#but I don't think it's canon at all and that the narrative rather contradicts it

[chocmuffinsscones]

BKDK endgame theory

Another highly self-indulgent theory on how bkdk's gonna be endgame canonically

Disclaimer: Since I don't wanna jinx it or feel embarrassed for being so brazen about this mere silly thought of mine, I'll just keep this private until if things similar to what I've predicted became true. Otherwise, this will only be for my eyes alone. - edited 6 Nov 2023

Fuck all of that guess I'm just gonna put it out there and let y'all have fun as I embarrass myself. Just think it's all for lolz if none of these happen, at least I have fun writing to indulge my fantasy - edited 8 Nov 2023

So, what I think is that since hori's gonna keep giving us surprises and +u up his own game, my guess is that to clearly and subtly lock the pair without making it feel forced is to make bkdk make a promise to each other that hinted a lifelong warrant. Refer this to what toga said in her arc

It's not exactly a love confession, but what'll you feel if someone promise to dedicate their whole life in making you feel happiness, loved? I think that's love disguise in a glass case

So, how's this gonna parallel to our favourite dorks who're both so emotionally constipated and verbally poor at confessing?

Me thinks that, apparently when the boys were pushed to the extremes -- to the moment when there's literally no time affordable to think of anything else besides the most important thing they hold in their life, that the moment their body has to move on their own by instincts -- we'll finally get to see, bright as day, where their true feelings lay.

As far as we've seen, it has been clearly revealed (except for those who're illiterate or in a dilemma of spiralling denial) that on katsuki's side, Izuku's the one constantly haunting his head for the rest of his 10+ years. He'd jump into battle with him, rush in front of him to avert the blow, fight in pain to stay relevant in izuku's battle -- to the point of fighting to his death to protect his seniors and to yet remain as izuku's image of victory... all these, to atone his mistakes in mistreating Izuku.

Throughout his character growth, Katsuki had been to the extremes. What are the most extreme situations if not death itself?

After that, however, we see katsuki came back with his heart fully open (pun definitely not intended!), feelings more outwardly shown, saying thanks sincerely without hiding behind his explosive demeanor, smiling straightforwardly at his favourite idol AM 🥺

Katsuki had met his breaking point, met death itself, and came back a new man. A man who wanted to change before everything was too late. As soon as he woke up, he didn't waste time hesitating to allow further regrets, showing gratitude and humility whole-heartedly in any instant he should've done like any decent human being would.

Except, there's still one thing he hadn't yet achieve to reach a complete circle for his narrative.

Pre-war, Katsuki's biggest dread, the constant looming threat choking around his neck, was being unable to be honest and sincere to Izuku.

"But wait! He'd already stated his apology, he has no regrets left!"

Well, if you have that complain, you're not understanding katsuki well enough. Katsuki is a man of action more than his words. It's quite a common habit for Asians too to put more thoughts into action rather than just spewing beautiful words. And Katsuki, through and through, was an all-in-or-nothing kind of guy. He would never stop at just apologising. If his prior intention for reconciliation was to make himself feel better, then the integrity behind his actions and words was nullified, since that would undoubtedly negate the whole building up of his character's motivation. Moreover, it would become a huge flaw in horikoshi's writing as that would depict him in a "fake hero" spotlight as well as contradict the character's self incentive to be the bestest hero there is. I wouldn't bet hori would decide to ruin his writing like this. In fact, this is such a huge plot point for katsuki's character development that such a small blunder at this point would greatly affect the whole endgame story dynamic to his readers. Not that he'd care if he really did chose that path... I mean 🤷🏻‍♀️😬

Anyway, personality-wise, I'd say Katsuki would be the first person to hate that particular kind of people if he sees one. He'd definitely be disgusted of himself if he were one. That's why I wouldn't bet hori will make that blunder, because hori had been writing him as an incessantly growing character, relentlessly pushing his limits to be the best and always showed his results through visible actions.

So then, back to the point, what were left to do if he had already apologised? What more does he need to do then to further compensate?

:) As I've mentioned earlier, nothing beats the offer of a lifelong compensation, of devoting one's own time and energy willingly to the other as long as they need, or provide care and attention whenever they deserve.

"Wait. What does that even sound like tho? Doesn't that seem like a huge burden to bear??"

For Katsuki however, it's as per usual: all in or nothing!

A promise that hinted lifelong devotion though... That truly sounds like a heavy dedication to carry for the rest of one's life. Doesn't that kind of vow ring any bells? That's the only conclusion I could come to unfortunately. Because Katsuki is a perfectionist, he'll never aim at only atoning his mistakes for a "measly" 10-20 years.

But then, at what kind of situation he would promise a life-binding oath like that out of the ordinary?? Knowing our boys, there's no way they would open their ironclad mouths to say something as romantic as that out of the blue, right??

So here comes my prediction❗❗

📢 warning: take everything below with a grain of salt because at this point it's just me wildin' haha

Evidently, it's been awhile we're constantly warned about Izuku's lack-of-oxygen crisis. He was still fighting sAFO alone while Katsuki came back to focus on AFO himself.

