desperate dean and cas kisses are so special to me. dean holding himself back so much, emotions under lock and key, until he breaks like a dam, desperation spilling absolutely everywhere, his own skin burning hotter than the sun, mind spinning, he has to grab and claw and hold, because there are no more cracks in his facade, it’s only shattered glass at his feet and there’s no stopping him now. and cas. oh cas. levelling himself, an itch under his skin, that’s been there so long it’s a part of him now, but after the first steps are made, when he figures out that he can and he should, he finds the desperate need, the same fire of dean’s replacing the itch under his skin, and it’s so freeing. so freeing that it makes him want to attach himself to dean, because now he has a choice, now he can do that for himself, replace the thing that held him back with holding onto something. and oh is it good
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Who are the "toxic Bucktommy shippers" exactly ??? What is going on what are people talking about?
I keep seeing post about them, but don't see them when scrolling in the Bucktommy tag.
Like, what did they do? Are there Bucktommy shippers harrassing cast members? Writing hateful comments?
Someone please explain to me where this "both sides" thing is coming from.
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Oh how determined Dracula is to wreck Jonathan's psyche as punishment. He wasn't content to just snatch away his only way of writing home. Dracula knows Jonathan can't leave under his watch. Nevertheless, he proceeds to steal Jonathan's money, documents, identification, and anything else that would have been useful to him outside the castle. So now Jonathan gets the message that even if he somehow escaped the prison, the forest, and the wolves, he would still not be able to leave the area, and Dracula would get him. I have taken away everything that may have brought you home. You are no one, and you are never going back.
You're very right. And, in classic Dracula fashion, every one of these tactics works on multiple levels. It's extra insurance that if Jonathan ever somehow did get out, then he wouldn't get far, for various reasons now. It's a message to Jonathan of the same, and thus psychological torment.
He is also controlling and limiting Jonathan's ability to communicate, and thus metaphorically stealing his 'voice' - if it weren't for the diary, Jonathan wouldn't have anywhere to tell his true thoughts left. He's also digging away at Jonathan's sense of self. As you say, telling him "you are no one now," leaving Jonathan with nothing else to do or to look to except Dracula himself. He's deepening the reliance there, forcibly. But it's also taking away things that have cost him effort (@thethirdromana made a post about how the suit alone is probably pretty expensive) and also that matter to him emotionally. It's quite possible the recipes he was saving for Mina were in those papers. There may well have been positive memories associated with his nice traveling suit. These are things that might be a comfort even if not an outright aid in escape. They remind Jonathan that he is human, he has a life outside of this place. But he doesn't anymore, and he won't ever again - that's the message Dracula is sending him. All he has left is Dracula.
And he's not even done yet. It's gonna get worse.
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VERY long Ramble incoming
honestly now that I'm looking at the auraboa lore situation, I'm just disappointed. There was such POTENTIAL in the idea of the Loop and the horror of a new generation inexplicably being disconnected from it, forcing the newly hatched children into a world totally separate from that perceived by their parents (I mean, hell, they perceive TIME differently!).... but then the writer(s?) just fell ass backwards into Icky Tropes.
I feel like I can see what the idea was, especially with the recent alterations to the Encyclopedia entry... It seems like staff fundamentally understands the true Horror potential here, but... Instead, through the short story, they proposed it through the lens of a condescending outsider character, turning the fears of the older generation into something trivial. And also weirdly demeaning the Auroboa's situation by portraying them as overreacting.
Why... why would you do that? Like, from a storytelling perspective? What's gained from that? Why not embrace the true horror and even Emotional significance of that disruption? Why instead go for "ohh we NEED outsider help we NEED to be saved because we are so helpless and it is so Silly that we, creatures who have never experienced such things, do not know what sleep is"????
And if they WANTED to have a condescending outsider, I feel like they COULD have done that, but it would have to have that character realize the horror at some point. And make it obvious that their attitude towards distressed parents and children facing Eldritch Shit and the Sudden Deconstruction of it was not cool!
(or at the very least be a bit more...idk. Consistent with said outsider character? Juniper just goes from "omg I am so honored that the fascinating creatures of the behemoth have chosen me to speak to" to "oh their wasting my time because they don't know what sleep is. I'd rather be sleeping!! 🙄" like girl... c'mon now. Why are we trivializing it like this. Do you want me as the reader to be invested in their plight or not.)
I mean come on. They're beings connected through one networked hivemind-like system, yet each still maintains a silver of individuality that allows them to move freely throughout the Behemoth that they care for. And they've got an eldritch understanding of time that no other dragon could understand. They're seeing the future, past, and present unfold simultaneously. They're witnessing the birth and death of the world at the same time, and have no way to communicate it to other dragons. The best they can do is maintain their home, and even then, they see its roots spread and decay all at once.
