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snailchimera · 3 days

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A while back I saw an otherwise perfectly fine post about Murderbot and ART and the general progression of their relationship that, for no goddamn reason, decided to mention the "autistic people lack theory of mind" idea. It wasn't about autism. It wasn't refuting the idea that a character was autistic. Autism was not mentioned elsewhere in the post. It was just there, a brief, random, vaguely dehumanizing aside that I tried very hard to let go but apparently I can't.

First off, as used in that post, it implied that an adult autistic person is incapable of considering a situation from another person's perspective. That's straight up false. That's not going to be my main point but I just need to get it out of the way. Difficulty reading someone is not remotely the same thing as being unaware that they have their own experiences and thoughts, or unable to consider their perspective provided you've been given the necessary information to know/guess what that perspective is. I'm not saying Murderbot is autistic, but I am saying that it would not need subtle spaceship body language, whatever that would entail, to determine that actually yeah having a rogue SecUnit running around where all your delicate machinery including your brain is might be kind of worrying and it's not unreasonable to draw some clear boundaries. That actually is clear just from thinking it through.

Second, the idea that autistics lack a theory of mind comes from one particular study done with autistic children. The children watched a short puppet show. In it, one puppet placed an object in a box, then left the room. Another puppet came into the room, moved the object, and left. The first puppet came back into the room, and the children were asked where the puppet would look for the object. Allistic children usually said the puppet would look in the place where the puppet had originally put the object. Autistic children usually said the place where the object currently was.

So here's my question: did the autistic children know they were allowed to give a "wrong" answer?

Because here's the thing. Being autistic means that, from a very young age, you are painfully aware that your perception of the world around you is not the same as other peoples'. Normally I'd emphasize the difference in sensory perception here, but actually it's not uncommon for autistic kids to think everyone experiences certain sensory input as horribly painful and other people are just better at not reacting badly to it (this is also true of allistic people with pain conditions, as an example). But knowing you're missing social cues? That's near unavoidable. People are constantly assuming you know things about how they feel and why they're taking a specific action, because it's "obvious". You know you're supposed to know. You know it's supposed to be easy, so easy in fact that when you say you don't know these things you're accused of lying. Allistic people constantly assume you have context that you don't have, context that they're presumably getting from things like tone of voice, body language, etc. It's like being presumed fluent in a language that you only have a limited grasp of, and accused of not listening, not caring, or even not understanding the idea of language as a means of communication when you can't understand everything other people say.

A common complaint autistic people have about allistic people is in fact that allistic people expect us to be mind readers. Of course that's not true- allistic people expect us to pick up on forms of communication that we easily miss or misunderstand, but they are in fact communicating- but given the nature of our puppet show, that feeling might be relevant, right?

Let's imagine a different puppet scenario. Puppet A puts their ball in a chest. They leave the room. Puppet B moves the ball from the chest to a cabinet, but leaves a note saying where they moved the ball to. Puppet A comes back into the room, reads the note, and correctly locates the ball.

Now another one. Puppet A puts their ball in a chest. They leave the room. Puppet B moves the ball from the chest to a cabinet, but leaves a note saying where they moved the ball to. Puppet A comes back into the room. They don't see the note, and can't find their ball. When they ask Puppet B where their ball is, Puppet B is furious. B left a note! What is wrong with A that they can't read a simple note? A must have read the note but ignored it just to have an excuse to bother B.

Autistic children are surrounded at all times by invisible notes, and people who react extremely negatively, sometimes even violently, when they find out you're not reading their notes (because you can't, because you don't even see them).

So. Puppet A puts their ball in a chest. They leave the room. Puppet B moves the ball from the chest to a cabinet. Puppet A comes back into the room. The allistic child has never had to consider whether they themselves are missing information that everyone else who watched the puppet show has. They know there's no way for Puppet A to know the ball was moved. They correctly state that Puppet A will look in the chest.

Puppet A puts their ball in a chest. They leave the room. Puppet B moves the ball from the chest to a cabinet. Puppet A comes back into the room. The autistic child has been in many situations where they're expected to know something they had no way of knowing, like the new location of a ball they weren't told was moved. They've been in many situations where another person knew what they didn't know, even though they both received the same information. They've gotten in trouble for not knowing things. Maybe they've made people they care about angry or sad by not knowing things. Now there's an adult, an authority figure, the kind of person who might punish you or get you in trouble with your parents for giving them the wrong answer, asking you where the puppet is going to look for the ball. Well, you can't just assume you know what the puppet knows. Maybe the puppet read an invisible note. Or maybe (remember these are very young kids), the puppet is like you, someone who can't read the invisible notes, and they're going to get in trouble for looking in the wrong place unless you help them.

So you don't give the answer that makes sense to you, that Puppet A looks in the chest because that's where they left the ball. You give the "right" answer, the actual location of the ball, the answer Puppet A was probably supposed to be able to figure out in some way you know you can't see.

I'm not a psych expert. My only claim to expertise here is as an actual autistic person (diagnosed, twice actually due to a mixup with the transfer of medical records across state lines). But I have read enough to notice a trend in autism studies of taking the least charitable possible interpretation of any difference between autistic and allistic people (see the "rigid morality" study, in which sticking to one's moral stance when presented with rewards for abandoning it was pathologized in the conclusion because autistic people did so more than allistic people). There's a very long history (a part of the larger very long history of eugenics) of deliberately looking for ways to scientifically support the decision to treat autistic people as subhuman, or nonhuman.

That is probably why so many of us like stories about sad robots.

Anyway that's my rant, it's over, thank you for reading to the end. If you actually wanna take something from this whole mess, just... try to be kind to people. Do your best to understand where they're coming from, and help them understand where you're coming from.

#Snail babble #actuallyautistic #murderbot but only tangentially

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king0fcrows · 10 months

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#saw notes in a post that were about a fandom I’m in #that said: it’s exhausting to constantly see this adult man written like a teenage girl in high school #and I can’t even remember who said it #but HARD HARD same #a big reason I can’t vibe with younger fans #like it’s not that their expression is inheritly BAD #that is not what I’m trying to say #I’m saying they fill a function (a form of cathartic self expression) that is just not the right fit for me #and when I was younger I probably vibes with it really hard #but now it’s not the case #because I want to see characters filtered through a more accurate lens of their ages #and it’s hard for a 19 year to write from an accurate perspective of an older character #when they themselves don’t have those experiences #(and again I’m not saying the prose can’t be excellent or the logic sound or the world building isn’t solid)#but the reality is that as you get older you simply gain life experience and perspective you CANNOT get just by reading about #you can only get it by living through it #and it’s very hard to depict those experinces and internal changes accurately if you haven’t experienced them first hand #me and younger fans are just looking for completely different things from our fandom experiences #and both are valid #but they are not the same

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inhonoredglory · 10 months

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Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

#good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #it's kinda like capt america: civil war #with Azi as Tony Stark: traumatized and trying to do the right thing #and Crowley being Steve Rogers: fuck the establishment let's go rogue #gos2spoilers #good omens meta #good omens 2 meta #go s2 #michael sheen #go s2 meta #go meta #*mine #*mymeta #ineffables husbands #ineffable soulmates #*mybest

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dunmeshistash · 26 days

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How do you feel about Milsiril? Like what do you think of her interactions between the canaries, her goals, her intentions and morality? I keep seeing people with mixed feelings about her, some saying she's just toxic or morally grey or doing bad but with good intentions or that she's just a mentally ill and literally so much more, also with the comic about Otta calling Milsiril love for her children/Kabru as just love for a pet, I always saw people take it at face value and say yes, Milsiril did love them more as pets instead of children, did she take up raising/adopting non-elf children because she felt like none of them could ridicule her like the elves did because they didn't know what an elf was supposed to be like (and also because they were children) or did she inherently view them as less? I mean the canaries and I'm pretty sure almost all of the cast in dungeon meshi have some sort perspective on different races especially because how they were taught about them, i just think it was interesting to finally see someone interpret it as Otta just misinterpreting Milsiril, I'm just really interested in her, i think shes neat, sorry for the rant!

Ooh, well to preface this, I hadn't really realized Milsiril was such a controversial character before my last post, I kinda live under a rock. She's really not a character I had given much thought besides what I wrote there before it, but I can do my best to express what I have thought since, with sources for it. I'm not sure what order to go thru so I'll just go by manga appearances and then extras, this will probably be quite a long post

This is the first time she shows up in the manga (ch55) Kabru is wondering about what future they might have if the elves take them into custody because of the ancient magic, he thinks about Milsiril as a get out of jail card, and mentions "There's a chance they would make us become permanent resident of the elven lands." with the image of Milsiril holding him. I don't think that means she would be the one to not let them leave, since this would probably be an legal issue, and the fact Milsiril lives away from other Elves. It does set up that Milsiril is quite overprotective tho, with Kabru's reaction to her teary hug. (rest is under a cut)

The next time she shows up is in ch61 right after Kabru falls down the dungeon along with Mithrun, he faints and has this flashback

She's being her overbearing self treating Kabru's small injury as if its something you need to be in bed for, hand feeding him like he's a toddler, and when he insists he wants to learn how to fight and be strong like her, she hugs him revealing to us for the first time her arm scars, she's cleary in distress too, so you wonder "what has happened to her?"

It continues in the next pages, as she tells him to stay there, where it's safe and there's cake, and describes the bad things he might encounter. Until he tells her he will go with or without her help

Honestly this is a Kabru we don't see often, this is the version of him that is usually in thought bubbles, he's blowing out in frustation over being smothered and demanding straight up what he wants, instead of trying to manipulate Milsiril, very blunt for him. Milsiril seems to flip a switch into battle mode, when she decides to train him for real.

I really thought this was funny, the visual of these cuddly toys and this Mom that was being so soft just a second ago completely flipping into something menacing is very amusing to me. She says "I'll give you an exhaustive, thorough training in how to use a sword... until you finally decide that you're ready to give up." although it sounds cruel, it seems she really trained him as best she could to make sure he would survive the dungeon. If he couldn't take the training with her there was no way he would be able to take on the dungeon, but he could, so much so that he managed to make her let him go. I can see this being seen as her trying to prevent him from going but to me it seems more like some tough love from a traumatized war veteran in this case.

The last thoughts he has is admitting his Mom was right, "Not only were there plenty of traps, monsters, and malice... but there were times when I felt so hungry and cold that I couldn't stand it."

And he concludes with "I never once thought that I wanted to go back there. That room where I could eat all the cake that I wanted..." While I can understand the interpretation that he means he would rather go thru all this than go back, perhaps cause he hated it there, I think it's rather a statement to how committed he is to defeating the dungeon, the visuals show him in rubble vs him in a soft big bed, the rough reality he fought to be able to face and the comfyness of what his life could be. Plus is mirroring exactly what Milsiril said to him. Admitting she was right about the bad things but that he won't give up for the safe easy life he had.

After that visuals of Milsiril are used while Kabru tries to sus out Mithrun but she shows up again in Mithrun's backstory.

Here she's straight up called Gloomy, which wasn't really the version of her we saw so far, gotta remember this is also how Mithrun saw her and that she was called gloomy as a way of bullying. Kabru mostly cuts off her part in the story until the end, when she's the one to find Mithrun after he was eaten by the demon

She doesn't really care much for Mithrun as we see in some extras, and she was ready to mercy kill him, but she is also the one to spare his life. This could be seen as her thinking he can still be of use, and it's how it sounds with how Kabru tells the story, but I do think this was also a merciful act, Mithrun was in rehabilitation for 20 years after being saved, by the time he was actually useful for anything Milsiril had already left the canaries and adopted Kabru.