There's a few ways things could go south from there. Afo could very well be dealt by Katsuki now with extra buffs(his new cluster moves), but Izuku was still in an unknown critical state. So while Katsuki busied himself distracting afo, Izuku could somehow got sucked into sAFO's vestige space in a moment's hesitation (or something happened that sucked him into vestige space). We might finally get our vestige space fight between Izuku and tenko & OFA vs AFO, or we could get a heartwarming talk no jutsu (as well as some sprinkle of action fights) between Izuku and Tenko. And all of these played out without the involvement of Katsuki -- as he's stuck in the physical world and is still dealing a rampaging afo. The dudebros would be happy about this. Finally they had a chance to laugh at us at being clowns for wanting katsuki's involvement in the vestige fight. But remember, hori is a troll through and through. He could troll us, he could troll the dudebros too. It's our temporary loss for not getting Katsuki fight beside izuku in afo vestige space, but we'll have something better later!

Because while all of those happen in the vestige space, apparently Tomura and Izuku's body will be out of it, falling to the ground and seemingly lifeless, out of consciousness to the eye of the people in the physical world.

I can imagine Katsuki having no time to spare while dealing with Afo as this happen. He's got to finish AFO first to get back to Izuku. And I promise you it'll not take too long for him to do that, 'cause it'll be a combo attack from IN and OUT as Izuku counter both Afo and tenko in the vestige space -- but it'll feel a bit longer in Izuku's pov as timeflow seems to be slightly different in there.

Anyhow, as Katsuki was done with afo, what do you think he'll react then when he reached a passed out Izuku? When he arrived to the scene of Izuku and Tenko on the ground, Izuku probably temporarily *not breathing* and motionless. *not breathing due to the setback of gearshift

Katsuki will be shocked and traumatized. After spilling his heart out to win AFO with/for izuku, how could he stand to win the battle if Izuku wasn't there to claim victory alongside him? He would hold Izuku's hand and kept calling out to him (maybe angrily or threatening but the words are sweet and all of it are very contrasting?👀), calling for his soul to come back. Surely he would start crying and confess all his regrets even more too. *reminder: these are only possible because all his walls were finally broken down after his revival, he's a changed man in and out.*

Then, even better! When the medic units and probably some other heroes arrived to the scene, Katsuki suddenly realised he could give Izuku cpr! He'll do it himself and think it'll work since he learnt it from emergency treating lessons, and he didn't want Izuku to leave his side but also didn't want to do nothing to help Izuku recover.

See? Plus Ultra. Katsuki giving Izuku cpr y'all. Bkdk won. All these too in front of some witnesses and recording cameras. :)

And, yeah, cuz hori is a troll, katsuki's kiss of life actually wasn't the *sole* reason Izuku came to (all for the ambiguity too, ya know ;) and besides, hori likes trolling Katsuki too, not allowing him to get what he wants)-- it was all Izuku's well-deserved victory on defeating afo and saving tenko from the vestige space that allowed him to return to his own body after the vestige world close up. In fact, Izuku didn't actually need it, he was merely away from his body to fight in the vestige space for a bit; if he won, he would eventually come back and wake up by himself, the problem of hypoxia naturally dissolved along with it.

In another words, the "kiss" was just a bonus. It's a heartfelt gift from hori-sensei to his bkdk/grateful manga readers. Because in the end of the day, it's the promise between Izuku and Katsuki that wrapped the deal of bkdk being endgame canonically. For Hori, it's a win-win situation; he could have fun building suspense over his readers, as well as finally letting his favourite boys earn their long overdue peace to be together. Also, completing both protagonist and deuteragonist narrative foil as save to win, win to save. AND not making the whole scene romantically charged, as the reason behind their actions aren't out of sexual desire nor sexual attraction, since tHis Is sTilL JusT a shOuNen mAnGa afterall. Just "bros" devoting their life to each other and occasionally hold hands to get comfortable of each other's touch because they're practicing their next combo move. 😀

#Oh yeah #have I also mention what the “bkdk platonic lifelong marriage proposal” is? #I'm still mulling over it but this is as close as what I could guess if it's from Katsuki: #As long as I'm around. don't think you can go die heroically as you wish you shitty Izuku - #Stay by my side and win to save. save to win. ya hear? #From here on out. we're gonna win this together. From here on out. you got that?! #Bakugou -down-bad-for-izuku-and-will-willingly-call-himself-kacchan-midoriya- Kacchan Katsuki #I'm seeing it really #I'm seeing the vision of bkdk canon with the recent bkdk feasts #Everything is so unreal I feel dumbstruck by hori's constant plus ultra-ness #bkdk brainrot prediction #bnha meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bkdk #muffinsscones silly stupid self indulgent hc theory #TAKE THESE WITH ALL THE SALTS YOU HAVE #also please ignore some grammar mistakes I can't stand this in my draft any longer #bnha bkdk meta prediction #bnha bkdk #kacchan bakugou

[mistressoftherant-blog]

Stop Babying Mikey 2k23

This is partially a follow on from my post about how 12 Mikey isn't abused by his brothers, but I want to focus in on how much people across the tmnt fandom (I've seen fics in nearly every verse that do this), completely and utterly baby Mikey, and how it doesn't make sense.

For a start, in every verse but Rise (and possibly 87), it is implied or outright stated that the boys are all the same age. Especially 12 which starts on their joint 15th birthday. I feel like a lot of fans who get into the franchise via Rise decide that they can't all be the same age, and therefore decide to make Donnie and Raph a year younger than Leo, and then Mikey a year younger than that, or an even more weird age gap.

I see this a lot in human aus especially, as if people seem to forget that quadruplets are a very real thing.

It seems to me that people just want an excuse to baby Mikey, and so they decide to make him even younger, even when this directly contradicts canon.

Even in Rise, Mikey is only 1 year younger than the twins.

