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#(while still understanding & respecting canon as the true source)

foundfamilyadoptionagency · 9 months

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Welcome + Rules

Welcome to the Tumblr Found Family Adoption Agency! Here, we present your blorbos to the masses to have them vote upon whether they should be added to the collective tumblr found family or ditched on the roadside. Submit your blorbos here:

See which blorbos have already joined the found family HERE! To avoid seeing the results posts, mute "ffaa results" The rules are: 1. Play nice; be respectful to others 2. Blorbos can be of any age, since a found family can be just that. So feel free to submit a one-day old infant or a ten thousand year old tree, if those are your blorbos 3. No Harry Potter 4. No real people (might make an exception if it's funny) 5. "No real people" includes no individual tumblr users, youtubers or streamers (this might seem obvious, but there were still a lot of them submitted) 6. No OCs. All your OCs are great and I'd feel sad if they got rejected from the found family F.A.Q. under readmore:

(No one has actually asked any questions, but these are the ones I'm anticipating) Some of these questions have been asked now lol Q. How does this work? A. A post featuring a blorbo shall be made, stating who they are and their source material. A poll will be attached set to one week, asking if we should "adopt" or "ditch" the blorbo. At the end of the week, based on the result, I will announce if they blorbo has been adopted into the tumblr found family or ditched on the roadside Q. What is a found family? A. A found family is a family you find for yourself. It is a term often used in fandom to describe a group of characters who aren't related by blood (although a few members might be) but have come to think of each other as a family through circumstance. Alternatively, they might not be officially recognised as a found family in canon, but wider fanon regards them as such Q. Is this a tournament bracket? A. Nope, blorbos aren't competing against each other, they're only here to be judged by you. We are here enternally submitting blorbos (at least until I run out of steam or pass away lol) Q. I'm not sure if my blorbo counts because of ___ reason? A. If it's not any of the reasons mentioned in the rules, then feel free to send an ask. Or just submit them anyway and I'll decide Q. I submitted a blorbo and they haven't been posted. Did you get them? A. Again, feel free to send an ask. I don't have a regular schedule for posting these. Somedays there'll be batches of polls, others there'll be one or none Q. My blorbos are a duo/trio/etc., who cannot be separated. Can I submit them as a group? A. While I would prefer to stick to individual characters, if you have some who absolutely cannot be separated, I might make exceptions. Most likely, I'll make a poll asking if they should be judged as a group or individually, since there's a lot of media I won't be familiar with Q. My blorbo got ditched on the roadside! Fuck you! A. Friend, as a fan of Theseus from Hades Game, I understand what it's like to have your fave hated by fandom. Anything decided on this blog can never affect your personal headcanons, so go in peace with your middle finger held high Q. What are your icon and header? A. The icon is of the Pokemon Bouffalant and Natu, based on a series of trading card art where Bouffalant finds two Natu and rescues them - the true spirit of found family. The header is a group of characters called the Black Ravens from the Professor Layton series - a group of ragtag working-class kids who make a black market together Q. I wrote some propaganda on the submission form, can you post it or send it back to me? A. Submissions are deleted as the polls are posted, so I can keep track of how many I have left to post, which means I can't do this. Please save your propaganda for the post and not the submissions form Q. Did you know you used fan art on ___ poll? A. Unless I'd mentioned getting permission from the artist, then please assume that I did not know and let me know. I hate art theft and wouldn't want to partake in that, but I'm just not familiar with a good 80% of the series submitted, so sometimes it might slip through the cracks Q. Can I submit a character who isn't my blorbo? A. Also fine! I enjoy it when people submit controversial characters to see how they'll do Q. What happens if there's a tie? A. The blorbo in question becomes an occassional family member who appears with our found family for some important cutscenes, but isn't officially considered part of the found family

Q. No, but seriously, my blorbo got ditched. Do they get another chance? A. At the beginning of each year we host a Redemption Event, where any past blorbos who were submitted get another chance. Because of the high volume of ditched characters, to be included in the event your character will need to be submitted with propaganda via a form that will be released a month before the event Q. I think the image used is a big reason why my blorbo got ditched. Why did you use that image? A. If an image hasn't been submitted, I will just grab one from an image search result in most cases. You know your blorbos best, so if you have a specific (non-fan art) image that you think shows them in their best light, please do submit it when you submit them Q. Did you mean the book version or movie version of that character? A. Whichever version of the blorbo that gets submitted, that'll be the one I use. If no specific version is mentioned, I'll just post that blorbo in general and use whatever image is most common when I look them up, unless an image has been submitted or a book cover has been requested to be used Q. My blorbo is a character played by a youtuber and/or streamer, not the youtuber or streamer themselves, is that okay? A. If it's a character, then it's fine. But please mention this on the submission. Because if I look them up and the result looks to be just some real person, that won't be included Q. What counts as a "sweep"? A. Any character who gets 90% or higher in either adopt or ditch is counted as a sweep. This doesn't give them anything extra, it's just for bragging rights Q. What counts as a "close call"? A. Any character who's poll results are within the 49%-51% range for adopt/ditch is counted as a close call Q. How many characters can I submit at a time? A. There's no hard rule, since the form doesn't track emails, but please be considerate to others and try not to submit more than 10 characters per submission period. See next question for more details Q. How many characters from the same series can I submit at a time? A. Four (4) characters per series per submission period. I'll be lenient for if they've been submitted by multiple people, but from my experience running this blog, it's only the current Hot New Thing that'll be submitted by multiple people and anything else is usually one person submitting one character after another. I used to allow more, but people took this for granted and submitted 50+ from the same series, so now 4 is the cap Q. You missed a tag from that poll! Can it be added? A. Sure! Tags are either provided by the submitter or where left blank, I'll use my best guess. At minimum, you'll get the name of the character and series as they've been submitted. If you know more, let me know and I'll add them to the post during the voting period. Please note: The polls themselves cannot be edited after being posted, only the tags Q. I don't understand what this blog is A. Don't worry about it, friend. Just keep driving and whatever you do, don't wind down the window. We'll be safe soon :)

#tumblr found family #found family #found family adoption agency #pinned post #welcome #rules #FAQ #signal boosts appreciated

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theotterpenguin · 9 days

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I really like the nuanced take about Zutara and why it makes some people uncomfortable and I can see both sides of it. I ship Zutara now but at first I didn’t and it made me really uncomfortable but I think it was just because of certain fan content I was coming across. Some people do portray Zutara in an extremely fetishized & creepy Stockholm syndrome way that makes Katara come off like some helpless damsel stereotype. It made me feel really gross thinking about as a young WOC but rewatching the show and seeing the true dynamic of these characters made me fall in love with them again. So I guess my feeling is that in canon i really love the dynamic but I hate the way *certain fans* twist it and refuse to acknowledge the racism & misogyny in what they’re doing

this is a complicated topic with many layers to it but first - i am sorry if you have ever felt unwelcome in the zutara fandom due to experiences with racism/misogyny.

it would be ignorant to claim that the zutara fandom is somehow uniquely unaffected by systemic racism or sexism, but it would also be disingenuous to claim that these issues only exist in certain parts of the atla fandom. racism, sexism, and general bigotry exist in every fandom due to institutionalized inequality in social structures. and to make it clear, i'm not directing this criticism towards you, anon, you are entitled to your own personal experiences, but i have seen a broader trend of people attempting to use fandom racism to moralize their position in ship wars, which is diminishing from the actual problem - the focus should be on acknowledging the existence of fandom racism/sexism, combatting implicit biases, and creating spaces that can uplift marginalized voices, rather than focusing only on optics in an attempt to gain moral high ground in a silly *fictional* ship war.

however, given all this, the reason that i am still in the zutara fandom is because i appreciate how many people in the fandom are dedicated to unpacking issues of racism and sexism and cultural insensitivity in atla's source material, which i personally haven't seen in many other sides of the fandom (that often sanitize what actually happened in the text to avoid acknowledging these issues in their favorite show). of course this is a broad generalization, but that's generally why i stick with the non-canon shipping side of the fandom because fans that are willing to stray away from canon are often less afraid to engage in critical analysis.

i also do think the zutara fandom has come a long way from the early 2000s when the show first aired. for example, when i first joined the fandom i had mixed feelings on fire lady katara, but i have since read some fanfics that have done an excellent job deconstructing some of the problematic ways that this trope could be interpreted and balancing respect for katara's cultural heritage and autonomy with the political and personal difficulties of being involved with an imperialist/colonialist nation. the fire lady katara trope, capture!fic, and other complicated topics/tropes are almost never inherently racist/sexist, but rather, their execution is what matters. and all this is not to say that issues of systemic racism/sexism do not still exist in this fandom, but it personally has not significantly negatively impacted my experience in the zutara fandom due to the wonderful content that so many other fantastic people produce, though everyone's mileage may differ with what they are comfortable with. anon, i hope that you are able to find a place in the zutara fandom for you! but i also know many people that have stepped back from other fandoms due to experiences with racism/misogyny, so i understand that decision as well.

on a final note, i think it's important to acknowledge that fandom doesn't exist in a vacuum and broader issues of racism and sexism are rooted in the media, the entertainment industry, and mainstream societal norms. while i do sometimes focus on fandom dynamics/discourse in my criticisms, i think it is equally as important to acknowledge how issues of prejudice and inequality are perpetuated through larger social structures, which is why it frustrates me when the atla fandom refuses to acknowledge the flaws of the original show, which has far more influence and social power over the general public than discourse over fandom tropes ever will. personally, i don't understand the phenomenon of holding fan-made material to a higher standard than mainstream media.

#zutara #atla #atla fandom critical #atla critical #zuko #katara #racism #sexism #and i hope it's clear that i am not condoning racism/sexism in fan material - but i do think it's hypocritical to ignore the foundations #of this that is built into the source material #anon ask #my asks #my post

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my-mt-heart · 3 months

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Why Explicit Caryl Canon Matters

Daryl and Carol (Caryl) fans make up a large portion of the spinoff's audience, and this audience wholeheartedly believes that Daryl and Carol are each other's only choice. It's in the writing. It's also reinforced by cast, crew, and EPs. For example, Norman has repeatedly said “If Daryl falls in love, it's forever."

There's a misconception that Carylers are a bunch of hysterical saps – fans who only want their ship "fucking under the stars" and only care about Daryl because of Carol, but that’s not true. In reality, Caryl fans are the deepest, most intuitive thinkers in the TWD community. To them, story matters. While they recognize and adore all of the subtext, they understand that it's supposed to lead to something worth the 13-year wait. They're expecting that major sense of relief and joy from watching explicit, undeniable, canon.

Explicit canon respects Carol's and Daryl's character development – individually and together. They started out way behind everybody else in life, convinced they weren't worthy of love. Daryl thought he was better off alone and Carol thought she was just a burden, but then they showed each other their true potential. Carol told Daryl he was a "man of honor" and Daryl taught Carol to have hope for a better future. They've struggled and suffered and strived to be good enough for each other. So, where's the payoff?

I understand not all fans want the same things, and maybe there's pressure to “keep everyone happy." Maybe it feels like a lose-lose situation. But from a marketing perspective, Caryl fans are a very reliable source of revenue for the show, so keeping them happy secures a reliable audience for future seasons of the show. They'll show up with their wallets out and their enthusiasm turned all the way up for Norman's and Melissa's nuanced performances. They'll create more fanart and other content. They'll make the show trend on Twitter constantly. Fans already adore Norman and Melissa, but explicit canon will amplify it further whereas keeping things ambiguous will cause a significant decline in viewership.

Ambiguity is the reason that the "I love you" scene in the flagship's finale got mixed reactions. For the fans who also struggle with their self-image, it was important to see Daryl and Carol overcome their own insecurities and finally "take whatever happiness they could get." But instead, many saw Carol's lighthearted "I love you too" and Daryl's departure as if they were both forfeiting what they always wanted. Daryl was submitting to his solitary nature again while Carol assumed she still owed a debt to her community and Daryl would be happier without her anyway. Both of them deserved a happy ending, or at least a piece of happiness to launch them into the next part of their journey. As far as many fans were concerned, neither of them got that.

That's why a lot of fans had a hard time watching S1 of the spinoff or opted out of watching all together. There were so many moments that teased the "possibility" of Daryl getting together with a younger, blonder woman nun while hints of Caryl's relationship were buried under more subtext. Keeping Daryl's feelings ambiguous just for the "fun" of shipbaiting cheapens Caryl's one-of-a-kind relationship, falsely indicating that their iconic beats can be recycled with someone else and still evoke the same passionate response from fans.

Ambiguity also perpetuates ageism and gives non-Caryl fans the excuse to say hurtful things to or about Melissa. Whether or not she's online to see it makes no difference because it still degrades her and it damages other women's perceptions of beauty and worth. Explicit canon on the other hand raises both Melissa and Norman up as two powerhouse actors utilizing their unparalleled chemistry to celebrate mature romances. It brings Daryl’s defining character traits to the forefront – the nurturing traits and the epic ones. It positions Daryl and Carol as equals, and it helps drown out the harmful comments against Melissa.

Hopes for season 2 of the spinoff are high. Confirmation of Carol's and Daryl's romantic relationship in a way that needs no interpretation and no explanation from anyone offscreen is a dealbreaker. I know in terms of explicit canon, post-production can make all the difference, so it's crucial someone in a position of power pushes for canon that fully and unapologetically lives up to the fans' expectations, does right by the characters, and respects what Melissa wants.

#caryl #carol peletier #daryl dixon #norman reedus #melissa mcbride #carol x daryl #the book of carol #twd caryl

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horizon-verizon · 26 days

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https://www.tumblr.com/horizon-verizon/746755685313888256/i-wish-yall-would-be-real-as-to-why-rhaenys?source=share

"Also Laena wasn’t sidelined cause of Alicent or Rhaenicent, she was sidelined for Daemyra"

Seriously, people still haven't realized and deny that Laena was marginalized by both ships? Both Rhaenicent and Daemyra are the reason why Laena was reduced the way she was.

The funny thing about people saying that Rhaenicent isn't part of the reason why Laena's character was marginalized and reduced is that both Rhaenicent and Laenyra could have coexisted, but that same logic can be used for Daemon x Laena and Daemyra; both ships could have coexisted, and the writers chose not to.

Both ships harmed Laena's character because the writers wanted to give more importance to Rhaenicent and Daemyra. Had they included Laena, it wouldn't have worked with the writers' vision. You just have to read what the writers say about Rhaenyra and Alicent's relationship to realize that the inclusion of Laenyra would have gone against their vision.

