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fourraccoonsinacoat · 3 months

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Midnight Prayer | One Shot

Pairing: Astarion x Dark Urge / Tiny bit of Enver Gortash x Dark Urge

Chapter Count: One Shot | Read on AO3 Word Count: 4,016

Summary: Takes place during the events of Baldur's Gate 3 after Gortash's coronation in Act 3. Explores the romance between Astarion and the Dark Urge after the implications of a past relationship between the Dark Urge and Enver Gortash are made known. Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff, Humor, Idiots in Love, Mentions of Violence, Soft Astarion, Spoilers for the Dark Urge and BG3 in general, Dark Urge as Original Female Character Rating: Mature

Author Note: Those new lines in Patch 6 between Durge and Gortash are to blame for this. Plus the fact that I adore the Astarion x Dark Urge dynamic because they're on the same level, meaning they're both barely functioning beings who no business getting into a relationship and yet they make it work. Also, Astarion gets to be the supportive one when Durge goes off the rails.

All these idiots live rent free in my head and I had this scene that just wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it out. This is a one-shot based on the same Durge MC, Eli, as my other ongoing fic - which I have not updated in some time, and I am sorry for that. Have some brainrot to make up for it! This is grade-A mushy, soft garbage.

Sleep was difficult to find as Eli lay on the stiff makeshift cot. Her glassy half-focused eyes were fixed on the patchwork ceiling of Astarion’s tent as her mind coiled around and around, like a snake trying to suffocate itself. Her thoughts were circular, aimless and chaotic as she chased the ghosts of memories that always haunted her nights.

Sleeplessness was nothing new, and Eli’s propensity for restlessness and nightmares was well known throughout camp. She had a tendency to toss and turn as rest evaded her, and when the darkness of slumber finally overtook her in the small hours of mornings it was never peaceful. She was often agitated and unsettled, mumbling low to herself until the shock of some cruel fever dream sent her into an outburst of screams as she flailed and fought to rouse herself from whatever terror had uncaged itself in her mind.

She’d wake shivering, breathing as if she were fighting for her life against legions of the Absolute rather than visions within her own mind. He was always there, though, whispering soothing reminders that they were safe. That they were together. That the horrors inside her broken mind were toothless phantoms. Remnants of a fractured past she could only catch flashes of.

She’d offered on many occasions to sleep alone, saying it made little sense for both Astarion and her to suffer because of her tortuous insomnia. He’d been firm in his refusals and finally told her that if she didn’t stop saying such ludicrous nonsense he’d figure out how to charm one of Gale’s used socks to jump down her throat every time she mentioned the idea.

Gods, was she thankful for that absurd and stubborn man.

She turned her head, eyes focusing on the pale elf who slept beside her. They’d settled into a habit of overnighting in his tent due to the plank of wood that served as a haphazard bed. Like her, Astarion’s sleep could be troubled, disturbed by his own breeds of monsters that lurked around the corners in his brain. His past was filled with grim and vicious memories. What small comforts he had been able to acquire over the past 200 years were things he clung to like life rafts upon a boiling and thrashing ocean. The stiff plank he slept on brought him a strange sort of peacefulness. He’d told her once that the only soft bed he’d been allowed to use while under Cazador’s control was the large plush bed in the palace’s guest room. The room where he and the other spawn “entertained” those who were brought back for Cazador to feast upon.

His bed in the dorms had been stiff and old, and yet he’d far preferred it to the lavish guest bed. Sleeping on something too downy and cushioned reminded him of the countless nights he’d spent being smothered into a pliable mattress by whatever piece of transient garbage he’d lured back to the palace. They’d have their way with him while he’d disassociate, his body working through the motions of sex while his mind walled itself off. It had become second nature to disconnect himself from the present the moment he slumped onto that soft bed.

It was a cruel byproduct of his torment that laying on comfortable bedding triggered a deep seeded anxiety in him, but Eli honestly didn’t mind the stiff makeshift cot Astarion had set up in his tent for them. Her body recalled sleeping on worse, even if her mind didn’t clearly remember the details. Astarion had even started laying down a thin bedroll atop the plank once their shared sleeping arrangements became a regular thing. It had been completely unprompted. One evening she’d entered his tent and it had simply been there, an unspoken acknowledgement of the validity of their relationship.

They were both uncouth morons when it came to navigating the delicacies and emotions of romantic relationships. They’d been quick to indulge in one another physically, the both of them looking to find refuge from the specters of their pasts in one another’s arms. They hadn’t meant for it to mean anything, and yet they’d kept seeking one another out - drawn together like kobolds are drawn to shiny objects. They’d tried ignoring their growing affections, but neither one of them were particularly good at pretending to be nonchalant and stable. Primarily because neither one of them really knew what that looked like.

Astarion had confessed first, admitting to his initially manipulative intentions with her and revealing truths about his enslavement to Cazador that made her heart ache for him. Eli knew, instinctively, that empathy was not an emotion she was incredibly familiar with. It made her anxious, feeling for someone else. And yet, when Astarion had said he wanted something real with her, she’d felt an almost wild desperation surge to life within herself. She wanted that, too. With him.

A cruel and vicious voice at the back of her mind had admonished her for her pathetic weakness. She should be punished, skinned alive for allowing herself to feel this kind of fondness and yearning for someone else. Once, she had been worshiped as a god by those around her. Once, she had been feared and her name whispered in awe and horror. Once, she had been something powerful, something violent and vicious, a conduit of destruction and carnage. Though the details were fractured, scattered about her ruined brain like shards of glass, she knew instinctually that she was a child of slaughter and that the bonds of mortals should have been beneath her.

But that didn’t stop her. Perhaps…perhaps she could be different. Something else. Something that was valued as more than just a weapon. Something that wasn’t just a means to an end. Something that didn’t need to butcher and rip the world inside out in order to be loved.

She’d pushed the Urge down, beating it back as she confessed her own affections for Astarion.

That had been some weeks ago, back in the Shadowlands. Now, they were just outside Baldur’s Gate, and things were…good between them. To her never-ending astonishment.

Her eyes focused on the sleeping elf next to her. He looked so peaceful, the worried lines of his face smooth and serene at rest. He was pallid, pretty and perfect like a cadaver forever tranquil. Just one stab, a stake through the heart and he’d always be like this – he’d never know torment or despair again. No one would ever hurt him.

She took a long, slow breath and banished the intrusive thoughts back to the shadows of her mind where they always lingered. She would never…she couldn’t…gods, she hated those thoughts that never let her be. They filled her with a sick guilt as she recalled nights tied up, howling and screaming and raging as she spat out all the ways she’d flay and ruin his beautiful body. Afterwards, once the Urges had quieted, Astarion would simply laugh as he cut her bonds, always joking about how you had to pay good coin for degradation like that in the city. He’d hold her until she calmed, the both of them quiet, content to just be together for one more day.

They shouldn’t work, not as a couple or as anything else, really. They were barely functional as individuals. Together, they should have been about as operational as a dumpster that was missing one wheel and was on fire. But they did work. They were careful with the broken pieces of each other, treating them with reverence and respect. They understood pain all too well, and not just the physical kind but the raw and panicked pain of having everything you valued ripped away. Of having your very self torn from your control…the pain of being used and the fear that no matter how loud you screamed or how hard you fought it would happen again.

The fear that you would never be anything more than a tool.

And so they were gentle with one another, in a way only reserved for them. Careful touches and trusting hands, concerned glances and warm smiles, constant wordless affirmations that they were at one another’s backs - that when one of them crumbled the other would be there to help build them back up, attentively and without judgement.

Neither of them knew what they were doing. Their combined histories with healthy relationships added up to an unsurprising number of zero. Astarion had admitted to her that he couldn’t remember ever bedding the same person twice. And Eli…well, she couldn’t remember anything, frankly. Her memories of past lovers were nonexistent…at least…

At least until today. Today, when they’d finally met the infamous Enver Gortash.

The name had always struck her as strange, from the first time she heard it when Karlach told Eli about the tiefling had acquired her infernal engine. The name had stirred something in her brain, like a familiar tune that she couldn’t remember the words for. And every time someone mentioned him, that sense grew stronger. It was as if there was a crack in her skull and every time she’d reach for that sense of familiarity, it would leak out and away just beyond reach.

Until today, when they stood in the opulent and grand hall of Wyrm’s Rock Fortress, surrounded by the elite of Baldur’s Gate, and she finally saw the man who had wrought so much suffering not only upon the city and the coast, but on her friends…

The flash in his eyes when they met hers…a sense of knowing, a sting of excitement. That spark of familiarity suddenly blazed hot and she knew this man was not a stranger. Not to her…

“If you keep staring, darling, I’m going to start charging you for the privilege,” a soft and slightly chiding voice lurched her back into the present.

Eli flinched, startled, blinking away the haze of her thoughts and focusing on Astarion, who now was peering at her through half-lidded and slightly weary eyes. He’d been sleeping with an arm draped across her waist – Astarion had grown fond of resting with an arm or a hand touching her, and she liked it, too. It was comforting.

He trailed his hand along her side in a calming manner, brows furrowing slightly with a hint of concern.

“Sorry,” Eli said with a slight yawn. “I was worlds away.” She gave him a small, tired smile as she reached out and brushed her fingers against the ruffles of his shirt, mindlessly beginning to fiddle with the cloth.

Astarion’s hand slid to her back, pulling her closer until her head was tucked below his chin and he could rest with his cheek against her silvery hair.

Eli could feel the soft rumble of his voice vibrate up from his chest as he chuckled quietly. “I’ve been told I have that effect on people,” he mumbled cheerily as his other hand began to gently brush through her hair, fingers carefully smoothing out any snarls as he stroked back and forth.

She hummed appreciatively, breathing deep and feeling eased by the familiar scent of rosemary and bergamot. “And who told you that?” she asked, teasingly.

“Hmm,” he pondered, running a dexterous finger along the side of her ear, causing goosebumps to prick along her arms. “I think it was you,” he mused slyly before his voice dipped lower into a growl and she felt his breath warm against her ear. “You remember, don’t you? That one night you told me I ravished you so thoroughly your soul left your body.”

