#because I've been thinking about it so much that I may have lost the plot

[feelinungry]

and i will always, always, be defending the "plot-holes" that are not actually plot-holes at all. i've seen people on facebook complain so many times about the ending of the game - about the siege of talmberg to be more exact.

"just attack it", "just take it down", "why doesn't divish just do it", "ohh his wife he can't even fuck! nobody gives a damn", "henry doesn't even really care for radzig at this point" etc.

and i have to go back to that one solitary thing this game literally cannot exist without: love. it's the main aspect, it's the pillars the story stands on, it's everything.

medieval movies and books like to picture the old times ala skyrim: "my son was very young when he died. but he did so while doing his duty. he fell for skyrim! he fell for the empire! i do not mourn for i am proud!"

"oh, i loved my father more than anything. but he is gone now. that is life."

it is. but. hear me out. people back then - were actually just like people now. we break down when we lose someone we adore, cherish, love, protect. no matter how stoic we may be, we don't take it lightly, do we?

so, if you think about it, is it a plot-hole, when divish refuses to attack his castle because

it's his home and he loves it

his wife is in there

his friend is also in there?

robard would not attack if it were divish in there. radzig would not attack if it were henry in there. hans would not attack if it were hanush in there. istvan would not attack if it were erik in there. captain bernard would not attack if it were hans in there.

it all comes back to love. and wanting people you care about safe.

martin running back to certain death because his wife is in the village when the cumans attack.

both parents worrying about nothing but their beloved son even while they are being brutally murdered.

everyone on talmberg willing to lock henry up just to keep him away from skalitz (for reasons yet unknown).

theresa making a last stand for someone just as lost as her.

the understanding he's met with when henry comes and admits his failure to radzig, the fact that he went against direct order. (nothing, absolutely nothing else but radzig being in debt to martin, or radzig being someone close to henry, could explain the understanding, the acceptance, and the outcome of the whole situation. how do you think henry - who is just a young man, not a hero, not a dragonborn, not a chosen one - would get away with all this?)

henry backed out of the night raid on talmberg because hans was wounded and wouldn't survive long enough for the mission to succeed.

hans (in one of the outcomes) carried him out on his back, saving his fat ass. no time for glory, no time for saving the hostages when it's suddenly your best friend who is on the ground and bleeding out. he might have succeeded with the mission. yet he didn't hesitate when suddenly it was him who was put in the shoes of those who just wanted to keep their loved ones safe. it was stephanie for divish (he approved the raid). it was radzig for henry (he was the one who went first and most willingly). and it was henry for hans (who immediately backed out on henry's behalf). all those actions were based on love.

would you attack talmberg, knowing there was someone you loved? someone you wanted to know better, someone you wanted to learn how to love, someone who could have been much closer if he only tried? someone you only just met?

the whole story starts with love, continues with love, ends with love. it is everywhere you look and you don't even have to romance anyone to see it, to feel it. it is in the npcs' lives, it's the motivation behind so many actions. it's in henry's decisions. in your decisions.

because, don't you just love this game?

#kcd #kcd talk #kcd brainrot i welcome you back #and fuck off i need to live and sleep #kingdom come deliverance #hans capon #henry of skalitz #radzig kobyla #divish of talmberg

[dribs-and-drabbles]

Colours in Our Skyy 2 Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars ep 3

In which I get a little bit more meta than I usually do...

So as we know, this ep was spent mostly in the forest on a few days during which the characters couldn't change clothes, which means there are less colours/clothes to comment on. That being said, the red and blue pairings were provided in all possible places.

Tian's plaid shirt from the night before also has thin red stripes to accompany the blue, and kampung's jersey and Pran's tote bag offer another pairing. I think there's also blue, red and yellow in Kampung's t-shirt. I love that Pran brought his bag with him - despite being lost in the forest, Pat is still metaphorically with him. I think it's also interesting that Pran's shirt looks almost camouflage, and that he mostly wears it when he's taking the lead - looking after Tian on the way to Bull Camp and then accompanying Phupha when Kampung goes missing. Knowing that Pran ends up portraying Phupha in the play - and despite Pran playing Tian in his and Pat's role-playing of the other couple - it's a clever choice in this ep.

Pat, on the other hand, does get a change of clothes at the start of this ep, and with the brown, green, and cream he looks like he's trying to imitate the rangers' uniform to be included in the search party.

Plenty of people have commented on how Pran and Tian have been made to look very similar, especially with their hair, but in the below scene it's so clear how the show is trying to have the characters 'imitate' each other. Pran and Tian are in the same colours, only the white and yellow are reversed in their clothing. Pat and Phupha, as already mentioned, also sporting the same colours. But the mixed-pairings also have similar shoes - Pran and Tian in canvas lace-ups with cream toes/soles, and Pat and Phupha in leather boots. The show is really drilling into us, 'look how similar these people are!', but as we learn from their interactions it seems Pran and Phupha are more alike, as are Pat and Tian (hence why they end up playing those roles in the play).

Once Pat and Tian have made their way back to the village, Pat changes into his teal shorts and a brown shirt. I haven't offered much colour-interpretation yet in this post but in general brown and olive green feature quite heavily this ep, especially with all the camouflage. I think this partly comes more from the atots side of this crossover and the use of earth tones in the original series, but it's incheresting that there's been so. much. talk. about sacrificing arising from this ep. I won't go into it all but they're all dealing with something (or multiple things) they have to yield on or sacrifice.

But Pat here, below, has a moment - a mini-Oh! moment - where he realises he has to yield to himself. Having this 'nonsense' fight with Pran and going through their experiences in Pha Pun Dao has made Pat confront and admit to himself something which he either hasn't realised or has been repressing for a long time - that he can't live without Pran. Yes, Pat has always wanted to be around Pran, he always wants to help him, and he's been depressingly lonely without him...but being unable to live without Pran seems heavier. And this realisation goes beyond acquiescing on the fight with Pran, because it has consequences for the bigger picture of their lives and hiding from their families. And that's scary. So no wonder he's perhaps repressed this from himself, instead feeling easier to tease Pran about him always needing Pat, to bicker about who needs the other the most, and to sit in the nonsense fight rather than acknowledge what it really means.

Incidentally, I like that Pat pulled the watch out of his shorts pocket - the object that Pran links to Pat and the teal that seems to symbolise their union as a couple.

Someone (sorry I don't remember who) mentioned that Pat wears a lot more stripy shirts now than he ever did in BBS, which is potentially an influence from Pran, but I love that they're both wearing their love and happiness when they reunite back at the village. I also sat up at seeing Tian's brown t-shirt with the yellow rectangle over his heart - reminiscent of Pran's long-sleeved top in ep 8 of BBS. Tian is ready to sacrifice himself and his health again to go into the forest to look for Kampung and Phupha, with his love for them driving him to do it. (In ep 8, Pran's love for Pat took him away from drinking with Wai to comfort a sullen Pat).

And then on to that final scene with Pat and Pran and we get Pat in Pran's red and cream/yellow shorts, and Pran in Pat's dark blue (or their teal)...and an ominous dark green. They're finding a resolution to their little fight but it's bittersweet.

Coming back to what I was saying about Pat's Oh! moment above, I think him asking Pran to apply the bruise cream was a way for Pat to admit to himself and Pran, albeit subtly, that he does need Pran, and for Pran to understand that admission. (And I'll quickly say that I don't think Pran needed to be the one to say it first but I'll come back to that below). When Pat gives Pran's watch back, however, he reverts to the teasing "Like I said, you can't live without me", he's trying to keep things jovial. Tian has already told Pran about Pat's realisation though - not to aid any teasing or to bolster one side of the fight, he doesn't seem that type of character (he's not a gremlin like Pat and Pran). No, I think he sees that Pat and Pran need this knowledge open between them and facilitates a way for it to happen. In true PatPran fashion, Pran goads Pat into saying it and Pat's soft look to Pran shows his gratitude to have the opportunity (below). Pat needs to admit it out loud to himself and to Pran - the person to whom it means the most for him to hear it. His sigh before he says it is a relief, it's releasing the hold he's had on his fear about what it might mean for them, and Pran's reaction helps alleviate that.

Pran's "Neither can I" isn't as big and dramatic as Pat's statement, but that's because it's not revelatory, not for Pran (who's known it since he fell for Pat in high school and couldn't get over him even after being sent away and pushing Pat away once they had reunited at Uni), and not for Pat - there was always some truth in Pat's original words, "without me, he can't do anything" and they both know that. Pran wasn't the one who needed to admit to Pat that he needs Pat because it's been known all along. But Pran repeating now, in his own way, that he can't live without Pat helps to strengthen their bond.

This moment is bittersweet because of their situation - there is no option to not be together, they've known this already but now it's been explicitly said, so until their parents can be comfortable with them together they will always be hiding something, making sacrifices. This is their life. They're able to understand that on a deeper level.

With this understanding, Pran, unable to do or say anything else, takes his focus to something tangible: The watch, and what it represents - Pat, his time with Pat, their history and connection from childhood, the gaps when they were separated, and their reuniting in Uni. @btwinlines started off a great thread about how time stops for Pat and Pran when they're apart, but the watch also represents how time might make things easier in the future and that all they can do is hope. And, in the meantime, love each other the best they can through all these little fights they have. It's not a grand resolution for them, like Phupha and Tian get later in the show, because they're not in the same place as the other couple. This is just a snapshot of their journey towards where we see them at the end of ep 12 in BBS, so if it feels like they're in limbo when we leave them, they are, but with a renewed perspective of each other and the poignancy of it all.

I'm almost certain this will be a coincidence, but I love that when Pran puts the watch on again it's almost at the same time as when he reset it at the end of BBS ep 1. I love that it's ten minutes later though, because it symbolises how time has moved on for them - i.e how much has changed - since they got together, and therefore how much more will change as time keeps moving forward. And that's something they can trust in.

[ep 1] [ep 2] [ep 3] [ep 4] (<- I was right to be hopeful!)

#bad buddy #our skyy 2 #our skyy 2 x bad buddy #our skyy 2 x a tale of thousand stars #our skyy 2 x atots #our skyy 2 x bbs x atots #colours in our skyy 2 bbs x atots #I've rambled A LOT in this one but I had THOUGHTS #I'm not sure if I've made my point well or not #because I've been thinking about it so much that I may have lost the plot #but here it is...I hope it sparks something in you #there's just something about pat realising things and/or needing to say them out loud #and pran providing the opportunities for pat do that #that happens in bbs and I think that's what they've done here too #uservid #mjtag #usernuria #userjjessi #userkit #user111 #tosnimeat #<- in case you're interested! #no worries if not #colours in our skyy 2 bad buddy

[ineffable-suffering]

Why Aziraphale is an unreliable narrator

Part 1: The Story of Job

I'm absolutely not the first one to talk about this on here and I probably shan't be the last either. Alas, here's my take on why all of the minisodes in Season 2 should be enjoyed with great care – and taken with a grain of angelic salt.

I'm gonna split this into 3 parts, aka the three minisodes we are shown, since I tend to get a bit waffley in my posts and want to still be able to include all the little details. Once I've written them, I'll link Part 2 & Part 3 here as well!

Alright, let's get into it under the cut of doom.