And then the newest generation is suddenly disconnected.
An inherent link between parent and child and all dragons in-between, that has existed since the creation of their species, is just suddenly GONE for the newest births. With NO explanation for it.
The children have no easy way of communicating with their parents. The children are experiencing time in a way that was not meant for their species. They've forcefully been shoved into a circadian rhythm that they are Not! Built for!
The only way a parent could communicate properly with their child would be when the latter is sleeping, something that is also completely foreign to this species. It would be terrifying for all involved!!!
They are literally experiencing eldritch horror from the perspective of the eldritch being forced into the mortal.
Like why WOULDN'T there be panic!!! And why would that panic be trivialized! Why are we only shown the perspective of an outsider who looks at this situation and goes "Oh the silly tree beasts are being so silly over nothing, it's no big deal!"
That and the way the auraboas talk to outsiders. Like. There was such potential there. Real opportunity to explore how ancient, time-bending beings would communicate to someone who couldn't even BEGIN to understand the intricacies of it.
Instead we got what feels more like baby talk (even described as though they were hatchlings enunciating their first words, which... I dunno man, maybe we don't want to compare them to children like That) and less like... Beings that experience all of time at once. I mean, the hatchlings and the adults speak the exact same way, and that doesn't make any sense given the literal time barrier going on.
I totally get why people thought there was just a language barrier and that auraboas had their own language, thus causing the disjointed speak, and not that it was because They Do Not Experience Time Like We Do.
And I feel it would've been far easier to get it across by just... I dunno. Do anything else?? I saw someone on here suggest they speak in the "wrong" tenses, or using multiple tenses in the same sentence, which I think would've been far more clear.
Like, as opposed to "saplings wilt! saplings silent!" just "the saplings will wilt in silence, they've wilted in silence, they are wilting silently." Said all at once like all things are true simultaneously. And if we're going for hivemind, have each auraboa speak in a different tense, all at the same time, and have them switch it up every time.
Have our outsider get confused and be like "which is it? are they wilting now, or have they already wilted?" and the cluster of auraboas respond in a cacophony of yes's, no's, and maybe's all at once.
Would've probably gotten across the "alien" vibe they were supposedly going for far better than wide-eyed desperation for an outsider's guidance conveyed through disjointed, in-world described as baby speech.
And also maybe would've had less accidental connotations. Because as it stands, I completely see why people have made the connections to the real world where they have. This doesn't read like eldritch timey-wimey intrigue, or even a respectful look at how younger generations can become detached from their families' cultures over time and the struggles that come with it.
It reads like a culture being perceived by an ignorant outsider who (despite supposedly respecting these dragons) scoffs and rolls their eyes because the tree beasts with their funny words are being silly again, and that Hey, isn't it actually a great thing that the children are fundamentally different in all manners now? Because now they can join the rest of us in the "real world."
Yknow. Ick.
(I Personally think it would've been better to have the perspective be one of the Auraboas themselves, especially one of the children, to really understand what was going on here. Give us the full brunt of the mind of a creature experiencing all of time interwoven as one shape. The waters fall and the oceans crash with waves. They've now fallen to drought. The ocean has yet to be born. Caves have been carved out through the waters' currents. And when I break from this timeline, I open my eyes to see a child, the child not yet born, the child born now, the child born yesterday. Why can't I hear it? Why couldn't I hear it? Why won't I ever hear it?)
I dunno. People more qualified than me to speak on this matter have already torn the lore apart, I'm just... dropping my own two cents. Potential got weirdly squandered and we ended up instead with unfortunate implications and tropes that could be connected a liiiittle too awkwardly to irl situations.
*Also, before anyone points out: Yes, I know the hatchlings aren't COMPLETELY detached from the Loop and can join it when they sleep. But the fact is, these thangs never had to sleep before. That wasn't in their species' nature. So that's still weird and foreign for them on both sides. And since the hatchlings now have a circadian rhythm, they can't stay connected to the loop permanently. And also Also, seeing as the previous generations aren't experiencing time linearly, who's to say they even recognize when their child joins the loop? They'll speak with an echo of their child when that child was last asleep ages ago, not knowing that it's not them presently, because there is no 'present' for the older generations.
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more cfau miscellaneous things because Childhood Friends Danny and Jason have my head and heart always and I need to finish rewriting chapter two dammit (and redo the half-finished chapter 4 because its just Not The Vibes). i'm almost through I need to get through the graveyard scene. (i just stubbornly refuse to have it be shorter than the original chapter and thats the little death. that is the mind killer.)
