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milfhandholder · 9 months

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My Personal Headcanons on Grell's Past Life (A Masterdoc)

*with excerpts from a draft that will never see the light of day!

The autism got to me ok

Now before we start, I feel like I have to add some disclaimers, number one being everything about this isn't really based on anything concrete, this is strictly my delusions. Second being if there's a flunk in the time period, ignore it. Turn your brain off.

Mr and Mrs Sutcliff

Before our beloved baby girl, there are, of course, her parents. They're nameless in my head, only going by Mr Sutcliff and Mrs Sutcliff. Grell doesn't remember either (more on that in a later post about her reaper years). Her parents were happily married actually, her father knew he had to marry well and coincidentally fell for the best lady during his time. Her mother fancies a handsome man in a suit, perhaps that's where Grell got her taste in men

Her father had brown hair while her mother had red hair which she inherited along with the kind-yet-kinda-arrogant eye shape her mother has. Yet despite that, she looks more like her father: perpetual smile, sharp chin, a more angled face rather than a rounder one, broad shoulders, his eye color (I have never thought abt her eye color before Dispatch so imagine it as you like). Grell's attitude is a mix of both families, the good and the mostly bad coping response

They also know about her 'homosexuality' and her father states that it's fine as long as no one else knows. Their song is Our Word, TRUST

Early life

1840 - 1858

Grell Sutcliff, in my mind, was born to a wealthy old money family. She was her parents only child and as a son, they knew early on they had to teach her to be a respectable young man to be a good heir for her father's business. She's not close to any of her parents; her dad was fine enough to joke around with but he has his moments of anger (I see them like how Emily Dickinson and her father were potrayed in Dickinson) and her mother—though more soft-spoken—was strict with decorum and required Grell to act appropriately at all times no matter what

She had some cousins but most notable would be Martha who was 8 years old when Grell herself was 18. Martha was Grell's first exposure to her hobbies that are seen as feminine like sewing and dressing up but still no 'awakening' yet

She used to be very obedient and less outspoken with her opinions, some even regard her as a serious person who is above anything that isn't seen as polite. During social events, you can usually find her chatting away with people of the highest status but afterwards, she'll be very tired and would look disgruntled somewhat (my girl is tired of masking). Usually when that happens, she'd slip out of the party for a break, this is where she gets the opportunity of a lifetime, the cataclyst of everything actually

As seen above, at 18, Grell was invited to an event by Aubrey Churchill at his country house (privacy reasons, he said) which was actually more of a lively party for bohemians alike which wasn't something Grell was used to. Though she felt overwhelmed, out of place and slightly judgmental about it at first, she frequents the event more in the future after meeting her best friend Charlotte Moore

Crisis

1858 - 1862

Brown hair, blue eyes, and a fiery spirit, Charlotte was an upper-middle young lady who aspired to be a writer and mostly dabbles in poetry and short stories. She was Grell's first 'gender envy' which Grell misinterpreted as a crush so when Charlotte privately turned down her proposal to court her—stating that she didn't really see Grell as a future husband—, she got over it pretty quick and the two remained friends even when Charlotte moved to New York when they were 22

When Grell turned 19, she met Charlotte's cousin and a son from Grell's family friend, Julian Williams who was around 24 years old, no bitches, no rizz, bad vibes. They became fast friends, too fast actually. Julian's a dick and ended up using her as an experiment/for funsies :///. Charlotte attempted to get Grell cut the relationship off BUT THE ASSHOLE IS LIKE LICE, HE JUST WON'T GET OFF. Eventually, Grell does call their fwb situationship off when they almost got caught and Grell decided that "hey, maybe I don't want to get stoned for getting caught making out with someone who doesn't even like me enough"

Things have not gotten better because at 20, she gets stuck in ANOTHER situationship, girl FIGHT BACK. With none other than Aubrey and Eleanor Churchill (married couples are freaks) who were 25 years old and 20 years old respectively when they first coaxed Grell to join in on their... weird fuck pile. They treated her better than He Who Must Not Be Named and they did ignite her love for theatre and acting but still... on thin ice

Anyway, they don't matter. All you need to know is that they eventually drifted away from the situationship all together because they found someone else

Jane Doe, The Only One Who Deserves Rights

1862 - 1868

MY BELOVED JANE DOE (not her real name obvi), if you've read TWBDT you know she was Grell's wife during her human years and that she was a lesbian who was looking for a beard. Why, you ask? Because Julian is a pisshead who was jealous that Grell moved on to the Churchill and decided that the best way to remedy his jealousy is by spreading a rumor about her 'true nature' as if he wasn't sleeping with her beforehand ://

Mr Sutcliff had no time for such bullshittery and basically told Grell to pack her shit up and get a wife quickly. During this time, Grell wrote a letter to Charlotte:

Idk what else to put during their relationship aside from the fact that it was only with Jane that Grell started to question her gender a bit because she's the only one who isn't a raging transphobic cunt (sorry y'all Charlotte's a victim of her time, she changed later on though). Unfortunately girlie didn't connect the dots faster and ended up having a one-sided crush on Jane rip. They're cute and I wish they were real :( wholesome yuri

DEATH~✩

1869

Unfortunately, all good things do come to an end. 1869 in particular was a hard year for her because that's when the pressure starts caving in on her. Aside from her father forcing them to have kids already, Grell's starting to realize that her life just sucks man. As much as she loved Jane, it's not fun marrying someone for status and appearances only and not for love. Long story short, she ended up breaking down under the intense pressure after a huge fight with her father and she died via slitting her wrists in a locked bathroom in her home with Jane getting inside way too late

Grell died pissed off, believing that her suicide was as an act of revenge against her family because now, they don't have a heir that came directly from their bloodline, and overall became a bitter and jaded person she was in the reaper OVA

#kuroshitsuji #black butler #grell sutcliff #kuroshitsuji grell #kuroshitpost #TUMBLR DELETED THIS TWICE MIND YOU

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crave-mp3 · 9 months

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ok going to list good things in my life while my brownie cooks. i have a group of incredible friends who truly care about me. we're going to have a fantasy themed bonfire where we dress up in costumes and fool around on the beach soon. there is so much beautiful poetry and art and music i could never see it all in a lifetime and more is being made every day. i am part of that creation. i saw my friend today and she and i made plans to do a little book club where we cook things together. she and i and another friend are going to dress up and see the barbie movie next weekend. she's giving me old spice deodorant on my next birthday as a joke about me "becoming a man" (i love her so much). speaking of which i have my first ever appointment for gender treatment on my 18th birthday, which is only a few months away!! and when i came out none of my fears were true and my mom held me and we cried together. i still have a too-sensitive fight or flight reflex but there is less concrete reason for it now--my mom went to AA and my dad is less angry. i live in a uniquely beautiful place with lots of nature. my friend is coming home soon and we'll stay up all night and sneak out to the old bunker on the cliff. my work is interesting and my coworkers are nice and i am out and there is another trans guy there. my friends and i are going to see hozier in the fall. college is scary but i have some places i'm excited for and i'm moderately confident in my ability to get financial aid or scholarships to the places i want to go. i'll have less classes at high school this year and they'll be ones that actually interest or challenge me. a guy at pride prom said he thoufht i was really good at dancing. i live in a place that has pride proms! i learned how to replace a watch band the other day. there will always be early morning sun in the fields and dancing late at night in the kitchen. the wild blackberries are ripening. and now i have a delicious brownie :)

#this was not all typed while it cooked but it needed to be said lol #DEEP SIGH its alright #vic.txt

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deanwasalwaysbi · 3 years

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Dean’s Self Acceptance & Chekhov's Grenade Launcher

If you aren’t here for a deeper look at episode 12x22, metaphors, and Dean being bi, keep scrolling because we’re going to get into that holy hand grenade - Supernatural’s Grenade Launcher, the weapon that Dean has loved since season one but always got shamed out of using; shamed out of using UNTIL 12x22; an episode literally titled, ‘Who We Are’.

After which Dean loses Castiel and goes into the Widower arc ... ok. ... Cool. I’ll just read nothing into any of that shall I?

(cont under the cut)

Okay first- ‘what grenade launcher? I don’t remember a grenade launcher?’

Dean has a grenade launcher in the trunk that we’ve never seen him use. It's been there at least since episode 1x02. He has assigned a gender to the grenade launcher, calling it ‘she’ like his car. It has appeared multiple times, but one noteworthy time was two episodes ago when Dean was showing his arsenal to Max Barnes, the openly gay witch hunter, in 12x20. Mmmhmm, nothing to see there. Nothing about the slow progression of Dean learning to accept himself. Nothing about Dean opening his trunk up to a canonically gay man.

Dean often wants to use it her, but it’s she’s impractical, it’s she’s not stealthy. The thing is unsafe, and other characters are constantly telling him no, put it back, don’t bring it, don’t use it. (See 12x05)

When Dean lost his memory - when he would have seen no reason NOT to use it, one of the other characters reminded him with a post-it note: this thing that you want to do, that’s a natural instinct for you, don’t do it. (See 12x11)

[gif credit to @demondetox & @shirtlesssammy]

Okay, now that we have a bit of primer - let’s talk about 12x22. There’s a lot to unpack in this episode.

Mary has been brainwashed and the boys have been locked in the bunker to die. After trying magic and pickaxes (shout out to “goggles? goggles.”), Dean realizes it is time. Time to tear down his big concrete wall with something, "Big, Beautiful, and Dumb" regardless of what the British lady in the bunker says, and he's getting no more resistance from Sam.

"I have had this thing for so long, I have been waiting for the *perfect* moment to use this."

We've been seeing the grenade launcher for 12 seasons, and in how many episodes and they just happen to have Dean finally use it to break OUT by breaking DOWN walls in an episode titled ‘WHO WE ARE’?!

Having torn down that wall with the grenade launcher, it becomes time to deal with other, less physical ones. There are British Men of Letters to fight, Mary is still brainwashed, and there is no magical shortcut that is going to cut through. In a display of how far the characters have come, Sam is becoming a leader in a fight he originally wanted no part in [which the show will drop over and over for no reason] and Dean, well this one’s about Dean for me.

Dean fucked up his leg coming out ... of the bunker, I mean. Finally using the grenade launcher, it hurt, but it didn’t kill him. An earlier Dean would have joined the fight at the men of letters compound anyway, prepared to die in a blaze of glory. However, Dean has changed. Instead he recognizes that going into a fight right now would be idiotic and he stays behind to fight with EMOTIONS instead of brawn. It’s okay to Dean, and even his idea, to not go into the ‘manly’ fight. Dean has become secure in himself enough to volunteer to go into the battle that requires being open and honest about feelings. He initiates the hug and feelings talk with Sam, (only undercutting a lil with a classic 'bitch' 'jerk' call response). No chick flick moments indeed.

So Dean and Sam hug, Sam promises Dean he’ll come back, and we move on to the most important scene in the episode. Dean has broken through mind control with feelings before, with Cas in season 8 episode 17 when we had the infamous ‘We need you. I need you’ moment (though apparently Jensen Dean was still guarded enough that this was not an ‘I love you’.) but this time Dean goes into Mary’s psyche; Mary who has been a stand in all season for who Dean was emotionally before his character growth.

The viewer is expecting some big declaration of love, that’s how dean broke through last time. But no. That’s not what we get.

Dean finally lets out his true feelings. About his childhood. About John. About Mary’s death. About everything that has ever happened to Sam. The walls are coming down. Dean is honest with someone about the resentment he feels (which should be directed at John) about the responsibility that was put on him as a child. In sharp contrast to his reaction to Mary’s guilt at the beginning of the season, of Dean as the perpetual caretaker, now Dean gets to acknowledge his own feelings, that he does blame Mary and her deal for what they went through. Watch this scene. He hates her and he loves her. okay.

Yes, Dean got to use the grenade launcher, but it wasn’t in a climax of some epic battle. It was in the ramp up - the beginning of an episode.

No, the climax of the episode was Dean comin to terms with feelings the character has had since season one. We’ve been looking at this grenade launcher for 12 years, but we’ve been witnessing Dean’s feelings here for just as long & Dean takes his emotional predecessor, Mary, along with him.

I will skip past the fight scene between him and ketch - which is actually impressive given the horse tranquilizer he’d been given. Instead, I want to get to 12x23, to his reunion with Castiel.

Dean has used the grenade launcher. Dean has accepted himself and admitted something to himself that you can’t even really see until you look back at this episode’s placement retrospectively. Dean is no longer trying to fight with Castiel, he just wants to help him. Castiel heals Dean’s major knee injury and Dean, well we get an interesting jacting joice:

in fact, the moment continues with a lil half smile and Dean looking down and checking his knee, I’m just having trouble getting a gif or a video to make one from. Throughout the entire episode Cas routinely addresses Dean specifically despite being in a group at all times. Cas later makes a run at Lucifer and Sam wrestles a yelling concerned Dean away and back through the rift, just as Dean wrestled him away from Jess in the pilot.

At the end of this episode Cas is killed in front of Dean, who for the first time doesn't continue on in the fight, instead dropping to his knees. This all flows right into Dean’s intense season 13 widower arc. Dean feels Cas’s death in a way we have never seen him grieve before.

Ho.ly.Shit.

"Who We Are".

It gets another use later in the series in the same episode where Dean also wears a live action version of the pink sleeping gown he wore in scoobynatural, but we’ll get to that later.