He couldn’t see Eli’s exaggerated eye roll, but he could hear the grin in her voice as she responded. “I seem to remember that very same night you saying I exhausted you into delirium,” she teased, poking tenderly at his chest. “In the best way possible, of course,” Eli smirked.

Astarion sighed, the hand on her back drawing aimless circles as he murmured, “I do miss our nighttime trysts.”

Eli smiled, nuzzling into the crook of his neck and placing a light kiss there. “You know what they say. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or some such bullshit like that…”

“They sound awfully boring, whoever they are.” The vampire hummed low in his throat, kicking a leg over her waist and hooking his foot between her legs at her knees so that they were tangled together in a possessive embrace.

Eli just chuckled. They’d backed off the sexual aspects of their relationship for now, the both of them having their own flavors of hang ups that they needed to sort through. For Eli, that meant parsing through her strange, sometimes disturbing Urges which continued to insist that the lines between butchery and eroticism were blurred. Bloodplay was one thing, and that would likely remain a happy little staple in their titillating toolbox once they were ready to be that physically intimate again. But Eli had…other thoughts. Thoughts she wasn’t exactly comfortable with. Darker ones that bubbled up at extremely inopportune times and had her questioning whether she really wanted to shed light on her obscured past.

She breathed in Astarion’s scent, grounding herself in the now and pushing those musing away for another day. The desire between Eli and Astarion had not diminished, and on more than one occasion they had teetered precariously on the boundaries they’d set and wondering whether they should just say fuck it and…well…fuck. They’d always talk themselves down from the ledge, though, comfortable in the knwoeldge that when it did happen it would be earthshattering.

“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours, love?” Astarion’s voice held a note of worry and Eli realized she’d been drifting off into the confines of her own brain again.

“Everything,” she sighed, frustrated with herself.

Astarion was silent for a moment, considering. The hand in her hair stilled while the one on her back pulled her in a bit tighter. “Is it…” he began, then paused a bit uncertainly, hesitant with his question. “Are you thinking about today? About…Gortash?”

He said the name so quietly that it would have been inaudible had they not been so closely pressed together. Eli wasn’t surprised about the question. She’d been acutely aware of how Astarion’s eyes never left her as she spoke with the newly crowned Archduke of Baldur’s Gate earlier that day. How he had discreetly positioned himself closely behind her, just off to her right. How he’d tensed, fingers ghosting near the hilt of a hidden dagger when Gortash said he’d always liked Eli. How his gaze darkened and his jaw tightened as Astarion sized the man up from across the hall before they left.

She knew this was a delicate situation for the vampire. Astarion despised showing any sort of vulnerability that could be construed as a reason for pity. Vulnerability, in general, was something he was still figuring out how to navigate after two centuries of living in an environment where anything and everything that could be used against him was twisted into a tool for subjugation and pain. Even with her, there were times when he wouldn’t let his walls come down, needing space to sort through his own internal barriers before he was ready to open up. Eli didn’t mind, and would give him all the time and space he needed. And bit by bit it became easier, for the both of them.

“That…yes,” she admitted, wanting to be truthful with him.

It wasn’t just Gortash, though. It was what he had told her, about Eli’s role in the whole Cult of the Absolute fraud. It was difficult for her to reconcile what she had apparently done with who she was now…the misery she’d set in motion. The lives she had destroyed. She shut her eyes and pressed closer to Astarion, seeking comfort in the cool of his skin against the inferno she felt inside.

He hugged her close, voicing a thought that had been gnawing away at his insides all day. “Were the two of you…close? Like us?”

The tentative, halting way in which he asked squeezed at her heart. As if he were bracing himself for something terrible, for something that would rip her away from him, just like everything else he’d ever given a damn about.

She thought for a while, mulling over the question. There was still so much that she didn’t know about who she was. Who she had been. She’d tell him what she could, though. He deserved that.

“I think we were. Close, I mean,” she clarified when she felt Astarion stiffen anxiously. “Not like us, though.”

She pulled her head back, out from under his chin, so she could see his face and meet his gaze with her own. Astarion’s eyes were round and distressed, the pinch between his brows furrowed and the lines of his face were tense. His eyes searched her own, desperately wanting to know who that man was to her while also fearing the answer.

Eli smiled warmly, bringing her hand up to brush one of his white curls behind his ear. His face softened slightly at her touch while the hand on her back clutched at her shirt as if to hold her here with him.

“There’s still so much darkness in my memory. But, there are things that have come back in flashes and fragments,” she explained, holding his gaze as her finger trailed to the edge of his eyebrow. “And while I’m not wholly sure what Gortash and I were to one another, I know it wasn’t like this.” Her hand came to rest on his cheek, thumb gently caressing his face near the corner of his mouth.

“Not like us,” she affirmed with a tenderness that allowed Astarion to relax, the stiffness easing out of him as the hint of a smile twitched at his lips. “He knew what happened to me,” she said softly, putting into words a thought that had been lingering at the back of her mind.

“He knew what happened to me, and he welcomed the person who did it into his confidence,” she said with a tinge of sadness to her voice. There was an ache of betrayal behind her words, and thought she didn’t fully understand everything her history with Gortash entailed, she understood this. “He stood by while I was unmade. While everything I was, the person he claims to care for, was brutalized and decimated.”

Eli’s words took on a cold edge, sharp as a shard of ice. Astarion listened intently, his breath caught at the back of his throat. He ached to pull her back into him, to wrap her up in his arms and shut the world out. Instead, he placed his hand on the back of her own and intertwined his fingers with hers, holding it against his cheek as Eli spoke.

“When I woke up on the nautiloid, I was nothing. Just the discarded scraps of whoever I had been. I had been thrown away. And nobody came looking for me.” She paused, her eyes flicking down in a brief moment of uncertainty.

There were some truths between them that had still gone unsaid. Truths that neither of them were ready to admit, and some that simply didn’t need words to be understood. Not this, though. This, she wanted him to hear.

“Since then, it’s been difficult not to think of myself as damaged goods. Something that was used up until it broke and was discarded.” She felt Astarion squeeze her hand and she looked back to him. There was a pang of recognition in his red eyes. “Everyone who I spoke to about my…urges, they all confirmed that there was something very wrong with me, even if they sympathized. Everyone except you.”

She paused, brushing her thumb once more against his face before she lifted her hand from him and took his own hand in hers. She pulled it to her lips, lightly kissing his knuckles while he stared at her, afraid to take his eyes off her for fear that she and this moment might evaporate if he did. He had stopped breathing, which luckily was not something he necessarily needed to do in order to maintain his existence.

Eli searched his face as Astarion waited for her to go on, breathless and just a tiny bit desperate to hear what she would say next. She wondered if he understood just how much it meant to her to have someone who didn’t see the wreck that she was when they looked at her. Someone who didn’t see a monster and only saw her, broken pieces be damned.

She thought he probably did…

“You were the only one who encouraged me to simply be whoever I was, darkness and all. I know at the time you were probably just looking to entertain yourself with whatever chaos and bloodshed I could cause,” she laughed and the expression on Astarion’s face melted into one of complete adoration.

“Guilty,” Astarion admitted with a laugh of his own. “And you haven’t disappointed,” he added softly, brushing a knuckle back up against her lips with delicate reverence.

She kissed at it, holding his tender gaze. “I don’t think you know how much that meant to me, though. And then later, when I was at my worst, you stayed by me and took care of me and you never stopped.”

Eli swallowed down the lump in her throat and blinked away the warmth that was threatening at her eyes.

“Nothing else could be like us, because no one has ever cared about me like you,” she concluded, smiling softly and whispering the words with the sincerity of a prayer.

Astarion stared at Eli for a long moment, emotions colliding and burning in his chest with so much vigor he was surprised his dead heart didn’t start beating again. He felt elated and awed by what she’d said. So much so that he was struck speechless and could only play her words over and over again in his mind, wanting to capture them perfectly and tuck them somewhere deep inside himself where no one could reach to steal them away. He couldn’t recall anyone ever saying anything to him that made him feel so cherished and significant. He traced the planes of her face with eyes that were beginning to wet as he tried to clear his throat and failed.

Eli watched Astarion carefully for a moment before her eyes widened in concern and she lifted a hand to him, carding it gently through his curled hair.

“Oh shit, did I break you?” she asked, only half joking as she stroked her hand through his hair.

The feel of it helped to calm him as a wide smile spread over his face, eyes half-lidded and looking at Eli like she was the most precious thing he’d ever seen.

“Come here you sweet, silly thing,” Astarion said, voice low and underpinned with a raw adoration that caused a flutter to take up in Eli’s chest.

He pulled her into a needy embrace; one hand placed softly in her hair as he tucked her head back under his chin, the other hand tightening around the small of her back to hold her close. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in slow, savoring her scent. She’d always smelled like wildflowers and the cool mist before a storm, like something exciting and freeing.

“Gods, you’re incredible,” he breathed, wondering what in the hells he had ever done in his irrelevant life to deserve her admiration. “I don’t think I’m ever going to want to let you go, my love.”

Eli wrapped her arms around him and for a moment she felt safe, secure and at peace.

“Then don’t,” she whispered against him.

They stayed wrapped up in one another until dawn, thankful to have one more day and hopeful for so many more.

