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suffarustuffaru · 11 months

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so @alderamiin said subaru for the ask…. yes your ask was the one i deleted on accident whoops 😭😭 BUT HERE WE GO I MADE SURE TO REMEMBER TO DO YOURS WKDNDN (and i LOVE subaru fr i simply could not skip over him also) (pls expect my usual chaotic rambling im so sorry i really am overusing the caps button 😳😭😭)

Sexuality Headcanon: bisexual 👍 subaru being somewhere on the ace spectrum isnt a super strong headcanon of mine compared to the bisexual hc but i am still fond of it <33 bc i do tend to just hc him as bisexual but i suppose i could kind of see it <33 :DD !!

Gender Headcanon: subaru is literally, as we’ve all discussed, like EVERY letter of lgbtq+ i swear. like natsumi EXPLICITLY being stated to be his ideal self….. what cisgender boy has his ideal version of himself be a woman…. come on….. and hes been like. dressing and trying to pass as a girl for his crossdressing pre-isekai too. like subarus Practiced A Lot at this. subaru clearly enjoys doing this and he was crushed when he couldnt pass bc of his voice pre-isekai :(( AND LIKE subaru and his complex relationship to masculinity and feeling insecure in his own skin like……………… and then natsumi being his ideal self…… natsumi being the Heroine……….. and its like. subaru clearly has a case of “do i want to be them or be With Them” when it comes to men hes attracted to (most notably julius.) so like. it could apply to women too. like. and then the way subaru reacts to felix’s presentation too………. i just think it says a lot. i dont care what tappei says but he wrote all this shit in the text fr!!! and also in general. natsuki subaru being a gender neutral name…. same with natsumi schwartz… so yes genderqueer subaru for the win. i personally hc subaru as genderfluid or bigender!! and also like. subaru being Very LGBTQ+ is so in line with rezero’s themes of self love and self improvement and self discovery and Identity. i think it hits so much harder if subaru Is lgbtq+ versus if he was just insecure straight cis man. like no wonder subaru was struggling Even More. hes so so far in the closet and struggling with like the internal homophobia and shit fr :(((

that and 1. subaru being lgbt is such a great subversion of what you would think when you first meet his character. and also a subversion of ur typical isekai protag which ADDS to rezeros subversion of isekai in general and 2. i love making Certain People mad with these hcs. like its so supported by the text the only thing missing is explicit confirmation. which. i have my doubts with tappei on that but iirc he DID say he nearly wrote a lust if with the guys…. tappei. come on. you already explicitly said that natsumi is subarus ideal self.

A ship I have with said character: im very open to most subaru ships!!! i just love a lot of them—reinsuba, ottosuba, emisuba, remsuba, julisuba… i just like how each kind of dynamic with subaru has so much range like even in just main route alone?? and then you factor in the ifs and it gets So Interesting. theres so much history with each pairing and so much to explore, whether its platonic or romantic. and subaru has a LOT of love in his heart.

i just like each pairing for different reasons hah—like ok ive talked a lot about reinsuba and emisuba already in other asks so. i DO like remsuba okay. not in the sense that i want it to be the endgame ship in main route bc thats very much not happening and i would prefer The Most Detailed emisuba development of all time. which would be more thematically relevant <3 but i DO ADORE remsubas relationship in general. like its so so complicated??? like. yeah theres the conflict in arc 2. theres the conflict in arc 7 with her waking up and being different and being so mean to him about natsumi :((( theres her “youre my hero” versus “youre not a hero” WHICH. URHGHF ITS SO GOOD….. and like yeah remsuba really do be. iffy. in terms of how healthy it is. but its so complicated bc you also have rem being like—she was like the first person, narratively, to be willing to DIE to save subaru the exact way he does for other people (including rem). and then the famous from zero scene in season one which is a MASTERPIECE but i hate how people fixate on “i love emilia” LIKE REM IS HAPPY FOR SUBARU. SHE IS HAPPY AS LONG AS HE IS. EVEN IF HE DOESNT LIKE HER BACK. but also he did like her back romantically for a time. and also of course rem had her fixation on subaru :(( subaru had his own obsession for emilia while rem had hers for subaru pre-being gluttonyed?? :(( yeah like. remsuba being so complicated is so interesting to me. like she and subaru are very passionate people yes. but also they do need to learn to tone it down sometimes you know? REM ESPECIALLY TOO BECAUSE EVEN AFTER SHE STOPS BEING MURDERY TOWARDS HIM… FOR EXAMPLE IN SEASON ONE SHE WOULD CANONICALLY GO TO HIS ROOM IN THE MORNING AND WAIT FOR HIM TO WAKE UP…. like she'd just sit there at his bedside and Stare at him... like girl chill a bit its okay T^T i havent read sloth if. but it seems like they learned to mellow out and have a happy life T^T apart from. a shit ton of people dying in the background and also subaru dying of old age and resetting back to arc 3. i am interested to see if we’ll get further remsuba closure in arc 8 yes. but also im bonking subaru on the head in arc 7 for saying even REM TORTURING HIM was a fond memory. pls let this be addressed again later i swear sodndn.

ok also julisuba and ottosuba. i am no expert on julisuba but on the other hand i have analyzed Too Much Ottosuba so perhaps i am an expert there wodndn. but YEAH i love those ships. they have so much history and moments between them and they are. definitely the more Explicit evidence of subaru being bi (between subarus Interest in julius and reid calling julisuba boyfriends and SUBARUS INTEREST IN JULIUS... vs ottosuba repeatedly being like “omg do you Like Like me?” “NO I DONT SHUT UP” and also their continued divorce arc dynamics yep). but also i will say i really like ottosuba because specifically they are the subaru pairing where theyre like. Very Much Closer To Being Equals. if theyre not already equals in something. like in terms of power levels and intellect and their very loving families and previous inability to fit in or be believed by people and also their status in the narrative as Being Just A Guy in comparison to everyone else. and yet ottosuba are the MOST important members to their camp for their jobs—subaru keeps everyone alive, and otto handles All the politics, which we see over and over again. they are literally THE power duo. otto is so so important too as the second person to die FOR subaru the same way subarus died for others. like the paralleling of otto pushing subaru out of the way when the white whale drove otto insane (and later otto tried to go back for subaru once he regained his senses ;-;;;) versus otto pushing subaru out of the way so he didnt get killed by garf ;-;;;;;. and otto being the second person after rem to also give subaru an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT speech to him (otto-rem parallels...???) <33 except ottosuba also foil a lot bc of their Different Morals. but theyre both stubborn as hell and have a tendency to go off and do shit they think is best without telling anyone bc theyre too deadset (hah) on what THEY think. (OTTO. SPENDING A WHOLE YEAR SECRETLY GETTING THE BOOK OF WISDOM AND HAVING IT RESTORED?? HELLO???) anyway yeah ill stop right here bc i have So Much ottosuba posts on this damn blog wkdndn but i really do think the appeal of ottosuba is that they Are on a more even playing ground. and their morality flipflops sometimes. ottos issues are just more lowkey than subarus widndnd. i am. however. nervous about all the ottosuba and vincent-chisha parallels in arc 8 bc………. possible otto perma death on the horizon??? 😭😭😭😭 itd CRUSH subaru.