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topoillogical · 2 years

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I watched Encanto recently. Really good movie, in my opinion. Gorgeous animation, but that's nothing new for modern Disney. Still, it was good. The songs slapped. The story was emotional but fun, and I'm a sucker for a happy ending. I think the thing I liked most about it was..... how imbued with magic everything was. There was always something fantastical just casually going on onscreen. Super visually engaging and really cool.

BUT! And here comes the beloathed "but". I don't understand why so many people on here view Encanto as almost... sacred? There's some debate over whether it qualifies as Magical Realism, but either way it definitely is a story centered around a place (a home, and by extension, a town) in Colombia. It also has a huge focus on the family, and on the trauma. But it's a disney movie. It's meant to be fun! There are parts of it that are quite deep and emotional, and I do agree that it speaks to Colombian culture. But it was made by Disney, first of all, not by a Latine person from Colombia expressing their story. It's a good movie, but... let me be more concrete. Let's talk about LGBT+ headcanons.

I do not care what character and what headcanon, your LGBT+ headcanon for Encanto is fine. If you think Abuela is a lesbian, does that directly contradict the story? Sure! Can you headcanon it anyway? Of course! Because Encanto isn't sacred. It doesn't mean you are missing some grand point if you choose to interact with the movie in a different way. On the OTHER hand, there are headcanons that I've seen people get upset about, such as seeing Bruno as gay, or Isabela as a lesbian.

Before I watched the movie, I thought that maybe there was some merit to peoples arguments that saying Isabela is a lesbian was glossing over her story. You know, because marriages for the family and stuff is a serious topic and just because you don't want to marry one man doesn't mean you don't want to marry any man. Even still, it would be fine to headcanon her as lesbian, because it's... fine. Yet in the movie, I was surprised at how little Isabela's marriage actually WAS for the good of the family. She was marrying him because she wanted to continue being able to make her family proud, to have a beautiful husband, it just seemed like the thing that was expected of her. This storyline... this storyline is, genuinely, a very resonant storyline to what I've heard from the gay and lesbian communities. I don't think there is any loss to the importance of this story by seeing Isabela as a lesbian. There was no reason she had to marry this man in particular, she was doing it to maintain her perfection and continue living the life expected of her. Making her a lesbian, in my opinion, enhances this storyline, not detracts from it. At the very least, it's a neutral change.

In terms of Bruno - one argument I heard, from the pro LGBT+ headcanons side, is that Bruno can be seen as a metaphor for disowning a gay or trans relative. The counterargument to this that I saw was that, saying Abuela is homophobic and making the storyline about that, is racist. I partially disagree, and partially agree, with both of these. Of COURSE Bruno's story can be seen as disowning a family member for being gay or trans. Someone who feels alienated from there family for those reasons is extremely likely to see themselves in Bruno. On the other hand, I don't think that this is the intended metaphor - rather, that it's alluding to being the black sheep of the family in a general sense. Still, seeing yourself in Bruno is A-OK. On the other hand, assuming Abuela is homophobic for being an older Colombian woman, IS racist. But there is nothing wrong with reading her obsession with perfection in the family as something that could be related to homophobia, especially if that's how you're seeing Bruno. The story isn't sacred. It's okay to have negative headcanons about Abuela.

Incidentally, another common headcanon I saw was Camilo being gender fluid. I think this is cute, has little impact on the story, and is probably a great fantasy for lots of gender fluid people who would love that power! I think this headcanons is just good.

Anyway, I saw a lot of people saying that if you have LGBT+ headcanons for Encanto, you're missing the point. My main argument here is just: no, you're not missing the point, and even if you WERE (like with my hypothetical lesbian Abuela), it wouldn't matter. Because the movie isn't a sacred cornerstone of Columbian culture.

I ALSO saw someone saying something along the lines of "Encanto is a movie about intergenerational trauma in a latine family, it doesn't need LGBT+ characters". This is almost humorously false. Any story could use LGBT+ characters, because they exist everywhere. There are LGBT+ Columbians who are living through intergenerational trauma! And sometimes, their LGBT+ identity interacts with that trauma! Having queer characters would ADD to the movie, not detract from it.

Finally, to finish off, I'd like to tip my hat to one point from the anti-LGBT+ headcanons side that I do agree with. The fact that white people often have trouble relating to characters that they don't see themself in. This is a huge problem, and one of the reasons why representation is currently so bad (movies marketed to white people need to star white people as not to alienate the audience, even though the audience shouldn't be alienated by other races). In the white LGBT+ community, this trouble relating can be seen as plastering LGBT+ identities on everything. So it is something to be cognizant of. I think that non-Jewish white people getting really excited about Anne Frank being bisexual (an identity she never claimed, btw) is a good example of this phenomenon. Still, Encanto is VERY different from Diary of a Young Girl. One was written by a Jewish girl who lived during the holocaust. One is a Disney movie.

#encanto #tagging this as encanto is maybe dangerous lol but. i want people to see this maybe. i thought abt it quite a bir

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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 3 years

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Ok so - it always slightly bugs me whenever people write about sylvari getting married? Just because

- they had no contact with other races until Malomedies was captured by asura

- their first human contact was Waine, who by all accounts was still a teenager

- in Caithe's memories from S2 the sylvari are still really isolated and the Secondborn had been awakening for months at that point

It is not inconceivable - in fact it is highly likely - that the sylvari developed their own cultural flavor for things like falling in love and getting married before they really encountered the human way of doing it. I think Caithe and Faolain, being the oldest canonical sylvari couple we know of (until Wynnet died), would have set the tone of the cultural romance of the sylvari.

The tradition of marriage in real-life human culture has its roots in the Jewish/Christian practice of a lifelong pledge of oneness to each other. Sylvari have no tradition or precedent like that, and their love works differently to begin with.

Sylvari don't fall in love with a person so much as a concept or ideal that two sylvari fall in love with together; so they're kind of pursuing this concept or ideal together and bonding over it. This is why, for a sylvari player, Trammander is not just a fan-pairing, it's almost lore canon. But anyway - ideals and concepts change and you change and your partner changes, so a breakup for sylvari is less brokenhearted - like if your partner changes and you don't you're just kind of like - I thought I knew you? and you know them of course but they're just not your type anymore and you have to find someone else with your ideal or concept, or maybe you also change because of the breakup, or something.

But anyway; so I don't think sylvari 'get married' in any traditional human sense where you pledge faithfulness and the law recognizes you as one entity and divorce is long and painful and often traumatizing and interactions with that person later are just kinda awkward at best. I think when a sylvari says 'I love you' to another sylvari and they say 'I love you' back, that's the sylvari equivalent of marriage, and it can and does end peacefully at any time more often than someone gets angsty over it.

I'm not saying sylvari don't form interpersonal ties; I'm not saying if your partner leaves you just have to find another one to be happy, because it's clearly not. See Tiachren and Ysvelta, from sylvari level 10, and when Ysvelta changed, either Tiachren tries to bring her back from Nightmare because this isn't the person he knew (and Nightmare adds a whole other dimension of complexity) and eventually has to kill her because he still loves who she was and Nightmare kinda cheated and stole her mind, or else he joins her in Nightmare because - I think she still had whatever concept or ideal it was that they fell in love with together, and doing it in Nightmare is the negative side of it was better than abandoning that concept or ideal.

I also don't think sylvari use words like 'husband' or 'wife' - the sylvari term is the gender-neutral 'dearheart.' The words 'wife' and 'husband' just feel wrong when we're talking about sylvari because those are human terms.

Now, if there was a romance between a sylvari and a human and the sylvari was like 'sure we can get married your way' - then that would be cool and interesting.

But like - making sylvari just planty humans culturally is lazy when there's so much potential. And I'm aware I didn't do anything special in this post, I'm just being picky about words.

But hey, it's a concrete system for romance that doesn't feel like humans that happened to be born as plants!

For example, I don't ship Trammander. He's always been a friend/brother to me. My Commander specifically sees him as a father figure. Eveanin, my kinda-sorta 'backup Commander' - it's complicated - is head over heels for Trahearne (she's a sylvari player! her Wyld Hunt and Trahearne's are intertwined!) but he only has eyes for the Commander, but the Commander - who is sylvari enough to fall in the love the way sylvari do - sees him as a father figure and Eveanin lowkey resents her for not seeing how amazing Trahearne is and tying up his affections like that without even realizing. Eveanin knows she has no chance with Trahearne and is just kinda pining watching him stare at Commander while she (and actually Ridhais too!) are just left on the side. And so it's this massive love-square-thing and Commander just doesn't get it and it's tragic because then the Mordremoth Disaster happens and all three of them are devastated.

#gw2 #heart of thorns #trahearne #tiffanycommander #eveanin #tiachren #ysvelta #ridhais #malomedies #trammander #sylvari #firstborn #secondborn

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duelofthefatesmp3 · 3 years

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i DO actually wanna know how youd make kotor 3 !!!!!

this ask has been sitting on my inbox for so long on PURPOSE! i wanted some time to re read the revan book + watch some swtor gameplays so i could give a concrete answer about why the book and swtor arent satisfactory and what i would do instead (im not like. a storytelling god so i this is just my PERSONAL idea). under the cut!

to begin with, what's wrong with revan the book and swtor, mai?

i am very fond of swtor i think it was such a nice idea to have an "open" world game set in star wars old republic time. but ultimately, it was not a good conclusion to revan and meetra's storyline! now, i don't really know what happened in the development of the third kotor game (if there ever was a plan for one) but it's clear they dropped the ball on that and decided to start a whole different project. i don't think we can blame disney for that one, because it was announced on 2008, launched in 2011, and disney had just bought star wars that year. so who knows.

the thing is that it's painfully evident that a bunch of the story that was gonna be in the third game, ended up in the book + misc parts of swtor. much of the book feels like a gameplay.

now, it was clear when the book was planned that they wanted to keep revan's story open so when the game came out, they could have a cool Revan storyline so he could make a cool villain appearence and draw in some of that kotor nostalgia. which ehhhhhh. uh. i don't really think did any favors for revan's character. he didn't have a satisfactory arc (I'm not saying "a happy ending" because good arcs aren't always happy) but at least some closure?

revan went through many big events in his life. we didnt need to keep his ass in stasis for his fun villain moments 300 years later. we already had what we wanted from him: jedi turned sith turned jedi again to defeat a terrible threat. that was it we could have let it there and it would have been cool! but then they decided to drag and drag his story just to leave him right where he was before. he just suffered a little more in the in-between.

you could say he finally redeemed himself of all of his crimes this way, but wasn't that the whole purpose of the first kotor game (and would have been the purpose of the 3rd?)

swtor does not centre revan in his own narrative. he's a side character for the player to experience. and look, i get it, we've had a different protag on each game, why not have another one in this one. well, because the protagonist has no personal relationship with revan. meetra was one of his closest friends, and fought with him. there is a connection that can be exploited. but the swtor protagonist is just some guy 300 years in the future who happens to stumble into revan and his life. not even his descendants get to fully interact with revan.

also, there is the fact that revan is not the centre of the game itself, only of a particular storyline. and it's weird, because swtor could have happened without revan's involvement.

ms. meetra surik, ms. bastila shan, women of the world I'm sorry

so it's no news that star wars is misogynistic as fuck right. cause it is.

so you decide to make your gender neutral protagonist a guy. then you decide to make your other gender neutral protagonist a woman. cool. now let's guess who gets underdeveloped, turned into a plot device without reason, and promptly fridged in the most unceremoniously fashion just to fullfil some manpain moments. which one do you think got that treatment.

i know the revan book is supposed to be about revan, but why make meetra go through a whole arc just to undermine her character and turn her into the faithful servant of the guy? she leaves everything behind for him, sacrifices herself for him, hell not even dead is she not serving the guy. and she was the second game’s protagonist! she beat up a bunch of powerful people and now she’s just meh, there? she had so many interesting ways to interact with revan (meeting kreia, revan’s first master, encountering another force consuming entity, etc.)

meetra went through a whole arc about dealing with the guilt of doing something horrible and having the consequences of it cut her from the force. we see her broken, then slowly come back to the world and reconnect herself with the force, then stop running and face the consequences of her role in the war. thats such a cool character with tons of potential! and nothing happened!

then we got bastila who is. a whole deal. so you make her go through a “promising jedi who defeated revan, to questioning reluctant companion, to fell into the dark side, to was redeemed thanks to her bond to revan, who helped her come back because he’d been through the same experience” arc, and then you decide to push her to the side to have a baby?? which is... its clear that the writer didnt know what to do with her (or with the other characters outside of canderous) so hey, lets get her to marry revan and have a baby.

my ideal kotor 3

to preface, im not a game developer, so some of my choices could be stunted by what a kotor rpg can do lol. of course, it would follow the same mechanics and have the same format as the first two, because consistency!

the fun way to start the game, would be from scourge’s perspective. we get to play as a sith! i’d even say you get to change scourge’s name and gender and looks (i know sith have different looks)

in scourge’s storyline, we get from his arrival to normound kaas, to his talks with nissyris, to his missions working for her. in some of these, we can make scourge lean into the dark or the light side! fun! plus we get some exposition with dialogue options. it all continues untill we get to nissirys story about the emperor. we get a fucked up cutscene of his childhood and then BOOM when its over, we see revan waking up from a nightmare and their pov starts.