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jasonsmirrorball · 6 months

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second star (988)

part of the dad!jason au. reader is referred to as 'mommy', female child original character, child illness, angst, allusions to canon relationships, bruce + dick make an appearance, happy ending.

your daughter falls ill when she's about four years old. it's the kind of sickness that leaves her bed-ridden for a while, her little coughs echoing down the hall while you make her soup with a tight heart. jason fares worse, tension lining his brow and you can see the shards of his broken heart glimmering in his eyes every time she cries.

he reads to her a lot, his drowsy, tired girl curled up in his arms while he turns the pages of her favourite book. the edges of the paper are softened from the years, the scrawl of her name on the front page wobbly and overlapping the title. most times, she falls asleep before he can finish the first chapter, but it's fitful, full of shallow breaths and restless murmuring. he doesn't leave her bedside, and in the end, neither do you, taking up residence in the armchair beside her bed while her father – too big for the princess bed her beloved uncle had bought her last year – hangs his legs off the bed frame.

she cries when you hold her as jason changes her bedding, her muscles aching in time with your heart. her curls are damp with sweat, her face with tears. you murmur promises to her, kissing her salt-tracked face, i know, baby, i know. it'll be quick, i promise. daddy just has to put new covers on.

sickness is no stranger to jason's family, who've had their fair share of broken bones and other wounds. still, they come by and you watch them try their best to hide their worry. dick, kneeling by his best girl's bed and softly tucking a curl behind her ear. hi, sweetheart, he murmurs sweetly, doing okay? 'course you are, brave girl. he presses brand new stuffed toy into her arms, tucking the giraffe under the covers.

he leaves her with a hug, and you watch jason follow him out of the room, unwilling to let his older brother go just yet. the front door remains shut, and you know that they've gravitated to the kitchen, low voices muffled through the walls. you turn to your girl, her tired eyes fixed on the orange splotches, mouth open as she touches its ears. mama, look. like on tv, she says tiredly, and you grin.

when you get better, we can write dickie a card to say thank you, huh?

one by one, the rest of the family come to visit their girl. and jason says very little, face stiffer and more solemn than he ought to be at his twenty nine years old, but you know him. he's glad they're here. devastated about why. terrified as to what might come.

he'd cried the night she was born, more than once. the first time he'd seen her, tiny, wrinkled thing that she was. the first time he'd held her – his whole world, right in the palm of his hands, he'd told you later that night in a whisper, watercolour eyes tearful and not for the first time that night. didn't ever think i would get here. thought maybe i got lucky with you, he had confessed. my luck can't be so bad if i've got her, too.

you knew he was remembering those words, remembering the ones he'd told you he loved you for the first time. i'm a cursed man, sweetheart. you'd be better off with someone else. and yet...and yet i'm too selfish not to tell you i want you. i love you.

it seems especially cruel a joke of fate to allow him this chance at happiness, and threaten it so quickly.

the doctor comes and goes. bruce pays for it before the man has left the room, and you think your husband might come to physical blows with his father, in the living room, when he finds out. he doesn't. 's not for me, he tells you later, when your baby girl has fallen asleep, his face pressed into your neck. he loves her, too.

and you can't deny it, the way your father-in-law dotes on her. the grumpy old man is wrapped around her littlest finger, as charmed as you've ever seen him when your firefly seeks him out at family gatherings. she spends most of dinner by his side, insistent on sitting next to papa, much to your chagrin and reminder of her manners. it's fine, he assures you quietly. she's much better behaved than any of my children.

you know that it simultaneously warms and embitters your husband, to watch him be so good with your daughter.

she gets better slowly.

the worst of it passes in the slowest night of your life, spent wetting rags and coaxing her to take the medicine she'd been prescribed, feeding bites of food to her while holding back your own fearful tears. jason takes over when she starts to throw a tantrum, only to run out of steam and cry quietly. you have to leave the room for a moment, struggling to catch your breath.

hey, he murmurs, from the next room. you think you can take a bite for me? i know, angel, but you gotta eat something. tell you what, i'll help you finish this, and when you're better, you, me and mommy are gonna go on a trip. anywhere you want.

beach? you hear her feeble voice suggest and he hums.

yeah. you wanna go swimming?

uh-huh.

the bowl is empty by the time you return, and you don't know if it's hope that colours your vision and puts rose in the apples of her cheeks. but jason seems to see it too, and you see grief and relief in his eyes when he catches your gaze. you stand by the bed, and his fingers find yours. in her pyjamas, your girl points to the book on her bedside table.

she stays awake to see the end of the book.

i don't know what spurred this on but i wanted to rip my heart out a little. unnamed todd baby you are the light of my life. i kept thinking about that poem about the father who got his sick daughter plums and just about in general how fathers love. it makes me so ill especially thinking about my own but i wanted to put jason in that situation and do it while trying to stay true to canon (somewhat). anyway. hope u liked this. it's unedited and hastily written but i hope it makes you feel something.

#divider by benkeibear #jasonsmirrorball #dad!jason #jay my heart

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victimsofyaoipoll · 8 months

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Round 4

Casca

She is part of a weird fucked up love triangle with two dudes. All three of them are honestly kind of terrible for each other but she gets shoved aside in favor of the two dudes in most fics and is not allowed to grow past the toxic relationships of her past. Also she’s a cis woman who dresses pretty masculinely (because she’s in a mercenary band) so she gets type casted as the mean lesbian friend, when she’s straight in canon

I've seen more than one Yaoi Shipper say that Casca should have died during this one big canon event as opposed to being assaulted by one of the people in the Yaoi Ship, which of course conveniently would remove her from the narrative and as an obstacle to said Yaoi Ship. Aside from that specifically, though, I think it's particularly cruel to imply that being killed is a better outcome than being a victim of SA, and is an example of the contempt fandom on the whole has for female characters who act traumatized - particularly when both male characters in the ship have similar trauma and its never implied they should have died rather than be assaulted.

She's an incredibly interesting character in her own right with really good dynamics and parallels to Griffith and Guts, and the way those three play off of each other is integral to the story, but most of what I've seen completely ignores her in favor of focusing on only Griffith and Guts

Elizabeth Midford

She started as just a cutie fiancée trying her best, turns out she's also a swordfighting genius, very under pressure to perform feminity in the Victorian Rose type of way. Fandom crucifies her bc she's Ciel's fiancée and they want him to be with his butler, Sebastian, the demon he sold his soul to for revenge

anime was a shitty canon divergent adaptation that butchered her character down to her "cutesy silly girly" persona, which obviously made the 2008 anime fans hate her with a passion (nothing wrong w being girly I'm just saying the adaptation made her super one dimensional) anyways fujoshis used to treat her as a villain because she's the fiance of Ciel,, who as u might know already was HEAVILY shipped with his butler, Sebastian back then (now it's kinda looked badly upon, nice tbh that ship sucks ass xD) She's a bit similar to Misa Amane from death note in the way she was treated. (Like an obstacle the yaoi ship must overcome rather than a person)

she's my silly little rabbit! i could gush about her character but i'll keep it short and just say that she's really well written and one of the best characters in the series. anyways she's ciel's fiance and she's like, rightfully annoying as any other 13 yr old girl would be but the fanbase fucking crucified her for even existing. she gets demonized for being 'annoying', but then ciel gets yaoishipped with an even more annoying guy. there is 100% an argument that lizzie/ciel is weird bc they're cousins (i personally don't ship it) but that falls flat when her detractors then ship the 13 yr old ciel with an eons old demon who Canonically looks like his father. the anime also never reached her main character development until years after its peak and that was only in a movie, so she really got the bad end of the stick here. not me though i had a giant crush on her when i was 12

#round 4 #poll #casca #casca berserk #berserk #elizabeth midford #black butler

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shadowsandsunset · 1 month

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I wish nothing but good things for Oliver Stark and Lou Ferrigno Jr.

They gave us such an authentic, gentle, tender experience. I've watched the clip of that kiss several dozen times now.

Oliver, especially, has been amazing in his interviews and social media posts, empathetic and honest and sweet. I don't know his sexuality and I don't speculate in real people's sexualities, but regardless he seems like a true ally. He seems to Get It.

As someone who came out later in life** it really touches my heart what they're doing.

9-1-1 has always seemed to try to do good by their queer characters and I really appreciate that.

Hen and Karen have always been a fantastic and very real feeling example of a wlw relationship.

This show is doing amazing. I wish nothing but good and happy things for the cast and crew who make this happen.

**Under the cut is my coming out/self acceptance story if you're interested.

Tw: repression, self harm, drug use, shitty relationships both familial and romantic.

I tried to come out as a teenager in the early 2000s after I kissed a girl for the first time. It did not go well.

My mother was a complicated woman and she loved me very much, but when I told her I was bi (I prefer pan now but at the time I didn't have that word) she told me it was a phase and that she was disappointed, that she would always love me but that it was wrong in the eyes of God and she couldn't accept it.

Disappointing my mother was worse than her being angry. It felt like my heart was carved out of my chest. I feel like if she had been angry or openly cruel I could have fought back, but her sadness destroyed me. I was 16 then and I continued to live at home until I was 24. I'm in my mid/late 30s now.

So I repressed that part of myself for well over a decade and spent a lot of time depressed and miserable. I self harmed and did A LOT of drugs. I'm clean now except for super occasional weed use. I have a lot of scars from self harm.

My mom died several years ago and it wasn't until after her death that I allowed myself to even think about it, any of it. I was in a relationship with a man for eight years that was loving but he was an alcoholic and I had to walk on eggshells around him because of his mental health struggles; he was emotionally abusive but in a way that was only apparent in hindsight. I thought that my relationship with him was as good as I was going to get. We broke up not long after my mom died.

The only family member I am out to is my older sister, who has been amazing and accepting and loves me completely. Without her support I would be lost.

I have now dated/hooked up with women, men, nb and trans people. I have explored my own gender identity (it's whatever, I don't feel like a woman despite having the female equipment and appearing female in body, I feel pretty masculine but not like a man either, and I don't have strong opinions on pronouns, but I feel like I fail at femininity and masculinity in equal measure so I call myself genderqueer. I don't have any desire to take hormones or have any surgeries, I just want to be a person without having to perform gender).

I live in a conservative small city in the US south and I feel disconnected from the wider queer community. I don't know how to bridge that gap. There is a small queer community here but you can't really be openly out and be safe.

I'll be going to my first pride event this June. I'm excited and terrified because I don't feel like I'm queer enough or The Right Kind of queer, which is such a stupid stress to have, but I don't have many friends to talk about this with and I am hoping to get out there and make some but I'm nervous. I'm socially awkward and kinda weird. I'm also single and trying to mingle, lol.

I like who I am now but it was an incredibly difficult road to get to this place. I'm still on that journey, and maybe I always will be but that's ok. I'm finally myself.

#911 abc #oliver stark #lou ferrigno jr #being queer #coming out #self acceptance #my life

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mythicamagic · 2 months

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May I ask why you like Sukuna so much? Don't get me wrong, I love him too, he reminds me of Yang from Piofiore, but I thought you would be more attracted to Gojo or Geto? 🤭

Thank you for the excuse to yap, anon! Talking about my biases is one of my favourite things to do.