So why do people treat him like he's far younger than the others? It's especially irking in the Rise fandom when there is a whole episode dedicated to Mikey being fed up of being babied by his siblings (mostly Raph), though a few of the other Mikey's also get annoyed when treated as a baby.

Sure, for the most part, Mikey's are far more childish than their siblings, and tend to act far less responsibly.

But they aren't innocent, precious, angels who radiate positive energy, know nothing of the world or, horror of horrors, about sex, who can do no wrong.

They can be naive about a lot of things, and their brothers definitely try to protect them from the worst of aspects of their lives when possible, but some people take this to the absolute extreme in the most ridiculous ways.

I've seen so many fics about 12 in which Mikey knows nothing about sex, despite the fact that he canonically makes a sex joke (not that kind of sub) within the show. He's also a teenage boy, and despite their social isolation for most of their lives, they have access to enough books, shows, comics, and the Internet in some series, that it is incredibly unrealistic that they wouldnt have even the vaguest ideas around sex.

Or when fics have all the brother swearing, but they won't let Mikey say any bad words, ever.

There is also a pervading idea that 'Mikey gets punished all the time by his brothers for no reason, how could they be so cruel, he's only trying to help', despite the fact that Mikey spends so much of the shows (mainly 12 and 03) deliberately ignoring any boundaries his siblings set in place.

In 12, he constantly antagonises or stresses out both Raph and Donnie (he even riles up April's dad during the Krang invasion, and pokes fun at numerous other characters), and yet they are the ones seen as bad guys for when they inevitably lash out at him.

He also openly plays around with chemicals that are rare and/or expensive, not to mention dangerous, during times of crisis, and yet Donnie is seen as the bad guy for yelling at him or not wanting him in his lab. Purely for his own entertainment, Mikey risks the lives of himself, his brothers, his friends, and everyone that Donnie is trying to save via retromuatgen, multiple times. This also shows an incredible level of disrespect to all of the work that Donnie puts into his experiments and machines.

And don't even get me started on the 12 Croaking episode. Oh sure, Mikey completely destroys the place multiple times, even though it doesnt belong to him, and then decides to run away rather than helping to clean up his mistake purely because he actually got called out for his actions, but then somehow everyone else is in the wrong for being frustrated with him?

I think part of this mentality in the fandom is because, like I said in my previous post, Mikey is hardly ever punished by the narrative. In 12, his mistakes get him a cool new pet, he is somehow able to cure Donnie in Creeping Doom by basically pure luck and is then praised for this (as if it wanst his fault in the first place that Donnie almost permanently lost his mind!!), and then later on when he plays with mutagen during the invasion, he somehow manages to stabilise it, and Donnie gets told off by Splinter for being mad at him messing around with the dangerous solution that he has been working hard over and neglecting his health to complete for months.

Even in 03 Mikey is rarely punished by the narrative, and he also pesters Raph just as mich as 12 Mikey does.

In an ep in Fast Forward, even though he tries to cut in line for a new game, and is only interested in stopping a bunch of dangerous thieves so that he can get a copy, (behaviour which, in a kid's cartoon especially, should not be rewarded), he is still given a copy of the game at the end of the episode.

And then, one of the instances that really ticks me off, is when Raph gets powers via the superhero Cape in in that Back to the Sewers ep. Mikey spends the entire episode throwing a tantrum, to the point where he almost gets both himself and Raph killed, almost let's the bad guy win because he is too busy trying to physically wrestle the Cape away from his brother whilst they are being actively attacked by a dangerous enemy, almost lets said enemy get his hands on the cape and its powers, and then damages the Cape by trying to snatch it from Raph, only for him be allowed to use the Cape later on, giving him the chance to experience superpowers like he dreamed of.

Surely it would have been much more narratiely satisfying for Mikey to have taken a step back at some point in the episode and realised that Raph deserved to be a superhero using the cape's powers, and then maybe have him step in to support Raph, proving that he could still be a hero, even without powers? If they had handled it that way, it would have been far less annoying if Mikey was allowed to use the Cape at the end of the episode as a reward for doing the right thing. Instead, he spends and entire episode whining and pouting like an entitled brat, before almost getting himself and Raph (who had been using the Cape's powers to help save people), and then is still rewarded by getting a chance to use the powers anyway??

It's endlessly frustrating when other characters within these shows receive far more severe narrative consequences for either similar, or far less selfish actions than Mikey's.

I think this happens slightly less in Rise, but the fandom baby Mikey even harder. I genuinely don't think people grasp how small the age difference is between the twins and Mikey. I see comics of the twins walking around and talking in full sentences and looking to be around 5 years of age, but Mikey is a tiny baby swaddled up, unable to do anything at all. The age gap is not that large, he is not that far behind them developmentally.

My sister is just about 2 years older than me, and for most of our childhood people who didn't know us would mistake us for twins. There is no way that Mikey (again, only a year younger than the twins), would be so far behind the twins developmentally.

By the time they're toddling, he should at the very least be crawling.

To conclude yet another TMNT rant, I am just so sick of people completely and utterly infantilising the Mikeys. I see story upon story of Mikey being oh so sweet and innocent, unable to cope with seeing his siblings hurt in anyway (I have legit seen stories in which on of his brothers is severely hurt either physically or emotionally, and yet far more attention is given to Mikey who will be having an absolute breakdown, leaving the injured party to pretty much bleed out in the background whilst Mikey is coddled), or who could never say a bad word about anyone (even though he insults or winds his brothers up on the daily), acting as a therapist for the team (he does do this to some degree, particularly in Rise, but he is also just as likely to capitalise on someone's fears as he is to do anything about them).