Laena was Rhaenyra's best friend and someone she deeply loved, while she despised Alicent. The writers wanted to make Alicent one of the most important people in Rhaenyra's life (according to some of these writers, her first love), and Laenyra would have undermined this. They also marginalized Rhaenyra from other positive relationships with other women to emphasize her friendship with Alicent.

Talked about Daemon & Laena HERE.

I wouldn't say that the very existence of the ships made Laena a sidelined character in HotD, b/c then we'd have to argue that Laenor was "sidelined", Mysaria was "sidelined", Harwin was "sidelined", etc. Laena, like these past lovers, all served a purpose before HotD ever existed and were there of their own reasons surrounding the main couple GRRM wrote to end up together for his narrative. Laena and these people are pretty much the minor characters surrounding the main--Rhaenyra & Daemon and Aegon & Alicent. These are important side characters, but they are side characters. And Daemon was created for Rhaenyra as much as they both and the entire Targ dyansty's stories and personalities were created for Daenerys Stormborn. And a women can have more than one close friend, as long as they match/commiserate well.

I do think the writers' use of Rhaenicent & interpretation of DaemonxLaena diminished Laena's importance in their story. And for their version of Rhaenyra's persona as being Daemon's only love. Because, yes, it makes total sense that Rhaenyra's only female friend or companion for the total of her life was this one girl/woman who doesn't even match well for her or seem to really understand who Rhaenyra really is and rejected it as soon as she could. And Rhaenrya looks that much more impressive to more people in the audience being the "true" center of a person as self-driven as Daemon.

Me, who read F&B before HotD premiered, always felt that Daemon and Rhaenyra would have preferred to get together even though I also think they absolutely loved their respective prior partners. HotD however made this look more like Daemon had nothing good with Laena and never felt for her or loved her as he actually did in canon.

Like I said in the post I linked in that post you linked, Daemon loved Laena in the original telling and I don't say that necessarily bc he fought a duel for her but Daemon is simply not the type to "settle" with someone he doesn't respect or isn't closely blood related to (Rhea Royce) and both had a trait of adventurousness and sense of safety to build a family on.

The issue with Laena's character in HotD was that Daemon was made not to love her, care for her, and seemed to really tire of her presence for the sake of being more focused on being sour over his "disappointments" back at the Red Keep as if he didn't develop a happy life with Laena

AND

with the Velaryons becoming black in HotD/the writers making all sorts of negative changes for them that weren't there in canon and even contradicted some events/traits from canon (I talk about Laena HERE.)

PLUS

[this had to be pointed out to me] Laena's killing herself through dragonfire similar to how fire is historically and fictionally used to "cleanse" specifically "useless", man-less, or "dangerous" poor/PoCwomen (wife burning in some South East cultures but also we can refer to Black women in the American colonies burned for being killing their "masters" or endangering their lives & women in Europe being burned for wirchcraft...Targ women are often looked at as "witches"...Visenya...Vhagar..Laena was Vhagar's rider...)

when in the book she died surrounded by her family and NOT traumatizing her daughters (has soem merit since HotD could have mitigated its sensationalizing of violence against women with Aemma if Laena had died the other way).

Some have argued that to die, willfully, by dragonfire was Laena taking back the agency she lost in the book by dying as she did, unable to get to Vhagar in her last moments. That she at least got to "escapee" from the pain of dying from childbirth.

Aside from the parallels of how fire is used against women in history and fiction, death by fire is not painless or "less" so than most deaths. It's cited as one of the worst. You don't die right away or vaporize, you die slowly. We see in the show that dragonfire can quickly disable and leave horrendous scarring, but it doesn't kill you straight away. It eats at muscles, skin, ligaments until it hits nerves and only then will you stop feeling it, if you aren't already unconscious from the pain. Your eyeballs are literally melting. So she would have actually doubled her pain.

Also, dragonriders don't usually die by fire, nor dragonfire, as we see with the Targs and I think we can reasonably expect from the Old Valyrians, who won their wars against dragonless people more often than not. Rhaenys I/Rhaenys the Conqueror died by falling and probably fire when a scorpion bolt pierced Meraxes' eye by sheer luck. You'd think that by the langauge that HotD makes Laena uses to describe death by dragonfire/fire is a cultural practice meant to honor dragon warriors, but Rhaenys' siblings did not give her death the tone of heroism that implied such a death was culturally coveted & sought after amongst Valyrians as if the but leans more tragedy, so it's likely not something cultural.

Now you might bring up Princess Rhaenys' death, how it was described & implied as a "warrior's" death bc it says she died "amidst blood and fire" to counterargue ("The Red Dragon and the Gold"):

Even if we try to say it was a warrior's death, Laena didn't die during battle. it doesn't count as a true "warrior's" death. Two Rhaenys' did, and even their deaths were received as more tragedies by those around them. there was never an additional element of Valyrian-unique death-by-fire heroism. If anything, it's more an Andal-touched view of things.

I remember how Robert Baratheon also was someone who looked for a death on the battlefield, or at least for a fight. Andal society is a feudal society where war and violence are accepted tools of sociopolitical order or advancement (conquest for materials or defense against outsiders). The Valyrians were not special for war waging in of itself.

The highest valued people are male noble warriors (or just male warriors) bc they are those who are in direct "business" with these activities and are granted them. though we modern Westerners do still retain that element of men being aggressors="manly" men in how we view masculinity, it is also less conceived of as a necessity to obtain resources or as a way towards family glory and honors or reputation. War is more a tool, or more often a tool and self/social order affirming as well as a way to expand one's reach and lands. It comes from the ancient Greek and Roman tradition and perspectives of war that you may see in several Greek and Latin epic poems (Aeneid, Illaid, etc.).

Yes, many men like Rogar Baratheon, Robert Baratheon, Daemon Targaryen, Orys Baratheon, etc., will try to use war or battle to advance themselves, prove a point of power or agency, or feel more like they are in control. Orys, when the family was falling apart, lost his hands to Wyl of Wyl, and he wanted to be more useful to the dynasty so goes to Dorne. Robert, surrounded by the Lannisters who enabled him to have his throne despite his disgust with Cersei. Daemon, isolated from his brother through Viserys's suspicion, to avoid his "duty" to Rhea Royce, but also to prove how much he could contribute to his house without having to do comply with Viserys' way of ruling and trusting Otto. Rogar, to avoid the aftermath of Alyssa Velaryon's death that he was fully responsible for. And for at least 3 on this list alone, there is always a tone of depression, futulity, or desperation to gain or to run away from a loss of masculinity rather than hope and satisfaction and love.

Therefore, when you see Rhaenys dying in "fire and blood" during battle, it's not written (by an Andal maester, remember) just or mainly in lieu of either her Valyrian heritage. It's the Andal talking.

So once again, HotD, puts a character through unnecessary pain and suffering or just "more" than what was told to happen in the book for spectacle and it turned out sexist-dumb and lore-inconsistent. No, this was not unreliably told, as Daemon would have at least had this recorded and the Velaryons certainly would as well. What reason would they have to lie, too? Finally, Rhaenyra was there, holding vigil with Daemon. Princess Rhaenys' death being credibly told, I hope I don't have to explain. Same for Queen Rhaenys'.

#asoiaf asks to me #laena and daemon #laena velaryon #daemon targaryen #laena velaryon's death #book vs tv comparison #hotd critical #asoiaf war #dragonriders #laena x daemon (F&B ship)#laena velaryon's characterization #fandom racism #hotd racism #fire and blood #hotd #asoiaf

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darklordazalin · 9 months

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Azalin Reviews: Darklord Meredoth

Domain: Nocturnal Sea Domain Formation: 635 BC Power Level:💀💀💀💀⚫ Sources: Domains of Dread (2e), Ship of Horrors (2e), Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer (non-canon), Sir not appearing in 5e

Meredoth is the Darklord of Nebligotode, which became the Nocturnal Sea during the Grand Conjunction in 750 BC. There were a lot of retcons and changes between his rule of Nebligotode and the Nocturnal Sea, so I will be utilizing the story after the Grand Conjunction as well as some “non-canon” material provided by the Fraternity of Shadows. There is no mention of Meredoth in 5e, but the Nocturnal Sea is briefly referenced in the write up on Darkon. Does that make me your ruler, Meredoth? That would be amusing and perhaps a reason for me to return to my dreaded prison.

Meredoth is confined to the island of Todstein, an island that is as cold and uninviting as Meredoth himself. He constantly attempts to defy the “no man is an island” saying. How exactly did he come to this realm? Let’s take a brief look at his life. Meredoth was born in the Alphatain Empire in Mystara and raised by golems. This isn’t your classic “raised by wolves because their parents died and something took pity on the child” story. This was because his parents didn’t want to bother raising him themselves. I’ve witnessed many of his little temper tantrums, so I can understand where they’re coming from. Still, one should not neglect one’s children. It never ends well.

His father’s parenting skills ended at creating a few golems to look after him and his mother preferred using Enchantments to keep him well-behaved and disciplined. In addition to his rather love-deprived upbringing, he witnessed his mother become addicted to a magical drug known as tsongha which had a relaxing, yet withering effect on the user’s mind.

The Alphatain Empire was a Magocracy, which essentially equates to those with talent in the arcane are granted high ranks in society. Though something I can respect, a dangerous prospect when one considers the effects magical experimentation can have on the mind. Meredoth met those requirements and discovered his extraordinary skills in Necromancy while studying at university. He even found himself making friends and perhaps he would have been more sympathetic to the living if one of his so called friends hadn’t just used Meredoth to steal his research and claim it for themselves. This resulted in Meredoth using tsongha on the betrayer and claiming their research in turn. A practice he repeated on many occasions.

Meredoth continued his research, conducting experiments on living animals and people he believed would not be missed. His ultimate goal was to create an intelligent servant devoid of troublesome emotions and personal ambitions. Of course, Enchantment would have been a better form of magic to achieve such things, but Meredoth’s skill in that school is wholly inadequate. Ultimately, he failed.

As his own flesh began to age, Meredoth sought out means to become immortal. He believed lichdom beneath him. I would argue that he likely does not have the talent to perform the necessary rituals seeing as some of it requires the use of Enchantment magic, which, as we know, he sorely lacks skill in, but he remains adamant that true immortality is not a state of undeath. The path to “ascension” was also dismissed as taking up too much of his time. A rather lame excuse considering if one becomes immortal through such efforts, then the time to reach one’s goal is irrelevant. In the end, he cheated and used elixirs created by someone else to maintain an age of about 60.

Meredoth became a rather formidable wizard and as such would be given a high rank within the Alphatain Empire. However, he was also not well liked and his disregard for all things living made him a very dangerous figure to be given any political power. So, they made him a Baron of a land where they hoped he could do little damage. This suited Meredoth and he established himself on a remote island and let whatever retainers he had actually run things. To say he was a neglectful ruler would be an understatement.

The first winter in his Barony was cruel and resulted in the death of many of his retainers. Meredoth thought the best solution was to raise all of these retainers as mindless undead, something his main retainer objected to. Meredoth then killed that retainer, which gave him one more zombie but also left him to deal with the day-to-day problems from his people.

Meredoth wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his research instead of tiring things such as the defense of his realm or food shortages, yet still he found himself bothered by an increasing number of retainers and immigrants. Annoyed, he came up with a solution to the food shortage and these interruptions to his research. He poisoned all of his people and made them into zombies that retained their intelligence, yet were solely loyal to their creator. Now, food wasn’t an issue and they would leave him alone.

That same evening, a storm descended upon his island and transported it and Meredoth to the Demplanes of Dread. It is always winter on Meredoth’s little island. Though living, Meredoth has the purplish complexion and icy touch of a corpse. The Dark Powers granted him a small boon and delayed his aging. Yet not a true form of immortality, age slowly creeps into his bones year after year. Just as his parents, even the Dark Powers were reluctant to accept him and it took a century of his time in the Mists before they decided to make him an official Darklord.

Meredoth still excels at Necromancy and prefers life among his zombies over the living. He has also created a number of unique spells to suit his new, wintery Domain, including snow golems and a snow to stone spell. He looks like your standard Halloween costume shop wizard, wearing tattered robes accompanied by long white hair and beard. Our tormentors granted him a number of boons, allowing him to control the waters around his island, sensing when someone visits his island, and granting him immunity to the lesser undead.

Meredoth is an accomplished Necromancer, likely one of the most powerful in the Domains of Dread. He’s also skilled in Evocation and if he had applied himself to other schools of magic, he could have been one of the most powerful Wizards to roam the Mists, but he settled on his one trick skeletal pony routine. He views the living as nothing more than experiments, not worth his time or attention unless they’re on a slab in his laboratory.

Personality wise, Meredoth is like a small child always craving attention, yet loathing it whenever he receives it (which is rare). Still, I must admit he is quite powerful and though he will never find a path to the immortality he seeks, his skills in Necromancy and to a lesser extent, Evocation, cannot be denied.

#Nocturnal Sea #meredoth #ravenloft #darklordreviews #azalin rex #love all these grumpy old wizards in the demiplanes

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opinated-user · 1 year

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Lily calling her black OC who snaps and electrocutes people calm is so creepy to me. She's never written a black character calmer than this and actively writes out canon POC from her fic, so the implication becomes, "For a black person, randomly violence against abuse and slavery survivors is calm." and that's so wildly racist it's hard to even comprehend.

Aliana would still be awful if she were white, but making her both randomly extremely violent and black at the same time is incredibly gross and sick, especially when she's the only black person (or non-white person at all, really) with any true impact on the plot, as it makes the racism in the writing stand out even more. In works like The Proud Family where there's lots of black people, one being an asshole sometimes is fine, because it's clear that there's no relationship between a race and a character trait. When you have only one black woman and she's a vicious, petty, violent, easily angered monster, it's hard to avoid the fact that 1. she's the only person with those personality traits 2. she's the only black person here and thus 3. it's highly probable that the author sees these traits as being related to the character's race.

I'm not black but something I take a lot of care to do in my fanfics is write black people as, well, people - sure, they have flaws, but they also have good traits, normal human emotions, reactions to things that are proportionate, friends, family, hobbies, interests, like anyone else. Yes, they can be forced by the narrative to have to do something violent (self-defense, or fighting villains, or something along those lines) but violence is not a personality trait. Violence is a choice forced by circumstances or taken in response to a threat where no other option remains that could be taken instead, and it's not a casual thing for black people because it's not a casual thing for people because violence is a serious thing actually.