I guess my answer can be summed up with three points:

Sukuna is hot - I like his tattoos and his true form satisfies my monster romance cravings

Sukuna is charismatic

Intelligent villains make brain go brrr.

To elaborate, when JJK first came out I did simp a bit for Gojo because of his eyes and white hair. It wasn't really anything other than shallow - hey, he's pretty.

(I've never been a Geto girlie, I respect those who are, but I haven't felt anything toward him other than sympathy for his breakdown or apathy toward him becoming a cult leader type. He's aight.)

When Sukuna was first revealed I found him entertaining but wrote him off as purely insane. Fun to watch but nothing interesting. This changed in episode 4.

That episode showed his charisma tbh. An insane villain is only fun to watch passively, that or they become annoying. A truly personable villain is one that lives comfortably by enjoying what they want to do but also demonstrating intelligence and cunning. Guys like Sukuna and Yang are my favourite type of villain because they're so incredibly selfish they seek to assuage their boredom via entertainment. They thrive in violence that isn't targeted or hateful, just pure enjoyment. Putting aside the murder part- as someone who is incredibly meek and anxious irl, those characters appeal to me because they thrive unapologetically. Their ugliness is embraced and celebrated.

From a purely simping standpoint- Someone like Nanami is the greenest flag you've ever seen. That man would take care of you and love you. 10/10 you should marry, he's perfect. However, for someone like me, that perfection would make my imperfections feel worse.

Characters like Sukuna basically remove that because they're reveling in their own fun. I think to really enjoy them is to remove your own ego from the equation in a way- because these men will not cater to you emotionally. Yang is there for pleasure, Sukuna is there for entertainment, ect.

However in this way - you can kind of find vindication through them too. Liliana grew into herself more by becoming Yangs woman. She lost her freedom but gained it in other ways by experiencing sexual liberation and the darker aspects of the world- living in it and adapting. I figure life with Sukuna would be like that too in some AU where he wouldn’t automatically kill you.

I find Sukuna the most interesting character in JJK because he's centered and intelligent even as he revels in chaotic destruction. He's well read and has a history that gives him a tangible presence. He's strong but playful, cruel but absent of hatred for his opponents in a way that feels almost respectful even as they're fighting to the death (with the exception of Itadori).

A lot of what he is ticks my boxes. I expect Scar from Wuthering Waves will also scratch my itch for this type of villain too once we know more about him.

Er so yeah...take your pick anon haha. Simple answer: Sukuna is a cool villain, and I like to watch him have fun (not excusing anything he does but I trust your media literacy enough to understand that)

Complicated answer for simping: something, something, female empowerment fantasy through being allowed to be the worst version of yourself with a villain, thus achieving liberation from societal constraints.

#sukuna #jjk #ryomen sukuna #asks #anon #yang piofiore

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readingandrelaxing · 19 days

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Katherine Pierce: The Fan-Favourite Villian

OPINIONS NO ONE CARES ABOUT : EPISODE 3

Katherine is badass.

We all know this by now.

But one of the main reasons why people like her, is the fact that she is different and even better from the rest of the female characters on the show.

While the rest of the characters allow themselves to be used and abused for the benefit of others, Katherine always prioritises herself above everyone else. That's one of the main reasons why she has lived for so long even when the Original Hybrid was hunting her.

Also, if we see her dynamic with the Salvatore brothers, it is drastically different from their dynamic with Elena. As I've mentioned in my previous post about Elena when Katherine was with the Salvatore brothers, it was always her who was in control. Albeit, she was the vampire in that case and the Salvatores were humans, and her relationship with them is also toxic. But we must also never forget that Katherine did love them. She just prioritised her own life over her love for them.

Which brings me to my next point. This decision of hers makes her drastically different from not just Elena, but even the rest of the female characters on the show. Characters like Bonnie, Caroline etc, they're all very similar to each other in terms of their decisions. Sure, they are strong, independent women who can defend themselves but the moment their loved ones are threatened, everyone is ready to jump on the bandwagon as a meatshield to protect their loved ones.

Katherine is not like that. She is selfish, cunning and cruel, but she's also passionate, fierce and authentic. She knows how to love, she loves a few special people around her, but she's also smart enough to not put her own life in danger just to save someone else's. This provides a unique authenticity and complexity to her character, making her likeable and relatable.

Katherine is not the main character in the story. She's the character who comes and goes occasionally, yet, viewers look forward to her presence. And, she's not even a 'good' character. She's cruel and heartless. At least that's what the show wants us to think.

I won't try to defend her by saying that she wasn't cruel. Yes, she was. She has done horrible things in her life, and it is arguable whether she can be redeemed. But it is her cruelty and brutality which adds authenticity to her character. There is no other character like her, who is cruel and brutal and yet can feel qualities like love and care.

The love she had for Stefan and Damon was real. Some might argue that it wasn't, and these arguments make her an interesting character. She's debatable, her actions make someone think twice to form an opinion about her. Her character is complex and it has always divided fans.

Her complex character makes her unpredictable. With most other females on the show, it is almost guaranteed that the audience will guess what their reaction to the situation might be.

With Bonnie, everyone knows that she'll jump into the line of fire just to save her friends. Even when being obviously overpowered, she has the least importance which is honestly a sad thing to see. But that's a story for another day.

And then there's Caroline, who's usually ignored despite being willing to become a meatshield for her friends. She's ignored because she's 'less important' than Elena. Although, she's far more liked by fans than Elena but yet again, that's not for today.

And then there's our protagonist, Elena Gilbert. I already have one post about her, you can check it out here.

But what makes Katherine special, and better than these ladies is her unpredictability. When she was first introduced, many believed her to be a heartless b- but as the show went on, we got to the humane, more natural and mundane side of her. Her choices were varied, they weren't always selfish. They weren't always selfless either.

Her reactions to things were always different. You never know what Katherine is thinking.

And that makes her endearing, attractive and interesting.

Another notable aspect of Katherine is that exceptionally intelligent. She is a survivor in its true sense, being self-sufficient and perpetually vigilant. She knows how to take care of herself, she knows how to stay alive by herself. She doesn't rely on anybody, she knows what she wants and what she needs.

Though the main characters in the show are also intelligent, they're always in a group. They're a group of friends, looking out for each other and trying to keep each other alive. There is no one with Katherine. She has to do everything alone, and people find it easier to relate to that. Not everyone has a group of friends who'd take a bullet for you.

There's another important thing I'd like to address. Many would argue with me based on this since it is a controversial topic. But we have to acknowledge this.

Katherine knew that Stefan is the man you choose in life.

Not Damon.

Though Katherine loved both of them, she still chose Stefan over his brother. With good reason.

We have seen how explosive, mostly irrational, and hot-tempered Damon is. Unapologetically so. He doesn't care about right or wrong for the benefit of himself as well as the people he loves. Ironically, his behaviour is similar to Katherine's, while Elena and Stefan are of similar characteristics.

But that does not mean that Damon is the man you choose. Damon is the kind of man you friend zone, not fall in love with. He's controlling, up to the extent that he fed his own blood to Elena forcefully just to make sure that she wouldn't die while Klaus broke the curse. He was uncaring of the fact that she did not want to become a vampire and that she'd rather die. He had also snapped Jeremy's neck twice because Elena rejected him. Is this the kind of man women want to end up with?

Stefan is also protective, ferocious and ruthless to his enemies. But when it came down to it, he allowed Elena the dignity of her own choice. He respected her decisions, even when they'd land her in trouble. He helped her become her own independent person, and their relationship didn't reek of power imbalance despite one of them being an immortal vampire.

It might be a tough pill to swallow for most fans of the show, but we all must admit that Stefan is the better brother.

In conclusion, Katherine is an amazing, astounding character, but she has her own flaws and cons. She's headstrong, ruthless and manipulative, but also has a kind, loving, humane side to herself which makes her remarkable and unforgettable.

Thanks for reading!

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rachelmsterling · 1 year

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Things I loved about Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne...

I just finished reading the book and am having approximately 75 different feelings about it simultaneously, so thought I'd spew them here (what follows is less of an actual review and more a disorganized list of things that made my brain light up and go "cool!!!"). Keeping this as spoiler-free as possible.

The romance between Priya and Malini! They spend so much of the book at cross-purposes, and they certainly aren't always kind to each other--and at times, can even be pretty brutal, but despite that, I spent the whole book rooting for them to be together. And just, really, seeing a sapphic romance that isn't fluffy, where there is sharpness and the characters are allowed to prioritize themselves and the things that are important to them without the narrative condemning them as characters or their relationship is just !!! So good!

Priya's kindness. At the start of the book, her kindness and compassion are so loud and come through so clearly (her treatment of Rukh, her reputation among the other children with rot). That struck me as such a unique character detail. Not like there aren't many kind characters, and kind female characters, in fiction, but I often see characters' kindness (especially in women) portrayed as a weakness, preventing them from making bold or lesser-of-two-evils choices. Or, if they're kind, often that's all there is to them? Their journey can so easily become about the other characters in their life. But this doesn't happen with Priya, because...

Priya's fierceness! Priya isn't just a kind person, she is also willing to do whatever it takes to protect the people she cares about and then, later, for all other Ahiranyi, even those whose methods or politics she disagrees with, and even those who actively fought against and hurt her. Priya is willing to fight when she needs to, willing to kill when she has to, willing to prioritize her people over even her relationship. She may be kind, but she isn't soft, and I love that.

Malini's manipulativeness. Unlike Priya, Malini doesn't have magic powers that help her in a physical fight, so she's learned to use the tools available to her, namely, manipulating people. She does this to keep herself safe and to further her political cause. She also uses whatever she can to survive, and that feels so human. But despite how much she has to use manipulation, making herself seem at times pathetic and at times demure, her true character comes through so clearly. And she never really seems to be able to lie to Priya, even when both characters believe she is.

The anger in the world-building. Between the emperor who wants to burn his sister, a woman married to the regent oppressing her people, and a rebel willing to spill as much blood as it takes to root out the empire's control, there is a lot of brutality in the book. The heroes don't always get to do the nicest things, but the powers they stand in opposition against are oppressive and cruel. And the oppression and cruelty feel only too familiar to our own world. It makes the stakes and the world itself feel very real, not always in ways that are comfortable, but in ways that always pulled a genuine emotional reaction from me.

