dark Materials follows a similar formula. The problem with Potter is that the "real world" of the Potterverse is so utterly childish. Harry is growing up into a world where everybody is still obsessed with school, where the only person that He Who Must Not Be Named is afraid of is his old teacher, where three fifteen year old kids competing in a school sporting event is international news.

So Harry's journey is that of a child growing up and learning about the world, but what he learns is that there is no world outside of Hogwarts. Unlike Buffy, whose later-season problems are the result of legitimate creative decisions, Harry's late-series implausibility is a result of his inhabiting a world which is poorly conceived and badly realised.

Harry Potter is often praised for dealing with difficult real-world themes, like death and racism. It doesn't. It's true that people die in the books, but they do so as a result of magical, fantasy violence, which simply doesn't capture the experience of bereavement in a meaningful way. Quite a lot of children, reading Harry Potter, might well have lost a friend or family member due to illness, old age, or accident. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that none of them have had anybody they care about killed by evil wizards. The deaths in Harry Potter are part of the fantasy, they're no more real than chocolate frogs and Quiddich.

Then there's the "racism". Wizardry apparently runs in families, and those who don't come from a wizarding line get called "mudbloods". There's some half-baked talk of killing the mudbloods, but nobody ever does anything about it, and it's only ever evil people that even think like that. That isn't confronting the issue of racism, that's using a cheap metaphor for racism as another way to demonstrate how evil your villains are. It is a metaphor, furthermore, which only has any impact if your audience already recognises it - we know that it's wrong for Draco to call Hermione a mudblood, because it's "like racism". It's not using a fantasy world to explore a real world issue, it's using a real world issue to explore a fantasy world.

And this, I think, is why I think Buffy succeeds and Potter - despite sales figures - ultimately fails. Buffy has its metaphors screwed on right. Well, apart from that bit with the crackhouse in series six. Buffy takes issues that its audience will be highly familiar with (academic pressure, romantic disaster, teenage insecurity) and uses the language of the supernatural to explore them in an emotionally believable way. Harry Potter, on the other hand uses real-world issues (racism, slavery, death) as a cheap way to add colour to an otherwise unconvincing fantasy world.

In Sunnydale, Joss Whedon created a world which reflects the mind of a young girl growing up in America, and he succeeded admirably. In Hogwarts, Joanne Rowling attempted to create a dark, believable world for a young boy to grow up in, and she failed dismally.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

Books

TV & Movies

Young Adult / Children

Whedonverse

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Rami

at 09:00 on 2007-06-15Hmmm... that's interesting. I'm one of the few people who's neither read Harry (though I've seen one of the films) nor watched Buffy (not consistently, at least), but I'm inclined to agree that Whedon's way of presenting his world is deeper and more meaningful though perhaps less immediately obvious. Heck, I didn't appreciate Whedon at all until I saw Firefly...

#Ferretbrain #Harry Potter #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #Dan H #J.K. Rowling

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jrubalcaba · 6 years

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Testing

CHFIL - Testing

author: jrubalcaba feat. @suz-123

featuring: OFC Evelyn “Evie” Rogers x Steve Rogers, Sarah and Robby Rogers, Bucky Barnes x Alice Winters, Becca Barnes, Simon x Maggie

word count: 10723 words

Rating: PG

warnings: cussing, fighting, drawing blood

A/N: Here’s another bonus chapter for CHFIL and Impact. This explains how Alice was able to have Becca at all.

A/N 2: In the comics, T’Challa and Storm have a son named Azari. In our ‘universe’, T’Challa has a son with Gail, and we came up with T’Zari, so it would fit with how T’Challa and T’Chaka were named.

Life with three babies is insane, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Becca, Sarah and Robby loved playing together, and I know it made Steve and Bucky happier than ever to see their kids growing up together.

Growing however, has got me thinking overtime.

While I was pregnant, I was exposed to the super soldier serum, which enhanced my hearing and strength. It’s been almost nine months since the kids were born though, and I’ve noticed that I’m not as strong and my hearing has gone back to normal.

That’s a problem.

If my exposure and the resulting effects wore off, then what would that mean for Sarah and Robby? Would it wear off on them too, making them more like me? Or would it stay in their system for life, like it is for Steve?

As an anatomical pathologist, I set myself the mission of finding out what would happen. Since Steve and Bucky are the only men to have the serum, there’s no precedent, which means that any research that I do will be the first of its kind. The thought of being the first to discover the long-term effects of super soldier serum in Steve and Bucky’s offspring was both exciting and terrifying.

I began by running tests on myself. I know my genetic makeup like the back of my hand, no pun intended, so it was easy to see if there were any real changes. The serum, apart from making my hearing and overall strength better, did nothing to me. I could still get sick, there were still hereditary illnesses I could develop in my life, and I was still ageing at the same rate as I was before I even met Steve.

That was the main thing that worried me about all of this, the ageing process.

The main function of the super soldier serum is to keep Steve and Bucky’s cells in peak condition. That’s why they’re as strong and fast as they are and can heal almost instantly. The serum finds an issue and cures it. When cells age, their functions break down and the cells die. The serum, however, keeps that from happening, meaning that Steve and Bucky’s cells don’t age. The average person’s cells change every seven years, which means that the cells you had at birth are completely replaced by age seven. In Steve and Bucky’s case, their cells are the same from when they received the serum. In the 70 years since they were injected, their cells should have changed ten times, but they haven’t. If the cells ain’t broke, the serum won’t fix them.

That’s when it gets interesting.

If Steve and Bucky don’t technically age, then what would happen to Becca, Sarah and Robby, since they are only half super soldier? Will they age like their mothers, like normal? Or, would they reach a certain point in their lives and begin to age slowly, looking like they’re in their 30’s when they’re actually in their 100’s, like their fathers?

Do Alice’s abilities have any kind of say-so on what happens to Becca? Alice has explained to me that magic is what made her into a Slayer, but what extent would magic affect Becca’s growth and development? Normally, I would have laughed at the notion of ‘magic’, but I work for SHIELD, I’m married to a literal super soldier, and I’ve met an actual God, so I’m willing to go on a little bit of faith.

I was hesitant to breach the subject of testing the kids with the others because, well, the three of them have been through enough labs and testing of their own, especially in Alice’s case, so why on earth would they want to put their children through that?

The seven of us were hanging out in the living room one day, watching as Becca was trying to teach Sarah and Robby how to crawl. She started to get ahead of herself when she fell over and got a little bit of rug burn on her chin. Bucky beat me to her (damn serum), but I still checked her out because I’m the actual doctor. I watched with utter fascination as the spot on her chin went from angry red to shiny pink to not even there in the span of a few seconds.

“That is amazing,” I muttered in wonder. Bucky grinned proudly.

“Well thanks. She is mine, after all,” he joked smugly to which I rolled my eyes.

“I meant her healing, you dum...my,” I corrected at the last second. With Becca being over one now, we’ve all had to watch our language, much to the amusement of Bucky because Uncle Steve still swore like he was in the Army. “It’s incredible how fast she healed, and she’s only half super soldier.”

“Well, she’s also half Slayer, so that helps too,” Alice tacked on. I nodded, still amazed.

“I know. I just wish I could figure out what that's gonna mean in the long run,” I muttered the last part under my breath, forgetting that they could still hear me.

“What do you mean ‘in the long run’?” she asked. I turned to her, shaking my head.

“It's nothing, really.” I was not wanting to bring this up now, so I hoped she would drop it. Her hand grabbing my shoulder and holding me still was proof that she wasn't.

“Evie, haven't you learned by now to not keep things from us?” she snapped. I sighed.

“Yes Alice, but this is something that I know you'd say no to, so why bother bringing it up?” I challenged. She smirked at me.

“Okay, but it wouldn't hurt to hear the windup and the pitch,” she teased. “Come on Evie, you know you'll end up telling me anyways.” I huffed in irritation, because dammit she's right.

“Fine. So, you know how the kids are all half super soldier, right?” I turned to glance to Steve and Bucky, including them in the conversation. They all nodded, curious as to where I was going with this. “Well, I’ve been wondering, ever since you told us about Becca really, about how that would affect her, and now Sarah and Robby’s growth.” They all gaped at me like I had grown another head.

“What would that have to do with the kids growing up?” Bucky asked.

“Think about it, the primary function of the serum is to keep your cells in peak condition. In a normal person, like me, when my cells start to deteriorate, they die and new ones replace them. My cells change every seven years, which is how long it takes for them to deteriorate and die. That’s how I age.” I stopped to catch my breath before going on. “In your case, when your cells break down, the serum fixes them, which in turn means that your cells don’t get replaced with new ones. Your cells are basically the same as they were the moment you were injected with the serum, which is why you still look like you’re in your 30’s when you’re way older than that.” Alice, I could tell, was intrigued. I guess she didn’t really know how the serum worked.

“Huh. That’s interesting. So, if the guys don’t age because of the serum, what would that mean for Becca, Sarah and Robby?” she asked quietly.

“That’s the thing, no one knows. Becca, Sarah and Robby are the first children to be born with the serum already in their veins, so we have absolutely no idea.” I looked around before adding on, saying the one thing that was sure to scare them. “There hasn’t been any testing done on them, so their future is literally unknown.” Alice’s face went white as the reality of my words registered with her.

“No. No. No. Absolutely not,” she refused, eyes wide with fear.

“I know, that’s why I didn’t bother bringing it up before. I knew your history with testing and labs, so there was no doubt in my mind as to what your reaction would be. Out of the question, I know,” I replied. “Becca is off limits, which is entirely understandable.” I turned to Steve next, walking over to grab his hands. “I have to ask, but will you let me test our children’s blood?”

“Wait, you’d be running the tests?” Alice interrupted, her voice cracking at the end. I looked at her over my shoulder and nodded.

“Of course. You really think I’d trust someone else to do it? Besides, it’s literally my job to do testing like this. It’s my field of study,” I answered her. “I’d draw the blood myself and run the tests too. These are my children’s lives, and the only other person I’d even remotely trust with any of this is Bruce, and he doesn’t even have any idea I’ve done testing on myself.” At that last statement, Steve grabbed my arm and turned me back to him.

“Wait, you’ve done your own tests?” he asked incredulously. I nodded slowly, not understanding why he sounded so tense.

“Uh, yeah. Who else would do it?” I looked at Bucky and Alice, who also looked like they couldn’t believe it. “You guys do realize that I am both a medical doctor and a scientist, right? I can do both sides of the doctoral profession, and if I may be so humble, I’m fucking phenomenal at both.” I smiled smugly at them, loving the look of awe that spread across my husband’s face.

“Why did you have be tested?” Bucky asked after a brief pause, which caused me to sigh.

“Because the effects of the serum have worn off on me, and I don’t know if that will happen to Robby and Sarah.” It was Steve’s turn to go pale as comprehension dawned on him.

“If the serum wears off on the kids, then it might wear off on us?” he asked, somewhat hopeful.

“I honestly don’t know. That’s why I want to run tests,” I replied. “So, do you give me permission to draw our kids’ blood and do the tests?”

“Evie, you’re their mother. Why do you need Steve’s permission?” Bucky asked before Steve could answer.

“Because it’s a conflict of interest if I just do it on them. As their legal guardian, he has to give permission for me, a doctor, to run the tests. If I publish the results, I have to show that I got consent from the patient’s parent. It’s unprofessional to just run tests on someone just because, even if you gave birth to them,” I explained.

“Even though most of this is science jargon and I don’t understand it, it’s dead sexy when you talk doctor to me,” Steve cooed, pulling me into his arms. I smirked up at him, as this was new to me.

“Is that so? Maybe I should go get my white coat and stethoscope then,” I teased. Bucky cleared his throat loudly, bringing us back to reality.

“So that’s why you liked going to the doctor so much back before the War. Seeing the doctor turns you on,” Bucky teased. Steve began to blush as Bucky and Alice chuckled.

“Yeah, it’s no wonder he never got over Evie! She’s the prettiest doctor he’s ever seen!” Alice joined in. “I bet he got a stiffy when they were introduced!” Steve’s face was now the color of Tony’s suit, and I felt bad for him.

Kinda.

“Alright, that’s enough,” I insisted. “And for the record, Steve was a perfect gentleman when we met.” He smiled, while Bucky burst out in hysterics.

“Yeah, okay,” he snickered. “How’s that saying go? ‘A gentleman in the streets, a freak in the sheets’?” He started laughing again, Alice joining in. I bit my lip to keep from laughing, as Bucky didn’t realize how right he was. Once I got my laughter under control, I swooped in to save my husband again.

“Getting back to business, Steve, what say you?” I asked one last time.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m honestly curious about all this now too, so definitely yes.” I smiled, glad he was okay with the testing.

“Well, if it’s okay, I’ll go grab my stuff and I can draw their blood really quick, since we’re thinking about it.” I headed for the stairs.

“Evie,” Alice said shakily, catching my attention. I turned back to her, waiting for her to go on. “You said you’d draw the blood yourself? And run the tests yourself?” I felt my forehead crease as I tried to see where she was going with this.

“Uh, yeah? I mean, I did spend all those years in school learning how to do all that for a reason. Why?” I asked. She began wringing her hands together, looking around nervously.

“If you were to, I mean, if we were to say okay, you would be the only one to draw Becca’s blood and the only person testing it, right?” I walked over, stopping in front of her.

“Right. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bruce dearly and I trust Helen with a lot, but this is one thing that I would do on my own, off the record.” I looked over at Steve and Bucky before looking back at her. “This is our family business, no one else’s.” She nodded before glancing back at her daughter and then Bucky, who nodded as well.

“Good. Okay, you can test Becca’s blood.” She sounded sure of her decision, which blew me away.

“Alright. Just tell me when and I’ll do it,” I replied. I started to head for the stairs again when she grabbed my arm to stop me.

“You’re gonna draw the twins right now, right? Well, just go ahead and do Becca’s too.” I could tell my eyes were huge as the reality of her statement sank in.

“Sure. Do you want to come with me and watch me get my supplies? I find that having patients watch me get everything set up helps them relax,” I offered. She nodded as she followed me upstairs to my room. She was next to me as I pulled three sets of tubes out of the container and set them on my tray, followed by gloves, my sharps container, some suckers, bandaids, cotton balls, alcohol pads, a few vacutainers and butterfly needles. We went back downstairs and headed to the kitchen table, where Bucky and Steve were waiting. “Let’s do Becca first, but let me get my stuff set up before you grab her. The longer she sits, the crankier she’ll get when she can’t move.” I washed my hands in the sink before pulling my gloves on, sitting in the chair next to Bucky. I got the bandaid half opened and set it down so it would be easier to place it when I was done with her. “Alice,” I started as I continued getting things ready. “Would you rather stand and watch as I draw her blood or sit and hold her while Bucky stands?” She took a deep breath and thought it over while I finished getting ready.