ok, as for revan’s story, since we’d have to pick it up from where kotor ended, i’d have a little cutscene of revan back into the ebon hawk, with bastila, and them telling the crew to take them to courascant. then cut to a council meeting where revan and bastila get scolded in private, then rewarded by the republic. i would also like to see some revan mournink malak’s death mayhaps. since he was their childhood friend and all.

i would 100% scrape the marriage and two years passed part. as the book said, the council had no use for revan aside from the legend(tm), so why would they stay in courascant. revan was very alienated from the jedi at that point, despite being back in the “light side”

then like, to revan asking around for meetra and other jedi from the mandalorian wars, we can cash in that atris cameo, then revan starts to have these visions about the sith emperor, and maybe we could get a playable dream sequence about revan’s fight with mandalore the ultimate (I KNOW I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.) and we get the whole exposition to mandalore telling revan that the sith are behind it all. i believe we should get a bunch of these flashback/dream sequences of revan’s past doing shit. cut to revan burying the mask in a planet, then back to the present. we see a bunch of mission and juhani scenes trying to reach him, but he keeps pushing them away. revan and bastila meet canderous, travel to the ice planet, meet clan ordo (god i love clan ordo) you get the whole quest, you decide weather to spare veela or not, maybe you get a cheeky mandalorian companion (force sensitive mando oh?) and leave canderous behind.

we can visit like, a couple more planets searching for clues maybe, etc. then when reaching nathema, you are forced to go alone as revan, get to explore nathema a bit (raiding ancient location yay) nathema as a location can be so fun because you can have it weaken you hp bar and also you cant use the force (which, in game is pretty cool)

then we get to scourge and nyssiris arriving to the planet, they fight but since theres two of them and revan doesn’t have the force, they beat the shit out of them, and while running away, they get in a fight with bastila and the companions in the ebon hawk (ebon hawk shooting game my hated). bastila manages to get a glimpse of revan’s thoughts before they take them away. but the ebon is so ruined it takes bastila, t3 and the mandalorian a while to fix it, and they get stuck into the unknown regions for a while. the ebon hawk is left in an outer rim planet with t3 fixing it, bastila and the mandalorian run back to the jedi council, only to get caught in the middle of the jedi civil war. we can have bastila choosing to hide in courascant and trying to make sense of what she saw, reading texts about the sith empire, trying to plot a course to where they took revan (more atris! but shes pissed at her now)

cutscene to meetra’s pov, leaving malachor v behind, getting calls from everyone at the hawk (atton my beloved) but just as she’s leaving she gets a force message from revan, calling for her to find him and sending visions of normound kaas. then, through her force bond with visas, she tells her not to go because they’re gay and in love and whatnot.

then boom, she gets intercepted by bastila’s ship, with the mandalore and the other mandalorian (yes i do love having a bunch of mandos on board) and they go on their way to find revan.

now i want there to be an underlying message of “we can’t take our friends with us because we have to do this ALONE we’re powerful JEDI we don’t need our FRIENDS.” meetra gets asked if she wants to bring any friends and she’s like “no. we have to do this alone.” along the game you get constantly contacted by other game characters, you get the chance to talk to them or ignore them.

so, we get back to nathema, and meetra has a whole “holy shit this is just like darth nihilus but ten times worse. but i beat darth nihilus. i can do this!” then she finds peace in this place without the force, we get a whole speech about how the odds arent against them, they find a way to normound kaas, and get going.

in normound kaas i thought about them getting a whole mission about how to infiltrate the citadel, only to get helped by scourge. he joins the party, we get a little flashback of all the years he spent trying to make revan remember and they storm the citadel. we get to fight the dark council members, fun! then we get to free revan and the game switches povs. bastila hands the mask to revan and he has a cool “yes im revan im pretty cool” then a nice heartfelt yet rushed reunion with everyone.

then have a small CONVERSATION WITH MEETRA where she talks about the sith triumvirate she defeated and revan is impressed with her and is like “we are the last hope of the jedi, we’ve learned to walk between light and dark, we’ve done horrors but we can still make things right, our experience has made us more powerful etc.

then they fight the imperial guard, ALL OF THEM, meetra revan and scourge make it into the throne room, they all fight the emperor. meetra shows the emperor that she has seen the void, she has cut herself from the force, and she’s not afraid of him, revan supports her, talks about redemption and hope and NOW.

NOW. how the alternate endings could go:

if you decide to take scourge through the light side, he manages to form a forcebond with meetra and revan since they’ve both teached something about the duality of the force, they get 100% stronger, but its still not enough. UNTIL. a bunch of ships (jedi and mandalorian, even non republic ships) arrive to dormound kaas, the gangs from each game storm the room and together they make the emperor and his guard a bunch of punching bags. they beat him! (unknow to them, this was a backup body because the emperor can do weird shit like that, and has only debilitated his plan, but he’ll come back dont worry). then they fly back to the republic, to tell the chancellor about the sith threat, and preparations for the war begin. meetra and revan get to live happily ever after for a while, then they die away from the jedi or the sith (waaah im thinking about them helping canderous rebuild the mandalorians, and them doing it since they killed so many mandos in the war)

BECAUSE IN THE END KOTOR IS ABOUT LEARNING TO PROCESS TRAUMA AND RECOGNIZE YOUR MISTAKES AND LIVE WITH THE GUILT WHILST TRYING TO FIX THE MISTAKES YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY. AND ALSO TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA YOU NEED A SUPPORT SYSTEM SO EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES SENSE TO YOU YOU SHOULDNT PUSH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AWAY. AND THINGS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE ITS COMPLICATED SO YOU DONT END UP BACK ON SQUARE ONE YOURE A CHANGED PERSON.

if you decide to dark side scourge further, he betrays revan and meetra, they all die, and the emperor unleashes his angry lightning or whatever on everyone + a bunch of visions of all the enemies of past mocking them, and their loved ones suffering. and since you’ve had that “im not calling my friends bullshit” no one comes, you die there, and the emperor is only stalled for a few years. swtor ensues. scourge becomes the emperor’s hand.

now you could of course bring revan and meetra up in swtor, but maybe only as force ghost guides, or have some of the other characters of the game have relevance (visas tries to heal the miraluka planet 2021)

WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS. HOPE THIS IS SATISFYING ENOUGH

#this is bonkers but ive been thinking about it since 2011 so.#wow 10 years since i played kotor. wretched little game.#also if i switch pronouns midway its because it would make it clearer #kotor 3 rewrite

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constablegoo · 3 years

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@astralglam filed a report .

mint: does your muse view themself as virtuous & moral? what do these words mean to them?

OHOHO. hey hi ily. this is, of course, one of odo’s deepest ongoing battles, and the moment he stops questioning it is the moment he becomes a founder.

the founders grant themselves god status. GOD! status. they just reach out and pluck it. Within their range of power, the founders become unquestionably Just and Virtuous and Moral, their Word becomes Law, it becomes “the way things are” and “fact” and they create their own reality stemming from thousands of years of intense xenophobia. they’re above it all. gods don’t make mistakes, right? sure, maybe changelings were hunted and feared ages ago but they still fear it, and that drive for Order and Control over the galaxy is now encoded into their genes and they place a companion structure into the genes of every other species they control, subjugating them to the founders’ own cozy position as Gods, or-- ‘gods’. the founder (i rly don’t like saying “female” founder so she’s THE Founder. she speaks for the link.) makes it quite clear on many occasions that the founders are not here to negotiate. they fully intend to control EVERYTHING at any cost. it is absolutely chilling when she cuts garak down with: “they’re dead. you’re dead. cardassia is dead.” and draws the line between the dominion and everyone else miles deep into the sand.

that same genetic coding is one of the first semi-concrete things odo comes to understand about himself and, horribly, he’s landed into conditions under the occupation that very easily could have taken advantage of a less meticulous or stubborn changeling. no, odo says initially (and incorrectly), i am not bajoran** and i am not cardassian and i stand apart from either side of this conflict and so i am bound to PURE Virtue and Morality because of it. he can’t be bribed or bought or won over, and he won’t allow for anything less than a kind of incorruptibility. this effectively wins him allies (and enemies) on both sides, however -- that’s just not how the universe works. the truth of it is that no matter how much he tells himself he is not a part of their regime, his working with the cardassians makes him a collaborator in that he has then recognized their authority and ultimately upheld their legitimacy, even if he never agreed with the cause, even if he was also on some level a casualty of it. at some point when he moves past ‘contract’ investigation and begins to work permanently, he falls into the trap of thinking Order is the same thing as Justice... huge yikes. in that moment he becomes a true and apathetic villain, but he’s subsequently haunted by the resulting execution of innocents. it shakes something up in him. years pass and he still wonders, what other mistakes has he made? what other less direct consequences of his ‘neutral’ arbitration exist? he (and everyone around him) has to live without really knowing, and it’s a constant reminder to him of the power he holds and it informs his understanding of what Real (and imperfect) Justice Means.

**sidenote but later in s7 he introduces himself as ‘from bajor’ and AAAAAA. its good. very good. yeah, you’re bajoran, odo. he gets it now.

Mirror odo is really the ultimate example of an odo having taken those instincts to extremes in an environment that rewarded him for them -- there is no guilt there, and even a sadistic kind of pleasure in it. i’d argue that gaia!odo is another, less extreme example of an odo who’s been alone too long and lost sight of things when he single-mindedly (and against kira’s wishes) chooses her (one person) over 8000. like holy shit? NOT ok? uhhuhhhhfff. anyway. very fortunately, neither of these are OUR odo, but act as great foils to reflect on the worst (bastard cop) qualities or potential qualities of our goo pushed to highly visible extremes, which star trek just loves to do all the time.

but regular/prime odo isnt exactly a rule-follower, either. throughout his life, he frequently takes things into his own hands, uses his abilities to his advantage, spies, wiretaps, eavesdrops, and yes, harasses [quark] sometimes -- he develops his own set of values and personal rules and follows them; even starfleet comes in wary of him and how he operates and hes on thin ice. but because of possibly his most redeeming quality, odo is able to adapt those self-ordained values toward something increasingly honest: for how rigid he can be in personality, he is HIGHLY influenced by the world around him, listens hard to what his friends and allies have to say and adapts that feedback; this allows him to evolve and grow and take important matters to heart. he becomes more flexible and better able to hold onto what’s really most important after locking into a decision, because above all else, he is passionately committed to doing the Right Thing. he PLEADS with himself in things past, “your job is to find the truth, not obtain convictions.” by his tendency to push back against what is laid down as ‘law’ (something he becomes more and more aware of and effective at doing) as not always being good or right, or necessarily even creating Order (the thing he’s driven genetically to want), he prepares himself to challenge the most deadly voice of authority -- that of his own people.

so... yes and no. odo’s role and persona as ‘your average security chief’ might dictate that he be virtuous and moral, but he so obviously can’t fit the same exact mold as others in his position -- he has these insane abilities and this mind-consuming nature and it requires he tread with extra care, but he also has a potential for more adaptive, more nuanced morality. he has to build up his own definitions to the words, constantly examine and tease and test them, or else he risks straying too far from what he really wants to achieve -- harmony, honest justice. he has to accept that he’s a part of the system he operates in (not, in fact, alone or isolated! something he actually wants), and know that he is not exempt from making the wrong choice, just like anybody else.

carnation: what is your muse’s relationship with their gender? how do they express or not express this relationship?

ODO AND GENDER!!! i love odo and gender. let’s take this one step at a time. he starts out as an amorphous glob -- he has no gender. there’s no basis for assignment, no culture of difference, and all the goos are goo. odo takes on the shape of the first living thing he sees / the thing he sees most frequently: dr mora. he adopts an image of masculinity from mora and he adopts the hair. that’s about it, and it’s pretty much arbitrary. (maybe the hair is simple enough for his skills, too?) the next people odo meets are also these very masculine, military, cardassian leaders, so again -- this is all he knows! this is neutrality. i imagine it takes him some time to work out what the differences in gender are, and sex, and orientation, romantic vs sexual stuff, all of that. it’s all got cultural baggage he knows nothing about and does not experience, and he’s also dealing with multiple, clashing cultures to boot. since he doesnt have any strong inherent leaning, he simply opts out. he/him becomes his default because thats where he started, thats what he’s been able to successfully present and how people know him, and, terrifyingly, under cardassian rule, it probably offered a bit of safety, too, which was obviously something he needed at the time.

way way way way way down the line in season seven, odo asks kira to (paraphrasing) look at me. what do you see? [i see you.] but this is NOT me, this is only a shape ive assumed in order to fit in. she says, yes, i know that. but this is who you have chosen to be. “a man. a good and honest man.” (i knowww shes not really talking abt gender here BUT) its hard as a trans person not to read the metaphor. he’s chosen to express SOMETHING. he’s chosen something other than what he was given (neutrality) and although he doesnt personally buy into what ‘masculinity’ “should be” (ie the ferengi, smh) / would certainly not argue he doesnt feel non-binary, this is how he has presented all his life, its how hes been treated, and it is what he has chosen to adhere to. there’s a choice in that, kira’s right, and now it reflects something about him.

parallel this, i’ll mention the “female” founder again bc of course there is no discernable reason for her to have a gender -- other than to appeal (im not talking sexually here although there’s,, obviously weird shit happening with the link... yike) to odo in the sense that until that point odo has lived with “gendered” individuals and, i think importantly, kira is with them when they first meet. i think its safe to say the founder saw her, figured she was a friend/ally to odo or at least familiar to him, and took her general representation to appeal as a friend/ally.

otherwise... why, honestly? the founder’s got NO love of humanoids lmao why would she bother.

anyway i’d like to see odo experiment a bit. because when hes safe, he can!! aside from his own doubts and insecurities about shapeshifting, at some point he really has no reason not to, at least a little bit. really, it should just be another thing to practice, much like becoming a convincing rock or a leaf, its just that there are other significances in the cultures around him. i’d just like to see him loosen up a little. have fun. grow ur hair out a bit, odo, why are u still looking like ur terrible dad.