It's also really annoying to have people act as if the Mikeys are far younger than their siblings when they are the same age, except for Rise, but even then the age gap is basically negligible.

He isn't a poor little uwu bean that gets unfairly picked on by his brothers. He's a little menace that is hardly ever punished for his actions.

#rottmnt #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2k12 #tmnt donatello #tmnt donnie #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt mikey #tmnt raphael #tmnt 2003 #tmnt leo #tmnt leonardo #tmnt 2k3 #tmnt 2k18 #tmnt #Teenage mutant ninja turtles

[kobitoshiningneedle]

I've spent a good amount thinking about Ikuko Hachijo = Sayo Yasuda theory, but not from the point of whether it has basis in canon or not (there are some strong nods that could be interpreted as hints; as much as there are some contradictions to it), but from the perspective of how it would recontextualize the entire finale of the VN. And to be honest, I'm not sure whether I myself would fully subscribe to this theory, because both point of view make a cohesive interpretation of the story itself

1. Ikuko isn't Sayo

So it just would be as taking Ikuko/Featherine's character and purpose at face value - a sort of the author's self-insert who is an outsider of the story and who literally and metaphorically gives the reader a chance to make the final choice. These types of character are expected in sich a multilayered work as Umineko

So in the final episode she was revealed as someone who was helping Tohya process Battler's memories through making the forgeries. In a sense, the forgeries are Battler's journey to Beato's heart, and in the end, after facing various oddities, the Battler "piece" that was locked in Tohya reunited for good. Incidentally, the manga's final frames illustrate that better: there is meta-Bettler (the one who drowned together with Beato) and the Tohya/battler who fuse into one on the end

In a similar vein, it's also interesting to think about what's going to happen with Tohya himself after the party in Gospel House. Will his new and old selves be finally at peace (logically, it would mean a some degree of the recovery)? Will he be starting to gradually his Battler's memories (this is more of a pro-magic explanation, but no problem about that, it's the magic ending after all)? Will he suddenly die just there (this one is a rather gritty scenario, considering the sequence takes place in an orphanage with a hall full of kids)?

But anyway, ultimately, the whole story was about understanding the story and the main character behind it. So Ikuko/Featherine, at least in some form, was an intuitive way to make some sort of a foothold - both for Ange (the other outsider who wants to understand the story) and the reader. They gave the name Virgilia to a wrong character, heh

2. Ikuko is Sayo

With few tweaks there can be made a case that, much like Tohya, Sayo survived the drowning. Taking a new name and appearance (wouldn't be the first time for her), acquiring a house and servants (she's super-rich) she really could trick Tohya/Battler into thinking she is an unrelated person. But why would she do this?

Well, first of all, being together with Battler and discussing mystery novels was her dream. There's a big but about that, because it just couldn't be the same way she imagined in her childhood - it was accentuated that Tohya and Ikuko have platonic relationship, and that may be because she doesn't want Battler to "know the truth about her cursed body". Despite her self-doubt, it really could be that Battler's words in the boat scene were heeded, and Sayo reconsidered her stance, leaving her self Beatrice dying instead, probably as a way to finally put behind her past.

In this case the meta-narrative is still working, since now it's both Beatrice and Battler become some metaphorical figures in the Forgeries, both abandoned by their bodies/shells. The forgeries are still meant to help Tohya to come in terms with his memories and losing Ange (like meta!Ange's death in ep4 was tied into her disappearance in 1998)

This is a less tragic and more positive ending for Sayo, and I don't really think that she doesn't deserve it. Among other reasons this is why I think the Ikuko=Sayo theory has some merit

So, I'm not really sure? Battler finding (and fighting through) the way back to Beatrice is a very beautiful narrative for a sucker for angsty romance such as me, but the idea of them also having at least some resemblance of contentment on a more mundane level is pretty attractive too

#umineko #umineko spoilers #meta #ikuko hachijo #tohya hachijo #battler ushiromiya #beatrice the golden witch #beabato #<- i wrote this entire post purely because i love them sm

[jamieedlund]

What's ur favorite hc for Aaravos?

This is a surprisingly hard question to unpack for a lot of reasons- but I'll do my best to articulate myself (ง •_•)ง

I think this spoke for itself but just in case, here is a short elaboration: if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be this.

He is someone who - despite all of the odds, despite how the world treated to him, despite being ridiculed, subjected to the worst torture known to man(yes solitary confinement is considered one of the most inhumane methods of torture) for over 300 years and had his name dragged through the mud for literal centuries-

-could still smile so brightly and sincerely like that, affirming that he does, with all of his heart, still very much love this world. However twisted that love might be, however difficult it was for him to learn how to use and express that love in a healthy way, it still speaks volume about who he is as a person.

Now if you have the time, allow me to explain bellow. If not, stop here, the question is basically answered 🙏💗 Thank you for reading!

Hello, if you're reading this that means you are willing to listen/read more about my thoughts and therefore I expect you to have a leveled head and a polite attitude to what I'm about to say.

If not then why are you here there was LITERALLY A STOP BUTTON. Please click off this post, what are you doing with your life wasting it hate watching me? 

With that being said, hello! fellow polite person who is reading this - - - Spoiler there is no illust down here because I'm running low on time on my thesis I'm so sorry ;;A;; Here is the elaboration to why this is my default favorite headcanon!