“I’ll stand and watch,” she answered before walking over to pick Becca up and bringing her to Bucky, who set her down on his lap.

“Becca, sweetie, Aunt Evie has to poke your arm, okay?” I told her as she looked at me with interest. “You just sit still on Daddy’s lap so Aunt Evie can do her job.” I checked her left arm first, looking for a good vein before checking her right.

Bingo.

I grabbed a pad and swiped it over the vein, cleaning the area. I dried it off with a cotton ball, looking up at Alice to make sure she was still good with me doing this. She nodded, to which I smiled.

Here comes the fun part.

I grabbed the needle, making sure the tube was in place and the vacutainer was connected properly, before bringing it to my niece’s arm. “Little stick sweetheart,” I warned as I carefully pierced her skin, causing her to fidget and cry. I glanced at Alice, who was slowly squeezing Steve’s arm as Becca fussed. “Daddy, you need to hold her arm still, or the needle could hurt her,” I instructed Bucky. He secured her arms, which upset her even more. Her little heart was racing, which helped pump the blood quicker and fill the tubes faster. Finally, all the tubes for her were filled, so I placed a cotton ball over the injection site before slowly easing the needle out and putting it in the sharps container. I grabbed the bandaid and put it over the cotton, keeping it in place before opening a sucker and handing it to her, kissing her forehead. “Such a big girl you are, Becca. You’re all done.” She was all smiles as Alice picked her up, cuddling with her. “Mommy, are you okay? Do you need medical attention?” Alice’s face was white, so I steered her to the couch before she fainted. I looked over at Bucky, who had an amused look on his face.

“I half expected her to throw you across the room when Becca started crying,” he confessed. “She did good for her first time.” I quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Who, Alice or Becca?” I asked. He smiled softly, while I giggled and Steve flexed his arm. “Do you need medical attention, Captain?” I teased. He rolled his eyes at me.

“Not in front of them,” he replied, sweeping his arm out to include everyone, sending a wink my way.

“Behave, Captain. Doctor’s orders,” I stated. His eyes dilated and nostrils flared as he took a deep breath. Wow, I had no idea this would turn him on this much. Bucky watched us, fighting the urge to burst out laughing.

“Pretty sure Evie has all of the power now,” he chuckled. “All she has to do from here on out is wear her stethoscope and white jacket and Steve’ll do anything she says.” Alice chuckled weakly from her spot on the couch at this, causing Steve to blush even more.

“Alright, alright. Bucky, can you grab Sarah so we can get her done? She’ll sit still better on my lap than yours,” he snapped, shooing his brother out of the way so he could sit down.

I got my stuff ready again as Bucky handed her to Steve before finding a good vein in her left arm. Feeling so incredibly guilty, I cleaned the site before grabbing the needle and sticking my daughter, who immediately began to cry. Knowing that I was making her cry made my own tears begin to fall. After a few minutes, all of her tubes had been filled, so I gently removed the needle, covering the site with a cotton ball and placing a bandaid over it. I gave her a sucker and some mega hugs before Steve sat down to cuddle her. Alice was feeling better and Becca had gone over to comfort Sarah, so she sat down with Robby, who was a complete surprise, not flinching or crying at all. He also got a sucker after he was all done, prompting Sarah to grab his and give hers in exchange. They love to share everything.

“I’m going to head to the Tower and start the tests. Anyone wanna join me?” I asked, to which Steve, Bucky and Alice all agreed. Once we had the kids ready, we headed out in my Suburban, since it has plenty of room for all of us, including the dogs. After arriving, I headed straight to the lab and began working on the samples.

Robby and Sarah’s were interesting to look at. I could see the serum had penetrated every cell, just like it did with Steve. That was good news, because if the serum was present from the beginning, then there was a good chance that its effects wouldn’t wear off on them. Since it was introduced to me in such small quantities and wasn’t present at the time of my conception, it wasn’t remaining in my system, which was fine with me. I could tell their cells were aging properly, but I wasn’t sure if it was because they were only half-enhanced. I’ll just have to check it from time to time and see.

In the years I’ve known Steve, I’ve gotten to know his genetic background quite well. After all his time in the ice, on top of all the years that have gone by since he was first given the serum, Steve has been curious as to how it would affect him. Since Dr. Erskine never got to pass on his notes on the matter, I’ve kinda become the expert on Steve. Looking back on it though, now I realize why Steve didn’t really mind coming by the lab all the time.

When Bucky (and Alice) came to New York, Steve somehow got him to give a sample of his blood for, as Shuri calls it, ‘research purposes’. I’m not an expert on him, but I know his genetics pretty well. But, when it came time to check Becca’s sample, I hit a snag.

I don’t have any of Alice’s blood, so I have nothing to compare Becca’s to. This was going to be fun.

I went back upstairs to hang out with everyone. I didn’t say anything to the others, as we had all agreed to not say a word in front of anyone. We spent the whole day hanging out with the team, all of the kids completely worn out. After nursing ours to sleep, I told Steve what I had found out.

“Well, that’s good. What about Becca?” he asked. I froze, looking over at him with wide eyes.

“Yeah, about that…” I trailed off. He quirked an eyebrow so I went on. “I’ve only ever gotten Bucky’s blood. I don’t have any from Alice, so I can’t really do any testing on Becca’s.” His eyes got wide as the implication sank in.

“She won’t listen to me. Maybe you can talk to Bucky about getting it from her.” I shook my head at this.

“No, I need to be the one to do it. Ask her for the blood and take it if she says yes. If she doesn’t, I guess I won’t do any testing on Becca.” He nodded at this, realizing that I was right. We went to bed, or rather, he went to bed while I stayed up trying to figure out the best way to ask Alice if I could have some of her blood. Exhausted, I finally fell asleep.

The next few days went by before I could approach the subject. Luckily, Alice and Bucky didn’t ask about the blood tests, which was good for me because I wanted to talk to Alice about it alone.

Alice and I were watching Steve and Bucky play with the kids outside when I finally got the courage to talk to her. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this nervous, so nervous that I was shaking as I walked over and sat down next to her.

“Hey, Alice?” I asked, my nerves making my voice vanish. She looked over, a residual smile from watching our men play with our kids.

“Yeah?” I swallowed thickly before rushing out the words.

“InorderformetorunthetestsIneedyourblood.” She raised an eyebrow and chuckled.

“Come again?” she replied. I squared my shoulders and tried again.

“I need some of your blood so I have something to compare Becca’s to.” Her smile was gone in an instant as my words registered. “If you say no, then I drew her blood for nothing because I just have Bucky’s for comparison but she’s only half him. Having yours would help so much, but like I said, if you don’t say yes, then I can’t run any tests.” I sat and waited for her to make her decision, even though I already knew her answer. There’s no way in God’s green earth, Midgard, whatever, that she would let me-

“Okay.” I felt my jaw hit the floor and end up halfway to China. “You’re right, and it’s not like I’ll be held down like I was in the Lab. And it’ll be you doing everything, so I have nothing to fear. Let’s do it.” I stared at her, waiting for her to laugh and say it was a joke. When she stood up and began to walk toward the house, she looked over her shoulder at me. “Let’s do it now so we can get it over and done with.” Realizing she was serious, I jumped up and followed her.

“Since all of my supplies are up there, wanna do it in my room?” I asked, to which she nodded. We climbed the stairs in silence, steeling ourselves for what was to come. Once inside, I had her sit on the edge of my bed while I grabbed the chair from my vanity and brought it over. She watched with wide eyes as I got everything I needed, holding every item up and showing her that it wasn’t messed with in anyway. When she was satisfied, I brought my supplies over. “I’m going to go wash my hands. You can watch me through the door, okay?” I walked in and stood in a way that she was able to see everything I did. Finished, I came back and sat in the chair, slowly pulling on a pair of gloves. “Alice, I’m going to check your arms now to find a good vein. Is that okay?” She took a few deep breaths, no doubt trying to keep calm.

“Yes, thank you for asking.” I shot her a quick smile before holding my hand out for her arm. I waited for her to give it to me instead of just grabbing it as I figured grabbing it would be a bad move. She gave me her left arm first, letting me check but I was unable to find a good vein. Then she offered her right arm for me to check, and I was finally able to find one.

“Okay Alice. I’m going to clean the site with an alcohol swab now.” I wanted to already be done with this, but I knew that I had to tell her everything I was doing so she wouldn’t freak out. “Alice, now it’s time for me to insert the needle into your arm. Are you still okay with this?” This was it, the big moment.

“Yes, go ahead,” she answered after taking a few more deep breaths. I nodded before reaching over and grabbing the needle and bringing it to her arm. She began to tense up, so I stopped, knowing I had to give her time to adjust. “Just do it Evie.” She was still tense, her face all screwed up as she waited. Seizing my chance, I brought the needle back and carefully pierced her skin with it. Her breath caught in her chest at the feeling before slowly releasing it. I let go of the breath I had been holding as well, now that the hard part was over. One by one the tubes filled up until the last one was done. I put a cotton ball over the site before pulling the needle out, grabbing a bandaid to put over top to keep it in place. I disposed of the needle before I took a good look at Alice. Her face was still pale but the color slowly returning and her breathing was still heavy. I grabbed her wrist to check her pulse, glad it was returning to normal.

“If you want, you can lay back on the bed until you get your bearings back,” I offered. She slumped back at once as her body continued to calm down, and after a few minutes, she sat back up, looking like her old self. “So, how do you feel?” I asked, checking her pulse again. She smiled softly, taking one last deep breath before answering.

“Ya know, out of all the times I was tested, that was the least...objectionable experience.” She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it. “While I’m not keen on doing that again any time soon, as long as you were the one doing it, it wouldn’t bother me.” I felt so happy knowing that I was able to do this for her. I gave her a huge hug before helping her up, in case she was still woozy. When she was able to walk down the stairs without fainting, I knew she was alright. As soon as we got outside, she all but ran to Bucky and Becca, whispering in my brother’s ear and the three of them went to their apartment. I walked over to Steve, who looked puzzled.

“Why’d they leave?” he asked. I kissed him before smiling.

“I just drew Alice’s blood. She’s just wanting some snuggles I’m sure,” I answered. He grinned back at me.

“I’m impressed, and all without any bloodshed. Well, from you,” he added, as he realized what he had said. I chuckled at him.

“Wanna go to the Tower with me so I can run the tests? Figured they’d want some alone time and I’m sure Bruce won’t mind seeing the twins again so soon.” He nodded so we took the kids inside to get them ready before we headed out, leaving a note on the counter in case Bucky or Alice happened to come over looking for us. Once we got to the Tower, Steve took the twins upstairs and I went straight to the lab.

Looking at Alice’s blood under the microscope was amazing.

Her cells were normal, but there was this faint bluish glow to the entire sample, which was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my years of study.

I came to realize that this must be the Magic that made her a Slayer. Getting deeper and deeper into things, there wasn’t much else that made her so different from me. I could see that she had similar traits that Steve, Bucky, and the kids had like the accelerated healing and increased strength, but apart from that and the Magic, we were the same.

Now that I had something to go off of, I was able to run tests on Becca’s blood. There was no glow to hers, but unzipping her genes was amazing. Whereas Steve’s genes mostly overrode mine in Sarah and Robby, Alice and Bucky’s genes had combined so well for Becca it was honestly like looking at a complementary set. Not that Steve and I weren’t compatible, but Alice and Bucky were truly made for each other. I also noticed that Becca’s cells did age normally, but I couldn’t be sure if they would suddenly stop or slow down like Alice’s did when she was Called. Hopefully, Alice won’t mind me checking every few years, like I would do with the twins.

Finished with the tests, I returned to my family so I could hang out with Bruce. He took ‘Papaw Boo’ detail very seriously. He doted on all three kids, which surprised some people (cough Alice cough). I could see where she was concerned though. Becca wasn’t related to Bruce in anyway, so why would he treat her like another granddaughter?

It was because she was.

We were all family, from Thor, our hipster cousin down to Peter, the little brother we were fiercely protective of. Over the years, our ‘family’ has grown, starting with Tony, Nat, Clint, Bruce, Thor and Steve, and expanding to include myself, Pepper, Rhodey, Laura and the kids, Coulson, Maria, Nick, and Jane. Then, Wanda (and briefly Pietro), Sam, Vision, Scott and Cassie, Peter and May, Bucky and Alice joined. With the addition of Bucky and Alice came T’Challa, Gail, Kerry, Shuri, Simon and Maggie, and just when we couldn’t think our amazing family couldn’t get any bigger or better, Becca, Robby, Sarah and T'Zari came into the world, proving that life finds a way to give you everything you ever wanted.

One day, some time after I had run all the tests, Simon and Maggie arrived in Wakanda to check on the status of Kerry and a retired Slayer. Simon called to see if they could stay with us for a few days, as their visit had been spur of the moment.

“Hey Si. Of course you guys can stay here,” I answered. “That room has unofficially been dubbed yours, especially since neither of the kids will ever move into that room after you two defiled it.” His subsequent snort made me giggle, but what he said after had me rolling.

“You defiled it first. We’re just adding a bit of flavour to it.” I cringed as I started laughing.

“Alright, but it better not look like a Jackson Pollock painting the next time I take a black light in there,” I warned with a final chuckle. “SO, how are things over there? The remaining Slayers doing alright?” I wish I could visit over there, but Steve doesn’t want to chance it in case any vampires happen to attack.

“Eh, they’re doing okay. Ever since this ‘ole thing with Gail and Alice ‘aving kids, Slayers’ve been cropping up pregnant more and more. There’s these two girls, Tina and Amy, that’ve been friends since they were able to walk. Tina is a Slayer and just gave birth to a baby boy about a month ago, and now Amy is pregnant. It was the weirdest thing, ‘cause Tina ‘ad no inkling of wanting a family until one day Amy pushed her out of the way of a oncoming car. Not too long after that, Tina turned up pregnant. That ticked Amy off, ‘cause she and her boyfriend wanted kids but she wasn’t getting pregnant.” Simon stopped to take a breath and I was able to interrupt him.