#astralglam #geez ok anyone who reads these are gods #thanks for letting me let some frogs out of my brain #like a lot of frogs #⌀ EVERY SIXTEEN HOURS I TURN INTO A LIQUID! [ about. ]#⌀ YOU HAVE NO SECRETS FROM ME. [ asks. ]#long post /#long as hell post /#sorry hopefully everyones asleep i dont wanna do readmore bc im a nuisance asjdfa

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roboromantic · 3 years

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I should update my ffxiv oc lore doc a bit but I keep getting distracted by lore questions like.

ok I know the planet is called Hydaelyn in Common but she really isn’t mentioned like At All in the way that other deities etc. are. Is there Hydaelyn worship??? what does that look like. also tell me more about all the various religions and cultures dammit. we get just info enough to be interesting but not nearly enough detail about what people actually do and/or believe.

If the Qestir believe all words are lies then like I said before, I want more info about how they actually learn to communicate etc. but also that seems to be pretty hard to reconcile with the idea of working with a bunch of people. Xaela are already described as wary of outsiders and that seems like that belief would make the Qestir even MORE distrustful. Then again, we're told Reunion was created bc they couldn't get medicine for a sick kid in time (or something to that effect) and if they want to improve trade relationships with clans to prevent something like that from happening again then I guess doing it yourself is more effective than trying to hold some meeting of the clans where they just talk about it for hours on end and never actually solve anything. Despite the animosity and infighting among clans we're told about, I feel like we see an awful lot of inter-clan friendships

I feel like they mentioned at some point that linkpearls go in your ears but uh. Khaljan ain't got those so how exactly do those work anyways. I'm just imagining like, clip-on headphones that idk, keep the linkpearl pressed against the horns for the vibrations to travel or st???

I have So Many questions about how the hell Seeker of the Sun clans work bc they keep saying it's rare to have more than one Nunh in a clan and there's only ~26 clans so like unless they have "litters" I feel like the total Miqo'te population would be VANISHINGLY small.

unrelatedd but elly mentioned that Viera "reach an age of gender" and okay so a gender neutral term for bar/bat mitzvah is b'nei mitzvah so my brain was just like. bunny mitzvah.

I'm almost certain there was more lore stuff I wanted to talk about a) im tired and I forgot and b) this is already pretty long and I haven't even talked aabout the OCs yet whoops

I gotta add/remove a couple alts from the doc like ok currently in the doc:

P’molminn: Has a surname now and also needs to be listed as an alt

Rorobo Robo: I really love her but I still haven’t actually come up with anything concrete for her yet 😔 She (and everyone else) will get a new reference pic though

Trans Purr-ide: I’m not sure if they’re gonna be an OC or just a "hey check out my name" alt but I do really like them so they can stay

Effervescent Snail: I REALLY WANNA FLESH HER OUT but I haven’t looked into Roegadyn stuff At All yet

The Neytiri Miqo’te: She’s just an Avatar reference so she don’t got lore and won’t be getting none neither so I’m just gonna delete her

Not in the doc:

Tolgoun Qestir: okay so I was looking for unisex Mongolian names bc I wanted to make nem nb and I came across one romanized Dölgöön, so I tweaked the spelling to reflect what I’d probably do with my Xaelang and voila. I later realized that neir name can be shorted to “Tol” and ne’s a max height ““““male”“““ Xaela so,

Eclaileaux Cerdal: He’ll probably become an OC eventually but he’s literally just a TFA Blitzwing reference atm so it's a little weird. I’m very proud of his name though bc see I got the idea while making an Elezen so clearly he has to have a French name. Eclair=lightning and aile=wing and they combine perfectly to make Eclaile. The Elezen naming conventions are like “well its gotta end in a french suffix that ends with a silent x or t” so I just threw on -aux. Basically his name is Lightnwingz and then his surname is the last name of the guy who voiced Blitzwing for nearly all of the French dub. It’s all very silly and I love it

girl help I have so many saved appearances that I really like and wanna turn into OCs eventually and now we got bunny boys too

#*makes an alt and gets it to Sastasha* *makes an alt and gets it to Sastasha* *makes an alt and g–

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throughthewwods · 3 years

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100 Days of Productivity. Day 70

🐾 continuing with the GSD training.

He’s been acting slightly less spastic and actually did a pretty good job when I asked my boyfriend to accompany me on the walk as an intentional distraction. GSD loves my boyfriend obnoxiously. I expected him to practically disjoint my shoulder, but he did ok, despite RB and the excitement of all the neighborhood children zigzagging in every direction

💚 I worked out by 8 AM

( my golden window of opportunity before I get pulled into the mom-school-dog-cooking-damnit, now I have to clean up what I just cooked-calls-peopling undertow )

💙 In the spirit of not letting my bleak school readings depress the hell out of me, I read a few articles about successful mental health interventions for the blind.

📚 i found numerous articles on sighted person stereotypes and attitudes towards the blind for my paper.

Spoiler: that was depressing, but... it needs to be done.

💙 I looked up a couple interventions that helped the sighted participants Attitudes improve towards the blind

💙 Did nice things for my skin and hair

💜 got my Kiddo to her conflict resolution styles workshop.

⭐️ Finally cooked that spaghetti squash

I’m lucky to be partially sighted. In most cases my blindness is an invisible disability. I don’t quite fit into the “blind community “because of it. I’ve learned how to posture myself like a sighted person in many scenarios to avoid these countless stigmas I’m reading stats about, but I shouldn’t have had to.. and many blind people don’t have the option to conceal the extent of their blindness at a job interview, on a date, at a party, in their classes. I had a friend get turned away for months in my ultra ‘ Rara diversity! We want inclusivity for all!’ town because nobody wanted a visually impaired roommate. The normalized, unaddressed prejudice, rejection, poverty, under-education, and lack of representation.. it’s really hard out there for blind people. It has been for like, ever, on a global scale. Yes, it makes me angry that there’s near nothing being fucking done about it.

Sigh.. 😞

On a happier note..

RB surprised me with a more concrete talk about moving in together. Those conversations are always awkward because neither one of us particularly likes talking about money, but each talk is meaningful.He’s decided to take on the steady task of decluttering in preparation to eventually uproot. At first he was talking about going straight from sell to buying, which seemed to me a pretty big plunge, but since I’m not the one who has to sell my house to buy a new one and I’m aware much of the financial burdens would be on him, I just figured I would roll with however he felt comfortable blending lives as long as wherever we ended up was pedestrian friendly. Now he’s thinking to get the ball rolling we could rent a duplex or house nearer to my area to test drive living together, and do that for however long until the right buy pops up. It’s still a ways out, but that timeline is definitely more feasible than the original idea to leapfrog us all into our next forever home. Even though there’s no date were specifically shooting for, it’s comforting he’s realistically thinking about these things and including my needs/wants into the equation.

I’m really grateful that RB understands sustaining my independence needs to be a non-negotiable priority. Every other boyfriend has treated me like a sidekick in their story when they speak of the future, a la 1950’s where a woman attaining a degree was tolerated, sometimes admirable, but if she wanted to marry it was understood she’d acquiesce to housewife. Instead of my lane being about gender, it’s often the implications of being disabled.

✨ Fuck that.. ✨

#journal #writing #my writing #motherhood #parenting #100 days of productivity #studystudystudy #disability activism #disabled #angry vent #relationship #couples goals #love #RBLOVESTORY

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bookfreaky · 3 years

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Trying to Be OK.

To the few friends I have in here: I am not OK. I’m trying to be OK, or at least to pretend to be but, in fact, I haven’t been OK for a while now. For more than six months now I have been stricken by a depressive crisis that, while it is not as deep as it is durable, has taken from me great part of my energy, my functionality and my enthusiasm for life, too.

A bigger part of my energies goes to my struggle to keep myself functioning as a human being, but even simple tasks like eating, taking a shower, or getting up in the morning have become extremely hard to execute, and take twice as long. At this point, I don’t know whether the pandemic and the quarantine are a helper or not. On one side, I feel relieved to not have the obligation to “participate in life”: go to work, socialize, perform complex tasks. However, being isolated helps me to simply isolate myself even more. And I can’t always blame it in like “nobody will get out sane after this pandemic”.

Well, I’ve never been really sane. This one is not my first experience of clinical depression, I’ve been diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder when I was 17, but I’ve been probably dealing with maniac-depressive behaviour since I was 8. I am used to it. More used that anyone with eyes would recommend. I used to blame myself, or my parents, or the world for my being mentally ill; but now I know it isn’t anybody’s fault, it just runs in the family. My father has a diagnosis, my father’s brother is bipolar too, my grandmother – though never diagnosed formally – had depressive symptoms all her life, her sister has Panic Disorder and my father’s sister had Schizophrenia. She killed herself. It’s not that deep:

I got cancer genes from my mother side. I got depression genes from my father side.

Back to my own case, this depressive crisis feels different from the other ones I’d been through. For one, I am properly medicated, and so massively medicated: anti-depressants twice a day, mood-stabilizers, anxiolytics and something else stronger for making me sleep. It’s a lot but I am used to it. It’s a bother but they keep myself away from suicidal thoughts and from drinking too much. Also, my doctor cut off clonazepam from my prescription as he judged I got addicted to it (I had become fond of mixing them with a glass of gin tonics). So, I’m off abusive, self-destructive behaviour but saying I’m off abusive, self-destructive thinking is another story altogether.

Sometimes I go to this very dark place where I want to be violent against myself and against my body. Mostly, though, I lay in bed doing nothing, wanting to do nothing. At least, when I want to do nothing it means I won’t want to do any stupid shit. I’m trying to be OK, I said.

Six months I’ve been living with, more than just struggling with, gender dysphoria too. I feel and believe that this is one important element of my psyche that has been affecting directly my depression. I don’t feel sadness, exactly, but a strange sensation of not belonging anywhere, of being wrong… inadequate. My emotions don’t make any sense to me anymore, so I just school them under a blanket of apathy or plain dry sarcasm for my friends, family and for myself.

In therapy we, my psychoanalyst and I, have been discussing that perhaps this is a case where my depression is only a secondary manifestation of a larger problem. We’ve been discussing other implements to my medical transition - yes such as bottom surgery. I don’t feel ready to talk them out in the concrete field, neither do I know if I actually want them, although it is in agreement that perhaps the adequacy of my body to myself will make me less depressed in the long term. And who knows, take less pills.

I have grown into my own identity – as a woman, as a trans person, and as something I could start calling my “self” – only during one of the hardest times in the world right now, we’re in the middle of a pandemic disease and people are dying, my country is under a pandemonium and because of it people are dying too. I admit I mostly don’t care about them. And I feel bad that I don’t. I’m sorry. Everyone who’s transitioned tells that the first year of the HRT is the toughest, but shit girl I wasn’t ready for it to be that tough. I took the quarantine as a blessing at first, so I had a calm and safe cocoon to live in while my body slowly (or quickly) changed. Now it feels like a bubble of anxiety, and to go out and interact with people is dreadful. I have a large range of what will be people’s reaction to me, either I’ll be misgendered or dead-named, but I can’t really predict.

Being treated, seen and understood as male even after having my hormone indexes, my legal documents and my wardrobe changed is always very violent. It is violating, because it only reinforces the idea that there’s something wrong with me. Maybe there is. Maybe there is something really wrong and it’s all a joke I cannot get. But I will try to laugh whenever I get the strength to actually leave the bedroom.

I don’t know what to do exactly, and I don’t master the energy to actually plan out my future even if in a couple of months. But I am trying to be OK.

#my own #personal #rant #mental health #depression #TW #transgender #gender dysphoria #trans person #diaries

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feisty-fae · 4 years

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If you still do the flower ask thingys.. 👉👈 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙜𝙤 :)

HoooH boY hEre we gO-

Alisons: Sexuality?

I sexually identify as a can of beans

Amaranth: Pronouns/Gender?

Cis female she/her

Amaryllis: Birthday?

27 September

Anemone: Favorite flower?

All flowers pretty,, but stargazer lily, rose, dahlia and cherry blossoms

Angelonia: Favorite t.v. show?

I don't watch tv but I'll list some other stuff i like to watch:mha, beastars and aggretsuko

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger?

Idk depends on scenario??

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes?

"Kanye West he likes, fingers in his ass."

Aubrieta: Favorite drink?

Any Milkshakes or smoothies (mostly banana and strawberry for milkshake and p much anything for smoothie)

Baby’s Breath: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

I've never had kith

Balsam Fir: Have you ever been in love?

Well you see yes but actually no

Baneberries: Favorite song?

I listen to a lot but to keep it short:baby in the kitchen, in my mouth and friends slowed (chase atlantic)

Basket of Gold: Describe your family.

We p chill fam

Beebalm: Do you have a best friend? Who is it?

Irl bestie,, shes not on tumblr lol

Begonia: Favorite color?

PinKKK

But i like most colours

Bellflower: Favorite animal?