also of course the similar flavors of julisuba and ottosuba….. u can have ur tsundere x tsundere ships in TWO DIFFERENT FONTS. anyway ill become a julius lore expert someday i promise.

A BROTP I have with said character: BROTP ottosuba and ramsuba are so so funny and great wofndn but special shoutout to garf and subaru in particular!!! i think its interesting how far their relationship has come bc they had a VERY rough start and its like. 1. im sure garf would immediately regret going into a rage and killing a shit ton of people in that One Failed Loop and 2. we learn garf is a traumatized fourteen year old whos been trying so hard to take care of the demihumans inside sanctuary while his sister and mom left him, one way or another, and hes very afraid of the outside world. and its like YEAH now your behavior makes sense. and its so good to see garfs growth and also his growth in his relationship with subaru (and otto) bc he looks up to subaru sm!!! subaru helped garf so much T^T theyre brothers guys 😭😭 i think its so adorable and so sweet. ill defend garf all day everyday. garf 🤝 subaru with their DAMN hero complexes while otto tries to keep them both on a leash so they dont do stupid shit. subaru IS a good role model for garf though ill say that. subaru tries so hard to be a good role model wkdndn. and yes i always laugh when garf teases subaru for drawing doodles and writing encouraging things for emilia in the temple.

A NOTP I have with said character: okay so. maybe i will spill some tea here. hah so i went over in ram’s ask how i think ramsuba in wrath if is actually super interesting widndns but otherwise ramsuba to me is bland. which. i also just feel like subaru/crusch and subaru/ana and subaru/priscilla are also bland. like. i dont think theyll ever feel interesting to me akdndn. like theres not. as much to work off of imo. like i just dont think theyre a good match romantically at all. like At All. priscilla especially LMAO…. and im tired of people reducing women in the story to just boobs and being fucked by subaru 😭😭😭 like i dont have anything against those subaru ships, my biggest notp is just seeing a bunch of characters be butchered just to have subaru have sex with various women. 😭😭 obviously not everyone in the fandom does that but i see this happens the most with priscilla fr. pls. shes more than just boobs :(((

anyway. my other notp is like. echidna/subaru but like. i feel similarly to ram/roswaal on this where its like. theres a potential there to show a nuanced complex toxic relationship bc THAT IS what echidna/subaru are. even more so in greed if. like theyve spent an UNGODLY amount of time together like their relationship is so fucked. like god the amount of details that were added to their dynamic in the greed if ln makes me go INSANE….. like you know how echidna said that subaru could use her body with this contract?? what she ALSO really meant was HEY SUBARU YOU CAN KILL ME IF YOU WANT. ILL JUST COME BACK BC WE ALWAYS MEET IN A DREAM WORLD AND THERES NO CONSEQUENCES BUT ITLL FEEL REAL TO YOU. LIKE HOLY FUCK FR 😭😭 and like in generally reading through greed if ln is a Trip alright. like “no yeah duh of course it is, suffaru, its GREED IF” but LISTEN……. echidna being subarus weird mother figure and then like. idk there are obvious implications i feel from like the body fluid tea and then echidna being like “you can use my body” and then theres a moment where she puts his hand on her chest and yeah its to feel her heart but LIKE…. SOMETHING ABOUT THAT SCENE FELT LIKE. SOMETHING. TO ME. AND THEN SHES SO OBSESSED WITH HIM AND HES DEPENDENT ON HER LIKE JESUS ITS A MESS. ITS LIKE HOW SHE WAS WITH OG ROSWAAL. GOD. *puts my head in my hands*

anyway my real notp is like. depicting echidna/subaru like it is a Healthy Thing like no it is not 😭😭😭😭 it never was healthy and it literally never will be unless ur changing echidnas character drastically. if ur gonna show off echidna/subaru then they are gonna be SO RANCID in like every way possible there is no other correct way to write them. she is terrible for him. she literally saw him and went “i can make him worse” and then it happened. bc greed if subaru is a Terrible Person. like. its not even a question. the biggest example i can think of rn other than obvious Rbd use is KEEPING MEILI. A CHILD. HOSTAGE AND LOCKED UP IN ORDER TO USE ELSA. HER OLDER SISTER FIGURE. JEEZ. my biggest notp of all time is treating unhealthy relationships as if they Arent unhealthy.