“Wow. That sounds like how it was for me and Alice. Steve and I were trying like hell to have a baby, but we just couldn’t. Nothing wrong with either of us, but it was like as soon as Becca was born, a few weeks later BOOM.” I sighed. “Hell, even to this day we still don’t know why it took so long for me to get pregnant.” He was so quiet on the other end, I thought the call had dropped. “Simon?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m ‘ere. I was just thinking about Maggie.” I rolled my eyes.

“God you’re such a sap. And people used to be afraid of you? Gimme a break,” I teased.

“No, not like that. Maggie and I don’t exactly use much in the way of protection, but she ‘asn’t ended up pregnant yet. Not that we’re trying, but it still ‘asn’t ‘appened,” he explained solemnly. “I was just wondering as to why.” Well, now that he’s brought it up, I’m wondering too.

“Really? Like, there’s no protection at all, but it’s still not taking?” I was curious now.

“Yeah. I mean, kids might be in the cards for us someday, but ‘onestly, with as much as we go at it and the minimal precautions we take, you’d think we’d would‘ve ‘ad one by now.” It was my turn to be silent.

That’s exactly how it was with me and Steve. Once I came off the birth control, we went at it like bunnies, but it wasn’t until Becca was born that I finally got pregnant.

“Evie? You still there?” Simon called through the phone. I brought it back to my ear, not realizing I had dropped my hand.

“Yeah Si, I am. This Tina and Amy, they’re best friends, borderline sisters? Are both of them Slayers, or just Tina?” The wheels in my head were turning with a theory, but I had to gather more data before I wanted to say anything.

“Uh, yeah. Been best friends since forever. Grew up together and do everything together, until Tina was Called. Amy is a regular, like you and Maggie. Why?” My heart was starting to race with the direction my thoughts were going.

“And Tina didn’t get pregnant until Amy pushed her out of the way of that oncoming car, right?”

“Right. Evie, what’s going on?” Simon sounded impatient, but my brain could only go so fast.

“Simon, the Magic only affects women, right? There’s no way it could latch onto men?” He paused for a moment, clearly not expecting me to ask that.

“No. Never in the history of Slayers ‘as a man been Called. It’s only ever been women.” That kinda explains it…

“Did Gail happen to mention anything...out of the ordinary happening before she got pregnant with T'Zari? Like something that maybe Queen Ramonda or Princess Shuri might have done for her?” He sputtered on the other end, trying to figure out where I was going with this.

“Well, fuck I don’t know Evie!” he snapped. “I do remember Gail saying how Shuri took some kind of oath to protect her like the Dora Milaje, now that I think about it,” he added after a brief moment.

“Shuri, an ordinary woman, like me and Maggie,” I murmured. “Speaking of, has Maggie gotten close to anyone in particular over there?” I could almost see his face contorted in thought.

“Yeah. She and Kerry are like sisters. Can’t ‘ave one without the other,” he said fondly.

Just like me and Alice.

Just like Gail and Shuri.

Just like Tina and Amy.

“Si, when will you and Maggie be here?” I choked out, my theory finally having substance in my head.

“Uh, we’ll be there tomorrow morning. Why?” I could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

“Because I got something that I wanna run by you and Alice. See you tomorrow.”

“Uh, okay. Bye.” He hung up, worry evident in his tone. I took a few deep breaths to calm down as the implications of what I was thinking sank in.

The rest of the day I spent in my head. I did everything on autopilot and it wasn’t until dinner that Steve and Bucky ganged up on me to pull me from my thoughts.

“Evie, what the hell is wrong with you?” Steve called from my left. I blinked as I turned to him.

“Nothing. Why?” He and Bucky rolled their eyes at me.

“Yeah, I don’t believe that for a second. What’s eating you, sis?” Bucky retorted. I smiled, shaking my head.

“I talked to Simon earlier. He and Maggie will be here in the morning. They decided to make a spur of the moment trip over to check on the retired Slayer they sent to Wakanda,” I stated. The three of them looked at me in surprise.

“And, you’re just now telling us?” Steve cut in, eyebrows raised. I rolled my eyes at my loving husband.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I had to get permission for friends to come over, Dad,” I sassed. “Daddy, can a couple of my friends come over and stay for a few days? It’s not like we don’t have the room,” I asked in a too sweet baby voice, batting my eyes for effect. He clenched his jaw as Bucky and Alice began to laugh.

“I don’t care, just don’t call me daddy ever again.” He shuddered, causing Bucky to laugh even more.

After dinner, I was on my computer when I got a wild thought, and pulled up what I needed.

Holy. Fuck. I have to show this to them tomorrow.

The next morning, Simon barged in like he owned the place, Maggie trailing behind him.

“Alright Evie. What was with the Spanish Inquisition yesterday?” he snapped as they walked into the living room. Steve looked at him in surprise, ready to throw down as Simon normally didn’t have such an attitude with me.

“‘Cause no one expects it,” I replied, smirking. Simon huffed and crossed his arms as Maggie and Alice cracked up, leaving Bucky and Steve looking confused. “Relax, Si. I was waiting on you two to get here before explaining everything.” The other four turned to me, Steve, Bucky, and Alice finally understanding my preoccupation since yesterday. “Come on. Let’s go in the kitchen and talk while the kids play in the living room.” We all walked in, the five sitting at the table while I stood at the counter, opening my laptop.

“Evie, are you keeping shit from us again?” Alice snapped and I pulled up the blood results I had looked at last night.

“No. I literally thought all of this up yesterday,” I answered. “Okay, so when Simon called yesterday, we got to talking about this and that and he told me about how now that you and Gail have had kids, Slayers are coming up pregnant more and more. He told me about this one, Tina and her best friend Amy. The two of them have known each other since infancy, growing up and doing everything together, until Tina got Called and Amy didn’t. Simon then went on to tell me that one day Amy pushed Tina out of the path of an oncoming car, saving her. Shortly after that, Tina ended up pregnant.” I stopped to catch my breath before going on.

“That wouldn’t be an issue, but Amy and her boyfriend were desperately trying to have their own baby. They tried and tried for months, but it never took. Within a month, however, of Tina having her baby, Amy wound up pregnant. Sound familiar?” Alice, Bucky and Steve all looked at each other, because we had all lived that same scenario. “Some time before Gail got pregnant with T’Zari, Shuri took some kind of oath like the Dora Milaje to protect Gail. After the oath was made, BOOM, Gail is pregnant. Simon, what did you tell me about you and Maggie yesterday?” I directed at the gruff looking man. Understanding washed over his face as our conversation came back to him.

“That Maggie and I barely use any kind of protection, but she ‘asn’t gotten pregnant in the three years we’ve been together.” I nodded as the other three gasped, looking to Maggie for confirmation.

“And are you close to anyone in particular, Maggie? Someone that you would, oh I don’t know, protect with your dying breath?” I asked the brunette. She nodded.

“Kerry. She’s the sister I never had. I have her back, and I know without a doubt she has mine.” I smiled, because that’s how it is with me and Alice.

“The Slayer to a Regular. Like Tina and Amy, Gail and Shuri. Like me and you,” I spoke directly to Alice now. “The Magic is jumping. It’s jumping from a Slayer to a regular woman, one that has proven that she would do anything to protect the Slayer, such as pushing them out from in front of a moving car, taking a warrior’s oath, always having their back, or...putting a tracker on the Slayer so they’re always accounted for and therefore always safe.” Alice’s eyes grew big as the weight of what I was saying sank in.

“That’s…..” she trailed off, not sure what to say.

“Impossible? Unheard of? Crazy? I’m gonna go with option D: all of the above. If you want more proof, here. Take a look,” I said, turning the laptop towards them. When I was met with silence, I explained what they were seeing. “The sample on the right is the one I took from Alice a few weeks ago. The blue glow that you see? That’s the Magic. Under the proper magnification and filter, you can actually see it.” Alice and Simon jumped up and crowded the screen.

“Bloody hell that’s amazing” she wondered out loud. Simon nodded in agreement before pointing to the other sample.

“Who’s is that, then?” I smiled sweetly, knowing I was about to drop a bomb on them.

“That’s mine. Taken after we returned from our honeymoon and before Becca was born. Proof that I’m right.” I heard the table crack before Steve stood with a chunk in his hand.

“You mean to tell me, that all of the heartache and pain you went through, all the tears that you shed over not being able to get pregnant, were because Alice’s Magic had latched onto you and kept me from knocking you up?” he reasoned slowly. When I nodded, his jaw clenched, and I knew that he wasn’t happy with my discovery.

“Steve, come on,” Bucky said calmly, noting how angry his brother was getting. “It’s not like we knew this would happen.” Steve glared at him, nostrils flaring.

“But Evie didn’t ask for this! You have no idea how many nights she spent crying herself to sleep over not being able to give me a child or how much she beat herself up over not getting pregnant month after month. It killed her watching Alice parade around with the baby that you guys never even wanted! You don’t realize how hard it was to watch her go through all of this, and to find out that it was because of Alice, who didn’t protect Evie at all while she was pregnant!” Bucky stood now, looking equally angry with Steve. Alice and I jumped between them, hoping to keep it from coming to blows.

“Take it easy,” I warned Steve, placing my hands on his chest. He looked down at me, those baby blues peering into my soul.

“Baby, don’t you remember all the pain and suffering you went though because of this?” he asked, placing his hands on my shoulders. I nodded.

“Well yeah, of course I do, but Alice went through her own pain and suffering. It’s only fair that I share the load.” He glared down at me, clearly upset that I wasn’t on his side. “Besides, we were rewarded generously. We have two kids instead of just one!” I was trying to help him see the bright side of things, but then Bucky had to open his mouth.

“You think Alice wouldn’t have helped if she could, Steve? The woman who put her life on the line for strangers?” he snapped, stepping closer.

“Evie, I didn’t know! I would never have stopped you from having kids if I had known!” she pleaded with me over her shoulder, as we didn’t want to take our eyes off our men.

“Allie, you came to terms that I could protect you when I put that tracker on you, huh?” I asked over my shoulder. When I heard her murmur ‘yes’, I laughed humorlessly. “I fucked myself over with that stupid thing. When you fully understood that I would risk life and limb to protect you, the Magic sensed that and jumped to me, taking my ability to get pregnant and gave it to you. Once you had Becca, I was able to get pregnant, but the universe apparently took pity on me and doubled my chances, which is how we ended up with twins.” It was startling to come to terms that I had done all this, albeit unknowingly. Alice scoffed.

“Evie, c’mon. Neither of us could’ve known and-” she was cut off by, guess who? Bucky.

“Well, y’shoulda never put a damn tracker on her, should ya?!” he chastised, and I could tell he had his hands on his hips.

“DON’T TALK TO EVIE LIKE THAT!” Steve bellowed suddenly, causing Alice and I to jump.

“FUCK YOU!” came Bucky’s reply. I put my hand over Steve’s mouth, as I could tell he was about to go off on his best friend.

“Buck, last I checked, you were okay with it, so hush,” I called over my shoulder before glaring up at my husband. “Steve, he’s family. He’s got more right to talk to me like that then anyone, even you.” Alice giggled before I spoke to her. “I’m not blaming you Alice. I’m just reaching an understanding that I did it to myself.” She and I let our hands drop but stayed between Bucky and Steve. I heard her mumble something about ‘your husband’ which made Steve take a few more steps forward, pushing me up against Alice.

“Alice, I’m warning you-” he began before I cut him off.

“And what are you gonna do, ‘cause you’ll have to go through me to do it!” I snapped, pushing his chest with both hands.

“He won’t have to go through you, Evie. I’ll knock Steve on his ass if he comes for Alice,” Bucky growled from behind me. I bowed my head. Can’t Bucky just stop goading Steve for a bit?

“Firstly, Steve? Bite me. Secondly-” Alice started.

“Bite you? Like Ivar did?” Steve spat at her. I felt Alice freeze at my back, and I knew that Bucky was frozen too. My right hand came up and connected with his left cheek, leaving a red handprint there. I was shaking I was so mad.

“Steven Grant Rogers, how dare you!” I snarled at him as he held his face. He blinked rapidly for a few moments before his vision cleared. “Apologize to her now!”

“I’m gonna go,” Alice murmured before leaving, no doubt heading for their apartment. I was suddenly aware that I was the only thing keeping two super soldiers from beating the hell out of each other. Steve was still reeling from my slap so I turned to Bucky, who clearly had murder in his eyes.

“Bucky, please don’t. He didn’t mean it. He said it out of anger,” I stammered, trying to keep them apart. Bucky was slowly striding forward, so I put my hands on his chest, which was about as effective as trying to stop a train with my bare hands. I kept pace with him until my back was up against Steve’s chest, sandwiching me between a rock and a hard place. When neither of them said anything, I tried a new tactic. “Uncle James, please don’t.” Bucky blinked before looking down at me in surprise. I’ve never called him that, but apparently it worked as he started to back up.

“Fine. I’ll go. Evie, you’ve got Becca right?” he asked quietly, still glaring at Steve.

“Yes,” I answered, nodding. “Absolutely. I’m sure Simon and Maggie won’t mind watching her either,” I added after seeing the two aforementioned were no longer in the kitchen. Probably good that Simon didn’t hear what Steve said, ‘cause I don’t think I could fight off Simon and Bucky at the same time. Bucky stomped out of the kitchen after Alice as I turned to Steve. “Give them both a chance to calm down before you go fix this. You will not be sleeping in our room until you do, so you best figure out how you’re gonna do it or find the comfiest couch we have.” I stormed out, leaving him there as I entered the living room, seeing the kids playing together. Simon and Maggie both shot me a quizzical look before I shook my head. “Later, when the kids are asleep.” They nodded before we all joined the kids in their little games.

Steve’s POV

I have fucked up royally.

My wife has kicked me out of our room.

My best friend/brother wants to kick my ass.

My sister hates my guts.

All because I let my anger get the better of me.

I stood in the kitchen, still reeling over the fact that I had actually said that to Alice. It was a truly despicable thing to say, and even though I was madder than hell, that was still no reason to say that to her. To top it all off, Evie slapped me! I know I’ve really messed up when she feels the need to get physical on someone else’s behalf. I walked to the doorway of the living room and peeked around the wall. Simon, Maggie, and Evie were playing with all three kids, not paying attention to anything else.