Episode 2 opens with the Story of Job. Right off the bat, I noticed that it sort of looks like an old film playing. At first I didn't read that much into it, but once we see the cut-away to Aziraphale at the bookshop, currently reading that part of the Bible (presumably), I immediately thought: "Oh! It's because it's his memory. He's remembering how it went down and therefore it plays like a figurative film in his head."

This, I then came to realize, is a very crucial difference to all the flashbacks of S1, which were exclusively told and narrated by God. May her intensions be as ineffable as they are: She did tell us all of these stories from an objective outsider's point of view. Now, however, it's Aziraphale who's re-telling those stories to us from memory.

And if there's one thing that's for certain, it's that a memory is something entirely different to an objective narration of a story. Just think about how you yourself remember things. Especially things that happened years, maybe even decades (or, in an angel's case, millenia) ago. What is it, that you really remember? Can you know for sure, that a conversation was held with those exact words? Are you 100% certain that the clothes someone wore weren't different? Had it really been snowing or would that make very little sense given what you're remembering happened in May? And did it even happen in May? Or does that just happen to be your favourite month, the current weather, your preferred style of clothing and what it was that you would imagine someone would have said to you?

What I'm trying to say is: The further away it is that something happened, the more your brain has to fill in the gaps. This is why, for example, your parents will remember the family summer holiday entirely different when you ask them about it 20 years later.

"No, it was Sarah who puked on the car ride home!" "Nonsense, Sarah never puked as a child. Bobby had that gone-off pizza, he's the one that was sick the whole ride long!"

We've all been there. Bobby made it out alive. Don't buy gas station pizza.

Alright, back to the plot: Naturally, Aziraphale is not actually human, so it is a pure assumption on my part that the way his memory works is similar to ours. However, the whole topic of "memory" is actually quite a recurring one on Good Omens.

Crowley seems to have lost his in the Fall, yet somehow managed to get most of it back. Not all of it, though, he clearly has some major gaps ("You used to jump on me back, little monkey in the waistcoat!"). Beelzebub helps Gabriel store all his memories in their little fly container before they get wiped entirely too, by the Metatron and/or Saraqael. Crowley and Aziraphale (and possibly Jimbriel) perform a miracle together that makes everyone in Heaven and Hell forget who Garbiel is or what he looks like. And we know that the Book of Life apparently has the ability to completely erase someone from existence – ergo also erasing them from everyone's memory and making it is as though the person had never been in them at all.

So, clearly, angels and demons being able to remember, forget, reconstruct and, if you're the Metadork, wipe memories, is very much canon. Apart from that very last one, it does make them quite human-like in a way. We too can forget or (wrongfully and incompletely) reconstruct memories, due to things like trauma, illness or simply a lot of time having passed.

So, just like Crowley remembers going into battle but doesn't remember Furfur being there, or just like Jimbriel has entierly forgotten who he is but still remembers the tune and lyrics to Buddy Holly's song Everyday, and just like archangel Michael was miraculously made to forget Gabriel and yet says "Don't I know you?" when seeing him again – just like that, Aziraphale's memories of the story of Job, the story of wee Morag and the story of the magic show in 1941, might not actually be the whole truth.

So, time to look at where the furniture isn't.

Now, it could very well be that the costume designers of S2 thought: "Fuck it, let's go crazy" – but given that this show has a track record of meticulously making sure to stick to accurate and cohesive character design, doesn't it strike you as odd that Crowley would go from this look at the Flood in Mesopotamia, 3004 BC:

... to the (very iconic, don't get me wrong) Bildad the Shuhuite drip in 2500 BC:

... back to this at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in 33 AD:

I mean ... I mean– come on, that seems like a bit of a far stretch, even for someone as enthusiastically experimental with fashion as Crowley.

And it's not just that: Where did the sunglasses come from, all of a sudden? And why do they look like some sort of obscure, ancient optometrist's device? It's a known historical fact that the Romans were the ones to have invented sunglasses, somewhere around 50-ish AD. Which actually matches perfectly with when Crowley and Aziraphale meet again in Rome 8 years after the crucifixion (51 AD).

So, where do the weird spectacles come from, over 2000 years too early? Maybe from Aziraphale's brain filling in some gaps? Hasn't Crowley always worn those ridiculous sunglasses? Was it Rome? Or Golgotha? Wessex? Oh, blimey, what does it matter!

And it's not just Crowley: Aziraphale's own clothes, as well as the other angels', seem to be very different from the rather plain linen we see him wear before and after the story of Job.

They're laced with golden embroidery along the neckline and sleeves. The remind almost of the clothes angels are depicted wearing in biblical and historical drawings. Ornate and decadent. Not at all like we see Aziraphale in the other flashbacks of S1.

Even Bildad the Shuhite's hair within the minisode keeps changing, going from all pouffy and voluminous to rather deflated and straight-looking:

The costume department either had to fix up two seperate wigs or manually straighten out the volume of the one again to give it a more sleek look. I'm not a professional in this field, but if there's anything I've learned from watching hours of behind-the-scenes material of movies and shows, it's that very little about costume, character, prop and set design is purely coincidental.

You know what it could be, though? An accurate representation of how memories aren't linear, historically correct and objective representations of a certain event, but rather an ever-changing, jumbled mess of impressions, emotions and exaggerations.

More specifically: Aziraphale's impression, emotions and exaggerations.

Like "remembering" Crowley with sunglasses because he's been wearing them for so long.

Like "remembering" himself wearing more luxurious, angelic clothes because that's how he thinks of the difference between Heaven and Hell.

Like "remembering" the permit as a ridiculously long scroll that folded out over an entire valley.

Like "remembering" Job's children to be weirdly sassy in an almost Aziraphale-esque way (Enon: "Don't be silly!") for the fact that Job would have probably taught them to be more humble and obedient in the presence of a literal angel.

Like "remembering" eating an entire fucking Ox after having just one bite of it while Crowley watched him lustfully, sipping on his wine.

Like "remembering" Crowley calling him 'angel', despite them having barely known each other back then.

There's a reason why the flashbacks in S2 seem so much more alive, quirky and, at many points, confusing and all over the place. Because they're not objective stories being told by a third party. They're Aziraphale's. So much of his own thoughts and feelings at the time get projected onto them because that's simply how memory works!

It's subjective. It's unrealiable.

It's not that I'm calling Aziraphale a liar. He's no more a liar than your parents are, mixing up Sarah and Bobby. Or you, remembering snow instead of sunshine. Memories aren't lies. They can simply be faulty, focus on things that you thought were more important and leaving out or changing things that weren't, to you.

The real challenge in all of this, is trying to filter through Aziraphale's stories to see what it actually is they're telling us. Where it is that the furniture isn't. And I think in this case, that's 6 main things (eff you, God, I know you like sevens, but I don't care):

God and Satan (still) talk to each other We see that Aziraphale is quite surprised when Muriel mentions that the whole Job thing is God's bet with Satan. But clearly, despite having made him and the rest fall, God still converses with Her number one traitor about whether or not the humans simply love Her because she gives them nice things or because they truly believe in Her.

God and Satan (and Heaven and Hell) can and do collaborate with each other when they feel like it So much for choosing sides, huh? Truthfully, this is not the first time this is shown to us, but still. It's another piece of evidence on the growing pile.

Aziraphale understands the World and humans way better than any of the other angels "Well, you see ... Citis is 58 ..."

Aziraphale, despite having troubles voicing it, absolutely disagrees and even condemns God's plan of destroying Job's children (and goats and camels and––)

Aziraphale is willing to lie and thwart the will of God Also not the first time we're being shown this but again, piiiile of evidence.

Angels don't automatically Fall simply by doing the above To me, this is one of the most important take aways. It's already hinted in S1 as well that 'Falling' seems to have been a one time even back when the first war broke out in Heaven. And I actually believe that ever since then, no other angels have Fallen again. Aziraphale is the best example for this. He has gone against God's plan numerous times and even lied to her very face (voice?) about it. And yet, nothing ever happened to him. Why exactly that is the case remains a topic for another meta (that I might or might not be working on already, teehee).

Alright, that concludes this first look at the Job minisode! If there's anything I missed, feel free to share it with me. I'll try and add Part 2 (the story of wee Morag) and Part 3 (the magic show of 1941) soon.

Update: Part 2 and Part 3 have officially been written, you can find it them right here:

Part 2: The Story of wee Morag

Part 3: The Story of the Magic Show in 1941

Hugs and kisses, (God)!

#good omens #good omens season 2 #gos2 #go2 #good omens 2 #good omens meta #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #crowley #story of job #job minisode #good omens analysis #aziraphale is a storyteller #but not a very accurate one #my own meta

[mylight-png]

I refuse to be told to "move on" from October 7th. I simply refuse.

You know the thing about trauma? You don't really get the choice to move on. You may be living in the future, but at least a part of your mind is trapped in that horrible moment. Sometimes that part of you can never escape.

Right now, as I'm writing this, I am sitting at my desk in my room. But right now, as I am writing this a part, huge part, of me is still in that airport. That part of me is still staring at my phone, trying to catch its breath but failing. That part of me is still watching in shock as the death count rises, the videos of Hamas's atrocities are broadcasted everywhere I see, the celebration of my people being massacred is burning my eyes. My ears are hearing the wailing sirens from when I was last in Israel. My hands are still feeling the shaking of the walls as the Iron Dome intercepts attempts upon the lives of my family and me. My heart is hurting for each life lost and each family left broken.

My body is here, in January 10th. My mind is not. My mind, and the mind of nearly every Jew is still stuck in October 7th.

Do not think we chose this. If I could choose indifference, if I could choose apathy, if I could choose ignorance, I wouldn't feel so constantly triggered and in pain.

But nobody gets to choose trauma.

This wasn't a unique trauma, a first-time event. Pogroms are nothing new to us, genocides and attempts at such against us aren't anything new, hateful libel and lies are near-constants.

That's part of what made October 7th so much worse.

I grew up hearing about how my great-grandfather lost his entire family to the Holocaust, how my ancestors survived pogroms, how my parents faced systemic antisemitism in the USSR.

We all grew up hearing our parents and grandparents tell us about antisemitism.

And do not think we were ignorant of it. I was well aware that the world is not even close to shedding its deeply ingrained antisemitism.

I was aware of it when I wrote a speech about discussion of modern antisemitism and being told it was "well-written but controversial". I was aware of it when my teacher said I was responding "emotionally, not academically" to an author claiming antisemitism and the Holocaust weren't "that bad".

I was aware of it when a synagogue near me got shot up, a synagogue I've been to. I was aware of it because I had no other choice.

But it had always felt like it was "winding down" from what my parents had told me. Yes what my teacher did was bad but at least he didn't explicitly single me out for being a Jew and intentionally fail me. Yes the feedback for my speech was hurtful but it wasn't like I was being violently censored. Yes the shooting was awful but it wasn't a full-blown pogrom.

I'm not saying my logic was correct. Far from it. But that's how it felt before October 7th.

When October 7th happened I saw that nothing was "winding down" as I had previously thought. People were still just as keen to gleefully cheer on the killing of Jews as they had been. The world is just as slow to act when Jews are being forcibly held and tortured and killed. Blood libel and ideas of the "doctor's plot" are alive and well.