While I am aware of the amount of WILDLY different headcanons that exist out there for him, which are very popular within the fandom and even taken as gospel, I strongly feel that mine isn't really aligned with some, if not most of the hc out there at all.

Personally, I don't even agree with the canon version of in him ss4.

I'm assuming that you are asking me about my- personal favorite headcanon for him so for now, my answer will be: Ignoring the terrible characterization of him in season 4, my absolute favorite thing about him has to be: Despite everything, despite what everyone says about him, despite how the world perceives him

He is

without a doubt

Someone who loves this world very much.

Again this all ties in with what I'm going to present in my thesis, so I can't elaborate on it too much without giving any spoilers to the case I'm going to present for him. But for now, and especially right now at the time of writing this, they just released another vaguely worded and filled to the brim with plot holes short story regarding his past ... I-- hm I sincerely have no intention to keep up with the series... Therefore my hc will definitely contradict vastly with the horrendous plot holes ridden pre-established canon

-which then made the act of answering to this question exceedingly difficult due to the way I personally perceive him.

To wrap it up, all I want to say is, we could have had it all, a character who would make us cry, laugh and want to root for, had they written him with love and care, rather than trying to stuff him into the shoes a villain, which just felt forced and unnatural. Villains who are terrible only to be stopped have been overdone, and for tdp to be another generic show is a huge waste of potential

Wouldn't most of us have killed for, finally, an antagonist who isn't actually the antagonist but rather the very system that these people are experiencing is the actual villain ? ? ?

Best of all, they could have contrasted this with Callum, our protagonist. In Callum's case, despite being portrayed as one of "the good guys" or "heroes", he has all the reason to hate the world. This in turn create a complex narrative about the nature of people - Or in this case, the hero acting morally righteous despite hating the world vs the guy who was deemed evil and terrible by the world and yet still loves it with all of his heart. It could have been a heart-warming story about how two individuals find their way in this messed up world-- but nope~ non of this is canon :DDD

When in the history of television has any shows have a twist with the "hero" and "villain" ditching their role immediately to become a neutral party to reflect all the flaws in the world they live in? ? ? TDP had the perfect setup, but then proceeded to drop all of the balls spectacularly in ss4...

I always try my best to not touch ss4 but it feels almost impossible to talk about Aaravos w/out addressing the disservice that it did to his character. And that is all, I have to say for now~

Sincerely, thank you for reading.

#my art #ask jamie #about #aaravos #tdp #the dragon prince #callum #doodle #comic #short #and then there was a literal essay #you asked #and you will now receive #i honestly had feelings drawing him smile #it's bonkers #I have a strong feeling I'm being hate watched #so sorry if some of the wording are strange #but to anyone who loves what i make and stayed here for my shenanigans #hi #this one is for you #thank you for loving aaravos #anyways #bye.

[bbygirl-aemond]

Ch18 Spoilers: What the Hell Happened with Aemond

Hehe okay I don't have the patience to wait until the explanation fits into the narrative, because it won't come up for a while. Daeron's gonna have to do a lot of digging back at the Citadel before anyone in-universe finds this out; until then, they're all going to treat it a bit like a miracle since they won't know any better. But y'all know me, and y'all know that if I do anything I make sure it's canon compliant in like ten different ways haha. I've put a ton of thought into this and didn't write this plot point just for funsies!

Also, if anyone wants to wait to find out, by all means do! But the reveal won't be treated as a huge plot twist, so you'll still be able to enjoy Stormbreak with all of the expected amounts of suspense if you want to read further! So if you want to know how Aemond pulled off what he did, or exactly what he pulled off, read on!

Before you read this post, read this one here because otherwise parts of this will seem like they come out of nowhere.

Basically, if a rider comes across a dragon who is directly related to their claimed dragon (parent/child/sibling), there's a possibility that they can claim that second dragon. I got this idea from all of the emphasis of the phrase "blood of the dragon," because it was interesting to me that the only bloodlines that seemed to matter were the Targaryen ones. But what if the ability to form this bond was inherited on the dragon side as well? Remember that every single dragon in Westeros is a descendant of the first dragons who came over from Valyria with the Targaryens, all of whom had this type of bond.

But a rider can ONLY form a simultaneous bond with another dragon if that second dragon is currently unclaimed. Remember that in my lore, nothing can replace or break an existing bond. And I maintain that! So RIP Joffrey, and please don't try to get on Syrax, she already has a rider and she won't accept another; no dragon with a rider ever will. This is also why Rhaenyra didn't bond with any of her sons' dragons, even though I think most of them probably hatched from Syrax's eggs: They were all placed inside her children's cradles, and basically bonded the second they hatched.

Since it's canonically really difficult to get an egg to hatch, even if you're a Targaryen, I also think that an egg is unlikely hatch for a rider who already has a dragon; if they want a second one, they'll have to claim an adult, "widowed" dragon rather than hoping that one will hatch for them. For example, if Rhaenyra wanted to claim a second dragon, she'd need to wait for one of Syrax's eggs to (1) hatch on its own and grow a little, or (2) get and lose a rider before trying to claim it.