MY OTHER BIGGEST NOTP OF ALL TIME FOR ANYTHING IS SHIPPING A CHILD AND AN OLDER PERSON TOGETHER. subaru/petra SHOULD BE AN OBVIOUS NOTP BUT SURE DOESNT FEEL LIKE IT SOMETIMES….. guys she is a child. come on. hes seventeen and shes TWELVE. GUYS…. and then theres tappei making iirc an ACTUAL petra if????? and idk what the content in petra if is exactly but i worry given tappeis track record with the child characters sometimes 😭😭 AND THEN PETRA BEING IN LUST IF. TAPPEI…… N-NOTHING HAPPENS, RIGHT? *EXPLODES WITH RAGE*. even if petra and subaru get together later when theyre Older Adults in some AU or something its like. subaru knew her when she was a young child. and she had a crush on him then. um. personally idk if im fully comfortable with that hah T^T

A random headcanon: GONNA TALK ABOUT WRATH IF. anyway so the wrath if divergence point is that subaru gets beatrice to teleport him away and ram chases him down, ram tries to strangle him to death but fails, he smashes her head with a rock. yes. BUT OKAY when u watch the anime. beatrice comes for his aid AFTER subaru gets to the cliff and tries to psych himself up to like. jump off to save rem and stuff. THEREFORE wrath if subaru still considered trying to rbd via jumping off that cliff. he just decided not to and agreed to have beatrice teleport him away. this is something not many people seem to mention or maybe even notice (??) but I THINK ABOUT IT A LOT…. :((

General Opinion over said character: i LOVE SUBARU WITH MY WHOLE BEING. he is my absolute favorite anime character of all time. his character arc is so chaotic and complicated and i think the way he Does like still struggle with the same Inner Conflicts is so so much more realistic. recovery and self improvement are NOT linear and he shows that perfectly. and i hate how much people misread subaru T^T the whole chadbaru trend in fandom of how he should get harems or how he should leave everyone or be terrible to emilia for *insert a long list of Terrible reasons here* is so. like did we all read and watch the same damn story or what hah. the whole point of rezero is LOVE ITSELF….. and subaru ultimately has a lot of love for so many people around him. though of course i do worry for how rbd reveal is going to be handled, and im not entirely sure how to feel about subarus arc 7 development atm. rbd reveal is gonna have catastrophic consequences for Everyone. like everyone hes ever been close to finding out hes died a shit ton of times to save him?? that so many of them have like. maimed and killed him or at least Tried To Do That? like HOW are we gonna get a happy ending out of all of this—hows tappei gonna handle this?? 😭😭 i worry sometimes that when rbd reveal happens it wont be nuanced or itll gloss over certain things or it just. wont be so satisfying. bc u have arc 7 subaru out here with SUICIDE PILLS……. ARC 7 SUBARU IN REPEATED INSANE DEATH LOOPS AS A CHILD….. how are we gonna come back from this?? 😭😭 i have my doubts sometimes but tappei loves insane character development for subaru so i suppose i will hope. i just wish for all the trauma to be seen and addressed akdndn and the fact that rbd is so. complicated. it makes subaru and his relationships with everyone else so complicated. and rbd is inherently unfair in a lot of ways to both subaru and everyone hes close to. i cant wait for more subaru development but i also think after arc 8 he NEEDS a break or like otherwise, personally i think subarus gonna snap for good and not be able to return from it 😭😭 or ill just have to suspend my uhh disbelief. i suppose. but yes i do love subaru a lot!!! his hair is a Pain in the ass to draw but ill endure the pain just for him. <33

but regarding all of subarus loved ones maiming and killing him a lot—i think its fascinating how the if routes prove he is JUST as capable of ruining all their lives. like i feel like people forget that sometimes in favor of woaaah cool what if routes where subaru becomes “badass”…. but LIKE…. hes SO SO CAPABLE of so much destruction. he is choice itself. he is capable of changing the entire world and everyone around him. he is capable of causing the deaths and trauma for SO MANY PEOPLE… and like i think rezero itself and subarus relationships are like an extreme version of hedgehog’s dilemma, u know? like u get close to people to love and be loved, but ur also very vulnerable to getting hurt. and rezero is About love. and part of close relationships are that ur so close u Can be hurt. maybe you Will be hurt. but u will also Love….. unless ur one of the ifbarus then fuck u for making the wrong decisions ig wodndndn. im telling u guys that subaru is LITERALLY an eldritch being at this rate. todd is so right.

and. okay one last thing im gonna be real for a second. im a little eh on subaru being a child, honestly. like i DO like the trope of turning characters back into their child selves in order to explore their psychology that way!! but like. idk i feel like the childbaru arc is kinda too similar to the whole amnesiabaru arc in arc 6. it feels Extraneous. it doesnt feel different enough for me personally. (emphasis on personally. this is all my opinion hah.) and then he is STILL A CHILD IN ARC 8 EVEN THOUGH THE OTHER PEOPLE THAT GOT TURNED INTO KIDS ARE NOW BACK TO NORMAL…… LIKE…. im sorry but the childbaru has overstayed its welcome by the time we get to arc 8 imo 😭😭

#re:zero #natsuki subaru #ask #arcs 7-8 spoilers #i decided to do ur ask as soon as i could so i didnt forget bc i deleted ur ask oops HAH #i dont know if people like remsuba on here BUT I LIKE REMSUBA OKAY THEYRE COMPLICATED AND I LIKE IT.#and. yep there we go theres my usual ottosuba agenda 😭😭#if anyone asks me otto ill write even more essays ig 😭😭 HAH….#i just think. subaru ships have a lot of great flavors. but they also have some of the most rancid flavors in my opinion lmao 😭😭😭#rancid (affectionate or derogatory)#my reply to these asks keep getting longer and longer aalsdjdfls oh well

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moghedien · 3 months

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like I have to admit that I still don't actually 100% know what people mean by meta

like I broadly get the idea of it but like the specifics are lost on me

because sometimes I'm just yapping to myself on tumblr.com and people will reblog it like "wot meta" and I'm like "but i'm just talking about stuff what"

and then I see like long ass "meta posts" and I'm like...."this is an essay?"

#idk I never purposely delved into like fandom in that way or in like the fic writing way so things are lost on me #like i will be out here writing essays on shit but like if its longer than a few paragraphs i'm like #approaching it like an essay like I would in fucking college minus strict citations #like most of my writing/analysis knowledge came from academia and not fandom #and it really shows when I don't know what the fuck people are talking about on here half the time

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rickybaby · 16 days

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good feeling or nervous feeling

good feeling. i can feel the pendulum shift in his favour in my left tit like Karen Smith feels that 30% chance of rain in hers ...

#but also like don't quote me on that #this man's bad luck knows no bound #but as much people are writing whole essays about how his career is over #i need people to remember that there are still 20 races left #which is much longer than some seasons in F1 have been #and both CH and Helmut have gone on the record to say it's too early for them to make a decision #anon.txt

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naranjapetrificada · 9 months

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Consider this your opportunity to be an Astrology Bitch and go off about Leo Stede!