Danny and jason’s ghost forms both smell faintly like burnt flesh and cigarettes. However, Jason has a more smokey smell while Danny’s smells almost,,, electrical? In a sense? Like he just straight up smells like burnt flesh and sulphur while Jason smells like someone put him in a smoker first.
It’s very much an unpleasant smell but Danny finds an odd comfort in it just as much as he finds a comfort in the smell of nicotine.
(Jason post-revival smells burnt flesh once and is immediately offput by the fact that it brings him an instinctive comfort. He doesn’t realize its because it reminds him of Danny, and is uncomfortable by it.)
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In an au of an au, Danny’s altercation with Rath ends with Rath regaining enough of his sanity to snap out of the grieving state and ends with him breaking down. Instead of being souped and imprisoned, Rath, who is permanently 14, decides to Move On into the unknown. He’s exhausted, heartbroken, and tired.
(Is this influenced heavily by the ParaNorman scene where he talks to Agatha and helps her move on? Yes. But it doesn’t fit with the Original Storyline so im shoving it into an Au of an Au.)
Rath tells Danny that Jason lied to them (which he genuinely believes), and that he’s tired of waiting/looking for him/grieving. Jason is gone. He isn’t coming back, he abandoned them. And he wants his mom and dad, and his sister, and his friends. And he’s ready to join them.
He leads Danny out to Gotham, which other than Amity Park might’ve been the only city left untouched due to Rath’s own mental block on the place. They go out to the park he and Jason used to frequent or up to one of crime alley’s rooftops, and there Rath lies down and goes to sleep. Only to never wake up again, materializing into nothing as his soul moves on.
Before Rath leaves, he forces Danny to promise him that he’ll only wait for Jason for ten years. After that if he doesn’t find him, or if Jason doesn’t show, then Danny has to move on. Whether that be like how Rath does, or if its inly mentally/emotionally, doesn’t matter. He has to move on. Don’t wait for him. Don’t waste his time any more.
(“Oh, and if you find him, kick his ass for me.”)
Danny reluctantly agrees, and Rath lies down. Danny sings to him as he falls asleep.
(Angsty points if the vigilantes including Red Hood caught wind of their presence and were silently watching from the shadows. Rath might know they’re there, but Danny’s too focused on Rath to notice.)
(If only so that Red Hood realizes that this is what happened to Danny, and that Danny is gone before he can make things right. The tragedy, folks. The angst. The initial realization that Danny was Rath, and then also that Danny was dead and has been dead for years, and that before he moved on, he moved on believing that Jason abandoned him.)
(like i said it doesn't fit in the original timeline/storyline hence why its an au of an au and isn't nearly a fleshed out, but i was largely just focusing on the tragedy of Rath moving on and Jason being alive to see it and realize just who Rath is.)
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Just like how the Lazarus pits shot Jason's twiggy 4'6-5'4 (depending on what you find) feet tall and 86lb ass up like a tree an essentially fixed his malnutrition, the portal did the same thing for Danny.
(granted i forgot about malnutrition and danny's likely stunted growth at first -- his family lived in crime alley and despite both his parents working, I don't think they had enough food all the time. He probably wasn't as badly malnourished as Jason was, but he wasn't healthy either.)
Granted his ghost in its "natural" state (14) is short, and his growth spurts were slow at first, it did result in him reaching his dad's height. There were points where it just happened overnight, like a baby. He went to bed one night 5’6 and woke up the next day 5’10.
Jazz is shorter than him. Although I have't decided if she's even liminal at all (and if she is, it didn't cure everything because she would have also suffered childhood malnutrition, and since in au canon their parents didn't get their hands on physical ectoplasm until after they got to Amity Park. So the exposure is less.)
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Danny's voice absolutely sounds like canon Dan's. It kinda just dropped one day when he was 16-17 and never went back up. Sam and Tucker sometimes ask him to just talk about anything because they find his voice soothing.
I'm not sure yet how Danny would feel about it at first considering Rath, but I imagine that Rath, when he did speak, would have had a quieter and scratchier/weaker voice considering he's spent the last decade shrieking and crying.
(and i suppose technically that shouldn't have any effect on his throat considering he's a ghost and idk if that would actually affect him, but i like the idea so im keeping it)
In the beginning you could hear him from a mile away by the sound of his loud, echoing wails, but ten years later you can only really hear him by the soft, shuddering sobs he makes. Like he's gasping for air that isn't there. The future is full of very quiet survivors.
And it's much easier to speak when you pitch your voice upwards (especially when whispering/speaking quietly) so he might've spoken in a higher, airy pitch in order to be heard. So Danny might actually find a comfort in having a lower voice.
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