Oct 7th triggered old trauma, Oct 7th was traumatic in its own right, and for most of us, Oct 7th proved that antisemitism isn't going anywhere. It isn't winding down or getting better.

And that kind of pain? That kind of trauma? That sticks with you.

You wouldn't tell any other person to get over their trauma. So what makes it ok to say it to traumatized Jews as we are still processing the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust?

That behavior is horrible and inexcusable.

Trauma is trauma, you don't get to decide who does or doesn't have the right to be traumatized. You don't get to decide how people discuss their trauma.

#jumblr #jewish #judaism #jew #proud israeli #israel solidarity #opinion #discourse #antisemitism #trauma #generational trauma

[howdoesagrapewrites]

𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧 𝐉𝐚𝐰𝐬

Plot: Imagine being the legitimized bastard of Daemon Targaryen, and having a very devoted family.

Cw: fem!reader, cisgender female reader (I'm sorry mascs and nbs, I'll make something for you later) incest/targcest implied for later, platonic and romantic yanderes, yandere EVERYONE x reader, here's a list of every character that will be featured (not all of them are romantic):Rhaenyra Targaryen, Daemon Targaryen, Rhea Royce, Alicent Hightower, Otto Hightower, Viserys I Targaryen, Aegon II Targaryen, Aemond Targaryen, Haelena Targaryen, Daeron Targaryen, Lucerys Velaryon, Jacaerys Velaryon, Laena Velaryon, Laenor Velaryon

Notes: I go by a very strange mix of the series and the books, I haven't seen the series in a while so the timeline will most likely be a mess. I'd like this to be a series but I've been incredibly busy. Extra: at first I thought about making reader Mysaria's daughter, but this is a self insert, so it's best that you look however you like, leaving the mother anonymous. The only physical reference I'll make will be reader's silver hair

>After Rhaenyra was declared the heir of the iron throne, Daemon, insulted, flew away with his mistress, the white worm, who he would conceive a child with, even asking for a dragon egg for the prince or princess to come

>However, Viserys demanded him to go back to his home and wife, he sent Mysaria off to lys, where the stress of a storm in the trip back made her lose the baby

>Daemon never fully forgave his brother, and this left him less than eager to have another child anytime soon

>So imagine his surprise, when 7 years later, there's a rumour spreading in flea bottom like wildfire, about a girl carrying Daemon's bastard

>Many women had claimed to carry a royal child before, thinking this could give them any sort of prize, so Daemon didn't think much of it at first, but when he heard her name, he recognized her as one of his previous "favorites" who disappeared without a trace months ago

>She was said to have taken residence in Essos, and Daemon went on dragonback to find her. She was from the free cities, five years older than Daemon, and a heart as cold as a northern winter, or so they said. She was not expecting Daemon, running away to have the child in peace

>"They said I was too far along when I found out, moon tea would've only harmed me. Besides, it was lucrative in its own way" said the woman. Daemon did little to suppress the disgust on his face when thinking about her being defiled by other men while carrying his dragonseed babe

>She wanted no part in the baby's life, and Daemon, in his particular fashion, informed her he'd take the youngling as soon as it's out of her, may even pay her a few coins to make sure she won't do much as think about keeping it

>A few months passed, and he returned to king's landing with a babe in arms. Demanding an egg in honor of the birth of princess Y/N Targaryen

>This egg would later hatch into the dragon Dagahrion, the princess' bound dragon

>The court was a hot mess, according to Otto, he wouldn't be surprised if the young creature lost its left ear because of all the gossip and ill-speaking of her, just like her father. This was a scandal, considering he was still married to Rhea Royce, who he gravely dishonored time and time again, Daemon was always shameless, but this was crossing a limit, even for him, to call his bastard a princess while refusing to lay with his own rightful wife, disgraceful

>Daemon tried to use you as yet another attempt to get his brother to annul his marriage to "the bronze bitch", but even when he failed, he did everything in his power to legitimize his daughter

>Despite everyone on the council telling Viserys how foolish it'd be to do it, making enemies out of the Royce house, further insulting Rhea, and putting a whoreborn on the line of succession (no matter how far from the throne), all it took was a little yawn and the bright twinkle of your eyes to make him melt, he is fully committed to his role of uncle, even as a doting grandfather, considering his father passed long before her birth

>Viserys sent Daemon back to the Vale, saying he should do his best to give lady Rhea an heir, to make up for the slip and avoid causing the Targaryen house any more trouble. Viserys, for totally not selfish reasons wanted to keep the princess in KL, saying Rhea should not be made to raise his bastard

>Daemon said he'd rather be exiled again than to leave his daughter in Hightower hands to go try to fuck his wife. Viserys was greatly offended by the implication that the Hightowers truly ruled and schemed while he reigned

>To his outmost displeasure, he finally had to let his niece go to the Vale with her father

>Rhea loved you as soon as she set eyes on you, completely separating you from your father's actions, and seeing you as a pure angel in this horrible situation

>But it was so difficult with Daemon around, she just wanted to whisk you away and love you, she'd pray to the mother to be able to breastfeed you, crying when she heard you wail in frustration of your hunger, since it took several wet nurses to get you to drink milk

>But Daemon was always around to remind her you were not hers, that he considered her lowly, not worthy of you. He'd correct you when you learning to speak, and dared to refer to her as "mama"

>It was said the ground of the vale would shake upon them yelling when fighting over you

>But this joy to Rhea was short lived, as Daemon sent you to KL when he had to fight in the war of the stepstones, saying the "nest of vipers" was more deserving of you than she was. When you were three, your step mother had an accident while hawking, many said Daemon orderded for her to be poisoned when she was bed bound, others said the distress of your parting made her lose skill

>It was Viserys greatest pleasure when you were left at his care, his adorable baby niece was now an infant, and somehow you were even more charming, being able to speak, sing and walk

>To no one's surprise, Viserys' reaction was not generalized, with many not being keen on having a bastard running around the castle playing with the princes, by that point, Aegon was 8, Haelena was 7, Aemond was 5, and Daeron was 1, and almost all of them could see people treated you differently

>Rhaenyra was welcoming, baby Lucerys had just been born, and she was delighted to have a girl to spoil, it only helped that Jacaerys loved you as well, and would often fight his uncles for the chance to be with you

>Alicent in particular was not pleased with your presence, thinking you were an uncomfortable conversation to have with her children, especially resentful of the fact her youngest son would be attached at the hip with you

>To Otto, you were an annoyance, a living proof of Daemon's pure disregard for the norms, however, he could rest at night knowing you were ninth in the line of succession, and a girl, who would someday marry a son of a minor house and be too busy bearing children to present a claim to the iron throne

>Even though the Hightowers were tougher than the king, they did eventually succumb to your spell, and became just as enamoured with you as everyone else, in their minds, you were almost a product of spontaneous generation, completely ignoring your shameful father and prostitute mother

>Your arrival also caused the birth of Lucerys (who was again, born with a striking resemblance of Harwin Strong, just like his older brother) to be less gossiped about, after all, your case was much more interesting

>Some people in court starting referring to you as "The princess of flea bottom", this title costed quite a few tongues around the castle, ordered by Viserys, happily approved by Otto

>The Hightower hand was careful not to show too much affection to you, as it was improper and he knew how zealous was Viserys when it came to you

>Aegon was "already too old to be playing" in his words, and kept his distance from you, you reminded him to much of his sticky handed little brothers

>But as if you knew, you chased him around and praised him for his knightly demeanor (in your eyes) and how he's just like the heroes in Viserys' stories. It was not a long time before Aegon now appointed himself as your guard, watching like a hawk over his brothers and nephews when he thought they were being too rough on you

>Haelena loves you from the start, sees you as a little doll, she loves showing you her bugs, you're the only one who listens to her attentively

>Jacaerys and Daeron are only a year old, but always search for you, you think they're cute, something that spikes jealousy on Aemond, he wants you to think of him as someone worthy of admiration, like you see his older brother, he'd even accept being cute in your eyes, but he has none of those traits to appeal to you. You love him and love playing with him nonetheless, but he thinks he needs something else to win your favor

>The Velaryons dote on you too, with Laenor married to Rhaenyra and once your father marries Laena that same year, they are maybe too eager to become part of your family, and regard you as theirs

>Especially Laena, who Daemon allows (unlike with Rhea) to pamper and care for you, but still corrects you when it comes to remembering your origins, Laena may love you, but she's not your mother

>Maybe Daemon does this as a way to imagine you're only his, he doesn't care for the woman who abandoned such a precious treasure, she has been wiped away from your life and memory, you're only familiar with your father, you only belong to him

>You have his silver hair, you have his name, no matter who your mother was, you are his true valyrian heir, his dragonseed

>Unfortunately, Daemon is not the only one whose eyes light up when thinking of owning you

#yandere hotd #yandere targaryens #yandere aemond targaryen #yandere daemon targaryen #yandere rhaenyra targaryen #yandere Jacaerys Velaryon #yandere aegon targaryen #Yandere Aegon II #aegon ii x reader #yandere Haelena Targaryen #jacaerys velaryon x reader #aemond targaryen x reader #hotd x reader

[anneapocalypse]

Why I Love the Hinterlands

The Hinterlands in Dragon Age: Inquisition get kind of a bad rap, and for kind of understandable reasons. For anybody who doesn't know the story, some context. The Hinterlands are the first open world area that unlocks for the player, a vast and highly explorable map full of quests, worldbuilding, and NPCs. So what was the problem? The problem was that the Dragon Age series had set two games' worth of precedent that the player could get locked out of an area and lose access to sidequests and other content—and the devs seemed not to fully realize they were fighting this precedent, or how strong it was, until the game came out and completionist players were getting exhausted and annoyed running around this huge map trying frantically to knock out all the side content before moving on. We still make jokes about devs on twitter trying to tell players that they could leave the Hinterlands. Lines were later patched in for the starting companions urging the player to go to Val Royeaux and advance the plot; you'll hear those lines if you play the game today, but they weren't there in the beginning.

The game's executive producer Mark Darrah has even spoken about this problem in his Dragon Age: Inquisition Memories and Lessons video on YouTube. From a game design perspective I do not dispute this issue. It definitely represents an oversight in the way the area is presented to players and the context they are given for what they should do next.

All that said… I love the Hinterlands, and with every replay (I have beaten the game four times at this point) my appreciation for this area and what it brings to the story has deepened. And as recent polls have raised discussion about the merits of various maps, I've felt moved to rise to their defense, so... here's why I think the Hinterlands are Good Actually.

Every map in Inquisition has its own overarching story, introduced by Scout Harding when the map unlocks and revealing itself through exploration and completing the quests within. Crestwood has the story of the flood during the Blight. The Exalted Plains have the story of the Orlesian Civil War. The Hissing Wastes have the story of Fairel and the surface thaig. And so forth. For this reason, I've come to feel that once you've progressed far enough in the main quest to have collected most or all of your companions, the most rewarding way to experience each area is at one go, as much as possible. Popping in and out of maps to complete one quest at time is, in my opinion, really detrimental to exploration and makes it harder to see the big picture. This is also one place where I really appreciate the invisible approval meter, because it discourages me from always stacking my party to game approval, the way I pretty much always play DA2.