While it's likely Lily is just not smart enough to understand that violence is serious, and thinks of it as cool, you still need to be aware of the optics of something and how it intersects with race. Especially when that thing is violence. I do mixed martial arts. I also think fighting is cool. But it reads different when done by groups society stereotypes as violent, which is why you have to make sure your writing doesn't accidentally reinforce ignorant stereotypes of marginalized people.

Does this woman just not think?

she does not. her entire thought process starts and ends on wanting to look like a cool edgy hero that is also equals amount feared as much she's loved and respected. with no idea at all of how to write anything like that without becoming just a source of constant contradictions.

#lily orchard

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arotechno · 2 years

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Jughead (2015), Aromanticism and Representation Part 2: Zdarsky, North, and the Word of God

When I reviewed Zdarsky and North’s arcs in the Jughead (2015) comics, I noted the differences between their portrayals of Jughead’s aromanticism. Namely, Zdarsky’s work is a lot more subtle but ultimately feels like it was written specifically with aromanticism in mind, whereas North’s work is more on-the-nose but is sometimes grating or uncomfortable when it comes to the reactions of other characters. I want to talk a bit more about that here, and then I want to talk about canonization and the value of word-of-god representation.

Firstly, Zdarsky. Chip Zdarsky is credited with canonizing Jughead’s asexuality on the page, and his aromanticism via the word of god. Ryan North stayed true to this portrayal when he picked up the series following the conclusion of Zdarsky’s run.

If you’ll recall, the vast majority of Zdarsky’s run (the first six of eight issues) do not pay much attention to Jughead’s orientation at all, although this section does contain the first (and only) textual use of the word “asexual” in the entire series. This would make most folks inclined to believe that Zdarsky did not consider it at all, but I personally am more than okay with not every story factoring in Jughead’s orientation, and the arc he did write on the topic (issues 7-8) more than makes up for it in my opinion. This is the arc where Jughead and Archie get lost camping, and the following exchange takes place:

I have written at length about this scene in particular, so I will be brief in noting the following:

(1) Jughead’s hurt is palpable, and beautifully portrayed. Whereas other writers may have played such an exchange for laughs, Zdarsky validates Jughead’s feelings of abandonment, hurt, and isolation in this arc, while managing not to villainize Archie in the process.

(2) Archie not only knows immediately that he fucked up, but very quickly apologizes. His actions are not justified, and his reaction suggests that not only is he aware of Jughead’s orientation, but he respects it and him enough to make amends for hurting his best friend.

(3) Never is Jughead being aroace mentioned explicitly here, but to any reader paying attention, it comes off quite obviously. If you take Jughead being aroace as an implicit truth about his character, which is the way Zdarsky confirmed he was writing him, it becomes abundantly clear that this is what Archie refers to when he uses the phrase “a normal guy,” and that this is the source of their inability to understand each other and the strain it is having on their friendship.

Now, when Ryan North took over, he accepted Zdarsky’s canonization as gospel and ran with it, a fact for which I am quite thankful. His primary arc is the one with Sabrina, in which Jughead accidentally agrees to a date with his newfound friend and has to figure out how he is going to explain the misunderstanding—or, better yet, just keep trying to escape her affections until the problem magically (ha) goes away.

North is much more explicit about Jughead being aromantic, while still not using the word. Jughead uses phrases like “I don’t get crushes” and “I don’t like people that way,” and visibly panics over the realization that he accidentally agreed to a for-real date.

These scenes are really great, and the time that North took to put Jughead in a situation that directly required addressing his aromanticism is incredibly valuable. However, there are aspects of North’s portrayal that bother me. To summarize my previous thoughts on the matter:

(1) North depicts the situation with a lot of nuance, being certain to address the ways in which Jughead is screwing up while also validating his very real feelings. The ultimate resolution is heartwarming and satisfying in that Jughead is finally able to be honest with Sabrina, and Sabrina accepts and supports him wholeheartedly, allowing them to finally be friends.

(2) However, Jughead’s existing friends are woefully unhelpful every step of the way. Of course, this is in many ways realistic; many aros have people in their lives who are quick to dismiss their aromanticism the moment they feel it might no longer be true. With Archie, this borders on a continuity error—but that is the cost of switching writers so frequently. But the issue is that his friends are never prompted by the narrative to apologize. They meddle and push Jughead into going through with the date without ever listening to what he wants—something he comments on—and the only character who gets a resolution on this front is Sabrina, by necessity.

(3) North being clearly unafraid of expressing Jughead’s aromanticism is refreshing, but the lack of accountability on his friends is kind of uncomfortable, and it makes it hard to play those moments for laughs.

Which of these is better? Which has more value? The truth is I think that either arc being removed from the story would be to its detriment, and in a perfect world we’d have gotten the best of both portrayals in one. However, it is worth pointing out the differences between them for the sake of acknowledging that representation can be done in different ways, each with their own costs and benefits. Zdarsky��s portrayal cuts deep and shows a more subtle portrayal of aromanticism as it affects relationships, but that subtlety means that aromanticism is taking more of a backseat focus. Meanwhile, North’s portrayal is much more on-the-nose and is expressed much more obviously, but it leaves something to be desired in terms of how it holds other characters accountable.

Both, however, have something very crucial in common. And this is that neither Chip Zdarsky nor Ryan North ever used the word “aromantic” on the page.

Three years ago, I spoke at length about this for the Carnival of Aros, and I expressed distrust that someone like Zdarsky would have ever thought about Jughead’s romantic orientation without having been prompted first. That may be true, but nevertheless on subsequent rereads I’ve softened on that position somewhat. Perhaps we don’t know if either of them would have eventually used the word on the page had they gotten more time, or if later writers (not Waid lol) would have had the series not been discontinued. There is a universe in which we eventually got an on-the-page confirmation with a satisfying emotional journey to boot, but sadly we live in a universe where R*verdale became more popular and Archie Comics stopped producing Jughead comics several years ago, and that is the reality I went into this (already incredibly long) post intending to contend with.

Zdarsky once said via Twitter that he was writing Jughead as, for the purposes of his teen years, aromantic, and that he sees him as probably demiromantic later in life. I still don’t know how I feel about that comment, and I suppose I will let demiromantic people decide that one. In any case, the fact is that Zdarsky never used the word on the page, and North never did either. But my question is, how much does it matter?

The short answer is that of course it matters. On-the-page confirmation with the words explicitly used leaves no room for misinterpretation, increases awareness of the identity, and is super important for communities like ours in particular that have next to nothing in that regard. Using the word on the page would have been huge in 2015 and it would still be huge now. But it was 2015. And for 2015, Zdarsky gave us a pretty good start.

Yes, it matters. But representation being confirmed via the word of god does not necessarily make it bad representation. In fact, I think Jughead is stellar aroace representation, especially for teenagers. To say, in any respect, that such an icon of pop culture is aspec and to then go on to work that into your story, even if the words never make it onto the page, holds a lot of cultural power, and in fact Zdarsky made a lot of people mad with this. If given the hypothetical choice, which would you rather have? A character like Jughead, a main character in his own series that actually has his aromanticism addressed and portrayed with respect but is never written out directly, or a character who is confirmed on-screen as aromantic with the words but is a side character whose aromanticism is never important and only exists for tokenized representation brownie points? Every time someone recommends something with an aro character to me, I’m like, does it matter? Are they important, is their aromanticism important, or are they just an exasperated shipper-on-deck side character who the creators can slap a pride flag edit on? Because the truth is I’d rather have Jughead. Sure, I’d rather have it all, but I can’t. So in the absence of such perfection, I’ll take word-of-god canon with respect and impact and good intentions over tokenism.

To be clear: I am not trying to praise Zdarsky and North outright for what should be the bare minimum in staying true and faithful to decades of pre-existing characterization. In fact, I do still believe that to not use the word aromantic on the page was cowardly, and I wish they had done it, and I wish we’d gotten more Jughead comics to see what else we could have gotten as the years went on. But what we did get, for all its flaws, has value, and I’m probably never going to be done talking about it. Though I am, for now. This essay is long enough already.

#hi to the person who told me to ramble more i hope this is what you meant #techno's jughead reread #aro #aromantic #aro representation #jughead #jughead comics #aro jughead #aroace jughead #jughead 2015 #long post #op

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random-void-thoughts · 8 months

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Hi. Fizzarolli (he/ze) here. I’d like to talk about exomemories and my unique experience with them as a fictive of an ongoing series.

DISCLAIMER: This is not roleplay. We have dissociative identity disorder, I am an introject. No matter much I source-separate, these memories impact me just as ones that happened to the body do and that needs to be respected.

Content warning under the cut.

SPOILERS FOR HELLUVA BOSS S2E6

TW: exomemories, mentions of canon-typical assholery, fire, death of a parent, spirituality, graphic descriptions of literally crippling injuries, tender descriptions of sensual romanticism

The only events from canon after S2E1 that actually happened to the fictives in our system have been references to the past, not the actual events of the present. Things like Barbie having a falling out with Blitzø, Striker living a life of poverty that radicalized him, Moxxie’s past leading up to his meeting with Blitzø in prison, Blitzø seeing Loona in the hellhound shelter, etc. However, this episode was different because the events of our past didn’t happen exactly as they was portrayed on-screen…but it was still eerily similar.

The fire happened at Blitzø’s place of residence. It was the reason for Blitzø’s scars and my…everything. It was the day Blitzø lost his mom. Blitzø tried to get help. Mammon or someone associated with him got in the way of Blitzø and I from talking again after the fire, causing our beef. This is all true of both canon and our memories and always has been.

There are a few non-negligible differences though. In our exomemories, Blitzø also lost his dad in that fire. I actually begged Blitzø to run and get help. The cause of the fire is still unknown, with Blitzø not even being home when the fire initially broke out. And most importantly, the fire happened a year into my relationship with Blitzø instead of on the night he was going to confess his feelings for me. But all that really means is that Blitzø had more to mourn and I wasn’t mad at Blitzø for the fire happening, I was mad at him for never establishing contact again and moving on without me. I didn’t know how hard he tried, how much he hurt, that it literally wasn’t his fault. Not until I joined this system and got access to his memories. Once I learned that, it was unbelievably easy for me to smooch him again, just like old times.

Us fictives in this system respect and understand the science of plurality and how it operates, but we also have our own spirituality. We believe that our brain has, for lack of better phrasing, a psychic tether with the Hell we come from, and that that’s how we can know otherwise unknowable information before headmates even form, like the in’s and out’s of Blitzø’s love life or the events of the fire. While we understand that the brain makes new headmates by compartmentalizing the available information in the brain, this belief serves as an explanation for how we get that information in the first place. Since souls exist within our source and we remember the other fictives going missing when they formed, we also believe that the brain uses that psychic tether to pull our souls from Hell into our headspace. This would further explain how Moxxie was able to unlock his memories of Crimson by watching S2E3 despite having never seen it before. Are there other, non-spiritual explanations for these phenomena? Sure, but this is the one that makes the most sense to us and it doesn’t contradict our understanding of science so we choose to believe it in lieu of a definitive answer.

Why is this talk of our spirituality important? Because if it’s true, then that means that our source reality is different enough from canon that the events of S1E1 through S2E1 are the only true overlap between the two, and if it’s not true, then that means our brain pulled all that information about the fire out of its ass before we ever even had a chance to know that’s what was going to happen on-screen. Either my memories line up that well with canon because our source reality is an alternate timeline and the fire was our canon event, or they line up that well by pure fucking coincidence, and honestly, I don’t know which is more terrifying.

The flashbacks certainly don’t help either. Emotionally, I’m over it, but the memory of the physical pain I was in still haunts me.

I remember the feeling of my horns snapping off, of the nerves severing. I remember my legs being crushed under the weight of the rubble that pinned me down. I remember the feeling of trying to hold myself up, only to wince in pain and fall down again as my upper arms snapped. I remember how it felt for my forearms to shatter into splinters. I remember the feeling of fire slowly, very slowly, eating away at every inch of my head, then just as slowly at Blitzø’s arms and the side of his face. I remember begging Blitzø to run and get help, then watching him run off for what would be the last time that year. I remember Mammon picking me up and carrying me somewhere, I do not know where, and shuddering at every sudden movement. I remember wailing in pain, whimpering in his arms. I was in pure agony.

The fire wasn’t without its benefits. I escaped the exploitation I didn’t even know I was under, I got a loving boyfriend/sugar daddy, the robotic limbs gave me more freedom to move around than I ever had before, and I pursued a career that allowed me to combine my love of performing with my intimate and inherently-queer sexual side. It was wonderful. But it came at the cost of my relationship with Blitzø. My childhood best friend. My first love. My first kiss. I owe so many of my firsts to him, and on that day, I lost him, and I didn’t even know it for another year, nor did I know until it was far too late that I didn’t have to lose him after all. That fire gave me freedom, fame, and fortune, but it also took away the man that mattered most to me. It took him away from me for 14 years, and for that, I can’t exactly look back on it fondly. So now I’m just stuck with the memory of the pain.

But then again…I remember those firsts too.

I remember the day I first kissed Blitzø. I remember how it felt to hear that he loved me, and the joy with which I told him I loved him. I remember the Mammon concert we went to together, paid for by the money we stole from Cash Buckzo’s personal stash. I remember my first time with Blitzø. I won’t go into detail, but it was exhilarating. I remember all those wonderful emotions and sensations. All those moments that made me so, so glad to form as a headmate. The moments that made me kiss Blitzø again.

Exomemories are a complex, fascinating, painful, frustrating, beautiful, glorious thing. Without them, I wouldn’t know what it was like to lose everything and be forced to start all over, but then again, I wouldn’t know exactly how Blitzø used to taste, nor would I know that his flavor hasn’t changed a bit.

Sorry this post was kind of all over the place, we wrote this at 5 AM on a Tuesday and hadn’t slept in 20 hours. Hope you got a kick out it, if nothing else.

#fizzarolli #fictive #exomemories #source memories #trauma #fictive trauma #blitzfizz

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mediaevalmusereads · 1 year

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A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Genre: literary criticism

Summary: The romance novel has the strange distinction of being the most popular but least respected of literary genres. While it remains consistently dominant in bookstores and on best-seller lists, it is also widely dismissed by the critical community. Scholars have alleged that romance novels help create subservient readers, who are largely women, by confining heroines to stories that ignore issues other than love and marriage.