Hanging my head, I turned and walked through the house before going down the walkway that connected the main house to the garage. I looked up at Bucky and Alice’s place, guilt flooding my whole body. I sighed before getting in my truck and driving away. I sent Evie a text that I was going for a drive to clear my head and to figure out how to apologize. I didn’t get an answer, but I knew she had seen it so she knew where I was.

I headed to the city, but decided against going to see the Team. Tony said that he was going to be moving them to the Compound, but since it was out in our direction, I didn’t feel like doubling back. I drove around for what felt like days, but it was only a few hours. I remembered that Alice was out of tea, so I stopped and bought her more along with her favorite chocolate. I grabbed flowers for her as well, before heading back home. Once I parked in the garage, I sat there, hoping that I was able to fix this.

I walked up the stairs to their apartment door, taking a deep breath before knocking. A few minutes passed before Bucky opened the door, his patented Winter Soldier glare in place.

“What the FUCK are you doing here?” he snarled. I held up the stuff I had bought to which he shrugged. “What the hell is that?”

“I got Alice more tea, some chocolate and flowers. I’m here to apologize because I need to fix this,” I explained. “Also, Evie has kicked me out of our room until I do, and I don’t want to sleep on any couches.” He smirked but still wouldn’t let me pass.

“She’s a Barnes alright. Our temper is legendary.” His smile fell as he went back to glaring. “That was a fucked up thing to say to her, Rogers.” Last name? Ouch.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I was just angry and it came o-” I tried to apologize before he cut me off.

“No. I don’t wanna hear your sob story. The mother of my child is distraught because of something you said, and you honestly think bringing her food and flowers is gonna magically fix everything? No. I don’t think so.” And with that, he shoved me.

I set the tea, chocolate and flowers down before pushing him back slightly. He shoved me back harder, to which I responded in kind by openly shoving him through the door into their living room. We started pushing and shoving each other more and more, each time getting meaner and meaner. I couldn’t see an end to our fight until Alice stormed in, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen her and yanked us apart, sending us falling back on our asses.

“Bucky, you’re better than this, getting into a shoving match, and stupid Captains of America shouldn’t be fighting like a little bitch,” she snapped. We both stood, heads bowed.

“Sorry, Alice,” we both apologized before I grabbed the stuff I had bought and held it out to her.

“I come bearing tea, chocolate and flowers. All I ask is that you give me a chance to explain myself and let me apologize. Hell, I’ll even let you hit me as much and as hard as you want,” I explained quickly. She snorted indignantly.

“Why?! So Evie can bitch slap me too because you came back with a broken jaw?!” She had me there.

“True, but the offer still stands.” She looked around for a moment before sighing.

“Bucky, could you give me and Steve some space to talk?” she asked. Bucky took a deep breath in before walking to their bedroom, passing by to press a kiss to her lips.

“Buck, if you’re still pissed after we’re done talking, we can go out back and I’ll let you kick my ass,” I offered as an olive branch. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“You’ll let me? Motherfucker I will, whether you like it or not,” he shot back, taking a step toward me. Alice jumped between us again to keep us apart.

“Bucky, come on. Give us a minute to talk.” He huffed before storming to the room.

“I’ll come back if you need me,” he promised before slamming the door. Alice rounded on me then, and suddenly I was wishing I was still fighting with Bucky. “You are such an asshole!” She screeched, poking my chest with her finger. “Why would you even say something like that?” Her face was all blotchy and her eyes were red, obviously from crying for most of the day.

God I’m such a jackass.

“Alice, I am so sorry. I know nothing I do will ever take that back, but I will send the rest of eternity trying to earn your trust back.” She raised both eyebrows at me, surprised.

“Eternity, huh? You’re awfully optimistic that it’ll only take that long.” I am in such deep shit.

“Whatever it takes, I’ll do it,” I swore. She scoffed, clearly not believing me. “You don’t think I’m serious? Alice, I pined after Evie for years! Waiting for the right time to strike so I could finally be with her. Then you came into the picture and fixed it so I could, so I owe you.” Her face was turned up in such a sneer, it was truly remarkable how scary she could be when she wanted.

”Is that so? Then what the fuck is your problem?!” I hung my head in shame. “What possessed you to say something so vile and cruel to me? It’s not like I don’t still dream about him.” Fuck. I didn’t think she still had nightmares.

“Alice, I’m sorry. You know I would never mean it.” She shot me a look that would have killed me before I was born.

“Then why did you say it?!” she yelled, throwing her hands in the air.

“I was just so angry about all the suffering that Evie went through, I wasn’t thinking straight.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I know it doesn’t excuse what I said, but can you find it in your heart to forgive me?” She looked so upset, and I knew I was to blame.

“Possibly with time I could come to think about forgiving you, but as of right now, I can’t. That was the lowest blow anyone could’ve dealt me, and it came from my own brother no less.” I nodded, knowing that this was better than nothing. “Do you honestly think that Bucky and I didn’t want Becca at all?” she hissed at me.

“No, Alice. Of course not. I didn’t mean that you guys didn’t want her at all. I meant that you two had come to terms that you couldn’t have kids, or so you thought, so it wasn’t as devastating when you ‘couldn’t’ get pregnant.” I started to tear up as I remembered the anguish that Evie went through all those months. “Evie was in so much pain, negative test after negative test. She got it in her head that I deserved a better wife, someone who could actually give me children. She was sneaking out of our bed and sleeping in what’s now Simon and Maggie’s room. Night after night she did this, because she didn’t feel that she was worthy enough to share a bed with me anymore.” I was full on crying now, but all she did was glare at me. “Then there you were, going on and on about how happy you were and what a miracle it was, and Evie kept it to herself how bad it hurt. You know how much it hurts you to see Bucky in pain?” When she nodded I went on. “That’s how it was watching Evie cry herself to sleep every night over something we didn’t even ask for.” I stopped to catch my breath and to try and stop crying.

“Steve, I am truly sorry about that, but Evie and I already went over this. It’s not fair for you to keep bringing it up and using it against me. Evie has forgiven me and I her.” She walked over and shoved my shoulder hard, and I tensed, waiting for more, but it never came. Instead, she gave me a tentative hug, which I gladly returned. I saw the bedroom door open as Bucky stuck his head through, gauging the situation. He walked out, approaching slowly and stopping once he reached us.

“Everything okay?” he asked quietly.

“I’d say possibly, but I’m not the one who got their feelings hurt by me,” I answered as I looked down at my sister, unsure of where we stood. She smiled softly before nodding.

“I’m not forgiving him right now, but I could eventually see myself thinking about it,” she replied. She grabbed the tea, chocolate and flowers from where I had dropped them and carried them to the kitchen. “You got me the proper kind of tea and my favorite chocolates. Not a bad way to start on the road to forgiveness, Steve.” I smiled, happy to know that I was on the right track. My reply was lost however as the door swung open to reveal Simon, who stalked in and decked me. I stumbled back as his punch registered, and I noticed Maggie and Evie standing at the doorway, both looking worried. Simon then dove at me, tackling me to the ground as he began to punch every bit of me he could reach.

Evie must have told him what I said to Alice. Shit.

I knew that I deserved having the crap beat outta me, so I let him get all his anger out. He finally stopped, his chest heaving. I stood slowly, noting the soreness all over. Luckily he’s not as strong as Alice or Bucky, so the injuries I had would heal within a day or two.

“Where the fuck do you get off saying anything like that to her?!” he bellowed.

“Si, relax,” Alice replied, placing her hand on his arm. “He’s been over here apologizing to me for it, and he’s going to be apologizing for the rest of his life.” I nodded in agreement as Evie walked over to inspect me.

“Apart from the broken nose, you’re okay,” she assessed. “Travers, is that really the best you could do? Even Bucky was able to put him in the hospital.” He snorted before going off.

“Yeah, well I don’t have a fucking metal arm and I’m not super like them! So yes, that is the best I can do!” Evie smirked at him before turning to Alice.

“Honestly, I don’t think apologizing for the rest of his life...is enough. Whoop his ass, girl. He totally deserves it,” she taunted. Alice laughed before shaking her head.

“Nah, it’s okay. It’s not like he hit me at all. Besides, you, Simon and Bucky got him for me.” Evie smiled as Alice looked around. “Where are the kids?”

“Oh, they’re asleep. We put on a movie and the three of them were cuddled up together and just zonked out all at once. Figured it’d be better than bringing them over here and possibly witnessing their dad/uncle getting the hell beat out of him by their other uncle.” We all nodded in agreement, as we all had agreed to not fight or yell in front of the kids. “Come on. Dinner should be done here soon.”

We all trickled out of the apartment, Simon and Maggie holding hands in front, Evie and Alice linked arms behind them, followed by me and then Bucky. He grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face him.

“I’m still mad at you, but I’m glad you apologized. That was a pretty shitty thing to say to her, and it’s gonna leave a mark on her,” he scolded.

“I know Buck. Like I said, I’m gonna spend eternity trying to make it right between me and her.” We paused for a moment before I thought of something else to say. “Maybe tomorrow morning you can kick my ass when we go on our run.” He smirked widely before nodding as we walked back to the kitchen for dinner.

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#cant help falling in love #impact #jrubalcaba #suz123 #evie x steve #alice x bucky #maggie x simon #sarah and robby rogers #becca barnes

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what-the-hekate · 5 years

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The Becoming

There’s a lot I want to do with this blog, and I’m still putting it together in my head. I do know that I want to use it as a space to share my thoughts on witchcraft and related subjects, some of it centered around research into particular topics, and some of it just what I’ve been thinking about.

Right now, I have a lot of stray thoughts that aren’t ready to be developed into posts of their own. As I sat down to type some of them out and see where they went, I ended up running pretty far with a piece about my personal journey into witchcraft. And that seems as good a place as any to start.

I suppose I’ve always been attracted to the strange and supernatural, but I didn’t think of myself a witch (or even consider it) until I was a teenager. This was during the teen witch craze of the 1990s, when the movie The Craft and the TV series Charmed reintroduced the idea of witchcraft as something appealing and empowering to young women. I don’t remember which of my friends first got the idea to dabble in witchcraft; maybe it was me, maybe not. I do remember that someone got hold of a copy of a Silver RavenWolf book, probably Teen Witch, and that we had to pass it around because the girl who actually owned it was afraid her parents would find it in her room.

Looking back, I have mixed feelings about those books. I feel lucky that I was the right age at the right time to have that option offered to me—that I was a teenage girl in the 90s listening to Tori Amos and Liz Phair and Ani DiFranco and Paula Cole and Alanis Morissette, and that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on TV, and that pop culture in general was telling me I had power at the point in my life when I could’ve felt the most powerless.

Which Witch? A wordgame

At the same time, I wish there had been a greater variety of voices to hear about witchcraft from. Silver RavenWolf may have been a driving force behind a generation’s interest in witchcraft and Wicca, but her books were also full of bad information and skewed heavily towards one version of witchcraft. She doesn’t clearly distinguish between “witch” and “Wiccan”, and I think the passage in To Ride a Silver Broomstick about her associations with those two words explains why, but I also think it’s important to be clear that they aren’t wholly interchangeable. You can be a witch and not be a Wiccan; her books are about how to be a Wiccan. That’s what I tried to be as a teenager, and ultimately it’s why I drifted away from witchcraft in general over the next few years.

(Let me go ahead and say: Wicca is right for some people, and that’s fine. It’s not right for me.)

Some of my aversion to the Wiccan version of being a witch is instinctual and was pinged early on. when I was reading those Silver RavenWolf books. For me, being a witch was about female empowerment and independence, so I was confused when I got to the bit about worshiping a dual deity, the Goddess and the God. I never gelled with the Horned God on any level. It wasn’t to do with the similarity to the Christian devil; I wasn’t raised religious and I had no particularly strong feelings about anything in the Christian universe. I just didn’t feel at all compelled to adopt a central deity (or two) in general, and I really wasn’t interested in a male one.

Nor did I really care for the heterosexual duality of the Goddess/God, and all the binary sexual symbolism of things like the Great Rite and chalices and athames. At the time, I wasn’t consciously aware that I was queer (probably because it just wasn’t a possibility that I was exposed to very much). But I reacted to this whole Goddess/God thing turning up in my magical female empowerment pretty much the same way I reacted to a romance subplot suddenly taking center stage in a book I was enjoying. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, but I couldn’t help being annoyed that it was distracting from the stuff I was really there for.

Honestly, what probably played the biggest overt role in my move away from Wicca was simply that it was a religion. I’m just not cut out for religions. I find them interesting, and there are pieces of them that work for me sometimes, but on the whole it’s just not something that’s ever going to be a part of my life. Wicca is a very demanding religion. It’s highly ritualized, from the major holidays (the eight sabbats, plus the 12-13 esbats) down to the daily practices of spellwork. There is just a lot to do, and a lot of specificity about when and how to do it. I have enough trouble disciplining myself to do the other things I’m obligated to do in my life, like work and school and errands and keeping my house reasonably tidy and eating a vegetable on a regular basis. I was way worse at this at 14 or 15 years old. I got tired of rituals fast.

So TL;DR, I did not end up being a Wiccan. And because I’d gotten the idea that, in real life, witch = Wiccan, I didn’t think of myself as a witch anymore, either. If I have any lasting bitterness toward that segment of my path, that’s it. The identity of “witch” was an empowering, beautiful thing that I wish I’d been able to keep in my life even after my dalliance with Wicca was over. There were definitely times I could’ve used it.

In the years after that, I kept on being a little spooky and magical and all the things I’d been that had drawn me to witchcraft in the first place, just without a central identity to pin it all to. It’s interesting how things drift in and out of focus and concreteness depending on whether they have a name. The witch fad gave way to something else the way fads do, Buffy and Charmed eventually ended, and I didn’t think much about witches again until recently.

There’s a lot to delve into about why witchcraft has its resurgences when it has them; probably there are already a lot of essays on the subject. But generally, I think you tend to find women thinking witchy thoughts at times when they’re particularly under threat.

Much of my early/middle-early adult life coincided with the Obama administration. I’d only become really aware of politics toward the end of the Bush era. When 9/11 happened, I was in the middle of an unrelated nervous breakdown and just did not have the spoons to think critically about political issues; I was also 16 years old. I didn’t realize how fucked up things like the PATRIOT Act were until years down the line. I was in the dark in more ways than one, dealing with undiagnosed depression and anxiety and having to claw my way up out of its depths without even medication to give me a boost.

A Musical Interlude: What does this have to do with witchcraft...?