Now for extras... About Mithrun/The Canaries, Milsiril was cleary someone that hated the people around her. This is her extra in the Adventurer's Bible

Milsiril seems to be the type that hates "popular kids" so to say, her description says she was bullied by other elves for being so introverted so I believe she holds a grudge against people like Mithrun that seem to have succeeded where she failed. But realizing he was a twisted person like her seemed to make her feel more sympathetic towards him, that's why I think she really did act with mercy when she saves Mithrun, he's now someone she sees as similar to her, she sees he also suffered like her

Her decription also mentions she left the canaries specifically because she was disgusted with how the Utaya situation was dealt with. Yet it seems like she came back to help Mithrun with his rehabilitation once she quits.

There's an interpretation to be made that she did this only to get "revenge" on the demon since she just saw the destruction of Utaya, and that she's using him. On the other hand maybe she wants to help him find a motivation to live, she's no longer a canary and she has time to actually help him now. I don't know which one is the truth but it's not obviously something self-serving if you ask me. Especially in the context that right before this scene Milsiril admits she wishes they could have talked before.

My interpretation of her relationship with the canaries and other elves is that she's someone depressed that was mistreat for her 'quirky' side, the dolls are clearly one of the ways she used to cope with anxiety/depression but it only caused her to be bullied by her own kin, she's the daughter of an important family and it's shown in other extras, including one about Mithrun, that nobles often send out the kids they don't want around to become canaries. It's an easy way to get rid of someone undesirable and I think it was the case for Milsiril. (Pattadol even assumes her parents love her less than her sisters for sending her to join the canaries).

No wonder than that now that she's finally free from the canaries she chose to seek her own happiness away from the society she felt she could never fit into, she clearly likes to take care of children too, I think it's mean to assume she only likes them because she feels superior to them when there's no indication that this is the case.

And I don't think it's a coincidence she's so overprotective of Kabru after Utaya, it's literally the tragedy that was the breaking point for her, and he's a surviving small child from that tragedy, Milsiril cares about Kabru and wanted him to have a comfortable safe life after everything he went thru...

This ended up getting way too long so I'll make second part tomorrow about the rest of the extras and Kabru, and some other things I've seen said about Milsiril, but to answer the questions...

I don't think she treats her children as pets, Otta is just salty she was called out for dating like Leo Dicaprio.

Every single dungeon meshi character can be called morally grey because they all have flaws that in our world can be considered unforgivable, but they don't live in our world. To me Milsiril is doing her best in the context she lives in.

Who even is neurotypical in dungeon meshi, Milsiril is yet another flavour of a neurodivergent traumatized character among so many.

I believe she thought of the other canaries, especially Mithrun, as the same type of people that were cruel to her, probably because some of them really were, but that she generalized it to the point she thinks of all of them as bad by default. You can only get hurt so many times before you assume everyone will hurt you.

Part 2

#dungeon meshi #adventurers bible #this is REALLY long because I dont know how to say things #and I want people to make their own interpretations of this...#Milsiril #Ask #Long post #longpost #Part 1 of 2 #Edit: I went back and rewrote some stuff I thought were written in a confusing way #I keep repeating this in tags but I really am bad at writting I say things in a weird order using strange words sometimes #If you ever dont understand something I said please ask #dunmeshi thoughts

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clairegregoryau · 7 months

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Through the Looking Glass

From fairytale in Season 1 to stark reality in Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death- meta ported across from this Twitter thread by popular demand!

This thread contains spoilers for the entirety of OFMD Season 2

First OFMD S1 rewatch since S2, and holy shit, if you haven't done that yet... do that. A thing that it made instantly clear: they told us *all along* where this was going, but there was a reason we didn't see it. Because we were living in Stede's world then. Now it's Ed's.

I know that a lot of us have felt that the tone shift at the end of S2 was... jarring, compared to what's come before. This felt like a show that wouldn't go there. One where being run through was a temporary hiccup. We've travelled all the way from this to this.

But we haven't jumped there without a journey in between. And from the minute we started hearing about Blackbeard, the show never tried to hide what Ed's world and his specific life was like. Not once. In fact they told us over and over and over.

But Season 1 told us a lot of those things through song and story and fuckery. It blended reality with fiction.

Stede met the Blackbeard he knew through books and tall tales, and the real man was even more wonderful than he'd imagined.

We, along with Stede, were comfortable thinking that all those other tales were exaggerations and misrepresentations, and a lot of them very likely were.

The Ed Stede got to know was a person who was capable of whimsy and silliness and loved soft things and doing something weird. Yep, he was also capable of violence and rage, but when he was with Stede, he didn't feel it so much.

This was a vacation from that life.

To Stede he was absolutely lovely... oh, and also a bloodthirsty killer. And Stede loved (and loves) everything about him, and both of those things can be true. This is a perfect example of a spot where (in watching Season 1 without the benefit of hindsight) I assumed that everyone else in that pub was wrong, and Stede was simply trying to protect Ed's fearsome reputation by agreeing on the bloodthirsty bits. And I think from Stede's perspective that was largely true. I think that's how they wanted us to see Ed, through his eyes. Now, after watching both seasons, I think it wasn't the whole picture.

They told us, we heard it, we saw glimpses of it. But we (and Ed) were in Stede's run-away-to-sea fairytale the whole time. It wasn't until Stede left that we saw the reality- the Ed we knew had been, to a degree, a fictional character all along. I always saw this scene as Ed putting a bit of distance between himself and reality; it always felt like the Blackbeard of Stede's storybooks was the fictional one. But now it feels like the softer Ed that Stede knew was much the same- neither of them the whole story of who Ed was and is.

The one person who refused to live in Stede's fairytale was Izzy. I've seen people say it before, but he always gave off that vibe of the only human in the Muppets movie, or the guy who was in Black Sails while everyone else was in Pirates of the Caribbean. He saw the real risks clearly.

And in that light, the end of S1 has shifted an inch to the left for me, and I'm seeing it at a slightly different angle.

Izzy ripped away the healing Ed was doing, but in some respects he did it by tearing away the fairytale we'd all been living in, shoving Ed back into the Blackbeard story.

And that's where we pick up again in Season 2.

The fairytale reference came back in S2 in two notable places, those being Jim carrying that legacy forward in the darkest times, and in Izzy invoking the wooden boy against Ricky's efforts. Stede's made himself into a real boy. Ricky, nope.

Now that I've watched both seasons together, the tone shift doesn't feel so jarring at all, actually.

It feels like sliding through the looking glass, out of Stede's world, and into Ed's- a world that existed all along; we were just seeing it, la vie en rose, through Stede's eyes.

At the beginning of S2, Stede's gone, and we're seeing it unfiltered through Ed's reality.

But Stede wasn't lying when he said he loved everything about Ed. He made a promise to come back and find him- he went down into Ed's darkest place and reminded him that no matter how bad things got, there WAS someone waiting for him, ready to love him.

The contrast between S1's fantasy and S2's reality (excluding mermaids and actual bird guys and cursed coats) is stark, but it really is that.

We have the same settings, the same people, and very different ideas and outcomes at different times.

But it was always there.

Things do come back to a state of (precarious) balance once they're all together. Apologies are made, whether they're spoken out loud or through actions. Things go right, things go wrong. Healing happens. Izzy continues to have the steadiest, most real through-line in the story as he tracks toward redemption, finds acceptance, and to an extent finds himself.

Once again, I hate that they went here with the ending and I wish they hadn't. But it got a fraction easier for me looking at it not as a continuation of Stede's fairytale, but of the grounded-in-pirate-reality arc Izzy was always on, even while we lived in Stede's world.

Where does that leave us? We're not going back to the fairytale, but we're not going to be living in Black Sails for S3, either. We've hit a fusion point where S1 ended with each of them going to separate, miserable homes, but S2 ended with them in the same place, ready and willing to make a go of it.

Season 3 is going to give us their world, together.

I LOVED the moments in this season where the deep emotions were in balance with the silliness I've always adored about this show. Eps4-6 were wonderful like that. Clearly we're not done with drama, either, but like Ed and Stede, I think we'll find a middle ground.

Anyway in conclusion, a rewatch of S1 after S2 somehow made me love the first season even more, which felt impossible? It's now gained /even more/ layers of depth than it had before. No matter how you feel about S2 I think it's worth that rewatch.

Adding one more bit of clarity for myself: I think we got a bit (intentionally) seduced in S1 by the idea that the Ed of the storybooks, the Vampire Viking Clown with the nine guns, was a version of him that others saw, when Stede saw the REAL person who 'worked' for Blackbeard.

In hindsight I think it's clear the Ed Stede go to know was also not the complete version of himself- the reality is, there's a whole spectrum between the two, and they've landed in the middle of it now. Ed intentionally leaned into the unlovable Kraken image to protect himself.

It very much didn't work, just like being just... Edward hadn't worked to protect himself, either. This season has been very much about pulling those two extremes together and finding all the parts that make up Ed overall (another thread on that here on Twitter, which I'll also shift across to Tumblr soon!)

And I think one of my favourite things in S2 has been seeing the way Stede SEES that- he knows what Ed's done, everyone's told him, but he still loves Ed. sees his trauma and how it affects him, and believes he's a good man regardless. He IS lovable; he's not forever broken.

And together, they can heal.

#ofmd #our flag means death #gay pirates #ofmd meta #unreliable narrators #fantasy vs reality #ofmd spoilers #ofmd s2 spoilers

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most-normal-eccles-cake-ignorer · 9 months

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Good Omens: Lockdown and Crowley not mentioning his living situation in S2*

*till S2E6 when he asks if he can have his apartment back bc he's bored of living in his car but Aziraphale doesn’t hear bc mentally he’s in Alpha Centauri.

Having read the 'Crowley doesn't tell him' Neil Gaiman ask close to when I first listened to Lockdown (I lived under a rock until recently), my initial thought was HAS HE BEEN LIVING IN HIS CAR FOR YEARS?! but I think he was still in his apartment in 2020:

as far as Hell knows, Crowley just had a pool party in holy water (the holiest) so the higher-ups are probably willing to give him some space (plus Beelzebub is busy going on pub dates w Gabriel)

while there should be ~8 months between the end of Season 1 events (The Very First Day of the Rest of Their Lives on Sunday, Aug 25, 2019) and the Lockdown phonecall (on or near the 30 year anniversary on May 1, 2020), I can't imagine that's a very long time for Hell, especially if you're understaffed and busy dealing with fallout from Almostgeddon / going on pub dates

Shax dropping off mail and asking about the boiler seems like something one does in the first few months of living somewhere, not ~3 years in (if S2 is in 2023)

That said, I think the phone call underlines why Crowley never directly tells Aziraphale that he is living in the Bentley in S2, and it's just a great conversation (all hail Gaiman) sooo I wrote about it:

***Note: This post analyzes the Lockdown phonecall from Crowley's perspective only. Our heroine is feeling quite emotionally vulnerable at this point in time so things are going to hit him harder than they normally would.

I do not think Aziraphale meant to cause him pain (!!) but Crowley can't see that yet and I've written this post in a way that reflects that missing insight. (I explain in more detail in this reblog if you are interested) I am working on a companion post for Aziraphale's side of this conversation and how I think it affects his behavior in S2 because if we know anything about these two, it's that their exactlys are different exactlys.***

Crowley’s habit of sleeping to skip time like an RPG character by a campfire amuses me to no end, but in this context it feels heavy. Crowley already worries about losing time with what he loves and he probably hoped things would be different between him and Aziraphale after the events of S1. But things don’t change much. Then lockdowns start, and Crowley is trapped in his apartment alone, transcendentally bored, and unable to make his brain shut up. Sleeping a month away starts to sound less awful.

But Crowley hasn’t given up yet; he’s still awake when Aziraphale calls, and he’s even giving it two more days. Was he waiting for Aziraphale to call? Is it even possible not to at least kind of wait for someone’s call when you are cut off from everything and the caller has been your only friend and crush for millennia?

Aziraphale asks why Crowley isn't "out and about" tempting people or setting a bad example and he responds:

C: Everyone's so miserable and cooped up right now anyway, and I just… well… don't have the heart for it. A: *glowing audibly* I'm not miserable~ C: Really?