Cats,,,,

FoxES,

ANYTHING CUDDLY AND CUTE

Bergenia: Are you a morning or night person?

Night

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be?

I'd be like a doggo bc it would be the most fun i think-

Bloodroots: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a vet but then when my granny asked me "but whos gonna clean up the animal poop?" I was like "eWW pO0pP!" and then decided that mayb i shouldn't be a vet

Bluemink: What are your thoughts on children?

They're either really kind and sweet

Or literal demons from hell

Legit no inbetween

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why?

I'm afraid of lot of things-

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood.

I was one dumbass bitcg-

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth?

Idk eat pizza and cry or smth ajakamkw

Buttercup: Relationship Status?

Single

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go?

NEW YORKKK, CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFF THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN'T DO NOW YOU'RE IN NEW YOOORKKK

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved?

When someone hugs me or just generally spends time with me

Canna: Do you have any tattoos?

Nop

Canterbury Bells: Do you have any piercings?

I used to have piercings when i was a bab but eHh haven't worn them since and i dont think my ear holes are big enough now-

California Poppy: Height?

4'10 grrr I'm the omega midget and I'll devour ur ankles

Cardinal Flower: Do you believe in ghosts?

Nop

Carnation: What are you currently wearing?

Pant, pink top and black hoodie

Catnip: Have you ever slept with a nightlight?

I think i have??

Chives: Who was the last person you hugged?

My mom and my dad

Chrysanthemum: Who’s the last person you kissed?

I never kith

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font?

I dont have one so imma say sans bc it always looks out of place and makes me laugh-

Columbine: Are you tired?

I feel like screaming and jumping around my room like a crackhead

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to?

Nothing in particular ig

Coneflower: Dream job?

Smth kinda fun and art or design related hopefully,,,,

Crane’s-Bill: Introvert or extrovert?

Introvert but i also get lonley easily

Crocus: Have you ever been in love?

Nop,,,,

Crown Imperial: What’s the farthest you would go for someone you care about?

I would get run over by 5 monster trucks, jump off a plane, get mauled by 10 bears, get trampled on by a stampede, get brutally tortured for 12 hours straight, yeet myself into the Grand Canyon and then break all my bones with my bare hands if they weren't broken already

Ok basically i care a lot

Cyclamen: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? What was it?

I had this st bernard plush called Sparky and this lion named Sammy,,

Daffodil: What’s your zodiac sign?

Libra

Dahlia: Have you done anything worth remembering?

My memory is legit so bad it's probably concerning uHHH

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?

Mayb art??

Daylily: What would you do if your parents didn’t like your partner(s)?

Ehhh i might reason with them and then if they still disagreed I'd just keep the relationship a secret

Dendrobium: Who is the last person that you said “I love you” to?

My parents

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at?

Ehhh arT

Foxgloves: What’s something you’re bad at?

EhhHh everything that isn't art-

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month?

Oh boy here comes my shitty memory-

Hmmm

Idk but I'm mostly happy that I've been more social and stuff and i feel like im kinda coming out of my shell a bit

Not sure what to say for other 2 bc nothing in particular has really happend?

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today?

Ehhh oK??

Gardenia: Are you happy with where you’re at in your life?

Mayhapsn't

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two?

I hope to pass all my exams and get an okish job mayb

Glory-of-the-Snow: What are ten things that make you happy/you’re grateful to have in your life?

1.fRIENBS ILY MY HABIBIS

2. Fammm

3. eHhh yummy food,,

4. Drawing and uhhh art

5. EPIC MUTUALS

6. Ok idk what else aside from like serious stuff like house and etc.-

Heliotropium: What helps you calm down when you feel stressed?

Drawing, crying, venting to a friend/parent

Hellebore: How do you show affection?

Hugssss,kith,cuddle, *draws u stuff*

Hoary Stock: What are you proudest of?

MmmmmMy aRRt?

Hollyhock: Describe your ideal day.

Wake up

Don't go to school

Vibe with friends

Sleeb

Hyacinth: What do you like to do in your free time?

MmMmMM aRT-

Hydrangea: How long have you known your best friend? How did you meet them?

Ehh 8yrs? We met in hell school

Irises: Who can you talk to about (almost) everything?

Friendos

Mom

Laceleaf: How many friends do you have?

6..?? Aa idk theres some people that idk if they'd consider me a friend or not,,

Lantanas: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?

Idk any compliment is best compliment for me,,

Larkspur: What do you think of yourself?

Ew yucky gröss

Lavender: What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

m y a r t

Also my hair bc its soft and wavy,,

Leather Flower: What’s your least favorite thing about yourself?

Everything else-

Lilac: What’s something you liked to do as a child?

Climb trees and do dumb shit

Lily: Who was your best friend when you were a kid?

Same irl bestie i mentioned before

Lily of the Incas: What is something you still feel guilty for?

MmmmmmMMM,,,

Lily of the Nile: What is something you feel guilty for that you shouldn’t feel guilty about?

MMMmMMmMMMMmmmMMm,,,,,,

Lupine: What does your name mean? Why is that your name?

Well I chose Fae bc i thought it sounded pretty

Marigold: Where did you grow up? Tell us about it.

Idk what to rlly say lmao

Morning Glory: What was your bedroom like growing up?

Kinda the same but i had toys everywhere-

Also when i was like 5 i had this legit fucking cursed thomas the tank engine shaped bed that i actually found a pic of but it's FUCKING HORRIFYING SO I PROBS WONT SHOW HERE-

Mugworts: What was it like for you as a teenager? Did you enjoy your teenage years?

EW BEING A TEENAGER SUCKS ASS HOW DO I UNDO????

Norwegian Angelica: Tell us about your mom.

Hi mom ily ur epic

Onions: Tell about your dad.

Hi dad ily ur epic

Orchid: Tell about your grandparents.

Omg i miss my grannies sm bc i couldn't see em this year bc nasty pandemic

Pansy: What was your most memorable birthday? What made it be so memorable?

Haha shit memory gor brrRR-

I don't really remember too many specific parties but when i was like 7-10 i had these epic parties in those birthday places with the giant play areas

I kinda wish i wasn't too old to go to them sobs

Peony: What was your first job?

I haven't had a job yet

Petunia: If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your partner(s)? If you’re not in a relationship, how did you meet your crush/how do you hope to meet your future partner(s), if you want any?

Hmmmm idk? I haven't really thought abt that but i don't really mind i just wanna find someone to vibe with,,

Pincushion: How do you deal with pain?

I cri

Pink: Where is home?

Home is home home

Plantain Lilies: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would stop/change?

Now where do i start...

Prairie Gentian: Who is someone you look up to? Describe them.

I look up to people that are kind, caring, brave, funny, cool or stronger than me ig?

Primrose: Describe your ideal life.

Basically my current life minus school, stress,pandemic and responsibilities lmao

Rhodendron: What is something you used to believe in as a child?

I used to believe in ghosts after i thought i encountered one

Ricinus: Who’s the most important in your life?

Hermmmst

Rose: What’s your favorite sound?

Peoples laughsss also music

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory?

Bro i dont have one,, my aphantasia makes it hard for me to remember stuff-

Sage: What’s your least favorite memory?

Snapdragon: At this moment, what do you want?

I wantttt better chargersss thattt donttt telll meee thatt myyy tablett will finishh chargingg innn 1 dayy andd 7 hoursss

St. John’s Wort: Is it easy or difficult for you to express how you feel about things?

Kinda difficult but im opening up more

Sunflower: What is something you don’t want to imagine life without?

fRIENDS,,,,,wAh

Sweet Pea: How much sleep did you get last night?

8 hrs

Tickseed: What’s your main reason to get up every morning?

Idk ig i kinda have to go to school and do stuff

Touch-Me-Not: How do you feel about your current job?

Non existant

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing?

My black and white stripy top, and all my hoodiess

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic.

I don't think i have just one aesthetic bc im drawn to so many different aesthetics at the same time-

Like vintage, neon, dark, spoopy, pastel, cute, etc etc

Tulip: What would be the best present to get you?

OMG I LEGIT JUST SCREAM AT ANYTHING ANYONE GIVES ME-

IF SOMEONE GOES OUT OF THEIR WAY TO MAKE ME SMTH I CRY,,

Vervain: What’s stressing you out most right now?

🤏

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called?

I haven't been reading anythinggg

But i should really finish reading Percy Jackson bc it do be picking up dust-

Wolf’s Bane: Where do you want to be in life this time next year?

Everywhere

Yarrow: Do you know what vore is?

Mmm yummy 👅

Zinnia: Give a random fact about yourself.

I am currently living and breathing yes

5 notes · View notes

tacitwhisky · 5 years

Text

Jon / Sansa Reread - Jon II, AGOT

< Previous Chapter (Arya I) | Next Chapter (Sansa I) >

In which Jon visits Bran, Catelyn is a horrible person, and he gives Arya Needle.

Like Jon I, this chapter is really complicated and a bit of a beast to get through. It's a critical chapter for understanding Jon though; it's his single on page interaction with Catelyn, and the one that solidifies just how traumatic a figure she is in his life. It’s also a tour of all his major Stark relationships outside of Ned: Catelyn, Bran, Robb, and Arya.

There’s actually a lot more to this chapter than I realized, which is one of the reasons it took me so long to get it out.

Lady Stark was there beside his [Bran’s] bed. She had been there, day and night, for close on a fortnight. Not for a moment had she left Bran’s side. She had her meals brought to her there, and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it was said she had scarcely slept at all. She fed him herself, the honey and water and herb mixture that sustained life. Not once did she leave the room. So Jon had stayed away.

Before we get into Catelyn’s horribleness in this chapter, it’s worth pointing out that this is Catelyn at her absolute lowest emotionally. She also severely sleep deprived and borderline crippled with worry and grief. Unfortunately, much like Sansa last chapter though, we’re not really going to get a sense of just out of her mind Catelyn is until her chapter later: if the order of the chapters had been swapped (ignoring plot considerations for a moment) readers would’ve been more sympathetic to Catelyn as a whole.

Not that her actions this chapter aren’t objectively awful.

Lady Stark looked over. For a moment she did not seem to recognize him. Finally she blinked. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice strangely flat and emotionless.

“I came to see Bran,” Jon said. “To say good-bye.”

Her face did not change. Her long auburn hair was dull and tangled. She looked as though she had aged twenty years. “You’ve said it. Now go away.”

Martin has gone on record saying that if he were to write it today he would’ve softened Catelyn a little in this scene or at the very least given it more context. While I get that, nothing Catelyn does or says in this scene (with the understanding that she’s half delirious from lack of sleep) is actually out of character. Jon is an existential threat to her children: not only does he look more Stark than her sons, but he’s also as old if not older than Robb which would make him dangerous if he were ever legitimized.

The thread Jon poses is not an idle one; as she'll mention to Robb later in ASOS the Targaryen Blackfyre bastards led to three generations of brutal civil war and repression. Bastards are, by definition, destabilizing to the westerosi social contract. In a society where everyone has a rigid social role (even their gods are broken into specific societal roles) bastards have none and threaten to crumble the walls between them.

The other threat Jon presents to Jon is to the limited power patriarchal society gives her. As a noble lady, managing her home is one of the few places Catelyn can exert any control over her life, and theoretically has as much of a say in as her lord husband, and Ned deciding Jon will stay with them is a slap in the face to her and a breach of that power. As Catelyn herself thinks in an earlier chapter, the problem isn’t that Ned has a bastard; it’s that he has him live with them and she has no control over it.

Part of him wanted only to flee, but he knew that if he did he might never see Bran again. He took a nervous step into the room. “Please,” he said.

Something cold moved in her eyes. “I told you to leave,” she said. “We don’t want you here.”

There’s a real sense of dread seeping out from Jon when it comes to Catelyn. He’s terrified of her, not so much for material reasons (he doesn’t actually think she’ll throw him out despite how she'll threaten to in a minute), as emotional ones. He’s dreading the emotional backlash he knows is coming, which is a very organic reaction from a child who’s been emotionally neglected or abused in the way he has. This is an old pattern, and he's instinctually flinching from what he knows is the emotional fallout.

Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry. Now it only made him angry. He would be a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch soon, and face worse dangers than Catelyn Tully Stark. “He’s my brother,” he said.

“Shall I call the guards?”

“Call them,” Jon said, defiant. “You can’t stop me from seeing him.” He crossed the room, keeping the bed between them, and looked down on Bran where he lay.

Even this early on Jon has started to use his Night’s Watch identity to draw strength from. It makes sense and speaks to why he wanted to join it to begin with: joining it is a clear mark of adulthood, a way of taking his destiny into his own hands, and because of the nobility of the institution, a way of scrubbing off his bastard taint, something Jon has not doubt craved most of his life.

Drawing strength from taking the black is something that will only grow more second nature to Jon as the series goes on. As I wrote in a recent ask, it’s one of the reasons when he’s resurrected I think finding out he was murdered by his brothers will hit him significantly harder than it does in the show. If he's not a man of the Night's Watch, then he's what he is in this scene: small and vulnerable and unloved.

“Bran,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t come before. I was afraid.” He could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks. Jon no longer cared. “Don’t die, Bran. Please. We’re all waiting for you to wake up. Me and Robb and the girls, everyone …”

Lady Stark was watching. She had not raised a cry. Jon took that for acceptance. Outside the window, the direwolf howled again. The wolf that Bran had not had time to name.