Two things kept me just this side of insane when I was in the depths: writing and listening to music. Of the latter, I still had the female artists who’d taught me how to be a woman, thank fucking god for them. And as I was trying to find a foothold in the long slow climb out of my depressive pit, I’d come across a Finnish band called HIM; for whatever reason, their particular brand of gothy romantic macabre intellectual music was exactly what my soul resonated with at that moment. I realized that I could vibe with men sometimes, provided they were the type of men who wrote poetry and wore eyeliner and a lot of black. This is probably how I ended up listening to Nine Inch Nails.

I was aware of NIN, as anyone who experienced the 90s was; even if that wasn’t your particular scene, you heard “Closer”. A lot of women around my age credit David Bowie in Labyrinth for their early confusing sexuality-related experience; mine was probably the “Closer” video. I think this explains a lot about me. But besides that, I hadn’t paid much attention to NIN until I ran into them again in 2007 or so, when they were doing this crazy metafictional thing called Year Zero around their latest album. I don’t remember exactly how I found it; maybe via Lost, which had its own thing like that and led me to the niche narrative medium of alternate reality games. Anyway, it was highly political, which was not what I remembered NIN being about, and as I was listening through the band’s back catalog and reading a bazillion interviews with brooding, sarcastic, witty, thoughtful Trent Reznor (look, I’m not completely gay), I got sucked into this thing.

I don’t remember whether I read this while I was diving into Year Zero or after, but in some interview or other I found out that Trent had just come out of his own darkness. He’d struggled with drugs and depression and nearly died, and when he finally got his shit together, he realized how much he’d been oblivious to, in his own life and in the world around him. Year Zero was political because he’d woken up, and it woke me up.

It’s interesting to me now to think that female music and male music acted like an alternating current in my life, one then the other driving me forward, yet I got absolutely zilch out of the hetero-duality of Wicca. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s also interesting that the avatars of that dynamic in my life were Tori Amos and Trent Reznor, since they had an important impact on each others’ lives too (that I didn’t know about till much later). There’s a bit in Tori’s book Piece By Piece where she talks about reconciling with the angry masculine energies she was drawn to at points in her life (I can’t remember if she specifically mentions Trent in that part, but I assume it’s at least somewhat about him), and her realization that she had a need to tap into energy like that sometimes. If anyone is the embodiment of feminine power to me it’s Tori, and reading her words about needing to channel masculine rage did and does resonate with me about the time in my life when male artists’ energies were what I needed to survive and evolve.

So anyway, back on the path: my dark times led me to Nine Inch Nails which, while the music was also helping me heal my soul, also focused my brain on the world I’d been ignoring. I became aware of, and pissed off about, politics in no time flat. I devoured Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. I watched C-SPAN of my own volition. In short, I realized that the system is fucked up. I realized that the things happening in America were literally insane, and I knew insanity. I learned the word “patriarchy”, but I’d known the thing it named for a long, long time. This was also the point when I realized I’d exhausted my lifetime stores of patience for bullshit and being fucked with; they have not, to this day, been replenished.

And then, like a lot of people, I thought the Obama years meant everything was okay forever. I mean, god, I sure felt like I deserved a break. There were ups and downs even then, but I really had no idea how fast and how far we could plummet down again until 2016.

Witch 2: The Rewitchening

I don’t believe you can be a woman and be aware of what’s going on in the world and not be angry. As I write this, my home state of Alabama has just passed an amendment (which may be useless; we do have the longest mess of a constitution in the world) aimed at undermining women’s right to an abortion. We have a president who says the most vile things about women on a regular basis, and a new Supreme Court Justice who is a rapist. There are a lot of rapists. There are a lot of men who beat up their wives and girlfriends and then go on to shoot up a school or a nightclub or a shopping mall, and we keep acting surprised, and we keep forcing women to share custody with their abusers and berating them for being abused. Women, everywhere, are under attack.

If there’s a single predominant reason I came back to witchcraft now, and why I think a lot of women are coming to witchcraft now, this is it. We are threatened, and that idea of female empowerment and strength and the potential to be feared by those who would harm us and to be fearless... it is as potent and attractive to us now as it was in the 90s, and the 60s, and probably so many times before.

I am a witch. I don’t belong to a religion, and I don’t feel obligated to be a witch according to anyone’s definition but my own. My witchery is a product of the path I’ve taken to this point, and is highly focused around female empowerment; that said, I recognize that other people’s witchery has a different shape, and different (or no) gender, and is religious or isn’t, and I acknowledge and respect that, too. I have zero interest in telling anyone else how to be a witch, or whether they can be.

I started this blog because I need to express myself, but also because I want to contribute to a diversity of voices about witchcraft that wasn’t available to me as a teenager. I want to put things out there in case someone else needs them. Honestly, I’m writing and gathering all the things that will eventually be here for a hypothetical, imaginary-but-maybe-real young witch who is maybe just a ghost of my teenage past, to tell her the things I wish I could’ve heard, and just to remind her that no one can tell you how to be a witch, and no one should try, and that there are so many different ideas and beliefs and voices and experiences out there for her to learn from, including the ones inside herself.

That’s my origin story.

#op #witchblr #personal

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thesydneyfeminists · 6 years

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Joss Whedon and Vee: It’s Complicated

By: Vee H.

Here’s the thing, I have a confusing relationship with Joss Whedon. If we were “Facebook official” (does anyone still call it that, or have I just revealed my true spiritual age of 105?) our relationship status would be “it’s complicated”. It didn’t used to be like that; as a teenager, I probably would have said my favourite tv show was Buffy The Vampire Slayer, with its spin-off, Angel, in second place. I fell in love with a premise that Whedon certainly did not create (one girl in all the world, blah blah) nor was he the best at executing it. Whether it was the characters he’d created, the actors playing them, the witty scripts and storylines – or a mix of all of these things, I was hooked. I staunchly defended the show, and by proxy, Whedon himself, from any harsh criticisms, and overlooked anything that now, as a 32-year-old, stands out as (and I hate using this word) problematic. I followed him from Buffy; to Angel, Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog, Dollhouse (look, I skipped Firefly for some reason, I’ve tried dipping a toe in but space cowboys aren’t for me, it seems), and that’s not to mention the movies he had a hand in (not an exhaustive list) – The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers and The Avengers Age of Ultron. I was loyal, if Whedon’s name was attached, most likely, I was all in. There was something comforting and familiar about his humour, the way he told his stories – all of them laughably simple but layered to make them more complex. Like Shrek and onions.

So maybe you’re wondering where I took a left turn, jumped off the Joss Whedon Fan Train, as it were. Admittedly, it was a slow process, it wasn’t just a running leap off into the unknown post-Whedon world. A few years after Angel ended, some things circulated in the Buffy and Angel fandoms, rumours of how he treated his favourites, and those who had fallen out of favour with him. One of those people being Charisma Carpenter. In 2009 at a convention, a fan asked her how she felt about Cordelia’s last story line in Angel and how the show changed after her departure. While she didn’t explicitly come out and say the exact reason, she hinted that Whedon had been mad at her for making certain life decisions that would directly impact the vision he had for his show. Rumours have long since abounded that, in short, he punished her for falling pregnant. Obviously, no one but Carpenter and Whedon know the true story and at the time of hearing it, I took it with a grain of salt, but that seedling sat in the back of my mind and began to grow. After all, it explained a lot about the fourth season of Angel, and why the character of Cordelia made a complete 360. It was here that my relationship with Whedon started to sour, I began to question how someone who was so outspoken and publicly proud to be a feminist, could treat a woman that he had worked with for nearly a decade like that.

With that knowledge in mind, it was hard not to view some of the dialogue and plot points in his media a little differently, this is only one small example, but looking back, there is way too much slut shaming going on in Buffy to the point where Faith (my favourite character in the whole series, don’t @ me, I’ll defend her until I die) is seen as a lesser person than everyone else, because other female characters (Willow, Cordelia and Buffy herself) have branded her as a “cleavagey slutbomb”. Sure, ok, she goes and kills a bunch of people but they focus on her being slut much more than a psychopath – and I feel the need to point out that we only actually saw her sleep with one person (Xander) by the time the slut shaming actually started, and not that we should count, but Faith only slept with three people (Xander, Robin, and Riley in Buffy’s body) in the whole course of the show. And she killed four humans. Which means in Joss Whedon’s world, if you’re a woman, having sex is a worse crime than murder. Not exactly a feminist message.

Cut to just last year, when Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, came out with a heartbreakingly honest account of just what went down in their marriage. Details of his infidelity, gaslighting and emotional manipulation came spilling out of her, and sure, you could argue she was an embittered ex-wife, wanting to hit him where it would hurt the most, but it’s interesting to note that Whedon himself has never actually outright denied or refuted these claims. And ok, infidelity does not strip you of the right to call yourself a feminist, but as written by Clementine Ford “it's about how he absolved himself in a letter sent to Cole after his infidelity had finally been exposed, blaming the women he cheated with, calling them "beautiful, needy, aggressive young women" who "surrounded" him.” It’s about how he used his feminist badge as a shield, claiming he was raised feminist so he just liked women better, or how he claimed in a letter to Cole, and I quote, “in many ways I was the HEIGHT of normal, in this culture. We’re taught to be providers and companions and at the same time, to conquer and acquire — specifically sexually — and I was pulling off both!”

With all of these things in mind, I started to see Whedon’s feminism as what it likely is; performative, a way to excuse his behaviour, a safeguard to hide behind as if to say, “oh no, I am not like other men at all, although I may act as other men do and fully accept my privilege as a cis-het white male, I’m different. Because I’m a feminist so when I do these terrible things to women, it’s ok, because I love, respect and support women.” Maybe he truly believes he’s a feminist, publicly, he flies the flag very well, and there’s no denying he’s profited from this label, heralded as a great feminist hero, an ally to women everywhere. It’s only when you start to scratch the surface, peel back the layers of the Shrek-onion, do you start to see him for what he (in my mind) really is. A dudebro playing at being the nice guy, someone who says all the right things but whose actions don’t quite match up, in fact, they crumble under any real scrutiny (for further proof of this, go read the leak of the Wonder Woman script, allegedly by Whedon. If you can make it through the whole thing, I’ll buy you a coffee – hell if you can make it through the first 10 pages).

Where does that leave Joss and I then? I admit that I’m conflicted, in a culture that has moved more and more towards “cancelling” people I’m the proverbial fence sitter. I acknowledge that there are people, media, etc that are problematic (the dreaded word) and I think everyone has the right to decide whether or not to consume said media. And for myself, personally, I endlessly flip between the two schools of thought. I won’t watch anything new with Johnny Depp, nor anything from Woody Allen, for example, but I have gone back (since Amber Heard spoke of her abuse at his hands) and watched some of Depp’s older movies. Some people have told me that they disagree, that even watching his older stuff is wrong, that I should ban all forms of Depp media from my life otherwise I am giving him my tacit approval, and that’s their choice and their right, but I suppose I’m still working out where I want to draw the line. I (maybe naively and incorrectly) believe that I can view a piece of media and know its flaws, or the flaws of the person behind it, but still somewhat enjoy it for what it is, or the story it’s telling.

Maybe that’s where I am with Whedon, somewhere in between, neither in the black or the white, somewhere in the shades of grey, because that’s how life is sometimes. I don’t think he’s a fully bad person, nor do I think he’s a fully good person. I think he’s human, and humans are inherently flawed. And maybe that feels like a cop out, but it’s all I have to offer right now. My view of him will never be as it once was, and thus my viewing of the media he has created and produced will likely reflect that. Re-watching Buffy and Angel has become a different experience; I’m no longer blindly swept up in the twists and turns, the witty repartee between characters, but instead viewing through a different lens, one where I question what message he's really trying to send, what his true intentions are. Instead of laughing at every single joke, they never quite land right with me anymore, my childish naivety gone, replaced with the simmering anger of a woman who wonders why sexist jokes and judgements are supposed to be funny, why the rape of a female character is an excusable plot device to teach men a lesson. It’s exhausting to second guess someone I don’t even know, but this is the brave new world that a combination of his behaviour and my own feminist journey has left me in. These days, I wouldn’t ever say “I love Joss Whedon”, like I would’ve back in my teenage years, more likely you’ll find me saying “I loved Buffy but God it’s weird to watch as an adult”.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

Sources:

http://oranges8hands.tumblr.com/post/117924895453/charisma-carpenter-transcript-on-being-fired

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_igTbXKPck

https://www.thewrap.com/joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/clementine-ford-why-joss-whedons-treatment-of-exwife-kai-cole-matters-20170821-gy16lx.html

https://indiegroundfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wonder-woman-aug7-07-joss-whedon.pdf

Image sources:

Yahoo.com

tenplay.com.au

#buffy the vampire slayer #buffy #angel #angel show #joss whedon #feminist #joss whedon's feminism #feminist review #whedon shows #sexism #feminism #problematic shows

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emilywatchescursedshow · 3 years

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Spn Season 1 Review

Hoboy

First, the live blogs of the last 4 episodes were done in a haze of jetlag depression so were less specific to what was actually happening in the episodes than normal and contained no extraneous information. HOWMEVER. I will get into those episodes more in this recap because:

1. I do not feel like the season really Led Up to this finale. Part of that could be because I took a bit of a break halfway through, but I think also the groundwork for the Sam/John parallel they tell us about was not really set up in previous episodes. 2. I think that the characterization of the brothers and their relationship to John is really Interesting in these episodes and the drama of that is a big part of the show as a whole, so the last several episodes are pretty relevant here.

THEMING The theme of season 1 is more or less: family. How do you handle family trauma and loss? How do you as a parent protect your children vs let them have independent lives (or just suck major ass)? To what extent is your family holding you back? Etc. The two sort of relationship dynamics this plays in is the Sam/Dean dynamic and the John/sons dynamic.

DEAN Dean’s characterization through this theme remains pretty consistent: he wants to be with his family. He showed up to get Sam at the beginning of the season, and he wants to keep them all alive at the end of the season instead of sacrificing John to kill the demon. The irony is that the season ends with them all “dying” (I know they’re not dead, but right now that’s what the show wants us to believe) and Dean’s insistence on family unity is what ends up getting them all killed.

Dean’s story line throughout has been one of responsibility assumed too early. After their mom died, his dad basically made him co-parent. Dean had to give up his ambitions to bend to his dad’s wishes while also trying to protect Sam from John and various monsters. It makes sense for him, given that backstory, that keeping the family together is his highest priority: he has been forced to give up all sense of self to keep his family safe, so if they die then he literally has nothing. I think it’s interesting that Dean is the only one of him or Sam who actually knew their mother, and yet Sam is the one who gets a mother-relevant character arc.