(signed, a Virgo sun, Cancer moon, Capricorn rising who simultaneously is and is not an Astrology Bitch, more of a Tarot Bitch tbh)

Okay! You asked for it lol.

I should start by saying that I'm an August Leo sun. Stede is a July Leo, as confirmed by the show:

July Leos are...different somehow? It's not a bad thing and it's not their fault, and if anybody else comes for them we August Leo's will throw down for our siblings, but there's something about the vibes! Maybe it's the Cancer proximity, idk. If anything my anecdata suggests that they're more well adjusted than the rest of us. 🦁❤️🦁

Anyway, I immediately sat up and noticed when they cut to the gravestones because it's second nature for me as an Astrology Gay. Obviously I didn't know Stede at the time and I don't actually know what went down as the character was developed, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I learned that at least one person in the writers room was a fellow Astrology Gay.

So I completely forgot about his birthdate because a) ADHD and b) swooniest romance I'd ever seen, but I started thinking about it again when I showed up like a year late to the fandom and saw people talk about whether they were Ed coded or Stede coded. I am heavily, heavily Stede coded for neurodivergent reasons, but he also exhibits certain Very Leo traits that I recognized immediately.

Leo stereotypes:

Let's get the stereotypes out of the way because while they do apply sometimes (especially for Stede), there's no need to rehash them in detail.

Leadership, which he struggles with at first but a) takes up the mantle of it anyway and b) improves enough that by the end of the season the crew that wanted to mutiny saves his life.

Good hair. Nuff said.

The man has an auxiliary wardrobe for fucks sake.

His "theatrical instincts are finely honed" and while Izzy says it to encourage the fuckery, it's not a lie.

The Revenge

If an 18th century Leo was going to custom build a pirate ship and money was no object, they would 1000% build the Revenge. I could see arguing that a Taurus might build something similar, but honestly I'm not sure a Taurus would become a pirate by choice. Maybe a Taurus might build like, a pleasure yacht or something. A Libra might build a ship that's as good-looking as the Revenge but sharing expensive tastes isn't enough to convince me either. Stede's money allowed him to build and decorate luxuriously, but plenty of rich people used to comfort didn't have ships like the Revenge. As Nigel says during his tour, it's just so incredibly him.

Now for some feelings stuff:

Leos love it when other people are happy, and when we can be involved in fostering that at all for people we care about we are ON IT. Stede wants to create space for others to get what they need to make that happen. Literally in the first episode he talks about the Revenge as somewhere for his crew to work on their trauma and communicate their feelings.

The above is also an extension of Stede's instinctive generosity. Canon doesn't tell us where Ed got his clothes for the French boat party in episode 5, but given that Stede has an auxiliary wardrobe (which he shared with Ed almost immediately) the most likely scenario seems like he loaned (or maybe even gave!) it to Ed. Another possibility is that it was on the ship where Frenchie found his and Oluwande's outfits, but the purple jacket in particular seems very extra in a way that says "Stede" to me.

Speaking of episode 5, let's talk about the party game. Obviously the main takeaway is that Stede has enough of a handle on passive aggression to make the French assholes tear each other apart, but it's not just the passive aggression, it's in the delivery. With sufficient motivation (Ed's hurt feelings, if not his own) we see Stede command the room with confidence. He chooses his targets well. He knows just what to say to get them to agree to play the game at all. The fire wasn't part of the original plan but it shows just how powerful those hard-won skills are when he wants to apply them. (This doesn't feel like it merits its own bullet point but Leos are protective, ride-or-die friends, something else we see in this episode.)

Stede's love language, imo, is quality time. There are arguments for others (there's also a really good meta about his love language causing miscommunication with our touchy-feely boy Ed, if I can find the link I'll edit) but quality time seems the most appropriate to me. Another part of the whole generosity of spirit thing is that he seems to enjoy what a friend of mine called "engineering experiences" for people i.e. crafting activities and jam sessions for the crew. The most obvious of these is the treasure hunt for Ed, which of course comes out of his fear of Ed leaving, but it's also a way for them to spend time together. I'm not at all surprised that a lonely, bullied kid would grow up to value quality time.

I would also extend this to the clearly routine (but still extravagant) breakfast for two that we see Calico Jack crashing in episode 8. Not to mention the first breakfast he and Ed ever share up on the maintop in episode 4. It's not fancy, but he wakes Ed up to share in that moment because he's enjoying the sunrise and the marmalade, and I can't think of anything more Leo than enjoying something then immediately wanting to share it because someone else might enjoy it too.

Stede's not perfect of course, despite all those seemingly positive things I just said. In the way of some Leos he is frequently thoughtless, up to and including when he didn't make to the dock. I can't speak for every Leo but I have definitely accidentally flirted with/been read as flirting with people before, whether I was attracted to them or not. And yeah his quarters are nice but he could have used some of that space for more crew quarters, right? And how could a Leo possibly misread "what makes Ed happy is you" as badly as he did?

Well I may be an Astrology Binch but I mostly like it (and anything else that puts personalities into discrete groups) as an analysis tool. It's just a fun lens to examine behaviors through, IRL and with fictional characters. Also, the show is clearly trying to examine things like trauma and self-loathing in ways that are gonna inform character behavior way more than a hypothetical astrology enthusiast in the (admittedly pretty queer) writers room. But the vibes? The vibes are so there.

#There's also an entire essay I could write about Leo traits people don't notice or care about but I can do that later #Rhys isn't a Leo though Taika is #Rhys is an Aries and Aries/Leo friendships and relationships can work out extremely well #I appreciate Taika for his Leo vibes #which are not the expected ones #I love seeing a Leo who seems occasionally bored during interviews and stuff #more grumpy Leo representation please #stede bonnet #because this next one came up in the results for Stede's name I'll add it too #stede bonnet has a caretaking kink #which isn't not a Leo thing either lol #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd meta #our flag means death meta #character meta #astrology is fake but #fictional character astrology #oh also let's not forget all that sunny Leo energy that's part of so much Stede fanon #that feels relevant #afaik we don't have a birthdate for Ed #but it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn he was a Scorpio because the man can BROOD #I can also see him as a couple other signs though so I would need to think about it for a bit longer first #also I couldn't shoehorn it in but something about the difference between confidence and self esteem #Leos can definitely have one but not the other #*points to self*

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queenlucythevaliant · 1 year

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Professor Kirke remained at the small dining table after the last of the dishes had been cleared away, puffing clouds on his pipe. It was strange, thought Lucy: he had a faraway look in his eyes, as though some tiny aspect of his reality had shifted over dinner and he was struggling to accommodate it.