“I have to go now,” Jon said. “Uncle Benjen is waiting. I’m to go north to the Wall. We have to leave today, before the snows come.” He remembered how excited Bran had been at the prospect of the journey. It was more than he could bear, the thought of leaving him behind like this. Jon brushed away his tears, leaned over, and kissed his brother lightly on the lips.

Not really important, but still kind of funny: the first time I read A Game of Thrones (fifteen years at this point?) I was very young and the kissing thing weirded me out to no end. It wasn’t until years later I would realize platonic mouth kissing is just a thing white people do sometimes (I’m kidding. Mostly).

“I wanted him to stay here with me,” Lady Stark said softly.

Jon watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was talking to him, but for a part of her, it was as though he were not even in the room.

“I prayed for it,” she said dully. “He was my special boy. I went to the sept and prayed seven times to the seven faces of god that Ned would change his mind and leave him here with me. Sometimes prayers are answered.”

Jon did not know what to say. “It wasn’t your fault,” he managed after an awkward silence.

Her eyes found him. They were full of poison. “I need none of your absolution, bastard.”

Even here, even now, Jon is trying to be kind. He's still, in some level, trying to forge some kind of a relationship, no matter how tenuous it is. It’s what makes Catelyn’s reaction all that much more painful. Even outside of this situation, there’s really no common ground the two could ever have found between them, not without Catelyn being a far different person and one living in a less rigidly patriarchal society. Everything Jon does, no matter how well intentioned, will always be galling and patronizing because of who he is and what he represents.

This doesn’t make how Catelyn treats Jon ok though. Whatever her frustrations or anxieties with the position Jon occupies, she is an adult and he is a child, a child who desperately needed a mother figure and to be treated as equal to his siblings. There’s just no getting around it. At some point early in Jon’s upbringing Catelyn needed to put her big girl boots on, do the right thing, and treat him like a person.

He was at the door when she called out to him. “Jon,” she said. He should have kept going, but she had never called him by his name before. He turned to find her looking at his face, as if she were seeing it for the first time.

“Yes?” he said.

“It should have been you,” she told him. Then she turned back to Bran and began to weep, her whole body shaking with the sobs. Jon had never seen her cry before.

It was a long walk down to the yard.

That last line (“it should’ve been you”) is a stab in the gut, but can ultimately, like a lot of Catelyn’s behavior in this chapter, be attributed to being half mad from grief and sleep deprivation: the part about how this is the first time she’s ever called him by his name can’t be, and is just chilling. It’s one of the few concrete details we get about how the two of them interacted. Denying someone their name is dehumanizing (Reek, it rhymes with meek), and speaks to just how much distance Catelyn created between her and Jon.

There isn’t really a reason to think Catelyn called Jon “Snow” or “bastard” or anything particular cruel, but ignoring is a special of cruelty all it’s own, though it probably came easy to Catelyn. In a castle as big and gendered as Winterfell, just like with Sansa, there’s the very real possibility that the two of them simply didn’t cross paths much.

We also don’t really get any reaction from Jon here to what Catelyn says. It’s a little frustrating in terms of trying to understand his character, but it fits Martin’s less is more ethos (for this, anyway, he definitely lacks that ethos when it comes to adding Greyjoy and Dorne plotlines).

Outside, everything was noise and confusion. Wagons were being loaded, men were shouting, horses were being harnessed and saddled and led from the stables. A light snow had begun to fall, and everyone was in an uproar to be off.

Robb was in the middle of it, shouting commands with the best of them. He seemed to have grown of late, as if Bran’s fall and his mother’s collapse had somehow made him stronger. Grey Wind was at his side.

While not a big part of either Sansa or Jon’s storyline, Robb really grows into being a lord in the absence of Ned and Catelyn. Just another example of how all the Stark children are forced to mature quickly, and a bit of a counterpoint to the idea that Ned didn’t prepare them for the adult world. While he certainly didn’t in certain ways in that all of them start their stories at something of a deficit of where they should be in terms of knowledge of the world, he and Catelyn did raise them in a way where they’re able to adapt swiftly to what’s needed.

“Uncle Benjen is looking for you,” he [Robb] told Jon. “He wanted to be gone an hour ago.”

“I know,” Jon said. “Soon.” He looked around at all the noise and confusion. “Leaving is harder than I thought.”

“For me too,” Robb said. He had snow in his hair, melting from the heat of his body. “Did you see him?”

Jon nodded, not trusting himself to speak. “He’s not going to die,” Robb said. “I know it.”

“You Starks are hard to kill,” Jon agreed. His voice was flat and tired. The visit had taken all the strength from him.

Robb knew something was wrong. “My mother …”

“She was … very kind,” Jon told him.

Robb looked relieved. “Good.”

Robb seems to be well aware just how hostile Catelyn might have been to Jon, which implies that he's very aware of the distance and tension between them in normal life. And the fact that Robb is relieved when Jon says nothing happened is also interesting for its implication of just how much strain Catelyn’s hostility towards Jon put on all the starklings. This is an excellent meta that explores this idea more fully. To quote just a bit from it:

“I don’t often see it acknowledged that Catelyn’s abuse of Jon reverberated through the family and hurt her own children, even though it’s quite visible in a few places. Beyond the strain it puts on the Starklings to be perpetually caught between their beloved mother and beloved brother… I don’t see Robb’s anxiety here that his mother might hurt his brother being mentioned, and how that kind of dynamic puts a terrible strain on both children. Catelyn very clearly did not “ignore” or “avoid” Jon, and her actions didn’t just affect Jon, either, they also hurt her own children. Note that I am not saying that Catelyn is a Bad Mother or siding with the goblins of westeros.org who will hate Catelyn for anything she does, but when a parent behaves in inappropriate ways to one child it affects everyone in a family, especially the other children.”

Trying to navigate the hostility between two people you love is hugely stressful, and triply so when one of them is your parent. Fundamentally Robb is caught in a zero sum game where any affection or closeness with Jon is a betrayal of his mother. This is a dynamic I see attributed a lot to Sansa in fic where she’s the one of the starklings in the family who chooses her mother over Jon. It’s a really rich idea to explore, but unfortunately there’s no way of knowing whether it’s true accurate or not: there just isn’t enough evidence one way or another in the actual books. I tend to prefer the headcanon that the two were just different, but it’s certainly no less valid.

What we do is that this zero sum dynamic isn’t what Bran and Arya experienced with Jon. Neither (as far as I can remember) actually ever think about his relationship with Catelyn, though you can still see the damage in how Arya immediately thinks as a child she must be a bastard because she doesn’t fit in. Like we’ve talked about, Catelyn created and perpetuated the subconscious understanding among the Starklings that to be bastard was to be other. To quote from that meta again (it really is excellent):

“We also see the effects of Catelyn’s treatment of Jon in Sansa’s reflection on both Jon and Arya. Catelyn’s attempt to interfere with her children’s relationship with Jon was most successful with Sansa who internalized that Jon was to be held at a distance because he was only their half-brother. Sansa also thinks of how it would have been easier for her to understand Arya’s nature and the difference between them if Arya was a bastard like Jon, which speaks of Sansa’s view of the proper boundaries of a relationship with a bastard sibling and the kind of behavior she was taught to expect from bastards, an expectation that she displays when she casually comments about how Jon was jealous of Joffrey in a very matter-of-fact way. That alignment of Jon and Arya colors Sansa’s perception of Arya just as much as Jon.”

Speaking of Arya, Jon says farewell to Robb, and then goes to say goodbye to Arya who is busy packing in her room.

Arya glanced behind her, saw Jon, and jumped to her feet. She threw her skinny arms tight around his neck. “I was afraid you were gone,” she said, her breath catching in her throat. “They wouldn’t let me out to say good-bye.”

“What did you do now?” Jon was amused.

Though it’s not ever mentioned, Arya is probably the only person Jon has ever gotten any physical affection from. Ned is not the kind of parent to overly shower his children with physical contact, and Jon is even likely to get any from him as both male and a bastard. And Catelyn sure as hell isn’t giving out any hugs to him. It’s interesting he actually isn’t more craving of affection of any kind (like Tyrion is) throughout the series, and speaks I think to how healthy and supportive of relationships he did have with his siblings despite Catelyn.

Her face lit up. “A present?”

“You could call it that. Close the door.”

Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. “Nymeria, here. Guard.” She left the wolf out there to warn of intruders and closed the door. By then Jon had pulled off the rags he’d wrapped it in. He held it out to her.

Arya’s eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. “A sword,” she said in a small, hushed breath.

The scabbard was soft grey leather, supple as sin. Jon drew out the blade slowly, so she could see the deep blue sheen of the steel. “This is no toy,” he told her. “Be careful you don’t cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.”

“Girls don’t shave,” Arya said.

“Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa’s legs?”

It’s here we get our first introduction to Needle, one of the top five emotionally charged swords in the series. Throughout all her travels and hardships Needle will be the one thing Sansa holds on to, and as she thinks years later in Braavos before the House of Black and White, Needle is a symbol not just of her old life, but Jon’s unquestioning acceptance of her nonconformity.

That being said, let’s talk for a moment just how weird it is Jon is arming a child with a deadly weapon. As this meta argues, Jon is remarkably comfortable with violence, and his modus operandi in almost any given situation, whether personal or political, is to immediately empower and arm a marginalized group: Arya here, Sam and the other Night’s Watch recruits against Alliser Thorne at Castle Black , and the Wildlings in ADWD.

This modus operandi is interesting to think about when applying it to his relationship to Sansa. Even if they had been in closer proximity as children, I still don’t think Jon would ever have gotten that emotionally close to Sansa. She’s simply in too much of a position of privilege for him to ever really have anything to offer her. Jon is capable of having relationships with people either at his privilege level or higher, Robb and Ygritte come to mind, but on the whole that really is how Jon tends to develop the majority of his relationships: almost as though he can only be friends with people who need him (Sam, Tormund, Alys Karstark, even Stannis to a degree).

To theorize for a moment, this probably stems from his understanding of the world as an uncertain place where his status is always tenuous. And also from a probably unconscious feeling of having no inherent worth of his own: there’s no reason for anyone to like him just for him, so he only feels comfortable when there’s some material reason for them to. It’s a really subtle expression of Catelyn’s withholding of affection and his bastard status as a whole.

This is all really interesting to think about in relation to what his relationship with Sansa will be when they meet again and she no longer holds the position of privilege that she once did. While she almost for sure won’t be as disempowered when they meet in the books as she was in the show, she will need Jon to one extent or the other. It’s also just interesting to think about in terms of Jon’s future emotional growth or how he’d handle it in an intimate relationship.

She giggled at him. “It’s so skinny.”

“So are you,” Jon told her. “I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use swords like this in Pentos and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won’t hack a man’s head off, but it can poke him full of holes if you’re fast enough.”

“I can be fast,” Arya said.

“You’ll have to work at it every day.” He put the sword in her hands, showed her how to hold it, and stepped back. “How does it feel? Do you balance?”

“I think so,” Arya said.

“First lesson,” Jon said. “Stick them with the pointy end.”

Again cute, but to quote from that meta: “[Jon’s] idea of thoughtful gift-giving is to sit around contemplating the best way for a small-sized nine-year-old to kill people and figure out what she needs to do it. “

Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung, but Jon found himself grinning like an idiot. “I know which end to use,” Arya said.

Jon’s grin here is evidence that he really does find fulfillment and happiness with Arya, even here on one of the most emotionally taxing days of his life to this point.

“Who will I practice with?”

“You’ll find someone,” Jon promised her. “King’s Landing is a true city, a thousand times the size of Winterfell. Until you find a partner, watch how they fight in the yard. Run, and ride, make yourself strong. And whatever you do …”

Arya knew what was coming next. They said it together.

“… don’t … tell … Sansa!”

Despite being one of the few times Jon mentions Sansa, I don’t think his evocation of her here is really about what he thinks about her so much as what he knows she means to Arya. We in general don’t really ever (as far as I can remember) get any real insight into what Jon thought about their relationship, or if he even internally took sides. Considering just how close he is with Arya, you’d think he would have more thoughts on the matter, but it’s yet another frustrating example of the black hole of their relationship.

Jon messed up her hair. “I will miss you, little sister.”

Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. “I wish you were coming with us.”

“Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?” He was feeling better now. He was not going to let himself be sad. “I better go. I’ll spend my first year on the Wall emptying chamber pots if I keep Uncle Ben waiting any longer.”

Arya ran to him for a last hug. “Put down the sword first,” Jon warned her, laughing. She set it aside almost shyly and showered him with kisses.

Again we see the dynamic of Jon finding fulfillment and feeling better in himself for arming and thus empowering someone else. It also brings full circle the tour of Jon’s Stark emotional relationships and how they relate to Catelyn: Catelyn herself who he dreads and has the worst with, Bran who’s comatose but is a positive relationship, Robb who is on the whole a positive relationship but one not unaffected by Catelyn, and then Arya who he’s closest to because they’re both nonconforming.

When he turned back at the door, she was holding it again, trying it for balance. “I almost forgot,” he told her. “All the best swords have names.”

“Like Ice,” she said. She looked at the blade in her hand. “Does this have a name? Oh, tell me.”

“Can’t you guess?” Jon teased. “Your very favorite thing.”

Arya seemed puzzled at first. Then it came to her. She was that quick. They said it together:

“Needle!”

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north.