That might be because of the next aspect of Dean’s character we see: he likes to have sex with women. I tend to be pretty sensitive to misogyny/mistreatment of women on screen, so either I’ve lost my mind or I’m already watching this show through a very queer lens because Dean’s treatment of women throughout the season Did Not Bother Me. The only thing that really rang sour was at the beginning of Provenance when Dean is lying to women about his job to get into bed with them, but even then, like, eh? The whole scene (and all the other such scenes) are depicted with a lightheartedness that is hard to read malice into, and Jackles plays that part with such a wide-eyed “Wow! I get to have sex now!” that it’s hard not to feel anything but happy for the guy. I do suspect that Dean is supposed to be characterized as “treating women like whores/expendable” and so does not have an attachment to his mother in this season because he’s not allowed to have a complex relationship with a woman.

SAM Uh boy. So Sam’s arc begins with his girlfriend getting immolated - we learn later that Sam wanted to propose to her and so she was getting in the way of the demon’s plans for “kids like him.” Whatever that means - the show does not communicate its stakes to us AT ALL, more on that later. Sam gets some episodes of characterization throughout. The only two I can remember are the one with the abused psychic and the one where a woman decides she’s in love with him within seconds of meeting him. In neither episode to I really feel like I understand Sam as a character. We are told at various points that he really loved Jessica and her death has affected him greatly. At the beginning of the season, he dreams about it often, but these dreams end up being psychic in nature (I think?) and fall off by mid season. He doesn’t have a keepsake of hers to gaze at longingly or any other way of showing he’s having trouble letting go. Dean basically lets him off the leash to go kiss Sarah in Provenance, which he seems pretty happy to do and has no real guilt over after. Sam’s characterization is carried out very directly - we are told what he is feeling or had felt, instead of some combination of saying it via dialogue and reading it from his actions. I’ve mentioned that I don’t think Jarp is especially strong as an actor, but I have to chalk this up to both weaknesses in writing and acting because scenes that communicate Sam’s internal world are largely nonexistent IMO.

We are told that the connection between their mother’s death and Jess’s death has had a great impact on Sam. He believes that he is cursed so that the “people he loves” (read, women) will die. While in a broad sense this might be true as the demon does admit to have targeted Sam, the supposed “curse” is not really dealt with by Sam except as a barrier in his journey to move on from lost love. Jess’s death served as Sam’s call to adventure at the beginning of the season and should give some emotional connection to Sam’s continued commitment to hunting, but until the final episodes Sam’s involvement in the monster world is continually explained as “wants to find dad” and not “wants to break curse.” In these episodes, Sam’s Jess backstory comes back and we are told that his desire to kill the demon makes him “like John.” Which. Is. Stupid. Let me explain.

In terms of the theming, Sam’s wanting to kill the demon even though it might cost the lives of any number of the Winchesters makes sense because of his established relationship with his family. He wanted to have a normal life which alienated him from Dean and John. Sam has very negative memories of John, and has little brother blindness to the stuff Dean did for him growing up and is largely unhappy with Dean as well. Thus it is not surprising that to Sam, a Winchester dying is not as large a price to pay if it means that Sam gets to have a normal life.

HOWEVER. I am giving the show a LOT of credit here because they DO NOT make that connection, instead going for the stupid “Sam is like John” parallel which is treated almost like a surprise reveal. John’s reasons for killing the demon are NOT Sam’s reasons for killing the demon. John is motivated by revenge to an insane degree: it has consumed his life and the lives of both of his sons. Sam is not revenge motivated. He moves on from Jess’s death in literally THE EPISODE before the finale run starts. Sam is motivated by what he has always been motivated by: his desire for a normal life, including a wife who wont burst into flames. So on a thematic level, short-handing these character conflicts as “Sam is like John” (which is explicitly stated multiple times throughout these episodes) does not work because these characters are approaching family from a very different place even if they end up with the same goal.

I do want to mention that I think Sam’s backstory of wanting a normal life could have been set up better; the show does a good job with Dean’s “too much responsibility too young” child stand-in, but Sam does not get a “I just wanted to go to prom” child stand-in. Which I miss because that would be HILARIOUS. I think the issue the show has here with Sam is, in short, that Sam wanting to be normal is Very Boring, whereas the world of monsters and how Tortured and Jaded everyone is is much Sexier.

JOHN The text of the show is pretty unabashed about telling us things that John did that a reasonable audience member could interpret as being Very Bad. In the brief moments he has on the show, the dynamic between him and his sons is mixed. There are plenty of heartfelt family moments, and there are plenty of fights. I think the show is definitely weakest when it is following John by himself. I do not care about John except as he relates to Sam and Dean, and really if he is in any sort of danger I just want him to die based on how awful he is as a person, so the suspense does not swing the way the writers maybe wanted it to.

I think the twist at the end, where Dean realizes the demon has possessed their dad because he’s acting nicer, just b a r e l y works based on what they’ve set up. Honestly, I think the real problem is that John Winchester’s actor does not, to me, read as having any onscreen charisma. In the altercations that he has with Sam, I don’t really feel a threat from him. There isn’t any explosive or destructive energy, just sort of “your mom is mad you ate the last of her ice cream” energy. I’ve literally BEEN a more intimidating fake drill sergeant than John Winchester and I’m 5 feet tall and 110 lbs. John has big sad wet dog energy. He can get mad, but not in a way that’s actually intimidating. Thus, him telling Dean that he’s proud is sort of like “yeah, I bet this milksop is proud or whatever” and not “wow I would have expected that character to be a lot more upset right now.” I get that family dynamics can be complicated and a parent can cause you Bone Pain with just a look that to anyone else would seem harmless, but this is a television show where things have to read on screen. One Look Bone Pain is a lot more nuanced to construct. I think John being Big Mean Drill Sergeant is what they’re trying for, but in my opinion he's mostly just annoying.

Anyway John sucks.

WHAT’S NOT THERE The above talks a lot about what *is* in the show vis. the family theme. But Emily, this is a monster show. What about the monsters? Well. What about them indeed.

This first season of Supernatural is very clearly referencing the tradition of The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A lot of former X-Files people are credited on the season and they mention BTVS by name in an episode that is clearly themed around season 6 Buffy villains. Howmever. Both TXF and BTVS have a very important thing that Supernatural does not. STAKES. And not just ones meant for vamps that then get ignored by SPNs stupid vamp lore voice over.

Both BTVS and TXF handle their monsters very differently. BTVS is a universe where the main character has been fully initiated into the world of monsters so that, throughout the course of the episode, it is reasonable for her to detail pretty specifically what the monster is and what it is capable of. On the other hand, the characters in TXF must always be kept on the edge of the monster world, getting faint glimpses here and there. Usually, Mulder has an expository scene giving information on “what is known” at the beginning of the episode and then further monstrosity is communicated to the audience via interstitial scenes that tell the audience what the monster is and where it’s going, introducing dramatic tension: AA NO SCULLY DON’T TOUCH THAT IT’S SUPER GROSS. Both avenues successfully communicate to the audience what the monsters are (approximately), what they can do, and what their motivations are. This means that in the climactic scene, the audience knows what the STAKES are. They know what might be lost of the main characters fail, they know what the characters need to overcome to succeed, and they know what the monster is trying to accomplish.

Now. Some of the MOTW episodes in Supernatural do communicate what the monster is and what it wants. Scarecrow and Bugs are two that come to mind that both do this. Tellingly, both of these episodes also seem very modeled on TXF (compare/contrast Bugs with the trash golem episode of TXF where Mulder hip thrusts after sticking a flamingo in the yard, essay for another time).

Home is the first Supernatural episode that I identified as being extremely plot-oriented after the pilot. It’s also the first episode after the pilot to give sole writing credit to Kripke. There are interstitial scenes wherein the audience sees spooky stuff happening. However, these scenes do not further the audience’s understanding of the monster - we already know the house is evil and trying to kill people, and that’s pretty much all those scenes show. Moreover, Sam and Dean do not learn more about the monster in the house during this episode; their arc is basically just “Wow, isn’t it strange that the house is spooky now? Our mom died here!” The resolution at the end is borderline incomprehensible and their mother just sort of. Appears. Out of nowhere and then vanishes again with very little emotional weight given to this occurrence later in the episode or in the next episode. My summary of Home was pretty much “I did not like this and don’t want to be mean.” I talked about how I like monsters in monster shows, whereas Supernatural is more of a soap opera.

And yeah, the finale of Supernatural (written by Kripke) basically follows that track as well. I don’t know what these demons are or what they want. I don’t know what they can do besides possess people. When Meg confronts people and talks all big it’s hard for me to take seriously because I don’t know what she wants or what she is capable of, except in that one scene where she wanted to fuck Sam which. gross!

This is what I mean by saying that Supernatural does not have stakes. When the choice between losing a family member verses not defeating the monster is posited, the only reason I as an audience member feel engaged is the family conflict that has been established. There is no tension about the monster because I just have to assume that it will do whatever the writers decide it should do. I’m not weighing the odds of the Winchesters winning, I’m just watching them point guns at each other and hoping for the best.

CONCLUSION Jensen Ackles does a good job of playing Dean and he should get an award especially for his performances in the last two episodes of the show. IMO, he basically carried the emotional weight of the conflict and really made us root for Sam to not shoot his dad which is HARD because of how badly John sucks. I’m going to keep watching this show because of Jensen Ackles playing Dean Winchester. Fight me about it.

I think season 1 of Supernatural felt like watching two different shows with the same main characters. On the one hand, you have the MOTW episodes which invariably begin with “Here’s why we’re not tracking down our dad, even though that’s our stated motivation” and then tell a nice monster mystery with some good character beats. On the other hand, you have the series arc episodes, which are soap operas with demonic elements. I’m fine with it - because of Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester. I’m interested to see what season 2 is like.

#supernatural #season 1 review #spn

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warlordgab · 7 years

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Analysis: NaLu in the GMG arc

It's no secret that this story arc did wonders for the development of Natsu/Lucy emotional bonding. However many NaLu moments are not what we would call subtle, and some of them capitalized on fanservice. So it's becomes a little hard to notice how NaLu scenes showcase the chemistry between the characters as well as how delusional some shallow pairings truly are

First of all we have the prelude to the arc. When Lucy recieved the news of her father's death, Natsu and Happy were with her. Even though Lucy was effectively repressing her feelings about the whole situation, Natsu not only grasped how she possibly felt but was so depressed about it he let get away a chance to join a fight...

...given his character has some traits of a "blood knight", this is actually pretty impressive. It shows how much can Lucy affect Natsu even without putting effort into it, and that's a sign of a strong emotional connection with a good chemistry

It's also consistent with something we saw in the "Rainbow Sakura" special. To sum it up, Lucy is very excited about the prospect of going to the festival and seeing the cherry blossoms, but she gets sick the day of the Hanami festival so at the end she couldn't go. During the party, while every FT guild member is enjoying the festival...

...we see Natsu and Happy are the only ones who are not enjoying themselves, all because Lucy couldn't come and she's missing something she was dearly looking foward to

Instead of enjoying the party like the rest of the guild, the Fire Dragon Slayer, in a very touching and quasi-romantic gesture, uproots an entire Rainbow Sakura tree just for Lucy to see. Needless to say Lucy knew who did that for her and appreciated it a lot

So, the moment when Natsu is feeling so down about Lucy's situation is consistent with their relationship. And it makes even more sense given Natsu can't do much to comfort her this time and he knows it. Luckily for him, Lucy found closure and let go of the sadness she felt in the same chapter.

We can also rely on an overlooked but nice detail. This and the following NaLu moments, all happened after Lisanna's return. So instead of trying to re-connect with his childhood friend, Natsu consitently stuck closer and closer to Lucy. Proving a remarkable emotional attachment to the blonde celestial mage.

Moving on, the next moment I'd like to highlight is the aftermath of the Lucy Vs. Flare battle. Yes, Lucy lost because they were getting cheated and she was really upset and frustrated about it. But who's the guy who walks up to her after the battle is over? Natsu! Who both praised and comforted her. This is an important element of chemistry between characters, when one (or both them) seek to provide with emotional support

Sadly this gets overlooked because many fans (including those who support NaLu) overhyped Juvia's paranoid delusion of a passionate GrayLu encounter that very same night. This is was taken way too seriously by many readers, but the fact remains both Lucy and Gray completely dismissed that crazy delusion, and during that late night party Lucy stuck close to the person that comforted and supported her earlier after going through such a bad experience in the GMG

Next moment is very controversial. When Lucy was brutally beaten by a Minerva, both Natsu and Gray catched her as she fell. Some manga readers are very familiar with the concept of "pandering". At times an author try to please as many fandoms as possible to either sell more of their work or avoid losing their audience. Even some western writers indulge into this. However, while the FT author tried to pander shippers here, and pretty much added fuel to the shipping war that was raging on back then; he also provided something, during the following chapter, that made some people understand who was the person Lucy felt the strongest about...

...by having her to say his name as she drifted off to sleep. Quoting Heisenberg: "Say my name"

Again, this is consistent with something we see later after the Tartaros arc; when FT disbanded Lucy spent a year tracking every single FT member. But after seeing Natsu's return we get a very interesting narration from the manga:

FT readers already know how the rest goes during the GMG. In their 2v2 fight, Natsu BFR'd his partner, Gajeel, so he could stomp by himself the members of the guild that brutalized Lucy.

Next moment is something similar to the first one I mentioned. Once again we know Natsu shares some traits typically found in the "Blood Knight" trope. He enjoys a good battle, and the GMG final offered many chances to fight very strong opponents. However under a series of plot-driven cirumstances, Lucy was put under arrest alongside a fellow celestial mage in the King's castle. Natsu was so infuriated by this that his guildmates had to tie him up in order to prevent him from storming the castle to rescue Lucy

While all the guildmates were mad about it, Natsu had the strongest emotional response and he chose to pass the chance to fight in the GMG final just to rescue Lucy

Lucy's reaction to this is both amusing and cute. Since she knows how much Natsu enjoys the thrill of a fight. Still, this is probably one of the smallest moments they had, as the following showings hold more significance and a greater impact.