“I wonder what he’s thinking about,” murmured Lucy to the others. Edmund shrugged and Eustace (who had only met the professor that night) said nothing, but Peter chuckled merrily and patted Lucy on the arm.

“You’ll find out soon enough, that’s certain. He got that look in his eye when you were talking about the Island of Dreams, Lu. No doubt he’ll call you into his study for a lesson later on.”

It was a little more than a week later that Peter’s prediction came true. Professor Kirke seated himself across his desk from Lucy with an enormous tome of poetry spread out before him. “Have you heard The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?” he inquired.

Lucy shook her head. Yet rather than muttering about the state of the schools as she had expected, Professor Kirke simply smiled beneath his whiskers and began to declaim:

“It is an ancient Mariner /And he stoppeth one of three —"

Lucy leaned back in her seat and fixed her attention on the words as best she could. Once, she’d spoken in such a register as queen of Narnia, but now she was only a girl of ten and unaccustomed to the flowery language of Romantic poetry.

“At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came—”

“Oh!” cried Lucy. “Is that why you wanted me to hear this poem?”

“Just so,” the professor replied. “Your account of the Island where Dreams Come True bears a marked resemblance to The Rime, beginning with the presence of the albatross. In this poem, the albatross bears a symbolic connection to Jesus Christ himself.”

“How peculiar!”

“I thought so too. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote this poem in 1797, in a time when sea voyages to the polar regions were very much like your own voyage to the end of the world. The albatross had only lately been described in writing, but he wrote it coming out of the desolate fog to guide sailors to safety. And Coleridge was a neo-Platonist! Fog and ice are very much like darkness, the way he uses them here.”

“A neo-Platonist?” Lucy asked, wrinkling her nose.

And now came the Professor’s customary muttering. “Yes. What do they teach in these schools? You may read darkness and fog both in Coleridge as something between ignorance and innocence, with the Sun as a symbol of Reason. Does that make sense?”

“A little,” said Lucy, who privately didn’t think it made much sense at all but was eager for the professor to continue the poem.

“It ate the food it ne'er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!”

Lucy hadn’t meant to interrupt again so soon, but the words were out of her mouth before she was really aware that she’d spoken them. “So it really is just like in Narnia! It guides the ship out of the ice like my Albatross guided us out of the darkness.”

“Yes.” Professor Kirke was entirely unperturbed by the interruption. “Precisely.”

“How lovely. Isn’t it interesting how you just know when birds are trustworthy?”

The professor chuckled. “You may change your mind in a few stanzas. Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

Lucy returned to her concentration as the mariner recounted how a good wind had sprung up after the Albatross and how it had stayed with the ship and perched on the mast sometimes for evening prayers. Yet the mariner must have looked unhappy, for the groom interrupted to ask him why.

“With my cross-bow/ I shot the albatross.” Professor Kirke paused here in his telling and looked very hard at Lucy.

It took her a long moment to understand. “The albatross isn’t dead, is he?”

“He is.”

“I thought you said he was like Aslan.”

“And didn’t you see Aslan die?”

Lucy opened her mouth, but closed it a moment later. Open again, “But why did the mariner kill him? Doesn’t he give any reason? The witch killed Aslan because she was evil and trying to conquer Narnia. Why would the mariner kill the albatross when it’s done nothing but help him?”

“Perhaps,” the professor replied, “the Gospels are a simpler comparison here. ‘I shot the albatross’ has the same kind of blunt irrefutability as ‘And they crucified him.’ There isn’t any excuse, which I think makes the confession all the more powerful.”

Lucy sighed. It was exhausting trying to keep this all straight. “I suppose that makes a kind of sense. But then we’re trying to think on three different levels of parallel—the poem, the Bible and Narnia—which isn’t very pleasant.”

“And yet, it’s necessary if one wishes to understand deeper meanings. We can pause for tea, if you’d like?”

“No, that’s alright. I think I’m keeping track well enough for now. I say though, is this what you do with Peter all day?”

The question seemed to catch Professor Kirke off guard, for he let out a sudden, loud burst of laughter as soon as Lucy asked it. “Yes, after a manner of speaking. Shall we go on?”

“Ah! well a-day! what evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.”

It was a difficult thing to imagine and Lucy wondered if Aslan’s albatross was unusually large. Aslan was always bigger than she expected him to be, so it would not be strange if he took the form of an unusually large albatross. Yet the more Lucy considered, the more sense the image made.

“It must have been at least three meters,” said Lucy. “The albatross, I mean. Mine was more like four, from wingtip to wingtip. It would be a dreadful weight, but I suppose that’s the point. The mariner can’t carry it, can he?”

“I think you’re right,” said Professor Kirke.

A smile tugged at Lucy’s cheeks. It was lovely to hear the professor give such an unequivocal endorsement of her analysis. Galvanized by the success, she continued, “I thought of a cross when my albatross appeared out of the darkness. There’s something in the proportion of the body to the wings, and in its stillness of it as it glides through the air. My albatross tore away the darkness. But here—it’s like the mariner carries his albatross like he thinks that act can save him from what he’s done.”

There was a glittering in the old professor’s eyes then, and suddenly Lucy realized that she wasn’t struggling with the poem’s language anymore. Maybe it was because she’d been listening to it for the better part of ten minutes, but privately she wondered if Narnia’s magic might be working on her somehow. Perhaps this poem contained some quality of the rich Narnian air.

“I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

But or ever a prayer had gusht,

A wicked whisper came, and made

My heart as dry as dust.”

Lucy shut her eyes and remembered the fighting-top of the Dawn Treader. The night-mare life-in-death was a black abyss, and all her own nightmares had been there in it. There had been monsters, of course, and the idea that even if she ran down to stand beside Edmund he might become a monster himself. But somewhere in all that dark, there was a Lucy who never spoke to Aslan again. She’d imagined herself in Lord Rhoop’s place, trapped forever in a state of endless fear-without-courage, because she could not call him.