Crowley sounds genuinely surprised at Aziraphale's happiness and quickly assumes it's because the angel has been around people. He's so lonely/depressed/in his own head that he hadn't even considered someone enjoying being 'cooped up'. *sob*

Aziraphale goes No actually I put the closed sign up in the window and I'm having the Time of My Life, never had so few customers, not in 200 years!, etc. Although, he says:

A: …There were a few young lads a couple of nights ago who broke in through the back and tried to steal the cashbox! But they soon saw the error of their ways~ C: *clearly amused* Did you smite them with your wroth? A: Well I certainly gave them a good talking to, and I sent each of them home with cake~ C: *annoyed, swooning* Cake? A: Quite a lot of cake, actually. C: *physically ill from having such a giant crush on this dumbass baker/security guard* eeeekkkgghhh I'm gonna regret asking but.. ...rrgh.. *30 seconds of Aziraphale joyfully describing his baking while Crowley probably tries very hard not to imagine the angel eating each item in sensual slow motion* I stg you can hear him struggling in the background once or twice

A: …And once I've baked them, I have to eat them all myself, which was why I was so delighted— C: To send your burglars home laden with baked goods, yes, nnyeaayeah I follow…

Crowley interrupts, finishing Aziraphale's sentence in his nervous hurry to say the next bit:

C: *loud inhale* You know, I could.. hunker down at your place. … Slither over and watch you eat cake. I could bring a bottle--a case of… something… drinkable…?

He's trying to sound so casual about it but this is someone who was rejected/abandoned by actual literal God after asking what he thought were welcome, uncontroversial questions. Asking makes him vulnerable. He's supposed to be the rescuer, not a demon in distress. He does not feel casual about asking.

Crowley knows it's unlikely but he's so miserable and desperate for company that he can't help but ask, just in case. Even the smallest chance of spending time trapped indoors with Aziraphale—with nothing to do but drink, watch him eat, and talk about things they'd normally avoid—is too tempting.

A: *panicking* Oh I— I— I— I— I'm afraid that would be Breaking All The Rules! *nervous breathing* Out of the question! I'll see you… when this is over. C: Right. gnnehh. I'm setting the alarm clock for July. Good night, angel. *dial tone*

And just like that, Crowley doesn't need two days to decide. The depression nap doubles in length. He doesn't hear how badly Aziraphale wants to say yes behind the fear, or maybe he does and it hurts worse because why isn't Crowley enough for him? You can almost hear the spiralling:

SHOCKING, asking made it worse. It always does doesn’t it? Why even bother? you just embarrass yourself.. SLITHER over? why did I say that *grumble grumble* of COURSE His Holy Holiness, your only friend in the universe, would rather eat cake by himself while everything goes to shit than ~deign~ to have you in his presence. "AsK aND yE sHaLl ReCeIvE" bugger this for a lark im going to bed

(a bit dramatic but we've all been there)

I imagine sleep doesn't come right away. Maybe his thoughts drift to when he sat beside the angel at a dark Tadfield bus stop after a rather eventful Saturday. Crowley must've felt a tiny bit hopeful when he invited Aziraphale to stay with him: Heaven had withdrawn its favor and the bookshop was gone; Aziraphale was like him now. Didn't that mean things would change?

"I don't think my side would like that." Apparently not.

In the end, Aziraphale did ride the bus back to Crowley's apartment and stayed till the next morning when he caught a cab, but only to sell the illusion. Crowley understood that as far as sides went, the angel was still on Heaven's, even if Heaven wasn't on his.

And now this: the entire world is shut down; there is nothing for Aziraphale to do but stay in and read and bake in his magically reconstituted bookshop and he still won't invite Crowley in. Burglars and un-fallen angels only—nobody who asks questions.

So... of course Crowley doesn't tell Aziraphale when he loses his apartment. He already knows what answer he would get; the angel has told him so many times. Aziraphale is a company man first, a companion to one very sad owl when convenient.

If Crowley works up the courage to say 'please take me in, I have nowhere else to go' and Aziraphale goes 'sorry, no, far too political, but I WILL risk being erased from the Book of Life to protect this nude amnesiac former coworker who always hated me,' it's going to be too much. You can't sleep long enough for that type of hurt to go away. Better not to say anything.

"Then nothing has to change, does it?"

#edited to add the note about crowley's perspective right after the cut! apologies if it seemed anti-aziraphale before!#good omens meta #good omens lockdown #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #ineffable spouses #ineffable divorcees #i can't even imagine navigating the pandemic brain scramblies while pining THAT HARD #Aziraphale is a company man (gn) but i think S3 will cure him of that #long but if i can't write essays about this on tumblr then where #good omens spoilers

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bpdjennamaroney · 10 months

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Will and Emma are having relationship problems because Will is not taking COVID seriously enough ("Therapy"). The next day Will takes his frustration out on the glee club and accuses them of not taking COVID seriously enough (Finn doesn't understand germ theory and Brittany is QAnon.)

Will says, "You guys lack historical perspective. Back in the 80s and 90s there was a young gay composer named Jonathan Larson who saw disease and suffering all around him. When he found out he was afflicted with AIDS, he put all of his pain into the timeless and unreproachable work of art, RENT. RENT taught us about community and caring for one another and more importantly...it taught us that musicals can rock." Will sings the title song from RENT with Artie and Finn.

That night: Santana is fed up with lockdown restrictions and sneaks out of her house to visit Brittany ("Out Tonight"). Brittany is planning a big show that will blow the whole COVID conspiracy wide open. She previews it for Santana ("Over the Moon"). Santana is freaked out and breaks up with Brittany. Santana can excuse ignoring disease prevention guidelines but she draws the line at being Republican about it.

Also that night, Will tries to sleep with Emma but she's too COVID-cautious ("Green Green Dress"). She says maybe they need some time apart because of their different priorities.

While grocery shopping, Will runs into Holly Holliday. Holly is lighting scented candles in the middle of the store but for some reason all of them are defective/unscented ("Light My Candle.") Holly propositions Will. Will says he's seeing Emma, and Holly admits she also has a boyfriend.

"I'm sure we can work something out," Holly says. "Meet me at the basement of the swinger's club at 9:00."

Will shows up at the swinger's club and spots his old rival, Brian Ryan (the Neil Patrick Harris character). They glare at each other, then confront each other and it's revealed that Brian is Holly's boyfriend ("Tango Maureen.") She knew Brian and Will were old high school rivals and set all this up because she's into the whole enemies-to-lovers thing.

Will scolds her. "That is so cruel and manipulative of you. I can't believe you would do this."

Holly tries to convince him to live life to the fullest. ("Another Day.")

Eventually Will thinks about what proud openly gay icon Jonathan larson would do, and he has a threesome with Holly and Brian ("Contact," I'm afraid.)

The morning after, Will can't believe he kind of cheated on Emma/hooked up with Brian and really enjoyed it ("Real Life").

On Monday, Brittany and Santana are still broken up but sitting on opposite sides of the choir room is emotionally difficult for them ("Without You.")

On the way home from school, Kurt and Blaine are like "Aren't you glad we're not like Brittany and Santana, breaking up every 5 seconds over something stupid?" and they sing "I'll Cover You" but then they break up over something stupid.

Will contemplates his sexual awakening, torn between Holly+Brian and Emma ("Johnny Can't Decide/Come To Your Senses" mashup).

The tension in glee club is unavoidable.

"Mr. Shu, this is ridiculous," Rachel says. "Ever since you brought up RENT and Jonathan Larson, it's been nonstop hookups and fighting. Also, Jonathan Larson wasn't gay and he didn't die of AIDS! He was straight and died of some random heart thing."

"What? Jonathan Larson wasn't gay? So my sexual experimentation was under false pretenses?"

Will immediately calls and breaks it off with Brian and they argue ("What You Own").

The next day Santana says "I can't believe we caused this much fuss over a straight man, who died of a random heart thing."

"Wait, just because he was straight doesn't make his words less powerful," Finn says.

"You're right," Will says. "Maybe I'm bisexual." ("Louder than Words.") And then they all sing La Vie Boheme.

At some point Santana and Mercedes sing "Take Me or Leave Me" as their glee club presentation. (It's a four-part episode.) Also I think Gwyneth would have fun with Today 4 U, don't kill me.

#glee #rent #jonathan larson

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howtofightwrite · 8 months

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I love picking at plot holes like scabs so i want my fight scenes to be as realistic as possible. However. There’s a creature in my head that says a buster sword is SICK AS HELL. What modifications would it need to be even remotely wieldable while still keeping its central appeal (huge sword big blade cool and sexy) intact?

You’ve made a mistake. You mistook suspension of disbelief for realism. This is a common problem that gets in the way of a lot of fantasy and sci-fi authors. So, don’t worry. It isn’t just you. However, realism vs believability is where your hangup is. Stories don’t need to be realistic to be believable.

The quick and dirty (and possibly unhelpful) answer is to create a world that justifies your buster sword, not a buster sword that’s trying to justify itself in a world that doesn’t want it. You step back from the sword itself and away from a world where reality dictates that it’s too heavy, too clumsy, too slow, and ask yourself: “in what type of world does this thing make sense?” And there’s about a billion different ways to create that.

The hangup with the realistic argument is that all of fiction is a lie. Good or bad, that’s what stories are. They can be very compelling, addicting, manipulative, feel incredibly good, and still be fake. The goal of a creator isn’t just to create stories that are believable, but for your audience to want to believe in them. Storytelling is always a joint venture between you and your reader. You are the salesperson asking your audience to come along for the ride. To keep their attention, you’ve got to spin up a good yarn. Build trust. The world has to feel right, but it doesn’t have to be right. Reasonable, not right. The goal is to take a cool idea and work backwards to how your society got here so that when seen from an outside perspective, the choice ultimately looks like a reasonable conclusion given the surrounding context. One of the better ways to build your reasonable conclusions is by studying the history of technological invention from the beginning to the midpoint rather than starting with the end point—the results.

History is full of weird, wacky, wild attempts and failures at creation. You’re not the first person to look at a human sized sword and wonder if it could, in fact, hit good. Or, really, better than swords that currently exist. Or, fulfill a battlefield role the sword was currently not occupying. Or, as we like to say, have real battlefield applications. The Claymore, the Zwhihander, the Zhanmadao are all real weapons that saw real, if not necessarily extensive, use. Like all weapons, they were specialized tools meant for particular battlefield uses. In this case, mainly as anti-cavalry support.

Ask yourself, why? Not just, why would I want it? Ask, why would I use it?

What actual purpose does the big cool blade serve beyond looking big and cool? What function does it fill on the battlefield? Why use the big cool blade instead of other weapons? What does it do better? What are some offsets which might account for the massive size? Technology? Superhuman enhancements, mystical or otherwise? Gravitic fields? Magic? Why is the big cool blade better suited to ensuring a character’s survival? What advantages does it provide? What is its practical value to warriors within your setting?

The initial defensive reaction is that we don’t need a reason because we have the Rule of Cool. That could be the reason, but I challenge you to go deeper. Go deeper than, “this was the weapon my character was trained to use.” The followup question is: why were they trained to use it?

In the real world, we can answer these questions both from a personal and from a larger social perspective. We may not be able to answer whether we’d use a gun, but we understand why humanity developed guns, why we use guns, and the purpose they serve both for personal protection and in their military applications. The answers don’t necessarily need to be good or smart. What matters is that an answer exists to feed your audience. When your reader starts struggling to believe, they begin to ask questions, they pick at the fabric of the narrative trying to figure out why their mind has rejected the story they were previously enjoying. What we, the writer, want to create is a chain of logic underpinning the narrative and its world. This way, when questions are asked, a reasonable answer is ready and waiting. While we won’t win over everyone, trust that your audience wants to believe. Trust that they’re smart enough to figure it out without being spoon fed. That way, you won’t fall into the trap of infodumping.