From this point onwards the plot gets a little complicated for it introduces time-travel. A Lucy from the future comes with a warning about an invasion of dragons that will wipe most life on earth. Even though this is a fantasy setting, dragons haven't been seen in centuries. So naturally to imagine an army of them poping out of nowhere would seem hard to believe. Yet as soon a Lucy of the future finishes with her story, Natsu is already preparing himself for the attack much to her surprise. When she questions if her comrades will believe her, Natsu reaffirm his trust and faith in Lucy.

When Future Lucy laments not having a plan to deal with the attack, Natsu comforts her reassuring her they'll take care of the matter and in a very touching manner...

...he expressed his gratitude for Lucy's determination to protect their future

Makes me wonder why NaLu fans often disregard their meaningful moments for the sake of weaker premises. Style over substance is getting very old!

However, the plot gets even more complicated when we get another time traveler trying to ensure the bad future when nearly everyone dies actually happens. At first he tries to fool everyone by claiming Lucy is the one who triggers the upcoming apocalypse, when in reality she's one of the persons who can stop it! Yet Natsu, despite being as clueless as he is, doesn't buy the act and holds onto his trust/faith in Lucy. When the guy strikes down Future Lucy, Natsu his tears in his eyes and anger in his fist delievers this little yet meaningful line:

The tears

His line

Natsu stating how much Lucy means to him. This is consistent with another showing from the last arc. When Natsu thought Lucy was killed by their current enemy, he went into a berserker rage (and a new superform) in which he was killing everything that was getting in his way. Touch Lucy and you're getting burned to a crisp

I could actually mention the next one, but given the amount of fanservice it involved I prefer to overlook it and leave it to any real NaLu fan to explain what made it a great moment aside from the "frolicking" in the nude. For now, I'm going to jump straigh to this arc's conclusion:

As the 'dragon apocalypse' was prevented, we see Future Lucy reuniting with her comrades in what the chapter calls the "golden plains", the meaning of this place as well as its placement in time and space is up to interpretation, but who's there to recieve her. I'll give you three guesses, the first two don't count...

Natsu is there and as he enthusiastically takes her to reunite with the rest of their guildmates from her own timespace, she tears up for the joy she feels. The chapter focuses on Future Lucy's emotional response to seeing the Natsu of her timeline once again, which is consistent with the first time she sees Natsu in the present during the GMG. This effectively gives her character a closure and a happy ending. But that's not all, back to the present Lucy experiences all the feelings her future self felt in those moments at the "golden plains" and tears up as well, acting on those feelings she runs to Natsu and hugs him from behind while the chapter closes with the following words:

"You don't need a reason to cry. All you need is to feel the warmth that dwells in your chest"

A highly poetic line that conveys Lucy’s feelings in that scene. This is more than enough emotional build-up leading to a logical conclusion:

A NaLu child XD (the other kid is a Gruvia child) Joking aside, this arc provides with a consistent protrayal of Natsu/Lucy bonding and their solid chemistry. Something not many are able to notice, but those who do come to appreciate even more the beauty, the appeal, and the strength of their emotional connection

Previous analysis on LuNa/NaLu chemistry here: http://warlordgab.tumblr.com/post/157284507416/analysis-chemistry

Previous analysis on LuNa's progression here: http://warlordgab.tumblr.com/post/163994230826/analysis-constructing-a-potent-relationship

#fairy tail #hiro mashima #NaLu #Natsu #Lucy #natsu x lucy #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #lucy dragneel #bonding #chemistry

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Demon Slayer Review: Netflix Anime Reinvents Classic Action Tropes

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This Demon Slayer review contains no spoilers.

There are a lot of anime about the slaying of demons. Almost too many, in fact. If someone was supposed to make an anime, but then forgot and had to quickly rush something together at the last minute, they’d make it about demon slaying. At this point it’s a little exhausting whenever a new demon-slaying anime gets announced, but it’s for this very reason that the series that work are especially effective.

Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba doesn’t just touch on familiar storylines and ideas, even its title is bland and vague. However, Demon Slayer turns out to be one of the most enjoyable new anime to come out in the past few years and it’s a very exciting addition to Netflix’s growing anime library.

Demon Slayer begins in an explosive manner that turns the relatively timid Tanjiro Kamado into a vengeful warrior after he experiences the worst kind of trial by fire. Demons slaughter Tanjiro’s parents and turn his sister, Nezuko, into one of their kind. The newly orphaned Tanjiro meets a Demon Slayer and becomes committed to avenging his family’s death, taking down any evil creatures that he encounters, and cure his sister of her unfortunate fate.

Tanjiro’s journey aligns himself with Zenitsu and Inosuke, two fellow budding fighters, and the lot experiences significant growth and challenging hardships the further they go. There’s also a very natural chemistry and sense of humor between this core group of characters, which helps balance out the anime’s more melodramatic moments.

Tanjiro and his group go through the usual hurdles of training and battles as they learn and refine powerful abilities. Demon Slayer doesn’t cram too much into its first season and the majority of these episodes get a chance to breathe where the characters can properly express themselves and not be rushing from one battle to the next.

Many of the battles against demons are spread across multiple episodes rather than a need to resolve each fight by the time that the credits roll. Demon Slayer is more concerned with characterization, for both its heroes and demons, so battles can mean more when they do happen. This means that some episodes are less productive than others, but it helps the series find its voice more quickly as a result.

It’s of course important to have protagonists that feel real and not just come across as anime stereotypes, but Demon Slayer especially excels with how it humanizes its villains. The episodes devote lots of time to who these demons were before their corruption, how they got like this, and what they sacrificed as a result. It’s a creative way to unify the heroes and the villains. This level of empathy doesn’t stop Tanjiro in his mission to eliminate these monsters, but it sometimes gives him pause as he considers how his sister is now in the same situation.

Demon Slayer wants both Tanjiro and the audience to consider how some of these demons are just as innocent or in need of redemption as Nezuko. It’s a fascinating wrinkle that adds a deep vein of melancholy and pain to each of Tanjiro’s victories. So many anime of this nature celebrate the heroes’ successes over beastly creatures, which makes Demon Slayer’s contemplative attitude all the more gripping. Tanjiro and company aren’t interested in bragging rights or even that focused on becoming the strongest Demon Slayers. They merely want to achieve their personal goals and move on with their lives. It’s a refreshing perspective that helps ground these characters during their more exaggerated moments or the times that action overwhelms story.

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Demon Slayer’s attention to world building is another reason why the anime works as well as it does. The story establishes powerful groups of characters in both the villainous Twelve Demon Moons as well as the altruistic Demon Slayer Corps and the Hashira. It can be common for the villains in an anime to have a team of enemies that they slowly rotate through, yet this feels different in Demon Slayer even though it’s still technically true. The season offers up just enough information on the Twelve Demon Moons and their leader, Muzan Kibutsuji, so that they’re compelling and terrifying, but far from overexposed. Muzan in particular is a villain that actually feels enigmatic and unstable. He’s far from the caricature that anime villains can often devolve into.

Demon Slayer leaves the audience wanting more in basically every category rather than overstay their welcome. It’s a smart approach for a series’ first season, but the next batch of episodes will need to pick up the pace and accelerate this strategy. This attitude is present right up to the season’s conclusion, which is satisfying, but does feel abrupt to some extent. It doesn’t go out on a major cliffhanger or triumphant battle. It’s a more muted finish, likely because the anime knew that it’d get its Mugen Train feature film to function as a more substantial ending. It’s appreciated to not get a season finale that’s manipulative of its audience, but at the same time it wouldn’t have hurt to turn up the tension a little more.

There’s a dense story about the conflict between good and evil that’s important to Demon Slayer, but it’s also entirely possible to just enjoy this series because of its exciting and gorgeous fight sequences. The animation studio, ufotable, truly makes every frame of the anime pop. The thick lines used for character designs are a little awkward at first, but it helps Demon Slayer develop its precise and vibrant style. The battles are aesthetic masterpieces and the many different demons all incorporate unique abilities that inject a healthy dose of horror into these action scenes. All of Tanjiro’s victories have a greater impact thanks to how they’re painstakingly animated. The same level of care is applied to Demon Slayer’s dub and the performances all make sure to match the level of energy that’s present in the scenes.

As much as Demon Slayer is a delight, it’s also not without its faults. Nezuko is a largely static character that doesn’t really get a chance to do much until the later half of the season. Similarly, Inosuke and Zenitsu are wonderful, but they disappear for certain stretches of time and can often feel inconsequential. They’re still characters that work more often than they don’t and they both get big moments where they demonstrate intense growth and power. Demon Slayer can sometimes fall into a bit of a predictable pattern at times and if the characters aren’t working for you then the slower pacing will definitely feel frustrating. There’s certainly an urgency in Tanjiro’s quest, but the anime doesn’t mind waiting for larger events to transpire and for the plot to move forward on its own schedule.

The anime does impressive work with how it reinvigorates an overdone genre and narrative with a fresh and exciting approach. Demon Slayer creates a world that’s entertaining, easy to get lost in, and led by a cast of characters that are increasingly lovable. It feels like Demon Slayer is still in the infancy of its story, but it’s not often that a series comes out of the gate with such confidence and style.

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is one of the biggest anime to come out in the past few years and it’s a series that has something for everyone to enjoy, whether it’s the hyperbolic fight sequences, the hordes of disturbing demons, or the breathtaking animation that brings the demon slaying to life. Demon Slayer is not going anywhere and it’s now the perfect time to jump on board.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is available to stream on Netflix now.

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dailycharacteroption · 6 years

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Mysterious Avenger (Swashbuckler Archetype)

Something of a predecessor to the vigilante class, today we’re looking at a swashbuckler that neither fights for the governing body of their nation, nor for wealth and fame. Instead focusing on a vendetta of justice.

While not true vigilantes in that they lack many of their abilities, they still ply their skills from behind a false identity, and may very well practice their dramatic combat style in secret so as to distance themselves from their masked persona.

Indeed, this swashbuckling hero is a natural fit for emulating the classic idea of the dramatic, Flynning masked hero, much like the founder of the trope, the Scarlet Pimpernel. This archetype is great for an urban game, and you might even use it alongside actual vigilantes.

In the hands of a master, a whip can be a deadly weapon, but also a useful tool, and these avengers learn to incorporate them into their swashbuckling arts.

Though not full vigilantes, they still have a profound secret identity which makes it difficult to discern, even with magic, who they really are, though it stops short of counting as a separate person.

While most swashbucklers are incredibly lucky and eager to seize the initiative, these individuals are even more so, able to press their luck more often each day.

Not only are these swashbucklers skilled with their weaponry, they show their real potential when they focus their attention on a foe, studying their movements and striking with deadly precision.

Mixing a tiny slice of slayer into your swashbuckler, this archetype is a great way to add some light vigilante action to your game without the class of the same name. Just keep in mind that as-written, these avengers must be good-aligned. In any case, I recommend a build that focuses on the reach of the whip alongside a weapon with a closer range, taking feats to deal lethal damage with a whip and maybe some interesting tricks.

While a secret identity is very important to this archetype, it is readily apparent that having this identity revealed is much less impactful in rules terms than the vigilante class, whom must make great efforts crafting an entirely new identity if they even walk free and alive after their identity is revealed, while these mysterious avengers need only find a new costume. As such, while they might be a proto-vigilante or a cousin to the concept, some true vigilantes may look down on them as being undedicated, despite their good intentions. On that note, while the core archetype has to be good, that may change depending on GM say-so.

Having discovered their family is part of a cult of sin among the nobility, Ethra could not sit by idly. So, masking her personal endeavors behind a façade of a dandy’s lifestyle, he began wearing a mask at night and spying on his family, mounting raids on their sin palaces, populated by the horrific fleshdregs created by their rituals, to actual demons.

Relying on the city’s canals and potions of expeditous retreat get around, Meidia has become something of a local legend, the elusive Bloody Skate, named for her skill with her scorpion whip and gliding movements. At night, the triton rights injustice and seeks out the truth behind the rumors of a corrupt marid sheik manipulating the city’s affairs.

For a long time now, the Lucky Lash, a masked hero who fights against the corrupt cronies of the Grand Justice, has been the rival of the Seven Sacred Patrollers, a group of vigilantes with various specializations, each able to magically transform into their alternate identity in mere seconds. While they do have the same goals, the seven err more on the side of lawfulness, sometimes ending up the pawns of the corrupt judge.

#pathfinder #archetype #swashbuckler #mysterious avenger #fleshdreg #demon #triton #marid #genie #Advanced Class Guide

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mediaeval-muse · 6 years

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Tips on How to Be a Critic of Media on the Internet

So, I’m going to give you all some tools for criticizing media (books, movies, tv shows, etc.) in a way that advances conversation in a meaningful way. I’m a bit fed up with people whose bar for quality is whether or not they personally like something or whether or not it meets a vague list of desirable attributes for Good Quality, so we’re going to go over a few things right now. In no particular order. This is literally my entire job as a college English literature instructor.

Whether or not you like a work in itself is not a valid criticism. Go beyond “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” Why or what did you like/dislike? Then continue to work on the whys until you find something useful to share. Screaming at others for liking something you didn’t like or vice versa is pointless and doesn’t generate discussion.

How closely a character, story, etc. matches reality or your own personal experience can be interesting to talk about, but it is by no means the yardstick by which you should measure quality. Just because something is different from your personal experience, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Put aside your (in)ability to relate and focus on other things. Sometimes, a piece of media isn’t created for you.

Consider the actual medium of the work and what its goals/limitations are. A movie cannot do the same things a comic does. A book can’t do things a tv show does. And so on. All have different goals and are influenced by different forces (like budget, number of people involved, amount of creative freedom, etc.). To expect them all to work the same way is to misunderstand how they are fundamentally different and how those differences influence storytelling.

Consider the goals of the work without projecting your personal opinion onto it. Most creators don’t make things to terrorize audiences or to ruin childhoods, so put that aside. Instead, think about what kind of story a creator was trying to tell and whether or not he/she met that goal. This doesn’t mean that what we, as audiences, got out of it is invalid, but it does help weed out opinions that fault a work for not being what we wanted it to be (as opposed to what it was meant to be). Ask if the creator’s goals are clear to an audience or if the things within the work line up with those goals. Sometimes, the gaps between those things are where real criticism comes into play, not whether or not the creator’s goals match the audience’s goals or tastes.

Recognize that narrative is important, but not the only thing that should drive a work. Characterization is important. So is mood. Aesthetics. How do they impact a work? Just because something has plot holes doesn’t mean it’s Bad. Sometimes plot takes a backseat to emotion or aesthetics, and learning to see that takes practice. For example, some of us may like moments where emotion is emphasized, but some may not - saying a moment in a work is “overly emotional” based on personal taste doesn’t necessarily tell us anything useful. Evaluating how that emotional moment serves (or dis-serves) the overall story is useful.