“That was my night-mare too,” she whispered. “Not being able to pray.”

She saw the professor’s lips thin beneath his whiskers and wondered at it. “You’re wiser than you have any right to be,” he murmured. “Ten years old and your greatest nightmare is alienation from God. What a marvel you’ll be when you’re grown.”

Well then. Lucy didn’t have any notion what to say to that. She half expected that if she tried to reply, she might start crying.

“Might I ask—what did you do then? Until the albatross arrived, once you realized that you couldn’t pray. How did you react?”

And that was a question she could answer.

“But I could pray! I did. I whispered, ‘Aslan, if you ever loved us at all, send us help now.’ And that was when the albatross came. I didn’t talk about it after—it was too much my own for me to share it, really—Edmund knows—but well…”

The professor made a sort of choked noise in his throat. “Perhaps it was the only nightmare that the island couldn’t bring true.”

“But there have been times,” continued Lucy, “when my heart was too dry to speak with Aslan. There were whole years when I was queen that he didn’t come at all.”

It was with a much softer voice that Professor Kirke resumed his reading.

“A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware:

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.”

Here, the professor lapsed into silence. Lucy thought that the poem might be over, but when she peered across the desk at the page there were columns of stanzas still left.

“Even after all these years,” he whispered, “some things still remind me of my own days in Narnia.”

He’d told the children his story before, of course: beginning with how he met Aunt Polly and concluding with the origins of the wardrobe. Aslan had not condemned him for bringing the White Witch to Narnia. Instead, he’d had loved Digory enough to shed tears and sent him home with an apple so beautiful that it healed his dying mother.

“Grace,” Lucy whispered into the hush. “Of course. Maybe this is the moment where Aslan leads the mariner out of the darkness.”

Professor Kirke exhaled heavily. The faraway look in his eye lessened a little bit, and at length he read on.

“The spirit slid: and it was he

That made the ship to go.”

Never had Lucy felt Aslan’s presence more keenly in his absence than during those last days as the Dawn Treader had sailed over the still, clear waters at world’s end; like Aslan himself had been drawing them towards himself by some great, invisible rope.

The closer they’d come to his country, the more tangible his spirit had been. When at last she glimpsed those green mountains beyond the waves, Lucy’s very bones understood that Aslan had made the still seas bring them there.

A voice spoke out of the air concerning the mariner, and Lucy remembered the piercing silence of the Last Sea. Of the voice, the mariner said, “He loved the bird that loved the man/ Who shot him with his bow.”

Not for the first time, Lucy wondered about Aslan’s father, the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. What did he say to Aslan when he left that land of high mountains to return to Narnia and die at the Witch’s hand? What did he think when Aslan went flying across the lily-covered seas on feathered wings to rescue their little ship? If Lucy had crossed that final threshold with Reepicheep, would she have met the Emperor there?

“The voice is his father,” Lucy said, voice brimming with certainty. “The albatross’s father, I mean. The Emperor-beyond-the-Sea.”

“I know,” the professor replied. “And beyond the sea is just where our mariner meets him.”

“Do you think the mariner knew that the albatross loved him?”

The professor stroked his chin again, and a ghost of a smile played across his features. “If the mariner didn’t know it when he shot him, he certainly knows now. But come, we’re nearly at the end of the poem.

“Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,

Yet she sailed softly too:

Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—

On me alone it blew.

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed

The light-house top I see?”

“There’s one more thing I haven’t told you,” Lucy said. “Something so bright and mysterious that I’ve not even told Edmund. When the albatross came, it—it spoke to me. And I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

Professor Kirke leaned forward, but his words were, “You needn’t tell me what he said if you’d prefer not to.”

Lucy nodded slowly. Somehow, she knew that if she tried to describe “Courage, dear heart,” she would fail. There was nothing, no word or image or music or poetry in this world or any other that could convey what that moment had been. To speak of it at all would be like dancing about architecture.

“I was the only one who heard him,” Lucy whispered. “It was my prayer, and he spoke to me. I wonder how this poet knows what it was like?”

“I think he knows the same way I do, in my own way. Coleridge lived a difficult life. He was a laudanum addict when he wrote this, for one thing. When the Divine voice speaks into our darkness and we feel his breath on our faces, it binds us together with every other person who has ever been rescued by an albatross that loved us. We don’t know what he says to other people, but we know how the breeze feels.”

The professor returned to his reading and concluded the poem while Lucy sat in astonishment and let the strangeness of the last hour wash over her.

“…A sadder and a wiser man/ He rose the morrow morn,” and with those words Professor Kirke shut the book. The heavy pages fell with a thud, and with bright eyes he looked at Lucy. “What do you think of it?”

“I think,” said Lucy slowly, “that it was a beautiful story. The very best kind.”

What she did not say, but what she was thinking, was that it reminded her of the story she’d read in the Magician’s book: the one about the cup, the sword, the tree, and the green hill. The two tales had no common points of reference, but they left her with much the same feeling.

“But why do you think Aslan came to me as an albatross?”

Professor Kirke harrumphed. “I have been asking myself that same question ever since you spoke of it. Why indeed? I wonder whether perhaps in part he appeared that way so that you would come back here and read ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ and come to know him better by it. If nothing else, I do not think it was a coincidence.”

Yes, perhaps, but the answer still felt incomplete. “Maybe it’s a stone in the bridge he talked about,” Lucy said. “Maybe he only wanted to show me—to show us—that he’s here too. In this world, in this time, and in all others. Maybe it’s like you said, and there’s an albatross for every person who’s ever been rescued from the darkness.”