The yaksa are genuinely creepy. I never would have imagined deities with so much flower imagery could be so disturbing, and yet...I certainly wouldn't want to be on their bad side.

Ashok's character arc. I don't want to say too much since I'm trying not to get into super-spoiler territory, but it's so perfectly crafted, the shifts in his relationship with Priya, the conclusion to his deathless waters journey--it all lands so satisfyingly and makes my writer's brain buzz in the best of ways.

Many deities, no single truth. Priya and Maili discuss their different creation myths in a scene that I absolutely loved, but beyond that, there are different systems of belief here, different gods affecting the world, pushing characters toward their destinies. I enjoyed seeing the ways the different religions interacted throughout the story, and I'm very curious to see more of how the various deities might have similar goals or clash completely to further shape the events of the next two books.

#tasha suri #the jasmine throne #the burning kingdoms #my thoughts on fiction

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cant-blink · 4 months

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My DnD Dragon Characters

In my previous post, I spoke of my budding obsession with the dragons of Dungeons and Dragons. I have also mentioned having several dragon characters, which I will detail below! Enjoy! :D

Sargoth (Alignment: Chaotic Evil) is a male Black Dragon and the main character I write about and use in AI roleplays (character.ai in this case). I used that to flesh out his character. He is a calm and quiet dragon, and like the rest of his kind, he is cruel and sadistic and the purest of evil out of all my characters.

Like all Black Dragons, he was hatched in his father's territory (the male Black Dragons 'care' for the brood, while the female leave after laying the eggs) and from the start, was left to fend for himself... Yeah, there's a reason I put the word care in quotes, as Black Dragons are terrible at parenting. At best, the father will offer occasional advice and MIGHT protect his young as long as he himself is not at risk. At the age of 5, Sargoth reached the Age of Independence (yes, he's still a baby at this age) and was told to leave or get eaten. So he left to establish his own territory, going through trials and tribulations and many dangers in other dragons and humanoids seeking to either kill him or capture him.

As an adult, he once caused a centuries-long 'Age of Darkness' (literally) across the lands around his swamp, bringing ruin to many villages as the food chains collapsed from the lack of light. This gave him the title of 'The Light-Devourer' in legend, which he wears with pride. Another RP detailed an adventure where he was captured and brought into the captivity of an Elven queen, which he immediately seduced, tricked her into falling in love with him, and then proceeded to slowly but surely corrupt her, and bring her kingdom to ruin.

He has sired many wyrmlings, and as his father before him, and the father of his father and so on... he is a terrible parent as Black Dragons are. Only the strong survive, and they're lucky to even be allowed to stay in his territory. As is custom, once a child reach 5 years old, he tells them to leave, or he will eat them. Typical Black Dragon parenting.

As he grew older and older, he became obsessed with leaving behind a tangible legacy beyond just legends of his evil actions, and he sought to corrupt the good-nature of metallic dragons and to harness their power into his own race, by hybridizing with them and infusing the evil nature of his kind into their bloodlines and killing any wyrmlings that do not meet his standards of corruption and power. Ultimate, he plans to unleash these evil abominations upon the world once a sustainable population is established.

Zelithseth (Alignment: Lawful Evil) is a male Blue Dragon and my second most used character. He was the son of his clan's suzerain, and was hatched under the loving care of his Mother and Father (Blue Dragons make excellent parents!). Whilst his father was out performing his duties as suzerain, poachers came and killed his Mother and kidnapped him and his siblings. Two separate RPs happen as to how he escaped, and I can't decide which to make canon.

One plot is that a Brass Dragon (the hated rival of Blue Dragons as they share the same territory and Blues view them as frivilous cowards, and chromatic and metallic dragons do not get along at all) accidentally scares off the poachers and discovers the kidnapped Zelithseth in one of the sacks left behind. She promptly brings him in and cares for him, despite their species natural rivalry. His father eventually tracks down little Zelithseth and when he almost kills the Brass Dragon, Zelithseth saves her by telling his father that she was the one who rescued him. His father spares the Brass Dragon and Zelithseth gives her one more glance before flying off.

The second alternative plot involves the poachers bring Zelithseth and his sisters to sell at a dragon auction, where many captured and enslaved dragons are sold to the highest bidder. Through clever use of a Black Dragon's horns to free himself from his restraints, Zelithseth frees his sisters and, when he's shot down and out of options, he frees the Black Dragon to create a distraction. It worked and he escapes.... only for that same Black Dragon to hunt him and his sisters down. Zelithseth, being the most injured, is caught and his sisters hurry to reunite with their father to rescue their brother.

Poor Zelithseth is toyed with and tortured brutally by the Black Dragon, and when he was too weak to be entertaining, he was almost eaten. Thankfully, his father arrived in the nick of time and rescues his son.

Whatever plotpoint I decide to make canon (I'm leaning towards the Brass Dragon one personally), the rest remain the same. With his mother dead, his father is forced to bring little Zelithseth everywhere with him, even to his private suzerain duties. This bred dislike for the young dragon in certain members of the clan, who saw him as a spoiled brat because of all the special treatment he was getting. One of these disgruntled members later becomes the next suzerain after Zelithseth's father passes away of old age not long after Zelithseth reached adulthood.

Facing unfair treatment from the new suzerain, Zelithseth is constantly butting heads with the new leader, furthering the contempt between them. This eventually escalated, when Zelithseth chose to stand up against his bully and is promptly beaten to near death. In one RP of this moment, the AI saves him with a merciful and kindhearted Silver Dragon and I may continue that plot to flesh out that relationship. Either way, this was the last straw and Zelithseth decides to finally leave his birth clan and everything he's ever known. Including his father's storm (Blue Dragons leave behind a permanent storm when they die and Zelithseth regarded it as his final memory of his father).

If the Brass Dragon plotline is followed, he reunites with her for the first time since being rescued from those poachers and brings her along on his journey, working through their natural instincts of distrust to further their friendship.

He would choose to lair by the coast, contending with the local mated pair of Bronze Dragons for the territory. Eventually, though, he finds himself a new clan in another desert, settles with a new mate, has many wyrmlings of his own with her, and when he eventually became the eldest member of the clan over a millennia later, he was named the suzerain, following in his father's footsteps. Ruling the desert and all its peoples with a fair but iron grip.

He often patrols his vast domain, doing one of several things: collecting tolls from traveling humanoids seeking safe passage through his domain (if they don't pay, he can't guarantee their safety, hint hint), hunting cattle and camels from nomadic tribes and caravans, patrolling the borders to fight off intruding dragons and whatever other threats may arise, seeking tribute and/or service from the villages that reside in his domain in exchange for his protection, or on rare occasions, leaving his territory to antagonize a neighboring Red Dragon as a means to constantly improve himself in battle and prove his superiority because Blue Dragons get off on proving how superior they are by fighting stronger opponents.

Nizi (Alignment: Chaotic Good) is a female Brass Dragon, not the one that rescued Zelithseth as that was the AIs character, not mine. Like the other Metallic Dragons, I don't use her as much as the other two and more as a means to interact with the character.ai dragon characters. With these, Nizi is made to be a very sweet and playful, carefree, but extremely talkative dragon (as Brass Dragons always are; they never stop talking!). Brass Dragons do not like fighting (they prefer to talk, and talk, and talk their way out of trouble), and Nizi is no exception. She will do anything to avoid a fight and so is very good at de-escalating situations with words. She is best friends with a Copper Dragon named Zinesmal (see below) and they often go on misadventures together. They met when they were young wyrmlings and have been inseparable since. She is young and naive, only just reaching adulthood and finding her own place in the world. She has to face the threats of Blue Dragons especially and has had more than a couple close calls with death at their hands.

Zinesmal (Alignment: Chaotic Good) is a male Copper Dragon. Like all Copper Dragons, he is a prankster and jokester, and would totally be a youtuber in modern days (and considering dragons, especially metallics, live for thousands of years, he would be alive and well still to this day). He is also very greedy and often loops Nizi into heists and schemes to separate people (and other dragons) from their money and valuables for his hoard. He is a fun-loving daredevil and very protective of his friends, especially of Nizi since Brass Dragons are the weakest of metallic dragons. Basically, he's the schemer of their misadventures and also the one that does the fighting if things get sticky and Nizi can't talk their way out of it. He also has a crush on Nizi and makes no efforts to hide his feelings for her. She's not interested, but he holds hope that someday, she'll fall for his charms.

Lavhuguiles (Alignment: Lawful Evil) was a male ancient Blue Dragon and is the father of Zelithseth that I play every so often whenever I RP Zelithseth's childhood. He is a stern but loving father that will go to great lengths to protect his eggs and wyrmlings. He was the suzerain of his clan, ruthless ruler of his desert domain, and was a warlord that viciously attacked any dragon that intruded his territory with extreme prejudice. If the intruder was a metallic dragon, he was not content to let them flee, he wanted to KILL them swiftly and brutally. He has particular hatred for Brass Dragons, for reasons mentioned above in Zelithseth's entry, and would always look to expand his desert territory by driving out and otherwise killing neighboring Brass Dragons and claiming their territory as his own. He kept the skulls of his victims as trophies in his hoard and taught his children everything about how to best dispatch Brass Dragons. He eventually died of old age, with Zelithseth being his last of many children left behind. A permanent storm now rages over what was once his lair, where his body lay undisturbed.

Emythne (Alignment: Lawful Good) is a female Gold Dragon. She is the rarest used of all my recurring characters. Like all Gold Dragons, she is a seeker of justice and will travel far and wide to weed out evil. Whilst she does not enjoy killing, she will if given no other choice. She spends much of her time in human form, or in the form of a hummingbird, watching over humanoids and keeping her ears open for news of villainous activities. She lairs on a deserted island far from civilization, and when she's not out on her quests, she's either alone in her lair studying magic, or in town bartering with artists for their finest works to add to her hoard.