How does this fit into canon? Well, if you check all of ASoIaF canon (I don't recommend it, since it takes forever, but I did), there is no instance of a Targaryen coming across an unbonded dragon related to their current dragon, aside from possibly Daenerys, who does succeed in forming a relationship with her three dragons. I've described here that I think Daenerys's bond with her dragons is meant to be a bit unique, but I acknowledge that the vast majority of the fandom considers her to be a rider of three dragons, not just one. And Daenerys's dragons are all siblings, and all of them were unclaimed when she came upon them! You can believe this without contradicting the idea that she was only able to hatch them because of a blood sacrifice. So it works for the same reasons that Aemond claiming Vermithor works, while preserving Daenerys's narrative importance as being different from all who came before her! She's still the first Targaryen to ever hatch and claim multiple dragons at once, and she's still the first Targaryen to have three dragons at her beck and call.

This adds more nuance and emphasis to the focus in Valyria on twins, siblings, and family. If bloodline matters on both sides of the dragon-rider bond, it's a great thing for dragons to be related to each other, since it increases the likelihood of a rider being able to claim multiple dragons. It's also going to help me play a ton more into the narratives that I've been setting up of the rule of three ("the dragon has three heads, and all that").

Finally, this lets me pay homage to how Aemond actually claimed Vhagar in the books. I understand why they did it differently in the show, and actually have no complaints about the scene where he claims Vhagar; I think it's one of the best scenes of season 1. But in the books, Aemond scrambles up Vhagar's side and into her saddle so quickly he doesn't even have time to worry about possibly dying:

And I love that this moment allows me to parallel what happened in the books, and stay very true to his actual character and personality. For all that bloodline is important, I also didn't want to ignore that the personality of rider and dragon do have to be compatible. I think Vermithor was probably pretty impressed at Aemond's sheer audacity, just like his mother once was. Plus, we know that in the Dance they specifically only let men try to claim him because it was suspected that he'd only tolerate male riders because of Jaehaerys.

Anyways, as always I've put way too much thought into this haha. But this is part of why I've been emphasizing the phrases "blood of the dragon" and "the dragon has three heads" and why I've written the dragon bond in general as almost a familial bond.

TLDR: Any dragonrider, not just Aemond, would be able to claim a second dragon, ONLY IF that dragon is a direct relation of their first dragon, and ONLY IF that dragon does not have a bond already in place. There are just so few dragons that this opportunity has never presented itself before in Westeros, but I think it was probably common back in Valyria, hence the focus on the "blood of the dragon" and the symbol of three in Targaryen culture. This also helps to explain why Daenerys was able to bond with her three dragons, if you subscribe to the belief that she's got an equivalent type of dragon-rider bond.

#stormbreak chapter 18 #hotd #house of the dragon #fic #fic: stormbreak #stormbreak #aemond targaryen #daemon targaryen #rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra #daemon #aemond #daemyra #daemond #rhaemond #aemyra #vermithor #vhagar #spoilers

[nintendoteuthis]

An Overly Comprehensive Revision of Splatoon's History and Lore

In this extremely long post, I set out to put together a rewrite of Splatoon's backstory and lore. Tying together pieces of lore from all three games, the goal here is to arrange a cohesive (and more scientifically plausible) narrative to serve as a backstory to the Splatoon we all know and love. Alterna, Inkling evolution, Mr. Grizz, the Great Turf War, Judd, Tartar - all of it is incorporated here in some form.

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT CANON. Although it incorporates a lot of official lore, the end result is effectively headcanon/fix fic. It contradicts the official lore in several places; you don't need to bring that up in the notes. This is not intended to be "better" than the canon lore, this is just stuff that I personally think would be cool. Maybe you will too.

Since this post ended up going well over 4,500 words, I'm putting it behind a Keep Reading for your dashboard's sake. But please give it all a read!

Log 1: Eve of Destruction

We start our timeline in the not-too-distant future, perhaps in the late 22nd century.

The fall of humanity was not quick or painless. Nor was there a singular cause - rather, humanity's demise was multifaceted. Human overharvesting had put a major strain on ecosystems. Shortages of certain vital resources like oil and water fueled the outbreak of multiple nuclear wars. Nuclear fallout made large tracts of land almost uninhabitable. Global warming had been building up for the past couple hundred years, wearing away at glaciers worldwide and slowly raising sea levels. And during World War V, a stray nuclear warhead hit Antarctica, melting far more ice than would naturally. These raised sea levels by over 15 meters, flooding many coastal cities.

To make things worse, an unprecedented geological disaster would soon strike. With no warning, the Toba supervolcano in Sumatra, which had nearly driven humanity to extinction during the Ice Age, erupted again with a violence not seen since the invention of agriculture. This eruption exacerbated the worst effects of both the climate change and the nuclear war. This combination of blows would ultimately lead to an extinction event the likes of which had not been seen for over 65 million years.

[Editor's note: Toba erupted 74,000 years ago, and there's genetic evidence for an extreme reduction in human populations around that time. I feel it would be fitting if the same volcano that may have shaped humanity as we know it would also be the one to destroy it.]

In the face of these disasters, human civilization tried its best to survive. But as the surface of the Earth became more and more uninhabitable, it became clear that staying here was not a viable option. What remained of the international community put aside old rivalries and came together for the greater good, and soon two initiatives were simultaneously launched to try and preserve humanity elsewhere.

Log 2: Time We Left This World Today

One major player in these decisions was biotechnology extraordinaire Prometheus Manning. A professor at a prestigious university, he made waves in the biology community for developing an "uplifting" process. Building on developments in gene therapy and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, Manning developed a plasmid of DNA that, when entered into an animal's cells, could make it intelligent and biologically immortal. This process was proven viable with the uplifting of his pet cat, Judd, who became an international celebrity in the waning days of human civilization. An optimist even in the face of a collapsing planet, Manning thought that humanity could find ways to pass their legacy forward into the future. He believed that everyone, from humans to the lowliest squid, was a part of something bigger than themselves. He acted as a consultant in both initiatives.