#i have wanted to write something like this for a loooooong time #but kinda felt like i wasn't up for the challenge #i'm off for a few days so i finally got it in 'good enough' shape though i'm far from being totally happy with it #hopefully it will make sense to people who haven't read The Rime #though it was written with an assumption that at least some cultural osmosis will have gotten to folks #i go absolutely crazy for the way that Jack incorporated the albatross from Rime into VDT #it is so darn elegant #he both upholds and subverts the symbolism of the original #i love love love love it #and i wish someone would assign me like an actual academic essay on the topic #in the meantime we'll have to get by with literary analysis just barely couched in narrative #dear darling heart-daughter of aslan #the magician's nephew no longer #into light #(courage dear heart)#narnia #leah stories #pontifications and creations #also! i just cross-posted to ao3 if you'd rather read this there #i know it got pretty long #(and i skimmed over a LOT)#intertextuality #characters within a work notice the intertextuality #if this makes your brain hurt a little bit i think i did my job right

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toaster-selfships · 1 month

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francesco loves u!!! Very much

IM?????????

HELLO TO YOU TOO??????

OUT OF ANYONE THAT COULD BE GETTING SO MUCH ATTENTION ITS HIM. THE MAN WHO ALREADY HAS A MASSIVE ENOUGH EGO. OUGH. GOD I LOVE HIM.

My brain so violently ping pongs between like the same six F/Os yoy don't understand its wild and I just. THE FACT THAT ALL MY RECENT PROJECTS HAVE BEEN SURRONDING HIM IS MASS COINCIDENCE.

I love F.rancesco. I want to be little center of attention center of his world. Give him a little kiss on the forehead of his helmet. And his face. I'm going to explode.

#one thign youre gonna learn about me the longer someoen talks to me is that i LLOOVEEE reaction images #so dont mind me putting like ten of these here #i hope the caps locks isnt too troubling! i know some people dont like them so 100% let me know #this. this means WAR.#anyways but. this was such a warm thing and really made my day thank. THANK YOU. really truly #I'll be tginking avout this for the rest of the week #fightning every urge to not write an essay here

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moshieee · 3 months

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Ew, essays :[

I miss the old days of kindergarten when we attempted to color butterflies and ate erasers and glue

-🎁

I hated kindergarten

Essays may suck but at least now I'm not the weird kid in the corner wishing I had friends

However yes I absolutely despise essays with all my being... in fact!

Achievement unlocked: you somehow found a topic moshie hates enough and on a bad day to start them ranting in the tags...

Warning there are curse words, poor spelling, and caps locks

Sorry in advance

#asks #off topic #seriously tho i hate essays so much #one of them is already 5 pages and thats just the rough draft #i better get a fucking high pass on that shit or i will scream #shes actually making us focus on out writing process and OH HO.HO BOY IS MINE A MESS #I SWEAR ITS LIKE TRYING TO MAKE A SKETCH BUT YOU KEEP PAINTING CERTAIN PARTS BECAUSE IT HAS TO LOOK NICE #ONLY TO RELIZE OH WAIT MAYBE THAT DOESN'T GO THERE AND I SHOULD ACTUALLY SHIFT IT AROUND #OR MAYBE I COULD SWAP THIS TOO BE THAT LOOKS AWFUL AND IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE AND WORSE TILL ITS A RIVER OF BLOOD AND PAINT #AND SHE WANTS TO SEE MY ROUGH DRAFT??? HONNEY YOU WOULD HAVE A BETTER CHANCE AT READING THE MARIO SUNSHINE SPEEDRUN CATEGORY BACKWARDS THEN #UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE FUCK IM TRYING TO WRITE ITS WHY I HAVE TO WRITE IT ALL IN ONE GO OTHERWISE I HAVE TO LOOK BACK AND UNDERSTAND WHAT #WAS GOING THROUGH MY HEAD WHILE LOOKING THROUGH THIS MESS!!! OOOHH WHAT? YOU WANT ME TO ORGANIZE THIS WELL SHIT THATS GOING TO TAKE EVEN #LONGER YOU ALREADY GOT ME WRITING WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE ME STOP MUCH LESS MAKE ME SWITCH SUBJECTS TO ANOTHER ESSAY HALF WAY THROUGH OH BU #AND GUESS WHAT!???? ONE PAGE! DOUBLE SPACE! AND IM NOT GOING TO GIVEN GIVE YOU A DIRECTION TO WRITE IN JUST ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT WE LEARNED #IN THESE LAST TWO WEEKS! TWO WEEKS FUCKING HELL DO YOU KNOW HOW INDECISIVE AND FORGETFUL I AM??? MUCH LESS THE FACT KTS ABOUT ETHNICS #I DIDNT EVEN EANT TO TAKE AN ETHNICS CLASS I WANTED ETHICS I FUCKING HATE EVERY SO MUCH RIGHT NOW #LIKE YEA SURE I KNOW THEY'RE IMPORTANT BUT I STILL HATE ESSAYS and j know my teachers are trying their best...#but jeese ethnics is such a difficult topic because on one had yea i relate to what these people are going through im part of the LGBT #are statistics are very similar but im also bery much a white person and not openly trans/non binary i dont want to look like some stuck up #white person going oooo look at the poor minorities i can TotAlLy relate and now im going to talk about me #because im genuinely scared of coming out idk whos accepting and whos not at least online im safe and can block people...#jeese im sorry for the rant i shouldn't have gone on that much less my art blog #this is supposed to be a positive blog but i just need to put this somewhere or i feel im going to cry out of frustration im sorry #rant post #system #oops moshie got emotional

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semercury · 3 months

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That honestly was so fucking bad, and it kinda destroyed any last little hope I held onto for the remake being anywhere near acceptable.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

#stuff sarah says #being vague bc APPARENTLY a lot of people liked it??#and im genuinely wondering if theyre paid actors bc holy shit #all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. bad voice acting. honestly just way way too much #it reminded me of sad shit id think of when i was 15. just piling on all the worst things that can happen to a character #like to the point of it being excessive.#but yeah. i feel like im being punked. people are posting videos about it being good #i did find a written review that was basically what i was thinking #but there was even a comment on that saything they thought the review was excessively harsh??#and im like???? no. it was accurate.#there was no room to put together what was happening for yourself. and random bad shit would just get thrown in there bc ???#ugggggghhhhhhh #im hoping the people who have the same opinion as me are just taking their time to write a proper critique #for a video essay bc i could probably write one longer than the runtime

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thefirstknife · 2 years

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How does Divinity help with the way disabled folk play, other than moving the crit spot? /genq /polite

Well, first, moving the crit spot is a huge help in of itself. That alone turns the weapon into something incredibly helpful.