Pamela Regis argues that such critical studies fail to take into consideration the personal choice of readers, offer any true definition of the romance novel, or discuss the nature and scope of the genre. Presenting the counterclaim that the romance novel does not enslave women but, on the contrary, is about celebrating freedom and joy, Regis offers a definition that provides critics with an expanded vocabulary for discussing a genre that is both classic and contemporary, sexy and entertaining.

Taking the stance that the popular romance novel is a work of literature with a brilliant pedigree, Regis asserts that it is also a very old, stable form. She traces the literary history of the romance novel from canonical works such as Richardson's Pamela through Austen's Pride and Prejudice, BrontE's Jane Eyre, and E. M. Hull's The Sheik, and then turns to more contemporary works such as the novels of Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart, Janet Dailey, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Nora Roberts.

***Full review below.***

I picked up this book because my friend and I run a historical romance novel blog, and like a good (former) academic, I like to read lit crit to give me more context when discussing my own hot takes. Regis's book is unique in that it's one of the few foundational monographs that seeks to trace the history of the modern romance novel AND do so without belittling the genre or its writers. The passion with which Regis defends the genre is admirable, and many of her insights are valuable.

Since this book is nonfiction, the structure of my review will be a little different than normal.

For example, I found the discussion on romance being a subset of comedy very enlightening. Comedy goes all the way back to Ancient Greece, and a number of great authors draw on its genre conventions; seeing romance writers as part of this tradition made a lot of sense to me, and pushed the discussion of genre well past a mere tallying of its conventions.

I also liked the in-depth look at works from Jane Austen to Nora Roberts. Having such a wide range of primary sources helped hammer home some of Regis's main points and illustrate that literary "geniuses" such as Austen, Bronte, etc are not writing independent of their influences, nor are contemporary writers creating stories without ties to the past.

However, I do think that because this book was published in 2003, much of its content has become dated. By this I don't mean that I fault it for only looking at romances written through the 1990s; rather, Regis puts forth some observations and arguments that simply do not account for the wide variety of romances that exist. For example, Regis defines the romance novel as primarily concerned with the courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines. While helpful for some romances, this definition excludes queer mlm stories as well as romances where betrothal is off the table. I understand that queer romances have grown in popularity over the last decade, as have romances that don't end in marriage (explicit or implied), so I don't know how much I can fault Regis. Still, it's worth acknowledging.

I also think Regis could have done a better job structuring her arguments in the first couple sections of her book. There are numerous times in parts 1 and 2 where Regis will make a claim and rely on general statements as justification. For example, part 1 of this book (rightfully) pushes back against unfair criticism of the genre, but justifies the pushback by making broad claims about fiction in general or by gesturing towards great works such as Pride and Prejudice. Granted, some of the more in-depth work comes later, when Regis does a deep dive into her selected "canon", but personally, I think the first couple sections of this book could have been much stronger.

Also, just as a nitpicky note: I'm not a fan of Regis's writing style. While it is accessible to a general audience and I appreciate that, the sentences are also choppy and somewhat uniform. The language is blunt and straightforward, which is great sometimes and tiring others, and I wish there was more flow to the writing overall.

TL;DR: A Natural History of the Romance Novel is a useful handbook for getting started in the romance genre. It provides a good introduction to the history and structure of the modern romance novel, though serious scholars will want to seek out additional resources to build on the knowledge presented here.

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austajunk · 2 years

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Komanami for the ship ask? >:)

Komanami

-Whether I ship it or not

YES YES YES A MILLION TIMES YES DO YOU KNOW HOW THIS BLOG GOT STARTED? It was started with my weird interest in this ship.

-Why I ship it or not

Honestly, I just find them interesting as each other’s parallels. Both of them seem to really understand each other and still have the dynamic “rivalry” setup that Byakuya and Kyoko do. But more than that, Nagito genuinely cares about Chiaki, but I don’t think he knows how to really express it. There’s times where he’s just weirdly protective over her and times where Chiaki puts in more of the effort to actually understand him more than the others. She can empathize with him sometimes better than even Hajime and just never holds it against him for setting her up to kill him. Not to mention, when she cradles him lovingly in the anime…

Oh and don’t forget the sparks when Chiaki was like “Actually there’s still evidence here” in the first trial and Nagito was like “… … I’m sorry… what was that?!” After that, he drank his Respect Chiaki juice. It’s awesome and tense and I love writing smut/fics where they are at odds with one another. :3

-My opinion on their canon potential (chemistry, canon interactions, etc)

Obviously we didn’t have them as a canon thing. There’s plenty of secondary canon interactions with them. And several times where Nagito is protective over Chiaki and vice versa. We know Nagito idolized her human self as an amazing source of Hope and seemed to break down as he was being brainwashed, letting his true feelings poke through as he was crying. We can speculate that this is because he genuinely messed up which is seemingly backed up by his crying out and asking Chiaki to understand and forgive him. But of course, he washes it off with claiming she’ll be a pedestal for Hope. Whether or not this is because he deeply cared for Chiaki or because his emotions are amplified by the brainwashing is the question. Personally I think it’s a lot of both.

The AI version of this is just as complicated. Nagito seems to care for Chiaki immediately, telling Hajime off for being noisy around her while she’s trying to game and being the only one to be concerned that she would guard the party against Monokuma. He also tells her to be safe and later on in the second chapter, doubles down on telling her to be careful around Fuyuhiko, not to let him get rough with her. During the first chapter trial, the two head off and Chiaki’s suggestions back Nagito into a corner. I think this is where he really starts to respect her and knows she’s one to watch out for. Afterwards, Nagito will go out of his way to praise Chiaki. He even makes it a point to steal her from their respective bf, Hajime, in the fourth chapter. But alas, he seemingly and probably smothers her, so Chiaki fled to find Hajime… only for Nagito to rush after her immediately and whine that she could be in danger!

It’s just such a funny relationship with potential. I wish there was more to pick up on, but at the same time, I’m so happy for what’s there and I’ll always talk about it!

They have a genuine chill chemistry if you want to see them in a more platonic and friendly light in canon… which I do like a lot. Canonly, I feel with all my heart that Chiaki’s love and Hope even after her death led to her classmates being reborn and able to find love with each other again with Nagito and Hajime. I think both of them still love her too.

-My opinion on fanon interpretations/fandom around it (Favorite widespread hcs, pet-peeves, etc)

Again, I think KomaNami fans in general feel like they have to be defensive. They have such lovely art and wonderful headcanons. They’re all about exploring what is there and taking it further. But of course, it’s a divisive ship because Nagito is “only gay” and I feel like a lot of biphobic rhetoric gets thrown our way. In essence, like every other group in this fandom, we all need to chill and know that we’re all valid and it’s so much fun.

We KomaNami fans are small, but I think we have amazing fics and art! And posts too. :3

#danganronpa #danganronpa 2 goodbye despair #nagito komaeda #chiaki nanami #komanami #thanks for the ask!#of course I get the first ship my blog posted about #I’ll always love and treasure them

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xaracosmia · 9 months

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ꕥ — WELCOME TO CATA COSMIA, MORDRED. 🌕

ꕥ — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: Quarter age: 23 pronouns: any ooc contact: @ withoutquarter - twitter other characters in xc: faen

ꕥ — IC INFORMATION;

name: Saber of Red (Mordred) age: (sighs heavily) young adult pronouns: he/him & they/them series: Fate/Apocrypha canon point: post series app triggers: weird pseudo incest, transphobic content from source material, typical canon violence and death

personality:

Mordred is an extremely prideful individual, believing himself the strongest of the Knights of the Round Table and the only one to ever surpass his father. While the truth in that is dubious, there is one fact that is certain; Mordred is unique amongst the Knights of the Round Table. While he still holds high certain knightly values, particularly protecting the innocent, Mordred does not constrain himself by them. If fact, with a few particular exceptions Mordred is not very knightly at all. No, if anything he is more akin to a foul-mouthed teenager. Crass and rude, Mordred will both speak and act without consideration. He simply does not care what most others may think, because the opinions of others are below his own.

something your muse struggles with: Rage. Mordred has a hair-trigger temper and is easily set off by a dozen different things.

your muse’s greatest strength: Tenacity. Mordred does not easily give up or surrender, yet he is not necessarily pigheaded either; he can understand the value in a tactical retreat.

history / background:

Mordred was born a tool – No, he was born a weapon. The homunculus son of Morgan le Fey and Arthur Pendragon, he had been created with the sole purpose of one day bringing about the downfall of his father.

… And yet, how could he? It didn’t matter what venomous words Morgan would whisper into Mordred’s ear; the King was perfect. A shining beacon of nobility and chivalry, a paragon without equal. Mordred could only find himself able to respect and admire this perfect King. If he must be a weapon, that would be okay. So long as he was a noble blade in the hands of the King of Knights, he could be content.

Morgan le Fey, perhaps blind to Mordred’s sheer adoration of the King, would carry on with her plots and schemes. She would train him rigorously as a knight, all while instilling a deep and bitter resentment of humanity and reminding him of his destined greatness. Once Mordred was adequately prepared, Morgan would gift him his helm and order him that he never remove it before the eyes of others.

“If word of your true identity were to reach the ears of the king, he would surely end you.”

With his mother’s recommendation and a display of his own skill, Mordred would easily become a knight of Camelot. The proceeding years would be the happiest of Mordred’s life. He never formed a close camaraderie with his fellow knights, but that was fine. He could only serve from within the shadow of the King, but he was content with that too. This was everything he wished for, wasn’t it?

In time, Morgan’s patience would begin to wear thin. She found it necessary to spur Mordred into action. Thus did she meet with him in secret, and reveal to him the truth of his ancestry; that he was the true son of King Arthur. Mordred was overjoyed with this news, like he never had been before. He would rush to meet with the King, to reveal to him the truth and become his heir.

“I see… born from the machinations of my sister you may be, but indeed you are of my blood. Yet I shall not recognize you as my son, nor shall I allow you the throne.”

Oh, how to hear those words crushed Mordred inside. They shattered the joy he had felt, replacing it with a deep and seething rage. Perhaps it had been hasty of him to ask for the throne. But to be denied acknowledgement as the King’s son, even in the confines of this private space? Did King Arthur really hate his sister that much?

Did King Arthur hate him that much?

The only things Mordred had been taught since birth were deception and violence. Thus, they were the only ways with which he knew to respond. Mordred would orchestrate the events leading up to the Battle of Camlann, while gathering forces of his own. There he would decimate the armies of King Arthur. There he would slay his own half-brother.

And there, once they were the only two who remained, Mordred would be pierced upon King Arthur’s holy lance.

powers / abilities:

Standard Servant Abilities: As a Servant, Mordred possesses physical abilities far surpassing those of a regular human. His physical endurance is particularly exceptional. Beyond that, Mordred is able to shift himself or his equipment into an intangible spirit form.

Instinct (Rank B): A sort of sixth sense relating to battle. Mordred is capable of doing all sorts of fantastical things such as predicting the trajectory of projectiles, reacting to unseen attackers, or fighting through obscurement.

Mana Burst (Rank A): By infusing his body or weapon with magical energy then instantly expelling it, Mordred is able to greatly enhance his speed and power in short bursts. While Secret of Pedigree is removed, this effect is strengthened and Mordred becomes able to release blasts of magical energy.

Noble Phantasm - Clarent Blood Arthur (Rank A+): Mordred channels all his hatred and rage for his father into Clarent, manifesting it as a maelstrom of violent energy that pours out from Clarent and surrounds him. Once released, it surges forward as a destructive blast of energy. This attack is particularly deadly against those who are King Arthur.

inherent abilities:

Charisma (Rank C-): Despite how he may usually behave, Mordred has some talent for leading and inspiring others. Naturally, his charisma is at it’s best while leading others towards rebellion. Mechanically, this enhances the attack power of his allies.

Battle Continuation (Rank B): Even after sustaining mortal wounds, Mordred is able to keep fighting for a time. Injuries are less likely to be lethal as well.

Magic Resistance (Rank B): As a Saber, Mordred possesses an innate resistance to magical effects. Lesser spells will outright fail to affect him, while everything else has reduced effect.

Riding (Rank B): Mordred is capable of handling most vehicles and animals with above average skill, even those that did not exist during his time.

items / weapons:

Plate Armor: His helmet, Secret of Pedigree, is capable of breaking apart and combining with the armor without the use of Mordred’s hands.

Noble Phantasm - Clarent (Rank C): A ceremonial sword, plundered from the vaults of Camelot by Mordred. Having illegitimately obtained the weapon, Mordred is incapable of utilizing most of Clarent’s power of amplification; he is only capable of using it as a focus for Clarent Blood Arthur.

Noble Phantasm - Secret of Pedigree (Rank C): Mordred’s helm, gifted to him by his mother alongside the orders to never remove it. So long as Mordred abides by certain restrictions, Secret of Pedigree will suppress information relating to his true identity and powers.

Saber: Or, less confusingly, a fighter jet that Mordred had commandeered during the Great Grail War and named after himself. even if it was destroyed this counts okay?

starting ability: standard servant abilities starting item: secret of pedigree

extra:

i don’t CARE what fate canon may or may not imply you��ll have to pry transmasc mordred out of my cold, dead hands

hes just over 5 feet tall why the fuck do i only have short characters here

mordred is getting back that jet fighter you cant stop me.

discord id: bloodarthur.#4062 (will be simply bloodarthur. once i get hit by the update beam, i got this username on lockdown)

passcode: awesome

#xc application #mun: quarter #cata cosmia

0 notes

nicad13 · 1 year

Text

Crossroads: Chapter 7

The Recovery

Summary: Din learns more about the Force, comes to understand why he can’t trust happy thoughts, and gets to be the little spoon.

Yadier makes his wishes known. Rayne relives a bit more of Order 66 before she accepts.

Notes: Canon-compliant through Season 1, alt version of Season 2. Posting some old fic before the sequel, which will hopefully be complete by the end of Season 3. Start now so you're ready! AO3 link in the Source at the bottom.

Illustration by @catstanbulite.

Tags/Warnings: PTSD, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Sexytimes

Rating: Mature

---

Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armageddon So when the Man come, there will be no no doom Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner There ain’t no hiding place from the Father of creation

Bob Marley, One Love

---

Rayne woke up the next morning to find that a small, green, alien baby had replaced the Mandalorian in bed with her at some point during the night. She figured out what had happened easily enough and closed her eyes once more, enjoying the easy warmth of the morning.