At first glance, the story of the Hinterlands is the story of the ongoing war between the rebel mages and the renegade templars. This is one reason the Inquisitor may go there: to make contact with the rebel mages. They have been offered refuge in Redcliffe and are presently entrenched in the castle and adjoining village; the templars continue to attack the mages' position, and thus there is concentrated fighting in this region. Splinter factions of both mages and templars are also entrenched elsewhere in the area.

But this is just the setup. What the Hinterlands is about, its real story, is the common people.

The Inquisitor is first sent to the Hinterlands to make contact with Mother Giselle, in hopes of gaining some Chantry support. Seeking her out requires the Inquisitor to fight their way through the conflict to reach the Crossroads, where many refugees have gathered.

In these big, sweeping stories about heroes and villains, I think it's easy for the perspectives of common people to get kind of lost. One thing I do appreciate about the Dragon Age series is that every game does make a real effort to give voice to the commoner perspective. Origins has its city elf and casteless dwarf origin stories, and the player encounters many commoners throughout the game and gets to hear a bit of their perspective. Dragon Age 2 wouldn't be Dragon Age 2 without Darktown and Lowtown and the elven alienage and our interactions with the people who inhabit those parts of the city. Oddly enough, though, every human character we've ever had the chance to play in Dragon Age has come from a noble family; sure, Hawke starts out living as a commoner, but doesn't stay that way for long.

In Inquisition especially, we don't have the option of a commoner prologue to really drive home that perspective and carry it through the story. And while a Dalish elf, a Carta dwarf, a qunari mercenary, and a Circle mage certainly live very different lives than a human noble, they also live very different lives than Giles the farmer—not necessarily more privileged, but still different, with differing priorities and different stakes in this conflict. Bron the farmhand has no reason to be at the Conclave; he's here mucking out stalls, knowing the horses still need to be fed even if there is a rift spewing demons over there in the middle of the neighbor's pasture. Elaina the farmer is putting away cabbages for winter and hoping the barn doesn't get burned down by a stray fireball. And Elaina is one of the fortunate ones: her family's home and livelihood are still intact, for now. The Crossroads now hold many ordinary people who through no fault of their own have lost their homes, their crops, even family members.

Theirs is the perspective we get in the Hinterlands.

You don't have to stick around for all that. You can take Mother Giselle’s advice immediately, go to Val Royeaux, go deal with bigger and more important things and people. You will need 4 Power to go to Val Royeaux, but Power is easy to come by. Close a few rifts, and you’re good to go. You don’t have to care about these refugees and their problems.

But you know, something I notice is that the founders of the Inquisition spend a whole lot of breath talking about "the people." How they have to restore order for the people. How the people are looking to us—to you, Your Worship. The people need you. The people need to believe in you. That’s why we’re raising an army and building a cult around you! For the people.

Well, here are the people.

And if you talk to the people at the Crossroads, it turns out that what they actually need is less faith in Andraste’s chosen, and more blankets for the cold nights, medicine for the sick and injured, and food so they don’t starve. They need the war ended and the Breach closed so that they can return to what’s left of their homes and salvage what crops and livestock they can.

It is easy to feel a bit smothered by the Inquisition’s overwhelming Andrastian-ness, especially when playing a character who has their own religious beliefs, or none at all. We have a lot of characters trying to tell us about the importance of faith—their faith, specifically. We’re told that the people need to believe, and that’s why we have to play the role of this figurehead. And you can run with that idea and play it straight, if you want to. But there is, in fact, a different story to be found here, if you want to look for it—a story told in the world itself and the people who who inhabit it: people cannot eat faith.

And Mother Giselle, the person we are sent to the Hinterlands to find, knows this. She is certainly a devout Andrastian and deeply influenced by a life in the Chantry—but she also chooses to be on the ground helping people in need rather than arguing with her fellow clerics in Val Royeaux. After the attack on Haven, Mother Giselle and the Inquisitor have a conversation about faith, in which the Inquisitor points out, in one way or another, that faith may not be enough. Giselle may seem to disagree. Yet it is she who then leads the survivors in a song that does not mention the Maker or Andraste even once. The much-maligned “The Dawn Will Come” is so frequently assumed to be a Chantry hymn because it is Mother Giselle who starts it; even the fan wiki lists it as such. But I hear something much more akin to a folk song, a marching tune—not a high holy chorus for a cathedral choir, but a song with a simple tune and repetitive lyrics, about hope in dark times.

Perhaps she was rather more persuaded than she appeared.

When you ask your ambassador Josephine, “What do the people make of us?” she tells you how many noble allies you’ve gathered. And that’s not unimportant; this boots on the ground shit costs money, and most of that is coming out of noble coffers. But when you ask Mother Giselle, “How are the people?” she speaks of the terror and suffering of the people in the Hinterlands, and warns of mass starvation if the farmers cannot return to their fields.

This is the story of the Hinterlands.

And the density of side quests on this map reflects that. In addition to aiding the refugees with food, blankets, and medicine, there are so many more opportunities to help people in small but meaningful ways. An elven widower who cannot reach his wife’s grave through the fighting asks the Inquisitor to bring flowers there as is his custom. A grieving widow asks for the retrieval of her husband’s wedding ring from the templars who murdered him. A beloved ram has gone missing. A mage mourns her templar lover and the war that has come between them. A note speaks of two brothers, templar and apostate, torn apart by the war. A son has gone off to join the cult in the hills (no, not our cult in the hills, another one), and his mother needs the special remedy for her breathing problems that only he knows how to make. And so many more. Even the Winterwatch cult itself asks us to consider what it is the people truly need: the Inquisitor can enlist them as Inquisition agents, or ask them to aid the refugees.

Are all these sidequests vital to the plot? No. You can skip them if you want to. Are they relevant to the plot? Absolutely. Are they meaningful? To me, yes. Maybe they didn't change the whole world, but they changed something for these people.

It is so important to me that we get to actually meet the common people whose lives are depending on us. Whatever you think of the Inquisition itself, people actually are dying because of both the rifts and the war, and many more will die if these problems aren’t resolved. Meeting them, giving them names and faces and side quests dealing with their more mundane needs is so much more meaningful to me than standing around back at base being told “People are starving in the Hinterlands.”

It's understandable that the Hinterlands had to fight the precedent set by Lothering getting locked off, because in many ways the Hinterlands serves the same narrative purpose as Lothering: showing the effects of the present crisis on the common people and what's at stake for them.

I should note that the Hinterlands are not the only part of the game that addresses the impact on common people—far from it, in fact. The Exalted Plains give us a taste of how many have died for the Gaspard's attempted coup; Emprise du Lion shows us commoners kidnapped and tortured by Red Templars; the Winter Palace puts the bloody reality of the "Grand Game" in stark contrast to its gilded veneer with the indiscriminate murder of servants for expediency.

But it’s important that we are introduced to the suffering of the common people early in the game, when the Herald—not yet the Inquisitor—may still feel pretty shaky on their motivations for even sticking around.

While I've mostly been talking about non-mage commoners here, I do want to say a few words about the rebel mages as well, since they too are a part of the story of the Hinterlands. I hope that no one reading thinks I am blaming the rebel mages as a whole for what's happening in the Hinterlands, for what the common people here have suffered. The templars, notably, are not entrenched in the Hinterlands. Their present stronghold is Therinfal Redoubt, an old Seeker fortress, which is a significant distance from Redcliffe. The fact that the bulk of the fighting is taking place near Redcliffe, while we've no evidence of a mage offensive against Therinfal, makes it pretty clear that it is the templars who are pursuing the mages at this point, not the other way around. Certainly some in the region may not bother to make that distinction while their crops are on fire, but let's be clear about the story the map is telling us: it is the mages who are under attack here, not the templars. It is sometimes said that Inquisition deliberately draws a false equivalence between the mages and templars in this war. I would like to point to this piece of environmental storytelling as evidence that that is not entirely true.

Sometimes, it seems like pointing out that collateral damage happens is read as condemning an oppressed people for defending themselves. I want to make it clear that this is not what I am saying. I simply feel that those characters who have lost homes and livelihoods in this conflict are also worth seeing, and talking about. But I also don’t think it’s an accident that this is the map whose story is all about the suffering of ordinary people, and it is also the rebel mages who have their base on this map; the templars do not.

So, that’s why I think the Hinterlands are Good Actually! They contain an absolute wealth of worldbuilding, and their story frames the game’s central conflicts around the people suffering for them, early in the game when that perspective is most needed.

#the hinterlands #dragon age inquisition #dragon age #dragon age meta #blunders of thedas

[aziraphales-library]

Lost Fic #164

1. Hello everyone :) for a terrible long time I've been searching for a fic I remember. Maybe you lovely peoole can help me. In it, Aziraphale and Crowley were visiting Anathema and Newt. Crowley spiked his drink with a lil hellfire and of course, our favorite Angel took the wring cup by accident. Does anyone know it? Thanks in advance and have a lovely day :) - @belowperfect

2. this is probably a long shot, but, there was this one fic that I read when the show first came out. in it, Aziraphale moved into Crowley's apartment after doomsday because in it Adam didn't fix the bookshop (I think) I can't remember much, but I know that it was a multi chapter fic with sexual themes later on and I wonder if it sounds familiar to anyone, I wanna find it again because it was the first fic of the fandom I read lol. I feel like I read it here on Tumblr but it might have been AO3 too I'm not sure honestly. - anon

3. Hello I hope you are doing well. I have had this fic stuck in my head and I’m not sure if it was deleted or what but it was this fic about like Aziraphale and Crowley’s sexual tension throughout time and like for Crowley it was initially more lustful and eventually they sleep together during the French Revolution only for Crowley to treat it like a one night stand and it breaks aziraphales heart. The fic continues with the end of season one and like over time Crowley realized he messed up and loves Aziraphale and they are about to sleep together before the swap and Aziraphale initially is hesitant because of last time. Does this sounds familiar at all? - anon

4. Hi folks, Thanks for all the recommendations, and the tagging, you’ve led me to so many wonderful fanfics! I’m looking for a fanfic where Crowley sees Aziraphale beheaded, I believe in China. There’s also a story about Crowley and Aziraphale meeting in Japan I think, the plot involving a childless couple who find a child, collect and cage too many birds, and a bathhouse. It may be epistolary, or a diary. It’s long, and it’s wonderful! I just read the bloody thing (twice) maybe a month ago, and now I can’t find it. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks, L - @shoemakerobstetrician

5. I’m looking for a fic where either the book or radio versions of Aziracrow somehow end up in the bookshop and won’t stop having sex and it’s driving TV!Azi absolutely bonkers. I read it like two years ago and can’t find it! - anon

If you know any of these fics please include the number in your reply! Thank you :)

- Mod D

#good omens #lost fic #ineffable husbands #mod d

[yan-lorkai]

i've been thinking about something and i thought you should hear it too,

mc is lilith's descendant but they're also a creation of the brothers' hatred for each other. like how lucifer was feeling so much wrath he created satan, the brothers' hate for each other created a curse and gave mc life [let's assume their mother couldn't have a child for the sake of this au-]

so when mc learns this, they try to stay away from the brothers as much as possible. how do you think the broters would react? [btw you're my fav yandere blog, keep up the great work, ily take care of yourself <3]

｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+ A/N: This is certainly interesting, darling. Got me thinking about tons of things that could happen if this was the case. Poor Mc though, they already deal with too much! I hope you enjoy! <3

｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+ Warning: Yandere content, kidnapping, I think that's it? Let me know if I forgot a tag.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Assuming he didn't know this, Lucifer would feel stunned. Did the hate, agony and all the sadness they have felt for centuries culminate in one being? A being that also carries Lilith's blood? He remembers the first arduous days that followed after the war, he remembers how Satan behaved and screamed, how he felt everything at once without knowing what to do.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ And he knows that up to this point, you must have had a pretty rough time growing up, being haunted by memories and events that you didn't see or witness, being tormented by their suffering without knowing what's up with you.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ You want to pull away and run away when find out about your origins, and honestly he understands. Lucifer understands but he will not allow this to happen. Just as you fixed his family, he and his brothers will help you process and deal with all of this. Even if you're screaming and crying at them, trying to escape them, trying to disappear from their lives. It's all for your own good, he assure you.