Show Comparison

(I know I’m in the minority, but Jon’s face is oh so punchable in the early seasons. Kit is a fair actor, but the impression of Jon we get is less of an intelligent and occasionally sullen bastard, and more just sulky)

The show changes this chapter in a few really significant ways. There’s two scenes that take place in the same timeframe that are addd. One is Jaime mocking Jon for going to the Wall, which is very Jaime and adds to the theme we’ll see in Tyrion II of Jon not quite understanding what he was signing up for, but otherwise doesn’t do much.

The other scene is Cersei coming to visit Catelyn at Bran’s bedside. This is a weird scene for a couple of reasons (not least of which is Cersei losing a child that will then be totally forgotten a few seasons later in Maggy’s prophecy), but for our purposes it changes what Catelyn’s mental state is for the scene with Jon. Instead of being half mad with grief and sleep deprivation, Catelyn really isn’t that distraught. Sad and worried, sure, but not out of her mind.

Before we get there though, Jon goes to say goodbye to Arya. Switching the order of this scene to before the on with Catelyn and Bran actually changes more than you’d think. I can see why they thought it was a good idea: there’s more of a dramatic progression this way, but it robs Jon and Arya’s scene. Instead of a scene where he draws strength from his relationship with Arya, it’s a sadder and more somber scene. It’s also a significantly shorter scene than it is in the book, with less banter, and combined with the cutting of the scene between the two of them in Arya I, it makes their relationship a little perfunctory. Jon also sasses Arya for not having Nymeria react to her command, which runs completely counter to how supportive he is in the books. In general he’s a little more harsh with her.

It’s not a problem, per se, you still get a sense that they’re close, but it’s the first step in a general flattening of Jon’s character. Speaking of which...

A lot of the dialogue in the scene by Bran’s bedside gets cut. A lot. Catelyn literally has two lines, one at the beginning, and one at the end.

Jon: I’ve come to say goodbye to Bran.

Catelyn: You’ve said it.

And then after Jon says his thing to Bran.

Catelyn: I want you to leave.

It’s fair to cut some of Catelyn’s dialogue here. The way she glares at Jon non-verbally communicates some of it, but it fundamentally changes the scene. While I don’t think there’s a need to keep Catelyn as sharp as she was in the original scene, because we don’t have access to Jon’s inner thoughts, cutting all her dialogue means that for all intents and purposes all the things we talked about in this chapter; the toll Jon’s bastard status takes on him, the complexities in his familial relationships, the way Catelyn’s actions affected all the Starks are just… gone. None of it exists on the show.

It’s the way the show handles a lot of things, and one of the reasons I wasn’t too fond of it back even in season one: really the show is interested only in a surface level reading of the text, and flattens everything, jettisoning a lot of the thematic and character richness Martin fills the books with.

(Oh, also Ned is in the scene now. Do we see how he reacts to Jon and Catelyn’s relationship? Nope, because none of it happens.)

Finally, the scene between Jon and Robb plays out pretty much the same. There’s another added scene after it where Ned tells Jon he may not have the Stark name, but he has his blood and promises to talk about his mother next time they talk. I don’t really have any thoughts about it. It’s nice, but could also have just been cut for time and we wouldn’t really lose anything.

Conclusion

This was a beast of a chapter to get done, much like Jon I. While chronologically the next chapter I should cover is Tyrion II, I’m going to skip it and do Sansa I next (and then Tyrion II). It’ll be the first time we’ll be in Sansa’s pov and get her sense of her relationship with Arya: it also contains the infamous incident between Joffrey and Arya out on the Kingsroad.

Like the last Jon chapter, there’s a lot of really good meta written about the Bran bedroom scene and Jon and Catelyn’s relationship in general. Some I’ve already linked to in this reread series (and this chapter), and some I haven’t, but most of it should be new.

Further Reading

Catelyn’s relationship with Jon drove a wedge through all the Stark children

Jon giving Arya Needle is a sign of how comfortable he is with violence

Catelyn’s animus to Jon stems from her patriarchal disempowerment

Should Ned have fostered Jon elsewhere?

Should Ned have told Jon about his true parentage?

Should Ned have told Catelyn about Jon’s true parentage?

Previous Chapters:

Bran I

Jon I

Arya I

#reread #jon reread #jon snow #arya stark #catelyn stark #jonsa #agot #got meta #game of thrones meta #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #asoiaf meta

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andthenigetbored · 5 years

Text

I’m crying and I don’t know why

I just ordered my first binder.

It’s a black tank-style binder from g2cb. I’ve thought of myself as nonbinary for about a year now (not counting the year and a half before it where I wasn’t sure), but I only thought about getting one recently. Really recently, tho, Ive had moments where I think I experienced significant gender dysphoria around my chest. Like, I’d previously thought that they were too big (I’d gained weight in college, and went from 34B to 34D, where I still am now), but they were kind of fleeting thoughts and I never felt sick about them.

As I’m learning more about how I experience being nonbinary, I find that I kinda waffle about how I feel about being and presenting AFAB and feminine. I don’t wear skirts at all anymore, but I still wear women’s pants and blouses and, very occasionally, dresses. Most of the time, I’m kinda neutral to vaguely positive about my body. I think I might be some flavor of genderfluid tho, if there’s a version where you move between demigirl and transmasculine. I started noticing that I’ll have 5 to 10 days where I really want to be feminine, but then I’ll suddenly feel weird and then I’ll have 5 to 10 days where I want to be masculine, and then it’ll cycle back around. But, even in my more masculine moments, I would still be wearing clothes from the women’s section (women’s flannels, women’s jeans, even a regular bra) and usually not have a lot of body dysphoria when I feel masculine.

More recently, especially after I’d graduated from grad school, I’ve started feeling sick during my more masculine days. I had “boat shoes” from the women’s section of sketchers (they look pretty masculine) and boy-short style undies from Victoria’s Secret, but while they did help, they didn’t make the feeling completely go away. I’ve always really wanted to get clothes from the men’s section, but after i graduated from my nearly all-women grad program, I left my apartment (where I’m completely closeted to my roommates) to stay with my parents and little brother. For context, all three know I’m bi and tend to wear masc clothing from time to time. Only my parents know I’m nonbinary, but they have no idea what it means for me outside of not wanting to be referred to as a “woman,” specifically, and wanting to be referred to as Ely; to his credit, only my dad knows that it’s related to my gender, and he’s been using it instead of my birth/dead/zombie(?)name (I don’t hate Elizabeth at all, especially in my feminine days, but Ely is more gender neutral and feels slightly more comfy on masculine days) around 75% of the time around me, to my mom’s 20% (she thinks it’s a nickname, and I’m still kinda scared to clarify; not because she won’t love me and won’t do it, because she would if I ask, but I’m scared that she’ll be mad at me if/when I correct her more concretely. She has been saying Ely more often than she had been tho). Basically, my parents know and are ok with it, but they still don’t fully understand what that means for me, and I always find myself at a loss for how to explain how I feel without resorting to essentialist language, which doesn’t really work for them, so I don’t know how they’d take me buying masculine clothes from the men’s section (as opposed to masculine/butch clothes from the women’s section, which they’ve actually been really chill and supportive of)

To my main point, I felt the opportunity for real men’s clothes come up. I went to TJ Maxx when I had a day off and my parents were at work and my brother was away and I picked a pair of khaki shorts (like, fuckboy/yacht-club shorts) and a collared shirt with a shark pattern to try on. I picked a few shirts from the womens section too to help them blend in a bit when I went into the changing room.

The shorts actually fit me really well-they were really comfortable, and they went to just above my knees and the pockets were huge; all things that I had expected. What I hadn’t expected was how they hid my hips. I’m kinda curvy, and have a really strong hourglass figure, and I was kinda startled by how straight my thighs looked in them. It was like I was a man from the waist down and a woman from the waist up and I never felt so amazing wearing clothes in years.

When I went to try on the shark-patterned shirt though, I couldn’t button the chest part. I’d had that problem with some women’s shirts too; when you’re larger than a C cup, it makes the buttons gap weirdly in the chest. But this was the first time that the buttons couldn’t close at all. And I felt this pain in my heart that I’d felt before, but never so strongly and so continuously. I had my short-for-a-girl/long-for-a-man gender neutral haircut, I was wearing gender neutral boat shoes, and men’s shorts, and the shirt fit so nice in the shoulders and the arms and it felt like nothing mattered because the shirt couldn’t close and I felt disgusting because my chest was too big. I caught myself wondering why I let myself get so big in the chest, and wanting to plan out how to lose weight quickly so my chest would shrink (a mentality that I hadn’t had since high school, when I had a very unhealthy obsession with counting calories and came close to being underweight). When I snapped out of it, I practically threw the shirt off and tried on some of the masculine shirts from the women’s section. They all fit perfectly.

It’s been about a week since then, and I’m still processing how I felt. I bought the shorts, and I haven’t worn them yet. I didn’t tell anyone I bought them, though I think my dad saw them when he was trying to find his own pants (all four of us are around the same size, so our clothes sometimes get mixed up; for the record, I gave him permission to look through my closet for them and only remembered they were there after the fact, so it wasn’t an invasion of privacy). I’ve thought about it a lot and I decided to bite the bullet. Its my birthday in a few weeks, I’d heard that g2cb was a good company to buy binders from, and I actually wear black tank tops quite often, so I wouldn’t have to explain what it is outside of it “having a really good sports bra built in” (which, if I’m being reallllly technical, isn’t totally a lie).

So, as of about an hour ago, a binder it’s on it’s way to me. My first binder. I don’t know if I should be proud, excited, or completely terrified.

#nonbinary #queer #binder #genderfluid #trans identity #tbh im actually really scared and confused #im not used to having gender dysphoria and i dont like it #but i dont know if a binder is going to help #or if it does help i dont know what i can do with that information #demigirl #demigender #transmasculine #enby #pride #pride month

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zenosanalytic · 5 years

Text

4/20/19 HSE 8

Ok back at it

MEAT 15

Cool Fight; Not terribly surprising.

MEAT 16

Dirk’s as much Rose’s father as Rose is his Mother. I guess maybe it’s more convenient, psychologically, to choose a causative direction and stick with it, rather than accept the Mobial nature of their genesis, but for some reason it bugs me this keeps getting overlooked.

Dirk’s over here talking about how right he is all the time and I dont think he was ever right about anything even once in canon(aside from certain aspects of his talk with Dave, and choosing not to kill Hal) XD The only “plan” of his to work was the one re: entering the Session, and 1)he outsourced it to Hal and 2)it only worked because he managed to improvise his way through every aspect of it failing to go the way he thought it would, and even that probably had more to do with their entry being part of HiC’s plan to use them, so she wasn’t trying to wipe them.

Another Thing: I dont think the Ascent Differential is Aspect so much as Personality.

Another Another Thing: That Rose, when discussing her life-long fear of knowledge as a corrupting and ruining outside force(this being a person who always felt her mother wasn’t her mother, in some sense, and responded to that fear by rejecting emotional intimacy with said mother), doesnt see the connection between that life-long fear and her fear that Ascending will be bad, damaging, and corrupting, is Notable. Perspective continues to be important, and lack of self-awareness continues to hamstring ppl in this narrative.

MEAT 17

I feel like this new narrative belligerence on Dirk’s part isn’t going to work out too well for him with a person as aware and recalcitrant to narrative meddling as John. It’s going to be John and WV all over again. This is also a wonderful example of how personal flaw and specificity isn’t solved by Godhood in HS, and can really trip you up; basically all of this, including the “impotence” applies to Dirk, too, when others disagree with the direction he’s trying to push them in, and this whole rant may be meant, ironically, as an example of dramatic irony: basically, that Dirk’s rant about total control and knowledge reveals the limits of his knowledge and will be followed by examples of how limited his control is, which he can’t be aware of, but which the “impotent” audience will.

MEAT 18

...And, almost immediately, John’s objecting to the narration and doing things before Dirk “writes” him doing them(the sigh).

MEAT 19

“So yeah, I’m gonna allow it” Notice how he asserts power over situations he does not, in fact, have power over.

Which is kind of an interesting dynamic to bring up in the context of authorship? I mean: in the realm of nonfictional works an author can’t “make” things happen, only alter for their audience what DID happen. In some respect this is being written as equivalent to that dynamic; the simple admission in M17 that Dirk is misrepresenting events also admits those events happened another way than he’d prefer, meaning it’s also an admission of his lack of power over actual events. And, of course, all the other things I’ve been talking about, and the fact that everyone’s “character” is rooted in natures established in the original work. But in a fictional work an author’s creative power is absolute, and this is a fictional work; though I suppose a derivative or transformational one, which accounts for the shortfall. Another interesting aspect of this is that the “Author” is presented as a Narrator; Narrators merely describe what happened, they don’t create it. I was going somewhere more concrete with this but it popped out of my head >:T >:T

Ok so other aspects of this: I agree that Jane’s been established as a pretty ambitious person, but she was also always a pretty moral person and the way she’s going about this so far doesn’t seem to be in keeping with that part of herself. And also: she literally wants to create shortages, and thus the suffering shortages will cause, for... what? Nostalgia? Because she think she can run Capitalism better than the adults from before all this?? Because Hierarchy is Neat??? Seems like a whole handful of really petty, selfish, and juvenile reasons to me. Also one guaranteed to cause social conflict; I doubt a civ that’s never known material want is going to react too well to sudden starvation and financially-manufactured forced-labor(which, lbr, is what most work in our world is).