Enjoying sleeping somewhere other than the cramped coffin of the bunk on the ship.

After another hour or so, she woke again to the sound of Yadier’s burbling, followed by his hands plastered against her face, followed by a string of nonsense words, one of which may have been a close approximation of “frog.”

Someone was hungry.

Taking the hint, Rayne opened one eye so she could poke him in the nose with a reasonable amount of accuracy. He replied with a giggle and a raspberry.

Breakfast it was, then.

She picked him up and headed to the ship. Din had left the ramp down, testing whether the beacon would truly keep the critters out. So far so good. Rayne paused half-way up the ramp. “Permission to come aboard?” She thought maybe she heard a mumble from behind the closed door of the bunk, so she figured it was safe to proceed. She saw that the door was, in fact, closed, so she placed Yadier in his crate while she stepped into the fresher for a moment.

When she came back out, Din had made minimal progress, getting as far as opening the bunk door and poking one bare foot out.

She tried to resist. She really, really tried.

She failed.

Light as a feather, she ran a finger along the bottom of Din’s foot.

He screamed. And, with the reflexes possessed of any self-respecting Mandalorian warrior, thrashed his way back into the bunk, banging every surface with both elbows, both knees, and his head.

She poked her head around the opening with a fair amount of caution to find him sitting, curled up in the back, tangled in the sheet. She didn’t need the Force to feel the glare pounding out from the other side of the visor. “Stop that.” His tone was snappish, and she couldn’t blame him.

She did, however, smile. “That was hilarious.”

He growled at her. Good god, he growled at her. It took every ounce of self control she possessed to not burst out laughing. “Will you forgive me if I make you breakfast?”

“Yes.” His tone switched to petulant, but she’d take what she could get.

Breakfast was served, sins were forgiven, and their first full morning on Methuselah began.

---

She showed him how to use her bow and he took to it easily, as he had with every other weapon he ever touched. He walked into the forest with it in his hand, quiver slung across his back, following a game trail. After two miles, he saw a spot on higher ground with a clear shot at the trail, hiked up to it, and settled down, leaning back against a tree.

When it came to the basics, hunting game was much like hunting bounties. Sometimes it was best just to pick a comfy spot and let things come to you.

The air was still but pleasant, sunlight dappling the leaf-covered ground as it filtered through the trees. After several minutes, the birds began to chirp, having grown used to his presence.

It was… nice.

He still couldn’t quite get used to things being so nice. Still couldn’t quite trust it. If it’s too good to be true…

He took a breath, trying to shake the thought. Things would get real again when they left for Coruscant. Until then, he would try to stop looking a gift blurrg in the mouth and let himself enjoy things here.

A few hours passed. He dozed off a few times. The birds chirped some more.

A decent-sized deer trotted down the trail. A buck. Big enough so that it would be a pain in the ass to carry back, but it would see them through for much of their stay. Din waited for it to stop and turn its head away before moving into position, pushing up onto a knee and nocking an arrow onto the bowstring without a sound. He pulled back on the string and took aim.

He waited, taking note of the timing of his heartbeat, the slight bump of the arrowhead with each thump, the correction back down in between. He waited for the buck to turn and face him.

It only seemed fair.

When it did, he held his breath, corrected his aim, and loosed the arrow in the gap between the beats of his heart. He heard the thwack of it hitting home and the buck sprinted twenty meters down the trail before dropping.

The birds stopped chirping.

Din sat back and waited, knowing that the buck would take off if he approached it too soon and he would spend the next hour chasing down the blood trail of an adrenaline-pumped animal. Instead, he gave it half an hour to die in peace, knowing his shot was clean. When time was up, he hauled himself to his feet, pulled his knife from his boot, and descended to the trail. His approach was silent until he reached the animal. It did not appear to be breathing, but he called out a sharp “Hey!” just to be sure.

Nothing.

He field-dressed the deer, maneuvered it over his shoulders, and carried it home.

His thoughts wandered as he walked, pondering the economy of killing something directly to eat it versus killing someone, getting paid for it, then buying something that someone else had killed and eating that. If he had to be covered in blood, it was nice that it didn’t come from a body that had been talking to him five seconds ago.

Come to think of it, it had been a good several days since anyone had tried to kill him.

It was all very quaint.

He just couldn’t trust it.

---

Rayne was up on the roof of the ship when he got back, working on the port engine cowling that had gotten damaged on their pass through the asteroid belt. Yadier was in the middle of the clearing, levitating pebbles, his toy frog, and the large bearing. When she saw the deer he laid out by the fire ring, she gave a low whistle. “Your freezer big enough for all that?”

“Barely.”

“Steak for dinner tonight?”

“Yes. What’s the radius on the beacon?”

“About fifty meters.”

Din nodded. He boarded the ship, then came back out a few moments later with an arm full of plastic bags, a small vacuum pump, and an enormous butcher knife. He disappeared into the woods to find a suitable spot to process the deer somewhere beyond the beacon radius, came back, hauled the animal over his shoulders, and slipped back into the woods again.

Something about Din’s tone was off, and his posture was stiff, almost angry. Yadier seemed to sense it, all of his pebbles and toys now on the ground, ears flat against his shoulders. When Din disappeared into the forest for the last time, the baby looked up to Rayne, his question written clearly all over his face. Don’t worry about it, kiddo, she pushed the thought to him. He’ll come around when he’s ready.

---

Rayne watched Din come down from the flight deck after tucking Yadier in for the night. “All good?”

He seemed to consider for a moment, hands clenched, then approached. “Can we have a word outside?” His voice was low.

“Sure.”

She followed him down the ramp, out into the night. When he continued past the fire ring and out toward the trail by the lakeshore, she understood the reason for their little hike – he wanted to be out of whatever kind of telepathy range Yadier might have. When they were half a mile away, he stopped and turned to face her.

A meteor fell across the sky, the fire of its passage through the atmosphere reflecting off of Din’s helmet.

“We have a problem.”

She figured as much. His mood hadn’t improved since returning with the deer. “What’s up?”

“I think he’s re-wiring me.” His tone was hard, touched with anger. “He might be doing it to you, too.”

She stopped to consider. “Could be. What’s your evidence?”

“I’ve been alone for most of my life. I liked it that way. The day after I picked him up, I tried to hire Kuiil as a crewmember. I’d only known him for two days. I only knew Omera for a few weeks, but…” he shook his head, lifting his hand with his thumb and forefinger spacing a narrow gap. “I was this close to taking the helmet off and… changing everything about myself for her. Losing my soul for her. When Cara decided to stay on Nevarro, it stung way harder than it should have. I even… god… I even tried to talk a droid out of the suicide mission that wound up saving the rest of us. And now I’m standing here doing therapy hour with the enemy sorcerer I slept with after knowing her for less than three days and then convinced to leave her well-established business to guard me and my enemy sorcerer kid to get him home.” Frustrated, he turned and paced away a few meters, then paced back. “It’s not me. None of this is me.”

“Hm.”

“Anything different with you?”

“I did let a Mandalorian talk me into leaving my well-established business after I pulled the incredibly unprofessional move of sleeping with him while he was still a paying customer despite the fact that he’s wrapped in the one material in the galaxy that serves as Jedi repellent. So, yeah.”

He drew an aggravated breath. “You sound like you’re almost okay with that.”

“Getting someone to do something they really don’t want to do is hard. Yadi’s good at blunt-force stuff and simple healing, but it’s going to be a while before he can finesse getting someone to do a hard 180 without them knowing about it immediately. Pushing someone into something they’re not opposed to, or something they want to do but are holding back on, that’s easy.”

“You’re saying I wanted all this?” She could hear his Mando’a accent creeping into his voice, clipping his t’s.

“I’m saying you weren’t against it. Your situation demanded that you get more help from other people, so you did the reasonable thing and got it.”

“Yes. But I liked it. I never liked working with people before.”

“Maybe you found better people to work with this time around.”

He shook his head. “Nothing else explains your change in behavior.”

She shrugged. “You did happen to catch me at a moment when I was bored and…” She bit back on the word “lonely,” uncomfortable with that admission on the heels of Din’s sudden reclamation of solitude. It gave her a moment to think back on the state of his brain structure when she had healed his skull fracture. She hadn’t had a lot of time to poke around in those moments, but had noticed the structural abnormalities that were the result of long-term trauma. She wondered what the best way to get at this was. “Did you like being alone before?”

“Before what?”

Before your life turned into a complete shitshow. She tried again. “Would it surprise you to learn that a life full of violence can alter your brain structure in ways that make it difficult to form connections with other people, and you have those altered structures?”

He tilted his head, putting it together. “I’m following.”

“Let’s say Yadier is re-wiring you. Chances are this is just another form of healing. He’s not manipulating you. He’s fixing you.”

Din turned away again. “It’s that easy?” The words grated out through his teeth, angry. “Change the way I think, the way I feel, just tear out the old wiring and shove new stuff in? Like I’m some droid?”

“Did you object to it so much when the wiring was getting damaged?”

“I don’t like it either way. I don’t like being… programmed. I watched you talk Stormtroopers out of their orders. I watched you put an entire platoon of them flat on their backs. God knows what Yadier’s doing to me. I don’t like being in a place like this and feeling like I can’t trust it because it’s all too good to be true.”

“You had a few moments of happiness and you’re worried that what you’re feeling isn’t real.”

“Yes.”

She took his left hand and pulled his glove off, stuffing it in his belt. Closing her eyes, she brought his forefinger to her lips, pressing a gentle kiss to it. After a moment, she took his finger in her mouth. His breath hitched as her tongue made promises he knew damn well she could keep. After a few minutes, she withdrew his finger, opened her eyes, met his gaze through the visor, placed his hand at her hip, and confirmed the effectiveness of her work with a hand at the hard length of him.

“That feels real enough.”

He turned and led her back to the campsite.

Hard. Soft. Warm. Tender. All of it real.

In the moments after, with all the impurities of doubt wrung out of him, he had gotten to the roots of his discomfort.

“I was… difficult, today.”

“Yeah, you were.” She smiled as she said it, and allowed him to pull her in close by way of apology. “Have it figured out, yet?”

“Yes.” His tone shifted to melancholy.

“And?”

He turned over, facing away from her but pulling her arm around with him so she was tight against his back, flattening her hand against his chest. She held him, feeling the air move through his lungs as he spoke of his childhood.

“The Mandalorians brought me to the covert and tried to place me in a family. They brought me to my new parents and I refused to speak to them. I already had parents. They were dead. I didn’t… want anyone to replace them. They wouldn’t just let me… It didn’t work out. Didn’t work out with the next five families. So I gave up. Decided I wasn’t wired for it anymore. They put me in the Fighting Corps instead.”

She tightened her hold on him, on this man who had likely been stolen as a child, only to find himself unwanted by his captors, passed around, then placed into the very war machine that had stolen him and destroyed his wiring in the first place. If he had, in fact, been stolen, that he was totally unaware of it all… it made her heart ache to think of it. To know this piece of him that he wasn’t even aware of, to withhold it because she had no idea how to tell him, knowing it would break him in half…

“I didn’t want to pretend to be something I wasn’t,” he continued. “I hated it when they did it to me and I didn’t want to be that. I didn’t want the kid… I didn’t want Yadier to think I was… I tried to manage his expectations.”

“That worked out well.”

He huffed out something between a laugh and a sob. “Yeah. I thought that part of me… the part that wanted a family… I thought that part of me was dead. Now it’s… back, and I… a different part of me hates how it feels.”

She held his hand with a gentle grip, accepting this part of him.

“I hate how it feels because I know I’ll just have to kill it again when I give him up.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. We have other things to do first that require you to be his father. Enjoy him while you can. People come and go from our lives all the time. It sucks when they leave, but that’s not a reason to pretend like they were never there. Life is better when you let other people into it.”

“You’ve done fine on your own for the last five years.”

“You understand how careful I have to be about who I’m with, right?” She felt his hand tighten around hers. It hadn’t occurred to him, but he understood when it was brought to his attention. “It’s not just about my own safety. Whoever else knows what I am... they’re at risk, too. Not a lot of people are up for that.”

He threaded his fingers through hers, realizing the implications of her choosing to be with him. She trusted him with her secret. She trusted his ability to handle the dangers that came along with connecting to someone who was a member of a group that was hunted to the edge of extinction. Qualifications that a vanishingly small number of people could meet. An exact reflection of his trust in her.

He finally realized that he wasn’t alone.

He didn’t have to be alone.

He didn’t want to be alone. For reasons that made sense, regardless of what his son was doing to him. Even if this was Yadier’s work, he understood that his son was doing nothing more than trying to restore what he once had.

Again, he realized that you sometimes don’t realize how broken something was until it got fixed. Sometimes, when it got fixed, you were afraid to take it back out just to break it again. But after a while, you remembered what it was like to have it, and you realized you were so tired of life without it, and it was enough to make you take the risk with it once more.

He pressed back against her, his skin to hers, absent of his own armor but finally trusting the armor she carried with her all along. He drew in a breath, held it, and let it out in his response.

“I’m glad you’re with us.”

He felt her lips press against his spine just above his shoulder blades. Warm. Soft. “I’m glad, too.”

He made it all the way through the night with her under the stars.

---

They began to settle into a routine. A light breakfast. Rayne would go for a run, taking Yadier with her in his crate as it repulsed along behind her. Din would get some helmet-free time in the sun while they were out, then swim once he got warm enough. He would forage for greens and fruit when they came back and did some Force-training in the clearing, usually some version of Yadier Force-throwing stones at Rayne while she was blindfolded, swatting them apart with her lightsaber. After the first week, Din would pitch in with harder throws and bigger rocks, encouraging Yadier along. Rayne and Din would trade off with the saber so that he could get a feel for it, though they lacked anything capable of sparing with it. Rayne and the baby would follow training with a swim. After lunch, in the heat of the day, the guys hit the rack for a nap while Rayne picked a spot to meditate, sometimes in the forest, sometimes on the beach, wherever it seemed easiest to reach out to the Force and listen. Later in the afternoon, Din would sit in the shade at the edge of the forest with Yadier and read to him, splitting the time evenly between Basic and Mando’a, while Rayne would hole up in the ship and work on the fob scramblers. One more swim for all of them together before dinner, more of a wade for Din, not wanting to have to deal with a submerged helmet if he didn’t have to. Din and Rayne prepped dinner together, learning to work around each other in the cramped galley as needed, grilling over the fire whenever possible. Din still took his meals alone on the ship. After dinner, they would turn Yadier loose on the shoreline to splash around and chase tadpoles against the blazing sky of the setting sun, reasonably sure that he wouldn’t decimate the frog population on a full belly. The stars would come out, and sometimes the spotchka would follow, Din suffering through the ridiculousness of drinking it through a straw, something he would never do before anyone else. When the baby finally wore himself out, they took turns putting him to bed, bundling him into his crate and, most nights, put him up on the flight deck where he could still see the stars. Most nights, they lay together at the edge between the clearing and the forest, watched the stars turn, watched the meteors fall, traced the lines of strengthening muscle, and unwound in the ways they best knew how. Most nights, hours later, Yadier would reach out with his mind, and they took turns gathering him up to bring him back outside to snuggle in between them.