⠀

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Mammon is the most empathetic of the brothers, as well as being the one who spends the most time with you since the beginning of the exchange program. It was clear that he noticed that you had your moments of anger and bitter hatred or long periods of sadness, even without an apparent reason. And he tried to help you the best he could. When the cause of your problem was revealed, Mammon tripled his efforts to help you.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ You are family and families help each other. Even if your family is hysterical and trying to disappear because of the conflicting feelings they have. Memories can't be erased like that and yes, it's unfortunate that you are made up of all their suffering, but he won't let you get away that easily. So run, scream and fight with him, with them, Mammon will make sure that at the end of the night you are back home.

⠀

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ For Levi, this is all a bad joke, the plot of a terrible anime. He remembers how he felt during each of the celestial wars, but most of all he remembers the war that caused his downfall. There was so much pain, so much suffering everywhere he looked. Heaven lost its brilliant children, his angel brothers would carry a weight in their hearts and a bitter memory of the events; the first time angels were cast out. As a general, especially after the fall, Levi had no intention of continuing to live anywhere other than the home he was given.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ His room was his safe haven, where he could cry and vent alone. Where he could exist without fear of judgment and the tragedies that haunted him. Knowing that you are the result of all this makes him immensely sad, despite this he doesn't know how to comfort you because everything he knows as comfort may not be enough for you. But he doesn't intend to give up so easily, even if in small steps Levi tries to look for ways to show you that you has no reason to fear, now that you knows about your origin, there's no reason to stay away. On the contrary, this could be worse now.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ It may not seem like it, but he knows exactly what kind of thoughts are running through his head and the heads of his brothers. A general knows how to read his opponent like his own hand and knows that having a focused and calm mind is the key to the situation. He knows that if he joined forces with each of his brothers, you wouldn't stand a chance. You are theirs now and forever.

⠀

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Satan knows what it's like to exist feeling only one emotion, so he completely understands how conflicted your feelings must be and, while he himself feels conflicted between letting you go to mentally heal and processing everything, he also wants to keep you close.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ However, if you really want to leave then he will go with you and this is non-negotiable. The others are hunting you and only he can take you through shortcuts and open portals, you need him. He is someone who can support you in difficult times and rinse your tears, to cheer you up, get you out of bed and make you forget your problems, like he wished someone had done when he came into existence. Even though a part of him feels really smug for being the one who shares a strong bond with you; being created against your will through a feeling that does not define you.

⠀

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Asmo didn't even know something like that could be possible, but then again he also didn't know that someone could feel so much anger and literally give birth to a new being. He is surprised, quite surprised by the revelation that you are kind of a creation with Lilith's blood but also with a little bit of his brothers, their feelings and thoughts. And he wants to help, but like Levi he's not sure how to help.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ So instead he spread word for his followers to keep their eyes wide open and if they see someone who reassembles you, then to tell him immediately. You can run away all you want but you can't truly escape him and his brothers, as many eyes are on your back wherever you are.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ When you're back he is affectionate as usual, kissing your cheeks and wiping your tears as you cry. Yes darling, everything it's too much and you need some time to process all those facts but you are gonna face it this with him and his brothers, you are part of the family after all.

⠀

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Beel feels sad knowing that you were born surrounded by pain and the terrors of war they all felt, they got better through the years, overcomes their pain and accepted Lilith's passing. There's still some issues they have to fix, but each brother is doing everything they can to found you when you run away. And Beel goes around Devildom with Belphie to search for you on your favorite spots.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ He knows it may be painful to be near them right now but Beel can't let you go. He already let Lilith go because he couldn't protect her but he sure can protect you, even if he has to protect you from yourself. When he finds you, Beel throws you into his arms and hurries home, without carrying how you punch and scream at him to let you go.

⠀

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ Belphie knows that instead of thinking how you feel and how bad your life was dealing with their sorrow, it's the first to act. He knows you well, knows how you think, what you feel and how you react to thinks, more times than he should Belphie used to invade your dreams without you noticing just to watch you, to study you. Sometimes to come closer to you, to hold your hands and ask for forgiveness for how wrongdoings. You never remembered though, he didn't want you to remember he could do this.

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ In all your dreams though you always had a particularly spot that you loved to go and hide when you needed some time alone. He take Beel with him when they go, he knows you're there, he can feel it. And when they find you, Belphie puts you to sleep with his powers. His brothers can comfort you with their words and affections meanwhile he could work with your unconscious.

#yandere lucifer #yandere mammon #yandere levi #yandere satan #yandere asmo #yandere beel #yandere belphie #lucifer x mc #mammon x mc #levi x mc #satan x mc #asmo x mc #beel x mc #belphie x mc #yandere obey me #obey me #lorkai headcanons

[folatefangirl]

On The Darkest Corner of the Heart

A comment on how Booktwt, Booklr, and Booktok media reactivity has lost the plot

Or, I think y'all need to log off and touch some grass and think about your actions for a hot minute. Note: This rant is a tad long, because I'm fucking pissed.

Disclaimer 1: I don't personally know the author of this book or anyone screenshotted in the drama. We aren't friends. I have no reason to either defend nor criticize these people, except for the fact that I've been a primary reader of self-pub and indie books for almost a decade now, and yes, including romances that some people don't consider worthy of civility. I'm also a queer healthcare worker.

Disclaimer 2: I don't want anyone mentioned/screenshotted here to be spammed with hate. Please do NOT contact them, including any authors mentioned. I included the primary actors for the current drama primarily so people don't claim I'm talking out of my ass.

Book blurb:

Forbidden. That's what they are to each other. Maddie Stevens has never felt good enough. Not good enough to keep her parents’ love. Not good enough to be independent and stop being her brother’s problem. Not good enough to build the future she wants. When she injures her ankle before a ballet audition that could change her career forever, she’s convinced her life is over at twenty-one. What’s the point of having dreams when they can go down the drain at any moment? And because the universe has a cruel sense of humor, her physical therapist turns out to be a tank-shaped grouch who doesn’t even seem to like her that much. It’s totally unfair that, for six weeks, she’s forced to look at that handsome beard and listen to that deep voice that makes her head all dizzy. Top that with the fact that he’s ten years her senior, and falling for James Simmons is a recipe for disaster. But when their forced proximity makes the lines start blurring, the forbidden temptation becomes impossible to resist.

The Timeline:

Events preceding 2023: Lisina Coney, author of The Darkest Corner of the Heart, was born in 1999 in northern Spain. She worked as a translator prior to publishing books.

Initially I thought these books were only self-published, but in fact are published under the formerly indie publisher Page & Vine, founded by romance novelist Meredith Wild.

January 27th, 2023: The Brightest Light of Sunshine is published by nearly 24-year-old Lisina Coney. On Goodreads, it currently sits at 3.87 stars as of today, February 10th, 2024, with 27,727 ratings and 3,592 reviews. Note: For a small-time author, especially for a debut novel, these numbers are huge.

May 2023, Page & Vine announced that Big 5 publisher Simon & Schuster would distribute their books as an imprint beginning in summer 2023.

In mid-to-late 2023, Lisina's website and socials announced The Darkest Corner of the Heart, her second novel to be published with Page & Vine on February 20th, 2024. Note: This means the events below occurred BEFORE the book's publication.

February 5th, 2024: anaborbareads on Twitter/X posts the cover and other art of Darkest Corner with the text, "a forbidden romance between ballerina and physical therapist???? pls i need this book now 🥺✨💗🫶🏻"

February 6th, 2024: h0mmelette on Twitter/X responds to anaborareads with "the booktok genre of forbidden romance is hilarious. theyre straight… whats forbidden"

February 6th, 2024: a tumblr user reposts the twitter thread from above to tumblr. Other tumblr users reblog and add on, and it quickly goes viral.

February 7th, 2024: From what I can tell via reverse image searching, the first iteration of the fake ARC page that's going around appears to be from Twitter/X user queef1ng. About 4 hours later, the same fake ARC page was reposted on the tumblr post mentioned above. And from here, this story takes a turn from people wanting to feel like they're above a romance novel writer to potential legal territory.

Of the 122 ratings on Goodreads for Darkest Corner to date, 9 appear to be 1-star reviews and from what I can tell, most/all of them were only published since the events began on 06Feb2024. 71 are 5-stars and while some of those are ARC readers, many newer ones appear to be trying to counteract the review bombing from the fake ARC page.

As of today, February 10th, 2024, it looks like the book will still be published on February 20th as planned, but we'll see.

Wait, so how do you know the page is fake?

I can't believe people have been so gullible but fine, here's my analysis:

Lisina's real ARC readers have stated that it isn't from the book (not gonna document all of them in the screenshots but you can easily go to the book's GR page and see the ARC reviews there).

As other folks pointed out on the tumblr repost, no real ARC page does a weird review watermark like that. Speaking from my own experience in reviewing ARCs or beta-reading, I agree.

The font tipped me off because it looked like it had literally been written on a Fanfiction.Net page. Not that Verdana, font size 10, is unique to FFN, but it looks like fanfiction typed font. Which brings me to:

Literally how could you believe this author writes like this? You can read her website or preview her first book or just have the bare minimum common sense to understand what satire looks like. If you don't believe me (because I know framing a post like this will put a lot of people on the defensive), I've also included screenshots below. The prose and dialogue are COMPLETELY different from the alleged screenshot. The only thing that is similar is that both characters are ballerinas.

But wait, all of this doesn't explain why YOU, Cinnia, are so pissed about this?

You're completely right! It really doesn't. All of the above is mostly documentation so the naysayers can't say I'm just some silly fangirl of the author.

The initial premise of the drama is that you can't have "forbidden love" in an m/f relationship. First of all, William Shakespeare would like to have a word with you regarding Romeo and Juliet. Second of all, yes you fucking can. See also: Religious and cultural differences and human history for a starting point. I know it may be hard to touch grass and look at media that is not tumblr queer media-centric and understand that people who are NOT you might enjoy it very much. Note that I'm a queer person saying this and I do read or watch m/f media at times because I don't like limiting myself. Go watch Bajirao Mastani and enjoy one of the most beautiful movies about forbidden love ever produced.