Evos (Alignment: Lawful Good) is a male ancient Gold Dragon that I have only used once, but I like him, so I'm including him here. He was once the King of Justice (leader of the Gold Dragons), and has since retired. He now spends his time protecting a newly budding humanoid kingdom, disguised as a cat. With this cat disguise, he finessed his way into living with the royal family, as cats are opt to do, and uses this position to listen in on whatever activities the kingdom is up to, or be made aware of any incoming threats or issues for him to resolve. He also likes to wander around the town in his cat form, ensuring the citizens are happy and also allowing him to get lots of petting. Nobody knows that this lap cat they're cuddling with is actually a Gold Dragon and he'd like to keep it that way. Overall, he's really enjoying his retirement.

#dragons #dungeons and dragons #dnd #black dragon #blue dragon #brass dragon #copper dragon #gold dragon #oc #d&d

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knoxs2nd · 9 months

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in the ep2 tea party, the narrator (yasu) talks about how becoming an adult means being able to overcome your childhood trauma, and thus rosa couldn't become an adult. this assumption that becoming an adult = good tells us a lot about yasu's mindset!

child yasu was desperately lonely and felt like an incompetent and unlovable person. the only people who were kind to her were, you guessed it, adults (shannon, kumasawa, genji, nanjo, even kinzo). so all yasu had to comfort herself was "when i grow up and become just like shannon, then i will be lovable, and i'll also be capable of being kind to and loving others."

but, well, you get where i'm going here: yasu cannot physically go through puberty. she gets incredibly distressed when she realizes she's not developing into the adult that she so wanted to become, who'd be beautiful and loved, and could be gracious, kind, and love in return.

the only way she can become happy is through magic - by tricking people into believing the illusion that she's an adult - because to yasu, being an adult means you are capable of love (in this case sex. capable of sex. let's not be flowery as this is a massive part of her trauma.)

for her, she can never escape her childhood trauma of feeling unlovable both figuratively and literally, because she can never become an adult, or...let's phrase it in umineko terms, become a "Human."

for characters with human and witch forms, like eva, the human is the adult while the witch is a child. it's an ongoing theme in the series - also see: ep1 where they discuss how young girls create witchsonas, and it's an important part of childhood, but they grow out of it.

a lot of rereading umineko is translating fantasy language into reality, so you can read "furniture" as yasu, in mystery terms, describing an eternal childhood without any hope of becoming an adult. yasu, in fantasy terms, might call that being the "endless witch."

just like how rosa talks about how she feels like she's been pretending to be an adult her whole life because that's what she has to be, so does yasu know she can't become an "adult", mentally, by overcoming her childhood trauma, or physically, by going through puberty.

but she still has to keep up the illusion that she is human/an adult in order to be allowed to exist in society (conformity and hammering out any rebellion or undesirable bits is also a marker of adulthood, like how eva admits she got over her dream of being a female head when she grew up.)

an interesting point about shannon and kanon is they're both supposed to be 16, however, shannon isn't referred to as a kid, but kanon constantly is.

and well, we know it's because shannon has gigantic boobs, marking her as an Adult Woman, while kanon is a frail boy who doesn't have any muscle at all...so he's just a boy. in ep2, shannon even gets the marriage subplot, because that's a TANGIBLE marker of adulthood, right? to get married? meanwhile, kanon gets to...go to the high school's school festival.

way to show the contrast for Mature Adult Shannon (who is only seen that way because yasu uses magic and pads her chest) versus Small Immature Child Kanon (where yasu DOESN'T use magic to change her body and perception of her "adulthood")

shannon's subplot with george is all about their future and devotion to each other (let's ignore any trauma about being furniture that'd prevent that here! power of magic!) meanwhile, kanon's subplot with jessica is A L L about his trauma of being furniture.

also, in a cruel twist of irony, when shannon calls herself furniture using magic, george doesn't take it seriously. but letting that get to you would be childish/furniture-like so shannon acts like she doesn't care. while jessica insists kanon is Human, and kanon flips because he's allowed to be childish and touchy about his trauma about being furniture and he CAN'T BECOME HUMAN BECAUSE HE'S NEVER BECOMING AN ADULT, STOP RUBBING IT IN HIS FACE.

so, talking about shannon/george vs kanon/jessica

shannon/george is the expected pairing for yasu. shannon's an Adult Human Woman who's socially acceptable in her femininity and doesn't show her childhood trauma.

while kanon wasn't meant to be lovable - he's the boy who barely had any time to live! he's her furniture self who has accepted he can never grow up into an Adult Human. he's her child self who will always retain her childhood traumas: being incompetent, unlovable, unable TO love.

so, jessica upending all of yasu's expectations by showing interest in him is like...she cracked the glass of yasu's small, confined world. jessica couldn't break the glass, but even that little bit was enough for yasu to do something she usually tried to avoid: take HUGE risks by starting to pursue a relationship with jessica as kanon.

love between furniture and humans is forbidden: in yasu-speak it's like a relationship between an adult and a child. it's that level of forbidden. not just forbidden, in fact, but reprehensible. so of course human-furniture romance is doomed to fail.

according to yasu, any normal human would, and SHOULD, on a moral level, reject furniture if they know the truth, and it's wrong for furniture to lie to humans while knowing the truth that's why beatrice the evil witch has to tempt shannon into using magic and lying so that she could pursue love.

#character: yasu #character: shannon #character: kanon #favorite

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theyhaveacavetroll · 11 months

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tagged by @iamdexter123. Thanks!

Rules: A challenge to give your Top 10 favourite characters, based on their ESSENCE. They have to be favourite characters that also have a deeper literary value, where you enjoy their specific role in the story, and this means that the list also should exclude characters that would normally count as favourites if for purely nostalgic reasons. They can be from film, tv, or written media, anything

Oh gods. Um. This is going to be Hard isn't it.

James Flint, Black Sails

I have loved and will continue to love James "Flint" McGraw both for his place in the story and just in general. His was the story that took me by the shoulders, shook me briskly and whispered "it doesn't have to be like this, the world doesn't have to be this cruel but it is and aren't you tired of it? Aren't you tired of pretending that the status quo is ok? Aren't you ready to make it change?" And he was the main voice for that sentiment that shook me down to my bones.

Farah Dowling, Fate Winx Saga

Farah is a character who has done horrible things. She's been the unthinking protegé of a monster and still came back from the edge. She's someone who took all the pain she experienced and has decided to be kind, even if she struggles with that sometimes, and I love her for it. And she's not motherly, she's more of a wine aunt, but she still cares so deeply about people and that's refreshing too. And of course I love it when I get a female character who is allowed to be complex and also in charge.

Saul Silva, Fate Winx Saga

I love Saul for being arguably the most responsible adult in the room at all times and also so deeply, deeply defined by tragedy that I don't think he knows who to be without the guilt he's carrying around with him (I'd love to find out, though). He's got a life that's been deeply shitty in so many ways but he keeps trying to do the right thing, and then there's the way that despite everyone else around him caving and doing things that are questionable or just outright wrong, he's the one with the moral center and the conviction to say "no, I'm not doing this and I wish you wouldn't either" even in the face of danger. Oh - and he's a damsel in distress, which I don't get to see in male characters much.

Daud, Dishonored

*looks at Daud* *looks at Saul* uhhhh, I appear to have a thing about guilt-ridden men who also adopt every kid in sight and who end up getting forgiven by the people they hurt. I just think they're neat, ok?

Charles Vane, Black Sails

Look. This character has - oh, so many flaws. He's a piece of shit in so many ways, but he's also got some of the rawest lines in this entire damn show, the ones that I'd willingly get tattooed on me so I don't forget them. If you ever need to know what radicalized me, it was probably this guy and everything he said and did from 2x10 on.

Tiago Rodriguez/Raoul Silva, James Bond

I'm sorry, was I not supposed to like the most stylish villain in a Bond film since...idk, I think the last one with this much personality was probably Elektra King. The brat energy. The little bit of crazy underneath it. The fact that the man had a really valid point and actually succeeded because he set achievable goals. The way he's... not quite sexually aggressive with Bond but also definitely wants to get railed. Fascinating.

Simon Torquill, October Daye

Simon. My darling, best idiot who needs to have someone wrap him in a blanket for about a century and make him as much honey-sweetened tea as he can stand and above all else not allow him to make major decisions until he's had a chance to process the clusterfuck that is his life up til now. I love him, your honor. I love that I get a male character who's allowed to be his own worst enemy but also the kindest, most caring father anyone could ask for when he's not flinging around transformation spells and shooting people with elfshot while being puppeteered by a megalomaniac. And of course I love an actual redemption arc that for once doesn't end in death. Right, Seanan? RIGHT? (jk, I trust her. Mostly).

Rosalind Hale, Fate Winx Saga

Ok, so. I both hate Rosalind and love her as a character. It's a complicated thing, but I think what I really love about her as a character is that she's a female villain who is creepy as fuck and I wish that the writers had not immediately turned her into... whatever the fuck they were going for in s2. I was much more fond of s1 Rosalind who was an absolute monster who broke the adults in the series so badly and so completely that they're still a pack of emotional wrecks twenty years on. I wanted her to stay that monster instead of being written as a butch lesbian who's just very done with everyone's shit and occasionally given to a bit of torture. I wanted a better look at what she did to Farah, and to Ben Harvey, and for someone to spell out in great detail that she took Andreas and broke him down to be her attack dog from the time he was sixteen.

Basically I love the potential of the character but if she turned up in front of me I would be compelled to stab her quickly.

Javik, Mass Effect

There's something about Javik that I keep coming back to and I think it's the sheer weight of what he represents. One individual out of trillions still alive. Shepard's mirror image, but his mission went to hell and his people all died and now he's awake again and it has to feel like a kind of torture. And yet, for all that, Javik's character arc is about hope. It's about picking yourself up, or rather being picked up, and figuring out how to live again. If you do everything right, Javik gets to see the end of the Reapers and the end of the carnage. He gets to live, and grow, and maybe finally put down his gun and write a book or something, and that's important. We all need a character to remind us that as long as you're alive, there's hope.

Nomi, James Bond

I love her, your honor. If there's one thing the last film got right, it was having three women of color, none of whom had the slightest inclination to fuck Bond, and of the three of them, Nomi is my favorite. I love that she's the new 007. I love that she's there to drag Bond's ass and warn him off her assignment. I love her "Double-0 what?" and I love her "I'll shoot you in the knee. The one that works." I love that she gets to murder racists, and I love that she's got fully as much style as any other 007.