Rayne discovered that many things were, in fact, rituals for Din.

Beskar was inspected and cleaned after dinner every evening. Helmet first, by himself on the ship, and then he would come out to join her and Yadier for the rest of it. Gloves off, he would detach each piece, turn it over in his hands, run his fingers over every surface. Only the first time around had he found any damage that required attention. From the blaster bolts that caught the back of his helmet and backplates when they had made their escape from Rayne’s planet. The marks left behind weren’t so much damage as they were simply new cosmetic imperfections, but they did require treatment to render the beskar once more impermeable to the elements. A simple matter of polish application and removal. Deformities in the surface remained, but were sealed. Once passing inspection, each piece was re-attached before moving to the next. Every evening.

Next, the knife was honed on the days it was used, which was most. He floated the honing steel over his knees, running his blade over it from heel to tip, aligning its edge, the ring of it sounding out through the clearing.

The Amban hung unused in its place by the door to the flight deck. His sidearm only left its holster when disrobing. Even so, they were disassembled and cleaned once a week.

Even in the moments before intimacy, the reverent detaching of the armor, placing it in its drawer if they were on the ship or stacking it neatly if they were outside, held a sense of worship for him.

It all had a sense of utility about it, the care of these objects that his survival depended on. In contrast to the helmet rules and resulting disruption in meals, going through these motions seemed to calm him, bring focus to his thoughts, center his mind. Religion, in this manner, almost seemed to make sense for Rayne, who had abandoned most of what she had learned of Jedi mysticism with the exception of meditating on the Force, the only thing she could really feel, the only thing that bore evidence of its existence.

In this, the attention to the details of the tools of war and defense, the Mandalorians and the Jedi were not so different.

---

One evening, sitting by the fire after dinner as they watched Yadier splash around on the shore, their conversation drifted back to the issue of using the Force for mind control and influence.

“Would you like a demonstration?” Rayne asked.

Din tilted his head, hearing the challenge in her tone. “Maybe. What are the terms?”

“One easy one, one hard one. Easy one first. You tell me to stop as soon as it’s too much for you. I’ll have to take a peek in your head first, but I promise to stick to surface stuff.”

“Deal.”

“Okay,” she smiled.

“Actually, hang on,” he interrupted. “I’ll be right back.” He got up, strolled back to the ship, and went up the ramp. He returned a minute later and sat down with a sigh. “Ok. Ready.”

She laughed, looking out to the lake, unable to face him directly, and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “That was it.”

Again, the head tilt, followed by a slow turn to the ship, then back to her. “Seriously?” His voice was low, like he couldn’t decide if he was angry or amused.

But definitely not “pissed.” Absolutely anything but that.

“What?” She turned her palms up in innocence, laughing. “You were about ten minutes out from that anyway, so it was the first thing I found in your head. Thought the hard one might be better for you on an empty tank, so, you’re welcome.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. It had been frighteningly normal, and proved her point. He’d had no idea she’d pushed him into it. “Okay. I’m ready for the hard one.”

“You sure? You’re not gonna like it.”

“I’m sure.”

“Say ‘stop’ when you’ve had enough.”

“Okay.” He watched as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, head down. After a moment, his hands lifted of their own accord and moved to the sides of his helmet. “Whoa...” He fought it, fought her, and his arms locked up. For a few moments, he was frozen, battling against the unseen Force acting on his body. His arms moved again as he began to lose that battle, and his thumbs slid along the lower edge of his helmet. “Whoa, whoa, ok, stop.”

The Force vanished and he yanked his hands away from his head.

“See the difference?”

“Yes.” He took a few hard breaths. “How hard were you trying?”

She shrugged. “I was at about ten percent when you said to stop.”

He shook his head. He’d been at ninety-five by the time he’d tapped the brakes. Even when it came to one of his greatest moral imperatives, she could overpower him with ease. “I thought you said getting someone to do something they really didn’t want to do was hard.”

“Without them knowing they’re getting Forced, yeah, that’s hard. Making them think they’re doing it out of their own free will takes a lot of skill. I have a fair amount of practice with it.” He nodded, remembering how she handled the Stormtroopers. “I blunt-forced it with you just now so you’d know what was going on.”

“How hard would it be for you to make me think I’d want the helmet off?”

She didn’t answer immediately, seeming to consider. After several moments, she met his gaze through the visor. “Maybe we shouldn’t look into that one too hard.”

---

Din threw two handfuls of rocks at her, one after the other, Yadier doing the same. Reading their intensions, Rayne pulled the lightsaber through all of it, feeling the vaporized dust against her skin where the blindfold didn’t cover her face.

Din stepped back and sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Rayne asked as she pulled the blindfold off.

“This is too easy for you. I’m bored.”

She smiled, deactivating the saber. “How may I entertain you instead?”

He did a slow turn, casting his gaze about the clearing, until he settled on the Razor Crest. He considered for a moment, then shrugged. What could go wrong? “Lift the ship.”

She lifted an eyebrow to start, her expression dubious. “No promises, but I’ll give it a shot.” She approached the Crest until they were about twenty meters from the port ramp, Din behind her with Yadier in his arms. Rayne closed her eyes , bowed her head, and raised her left arm.

She reached out tentatively at first, gathering the ship with the Force, feeling for the lift surfaces, the points that would best withstand the haul without tearing the ship apart. Once she had a handle on that, she raised her other hand, and began to lift.

Din heard the creak of the hull, heard the shift of stone as the landing gear unweighted.

Heard the snap of the primary com antenna as it broke off and went sailing over the lake.

“Dammit…”

“I got it,” Rayne countered as she reached out with her right arm, Force-caught the antenna before it hit the water, and brought it back. By the time it was in her hand, the ship had settled back onto its landing gear. She turned to face him and shrugged.

Yadier reached out to her, babbling a long string of nonsense, and Din handed him over after she set the antenna on the ground. Rayne took him, noting his attention focused on the ship. “I think he wants to give it a shot, but I don’t want him tearing the ship apart. I might be able to channel him through me. Between his power and my skill, we could probably do it.”

Din considered. Yadier had gotten stronger over the last few weeks; things that used to tire him out quickly now seemed to have little effect on him, just like any other kind of exercise. “Sure. Just don’t let him hurt himself.”

“No problem.” Rayne turned the baby so he was facing her, and she met his all-encompassing gaze. “Whaddya say, kiddo? Be my battery? We’ll lift your dad’s ship?”

Yadier smiled.

“Ok, then.” She held him in her left arm and extended her right, once again reaching out to the ship, feeling for the best places to pick it up, feeling the baby at the back of her mind, watching, learning, ready.

Now.

The ship creaked once more and the landing gear groaned as a hundred tons of steel lifted off of it.

And the Razor Crest hovered ten meters off the ground.

Din’s face went slack under the helmet. His eyes flicked from his ship to his son, secure in Rayne’s arm, eyes closed, serene with his head tucked under her chin, his hands flat against her shoulders. For her part, Rayne’s eyes were also closed as she took long, deep breaths, working hard, but not terribly so, steady, solid. Din looked back to the Razor Crest, silent, floating.

“Ok. I’ve seen enough.”

Rayne exhaled as she uncurled her fingers and lowered the Crest to its gear with a gentle release. Yadier relaxed as she turned back to Din. “Still bored?”

“Nope.”

---

Yadier was having an absolute blast.

During the day, he loved the lake and swimming and the frogs and the sun on his face.

During the night, he loved the light and warmth of the fire and the glow of the fireflies and the stars in his eyes.

He loved when his father read to him and taught him words. He learned to call his father buir. He knew it wasn’t his father’s name, not like how Yadier was his name, but it was what you called the people who took care of you. His father liked it when he called him buir. He couldn’t see the smile behind the mask, but he could feel it, and he loved to make his father happy.

He loved when his father’s friend took him for runs through the forest, to watch the trees flow by. He loved when she brought out the glowing sword and he could play with the Force with her.

Lifting the ship was so much fun, even if it did tire him out. She told him maybe they could do it again later, but not to try it without her until he watched her do it a few more times. They were stronger than the ship was, and they had to be careful not to break it.

Sometimes they meditated together. This was less fun, but she taught him that this was where their power came from. This was how they could understand it better. Most of that sailed right over his head, but he understood there was something important about it. She told him they had to be careful, about not hurting other things or other people. She also told him to be careful about other voices he might hear, to let her know if anything reached to him through the Force. He knew there was more she wasn’t telling him, that she didn’t really know how. But he knew she wanted him to be safe.

And so he began to call her buir as well.

His father took good care of him. So did his mother.

Her reaction was not the same as his father’s. She didn’t seem to know what it meant. She just gave him a puzzled smile and continued with the lesson.

That was ok. His father would help her figure it out sooner or later.

---

Din came down the ladder from the flight deck, turned, and saw them both curled on the bunk, sound asleep in the rainy afternoon. Rayne was on her side and the kid was tucked under her chin, tiny arms wrapped around her arm that was in turn wrapped around him.

He leaned against the bulkhead, thoughts drifting to earlier in the day, spent inside the ship on the one day of thunder and rain. She had been teaching Yadier deflection; Force-tossing tools through the air at him, having him repel them and hold them all aloft. He’d managed it until there had to have been fifty bits of metal hanging in the air and he’d dropped them all, collapsing with the exhaustion of fine-tuned control. He’d reached up to her, the word buir squeaking out. Mother. He’d called her mother. She hadn’t understood it, thinking it was part of his usual babbling, scooping him up, calling him verd’ika in return. Little warrior. “You did so well,” she had said, holding him close. “You’re getting so strong.” Holding him in one arm, she’d picked up the tools, showing him where they all went. “Next time you’ll be strong enough to help me put this all away.” The kid had replied with a raspberry. Don’t get your hopes up.

He called her mother. Of all the Mando’a she knew, the word for parent was absent from her vocabulary.

It made his heart ache.

Now, she began to twitch in her sleep, the muscles in her legs and jaw clenching and releasing, her brow furrowing. She’d woken Din up in the middle of the night more than once with this kind of thing, claiming vivid dreams. Dreams. Nightmares. It was all the same. He watched as the kid managed to turn over in her grasp and reached up to her jaw with one hand, a tiny groan escaping his throat. She stilled a moment later, and the kid settled back down.

Din slid down to a lower rung on the ladder and sat on it, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He called her mother. He was also apparently alleviating her nightmares. Had he been doing the same thing to him? Din thought maybe he had. He called her mother.

The only other person to serve anything near to a caretaker role to Yadier lay dead on Nevarro. Din had buried him himself. Kuiil had done his best to protect the child and paid for it with his life. Would Rayne pay the same price? Would Din have to bury her, too?

I’d have put your Amban through your throat. Her words to him after knowing him for less than two days, if she’d discovered anything sufficiently nefarious on his ship. She hadn’t been joking. He had no doubt as to her ability to do it, either. She may not be a Jedi in title, but, dammit, she had it in her. Under the clumsiness and cover of a respectable living, the Force burned inside of her. It burned through her, and when he lay with her, shed of the beskar, he could feel it burn through him, wrap itself around his spine, creep up the back of his neck until it reached his helmet, held at bay there, surging at his throat, ready to blow his mind if he ever dared take the bucket off.

She wouldn’t admit it, but she was a warrior. Not a soldier; she lacked trained discipline. But she was strong. Fierce when she needed to be. His people had clashed with hers in the past, but for now, the two of them, together, could shepherd the little boy he had found to safety, the little boy that they both knew could be the key to saving this godforsaken shitpile of a galaxy.

She could more than hold her own.

She was worthy of being the mother of his son.

She was worthy of the signet Din bore on his shoulder.

Three. We can be a clan of three.

The thought grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. He knew it’d been there for a while now, its seed planted in his gut that first night he’d led her to his bed, wondering what the hell he was doing in one half of his mind, knowing damn well what he was doing in the other half.

Decision made, he took a deep breath, stood up, and went back up the ladder, wondering how exactly one went about inviting a woman with the blood of the Jedi coursing through her veins into a Mandalorian clan.

---

“Join me on the flight deck.” His tone was light, almost hopeful, and she wondered what could be so interesting up there.

She followed him up the ladder and watched as he pulled up a crew manifest. “You actually have a crew manifest? How law-abiding of you.”

His only response was to shrug and step aside so she could read it:

Spacecraft Designation: Razor Crest

Spacecraft Registration: [dynamic]

Owner/Captain: Djarin, Din

Engineer/SIC: Rollins, Rayne

Passenger: Rollins-Djarin, Yadier

Her first response was a small laugh at his workaround for the ship not being registered anywhere and to make a mental note to investigate it further. Her second response was suppressing a snort at being second-in-command of the two adults on the ship.

Her eye hung on the last entry.

She took a long, slow breath. “Din, you can’t just-”

“Wasn’t my decision.”

“He decided on his own last name?”

“He called you buir today.”

“He keeps saying that. What does it mean?”

“When he says it to me, he means father.”

Rayne froze. She was familiar enough with Mando’a to know that it was a gender-neutral language. So when Yadier had said it to her…

Din tilted his head. You ok in there?

“He called me mother.”

“Yes.”

“Did you teach him to do that?”

“Nope.”

Not trusting her legs, she sank into the starboard jump-seat, gaze focused somewhere outside through the windscreen.

Din took a seat in the pilot chair and swiveled it to face her. “You’re unhappy about this.”

“No. I’m just unqualified for this.”