Worldbuilding always involves a lot more happening under the surface than ever makes it onto the page. Your characters will be the ones to demonstrate and act on the internal logic that’s been created for them without needing a billion questions to lead us from Point A to Point B.

If we look at human history in a wide view, we find that weapons are a fairly steady march forward that matches a civilization’s technological growth. We keep what works and discards what doesn’t. The crossbow replaced the bow as the main form of artillery in martial combat, but we still kept the bow. The bow still had practical applications. Guns eventually replaced the crossbow just like they replaced the sword, but it actually took a very long time. We had functional firearms in the Middle Ages.

Ease of Use

Ease of Training

Lethality

From a military standpoint, these are the three most important aspects for widespread adoption of any weapon. Easy to use. Easy to train. Lethal. The longer it takes to train a soldier on a weapon the more time your army is losing out on using that soldier and the more effective the weapon needs to be in order to justify its expense. Why give your soldier a big cool sword if they’ll never get close enough to reach the forward line to make the assault? Why have them use the big cool sword if operating the laser cannon is more efficient, effective, and keeps them alive longer? In the coldness of battlefield calculus, it’s often better to have cheap, efficient units rather than more expensive ones that might be more lethal but take longer to produce. No matter how good they are, you’re eventually going to lose them. Therefore, easy replaceability becomes a factor.

If you can answer those questions (and the myriad of other similar ones) you won’t just have a weapon, you’ll have a world. You’ll have more than a justification, you’ll have battlefield strategy, tactics, and a greater understanding of how the average layman characters in your setting beyond your main character approach warfare and possibly a technological history. You might even have several functional armies.

Ultimately, this is a game of value versus cost. Most settings that use big cool swords sacrifice ease of use and ease of training to amp up lethality. The weapon having a specialized function or only being usable by a specialized unit helps if that unit’s battlefield effectiveness is justified. Or, you could just have a weird technological outlier where its effectiveness doesn’t quite justify its cost even if the individual warrior is effective. A good example of this is in shounen anime where one character has a specialty that no one else has, a really cool, effective weapon that never appears anywhere else, because the length of training, high skill floor, and finicky nature of its use make it difficult to justify widespread adoption.

The danger is assuming there’s a right answer. There isn’t one. The value in learning the rules of real world violence is so you can break them. This way you can tell the difference between the vital rules necessary for suspending disbelief and don’t accidentally break the ones you needed to keep your audience invested.

-Michi

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #michi answers #how to fight write

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befuddledcinnamonroll · 6 days

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So with some of the takes I've been seeing in the Wandee Goodday tag, I wanted to share my perspective.

Just to note - I firmly believe art is subjective and what we see can vary a great deal based on our own perspectives and lived experiences. I'm not calling anyone wrong, I'm just saying this is my personal take on things. (I feel like this should be obvious, but nuance is so often lost online).

And my main goal with watching QL is fun and escapism. I'm here to have a good time. I tend to go with the flow, I like imperfect characters (I even like the fucked-up ones), and I trust the characterization and plot elements to be doing what they need to do until a problem shows within the narrative itself.

Ok, disclaimers done - here's my take on Dee & Yak's interactions around the fake dating idea.

I think all of their interactions are deeply affected by the degree to which they have already developed genuine feelings for each other, but are not yet in a place to admit it, even to themselves.

Do I think Yak has real concerns about being out as a boxer trying to hit a career high? Absolutely. But I think his quick jump to a "let's end this" reaction was mostly a kneejerk attempt to protect himself for what he felt when Dee, the man he is already emotionally connected to, and desperately wants to be able to kiss, dropped a request for fake dating over a real deepening of their relationship.

We don't yet know the level of societal homophobia this show is aiming for, BL land can go many different ways with this, but considering his brother's openness in the gym that he owns, training boxers, there is a tone being set. Yak literally holds hands with Dee in the middle of the street. He doesn't panic when people recognize him at the hospital. This may change, but I'm going to trust the signposts that his career concerns are valid, yes, but are not the dominant issue between them.

Similarly, is Dee competitive and overly focused on winning? Clearly. It's set up in his earlier conversation with Yak for a reason. But at the same time, his insistence that it has to be Yak is not just about his need to win - again, this is about genuine feeling. He wants Yak. This is a way to get Yak, and to frame it to himself in a way that feels less scary and vulnerable, especially after being hurt by Ter.

I know a lot of people saw Dee as being pushy. I do agree with that, and yes it is going to cause more issues for them in the future. But I wish more people also saw Yak holding firm to his boundaries and refusing to give in to the immature behavior from Dee, showing why he's such a good partner for Dee.

And sure, we haven't seen Dee support Yak as much so far, but the scene with the mother and child wasn't there just for kicks. Dee is empathetic and caring, and that will be important in his relationship with Yak as well. He is there for people when things are at their worst.

Some people see Dee on the bridge as being manipulative.

I saw Dee as finally cutting out the toddler shit and being emotionally real about why he's taking the scholarship too seriously, how sensitive he is to what people think of him, why Yak is someone he trusts implicitly, and how he knows it's not Yak's problem and it isn't fair to expect him to fix it.

Some people see Yak as finally agreeing to fake date as showing he is weak to emotional manipulation.

I see a man who has more agency than that. I see a man who is affected by seeing genuine vulnerability both because of how caring he is as an individual, and because of how much he wants a real emotional connection to Dee. And eyes-open, he makes a choice.

These are two characters who have never just been friends with benefits from the beginning. And the narrative has never been about what they are saying. It's about what they are feeling.

#wandee goodday #wandee gooday the series

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deandoesthingstome · 8 months

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Labyrinth Fantasy

Pairing: Minotaur!Sy x Reader

Summary: There's a new hotel in town. You now know it's for real and you need more.

Word Count: 5.7K

Warnings: 18+, NO MINORS, cunnilingus, p in v (standing and reverse standing cowgirl), monster fucking (right?).

Fantasy Hotel Masterlist

You'd recounted enough of the details to convince your online benefactors that the investment was worth it, but kept enough to yourself to make the experience truly special.

Like, you didn't mention the time stretch at all. Though you had been wondering why the hotel even offered longer booking sessions if the hosts could just snap a finger and keep you satisfied forever. You felt only mild guilt about keeping the image of naked human Walter to yourself. They didn't need to know how good he looked NOT as a monster. You were keeping that for you own private thoughts. But you were bemoaning your current funding situation.

sendmeanangel: ugh, I'm never getting back there!!! MNstrluvr: Listen. There's a way. sendmeanangel: how? I can't get any more shifts at the restaurant. MNstrluvr: let us open a Patreon for you sendmeanangel: I'm NOT giving a recount of this event to total strangers darkgothnightengale: you have no idea who we are sendmeanangel: you are NOT total strangers. I know your favorite coffee and what you're studying at uni and your top 10 comfort movies. I know how you got that scar on your hand. darkgothnightengale: yeah but you didn't know that until you asked. Up to then we were total strangers who loved your work. Just like everyone on Patreon will be only they'll be paying MNstrluvr: yeah and you don't have to tell it to them like you told us. Put a different spin on it. Don't make the story from the perspective of the hotel. Make it a true fairy tale. Red riding hood in the woods and shit. Make him your boyfriend, The Woodsman, who's ready to show you his secret this fine full moon evening. sendmeanangel: oh my goddddddd!!! darkgothnightengale: yeah, but put all the most important details of him in Sendmeanangel: you just want to read about his massive cock splitting you open again darkgothnightengale: i have my needs. Besides, I just mean those details you only know now because you experienced it. You have something to draw from, something to make it real for everyone MNstrluvr: seriously, meana, do it. You will make so much money. You should have been putting your other stories out there long ago but this you can post and sell cause it'll be completely your own content with no re-imagining of existing characters sendmeanangel: okay, but you gotta beta the shit out of this for me. I can't have it sounding like I'm just recounting the whole thing from last night's fuck session with my partner MNstrluvr: 😆 🤣 😂 😹 darkgothnightengale: oh my goddddddd!!!! MNstrluvr: anyway we already created an account. We'll add your email and send you the password reset so you can run it and transfer the money to your bank whenever darkgothnightengale: and as always, no pressure on timing other than knowing you need the money to get back to Walter but I can't wait to read this! sendmeanangel: what if he's not available?

As you clicked Reserve something caught in the back of your mind.

Would Walter care you weren't coming back to see him?

How could he? You spent two hours (or was it more? You could never figure out the time swap calculations) together. You weren't even sure if that was his real name. Sure, you fantasized about him when you got home. You'd been in a fog of post-orgasmic bliss when you saw him in his human form, but that didn't stop you from cataloging every inch you could. Imagining snuggling next to his enormous and furry body wasn't hard.

It was this domestic bliss scene you'd eventually settled on as the opening to your "boyfriend's werewolf confession during an evening walk in the woods" fic that you posted on Patreon. The feedback had been a dream come true.

While the income wasn't as plentiful as you'd hoped, the wages and tips from your extra shifts allowed you to book another stay the following month. Walter was indeed not available on your only open day of the week so you sought out another option and found a four hour time slot with a new-to-you creature.

The listing called him Captain of the Guard.

Something about this fantasy made you select the box at check in specifically requesting your host enter in form. You had missed this at your previous visit, and as you thought back to meeting Walter, you appreciated the gentle way he eased into the scene. But you wanted a little more…mystery? Suspense? apprehension this time. The front desk clerk told you your host's name was Sy, and sent you down to a lower level of the hotel. The only key he provided was the code you punched into the elevator number pad to allow you to press L3.

When the doors opened, you entered a small, rustic room with a hard dirt ground and cool stone walls. You only saw one other door besides the elevator you just stepped through and your mind did some mental gymnastics. Was that the exit to the maze or a bathroom? If it was the bathroom, where was the maze?

A few benches were scattered around and sitting on one was the Offering Tray you purchased, along with a note telling you to dress or undress to your level of comfort and step out into the hall through the door opposite the elevator when you were ready. Okay, door to maze then. But your nervous pee sensation was building. Where was the bathroom???

You knew the elevator was locked after you exited the car, but the note also contained the return code you were welcome to use any time, even before your reservation was over. And the note also revealed the secret to locating the washroom around the corner of one of the walls that you now noticed didn’t quite reach the next wall, causing a little optical illusion that the room was a simple square with no other space. Clever. It reminded you of a scene from a fantasy movie you’d seen when you were younger.

You peed and then undressed for a quick rinse in the surprisingly warm shower. You had imagined the temperature of the liquid streaming over the mini waterfall in this rock room would be ice cold, but it was as if the water was heated to a constant, perfect temperature from a thermal spring. The floors were warm on your bare feet too. You almost had to tear yourself away. There was a fantasy to be had.

You hung your street clothes on the garment hooks and pulled your red cape from your bag. You had researched a few different costume options and came across a clever way to fashion a toga of sorts from the material, albeit a slutty red toga with a giant slit up one thigh. You didn’t bother with underwear this time either. After one last look in the mirror to make sure your nerves weren’t showing too badly, you gathered up the offering of cured meat and stepped into the hall.

The rough hewn stone walls were at least three feet higher than the room you’d just exited. You noticed shelves jutting out occasionally at various heights and made a mental note not to run into them. Not that you planned on running. The ground was soft and sandy, rather than hard packed earth. Even in bare feet, this was going to make running hard. Again, not that you’d planned on running.

Now, which direction? Left was always your gut instinct so you followed the path in that direction, choosing a left turn anytime you came to an intersection. After dead-ending twice in about five minutes, you began to rethink your approach. While you figured it had be wise to build in some extra time to find your treasure, you didn’t want to spend four hours in a fucking maze alone.

As soon as you made the next right, the air shifted. The hairs on the back of your neck stood at attention and a ripple of goosebumps grew up on both arms. You made a few more turns before you began to hear snorts and huffs in the distance. For a moment, you froze, unsure if you wanted to move toward or away from the beast. Not because you didn’t want to meet the beast. But only because you truly couldn’t decide how. Sneak up and surprise him? Or let him chase you?