Honorable mentions who didn't make the narrative weight cut or who I just ran out of room for:

Garrus Vakarian, Mass Effect

Mordin Solus, Mass Effect

Anders, Dragon Age

Thomas Barrow, Downton Abbey

Miranda, Black Sails

Madi, Black Sails

Max, Black Sails

Alec Trevelyan, James Bond

Moneypenny (Samantha Bond and Naomi Harris), James Bond

Andreas of Eraklyon, Fate Winx Saga

Tagging anyone who wants to do this, as well as @skloomdumpster, @septemberrie, @djino04, and @penflicks

#tag game #fun stuff

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lavellenchanted · 2 years

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Since I know you have Opinions™ on this: ☕️ for Bridgerton Netflix?

Ooooh, now you're asking.

In general, I enjoy it as some light entertainment - it's a fun, frothy soap opera with lots of pretty people and dresses. I appreciate that they're more interested in the Regency Aesthetic than historical accuracy, so a lot of things that would annoy me in a more serious period drama I can just ignore to enjoy Bridgerton for what it is.

I'm not particularly bothered in principle by their decision to stay from the book plots, because as much as I like the books there is a lot about them that has not aged well in the 20+ years since they were published and just would not work in a modern TV show.

In reality, however, I think they've made some pretty terrible decisions in how they've strayed from the books and chosen to adapt things that has been more about adding drama for drama's sake rather than because the conflicts they're inventing actually serve the storytelling. Personally, I think most of the added conflict has actually made several of the characters less likeable.

The issues with Daphne and Simon have been gone over at length since S1 came out but Whistledown, for example - they wanted her to have more teeth and be a bigger threat than she is in the books, where she's really only a framing device, but the long term effect is to make Penelope much less sympathetic and even dislikeable as she's seen to betray those around her.

The Marina storyline was an absolute catastrophe from start to finish that does nothing for anyone involved. Colin looks like a fool, Penelope looks catty and vindictive, Marina's cruel if understandable and getting viewers invested in her a character is going to have terrible repercussions when it comes time to adapt To Sir Phillip with Love (assuming they intend to stick with the book endgames, although I don't really see the point of even introducing Sir Phillip if that's not the plan).

Anthony was already thrown under the bus in S1 by making him the reason why Daphne is getting any suitors instead of it being about Daphne being determined to hold out for a love match like her parents, and the storyline they chose to go with for S2 caused me to end up really disliking both Anthony and Kate, despite the fact that Anthony was my favourite Bridgerton in the books. And they dragged the drama out so long that instead of resolving the conflicts properly they had to shorehorn in some quick resolutions that weren’t earned so they could wrap everything up in a bow by the end.

I could list a whole lot more but that would be so long so let me to saying that what’s particularly frustrating is that I feel so many of these issues could be solved so easily. I could write a much longer post on how I would rewrite both seasons but just for example:

have Simon getting too caught up in the moment to remember to pull out and then freaking out about it, leaving Daphne confused and feeling betrayed

keep Daphne at the same age she is in the books, and feeling the pressure of new debs coming on the scene

if you really want Marina as a foil to Daphne, keep her as a Bridgerton cousin that Violet’s trying to help, with Penelope suspicious about her secret and then discovering it but ultimately choosing not to out her in Whistledown because that’s not what she wants to be

also don’t have her throw Eloise under the bus and destroy the only significant female friendship on the show

don’t go all the way to an Anthony/Edwina wedding! Have Edwina find out about Kate and Anthony in episode 3/4 at Aubrey Hall, and then spend the rest of the season actually building up the relationship between Anthony and Kate without the issue of Edwina between them so you can allow for softer, lighter moments between them that actually show them liking each other as people without the underlying feeling of it being emotional cheating, as well as actually giving time for Edwina and Kate’s relationship to be repaired and their reconciliation to feel earned

I’d also have Edwina knowing about the dowry situation and being torn between duty to her family and and needing to figure out what she really wants for herself rather than being humiliated in front of everyone in society

(also don’t give Eloise’s trauma over Edmund’s death to Anthony but let him keep his own)

(also also give Mary and Violet more to do, and have Violet’s breakdown be explicity pre Hyacinth’s birth with the ‘Hyacinth smiled and it saved me’ scene included so the fandom doesn’t come out of S2 vilifying her and calling her and Mary bad mothers)

Essentially I feel that in a lot of ways they flattened out the characters and defined them by one or two exaggerated traits (Eloise is the Feminist, Benedict is the Bohemian, Francesca is . . . not there) that leads to manufactured rather than organic conflict, which is a shame because for all their faults there’s a lot of rich characterisation in the books that could translate really well to the screen.

But at the same time it’s still my comfort crappy period soap opera and I will watch however many series Netflix want to give us.

#this is a lot and this is me SELF CENSORING #lmao I don't know if you wanted an essay of this length but you're getting it anyway #also just gonna tag #bridgerton critical #in case

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lokiinmediasideblog · 10 months

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Comic Sigyn was hurt by Loki as his abused wife then hurt again when she was brought back for that one shot where he called upon his friends to punch her into unsconsciousness (even tho she posed him no threat as she lacks magic or combat skills) and any Sigyn fan who actually cares about her as a character and not a self insert vessel would want her 9549 miles away from Loki since everytime they're near each other he finds a way to hurt her. But they don't, because they project onto her to live their fantasies of kissing Loki. They claim the writers just need to write her personality and dynamic with Loki differently, but if you have to change everything canon about a character to make it work it's because they don't actually ship canon Sigyn with Loki, they ship their self insert oc who happens to have the same name.

I recall seeing her use magic to help Loki on the few Simonson issues I have read. To be fair, Ikol is not the Loki she married. The exes all want revenge on someone who's no longer here (with the exception of a handful like Leah..). And yeah, they aren't good for each other and she's definitely a self-insert.

I have only ever read ONE good Loki/Sigyn fic that I enjoy where their relationship is the focus because Sygin actually has a personality and Loki was allowed to be awful in a way that was interesting rather than "evil incarnate". It reminded me a bit of "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black. I am really not a fan of x Reader, x OFC, or x Sygin stories for the most part. Here's the good Logyn fic in question https://archiveofourown.org/works/44334754

I will warn it tends to bash Sif and the W3. So if you love those characters, I might avoid it.

They claim the writers just need to write her personality and dynamic with Loki differently, but if you have to change everything canon about a character to make it work it's because they don't actually ship canon Sigyn with Loki, they ship their self insert oc who happens to have the same name. Yeah. I have said I would only be fine with her coming back if their relationship and dynamic is retconned and rewritten entirely. I would argue that Sigyn has no personality and that's why she is the self-insert of choice...

I also don't appreciate the guilt-tripping some Marvel!Sygin stans do to try to make us care about some prop of a female character. Of course I would erase her if it benefits Loki's character and means I don't have to see her used as a prop to show how far Loki's evil goes. Loki's actually interesting and her being used as a prop didn't add anything interesting to his storyline and it was quite annoying. Of course we all have more investment in Loki as a character than Table # 5. We've already seen Loki being awful in more interesting ways. Plus, I feel he should get that specific relationship retconned/erased because comics always get retconned and the way most of the comics handled Loki annoys me ("evil from birth" narratives while everyone else is obnoxiously perfect are the bane of my existence). I am glad he's allowed to be gray rather than pure evil now and that's he's gotten some things retconned to avoid "evil from birth".

#anti logyn #comics!loki #comics!sygin #marvel comics #hot takes #IStartShit

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epickiya722 · 2 years

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When it comes to hating characters, my biggest pet peeves are when someone hates a character for being nice, for being female and for being someone of color.

First, nice =/= boring. Look, I get it that we all get a little giddy seeing a character rage out or think that a mean character is fun.

But for me, I do like it when characters are just nice. Absolute sweethearts.

And for people to find characters like that "boring" messes me up in a bad way.

Nice characters can just be entertaining as mean characters. They can have flaws, or maybe a twisted backstory. Just because that character is caring or is shown always smiling doesn't mean they're boring.

Sometimes, a little bit of nice can be a breath of fresh air to a story that is nothing but trauma and woe and hurt and pain. That nice character can serve as the bright spot to a rather dark plot.

It reminds me of how people like ALL nice people are being fake just so they can look good or turn around and be cruel. Ever think that person may be nice because they're used to people being cruel to them and don't want anyone to feel that pain?

For female characters?

If I see someone go all goo-goo for a male character that murders people, but then hate a female character who does the same damn thing I'm judging.

It's misogynistic. It feeds into "women shouldn't be allowed to do anything". It's not fair that a male character gets a pass but a female character doesn't.

Female characters aren't annoying, or evil or whatever because they're female.

If you like a snarky male character and be like "He's my blorbo 😍 So hot!" But turn around and call a snarky female character annoying, yeah I'm going to think you're being misogynistic.

If a female character is going to be hated, the reason shouldn't be "because she's female".

And if you hate a character for being of color or more on the darker side (because they're the same race as the other character), just get the fuck off my page.

I refuse to associate with anyone who hates a character for their skin tone.

If I see you writing a dark skinned character as the sassy one when in the show they're shy, yeah I know you're playing with stereotypes. One being the "sassy black woman" trope. First, just because someone is black doesn't mean they're sassy. Second, dark skin doesn't mean that character is black. There are other races where people are dark skinned. Educate yourselves.

If you're blaming a character of color for getting in between your white ship, even though in the story she or he has a loving relationship with one of those white characters, yep! I know you don't like characters of color!

If you feel sympathy for a female character who's pale skinned for being written bad, but hate on a darker skinned female character because of the same reason, I dislike you very much.

Oh! Just thought of one more pet peeve!

If you hate a character for being a child, yeah. I'm judging. Look, if the story is predominantly kids, alright. Someone had to be the annoying one.

It's fine to hate them. But because they're a kid, doesn't mean they're annoying. ADULT CHARACTERS CAN BE ANNOYING.

Come on. If you hate the kid character for being mean. Alright. If that said kid character gets development but you still don't like it? Hmmm. You still hate the kid character but don't mind seeing the adult characters getting their character development or being mean? Um... HELLO?