He leaned forward, taking her hands in his. “You’re more qualified to be his parent than I am. You’ve taught him more about himself over the last three weeks than I have in a year. You’ve taught me more about him than I learned on my own in a year. You know what goes on in his head. You’ve taught him how to handle it all. You’ve taught him how to harness what he has. You put your whole life on hold to help him.”

“That makes me a good teacher. That’s not the same thing as being a mother.”

“I see how he looks at you. I see how you look at him. Don’t lie to me and tell me you don’t feel it.”

“That’s not… I’m not saying that.”

“What is it, then?”

She took a long, slow breath, elbows on her knees, pulling her hands away to thread her fingers through her hair and rest her forehead in her palms, speaking to the floor. “My first rite of passage as a Jedi… we each had to face our greatest fear.”

“Yes.” Din remembered when she had sketched it out to him earlier, how she had found the crystal that formed the core of her lightsaber. Unable to hold her hands, he placed his feet on either side of hers. “You succeeded.”

“… Yes…”

Her pause was longer than he expected. “What happened, Rayne?”

A long breath, in and out, followed by more silence.

“What did you see?”

“People dying because of my inaction. Children dying because of my inaction.”

“It came to pass.”

A shorter pause this time, and her fingers bent into the curls at the top of her head. “Yeeaaahhh…” The syllable was drawn out, shaken. Another breath, and she continued. “The night we got back.”

“Order 66.”

He watched her nod to the floor. “I crawled through the vent shaft to the nursery. Where the toddlers were.”

Din saw where this was going. He pulled his gloves off and shifted off of his seat to take a knee before her, threading his fingers through hers while at the same time careful to avoid touching her with the helmet. “You don’t have to say it.” His voice was low and soft over the modulator.

“You need to know,” she responded, her fingers tightening around his. “You need to know that I couldn’t save them.” Her words were spoken around tears, now, apparently the one memory she had been unable to disassociate herself from, the one memory that evoked everything that came with it upon the first telling. “You need to know that I hid in that fucking shaft and did nothing while I watched twenty toddlers get slaughtered.” Her breaths came in long, shuddering draws.

“Hey…” He pulled her to him, not entirely sure what the right thing to do here was, knowing she didn’t like the feel of the beskar, not knowing if she would even notice in this moment, holding her there on the floor of the flight deck. “You were ten, Rayne. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

“The way it happened… the person who did it… I’d fail again today. There’s no way I could save them. Even today.”

“Hey…” he said again, pulling away a little this time, just enough so he could look her in the eye. “It’s not just you anymore. Whatever happens next, I’m with you. It’s both of us. And Yadier’s not helpless. You’ve seen to that. You’ve protected us in ways no one else ever could. You’ve taught Yadier to protect himself. I will protect both of you with my life.”

She met his gaze through the visor, the blue of her eyes reflecting the beskar of his armor. “I never had a mother. I don’t really know how to be one.”

“Remember what you told me back at the hangar?”

That almost got a smile out of her. “I told you a lot of things back there.”

“You said babies need affection, to be talked to, played with, and loved. You do all of that with him just fine. You also said he was a good judge of character. As far as he’s concerned, you’re his mother. I’m not inclined to argue with him.”

Rayne stopped herself half-way through an eye-roll and smiled. “I never expected you to use my own words against me.”

“Easier with yours than mine.”

She flattened her hands against his helmet, just above the visor, and rested her head against them. He leaned into her, glad for her adaptation into the gesture as she breathed into it. “Well, that was the worst job interview I’ve ever had.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Offer still stands. Not sure the boss will take no for an answer.”

“What happens when we find his people?”

“Nothing changes. I’ll always be his father. You’ll always be his mother.”

She dropped one hand to the pauldron on his right shoulder, tracing the mudhorn sigil there. “Does it matter that I’m not Mandalorian?”

“No. You follow enough of the Resol’nare to qualify.”

“Six Acts?”

“Six Actions. First is to wear armor. You carry yours around in the form of the Force all the time. Next is to speak Mando’a. Defend yourself and your family. Contribute to the clan. Raise your children as Mandalorians. Fight for the cause of Mandalore.”

“About those last two…”

“Four out of six is fine. Our clan, our rules.”

“So this makes me part of the clan?”

“Yes.”

He watched as she closed her eyes, forehead still against her hand against his helmet. Waited as she worked through the implications. “Is this… is this all from him, or…”

“I want it, too. We both want you in our family.”

He watched as her lips formed around the last word, appearing to have as much trouble saying it out loud as he used to. With a final sigh, she sat up, meeting his gaze. “Where do I sign?”

“Nothing to sign. Just say the words of the gai bal manda.”

“Name and soul.”

“Yes.”

“What are the words?”

“Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad.” Din took a sharp breath, suddenly realizing that perhaps when he had spoken the words to his son, sometime during those first delirious days after Nevarro, they may not have counted. “And then you say his name.”

He watched again as Rayne’s lips traced over the translation. I know your name as my child. “Um… Din…”

He took a long, deep sigh. “Yeah. I think I need a do-over.”

They descended the ladder to find Yadier in his crate, sitting up and playing with his rubber frog. He reached up, asking to be held, the word “Buir?” squeaking out of him.

Din picked him up and sat on the edge of the bunk with him in his lap while Rayne went to the back of the hold to retrieve a chair. “I screwed up last time, kiddo,” he said. “This only works if you have a name.” He waited for Rayne to get settled. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Din took a breath, running a finger along his son’s ear, feeling something tighten in his chest as the baby looked at him with those enormous eyes. “Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Yadier.” He brought his forehead to the baby’s, holding him there for a moment before pulling back.

Yadier looked up at him and smiled, burbling. “Buir!”

Din tilted his head and nodded. “Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Your turn.” He handed her his son.

Rayne held him in her lap, regarding him with a serious expression. “Your dad says you want me to be your mom. You sure about this?”

“Buir!” he repeated, looking directly at her.

“All right then.” She looked up to Din for a moment. He remained still. Silent. Sensing no objection, she looked back down to the kid. “Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Yadier.” Following Din’s lead, she placed a kiss at the top of her son’s head.

And just like that, Rayne was a mother.

They were a family.

Din saw that his hands were shaking and he clenched his fists on his knees. After all the families that had declined him as a child, after instead being raised in the Fighting Corps, after believing for so long that he was incapable of having a family, incapable of being a father, destined for a solitary existence, now, finally, at an age where many Mandalorians who survived this long were just reaching the grandparent stage, he had a son of his own. He was a father. His son had a mother.

Rayne laughed. “We’re in our mid-forties and our son is six years older than we are.”

Din sighed. “He better grow up quick.”

---

The next day, he handed her a bullet casing, clearly ornamental, made of beskar, strung on a short length of leather. “Open it,” he said.

She unscrewed the flat end and pulled out the contents.

A small lock of hair, dark brown, almost black, bound with a black elastic, just long enough to betray a loose curl. She held the elastic end in one hand as she ran the fingers of the other along the length of it. Feeling how soft it was.

“I thought it might even the score a little,” he said.

She slipped the lock back into the casing and closed it. “Finally cut your hair.” She smiled.

“I did.”

“Thank you,” she said as she fastened the leather around her neck, the casing lying just below the hollow of her throat.

He tilted his head at the sight of her wearing beskar, understanding what it meant for her to accept it, to wear it against her skin. He hooked one of his fingers around one of hers. “Thank you for wearing it.”

She ran her free hand through what had become shaggy lengths on the back of her head. “Mine’s getting too long, too.”

“You can borrow my clippers if you want.”

“I’ve never done it myself.”

“I can do it,” he offered.

Her expression was dubious.

“I can’t promise I’ll do it well,” he clarified. “You keep yours shorter than mine and I’ve been doing this for thirty years.” He shrugged.

“Oh, what the hell.”

Five minutes later she found herself standing in the middle of the hold of the ship, naked so that she wouldn’t get her clothes full of hair, Din running his clippers up the back of her head. He took two passes, pulled the clippers away, and paused. “Huh. Woops.”

“What?”

“Kidding.”

She sighed.

“You deserved that for tickling me.”

“You hold a grudge, don’t you?”

“I do.” His tone held a smile, though, and when he was done, she checked the results in the mirror in the fresher.

Not a terrible job, all things considered.

He swept up while she got dressed, and when she returned, he was holding one of her locks, already bound in elastic. “May I keep this?” he asked.

Her expression clouded over, thinking back to the Padawan braid she never had the chance to grow out, never had the chance to sever had she ever made it to become a Knight. Something that might have otherwise happened about twenty years ago. Would she have kept it? Would she have given it to him in this moment?

He mis-read her pause. “Is this creepy? This is creepy. I’m s-”

“No, it’s fine.” She smiled. “You just get to see it every day.”

“I… should have explained. Mandalorian parents exchange these when they adopt children or bear their own. Makes up for the helmet.”

No, it doesn’t. “So, even when they’re married, they don’t…”

“No. Only in the dark. Our secrecy is our survival.” He paused, lowering his gaze to the second casing he had pulled out, turning it over in his fingers. “This is the Way.”

This is insane. Of course he was raised with the most fundamentalist upbringing Mandalore could possibly cook up in its stew of civil war and political factions. Of course the product of such upheaval would come to adopt the most powerful Force user in the galaxy. It made his admission of her into their clan all the more remarkable.

“Yes, you can keep it.”

“Thank you.” His tone was quiet as he slipped the lock of her hair into the casing and strung it around his neck, tucking it under the cowl.

Din had missed the weight of the Mythosaur, had missed the press of beskar against his throat. Having it back again felt good.

For so long, he thought he would never wear such a thing. A buir’ruk. A parent stone. A vessel containing a small piece of the mother of his son. It grew warm against his skin in seconds, and he hooked one of Rayne’s fingers with one of his own, head still bowed. “Thank you,” he repeated.

She took his other hand in hers. “You’re welcome,” she murmured.

---

Last day.

Rayne had completed and tested the fob scramblers with success. Yadier’s was embedded into the back of the Mythosaur pendant. Din’s was wired into the inside of back of his helmet.

They were free.

Din was sitting in the shade, a small can of paint at his foot, chestplate in his lap as he brushed red paint onto it. Earth-toned red. The color of his old armor. The color of dried blood.

Rayne brought her own chair into the shade and sat before him. “What’s up?”

“Bare beskar would be too conspicuous on Coruscant. Camouflage is in order.”

“Does the color mean anything?”

“Yes.”

He let the silence stretch for a while as Rayne watched him work. She didn’t press him to elaborate. When he was done with the chestplate, he set it aside to dry, and picked up his left thigh guard. “Red is in honor of my parents.” His tone was soft.

“Would you like any help?”

“No, thank you.” He pulled the brush through the length of the guard. “But I would like you to stay.”

“Okay.”

She stayed with him for the next hour as he bent over the armor and painted. Quiet.

Together.

---

Their last night on Methuselah. The sky rained down with meteors. The fireflies blinked. The cicadas buzzed. The frogs peeped.

She lay in his arms, under the stars, thinking of the number six.

The Resol’nare. The Six Actions.

The scars of six thin lines above his knee.

The scars in his mind, not quite healed over, but better than they were.

She wondered. How much he had taken.

How much more he could yet stand to take.

#the mandalorian #din djarin #grogu

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enderwalking · 2 years

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Whats up its tsubasa anon, bsck to ruin your day!

I see your "fai was never able to learn healing magic" and I raise you: fai was told as a child that his greatest crime was that he wasn't willing to die, that he wasn't willing to let his brother die. How the death of an entire world was blamed on that decision.

Do you think about fai, desperate to trade his life for his brother's? Do you think about fai, unable to bear his magic being the source of any more violence (unwilling to let syaoran, soul or no soul, contain that violence, to wield it), asking to die? Do you think about him giving up on reviving his brother for the chance to protect these people he was never supposed to care about, that he was supposed to kill when the time came?

Do you think about kurogane, no family left in the world, no context for the centuries of hurt built up in fai, seeing this as fai giving up on them? Kurogane who learned love from his parents as guardians of a country, who didn't stop fighting until they were forced to by death?

Do you think about these two men, so intensely products of the hurt children they once were? One unable to tolerate the others desire to die, one unable to forgive the other for forcing him to live?

Hey what do you think the c!emeraldduo equivalent of "Good morning, kurogane" would be?

see this for me is where the comparisons begin to fall apart a bit because while this is all true of fai and i Am extremely fucked up about it thank you very much trc anon you're the WORST, cphil's flaws have never particularly been about self-destruction or sacrifice imo? he's always been quite conscious of survival, and while i don't think he would ever hesitate in throwing himself on the blade for the sake of his loved ones, i don't think he would ever seek it so desperately the way fai does, even in his worst moments. cphil's flaws, at least to me, are instead about like. this contradiction between responsibility and separation? responsibility because he has to be the one to fix things, to see things through, to teach the lesson and repair the damage, but separation because he also has to exist Apart from people, whether that's because of his regrets over the pain he's caused them, or because he believes the best way to respect them is to give them distance, or just because of the ever-present knowledge that everyone he knows and loves he will one day lose.

in this au, where he's been conditioned to believe that his mere presence in people's lives has the power to doom them, i think that tendency toward separation becomes even more pronounced. he exists among the group and will do what he can to help because he has a job to do, a responsibility to fulfill, but he Will Not push, he will back off at the slightest show of resistance, even if he knows that he should interfere he just. can't. because what if he just makes things worse?

and like. in canon, c!emeralds have years and years of camraderie and shared experience and understanding backing their relationship, but in this situation where they don't have any of that and all ctechno knows is that he Has to fight for everything until his dying breath (because ctechno in any universe is all about loyalty and duty) whereas this guy backs off the second things get hard? yeah, kurogane's vicious callouts of fai's flaws would definitely still exist, even if the flaws in question are different.

in this scenario, the thing that causes the acid tokyo fallout would probably not be ctechno forcing cphil to stay alive, but instead putting him in a situation where he is forced to take action against his will, and in doing so cphil's fears are proven right; something goes wrong, someone fails to be saved, and once again it's all his fault.

also, this is completely derailing but you did get me thinking: cphil does not have fai's flaw of self-sacrifice, but um well do you ever think about "keep the discs i've done enough with my life" or like uhhhh

#asks #trcanon #WAILS

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ootahime · 3 years

Text

analyzing every gojohime moment in the manga >:) pt. 3

more and more paragraphs ahead. BE PREPARED!

i’m also writing this at 3 am so please bear with the horrendous grammar and punctuation.

chapter 63

i know he’s probably like this with everyone but i love how excited he is bragging about his students to her. he’s like a child telling his mother about an amazing adventure he had with his friends, making sure he mentions every detail. in the anime, their conversation lasted for 3:41 :3 backwards 341 is 143 which means i love you.