A new roar announced he was getting closer and you made a snap decision to turn away. Let him find me.

You maybe delayed the introduction by a few minutes. He was adept and clearly knew this maze inside and out while you were still trying to find your footing. You were just about to turn a corner that looked surprisingly familiar when you felt a rumble and the sand shift beneath your feet before you heard a snort and few stamps on the ground.

“Turn around.” Though a command, it came out like a question and you knew this was yet another opportunity for you to provide your consent to the game. Keep walking forward and it would all be over. As a matter of fact, you were convinced your next step forward would take you to the hall where the door to your changing room was. Your turn was deliberate. So was the flash as the cape swished around your legs and settled back into place. Give him a show, you smiled inwardly to yourself, before you wiped that grin right off the face in your mind and dropped your jaw instead.

Before you stood a monster of a man/beast, which explained the rumbling of the ground. You noticed the hooves which explained the stamping sound. As you drew your eyes up his solid and thick legs, you were a little disappointed to see he was wearing a heavy pleated leather skirt which hid any hint of what might be hanging underneath. His biceps bulged and thick veins trailed down each forearm. His chest was broad and teeming with unbridled strength, bare and full of the fur you were hoping to find.

Walter wasn’t the first hairy man you’d been with, but he definitely made you appreciate it more and this beast sported a similar amount. As your gaze met his, you took in the visage of a bull’s head, noticing the ring you expected to see in his nose was not there, but the horns near his ears were. They were massive as well and you had plans.

“Who dares enter my labyrinth?” he demanded as he sauntered ever closer to you. “What little bird has been flitting through these halls?”

You gave your name as you held out the tray in front of you, but he simply stood before you, motionless, save his eyes which roamed over every inch of you. When he returned his gaze to yours, he cocked his head to one side.

“And what am I supposed to do with this?” he roared, obviously unsatisfied with the tray of meat. Did the hotel make a mistake? “Maybe you’re playing a game with me? Is that it? Interrupt my peaceful solitude and taunt me with a delectable offering only to hide it behind a curtain of fabric and an offensive tray of inferior flesh?”

“I … I didn’t know… I didn’t think…” you stammered. Your heart was beating furiously, though he hadn’t taken another step toward you and you weren’t exactly trapped. You were more convinced than ever that if you wanted to escape, the entry room and the elevator were just around the corner. He was giving you time to acclimate to your decision to stay, making sure you weren’t having second thoughts. Though he commanded this hall in this maze, he was letting you call the next shot and you knew you were in no danger. Well, none that you didn’t want.

You set the tray on a ledge nearby, and grabbed fistfuls of your robe in both hands, lifting the material enough to give you the feeling of freedom around your lower legs. Just in case. Not that you were planning on running.

“In this labyrinth, the offerings are usually a little more respectful. Would you like to try your offering again?” Something about his words, the way he cocked his head again, the subtle pawing at the ground, as if he was about to rear up. He wanted you to.

You licked your lips, and nodded. Took one more beat. Then turned and ran. Past the door to the changing room, up the hall to the right, left down the next corridor, then right again. Left. Left. Left. Right. For a moment you imagined he wasn’t right on your tail and then you hit a dead end and he descended on you as you turned to try to escape the hall thinking you might have enough time to head in another direction. Well, around you really. His arms caged you against the wall behind you.

He was so close. His musk was intoxicating and the scent added a little more fuel to the fire already burning in your loins. You peered up into his eyes, which you now noticed weren’t jet black, but rather a deep, dark azure.

“That’s better,” he chuckled. “The offering is always sweeter after a little vigorous activity.”

“I’m so sorry,” you spoke. "I had no idea the offering I was given wouldn't be to your satisfaction. I should have anticipated better for a creature who commands such obedience and reverence as you."

“The tray isn’t the offering, little bird,” he huffed near your ear as you felt a hand drop from the wall beside you to your shoulder and then down to the pivotal point on your costume. One little tug, and, yep, there it went. The makeshift dressing had held up surprisingly well on the chase, but it was designed to come off easily and that it did. He made an approving sound, tracing a finger over one breast and down the valley between both, nearing your apex before he dragged the back of that hand up your belly and around your waist, ending with a firm grip on the meat of your hips.

“What…what is the offering?” you asked, with feigned timidity, as if you didn’t know what he meant. His arms moved to circle your waist and his hands slid to the creases beneath both now bare cheeks.

"I'll take this peach instead," he snorted with what you perceived to be a wink and a grin. He jiggled the flesh of your ass and grinned wider as he caught the moan of pleasure you tried to suppress. "You don’t need to fight it little bird. This is why you're here. To let go of inhibitions and feel free to express your feelings and desires with no judgment. If you like someone paying attention to this luscious cake, you shouldn't have to feel like you have to hide it."

The exchange felt a little out of character for the scene, but you didn’t mind. The chase was fun, but it was going to be even better finding out how this man would take care of your needs. So you let him know.

"Fuck. It feels good to have you touch it. Most men just go straight for the pussy and ignore the pleasure I get from the tease, the idea of you..." you trailed off, uncertain if you wanted to broach that subject here.

"Oh, it's just an idea, huh? Nothing you want to try? Isn't that why you're here?"

You thought about Walter and wondered if Sy was as well endowed under the fabric covering his loins. Surely the beasts at this hotel were all inordinately adept at providing pleasure; that was after all the entire theme. And maybe there were other ways to pleasure a person, and maybe this hotel had them too, but you couldn’t begin to imagine that the size of Sy’s cock wasn’t proportionate to his stature. You weren't quite ready to feel that in your ass.

"It's alright, little bird. We're here for whatever you'd like,” he answered without you even saying a word.

“Can I call you Sy?” you asked, unsure how committed to the bit he’d be.

“Of course, darlin’.” That was an odd Texas drawl that had just overridden the previous enigmatic accent you assumed was meant to convey ancient Greece. He kept the twang when he saw your surprised eyebrow quirk. “We can take this play anywhere you want to go. Though I’m going to make one choice for us.”

He bent to scoop you into his arms, cradling your legs and back as he held you against his chest. You could feel his heart pounding and wondered if he could feel yours, too. You took some slow deep breaths to try to calm yourself.

For a brief moment, you nestled your head against his neck, relishing the feel of the fur against your cheek. Then you turned your head to pay attention to where he was taking you. You figured you would need to make your way out of this maze alone after being well and thoroughly fucked and somehow you imagined you'd still have enough brain cells to remember the path he was taking.

But Sy wasn’t going backwards to any open hall. Instead he was making his way directly into what you took for a dead end. Before he crushed you against the wall, as you were sure he was about to do, Sy stepped through the wall. Sort of. Through another optical illusion that proved the dead end was actually a T intersection.

Sy took the left branch and in a few short strides, you found yourself in a room filled oddly with accouterments of pleasure. A platform bed covered in softness in the middle of the space was an inviting contrast to the sandstone walls you'd acclimated to. In a few spaces, what appeared to be fur rugs hung against the walls. Straight ahead, covered in dozens of warm glowing candles illuminating the room along with hanging oil lamp pendants, sat a wooden altar. Bowls draped with mounds of luscious looking fruit and plates of cured meats and cheeses were nestled in between the candle holders.

As you looked around, you noticed no other entrance to the room, though you kept missing the non-obvious openings, so who knew? The markings on the wall and other accompanying furnishings led you to believe you were not just in some other hall of the maze. You were now in Sy's sanctuary. You’d found, or rather Sy was going to show you, the treasure at the middle of the maze.

Sy set you on your feet and stepped back, as if judging your temperature again.

“Is this where I meet my fate, then?” you asked, with a shy smile.

“You’ll die a thousand little deaths in here,” he promised, returning to the previous accent, and you noticed now a tail swishing behind him. You hadn’t seen that before, but it seemed…excited.

“Sounds amazing.”

With that he rushed you as if you still held the red cape as a target. In what felt like one fell swoop, he bent to capture your hips and swing you forward over his shoulder as he turned and took a few steps toward a fur-lined spot along a wall and none of those movements jostled or startled you. It was as if he was picking up a piece of cloth, the ease with which he maneuvered you and held you stable so nothing hurt. Not his fingers in your hips, not your hips over his shoulder, not your back as he held you captive, pressed against the wall of the hidden sanctuary.

“Walter said you smelled delicious and tasted even better,” Sy huffed with hunger.

Did they talk amongst one another? That hardly seemed ethical. And yet, you’d gossipped and dished about this place and the man you’d met previously. Why would you assume he wouldn’t do the same?

“So that’s the first thing we’ll take care of here,” he continued as he dug his massive thigh into the moist heat between your legs and huffed breath onto your neck. His hands traced the length of your body, down both sides, over your belly, onto the sensitive skin of your inner thighs.

In a heartbeat, he had you off the ground, legs spread wide as he continued to trap you against the wall. You tried to hold onto his beefy shoulders for stability, but soon realized he wasn't done lifting you up as you lost purchase.

You were sure you'd be tumbling forward onto the sandy ground in front of you as soon as you cleared another foot of his body, but somehow you remained upright. Well, ‘somehow’ was known but you were still amazed at the raw strength and power Sy possessed to hold you aloft and continue to elevate your body.

With one final shrug, he had your naked form where he wanted it. Legs over shoulders and pussy right at his face waiting to be devoured. You'd had men, including Walter, in between your legs before. A few times when you were upright, and that always put a nice checkmark next to their names in your book. But never while hoisted six feet in the air.

The thick swath of muscle that ascended through your folds filled you with a warmth you had been craving for weeks. Sy somehow managed to manipulate the shape as well, so that he alternated between targeted tight circles with a tip and wide saliva drenched passes that were soon mingling with your own juices.

You had the distinct impression that the wall behind you was for your benefit only. A way to make you more comfortable and secure in the knowledge that he wouldn't let you fall while he was feasting at the altar of your thighs. That he had the ability to hold you upright all on his own while he ate you out.

He made you come at least three times with your back arched against the wall and crying out for relief as you pressed into his head to hold yourself steady, even while he supported you with a hand cradling your ass and another secure against your side. You had wanted to grab his horns, but something told you to stop and wait until you could ask permission. It didn’t seem polite to just grab at them without warning.

“Please, Sy. Please fuck me now,” you pleaded and he skillfully obliged, though he took his sweet time getting there.

He took a few more licks, sucking in the moisture dripping from your pussy before he began to ease your legs off his shoulders, down his body, and around his waist. He settled you there while he reached back to unhook his skirt and drop it to the ground. Then he knelt, still holding you against the wall, and shifted your legs down to rest on his thighs. This gave you an opportunity to peek down and see what he was working with, and not that you were at all surprised but it was still a bit of shock.

A strap of leather remained wrapped around his waist, traveling down both sides of his Orion's belt with the ends connected to a ring that sat stuffed behind his cock. While you contemplated just how long it would let him last, he worked an especially large condom onto his massive member, drifting a knuckle through your folds at every opportunity, given the proximity. He grunted and grinned each time you rolled your hips against his fingers, eagerly seeking more pressure, more depth, more everything.

“Patience, little bird. We’ll get there soon enough,” he warned as he finished affixing the rubber. You watched rapt as he held himself firm in one hand, tugging with the same languid pace he also used to trail his fingers from the other hand around your entrance, flicking at the hidden pearl up top and pressing his thumb deep inside you. It was killing you, but this was not one of the little deaths he had promised and you contemplated telling him so.

As if he could tell just how impatient you were becoming, he finally spread your puffy lips wide and began to nudge the tip of his cock at your soaking entrance. A gasp was all you could manage as he moved to standing at the same time, easing your legs back up around his waist again.

Sy moved into you inch by glorious inch, pausing every so often to make sure you were comfortable. It was certainly not something you were accustomed to, but the feeling was familiar and you knew now he was at least as large as Walter. This was going to be fun. When he was almost seated you asked.