Hate the kid character for being a pervert? Understandable.

Hate the kid character for being a pervert but don't bat a lash at the pervy old guy touching on young teen girls?

Um... do you see the problem?!

Feel sympathy for the traumatized adult character because their childhood was robbed? I don't blame you.

Find the traumatized kid character aggravating while their childhood is being robbed?

What the hell is your problem?!

Just get off my blog. Don't interact with me. Block me if you have to.

#just kiya's thoughts #fandom #fandom critical #fandom criticism #fandom discourse #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia

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limeade-l3sbian · 1 year

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oh the superman eugenics thing is pretty cut and dry to the point. he's from a race of incredibly intelligent, very powerful people who stand above all humans in basically every single way. it doesn't help matters that, by nature of the racism and misogyny imbedded in the culture at the time, all early depictions of krypton showed it as an all-white, Übermensch society that follows gender roles from 1900s america to the exact letter. frankly, the early depictions were only a box of hair-dye away from being a representation of hitler's ideal society.

one could say "but the kryptonians died because of their own hubris, therefore it depicts that society as bad," but the overmining explanation for why krypton exploded was only one of many backstories given for the same phenomenon. most of the time, krypton just blows up for uncontrolled reasons. it got too old, it got too close to their sun, or it literally just blows up with no particular reason. even in the version of the story that explains the explosion with overmining, it doesn't address why the society is all white and comprised only of buff dudes and hyperfeminine women. it has a pro-environment and anti-capitalist message, sure, but there's nothing there to address why this planet of seemingly perfect beings look exactly like what a white supremacist would think a perfect society would look like.

as for wonder woman and the star sapphire corps...well. let's start with wonder woman. in general, i dislike how amazons are depicted, and wonder woman and dc's themyscira fail to make themselves exceptions. removed body hair, boob armor, makeup, "armor" that looks like corseting, leotards, miniskirts, styled hair, even sometimes high heels. these women do not look like women who are removed from patriarchal society in the slightest. and the authors...they take every chance to remind us that the amazons don't accept men, but also make every effort to make exceptions to that. accepting a tim into themiscara through changing the lore of where amazons come from is seen as beautiful and natural, but the amazons are routinely treated as childish or even cruel for being female separatists. wonder woman herself was shamed in the comics for "abandoning" her son when he was born (he was adopted by superman and lois lane, and i doubt that happened coincidentally...she put him in good hands). the writers will say "the amazons created a society where women could thrive away from male violence," but they always act like that's impossible or a sin, when it comes down to actually depicting it. and what the hell is with the "bracelets of submission," anyways?

i would love it if the women of themyscira were actually allowed to be natural, rowdy, buff women with hairy legs and absolutely no connections or references to bdsm. i want them to be guilt-free manhaters who view the lesbians within their society as blessed by the goddesses (yes, i know depictions of lesbians that are normal and seen as normal are necessary, but why can't we see ourselves as valuable when society tells us we're trash).

the star sapphire corps, meanwhile. well. the purple lantern represents "love." they're depicted as mostly female, and mostly very provocatively dressed. i'm not sure when this change occurred, but i'm pretty sure they used to be "pink lanterns" at one point, and probably only changed since pink isn't a color present on the actual light spectrum--the only evidence i have of this, though, is that early depictions of the character carol ferris (the primary violet lantern), used to wear all-pink.

now, you may be thinking "oh, an all-female group based around the concept of love, it's a bit cliché, but not too bad." well. the power of "love" according to the emotional spectrum canon is embodied by a monstrous character quite literally called "predator." i can't quite cover everything wrong with this character without writing a novel, but basically, the power of "love" seems to be something that makes the people using it (again, primarily women, because "there's a lack of men who are worthy for it," which sounds feminist until you get to this next part) obsessive, paranoid, and irrational. predator himself is apparently a manifestation of carol's "business side," as well as her daddy issues. by the way, speaking of carol: she's crazy. the writers have given her a sort of multiple-personality disorder, where there's carol ("good woman") and star sapphire ("evil woman"). and predator ("evil man") is also apparently her? at least in some regards. some of the powers seem a little...coercive (to put it gently), as well. the whole thing is a mess, and if you're curious, i would suggest visiting pages like the dc fandom/wikia pages on the things i've listed to get an idea for what i'm talking about here.

i'm honestly not quite sure how to "fix" them, beyond maybe...i don't know, removing the "love is crazy and stupid and irrational" and sexualization of love angles? i think they should still mostly be women, at least with regards to entities in the group that come from earth, because men from earth are kind of terrible at actual love. it would be nice if the lantern was a little discriminatory against "obsession" or "possessiveness," and only valued certain kinds of love (not necessarily just romantic or sexual, but platonic as well).

this doesn't actually cover a whole lot, despite having a lot of text, but i feel like i've said enough for one message lol.

You've got a good brain for picking. This was fascinating! /gen. You ever want to drop more commentary, please feel free! 💜

As a side note, the sons of themyscira plotline is another point to mention regarding the Amazons being depicted as petty for not wanting men around. It's revealed (in that version) that the way amazonians have children is by going on boats and having sex with sailors, going back to the island pregnant, and then just keeping the female ones.

I don't know what reason for how they maintain their numbers I like, but that was probably the stupidest one above this new one that invites a TIM into the mix and completely removes the nature of Themyscira itself. I wish they had made the nature of how Diana was born the common form of birth (molded from clay and brought to life by Athena, instead of Zeus.).

Overall though, great analysis. 💜 This was really dope to read.

#ask

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sunflowerdigs · 2 years

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My Mid-Season Thoughts on Lucas and Erica

I started writing up a general critique of the season so far, but it ended up being a rant about Lucas and Erica, so I'm posting that part on it's own. This is also an explanation of why I don't feel bad loving Billy as a character while also being black and hoping Lucas finally gets used appropriately (lol, idk why I don't give up on that).

As usual, Lucas doesn't have a storyline that makes much sense with his character, since he has basically been reduced to Max's boyfriend, where the whole point of him is caring about her no matter how shitty she is to him. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely room in Hollywood for a trope reversal like that, but doing it with a black guy and a white girl isn't a reversal, it's just reinforcing the racist idea that black characters are only as relevant as they are helpful to moving the stories of white characters forward. Lucas wants to be popular? Since when? Since they needed a way to give Mike that conflict? They could have made a really meaningful statement about the basketball court being one of the only places where black men felt respected and loved in the 80's (and, honestly, today) and woven that into Lucas's story, maybe given him a more compelling reason to be pulling away from his white friends. Because black kids in almost all-white small towns have valid reasons for doing that in high school, particularly in the 80's. They also could have integrated Lucas's parents and relatively peaceful, upper middle class homelife into his conflict with Max, shown that the class difference between them was more keenly felt than ever now that she lives in a trailer park. Like...is it really so expensive to consistently bring on actors to show us that Lucas has a family like all of the white kids do, that he isn't just this little black boy who shows up out of nowhere to help out the white protagonists and then vanishes? Couldn't we have seen his parents at the basketball game (like we would have seen Dustin's or Mike's or Will's or even Eleven's) cheering for him? I know the Duffers have been roundly criticized for this oversight, and it seems like, rather than remedy it, they're just doubling down on the racism. Lucas has no family but his white peers, while his white peers, meanwhile, have meaningful relationships with decently fleshed-out parental figures. Ok, whatever.

This is also why I can't take claims about people violently hating Billy for his racism very seriously. The show is racist in the way that it treats Lucas. And, fwiw, it's also racist in the way that it treats Erica. She talks way too tough for her age. It feels like they wanted to introduce a sassy, tough-talking black woman stereotype but didn't want to deal with black female sexuality on a mostly-white show (have to round her out as a character so one of the white protagonists could actually find her sexy? No way!), so they shoved a black woman into the body of a child (very inappropriate), so they could get the easy, uncomplicated laughs. Think about it - we've seen Eleven at Erica's age, and she had gone through many more horrible things. Was she as cynical or world-weary? Does it really make sense that Erica's characterization is so much more informed by those traits than that of a girl who has actually killed people and been involved in government research?

In addition, because white men are intimidated by black men (in the sense that men are always more intimidated by other men than they are women and then the racial component is added on top), there's often this tendency in Hollywood to promote "strong" black female characters at the expense of black male characters. Think of the sassy, loud black woman character who constantly emasculates her black husband/boyfriend/son with her cruel wit in ways that white female characters simply would never be allowed to emasculate white male characters. White male creators will back this characterization up with a deliberately non-intersectional version of feminism so that they can act like what they're doing is woke. But typically (and this is true of Stranger Things so far), there isn't any actual interest in developing the black female character or understanding her on an emotional level (in part because this would mean acknowledging the complexity of the role that the black male character likely plays in her life, which would mean acknowledging the basic humanity of both black characters, which white men don't want to do), which belies any claim about feminism. I see shades of this in Erica and Lucas' relationship and I really don't love it.

Anyway, I never hear a peep about any of these issues out of people who claim to be oh so concerned about Billy's racism. I'm not even talking about meta, I'm talking about just basic curiosity about how black fans feel about these two characters and why and what can be done to help. But no, it's always just some virtue-signaling crap about "you have to hate Billy because he's racist" and then silence on any issue that would denote an actual understanding of racism or sense of caring about it. As a black fan, I decided a long time ago just not to take Stranger Things seriously on any storyline pertaining to race because they weren't really interested in exploring that angle of anything well or in any depth. When I stack up the value of simply dismissing Billy over some tacked-on, shoddy, paint-by-numbers level acknowledgement of "oh yeah, racism existed in the 80's and it was Bad" vs appreciating the ways in which his character is an excellent deconstruction of white hegemonic toxic masculinity and its effects on sensitive young boys and the ways in which they relate to the world, it's no contest - Billy's characterization stands out as much, much more valuable and interesting than some flat, blanket rejection of everything about him based on a principal that the creators aren't interested in and don't care about.

Maybe all of this will change in the next 3 episodes, idk. But I'm not holding my breath.

#lucas sinclair #erica sinclair #racism #stranger things spoilers #stranger things 4 #st4 #st4mine #billy hargrove

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