1 letter = i

4 letters = love

3 letters = you

chapter 63

i love her fit! i also like how both of them like to wear baggy clothing that accentuates their collarbones `w` it’s like they’re matching in a way. even if she did tell him to cut the crap, she still let him run his mouth to his content LOL i feel like if he didn’t compliment himself at the end, she would have said something different. UGH HE LOOKS SO HAPPY CALLING HER

ah, let me translate the conversation just in case anyone needs it.

utahime: you wanted to talk about the investigation, right?

gojo: well, got any idea who?

utahime: i have no idea. no one seems suspicious. what do we do now? should we ask the students for help?

gojo: yeah, that’s fine. i’m busy so asking the kids would be okay. keep looking. i’m counting on you.

I THINK THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE TRYING TO SAY.

OR it could mean that she’s asking if they should start investigating the students. it would make sense either way because gojo says in the next panel that he doesn’t want to assume that the mole is a student, and in chapter 79, gojo sends the trio to utahime to help her.

chapter 63

these two love their students to death. neither of them wanted to assume that the mole was a student. in chapter 79, when utahime is talking to the trio about the mole, nobara points out to the group that the traitor must be from kyoto because utahime is the one who’s reaching out to the tokyo side. utahime has a dismal look on her face, almost like she’s saying, “i didn’t want it to turn out this way -- for this to be true.” after mechamaru says his farewells to miwa on the train, mai tries to talk about what he did to which utahime says, “it doesn’t matter, he’s dead, after all,” with a similar sunken expression. i just love how her care for the students is one of the biggest aspects of her personality that’s been showcased so far. it’s also cool how it ties together with gojo’s belief that no child’s youth should be taken away. i truly think these two have the capacity to understand each other to a deep level, down to the core. seeing as utahime is also a teacher, it’s safe to assume that she also wants to raise the next generation of sorcerers to be strong. utahime and gojo’s similarities and contrasting elements are so interwined, i really wonder if it’s intentional. like am i looking too much into this? are utahime and gojo really meant to be this connected? think about it. similar motivations, care of the kids, contrasting palettes, the bickering, long history. IT’S JUST TOO MUCH.

also can we mention how their phone calls and meetings must be heavily planned out? this means they’ve talked and interacted with each other A LOT behind the scenes. she doesn’t answer his call with “what do you want? don’t bother me on my day off.” she knows exactly why he’s calling her and they even speak in code. she probably meets up with him and tells him to call her on a specific day and at a specific time. they must know each other’s schedules very well in order to execute this investigation in complete secrecy. when he says, “we can never be too sure who is listening in around utahime” it implies that they find calling a risk, so in order to guarantee that there is no one around, they have to meet up in person. see where i’m getting at? they talk A LOTTT and most likely are aware of each other’s daily lives.

the fact that gojo is her main source of stress when he’s literally a 3 hour train ride away from her is hilarious LMAOOOO. you know what that means, right? he must call and text her constantly about random things to annoy her.

chapter 65

ah yes, my favorite moment by far. look at that smile on his face.

chapter 65

he loves saying her name. he probably rushed over with the sole purpose of doing something like this to her LMAOOOO like i mean, mei was in there with her so technically they both needed to be helped but judging from his words and expression, he only wanted to help utahime. notice how mei’s not there in the debris. could she possibly have suspected gojo’s presence or an outside force? or was she fast enough to avoid being in the debris? either way, her lack of presence in this scene helps highlight the fact that this is a special interaction between utahime and gojo. he refers to her in a very familiar sense. the most formal way to address someone is by their last name followed by the honorific, -san. in gojo’s case, he should be calling her iori-san if they weren’t acquainted. he doesn’t even bother to call her utahime-senpai. granted, gojo is not the most respectful and socially competent person out there because geto points this out to him. he isn’t even aware that she finds him annoying because he views her bad attitude toward him as her just playing along with him. he probably thinks she’s flirting back LOLOL

since he asks her “you cryin?” that definitely means that gojo witnessed her crying on one occasion or maybe multiple. who knows, the old utahime could have been a very emotional person. while this is happening, mei is close to gojo, she then asks him if he would console her if she were to cry in a flirtatious manner. gojo dismisses her attempt at flirting with him and says she won’t cry because she’s strong. now normally, you’re supposed to face the person you’re talking to, GOJO. he KEEPS his eyes on her even when more people come to join the conversation.

now, we can all agree that geto, mei, and shoko are better at picking up social cues than gojo. they probably knew the vibe of the conversation and decided to play along with gojo’s antics.

chapter 65

WE were worried about you.

pay attention to the order of the characters that show up. gojo makes his appearance first, then geto, followed by shoko. based on utahime’s reaction to seeing shoko, it’s evident that these two share a close bond. shouldn’t shoko be the one to arrive on the scene first? she’s the closest to utahime and would therefore be more concerned about her condition, right? i know shoko’s technique doesn’t really allow her to do anything other than treat the wounds of others, but if you heard your friend was missing, you would definitely rush to the scene.

look at geto’s reaction when mei says, “you’re the one who’s picking on her, geto. you don’t even know it.” i think it’s mei who’s saying this because gojo calls geto “suguru”. but anyway, mei is aware that they’re picking on her. i don’t think she’s the type to legitimately bully someone for their strength. her reaction to all of this is very playful and her “heh heh heh” is proof of that. when geto shows up and swallows the curse before it gets to utahime, he says, “satoru. it’s not nice to pick on the weak.” by saying this, he pisses utahime off because he too, is joining in on gojo’s joke. i believe he’s unaware that he’s making fun of utahime because his reaction is “gah!” with a sweatdrop. he probably thought gojo was making fun of weak people in general.

geto’s usually a gentleman seeing as it is canon that he is more popular with girls than gojo. BUT WHO KNOWS...you gotta be a specific type of person to be best friends with gojo. maybe he ain’t shit too... okay, my point is that everyone is just playing along. when shoko shows up, utahime is relieved to see her because shoko doesn’t tease her like this. since utahime tells shoko to not become like those two, this implies that geto teases her as well (probably not as much as gojo). we all know geto is really big on looking out for the weak so he probably wouldn’t have insulted her for real.

verdict: utahime being weak is just a joke. i’ve mentioned this so many times, sorry if it’s getting annoying and repetitive hehehehehe...

chapter 65

these three aren’t irresponsible. geto and gojo are a troublesome duo for sure, but they’re dependable. seems unlike them to forget something so simple and essential to pretty much every mission.

chapter 65

here’s my headcanon. they were hanging outside or in the car when their assistant manager got a call. the assistant was informed that two days have elapsed since mei and utahime went on their mission (or last contacted someone).

gojo: that’s weird. mei’s with her so they should have finished exorcising the spirit sooner.

geto: you think something happened to them? maybe it’s a strong special grade.

gojo: utahime probably dragged mei down with her. poor mei-san~

gojo gets up

geto: where are you going?

gojo: going to save utahime! it’s fine i’ll put up a curtain!

manager: gojo wait!!!!!!!!!!!

geto sighs

shoko: that idiot’s always running off without us.

they pin the blame on gojo for saying that he’ll put up a curtain and leaving the assistant manager behind. you know what this means? he ran and the manager couldn’t catch up HEHE... why the rush, gojo? were you actually concerned about her?

tbh i don’t see gojo ever running to something unless it’s urgent. the fact that he ran to save her says a lot.

----

let me know if you have any thoughts or questions! i forgot to add this but gojo had a more serious expression when he was explaining how they must’ve been trapped in a barrier that messes with time. he then states, “we thought it was weird even though you’re here, mei.” i know he was probably worried sick because if mei couldn’t be contacted then that means something must’ve happened to utahime too. okay that’s it for now. i’ll be bringing up this little detail i’ve noticed about utahime in the manga next :3

#gojohime #gouta #gojo x utahime

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kellinrk800 · 3 years

Text

toko fukawa comphet no i don’t take criticism

nobody will even see this because my account just. doesnt get traction but here have a ramble abt toko’s backstory and how much i firmly believe her attraction was comphet.

spoilers for thh, sdr2 and udg

tw// ab/se, n/glect, severe bullying

toko was severely neglected and unwanted when she was a child. she grew up with two mothers and one father due to both sleeping with the same man and neither wanting their child which caused her to be mistreated. once she was locked in a closet and forced to stay there for three days without food. clearly, she grew up in a household completely devoid of healthy love. genocide jack’s development was likely a response to cope with the traumatic experiences.

her time in elementary was no different. in third grade, she was used as a scapegoat for stolen money and her classmates tied her to the jungle gym with a garden hose as punishment.

her first real “love” was with a boy who she had been friends with since elementary but when she finally confessed through a letter, she found it pinned to the bulletin board to mock her. this was genocide jack’s first kill, leading me to believe that her murders were actually a form of protection.

on one occasion (and most likely more considering her difficult relationship with understanding rejection) she was ghosted halfway through on a date after spending three days and nights planning it so that she would not mess it up. she later found out that the boy only asked her out because he lost a bet.

the most likely only healthy representation of love she ever has was through media, which is arguably extremely heteronormativity and the actual healthiness of how relationships are presented in media is debatable.

she internalised all of these things happening to her and believed she deserved them somehow, building her inferiority complex. she began to assume that people only expected bad of her and self victimises herself almost on instinct despite her nature to express opinions without care for others most of the time. her self esteem is extremely low and she often worries about being considered an “old hag” in ultra despair girls.

toko fell in love with the idea of love, not an actual person. at some point she turned to novels and writing as a way to express her emotions and she used that passion to create works of art through her novels and created a toxic idolisation of the perfect relationship with nothing but media, her family’s relationships and her past experiences to go off.

she began to let herself get hurt and internalise it which ended up building her inferiority complex even further to the point of becoming unhealthily infatuated with anyone she saw fit as a stand in for the dreamy perfect people that made her books succeed.

time and time again genocide jack and toko were mistreated in their relationships, causing their system to suffer greatly. jack began to kill anyone toko saw fit as a perfect romantic interest to protect them both, but this most likely caused her own mental health to decline as well, leading to the aggressive, startling and manic personality we saw in the games.

toko began to both idolise and fear falling in love. while she knew they would most likely be killed and she would have to cope with knowing that the police could come knocking any day if they put the pieces together, she also still purposed her life around being in a perfect relationship because it was now causing her to gain traction through her novels.

this only furthered her unhealthy infatuation with relationships. she became determined to find a man who fit her description of the perfect man and would not mislead, use, mock or hurt toko in hopes that he would not be killed and she would finally achieve her dream.

enter byakuya togami. blonde, blue eyed, rich, cold and most importantly, entirely unattainable. he was an ideal stand in, especially considering the circumstances of the killing game (jack’s unique killing style would immediately be found out). she was able to fantasise from afar without ever really getting as severely hurt as she had in the past because he simply did not care to provide her his attention.

jack had two options. kill byakuya and get executed, or suck it up. clearly you can tell which option she chose. in addition, she had all of her memories from prior to the game which most likely slightly numbed her thirst for blood. by the end of ultra despair girls, she has grown a respect for toko, a softness for komaru and even calmed jack down to the point where it’s suggested that she no longer uses her skills to murder but instead fight despair.

in fact, near the end, toko is acutely aware of what is happening despite the fact jack was fronting (they don’t usually share memories, only emotions), suggesting they may have slightly integrated but i don’t really want to make assumptions considering i do not have did and am not educated enough to speak confidently about did.

ironically, the killing game was actually good for both of their mental health’s. i’ll only be talking about toko but in ultra despair girls she was emotionally stronger and more mature. she believed she finally had a purpose other than romance and that she could fight against all odds. she even credits makoto for her newfound courage. she criticises cowards and those that remind her of her past self. she is willing to challenge her fears.

komaru had an amazingly powerful and positive effect on them both. her softness, optimism and empathy help toko’s character develop even further. when komaru tries to give in to despair, toko encourages her to face her fears. toko, who was before extremely afraid and uncomfortable with being touched, is now willing to comfort and even hug komaru. she claims she’s finally found a true friend (that’s actually human, can’t forget kameko the stinkbug) and that she found hope in her.

komaru admires toko and doesnt really mind her split personality, instead just considering it “a bit strange”, which is a noticeable difference from how she was treated by everyone else for it. toko is protective of komaru during chapter two due to her suspicion of shirokuma. later, they even sleep in the same bed.

however, when toko risks komaru’s life for byakuya, they get into an argument in which toko accuses komaru of manipulating her with terms such as “friends”, which leads to komaru showing that she really does trust her.

later, this arguably resolved after servant forces jack and toko to fight against komaru for byakuya. they fight back against servant and komaru forgives her because they are friends, which makes toko extremely happy, so much that she blushed and admits she has never had a real friend before. she thanks komaru genuinely for the first time and they try to become real friends.

toko swears she will help komaru with anything she can’t do by herself, just like komaru would do for her.

toko even stays by her side to the point of rejecting the opportunity of going to future foundation to stay with komaru :)

in the end of danganronpa goodbye despair, which is set after ultra despair girls, kyoko reminds byakuya that someone is waiting for him and he jokes that she shouldn’t remind him of “something so horrifying”. and honestly i think the fact he was able to joke about it shows that perhaps toko and byakuya found a somewhat healthy relationship as friends, acquaintances, or even just bearing eachother’s presence.

a notable addition that didn’t really fit anywhere else is toko’s scrapped execution. “first kiss prank” is the title and it consists of byakuya running towards her before toko gets hit by a roller. that says enough about her biggest fears and how badly her past memories affected her.

in conclusion, toko fukawa’s obsession with byakuya was comphet due to pressure from the media and her toxic ideals. the fact she was able to form a healthy relationship with komaru is hhh and i could talk about them for hours. tokomaru is the second closest thing we have to inmedia stated canon (fuck kodaka’s statement me and the homies hate kodaka’s statement about naegiri /j)

sources: toko fukawa’s fandom wiki, genocide jack’s fandom wiki, free time events, transcripts

#danganronpa #toko fukawa #fukawa toko #touko fukawa #fukawa touko #tokomaru #syomaru #toukomaru #trigger happy havoc #ultra despair girls #character analysis #in which i am unhealthy obsessed with toko fukawa

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