“Sy?”

“Yes, little bird?”

“May I touch them? Hold … hold onto them?”

“Yes, little bird, you may.”

You used the leverage of your grip to drive your hips down the rest of the way onto his colossal cock and willed your inner walls to ease around him. A heat filled you, a desire to grind against him, but he stilled you. Made you sit with the enormity of the situation for a moment while he palmed a breast, rolled a nipple.

“Please, Sy, please. I want you to move. I want you to fuck me into this wall. Please.”

He didn’t make you beg another time. He was slamming into you and somehow rotating his hips in such a way that you felt him in every muscle and nerve in your body. It felt electric and vibrant and you wanted to explode. Sy let you. Fucked you right through it and into the midst of a second one before you could open your eyes again.

You were grinding against him, pulling your body up and pushing back down using his horns to guide you and you were coming hard around him again. His laugh was infectious and you let one out with the third little death in this position.

Suddenly, he spun you away from the wall. For a moment you thought he was heading for the bed, but he lifted you off his cock, then turned you around. He held you against his chest with one arm around your waist as his other hand guided his throbbing member into you once again.

You threw your arms behind you to grasp at his neck as if you needed to somehow participate in keeping yourself steady against him, but he could handle you all on his own. He had your legs splayed wide, an arm under each knee, and he drove up into you as if it was nothing. And while you didn’t need to, you absolutely wanted to slip your hands up a little higher, off his neck, over the back of his head and right back onto those epic horns.

You smoothed your fingers over the bone, into the curl, and held on. It could have been your imagination, but his grunts and snorts seemed to magnify as you did so. Maybe he really liked it? Before you had a chance to consider dragging your fingers along the form again, he hit you with another deep wave of pleasure that had your eyes rolling back into your head as you slumped against him.

And it was like he knew how much more you had in you, because he just kept fucking you right back into consciousness, at which point you did gather your wits and give his horns a few more sensual strokes. It was his groan that told you he was close and you were helping him along. It only took a few more thrusts before you were coming hard around his dick and it seemed like he was letting loose with a roar, too.

He eased his phallus out of your sweaty, quivering body and moved forward to deposit you on the bed, admonishing you to stay put before he disappeared behind another secret wall. You heard water rushing and the sound began to lull you into a light sleep that only the warm, wet cloth pulled you out of.

“Don’t open your eyes just yet,” he spoke, his voice a little less gruff than before.

“I was promised a thousand little deaths,” you teased, unable to move your eyelids or anything else for that matter. His laughter lifted your heart.

“Oh, you want more? Looks like you’d scatter in the wind like a dandelion if I put my cock in you one more time.”

“I wish you weren’t right,” you joined him with a light laugh of your own. “Maybe if I could get a little nap…”

“Unfortunately, time has been flyin’ while we’ve been having fun. Don’t think you’ve got enough left for that.”

You peeled your eyes open, curious about his statement. You hadn’t meant to imply he should give you more time and you were embarrassed that he might think you were being pushy, demanding. You were not prepared for the sight of the man in front of you.

Where Walter’s shift had given him just a little extra height and bulk, not that he needed it to maneuver you around the room, Sy’s return to human form was dramatic. And not that he wasn’t massive in his own right, but the size of the beast that had just fucked you senseless was even more apparent comparatively. You could see he was solid, tree trunks for thighs and branches for arms. His shoulders were wide, chest broad. All the things you’d noticed of the bull, but just scaled down. And still incredibly daunting.

“S’okay I shifted back?” he asked with concern.

“Of course, whatever you… I mean, this is all so new to me. I have no idea what’s allowed. And how much time…” Was what you were thinking about within bounds? “Has it really only been almost four hours? How much time is left? I think I assumed…”

Sy gave another chuckle as you trailed off.

“Yeah, he musta really liked you from the get go.” At your quizzical gaze, Sy continued. “We don’t all have that gift. Walt’s one of the few. And he uses it sparingly. It’s not really a sanctioned hotel offering. If everyone could and did, we’d get nothing but two-hour bookings.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to… I mean, I hope that didn’t sound like I was demanding any special treatment or anything.”

“You honestly still don’t look like you have enough strength left to demand a deep breath,” Sy teased. “Here, lemme give you a hand. We’ll get you cleaned up for real.”

He scooped you off the bed and carried you into the bathroom, outfitted similarly to the entry room. He placed you gently under the warm, rushing waterfall before sudsing you up with a shower gel that smelled surprisingly like something you already owned. You watched as his hands slid over your body, easing the soap down your legs and guiding the water to rinse you off.

“Sy,” you began, wondering if you should even bring it up, but as he stood to grab a towel for you, the shape you thought you’d seen as he washed you was even more apparent. “Is it allowed? Do we have time … Can I…help you with this?”

You reached for him, circling a hand around his obvious erection and tugging gently. His eyes closed slowly as he dropped his head back with a deep sigh, before he wrapped his arms around you and drew you to him. He put a palm against your cheek and tilted your head to train his beautiful blue eyes on yours as he spoke.

“It’s technically not allowed.” Your heart sank at his words. “But Imma make it good for you one last time anyway.”

You let the towel drop to the floor as he lifted you to move back out to the bed. He set you down and you watched him climb onto the mattress, expecting him to grab a condom and crawl over you, or flip you over. When he settled himself between your legs, it wasn’t his cock that penetrated you. Sy put his mouth over your pussy again and the moan that escaped his throat had enough vibration you were sure you could come from that alone.

He was better. He was unbelievably better than Walter at this. It wasn’t something you were particularly proud to be thinking, but truth was where you found it and this was the truth. Sy was skilled and all the tricks he used in Minotaur form, he used here as well. You were squirming within moments, grinding up into his face and grabbing onto his freshly shaved head to help keep him where he’d do the most damage in the quickest amount of time. Not that he needed your help, because he was fucking good at this. He knew how to use his tongue and lips and, yes, teeth, gently, and yes fingers, deep and deft. And if you weren’t mistaken, he was squirming, too.

You could see his ass wiggling and humping into the bed and if you weren’t losing your own damn mind you’d have noticed his hips stuttering as he came into the mattress right around the time his fingers landed back on the spot that, in combination with the movement of his tongue, had you screaming his name.

He let you linger in bed a moment, catching your breath while he slipped on a pair of white, slouchy linen pants before he held out his hand to help you off the bed.

“Here,” he pulled the sheet around you with a soft chuckle and a grin. “This’ll be more comfortable than traipsing back to the elevator naked. I’ll show you the way.”

Sy led you back to the entry room, stopping along the way for a small detour to find your discarded cloak down the dead end hall. You swapped material with him as he deposited you outside the changing room and wished you a wonderful day.

“Come back and see us again, sometime. It was a pleasure,” he tilted his head at you as you stepped backwards into the room.

“The pleasure was all mine,” you replied.

“Don’t be too sure about that, now.”

Bonus Edit: Absolutely GORGEOUS headers made for me by my wonderful friend in fic @geralts-yenn:

Everything HC Taglist: (as always, let me know if you want on or off)

@sillyrabbit81 @mayloma @geralts-yenn @raccoon-eyed-rebel @fvckinghenrycavill @kebabgirl67 @beck07990 @itsrubberbisquit @sweetdreamsofgelato @liveoncoffeeandflowersss @alexakeyloveloki @marantha @aireraume @angelmather1 @lizzystuffsthings @enchantedbytomandhenry @omgkatinka @littlefreya @avengersfan25 @just-chirpin @thesaucynomad @valacirca @henryownsme @summersong69 @foxyjwls007 @peyton-warren

Special tag: @kittenofdoomage (cause sometimes you love my stuff and this one's another monster fucker lol!)

Tags from Werewolf!walter (if you commented):

@ellethespaceunicorn @juliaorpll78 @martha-oi @cardierreh15 @cinnamoroll-things @caramariehurst @zombicupcake3 @openup-yourmind @shellyshellshell @nickfowlerrr @greensleeves888 @misshinson @thelastsock @princessaxoo @augustsprincess @justjulie1105 @minimin1993 if you asked and aren't here, Tumblr won’t let me tag you. Sorry!

#captain syverson fanfiction #captain syverson x reader #captain syverson #syverson fanfiction #syverson x reader #syverson #minotaur!syverson #minotaur!syverson x reader #spoopy season #henry cavill characters #labyrinth fantasy #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #mine #deandoesthingstome

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astronomodome · 4 months

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What’s Up With Those Title Cards, Anyway: An Analysis

Now that Mumbo’s second episode is out I find myself thinking about these title cards again. And as much as I realize that they’re meant to be a fun nod to previous Hermitcraft seasons and Mumbo’s place in them, the items included and the context of their presence raise a whole lot of questions for me.

First of all, these aren’t blocks, they’re real items. Many of them don’t even have equivalents in the world of Minecraft (or even in Hermitcraft). Think about that. Are the blocky forms that we see on screen mere representations of a larger, more high-resolution world? A world with stickers and stamps and keys? A world where a ticket to Hermitcraft is a physical object you can hold in your hand? This certainly seems to imply so.

What is the context for these items? Where are they? Where are we? The stylistic choice was made to have them sort of resting on a solid-colored background. The selection of items makes me feel as though this is a representation of a desk of some kind, items important enough to Mumbo for him to keep around, lots of paperwork and stuff that you might find in a private office drawer. Which just raises even more questions. How does Mumbo keep these items from season to season? Where are they right now? Do they actually exist at all? (Not to mention smaller timeline questions. When did Mumbo receive the Grumbot message? When was it sent? Does the Grumbot left in Season 7 have a different consciousness than the one in Season 9, which last saw its dads only a month or two ago?)

If you follow the Rendog school of Hermitcraft lore, I guess you could say they’re kept on the Hermetheus along with all the other season-to-season holdovers and souvenirs. But that is one interpretation of many, canon to Rendog but never really canonized on a server-wide scale. Plus… if we take that interpretation in its entirety, how do the items from season 8 even exist, given that their entire world was canonically a simulation?

I also notice the relationship between the real world and the Minecraft world, the distinction between Mumbo the youtuber and Mumbo the block man. The ‘Official Rich List’ certificate mentions a ‘screenshot of a Minecraft chest’, implying that whoever wrote this certificate knows what Minecraft is from an outside perspective and finds Minecraft diamonds to be meaningless as a measure of wealth. And yet the certificate is addressed to one Mumbo K. Jumbo. The middle initial, having its origin in a highly in-character storyline during season 8, makes me feel like it could be more of a character Mumbo thing, but there’s no hard evidence.

How does Mumbo even have a picture of real-life Grian? Is this redstone incident report out-of-universe too? Who is he reporting this damage to, anyway?

And yet these are placed alongside items that are definitely from inside the world of Hermitcraft, if only the more fleshed-out version of it. A key to a mechanical car-horse would be functionless unless it was actually used, in-universe, by Mumbo the character. The ODEA manual was an idea considered but rejected by Mumbo during Season 7 in favor of tutorial videos, but perhaps this would make sense as an alternative for a world where the characters live in their Minecraft world as reality and have no capability to access the ODEA website.

Perhaps, in Mumbo’s view, there is little distinction between what we in the fandom call c!Mumbo and cc!Mumbo. We see both in-universe and out-of-universe items side-by-side, contradictory, because they are interchangeable here.

I doubt we’ll ever get any answers to these questions because obviously Mumbo made these title cards as fun little references instead of serious or purposeful lore, but I still think it’s fun to think about. Neat little worldbuilding details like this are few and far between in most mcyt content so I was foaming at the mouth when I first saw these. Well done Mumbo!

#hermitcraft #hermitblr #astro speaks #mumbo jumbo

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whateversawesome · 5 months

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SxF Chapter 91: Perspective, History, Empathy

Let me start by saying that I didn't think this chapter would make me so emotional. Was it the same for you?