Recognize that just because something is diverse or has good representation, that doesn’t mean it’s entirely without drawbacks. A work can have a whole cast of POC but still tell a story that promotes or glorifies harmful ideas. For example, Hamilton is almost entirely POC, but it glorifies a colonial narrative. Think about how the love for the actors and creators of a diverse work obscures actual problems with the work without seeing it as an attack on identity.

On the flipside, let underrepresented characters have diverse narratives - just because they aren’t perfect protagonists, that doesn’t mean the work is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. It’s ok to point out that some characters are never the heroes that others usually are, but don’t reduce POC, female, lgbt+, etc. characters to tropes in your effort to get better representation. For example, you can point out that the Bury Your Gays trope exists and is harmful, but if you insist that lgbt+ people can never die in a work, your ability to see characters as having complex narratives is limited. Instead, think about the events that lead to that character’s death and whether or not it was meaningful before writing a story off. For example, criticizing The 100 for mishandling Lexa’s death is valid because of the circumstances that led to her death - the goals seemed to be shock value, and the circumstances didn’t make a lot of sense. On the flip side, Atomic Blonde killed off a lgbt+ character, which, depending on the viewer, can be offensive - but there is more to her death than just shock value, and she dies for more reasons than just her sexuality. Similarly, just because a POC character isn’t perfect doesn’t mean the story is racist. Consider why the character isn’t perfect or whether the imperfection is part of a character arc.

Consider historical context. An older work isn’t going to have the same aesthetics and values of today. This doesn’t make everything in the older work okay, but it does mean that we can’t write something off just because it doesn’t measure up to contemporary sensibilities. For example, the Christmas song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” seems to have lyrics about sexual assault in it, but considering when it was written changes the lyrics to be about the very real existence of curfews for women and the culture around alcohol consumption. Likewise, a work might reveal that tastes were different in the past than today, and that’s ok. For example, we might see some medieval literature as disorganized, but people listening to it back in the day might have valued meandering narratives with lots of references to other works (more than we do today). That doesn’t mean the work is Bad.

Let things be complex. Works are rarely entirely good or entirely bad. People are complex, so they create things and like things that are complex. It’s ok to like Buffy the Vampire Slayer despite Joss Whedon’s record and the racist episodes. It’s ok to like a video game with female characters that were obviously designed by straight men. That doesn’t mean someone is a bad person or that the work is entirely without merit. On the flip side, don’t let love for something blind you to its faults. Viewing a work as a complex object allows nuances to be explored and prevents monolithic evaluations.

Separate your identity from works of fiction when it comes to criticism. I know it can feel like any criticism of a work can be a criticism of yourself. Some people have tied themselves so closely to Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc. that any negative thing said against it feels like a negative thing said against a person. It’s ok to be shaped by these stories, and it’s ok to love them. It’s not ok to shut down valid criticisms or to insist that other people “won’t let you enjoy things” just by saying something against it.

Recognize when to criticize and when to let something go - being overly critical can kill the love of a thing. This involves knowing what to emphasize, what to ignore, and who to say it to. Does it matter that a movie adaptation of a book got the eye color of a character wrong? Maybe not, but it certainly matters if the skin color is changed in the adaptation (like in The Hunger Games). One of these things is a more important point than the other.

Recognize when you don’t have enough information. It’s ok to admit you lack knowledge. Put your thoughts on hold and go look up some information or ask an expert for their input.

Avoid the “hot take.” Let thoughts marinade. Our culture is obsessed with the hot take - the criticisms and think pieces that are written 2.5 seconds after the release of a piece of media. Sometimes, our initial thoughts aren’t the best. Take stock of your initial impressions and let them sit with you a while. Challenge them. Let them change, grow, or evolve.

Learning to see another side doesn’t mean that you approve of it. It’s ok to understand the motivations of a character without approving of them. It doesn’t make a critic a bad person for it. for example, just because someone understands what makes a villain do what they do, that doesn’t mean they endorse the villain’s goals or behavior. But learning to understand these motivations allows someone to see the work more complexly, which is always the goal of criticism.

Stop being concerned about being right, and stop expecting people to perform rightness when it comes to criticism. If you only criticize a work to show how non-sexist or non-racist you are, your criticism is more about you than the work. By all means, criticize the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in a work, but don’t let the entirety of your criticism be a performance of how Good you are as a person. Criticism should be about the work, not about you, the critic.

Learn to see when something is exploitative and when it is not. It’s valid to insist that the industry include more creators of color, lgbt+ creators, etc. It’s not helpful to insist that only POC creators can write POC characters, that only women can write women, etc. If a white man is writing a story about a woman, it’s not necessarily exploitative. Think about the purpose of the story: is it a story about female identity? Then it may be a problem. That story would better be handled by a female creator. Is a white creator writing a story with POC in it? It might not on principle be exploitative - but if that story is about black identity, then it might be. Learn to see those gaps, but don’t treat all instances the same. Luke Cage is deeply rooted in black identity and needs to be helmed by POC creators. Wonder Woman is the first blockbuster superheroine movie, so it should be helmed by a woman. BUT The Expanse is written by two white men but handles its diversity (arguably) well. It’s not on the same level as exploitative media, such as Ghost in the Shell, Gods of Egypt, etc.

I’m probably forgetting things or articulating them poorly, so add on as you see fit, fellow tumblr critics.

#personal

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zombiesbecrazy · 7 years

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Five Times With Feeling - Part 1/5

Summary: It's always better to have a friend to share life moments with; good, bad or mundane. Or four times Dick and Barbara watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer together and one time they didn't.

Written for @batfamcontentwar‘s #halloweencontentwar. All 5 parts will be posted during the event

ao3 Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Part 1: October 1997

"Why do you want to watch this?" "It's Tuesday" "But it's Halloween. We should be watching a horror movie. It’s what we do." "But it's still Tuesday. On Tuesday nights before patrol, I watch Buffy. You know this." "But Halloween." Dick had always loved Halloween, and autumn in general. At the circus they didn’t trick or treat, but after that night’s performance or run-through, they had always had a big bonfire night with marshmallows and s’mores, sharing stories with everyone. It had been a real family affair. When he had moved into the manor he had missed it desperately, but quickly learned that other traditions could be fun too and he loved carving pumpkins with Alfred and trick or treating with Bruce. The past two years, he and Barbara spent the evening giving out candy to kids who ventured out to Wayne Manor and watched horror movies before patrol. The manor was always a favourite hot spot for Gotham kids to visit, with the creepy look of the exterior in the dusky autumn twilight, top notch decorations leading up the driveway to the door, and the fact that everyone knew that Bruce Wayne gave out full sized candy bars.

“On a Tuesday.” She laughed at him, but he knew that she wasn’t going to cave; she was far too stubborn for that. "How about this. You watch Buffy with me now and after patrol I'll come back here and watch whatever horror movie you want." Dick gave her side eyed look, considering her proposal. "What about the Commish?" "He's on nights this week. I'll let him know I'm staying with a friend." She brushed off his concern with a wave of her hand. "He's cool." "He won't care that it's a guy friend’s house?" "He won’t if I don't tell him." "You’re lying to your dad?" "I'm a teenage girl vigilante. Of course I'm lying to my dad. On the scale of what I lie to him about, sleeping at a male friend’s house is pretty low on the list. James is staying at a friend’s house tonight. Dad will just be glad I’m not home alone." "Alright then. But I want it on record that I think this show is stupid." But Dick didn’t want it on record that he was a bit terrified of Commissioner Gordon finding out that his daughter was going to have a sleepover at his house. Gordon knew they were friends, but something about her father’s stare made Dick know that the policeman didn’t think that he was good enough to hang out with Barbara. Not for any specific reason other than no one would ever be good enough for his daughter, even if there was absolutely nothing going on between them. He even felt it when he was Robin. He was probably overreacting then though because he was 95% certain that Gordon didn’t know that Dick was Robin.

But the way the Commissioner looked at Dick sometimes… "Have you ever watched it?" Dick shook his head and Barbara immediately looked like she wanted to hit him so he raised his hands in front of his face in mock defense. She jabbed him in the side instead making him let out a groan. Barbara had been gushing about this show since she started watching last year, but he just didn’t get it. It didn’t sound very interesting. "You can't say you don't like it if you haven't watched it!" "Her name is stupid. And vampires are silly. I can't believe anyone takes it seriously" "Says the guy named Dick who has fought with giant robots." She pointed out and he had to admit that she definitely had him there and his primary excuse had gone out the window. It just was weird. "Valid point. Fine. I’ll watch. What do I need to know about this?" "Teenage girl who is the chosen one to fight demons and save the world. It's full of action, snappy dialogue and puns. I don't understand how you don't already watch it. It's practically made for you." "Ok. For you, I will give this one chance. One. But if it sucks, I'm going to make you watch the goriest horror movie I can think of." "And when you realize that it's awesome?" "I'll let you pick the movie later. And I'll share my popcorn." "You've got a deal, Boy Wonder. Prepare to lose."

65 minutes later…

"That was so good! Why didn't you make me watch this with you before?"

Dick still thought the premise was a little goofy - because vampires - but he was completely drawn in and wanted to know more. Why was Buffy THE Slayer? Who was the Slayer before her? Who was that Ethan Rayne guy and how did he know Giles? Why did people live in Sunnydale if crazy stuff kept happening? He had often thought the same thing about Gotham when he had first come to live here; why would people live here if they could just leave? He understood it now, the sense of hometown pride.

The characters were funny, but then you got hit in the gut with emotion when you weren’t expecting it. The fight scenes were well choreographed and even though he could hear himself thinking of better combat moves (like he often did watching action movies), he had loved every second of it. But why had Barbara shared this? She had even said that she knew that he’d love it. And she was always right.

She smiled a little at him, reading his facing and knowing where his thoughts probably were going. "I don't know. Maybe I was worried you wouldn't like it?" Barbara was curling her hands in to fists and releasing them repeatedly and Dick frowned at the action. It was her tell when she was nervous, and something she tended to do before she leapt into a fight outnumbered, but he couldn’t think of why she was mentally prepping herself for a battle now. It was just the two of them. "I think it's because it feels personal. There aren't a lot of shows with a kick ass female lead. I think I needed you to like it but didn't want to know if you thought it was too silly."

He grabbed her wrists to still the action, leaving his hands wrapped around them lightly and smiled when she mirrored his motion. Acrobat style safe hold. "Why would that matter to me? We know actual female heroes. We’re on first name terms with Wonder Woman.” He leans over and mock whispers at her, “I don't want to alarm you, but I'm sitting next to a girl superhero on this couch at this very moment."

"I know, but... part of me thought that if you thought it was dumb, that by extension you would think I am too. I know it’s stupid, but I’m projecting and that doesn’t have to be logical." She shook her head and looked towards their joined arms but something about her eyes made Dick think that she was looking through them. "Sometimes when I'm out there, I don't feel like I'm being taken seriously. When I show up to break something up, they look almost relieved that it's me and not one of the ‘real’ heroes. They think I’m a joke.”

Dick said nothing because even if he didn’t think that, he knew it was true. He had heard the thugs and criminals say it in the field; he had just always hoped that she didn't know that. He felt a little bit the same way sometimes when he was out with Batman because he was only Robin, but he knew that wasn’t really the same thing. When he got a bit older or grew a little taller, while he’d never be Batman, they’d hopefully stop thinking of him as a little kid. They’d always think of Barbara as just a ‘girl’. "Does it help to know that they don't usually think that way after you've kicked them in the face?"

"A little." She looked back up and him and gave him a half smile and that move made him smile back. "It's just nice to see on TV, you know? Little girls can see a strong female hero every week, even if they don't have one in their own city. We don’t always have to be the damsel in distress. We can kick ass without you guys.” Dick knew that, on both sides of the costumed coin; Babs had taken him down sparring more than once and he knew what sort of vicious things Harley was capable of in battle. He wasn’t ashamed when he got taken out by a woman. No more so than against the men anyway; no one ever likes losing, regardless of who they are fighting. “Helps that it’s a good show too. Wouldn’t be the same impact if it was terrible.”

"We saw a few little girls dressed up as Batgirl earlier trick or treating." He had seen some over the past couple years as well, but the number of Batgirls, Supergirls and Wonder Women that had shown up at the manor this afternoon had been astounding. At one point a group of about seven girls had shown up together, all dressed up as female superheroes, and Bruce had taken a few pictures of them to send to Diana. He had even convinced Barbara to pose in one, with a little Batgirl right in front of her. Barbara had looked sufficiently whelmed and Dick could barely contain his laughter. “You make a difference in more ways than you were meaning to when you started.” “I saw some girls dressed up as Batman and Robin, too. They don’t need me to be inspired, but I can’t admit it isn’t nice.” Barbara glanced towards the clock, pulled in a slow steadying breath and pulled her hands away from Dick’s in order to stretch, shoulders making a popping sound. "Speaking of, it's about time for us to play dress up ourselves." “Want to switch it up for Halloween? I can be Batgirl and you can be Robin?” Barbara laughed and Dick joined in. "I’ll take that as a no. Ready to run some rooftops?"

"Only if I get to kick some bad guys in the face."

"Wouldn't be a night out if you didn't." Barbara had got up and started to walk out of the room, towards the study, but Dick grabbed her wrist again gently before she could get too far. “I know I said I’d let you pick the movie, but can I make a request?”

“We aren’t watching ‘The Thing’ again.”

Dick shook his head in dissention. He wouldn’t have made her watch that one anyways, knowing that she hated it. “Can we watch more Buffy? I want to watch from the beginning.” Dick could already tell this was going to be a new obsession. He had so many questions that needed to be answered and he knew that he’d be thinking about it all through patrol. Knowing that he could watch more later would help him put the show temporarily out of his thoughts so he could focus on what was happening in Gotham that night. “I’m going to start watching it with you, but I need to catch up first. I need more.”

“We can’t watch all of the first season tonight.”

“We can start.”

“Of course. If only to prove that I was right about it being fantastic.”

“You usually are.”

#halloweencontentwar #batfic #dick grayson #barbara gordon #buffy the vampire slayer #timelines schimelines #smashing pre new-52 and new-52 continuity together because of reasons #fanfiction #robin #batgirl

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