[Editor's note: Yeah, I didn't forget about this guy!]

I shall make a minor digression here. As these projects got Manning thinking more about the conservation of humanity's knowledge, he began to worry that even these would not be enough. He was eventually driven to bioengineer an organism - a biological computer, if you will - to store it. DNA is perhaps the most reliable form of long-term data storage, the only risk being the occasional mutation. The resulting organism, an uplifted slime mold nicknamed Tartar, had a gargantuan amount of knowledge - texts, data, images, sounds, even DNA of other organisms - encoded into its genome. While the two grand initiatives would preserve the planet's species and civilizations, this lowly amoebozoan would preserve the planet's knowledge, even long after humans were gone. Perhaps, he hoped, it would even be able to transmit this knowledge to the next intelligent species.

[Editor's note: I still like my old "Commander Tartar is alive and also the ooze" headcanon, and I think it works really well with the rest of the stuff here, so I'm keeping it.]

Manning opted to partake in neither of the preservation initiatives. Instead, he decided to send himself, Judd, and Tartar into ColdSleep, a patented form of extremely long-term cryogenic freezing, one that could theoretically last millennia. He was hopeful that, eventually, all three would wake, on a planet that had recovered.

[Editor's note: The Art of Splatoon and the Alterna Logs both use the phrase "cold sleep" to refer to cryogenic freezing. Let's roll with that.]

The first of the two preservation initiatives was the Ark Polaris. A spacecraft loaded with samples of Earth's biosphere, it was designed and launched with the intent of finding another planet to live on. Many specimens of animals, plants, and fungi were sent into ColdSleep for the duration of the journey. Of all the individual organisms loaded on the Ark, perhaps the most influential would end up be Bear #03 - an uplifted grizzly bear, nicknamed "Mr. Grizz". But nobody knew that at the time, as he lay in ColdSleep.

The second was a closed underground environment in which human civilization could survive until the Apocalypse had ended. Alterna was the name given to this underground stronghold, planned and designed by the greatest scientific minds left. Located in a geologically stable inland area, the outer walls of Alterna were fortified to be as durable as possible as possible, to withstand anything that could be thrown at it. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, flooding, nuclear bombs - all of it could be shielded. Inside, a closed ecological system kept the air and water stocked with oxygen and carbon dioxide. As most of the land surface was dedicated to human activities, most of Alterna's food came from the waters, which were richly stocked with representatives of whatever marine life was still alive (and some cloned representatives of some that weren't). There, a small fraction of humanity could survive, prosper, and continue innovation and progress as best it could.

[Editor's note: Most extinction events hit marine life just as bad as land life, oftentimes even worse. Ergo, I doubt that the sea life around Alterna would be quite as flourishing as they were before the Apocalypse. I think it was stocked by humans as a food source. Also, I'm not sure that Alterna would be built beneath the crater of a volcano. You'd think that a long-term safe haven would want to be built in an area UNlikely to have disastrous geological activity.]

Log 3: When the World is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around

The society of Alterna was led by scientists; having finally learned from their mistakes, the remaining humans opted to let the most intelligent and idealistic minds lead them forward. Technological innovation continued underground. Massive 3D printing operations were implemented to recreate some artifacts from the surface. The Omniscient Recording Computer of Alterna (O.R.C.A.) was developed to log all the data, history, and records that would be produced as a result. And eventually, they would even learn how to recreate the sky.

"Liquid crystals" was actually a euphemism. The screens lining the internal walls of Alterna are alive. Chromatophores, if arranged in a layer like in the squid of a skin, can effectively create a surface that changes color in response to neural input. The bioengineers of Alterna realized that, if the color-changing ability of squids could be harnessed, it could be used to produce images from thoughts.

[Editor's note: I highly doubt that liquid crystals were developed from squid bodily fluids. If you're going to figure out how to get images from thoughts using squids, the most obvious way to do so would be harnessing the functionality of chromatophores. That's one argument in favor of making the "crystals" into something biological, engineered from chromatophores, but not the only one...]

Thus, a new organism was designed. A biologically immortal human cell line was used as the base, and modified with DNA from many other organisms - squids, of course, but also bits of DNA from yeasts, algae, slime molds, bacteria, and Manning's uplift plasmid. The result was a single-celled organism that could, when grown in a mat, change color in response to electrical signals. Mats of these organisms, which for the rest of this post I'm calling "crystalloids", were grown and then installed into screens. When backlit, the colors of these crystalloids can be seen as on any other screen. If these screens were hooked up to the human nervous system, they could project any image that they could think of. A screen that could read minds.

[Editor's note: Immortal cell lines are a real thing! They're usually derived from cancer cells, which do not age and so can keep dividing indefinitely. They're often used in biomedical research.]

Eventually neural interfaces were implanted in all the residents of Alterna. Their collective thoughts, memories, desires, were collected, processed by O.R.C.A. and fed to the crystalloids lined in the screens - and it resulted in beautiful blue skies. For the first time in 25 years, the residents of Alterna could see the sky once again.