A small side character like Millie, who we saw only as one of Yor's annoying co-workers, turned out to have a very sad backstory and gave us a glimpse of how things are for young people in Ostania.

This chapter talks a lot about people understanding and misunderstanding each other. Millie was just talking about her own experience and feelings, she was explaining why it was so difficult for her to help during an event like this, and that lady felt personally attacked because she saw things from her own point of view and her sufferings.

In no way the story discards any of those ladies' sufferings; what they went through during the war was very difficult, I'm sure. Nevertheless, comparing their sufferings and demanding Millie to act the same way just because they were able to do it, it's not right.

They both had different experiences because their circumstances were different, so they face life in their own way. That's exactly Yor's point.

Here, Yor demonstrates her best quality (and one of the many reasons why her husband fell in love with her): Emotional strength.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Yor is a very emotionally intelligent character. The way she stood up for Millie displayed all her emotional strength. She called out that woman in such a smart way!! She wasn't rude but her words were true and very wise.

One of the most important things Yor mentions is that we cannot bear the same load because we're different. And I couldn't agree more👏

Also, if we take it as a metaphor, Yor is such a strong person because she carried a very heavy load: as a child and an orphan, she had to take care of her brother. Because of this, a naturally kind person like her had to learn to murder in order to survive.

It was a beautiful chapter. On top of everything, we learned a few important things:

1.Yor did lose her parents during the war and because of the war.

2.Donovan Desmond did NOT start the war. But plenty of young people like Millie don't know that, so it's possible that since he was Prime Minister during most of the war, he gets blamed for starting it.

3.Donovan Desmond is hated by many. That's probably the reason why he's no longer in office. And it also wouldn't be surprising that the majority of people in Ostania who voted against him want to move on from the war.

3.Melinda still wears her wedding ring and, even though she's separated from her husband, she still counts him as an important person for her. I guess, you can hate a person's actions and opinions, hate what they have become, but care about them at the same time...their marriage is complicated.

4.Not only Yor and Twilight fear the SSS because of their jobs. The general population do too because they know rich and powerful people can make them disappear regardless whether they are spies or not. That means arrests and disappearences of innocent people are common.

5.There was a repression during war time. This means the state controls and restricts certain rights of its citizens. When war happens, the state may determine it's necessary to protect their country and citizens. Chances are that policing of others started then and Ostanians got used to living like that.

And now some questions:

Was Melinda being sincere? In my opinion yes (for the most part). Melinda is no longer campaigning for her husband. In fact, she's going there incognito. Since her husband is no longer the Prime Minister and they don't have any elections to win, she doesn't have to support this types of events. If you think about it, once a politician retires from the public eye, their spouse generally goes back to their normal life.

Something that caught my attention was that it was mentioned Melinda has a lot of enemies; probably because her husband has a lot of enemies too. If that's the case, it would be easier for Melinda to move abroad, where she could have a care-free life, yet, she has chosen to stay in Ostania. Why?

Melinda is still a very mysterious character. We don't know her plans or intentions. We don't know why she separated from her husband. My only guess is that she's suffered a great deal and that's why she's able to empathize with Millie, even though their experiences are different.

What do you think?

Bonus (to end on a light note):

This is the Sxf when we see Yor 😄

#spy x family #twiyor #Spy x family manga #Sxf #Spy x family #yor forger #loid forger #anya forger #loidyor #loid x yor #agent twilight #Spy x family meta #spy x family analysis

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misc-obeyme · 5 months

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Well okay. One whole person stated they would like to see the pegging version of catboy Satan so here it is.

I see you, @cactusmisslittle. I hope it’s okay that I tagged you, but your tags here are the only reason this version exists lol.

An important note! I've been calling this pegging because that's how I've been thinking about it, but I also wanted to keep things gender neutral if possible. I don't know if I succeeded, but to that end, I've used the word "cock" in place of "strap." So if you're imagining a strap, let's just say you call it your cock, okay? I don't know, I couldn't come up with a better way to go about it.

Oh yeah and one more thing - I didn't talk about the putting on of a strap, either, but it would happen when MC is taking off their clothes. Tantan is being patient and waiting for them lol.

The beginning part is all the same, with Satan dropping hints and MC walking into their room to find him. The only part that's changed is the actual sex. Once again, I apologize for low quality, I'm still getting into the swing of writing again.

GN!MC x Satan

NSFW MDNI

Warnings: soft dom!MC, cat collar with bell & cat ears, praising, use of Tantan as a nickname, still a lil bit of biting, penetration (Satan receiving, could be read as pegging hopefully)

It might be difficult to tell from an outside perspective, but you knew that Satan was soft for you. The way he trusted you entirely with his feelings, even his anger, let you know that he was perhaps more comfortable with you than anyone else.

So it wasn't entirely a surprise when you started to pick up on some little hints of something he didn't seem to have worked up the courage to ask you directly.

You weren't sure what was happening right away. It started one day when he showed you a collection of cat collars that were for sale online. He scrolled through the pictures on his phone, finally stopping on one with a little bell.

"This one is especially cute, don't you think?" he asked.

You smiled indulgently. "Yeah it is. Are you going to get it for one of the strays in the garden?"

Satan blinked as if he was surprised by this suggestion. He looked at you and the confusion in his eyes was clear. Then you watched as a deep blush spread across his face. "R-right," he said. "Yes."

He immediately changed the subject, but you couldn't stop thinking about his reaction. Like maybe the two of you had been talking about different things.

You puzzled over this for a little while, a suspicion starting to form in the back of your mind.

Confirmation came in the form of a cosplay catalog that Levi left in the common room. The cover featured an anime character wearing cat ears and a collar.

Satan picked up the catalog and you could tell that he had known it was there. "Levi must have left this here," he said. He showed it to you. "Wh-what do you think?"

You looked at the cover. "Hmm," you said. "I like the cat ears. The collar should have a bell, though."

You watched in satisfaction as Satan's face flushed so hard and fast you thought steam might come out of his ears.

After that, you knew what you had to do.

You were careful about your purchase. You made sure it was obtained discreetly.

The collar itself was thick and black with a large silver buckle and a round silver bell. You had chosen black cat ears to match. You left them on Satan's bed with a note that said, Is this what you had in mind? MC.

And then you waited.

The next time you saw Satan was at breakfast. He sat across the table from you and met your eyes directly. He held your gaze for a moment too long before looking away. Nobody else seemed to notice and he acted completely normal the rest of the day.

You had no other indication of his reaction to your gift. For days, you waited for him to do something or say something. Was he upset? He wasn't acting angry.

And then one day you walked into your room and nearly died on the spot. As soon as you recovered, you closed the door and made sure it was locked. And that's when you remembered that everyone else was out of the house today. Was that what Satan had been waiting for?

You turned back to your bed to take in the sight of him.

There he sat, on his knees, with his hands pressed onto the bed between them. The collar was clasped perfectly around his neck, the bell and buckle shining. The cat ears were nestled in his hair, their black tufts a nice contrast to his bright blond. He was frowning, his eyes were closed, his face flushed, and he wore absolutely nothing else.

You slowly approached him, watching him as he stayed still. When you got to the edge of the bed, you stopped. You cupped his cheek, tilting his head to look up at you, even though his eyes stayed closed.

"Look at you," you said softly. "What a beautiful boy you are."

Satan's blush deepened, but he opened his eyes. You saw desire and pleasure and nervousness and embarrassment tumbling through the shades of green.

You brought up your other hand and held his face. "Don't be embarrassed. You look amazing."

The frown eased just a little. "I didn't think you would actually want to do this."

Your eyes widened in surprise. "What? Why would you think that?"

Satan looked away from you. "It doesn't… make you uncomfortable?"

You rested your hands on his shoulders and kissed his forehead. "No. It makes me horny as fuck. And I can see what it's doing to you, too."

You looked down deliberately where Satan's cock had been steadily growing as soon as you got close.

Satan buried his face in his hands, causing the bell around his neck to jingle slightly.

"No, no, no," you said softly, pulling his hands away. He opened his mouth like he was going to protest, but you cut him off with a kiss.

Satan responded to you instantly, opening his mouth for you. As your tongues entwined, you let go of one of his wrists to reach up and grab the collar. You used it to pull his head back, giving you easier access to his mouth as his hand now tugged on the edge of your shirt.

You pulled away to kiss the wrist of the hand you still held, trailing your lips down his arm and up his shoulder. He was breathing heavily as you traced your tongue along the edge of skin where the collar stopped, ringing the bell playfully with your fingers.

Satan moaned, his tugs on your shirt feeble but persistent.

You gave in, moving away from him to remove the shirt quickly, along with all the rest of your clothes. He waited patiently, mouth open, skin flushed, cock straining.

You sat beside him on the bed, putting two fingers beneath the collar to pull him toward you. He moved easily with your guidance, the bell tinkling ever so softly as you caught his swollen lips with yours again.

You ran a teasing finger along the shaft of his cock and it came away covered in pre-cum. Satan whined against your lips and the sound of it sent a shiver through your body.

You pulled away just a little bit. "Use your words, Tantan. Or would you rather meow for me?"

Satan shuddered and the bell tinkled. "Please, MC," he said, his voice low and gruff. It seemed he wasn't quite comfortable enough to meow and his eyes were closed again, his face turned slightly away.

"Look at me," you said.

Obediently, Satan opened his eyes and looked at you. He might have been frowning if he wasn't so overcome with lust in that moment. You took in the darkness of his eyes, the heat clearly visible on his skin, the expression that vacillated between need and embarrassment.

You realized you could tease him for hours if you really wanted to. You also knew that he would let you. Something about the way he was looking at you let you know that he was trusting you entirely. That he was putting himself in your hands, letting you do whatever you wanted to with him.

Certainly, part of this had been previously discussed. The two of you had an established routine, after all. But he was entrusting you with more than he normally did and you recognized that extra vulnerability.

The light of your room hit the silver of the bell around his neck. You took in the collar, the ears. Maybe next time, you could get him to meow for you.

For now, though, you wanted nothing more than to hear that bell chime with every thrust.

You leaned forward, running your fingertips down his cheek. "You're such a good boy," you said, loving the way he seemed to melt whenever you praised him.

You took hold of his collar again, this time pulling him with you as you sat back against the pillows of your bed. You had considered other positions, but you wanted to see that bell as it sounded through the room.

Satan moved where you guided him, but when you let go of the collar, he no longer waited for your direction. He put his lips on your neck, straddling your hips, pressing himself against your cock, his hands roaming across your shoulders and chest.

Satan hesitated, pulling back to look into your eyes. It was as though he caught himself being too eager and now he needed your confirmation.

You had already taken a bottle of lube from your nightstand and now you slathered your fingers with it. You smirked at the way Satan reacted when you slipped them inside him, carefully, one by one. He shivered and the bell tinkled.

You took your time with him until he was whining again, his eyes squeezed shut. When you pulled your fingers out, he didn't wait for anything else. He slowly sank down on your cock and you watched his expression change as he took it all in.

Satan arched his back and your eyes fixed on the brightness of the bell around his neck.

To your great satisfaction, that bell did indeed jingle with every thrust, louder than it had from anything else. Satan was almost creating the sound himself, bracing his hands against your shoulders as he moved himself. But your hands were on his hips, guiding him, and you couldn't prevent yourself from thrusting up into him as well.

The way his moans mingled with the chimes, the way he flung back his head - he was beautiful. There was a soft rumble in his chest and it seemed he was okay with purring if not meowing.

Satan was lost in the sensation of you inside him, but you found it was easy to make him react even more by nibbling a little on his flushed skin. He gasped and clenched down on you every time he felt your teeth pierce him.

You could tell it wouldn't take much more. He had been so good for you and you wanted to reward him. So you took hold of his already slick cock and pumped.

Satan's nails dug into your skin, the bell continuing to jingle as he kept up his pace. His eyes flew open and he looked at you with an expression unlike anything you had ever seen - desperate, begging, needing something more from you.