Obvsl, as a snake and member of the storied gens Atheris, I agree with Roxy&Calli that patriarchal human concepts of gender are not the end-all-be-all of identity, but what really jumps out to me here is Roxy’s description of the nature of their love for, and previous sexual interest in, Dirk which I find really True. Like: the sentiment of wanting to see children of a person because you really like that person and think they should continue, or of thinking having the kids you might have with another person would be pretty interesting. Also that loneliness is a hell of a drug 8T

I’m trying to figure out why this conversation would be circumstantially simultaneous with The Furthest Ring being “destroyed”, but I got Nothing :T :T :T

MEAT 20

So yeah, Jade’s merging with her Alt!Selves, not too surprising since it was heavily foreshadowed in Endgame.

Given that Sessions are located IN the Furthest Ring, and Sessions MAKE new multiverses, I find it being made out of “negative potential. The absence of a future” pretty ironic :p I wonder if the tentacle hair bit is a nod towards the Horror-Terrors, and theories about them being Players? Rose and Dirk’s view of Ascension would seem to suggest HTs might be SUCCESSFUL players who eventually abandoned their universes out of fear of the damage they’d do misusing their godhood(as it doesnt solve your personal problems), rather than the old HC of them being failed Players.

MEAT 21

My theory about “The Economy” being code for sex doesn’t stop feeling ever more confirmed by this narrative :|

Dirk’s anger at the idea of anyone not thinking he’s right about everything is Palpable on this page. Also I’d just like to note that This:

Is being said by a person currently in the middle of metaphysically manipulating a friends towards her worst impulses(and also potentially some amounts of self-hatred, give her thoughts re: femininity) for the sake of establishing a dictatorship through which she, as his agency-dimmed puppet, will enforce his personal politico-philosophical preferences regardless of what anyone else thinks and he’s saying it about people who just said This:

which is to say: a bunch of political pluralists who are NOT seeking to impose their morality on anyone but rather to establish a system where EVERYONE can SHARE their moral understanding of policy issues and come to a consensus decision on them, within the context of a political society DEFINED by the equality of all as political actors. There’s just so much that’s wrong, weak, and easily dismissable about Dirk’s argument here. Not to mention his obvs, undisguised, physical disgust for trolls >:T

And he’s doing all this Purely because, given his fixation on “Winning”, he wants to Win. Like: he’s not actually even pursuing what he considered good policy; he is, literally, doing this all for Pure Ego, which he has the gall(and lack of self-awareness) to accuse others of acting from. And this self-deluding buffoon is a person who believes himself “Ascended” and therefore possessed of a “higher” and “clearer” perspective on matters above their “petty” concerns about, oh non-humans being allowed to live as they like, or practice any political agency at all, and all ppls being spared unnecessary and pointless suffering due to entirely manufactured shortages. So much (real, actual)Irony, of so many types, in all of this, all at once.

An aside: I am really liking the political-mindedness of these Epilogues so far; really playing to my Interests uwu

The bit about Hybrid babs and shipnames is funny, and it doesn’t read like a shot at the fandom to me at all; it’s more a joke at Dave’s expense given the obvs distress Kanaya’s in and his inability to stop making the situation more awkward(itself prob the result of Bro’s neglect/abuse)

Oh hey look: it’s Dirk the “Omniscient” being distracted, caught unawares and off-guard by the actions of others, unable to handle the role&work he’s chosen for himself(ie “out of his depth”), unable to split his attention between even just two conscious ppl at once, and not knowing what others are thinking. Given this and his handling of Jade’s thoughts in the last section, I kinda feel like it’s less he can actually sense the thoughts of others, and more that he gets some kind of inkling or hunch, or maybe that’s it’s purely just him guessing(that’d fit real well with his comments on Roxy being “inscrutable” to him), or even just having an awareness of the plot he is narrating(and thinks he’s writing). Of course it could also be some kind of Heart thing; not really even access to their thoughts at all, but a sort of awareness of their Agency? Like: Heart is The Self and The Self is expressed through Agency, so he has, in some way, developed an awareness of “Self-Action”, which is to say, Agency? Kinda like how Dave “feels” Time and Jade “feels” Space and Rose “feels” Relevance. Which, just as an asnide, would be something super-basic powers-dev wise, since Dave started having a sense of Time way back in the early Acts, long before godhood. Though I can see how Dirk developing an awareness of OTHERS intentions(and feelings, potentially, given Heart’s other associations) would seem like a big step for him, given how self-absorbed he is.

Ok that’s it for this one I think. I know I’m not being terribly kind to Dirk in all this but, tbf, he’s being kind of a huge snide Dick in basically every respect, and I also don’t have a lot of Chill in me when it comes to 1)arrogant people or 2)manipulators (:T

#Homestuck #HS Epilogue #Homestuck Spoilers #zA Opinions #analytic posts

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fox-household · 5 years

Text

Act 4: Education and Moral Standards, Chapter 3

Whoa whats this? A post that didn’t take two centuries before the last? I know, a real shocker. I even would’ve got this one done earlier if I wasn’t also writing a longer event chapter which is also getting closer to being done, although you won’t be able to see it yet obviously. I mean you probably think it’s a Christmas chapter, but actually no, while a Christmas one isn’t out of the question (I’m thinking I’ll do a short one for that), I’ve got a fun one planned for New Years, weird decision, but I’ll fully explain it then, I promise. Anyway here’s the first of the shorter chapters, feel free to let me know how it goes, it does feel super short to me, but maybe that’s because I wrote it in one go and I’m just used to the longer ones still, but I still think it’ll be better than waiting 100 years for a chapter. Ok I’ll stop rambling now, hope you enjoy, you people have a good day and stuff.

FIRST, PREVIOUS, NEXT, INFO

Asgore Asgore found the familiar halls empty of anyone he wanted to see, he passed parents and students that he didn’t really know very well, one of them was in a class of his, though obviously he was busy. Honestly, he’d hoped that maybe one of the kids would show up or Simon, or anyone he knew well enough to hang out with. With a final defeated sigh, he leaned his back on a locker, finding that this was a better place than any to rest, in another ten minutes or so he would go on another search, perhaps more people would out and about. For the next five minutes nothing changed, only one pair of parents passed him, the recently cleaned halls shined a little, yet revealing nothing of interest to break him from his boredom. That was until he heard footsteps running down the hall to his left, glancing over to find a girl clad in what he could only describe as cowboy attire, the old western look being the main thing anyone noticed on first seeing her because of how out of place it was. Although for him and his classmates, seeing Clover like that wasn’t so weird, at least not anymore. Clover stopped in front of Asgore, looking at him with eyes of contempt and pure aggravation, ‘’God damn it, my fucking luck’’. She kept looking behind her, back towards the corner she came from, now the two could hear some slightly heavier footsteps approaching. Before Asgore had enough time to even give her a ‘Howdy’, he found himself being dragged by the arm further down the hall, slowing down only 5 meters further and coming to a halt in front of a cleaner’s closet. The human quickly opened the door and shoved him into it with a lot of unnecessary force, causing him to stumble and almost impact the concrete floor, luckily, he regained his balance thanks to being able to grasp some support from a dusty wooden shelf, although he did knock a bottle of cleaning chemical to the ground in his attempt to save himself. Clover soon after dashed into the closet and closed the door slowly, obviously trying to prevent any audible sign that they’d gone inside. She turned to Asgore and put a finger to her mouth as a sign to be quiet, watching him pick up the bottle off the floor with a look disdain. Her attention moved to outside the door as the footsteps became louder and louder, eventually peaking when the individual got the front of the door, their shadow covering the light from under the entrance. But the shadow didn’t move. Asgore could tell Clover was holding her breath and he couldn’t quite blame her, he didn’t even know why he was here and yet he was dreading what would happen if that door opened, what type of situation was he about to get himself into? A deep feminine sounding sigh came from the other side of the door before finally the light from under the door was unblocked and the footsteps begun to fade away. Clover let out a huge sigh of relief, even taking a few deep breaths afterwards, ‘’Shit, that was real close’’. She looked back at Asgore who now had a matching but less intense look of relief. Once the halls had once again returned to its former silence, she opened the door and took a few steps out, looking both ways to keep watch and already looking to be on the move. Asgore followed her out, giving a friendly smile, now enjoying the open, light hall compared to that cramped, dark space. ‘’Hey Clover, uh you alright, what’s going on?’’ The moment his words reached her, she appeared to tense up, her tone making it clear that this wasn’t a conversation she wished to be having, especially with him of all people. ‘’None of your damn business, as far as you should be concerned everything’s fine. Just go run along and do whatever dandy stuff you like to do, I don’t care, just do it away from me’’. His smile turned to a much more nervous one, faltering at the hostility, ‘’So you’re just going to involve me like that and not tell me why I had to hide from some stranger?’’ She pulled down her hat as she groaned loudly, ‘’No, I didn’t do it to involve you, I bloody well did it because I don’t trust you not to sell me out, for all I know your stupid extreme honesty would’ve kicked in and I ain’t risking that…’’, she pulled her hat back up as her brown eyes found his with an irritated gaze, ‘’Why don’t you stop being real damn nosy and focus on your own problems… because we know you have them’’. It was finally at this that his expression lost the smile, ‘’Excuse me? But what are you on about?’’ ‘’You know, the fact that you get your ass beat every few days because you want to protect some kid… don’t give that confused look, you think those bruises you try to hide were only noticed by those close to you? Almost everyone in class knows something is going on, though most don’t know what… even seems to be a theory going around that maybe that’s happening to you at home after school, if you know what I mean?’’ ‘’Th-that’s… That’s not what’s happening! That’s completely wrong!’’ ‘’Well the less informed don’t know that. Tell us Asgore, what is going on? Because I mean the way Tori’s been asking around, she doesn’t know either… so why don’t you clear up the truth?’’ The goat monster’s surge of anger disappeared and was replaced with a silence, he only watched Clover with a look that showed he wasn’t going to say anything. ‘’Whatever Asgore, you’re not my problem so just stay out of my way, see ya, make sure to leave me alone’’, with an annoyed and dismissing tone, she walked back the way she came swiftly, trying to leave the situation as quickly as possible, leaving the prince to his own thoughts and secrets.

Sci

While the school was unfamiliar to him, it was thanks to signs and random people walking around that actually knew the place that he managed to find his way. The school itself from the inside looked nice, it was simple and a little generic. However, it was clean, had a large amount of running facilities and lots of room to do whatever classes and students needed to do, he felt like he wouldn’t have minded going to this school back in the day, a time that felt like it was a long time ago, a time where he felt he was a different person to the one that he is now, who knew being an adult could change you. Stifling another yawn that he could feel were becoming more and more overpowering, he made his down the last hall to his destination, seeing two doors to a bathroom for each gender. He opened the door to the male bathrooms and was half way from stepping inside when something made him stop, sending a shiver down his spine and making his eyes widen as well as making his eye lights disappear. ‘’Sans… Sans… come to us… Sans’’ The voice was faint and raspy, as if it had to rely on the wind to carry it anywhere, but despite the voice’s quirks, it was all too familiar to him. He turned his head to the left, looking down the hall where he saw a tall shadowy silhouette standing there, not moving, only being audible, repeating those words. Swearing, he dashed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and running to the row of sinks in front of the large horizontal mirror. Sci stuffed his hands in his right pants pocket, finding nothing, trying to slide his finger into a small crevice. ‘’Quick, quick, ah shit please, c’mon’’. Finally, he found what he was looking for, opening the concealed pocket and pulling out a syringe in the open, the glass in the small thing filled with an orange liquid. His eyes found the mirror in front of him and in its reflection, he saw the shadowy figure from before standing on the other side of the room behind him, this time joined by a smaller figure right next to it. They both had eyes develop onto them, familiar eyes, and then that’s when he started to notice colours were starting to form on the taller one, white spreading along its head to make a bone like material. ‘’Is this really Sans? Come to us’’. This time two voices spoke with the filtered-like voice, the second one seeming a little higher than the first, the way he spoke also had a less confident tone, it made him feel guilt. ‘’G-get… get the h-hell way from me!’’, panicking now, his hands were shaking fiercely and twice he nearly dropped the syringe on the floor. He rolled his right sleeve up and managed, with a struggle, to position the syringe above where his forearm would be. Barely giving him any time to aim properly, he stabbed it into the bone, gritting his teeth from the sudden sharp pain, finally pressing down on the end of the syringe, making the orange liquid disappear into his arm. After a few seconds of nothing but fear and pain, both feelings just suddenly stopped. Energy, lots of energy, it was the only way he could describe the sensation that was going through his entire body. He felt new, refreshed, powerful. Putting the syringe back in his concealed pocket, he looked up at the mirror. Both figures were gone, he was alone in the bathroom now. He looked at his eyes, making the pair of them blue, the type that would usually show in his left eye whenever using a lot of magic. The skeleton returned his eyes back to the normal white eye light and let out a deep laugh. ‘’Oh, this feeling just never gets old’’, he said to himself as he cracked the bones around his neck. Any feeling of tiredness had been eliminated, no impending yawns, no sign that he was ever like that in the first place, all they could see was the Sans who was ready to take on the world. ‘’Hopefully this will allow the others to worry a little less, I told them I’d be fine and look at me now, right as rain’’. With those last few words, he stretched his arms a little before finally leaving the bathroom to go find Alphys and Asgore.

#glitchtale alphys #science sans #quantum asgore #undertale #story #fox household

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