The book itself falls into the medical romance subgenre. For those not familiar, these are romances (usually m/f) that often involve a healthcare worker and their patient. In the real world, where people touch grass, a healthcare worker like me having a relationship with their patient is such a huge ethical violation that it will get you fired. In Darkest Corner, James is Maddie's physical therapist because she's a ballerina with a sports injury and he is treating her. Ergo, it is forbidden for them to get together and the initial premise for mocking this book is on very shaky ground.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the folks mocking it seem to very likely not be familiar with romance novels and their subgenres at all, or else they'd be well aware of the concept of straight romances marketed as a "forbidden romance" because they're fucking everywhere on any place that sells romance books. I have a personal collection of over 14,500 kindle ebooks. While not all of those are romances, a good chunk of them are, so I think I can count myself as a bit of a source here, you know?

The fake screenshot and social media drama has spread to at least Twitter, Tumblr, and BookTok, which all have huge reader hobbyists. For a small-time author barely past her debut novel's publication, allegations of this sort tied to your author name and book titles can last on the internet and in web searches for a long, long time, hurting an author's career. Maybe you're like "boohoo, who cares about their careers, I pirate all my fiction books anyway" and well, a post like this was probably never going to convince you of anything. I'm talking to the folks who might still have a sense of shame and self-reflection. Authors, even authors tied to a Big 5's imprint, earn peanuts. This sort of manufactured "scandal" is not ideal when the book is weeks away from being published. In fact, if the book has fewer sales than the first book in the series, Simon & Schuster may have legal grounds to go after the person who made the fake screenshot. A smarter person would have kept that to the groupchat or posted it as a clearly marked fanfic on AO3.

As a reader, this also sucks because when shit like this happens, the reviews of a book are permanently biased by both the bombers and the fans of the author, no matter how good or bad the book ends up being. Do I know if this book will be a 1-star or 5-star now, based on the reviews? Nope. Will I read it? No, because I don't read medical romances as it's a squick for me. But I may read her first book, which has mercifully escaped most of the social media nonsense.

This isn't the first time booktwt/booktok/booklr has engaged in a similar mob mentality towards books they don't like and I doubt it'll be the last. See Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao and the allegations that turned out to be false then, too. However, I would like to ask y'all to please check your sources and not blindly accept what someone says on social media as truth. Get used to doing the research because manufactured misinformation is everywhere, and it's not gonna get better. (And for fuck's sake, not everyone is gonna like the same books and fandoms you like! It's not illegal to enjoy reading different things!)

Screenshots/Evidence (click for better resolution):

#lisina coney #booklr #booktok #booktwt #book rants #cinnia says stuff #long post #very long post #screenshot included at the bottom of the post #darkest corner of the heart #the darkest corner of the heart #misinformation #edited to fix title

[fruitysoupy]

100 years later I finally drew all of my AU Links

Say hello to my lads! They're going to be in a comic I've been scripting and planning for about a year now I think? I'm calling it Link and the Links, latl for short!

More info under the cut :]

(please don't tag as LU/Linked Universe!!)

The Plot

The Links find themselves in a mysterious forest that seems somewhat familiar to all of them yet none of them know where they are. Now they have to work together to find their way home. On the way they'll discover a thing or two about each other and grow closer!

The Cast

I could talk about these guys for hours, but to keep it digestible I'll make it short

A bit of info before I get into it - all of them are taken from different points in time after the end of their adventure(s)!

Birdie (Skyward Sword)

18

Roughly 6 hours after defeating Demise

The start of it all. Unbeknownst to himself and the others, the space they find themselves in was created out of his desire to meet the heroes after him. He feels terribly guilty about the curse and very much blames himself for the possible suffering of future heroes. His main goal is to check up on everyone and help where he can!

Grasshopper (Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask)

10

4 days after leaving Termina

Somewhat disoriented after his journey still, he tags along simply because he thinks Birdie is an idiot who would get lost without him. He doesn't talk a whole lot but he likes listening to other people's stories

Seagull (Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass)

13

6 months after leaving the domain for the ocean King

He's a real genuine pirate, yarr!! Or so he'd like you to believe. He talks a great deal about his strength and bravery, but really is just afraid and terribly homesick most of the time. He wants to fit in with Tetra's and her crew's toughness so much he might go a little overboard on the act in a way that may or may not end up biting him in the butt.

Choo (Spirit Tracks)

14

6 months after peace returned to new Hyrule

He wouldn't call himself a hero, in fact he'd say it's a miracle he made it out alive. Self-esteem and confidence really aren't his strong suits, he often finds himself dragged along and unable to say no. He is very friendly however, and if you just give him a little space he might even open up to you.

Wolfie (Twilight Princess)

21

4 years after defeating Ganondorf

Left Ordon after intrusive thoughts convinced him he was a danger to his village, now works at Telma's bar as a waiter in exchange for a room. He's responsible well liked, though he's not too fond of himself. He has some complicated feelings about the whole turning into a wolf thing

Apple (A Link to the Past, Oracle of Ages/Seasons and Link's Awakening)

20

Just a few seconds after Koholint disappeared

From one dream right into the next (sorta?) he's understandably disoriented at first. He pushes that aside pretty much immediately though, much more interested in getting to know everyone. He's a kind and soft spoken, weirdly wise sort of guy and near instantly becomes the heart of the team

Wallflower (A Link Between Worlds)

19

4 years after wishing upon the triforce with Zelda

Bitter doesn't even begin to describe this uh.. Pleasant fella. After being bossed around for the better part of his life he doesn't take orders from anybody and is this close to quitting his job as a blacksmith. He hates being stuck here, he hates these strange people, really there's not much he doesn't hate. But that can't be all there is to him...

Puzzle (The Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link)

18

1,5 years after waking Zelda II

Confused, disoriented, but still happy to help and ready for adventure. Though some of the others don't really like him around he's still just as friendly to everyone. Since he struggles to communicate he tends to stay quiet. He appears to be simple minded on first glance, but he'll prove to be a valuable member of the team.

Sprout (Minish Cap)

23

13 years after defeating Vaati

After his grandfather died he retreated into his house and dedicated himself to improving his blacksmithing skills to live up to his grandfather's name, he was quickly forgotten by his community and faded into obscurity. Now he may be the best blacksmith in Hyrule, so good that even the royal guard hires him, but among the general castletown population he's nothing more than a forest cryptid. He only leaves the house when he has to, carefully avoiding people. Not because they disgust him, he just has a major case of social anxiety!

Squire (Breath of the Wild)

14

3 years pre calamity

This absolute rascal couldn't be happier about his current circumstances. These unknown woods are his playground and all of these weirdos are his friends now! Though everyone's pretty sure he's a knight trainee, he insists that he's just a stable hand for the guard. His chaotic and carefree nature surprisingly doesn't get in the way of things as he's eager to help out wherever he can, seeing the whole journey as an impromptu camping trip.

Some funfacts :]

Most of them are neurodivergent in some way!

Birdie and Seagull have ADHD, Grasshopper and Choo are autistic, Squire gets the combo platter AuDHD and Wolfie has OCD

Additionally, Birdie has auditory processing disorder and dyscalculia, and Squire has dyslexia

A few of them also have speech disorders

Choo stutters and Puzzle has cluttering speech disorder

Apple has a weak voice, so after a while his voice gets tired and gets hoarse

Choo enjoys drawings and cartography, two skills that will be very important!

One of Seagull's hobbies is photography! He takes his pictobox everywhere

Wolfie also does entertainment at the bar from time to time! He sings or does card tricks

Sprout knows HSL (hylian sign language) because his grandfather was deaf

Seagull's piratey way of talking is 100% for show and painfully inconsistent

Wolfie speaks in a thick southern (in universe ordonian) accent but he's trying hard to mask it since he moved to castletown

Wallflower absolutely hates Puzzle

Squire's special interest is horses

Birdie is a bit of a doormat so he has the ideas but Wolfie is the one to actually get them through

A number of them are blood related (has nothing to do with the colours of their names in this post, I had to reuse some because there weren't enough orz)

That's all I have for you today! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! :]

If any of you have any questions about my Links or AU you'd like answered, my inbox is open!

Have a lovely day everyone!

#links meet au #tloz #legend of zelda #tloz fanart #tloz au #legend of zelda au #link #artists on tumblr #not lu #link and the links au #LatL au #my art #triangles #IT IS DONE FINALLY #Apologies for my handwriting also orz I tried #LatL #the lads

[lol-jackles]

I agree with your opinions for the most part. But there are still some points of contradiction. For example, if Jared left the show, the spn wouldn't last much without him. If you exclude the bias towards Jensen and Misha, with a proper plot, the series could very well exist. Like making a move with Sam finally finding peace, leaving hunting and starting a family. Dean is happy for him and continues to do what he loves and knows well - hunt monsters and protect people and that includes Sam and his new family. Just if you take the concept that Sam(Jared) is the main character and the story is about him and Dean(Jensen) is secondary and the story can't be without a main character, then what about The Big Bang Theory series? Obviously Leonard is the main character and Sheldon is secondary. But when James Parsons wanted to leave the show(several times) it wasn't allowed? Why? Sheldon is not the main character, neither is Dean, BUT they are both audience favorites. Suppose if the situation was the other way around and Jensen was the one who wanted to leave the spn, the show wouldn't make sense either? Just based on your logic, the main character leaving is a failure for the show. That said, the departure of the same James Parsons would be a big blow to the show. His character even got his own series in the end. Maybe that's what Jensen wanted. And then I don't understand why he didn't just do a series about John when Meri died and he was left alone with kids and monsters. That would have been so much more interesting!

I think I may be misinterpreting "bias towards Jensen and Misha", as in my bias or the show's bias? If the latter then put down that non-canon-compliant fanfiction and slowly step away.

The Big Bang Theory worked with Leonard as the lead until he and Penny got married, which ideally was when the show should have ended because the show started with him pining after Penny. But the show continued for 2 more seasons with the focused moved to Sheldon & Amy and it was very noticeable that the original magic was gone and the show was cancelled shortly after. The ratings in viewership and demo for the last 2 seasons were steadily going down.

I've said many times here that when shows lose their leads, they are either cancelled or limp along for 1 or 2 more seasons (X Files, The Office, Scrubs, 70's show, The OC) but then fans and critics complain that the show got way worse. So even though The Big Bang Theory still had their lead Leonard on the show, moving the focus to Sheldon & Amy still resulted in the show's cancellation 2 years later.

Moving SPN's focus from Sam to Dean & Cas would have had the same result, cancellation in one or two seasons. So the "proper plot" you speak off wouldn't save a Sam-less show. WB knew that and that's why they cancelled Supernatural.

If it was Jensen who left SPN back in season 3 or 4, the show still would have continued to season 5 to reach syndication. During that time the role of Sam's new partner would have been casted and if he or she worked well enough with Jared, then the show could have continued after season 5. Shows that lost their main secondary character have successfully continued for several more seasons: Monk, Cheers, Greys Anatomy, Law&Order:SUV, and of course Walker. NYPD Blues' Andy famously went through 4 partners in 12 seasons, each partner just as popular as the last.