"It's okay," you said softly. "Come for me, Satan."

It was exactly what he needed to hear. You watched as Satan bit his lip, his body arching as his cum spurted across his stomach.

Satan's body relaxed, the bell no longer jingling as he settled in your lap. He looked at you with heavy eyes. The cat ears were still on his head, but they were askew, poking oddly out of his blond hair.

You reached up to fix them. "Promise me you'll wear these again."

Satan let out a huff, frowning. "I couldn't refuse you even if I wanted to."

You smirked. "Good thing you don't want to, then."

Satan pulled himself up off of your lap and proceeded to give you the most amazing head of your life. It was a struggle not to knock off the cat ears while your hands were twisting in his hair.

Perhaps next time, you would bring a little leash, too. You were curious about how he would react to such an addition. Although he seemed unlikely to do this again when his brothers were around, so you might have to wait. You caught yourself kind of hoping one of his brothers would come home just to hear the consistent jingling of the bell on Satan's cat collar.

masterlist | Thank you for reading!

#well I don't know how I feel about this variant #but I wanted to try it out so here it is #obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me shall we date #obey me smut #obey me satan smut #obey me satan #om satan #satan obey me #obey me satan x mc #obey me satan x reader #om satan x mc #om satan x reader #satan obey me x mc #obey me x reader #misc naughty times #misc writes

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jesncin · 5 months

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The Potential of Asian Lois Lane. Pt 1: Girl Taking Over and American Alien, a comparative analysis

Lois Lane has had many iterations over the years. But specifically in the last decade, Lois has been reimagined as an Asian American woman in both the comics and recently in the animated show My Adventures with Superman.

I believe making Lois Asian is a very inspired choice for the Superman mythos! I would like to take a moment to analyze these versions of Lois from an Asian perspective, seeing what works, what doesn't, and what I'd like to see more of. We'll start with the comics first, as MAWS is going to need its own post.

Usual disclaimers: I'm just one Asian perspective, I do not and never will claim to cover every Asian person's opinion on a thing ever. We're not a monolith, we come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. I'm simply a fan who enjoys media analysis and believes it's valuable to have my perspective in this topic. Secondly, this discussion covers the comic run American Alien, which is written by Max Landis. He's an ultra creep and while I think the comic is worth a read for what it is, I leave it up to you whether you'd like to buy the comic. You can always arg-arg-ahoy otherwise.

I'd like to start with Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story written by Sarah Kuhn with art by Arielle Jovellanos. This is a self contained YA graphic novel about a young Japanese American Lois dealing with the ups and downs of breaking into journalism as a career in National City. When her dream internship at Catco gets a corporate take over, Lois seizes an opportunity to write an exposé on a shady art director. But when her story is turned down, Lois does some out of the box things to get the story of marginalized performers shared with the world.

Girl Taking Over is a fantastic story and I happily recommend it to anyone looking for how an Asian American Lois could be reimagined (with fabulous art by Arielle! The fashion especially is on-point). This story isn't just a diverse coat of paint on a Lois Lane story, being Asian informs Lois' experiences and choices. Both she and her frenemy roommate Miki, are ambitious Asian women yet have hidden insecurities where they still made themselves small to their respective white male bosses. They played into model minority in different ways, and it's only by working together that they're able to foster a community for their stories to be told.

Lois and Miki don't just "have a diverse friend group", that friend group is actively being taken advantage of and suppressed by white gatekeepers. By extension, Lois' friends from work find solidarity in each other. Lois looks up to Cat Grant, a Filipina-American journalist, because seeing Cat succeed made Lois feel like her dream as a journalist is possible. I love how Lois' mom (a character so rarely expanded on in DC canon) acts as a voice of comfort for Lois in the story. All these characters feel holistic and whole, going through their own unique struggles.

It's clear from interviews with both the writer and artist that they care for the history of Lois, and saw an opportunity to reimagine her in a way that aligns with her character but also revitalizes her for new readers of color who aren't used to seeing themselves reflected in media. It's taking Lois' ambition and fearlessness and channeling them into the need to be a model minority, and the insecurities that can come from the desire to succeed constantly. It's taking a character historically frustrated by sexism and disrespected by her male peers- including Clark Kent (who got better treatment than her as a man), and expanding her to be a Lois that has to deal with both sexism and racism in the workplace. It's humanizing Lois' excellence into something painfully specific and relatable for many Asian women.

The only thing I feel I want from this version of Lois is... honestly more of her! I want to see what Japanese Lois does when she moves to Metropolis and works at the Daily Planet. I want to see how her experiences in National City informs her adulthood. Girl Taking Over sets up an incredible groundwork for stories to be told in the Superman mythos. How would Lois react to Superman, a fellow immigrant? Would Superman see himself in Lois? Since she's someone who, in the American context, is perceived as the perpetual foreigner? What would their relationship be like? Out of all the Asian Lois' in media we have so far, this Asian Lois' story has the most rich potential in my opinion.

Up next, we have American Alien written by Max Landis. This 7 issue series swaps artists for each issue, as a means of reflecting different milestones in Clark's life. I will be focusing on issues #4, 5, and 7 since those have the most prominent Lois appearances. With that, I'd like to celebrate the artists for those issues: Jae Lee (issue 4), Francis Manapul (issue 5), and Jock (issue 7). All these artists did a fantastic job, their art styles are energetic and fun to look at. Lee and Manapul are both Asian artists (Korean and Filipino respectively) and I love how they draw Lois- who looks undeniably Asian in their art styles.

American Alien is a modern take on the Superman tale. It expands Clark's story to be connected to Batman, Green Lanterns, Green Arrow, and more. We see Clark grow from his days in Smallville to a city boy in Metropolis, coming into his own as Superman. It's a bold and pretty divisive take with some standout story moments. From what I know, this is likely the first time Lois has been reimagined as Asian- and continues to influence Superman media like MAWS (the producer specifically calls out this comic as inspiration).

In issue #4, Clark moves in to his Metropolis apartment and talks on the phone to his mom about "some bigshot guy named Louis Lane". The reader, likely familiar with the Superman mythos, knows Clark is coming in with biases and a preconceived notion of who he considers a promising student reporter. Once we meet Lois Lane however, the comic turns the reader's expectations on their head:

Lois Lane is an Asian American woman (it's not specified what her exact ethnicity is)! This is a fun moment where the comic metatextually challenged the reader's own biases, showing it's not just Clark who had a different idea of who Lois Lane could be.

Lois' introductory panel is my personal favorite part of her characterization in American Alien. Lois proudly stands as a wall of text behind her recounts how she was considered as a winner for the Daily Planet's Charlton Memorial Laureate Program. When asked why she deserves a place on the program, Lois snaps back that the very question itself is loaded. She's listed her credentials and looks professional- so she's either already been rejected and is just being made to "at least had my say" or she's been accepted and is "meant to garnish my success with eloquent affirmation" to which Lois refuses to do either.

This is a great defiant introduction to Lois, showcasing how jaded she is with the way the world perceives her- but is very confident in her self worth as a journalist. By the end of the issue she reaches out to Clark to combine their exclusive interviews into one story to make a big impression on the news. Her words inspire Clark to seize an opportunity to make a big change in the world as Superman.

Afterwards, the comic plays the classic Superman and Lois dynamic straight. Lois is initially suspicious of Superman, but eventually comes around and is inspired to hope through him. There's a great back and forth between the two where Lois' words initially inspire Clark to be Superman, then Clark assures Lois that Superman is probably just a good guy, and when Clark loses hope from a bad day of heroism, Lois gives him hope again. In the end, Lois realizes her love for Clark Kent over Superman and they share a passionate ending kiss.

Overall American Alien nails the Clark and Lois dynamic and understands their relationship. I consider this Asian Lois "just okay". I like that we get to see an adult jaded Asian Lois meet Clark Kent and Superman, and see them get together. Similarly to Girl Taking Over, I'd like to see how this Lois and Clark would play out. My only issue with American Alien's Lois is a sense of missed opportunities.

The writing overall leaves room for plausible deniability over Lois' Asian identity. The artists (particularly Lee and Manapul) are doing the heavy lifting delivering Asian Lois. If she was drawn as a white woman, none of the writing would need adjustment. Sure her introductory panel implies that people judge her based on her appearance- but that could be just sexism instead of the intersectional experience of Asian Lois going through racism and sexism. Clark did assume she was a man after all- it's never specified if he assumed she was a white man. The only thing you'd lose is the metatextual shock value of Lois Being Asian This Time. That's really what this Lois boils down to, initial shock value with no specific writing to follow through. Her marginalization and identity is written broadly enough that it could be attributed to general sexism and womanhood. It's not specific to being an Asian American woman.

However, because of its broadness, there's room for Lois' Asian identity to be built on in the world of American Alien. The story centers Clark's experiences, but I can easily imagine a continuation of the story expanding on Lois'. The basic groundwork is there. I think it's telling that in a comic called American Alien, we get a more diverse Superman cast system. Jimmy Olsen is Black, Lois Lane is Asian- when Clark moves to the city it feels expansive compared to Smallville. It's a world that feels ready to tackle themes of racism if it was ever to continue (and probably in the hands of a writer with that kind of life experience!). In the end, there's room for this Asian Lois to be something special. Clark isn't the only American Alien in American Alien, if you catch my drift.

You can see how Girl Taking Over has a huge piece of what American Alien is missing. The characters aren't just diverse for shock value, they're not an aesthetic change over historically white characters. They have a story to tell that is inseparable from their identities. Whereas in American Alien, the art is doing the heavy lifting with the reimagined diverse characters- Girl Taking Over has both the writing and art carry the representation. Lois can't be changed into being white in Girl Taking Over.

Both of these stories have potential- but if I had the choice to pick which story should continue, it would easily be Girl Taking Over. This graphic novel works for what it is: it makes sense that this is a younger and idealistic Lois that hasn't met Clark or Superman yet. It's a YA book and Lois can absolutely carry a story on her own. What I want as an Asian fan, is for the potential of Asian Lois Lane to be seen through to the point it's considered the definitive version. As of right now, Girl Taking Over is a fun twist on the Lois Lane story. Not something that is seen as inseparable from the Superman mythos. However! If those themes of marginalization and immigrant identity are tapped into for both Superman and Lois Lane? I feel that has the potential to radically strengthen the overall themes of Superman. It's certainly been touched on before.

(TW/CW: racial slur mention in below image)

Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Yang with art by Gurihiru is a retelling of the Clan of the Fiery Cross arc in the classic radio show The Adventures of Superman where Superman faces off with the Klan who had been terrorizing a Chinese American family. The graphic novel adapts the story to center the Chinese American characters, and makes it a point to show that Superman relates to them. If that dynamic was applied to Asian Lois, that feels like a definitive love story waiting to happen.

The classic two person love triangle with Clark and Lois is that Lois loves Superman and is indifferent to Clark Kent. She thinks Superman is this ideal macho man and Clark is a cowardly fumbling guy at work who rivals her. What happens when you take that dynamic and made it so Lois identified with Superman- the more othering identity? How complicated would that make Clark Kent feel? How would he navigate that when his marginalization isn't always visible? That's a whole new depth to the love triangle we're not used to seeing. I feel so far, none of these versions of Lois have touched upon this potential dynamic. The perpetual foreigner, Lois Lane and the ultimate alien foreigner that is Superman. The jaded city girl meets the alien farm boy who gives her hope. They inspire each other to be more of themselves in a world not ready to accept either of them.

Up next, we'll be discussing My Adventures with Superman's Korean Lois Lane in pt 2. It's well. You can probably guess how I feel about it from what I wrote here but welp. We'll talk about it.

#ramblings #media criticism #lois lane #once again please be nice!!#i have many many feelings about asian lois lane so i may as well write it down and share it with you #jesncin talks maws #(a little bit anyway! like a precursor)#jesncin dc meta

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