But outside of that, the debuff is instrumental with helping players who have a hard time playing for long periods of time. This help is two-fold. First, players with disabilities tend to generally not have a lot of time to play; disabilities come with various pains and issues that prevent you from spending 8 hours in the game every day. Players who can't exactly play every day due to various disabilities and issues will be less likely to have a surplus of god roll weapons and options to choose from. If you don't have the best weapons, your damage can be lacking and sometimes entirely insufficient. Divinity debuff helps with that. With the debuff (and a more accessible crit spot), suddenly not having the best heavy linear fusion isn't so much of a problem.

On top of that, it helps with damage from shots that don't miss. Yes, Divinity bubble is large and the crit spot is easy to hit, but even with that, some people still have a hard time hitting all of their shots. Any shots that they do hit will do increased damage which helps. Sometimes missing the crit bubble is not even anything you can really prevent as some bosses move a lot and some of them have swarming adds running towards you and either flinching you or eating your shots. My tracking rockets and supers have entirely missed not just the Divinity bubble, but whole bosses (Warpriest straight up jiggling out of the way behind a rock.....). The debuff makes sure that whatever you do hit, possibly with less effective weapons, will do enough damage.

The second way it helps is that some people just don't feel comfortable doing dps or don't like it and can't contribute in a way that matters. Divinity is an option for those players to use instead. A disabled person that struggles doing dps on bosses can instead use Divinity. Divinity is very accessible to use; you don't need superb aim to activate the bubble and apply the debuff and you are also only required to focus on one thing during dps. A lot of disabled people have a hard time juggling multiple roles during dps on top of actually hitting their shots for maximum damage output. By using Divinity, they can contribute and they also help other members of their team, thus feeling more useful and having a role during the part of the activity that they may struggle with otherwise.

There are also other specific niche situation. I've mentioned Golgoroth before. Divinity doesn't exactly help a lot with the crit spot on Golgoroth. However, it does apply the debuff so whatever he's being hit with, even if it's not optimal, will do increased damage. This is from personal experience: I have an incredibly difficult time seeing things during the dps phase on Golgoroth. His crit spot is in his stomach and he moves. It's very difficult to see if you have problems with vision, which I do. The colour of the arena also doesn't help and neither does the visual clutter of Golgoroth's venom and unstable light debuff + the swarming adds that flinch (or Taken phalanxes that boop you). I love using Div for Golgoroth! It means I don't have to worry about hitting the crit spot myself and I buff damage for those around me who are better at hitting his crit spot than me. It's very relieving to know that I can just take Div and be useful if I'm having especially hard time doing enough dps.

Another perhaps niche situation is that for a lot of disabled people, gaming tends to be focused on familiarity and habit. Some people learn to use some weapons better and have a hard time being told to swap, leading to decreased damage output. For example, I've mentioned before, but I have a "comfort" loadout which isn't exactly the best dps-wise; Witherhoard, Funnelweb and my crafted auto-loading rocket launcher. I can quickly swap between these weapons and minimise reload time (reloading bothers me a lot). If I have to take something else, I start messing up. I swap in the wrong order, I missclick things, I miss shots. This increases anxiety. For some, it may straight up not be possible to use "better" weapons instead of their own comfort weapons that they are familiar with; various motor skill issues and various disabilities tied to hands and hand-eye coordination can make it almost entirely impossible for someone to just switch to the meta loadout. This means that someone is likely to be using a less optimal dps option due to their disability. Div debuff helps make that person not entirely useless because the debuff increases damage of their less optimal loadout.

It may seem like these situations are few and far between and not very common, but they are not. There are hundreds of other situations that I don't even know about that affect players with various disabilities and ruin their experience with the game AND their chances to attempt certain activities, as well as to improve. If you can't start, you can't train to improve. A lot of accessibility options aren't even needed forever! Sometimes people move past them, but they are essential at least for the beginning to ease people into the activity and help them while they're struggling the most.

With that said, I don't really think slightly nerfind the debuff percentage would be very noticeable. It currently gives 30% debuff. If it were 20% or 15%, it would still be a useful weapon for the purpose of accessibility and those that need it would likely not notice a significant difference. I don't see how that nerf is entirely needed, but if so, decreasing the debuff % is fine with me. Outright removing it entirely not so much.

Again, not something I think is an incredible priority; Divinity is still a special raid exotic and only about 5% of the population even have it (and who knows how many are using it regularly; I use mine very sporadically). But if Bungie has data to prove that it needs tuning (and they said they will look into it long before this drama), slightly decreasing the debuff wouldn't be the worst outcome. I wish this discussion didn't start by people insisting that "aim should matter more" and "not everyone should be able to complete activities." It leaves an incredibly sour taste in everyone's mouth. By telling people that Divinity "trivialises aim," those who have a hard time raiding even with Div can feel understandably upset and excluded from the conversation, especially when their "bad aim" is a result of something they have no control over.

One thing that I agree with Salta over this is when he said that he thinks raid boss health would need to be looked at if they remove the debuff entirely. Some bosses really have unreasonably high health and it makes boss fights tedious with very little variety in what can be done during the dps phase. People also feel like Divinity is necessary for those bosses because they don't want to do 4 rotations of mechanics to finish the boss; prolonged encounters increase the chance of fatigue and deaths, wasting rezes and leading to wipes and having to start over. This is also especially problematic for people with disabilities who may need more breaks and may have a hard time focusing on an encounter for too long. Any option that shortens the strain on players with disabilities is good in my book.

I hope this helps and that it isn't too much to read through! There's a lot more stuff that I haven't touched on at all. If anyone wants to add their reasons for how Div helps them, feel free to leave a reply!

#destiny 2 #divinity drama #ask #long post #wanted to be as thorough as possible without having to write an even longer essay #i'm sure i missed plenty of other obvious reasons as well #we can also include other things here like aging which isn't exactly a disability but is inevitable and affects people in a similar way #you WILL lose coordination as you age. no one can escape this. it WILL take more time to adapt to new things as you get older #not to mention other factors like hardware (not up to date PCs and older consoles) and internet connection #for all intents and purposes div helps the vast majority of the players even if we completely ignore disability #but since this is primarily about disability that's the focus here

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