I agree that the Supernatural prequel should have been about a widowed John and wee Sam and Dean. That was Michael Rosenbaum’s immediate assumption on his podcast interview with Jensen. He missed a real opportunity for a young Sam and Dean prequel because nostalgia for the 80s is at an all time high. It could have been his version of Stranger Things as wee Sam and Dean explore the strange and the supernatural, like Sam’s imaginary friend Sully and we get to know more about the Zannas, the only supernatural creatures without agendas against mankind.

#supernatural #what if

[di-42]

I've been putting off writing this because I was trying to find a way to not sound defensive. But, I mean, I do feel attacked on this subject, so I may as well sound defensive in my response to it.

If you have read some of my other posts and are wondering... yep. Yes, you might have guessed this is yet another post about Aziraphale's choice in the final 15. Or, rather, not. This post is not about Aziraphale. This post is about explaining Aziraphale's choice in a way that differs to the one-layer depth that we are shown on screen and being accused of lacking the ability to accept that characters I like can be complex and can make mistakes.

Oh, the irony!

So, I mean, possibly no one will be interested in this but let me rant on.

So first off, and I can't believe I'm having to say this, my opinions on Aziraphale are just that: my opinions. I won't specify that on every post I write. If your opinions are different to mine, I strongly encourage you to reply/reblog my posts with your own thoughts and pointing out what and why you disagree with. I take this as a healthy exchange of opinion and really what the fandom is for! I can learn from you! Just, needless to say, keep personal attacks out of this.

Secondly, surprise surprise, Aziraphale lovers can see clearly that Aziraphale makes mistakes. We have watched him making mistakes for 2 seasons, dropping our jaws and shaking our heads. He can be self-righteous, self centered, oblivious to other people's (especially other demons') feelings and incapable to read the room at times. But you know what? He gets it right the time that matters. And that time we are talking about mattered. But that's beside the point. The point is, the point is, we know Aziraphale can be, deep down, a bit of a bastard (and we know Crowley wouldn't love him as much as he does if he wasn't). So, these two things live together in our little, simple, depth-deprived minds: the knowledge that Aziraphale can be a bastard and the feeling that that one time he wasn't being a bastard, he was in fact being selfless.

Thirdly: our little, simple, depth-deprived minds know that stories can have, wait for it, plot twists! When something later on in that story is revealed to have happened for different reasons to the ones that were apparent at a previous point in the story. Neil Gaiman has done it in most of his work. This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean he's doing it here. Again, this is just my opinion. But really, dismissing completely the idea that there can maybe be reasons we don't know yet behind Aziraphale's choice is doing a disservice to Neil Gaiman.

Fourthly (do you even say fourthly?). The most important point of all: do you think we don't feel for Crowley? Do you really think that, because we believe Aziraphale didn't betray Crowley, we can't identify with Crowley's feelings of abandonment? Do you think our little, simple, depth-deprived minds can't hold these two feelings at the same time? Do you think we are dismissing his and our own traumas? Do you really, really think we never wanted to drive that Bentley off a cliff? We do feel for Crowley. We do feel desperate, broken, empty. We know he's lost EVERYTHING and we do recognise that feeling as well as you do. Whatever I think the reasons are behind Aziraphale's choice I do enjoy reading fiction that explains it in a different way to what I think because, again, I can believe something and feel something different at the same time. Reading so wonderfully written fiction about Crowley's pain makes me feel less alone, like bloody all of us. I write my own poems from Crowley's desperate, heartbroken point of view. It is much more alluring than the calm certainty of trust. But I digress. My point is, don't think for one second we are dismissing Crowley's pain. Don't think for one second we don't love Crowley as much as you do only because we believe Aziraphale loves Crowley even more.

Rant over, I guess.

Justice for Aziraphale. Justice for Crowley.

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #justice for aziraphale #ineffable husbands #azicrow #good omens season 2 #final 15 #good omens 2 #aziracrow #rant post

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

scrolling through various people's dracula daily tags on the bus because this book is all i want to think about right now i was reminded that seward is only 29 (with his own lunatic asylum!) - which struck me (a 34 year old) now in a way it didn't before i'd gotten to know him and the others, way back before most of the Plot had happened. jonathan's Baby's First Job energy and mina's excitement about her impending nuptials radiate off the page, but seward's diary is so self-serious and intense that i think mentally i'd automatically been picturing him as much older, even though he's a longtime bro of arthur and quincey. it makes his self-seriousness, and his near-worship of van helsing, more endearing to me now that i've corrected my image of him - and it REALLY gives an even better cast (read: more delightfully awkward) on the scene where he and mina talk diary-stuff to remember they're likely fairly close in age.

it also just made me appreciate that this is ultimately a novel about fairly young people / a text i can slot into my personal canon of Texts About Your Saturn Return, and makes me think also about both the fact that the character relationships center on two engagements (this is literally what your late twenties is), and about all the non-dracula-related death content that permeates the book, from the parents and parent-figures dying left and right to the old man in whitby's monologue about the deaths. none of these bright, healthy, life-loving twenty-somethings have yet had their lives warped by tragedy, and the thing is, that's pretty normal. having your first brush with tragedy involve an undead bloodsucker hunting you and your pals is not normal, but hitting something on the road to thirty that changes you from a person who has never lost anything that mattered to a person who has kind of is.

i dunno, there's something oddly sweet to me in thinking about that - about how dracula is a book about unspeakable horrors, and also a book about when you're in your late twenties and you thought this was the part of your life where things were settling down because everyone's getting engaged and you finished grad school and you're in an actual career now, and then your friend's mom has cancer and you don't know what to say because you've never had to say something about this before, and at the funeral it occurs to you that it may be a while before the next one but this is something you'll be doing for the rest of your life. at the beginning of the book, four of the characters - jonathan and mina, lucy and arthur - think they're a few months away from their happy endings, while a fifth, seward, our last major POV character, is contentedly speculating about how his fascinating new patient may afford him opportunities for major advances in his field. now, one of those happy endings is shattered brutally for good, while the other one has technically transpired but looks nothing like they'd imagined, and renfield is dead while thoughts of his career couldn't be further from seward's mind. this is all very late-twenties, to me: the time when it starts to really click inside you that there are no endings until the very end.

anyway. i guess what i'm saying is, bram stoker's 1897 gothic horror opus is actually a coming of age novel, and i for one would fucking kill for a modern adaptation that really leans into this aspect.

#i don't think a modern adaptation of dracula is totally possible because of how it's a novel about like #exactly what it felt like to be a white guy in victorian england specifically in the year 1897 #but if someone wanted to get creative with the bones of the story... this is a thematic direction i think they could consider #dracula daily

[dduane]

Diane, I am wondering something about writing and you are very wise and very kind.

For context, I've been seeing a therapist for a few months and just saw a psychiatrist Sunday night and they both used the phrase "dissociative daydreaming". It started when I was about 13 and I'm 28 now and it is getting in the way of my life. I'll be having a one-on-one conversation with someone alone in a quiet room and completely miss a few seconds of what they say, and I zone out a lot when eating at restaurants and it creeps people out. The psychiatrist says we are going to work on getting this under control in the next couple months.

The thing is, I like writing fiction and I do a lot of my imagining while I'm in this "zoned out" state. You know, that being a major part of dissociative daydreaming. So I'm wondering, sorry for assuming (assuming makes an ass out of you and me), but if you do not also dissociative daydream, or any other fiction writers here do, how do you think about your stories? Do you just sit down at your desk and say to yourself "I shall write a story now" without leaving your unoccupied body staring at a wall?

First of all: my apologies for having taken so long to get to this... my ask box is so piled up with overdue stuff right now. (sigh) And thanks for the nice words. I don't know about the "wise", and sometimes I screw up the "kind", but I do what I can with what I've got.

Anyway, re: "Do you just sit down at your desk and say to yourself 'I shall write a story now' without leaving your unoccupied body staring at a wall?"

...Yeah, pretty much. Here's how the story-building process usually goes for me.

First I outline. (As detailed here.) The outlining is for me the equivalent of drawing a blueprint, or doing the measure-twice work that comes before taking a saw to the materials you're going to use to build a bookshelf. For this part of the process, as I assemble the underlying framework of the story, I've found it vital to be as completely present, alert and aware as possible. This is where the order of physical action gets laid out, errors of reasoning get caught, blind alleys get erased from the blueprint, useless character transactions get identified and thrown away, and hunches / incomplete ideas get incorporated.

While assembling the outline, if I find my concentration drifting or somehow compromised, I stop work as quickly as possible and put it aside until I can find time to deal with it when I won't be distracted by other stuff. Much experience has taught me that if I get sloppy about this, I may well wind up being really annoyed about it later on... secondary to having missed something vital about character interactions, or screwed up some important sequence of physical action. The writing time lost in fixing careless errors of this kind infuriates me... so I take my time with the outlining.

It's after the framework of the story is in place that the vaguing-out stages of both writing and thinking about the writing come into play. Over many years I've found that the shower, in the morning, is one of the best places for this. Usually when I'm in active writing mode on a project, the first thing I'll do after waking up (while still in bed) will be to look over the writing done the previous day, and—if there's need—check the outline to see what I was planning to do next. Then I hit the showers.

That's where the ideas really start to flow while I'm unfocused: scene descriptions and action sequences in particular. I don't know what it is, but running water really seems to do it for me. (One time I was up at this place for a writing trip, and plotted about six novels one after the other, over a week. Those tubes in the picture dump a liter of hot water per second onto your head. Very, very effective for me.)

...I'm also absolutely horrified to have to admit that one of the very best places for me to be in order to have dialogue arrive is at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. Possibly because there are few other situations in my day to day life where I more desperately want to have my mind be somewhere else. Anywhere else. (But also: running water again...)

In between these two modes of composition lies a hybrid "full-spectrum" writing mode in which I can switch pretty much seamlessly from total immersion in the scene presently unfolding to a more analytical examination of what's going on: a constant realtime adjustment of format issues, timing, pacing, and a lot of other things. When in this mode I can vague out when necessary, inventing new stuff as needed or refining material that was already there, and then snap back into the mode where I'm keeping an eye on paragraph lengths or whether there are too many em-dashes popping up. :)

...Anyway, that''s how it goes for me. The usual caveat applies here: other people's (entirely successful!) processes will not necessarily look anything like this. ...Meanwhile, I absolutely wish you good results in your upcoming brainwork, and the better management of your own process.

#writing #writing process #also #hot water #LOTS OF HOT WATER

[an-au-blog]

Got confused about the timeline you set up with Luffy meeting Buggy in the kidnapped au, accidentally made up an au of an au:

Buggy somehow escaping his capturers before Shanks ever even gets to him (added horror just imagine Shanks hearing about his friend being kidnapped, only to find the place he’s been taken to already in shambles and the only clue as to Buggy ever being there being a heavily damaged cage with seasstone cuffs in an equally damaged room…) , he still suffers from memory loss and a bunch of trauma and goes into hiding for a long time, until Luffy stumbles upon him at the start of his journey completly by accident. Buggy sees the hat, has the First disjointed flashes of his past that aren’t a total nightmare for once and for some reason… he needs to protect this dumbass kid. He NEEDS to protect this dumbass kid. He justifies it as only trying to get his memories back and to get a clue as to why everyone seems to be after him at first, in typical Buggy manner, thinking of himself first and foremost, but it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that he not only sees… something in Luffy he can’t quite explain, but that he also truly comes to care for that little brat after a while and that he does enjoy being part of a crew a lot and somehow seems to just be inherently good at sailing the seas and being a pirate for some reason. Huh. Whatever could that be?

Of course this would culminate with Shanks one day being confronted with the kid he put all his faith into living up to that faith absolutely splendidly… and then one day being face to face with his old friend, that he had lost twice and thought dead, again. Buggy just comes face to face with someone hes never seen but somehow still remembers.

On a fucking lighter note for once, imagine Shanks desperately trying to jog Buggys memory and Buggy being horrified at this stranger being all up in his face until there is a tiny spark in his mind “… You…I remember..” Shanks face lighting up with obvious delight “YES!? Come on I know there’s something in there!” Buggys shaking hands reaching up towards Shanks face while his eyes fill with realization and Shanks dares not to breathe. “You…”

Buggys hands suddenly grab Shanks neck without warning, squeezing hard and shaking him violently “YOURE THAT DANG IDIOT THAT MADE ME EAT THAT FRUIT! I’LL KILL YOU YOU SONNOFFA-“ Strawhats struggling to hold their demented clown uncle back from mauling Shanks, while Buggy just goes absolutely ham and cusses at “THAT GODDAMN REDHAIRED BASTARD!”. The latter just has a sobbing laughing fit. May not be the most flattering memory to come back first, but hey, it’s a start.

Omg I am going to die for u, I love you so much this isn't even a joke. Having an au of anything (even if it's because I didn't explain my thought process) I've written fills me with just so much joy :')

My original though process was more of a "they land the ship somewhere (or something) Buggy wanders off, or is left to rest but decides to look for them and gets lost, and accidentally stumbles into Luffy.

But I love your version! And the more I think about it, if he met Luffy in the early early beginning and was there for the Mihawk-Zoro fight, Mohawk going back to tell Shanks about the straw hats and mentioning a clown with them would make great plot development. Because Buggy following Luffy around I feel like he'd be almost an official member after an arc's worth time. Not to mention Luffy's tendency to take in traumatized souls and give them a reason to keep living (and God knows Buggy desperately needs one). And Shanks just following breadcrumbs to find Luffy like "Have you seen this boy?" and holding up his poster, most people would be too terrified that one of the emperors to answer. Plus why would he is look for a rookie pirate??? And he's always a step behind, but always hears the crazy stunts Luffy pulls and how many near-death experiences he's had and it just adds to the stress. Pride... but also stress.

Or even if he joins a bit later I think it'd be funny if he had a Usopp photobomb moment, just being there in the background in one of the others' posters, you know?

Also this may be a hot take but I think this version of Buggy would get along with Robin. Because they're both packing some serious childhood trauma and have lived most of their life either being hunted or being tortured. They both have (or used to have) suicidal tendencies... idk I think it'd be a cute friendship.

OH! Bonus: I already love Usopp endlessly and how he just bullshits his way out of almost anything and I could love it if there was two silly cremates that keep accidentally winning. They'd also have a nice bond imo because they're also both depressed and Usopp would have someone else to tell his tall tales to. Buggy would probably believe them all because he's literally been living underground his entire adult life.

#shuggy #kidnapped au #shuggy au #shanks x buggy #op #answers

[cookinguptales]

Related to the meta I wrote last time...

So there was this abandoned plot line from the episode with all the wives where one of Nandor's guy wives kept asking Guillermo questions about himself and that made Nandor uncomfortable so he had the Djinn poof him and like -- god, there's a lot to unpack there. Like, when I tell you that I've thought about that for months.

Now... there are a lot of different things I could say about this. And frankly speaking, I still might. But for now, what I really want to get into is this odd tendency I've noticed in Nandor to view his wives almost as extensions of himself. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this might be how he conceptualizes the difference between husbands and wives -- it's not a gender thing; it's a situation of ownership.

I'm not saying that Nandor is fully awful about this. He doesn't seem to believe that his wives literally belong to him or that he can tell them all what to do, like marriages of that time often would have been. But he does seem to see them as extensions of himself. They may not physically belong to him, but they are still his.

Like, he still expects these wives to be fully loyal to him. He still expects them to dote on him and guess what he wants and be pretty much exactly what he needs them to be. Their actions (and what people think of them) seem to be things that he believes reflect on him. Their actions are his actions, their beliefs are his beliefs, their wants are his wants -- and vice-versa.

We see this very literally becoming an issue with Marwa. He so fully transformed her into an extension of himself and his desires that she fully lost herself as a human being -- and that's even before he straight-up turned her into someone else.

So one of his wives being very interested in Guillermo does seem like something that would be very disturbing to him on a number of levels. First and foremost, there's the obvious annoyance that one of his wives would be interested in anyone but him. (We see him get upset with his others wives for this.) But then, you know, there's the fact that it's Guillermo specifically.

There's this discomfort with someone treating Guillermo as desirable and important, obviously, as it makes Nandor face the fact that Guillermo is desirable and important -- and that he hasn't treated him that way. There's also the discomfort with the fact that anyone else would get to know more about Guillermo's personal life than he does. But more than that, I think Nandor feels discomfort even acknowledging that Guillermo has a personal life outside of Nandor for people to ask questions about.

Nandor is very weird and possessive about Guillermo's personal life.

On top of all that, though, we have the fact that it is an extension of Nandor who is asking these questions. There's the inherent betrayal of part of him going to someone else, but more importantly -- I mean, it's very similar to what happened with Marwa at the wedding. A piece of him is very interested in Guillermo, and maybe that's going to make him confront the fact that he is very interested in Guillermo if he doesn't put it down immediately.

Because the thing is -- he does this to Guillermo, too. He very explicitly says that someone insulting Guillermo's honor is insulting his honor. He very explicitly claims Guillermo as his own and very purposefully monopolizes all his time and effort. He claims Guillermo's abilities, too, and uses them as he sees fit. He even physically manhandles Guillermo's body for his own needs. (See: using Guillermo's wrist, not just his watch, as his own in 4.09.) He has clearly always seen Guillermo as an extension of himself the same way he does his wives, and some of the shock of s3-s4 for him is realizing that Guillermo is his own person.

I think that's why we see him prodding at Guillermo and asking questions and watching him and testing him in s3. I think that's why he sounds bitter about not knowing anything about Guillermo's family or any of the things that he does in s4. I think it's why, when he is confronted with this person that Guillermo loves, this last small part of Guillermo that Nandor has not managed to possess, it makes him want to claim it for his own.

Nandor is wildly possessive over Guillermo in the same way he is his wives, but Guillermo is no longer happy simply with being possessed. There are parts of Guillermo (like his family, like the vampire hunting, like Freddie) that Nandor is slowly realizing he does not have access to, and he doesn't like that. Guillermo is really coming into himself, is becoming strong and recalcitrant and independent and uncontrollable, and Nandor isn't really sure how he feels about that.

Because here's the kicker: Nandor is totally fucking horny for people he can't control.

When you look at his love interests we've seen that he's been most into, it's always people that he cannot control. Gail, who he can never manage to rein in, who he can never quite manage to claim. She uses him casually and then she leaves, and she always has control in the relationship. Meg is a lesbian, totally uninterested in him, and he has no control over her, either. Jan is a complete power reversal, and one that Nandor seemed particularly thrilled with. She owns him and he likes it.

The point I am coming to here is that Guillermo is really starting to resemble these women that Nandor has run after -- and I think Nandor is starting to come to the realization that Guillermo is not an extension of himself, like his wives were. Guillermo is his own person. And maybe what Nandor really wants is to be the subservient one in this situation. He doesn't want Guillermo to become one of his wives; he wants Guillermo to become his husband.

Nandor wants to be Guillermo's guy wife.

We see him start to lean into this role reversal in s3-s4. Submitting to Guillermo's physical strength and leadership when they go after the Sire. Caring for him after an injury in 4.01. Going full role reversal and literally serving Guillermo in 4.05. Having Guillermo try on his groom's clothing in 4.06. Like... the man's not being subtle here.

He's still struggling with these ideas, clearly, but they're for sure there. And I think it's part of why Freddie ended up becoming such a clusterfuck. Nandor was still sort of seeing Guillermo as an extension of himself and wanted to claim all parts of him, especially the parts that Guillermo had thus far kept hidden from him. I don't think it's a coincidence that Nandor mostly just wanted to eat Freddie until the moment he realized he was there for Guillermo. Then he followed them around like a weirdo until Guillermo admitted Freddie was his boyfriend -- and then Nandor wanted him.

But as much as he was seeing Guillermo as an extension of himself, he was also seeing Freddie as an extension of Guillermo. And like Nandor's guy wife and Marwa showing interest in Guillermo and that being a direct representation of Nandor showing interest in Guillermo, Nandor going sappy over Guillermo's extension is another way that Nandor is indirectly showing his true feelings for Guillermo.

And so much of 4.09 was Nandor realizing that Guillermo wasn't his. He is not an extension of Nandor. Nandor can't have access to every part of him. He has to let Guillermo have some things that are just his. He has to relinquish control over him.

Put bluntly, 4.09 was really about Nandor having to decide whether he cared more about Guillermo being 100% his or Guillermo being happy. And I guess we know which one he chose.

I think even Guillermo understood on some level that Nandor was mostly just upset that Guillermo had a single goddamn thing that Nandor didn't have access to. That's essentially what he accused Nandor of, wasn't it? Not letting him have this one fucking thing for himself. Even he seemed to understand that Nandor's new crush was more about Guillermo than it was about Freddie -- even if I'm not sure he quite made the jump to understanding why.

So... by the end of s4, Nandor has gotten rid of his wife. She had become so much of a very literal extension of him that he was sickened by it, so he destroyed her. (RIP Marwa, you were a real one.) He had also gotten rid of the extension of Guillermo that he had claimed. And, this might be the most important part, he'd gotten rid of some of that internal idea that Guillermo was an extension of him. In letting Freddie 2 go, he was in some ways letting Guillermo go as well.

Now if only Guillermo actually wanted to be let go... :')

Up until this point, I think Guillermo also thought of himself as an extension of Nandor -- and it wasn't until their planned trip went up in flames that he was able to start conceiving of himself as his own person. He started trying to create this life outside of Nandor. And while that life was short-lived (and I don't think could ever last forever), it did give him enough independence that by the end of s4, as Nandor has given up on Guillermo being his extension, so has Guillermo.

And he decides to take the life that he now owns himself into his own two hands.

Do I think the two of them are going to be less codependent going forward? I don't think so, and honestly I certainly hope not. But I do think the shape of their relationship is definitely going to change.

Hopefully for the better...

#that detail was... I want to say from the casting call? #so I'm not even sure if it made it to the final script #but when I say I Would Like To See It #anyway I do wish that all of this had been a little more coherently laid out in the show itself #I feel like we got hints at some big ideas especially near the beginning of the season #like Guillermo being honest with his loved ones #and nandor needing to stop trying to make his loved ones more like him #and how Guillermo and Nandor both had these romanticized ideas about their relationships that didn't pan out #and being careful what you wish for #and what found family means really #but I do think things fell apart a little near the end #wwdits #nandermo #wwdits meta #long post