Log 4: Epitaph

The years passed prosperously. But man grew proud. As generations grew, living their lives entirely in the safety of Alterna, the apocalypse began to fade from living memory. The new generation of leaders became ambitious. They wished to see the world beyond Alterna. This led to the construction of a rocket, in which they would escape the confines of Alterna and get a look at the Earth.

Despite the warnings of Alterna's elders, the rocket neared its launch date. And then disaster struck. As in the Nedelin catastrophe so many years earlier, the rocket boosters were ignited prematurely. Alterna had been fortified against shock from the outside, but nothing could protect it from something happening on the inside. The resulting explosion not only killed hundreds of personnel, but it effectively created a self-contained earthquake. Many Alternan structures collapsed, and the screens forming the Alternan "sky" were shaken loose, raining down metal and broken glass upon humanity's last stronghold. Those few who escaped the carnage ended up unable to support themselves with whatever remained; the systems that kept Alterna functioning had become irreparably broken. In the wreckage they scraped out a living, until they too died out. Humans finally went extinct, with both a bang and a whimper.

As the screens forming the Alternan "sky" broke, the mats of crystalloids fell apart, and the individual organisms tumbled into the waters below. And there they persisted. In order to avoid needing to feed the screens, they had been engineered with chemosynthetic abilities, added to their genome from bacteria. Thus they could produce their own food using chemicals in their environment. The biologically immortal nature of the base cell line not only meant that the screens never had to be replaced, but it also meant they could reproduce indefinitely. And so they survived, and continued to propagate themselves in the waters below.

The lights were off in Alterna, but the compound was not breached. The outer walls - built to withstand volcanism, tectonic activity, nuclear war - proved to be extremely durable. Impenetrable by anything larger than gaseous molecules, Alterna soon became a closed ecological system. Once Alterna's energy source failed, the screens went dark. With no light, the base of the Alterna food chain died out, and with it most of the marine life. But the few organisms that could live without light, those that could make food using chemosynthesis and those that preyed upon them, continued to survive in this environment.

So there the crystalloids stayed for thousands, even millions of years.

Log 5: Echoes

Meanwhile on the surface, life proved resilient. Adaptable disaster taxa - weeds, pests, and generalists - were the first to take take over the ruined land, now scrubbed of almost all traces of human existence. It took millions of years for life to rebound and reach its former levels of diversity, but that it did. And so life continued evolving for millions of years. The continents continued the movements they followed for millions of years. The climate warmed and cooled naturally. Organisms came and went. More minor extinction events occurred. Mammals, the dominant class of animals, saw their time as rulers of the planet come to a close. Consult this video for one possible way this could play out.

Eventually, after over 100 million years, enough niches on land had become vacant, their former inhabitants having gone extinct, to encourage new groups of animals to fill them. Perhaps cephalopods, one of the taxa that survived the extinction, could make the leap...

After miraculously persisting on the scales of geologic time, Alterna's outer walls were eventually compromised by the sheer force of the earth. The seal lasted far longer than initially anticipated, but eventually something cracked. Perhaps an inland sea had flooded the continent and eroded the surrounding rock around Alterna, leaving it exposed. In any case, it became possible to enter and leave Alterna. So the descendants of the crystalloids escaped, and eventually made it into the surrounding waters.

It has now been many millions of years since the apocalypse that wiped out humanity, and the oceans were thriving once again. The crystalloids, being microscopic and unicellular, were barely noticed by the life in these seas. They soon filled the seas around Alterna, but as it turned out, one of the most comfortable environments for them was inside organisms. The crystalloids formed commensal relationships with many species of marine life: living inside the host, causing neither benefit nor detriment to them.

And then something happened.

Log 6: Into the Light

Many of these marine organisms started picking up DNA from the crystalloids. This is a process known as horizontal gene transfer, and it happens in nature with surprising frequency. In animals, this DNA could be picked up through gametes, or from parasites or other organisms living inside the body. In any case, that's what happened here - DNA was passed to the host animals. Even after hundreds of thousands of generations, parts of the crystalloids' initial cocktail of DNA was conserved. Remarkably, DNA from Prometheus Manning's uplift plasmid and even human DNA from the base cell line had survived over the aeons. And it is these fragments that were introduced into the genomes of the marine life. Although it wasn't much, the combination of these two genetic influences, when expressed in the marine organisms, was enough to spur the development of high intelligence, pulmonary breathing, the the move to land in a wide variety of species. Some of them even gained a more anthropomorphic body plan from the human DNA. In a way, they were all uplifted, just like Judd.

[Editor's note: Rapid evolution/mutation COULD happen in response to abiotic factors, like radiation, pollution, maybe even liquid crystals. But it'd be impossible to guarantee that different organisms would mutate in the same way. The only way that you could guarantee multiple organisms evolve along the same path is with genes. That's why the screens are alive - to facilitate DNA transfer.

As a side note, evolution is not goal-oriented. It is an act of random mutations being selected for and against, as a result of what increases reproductive success. So the move to land being "driven" by feelings inherited from humans... rubbed me the wrong way. The parallel expression of genes would eliminate the implied "motivation", while still providing a tangible influence originating from humans.]

As all these newly sophont species of marine life crawled onto land, they found out they weren't the first ones there. As it turns out, the entire time cephalopods had been evolving naturally down a similar path. These cephalopods, the ancestors of the modern Inkling and Octoling, had separately colonized the land and evolved intelligence. Thus, they have numerous differences from all the other sophonts. Instead of having a singular anthropomorphic form, they have two separate forms. One of these forms, the "swim form", reflects the what their ancestors were like, and the manner in which they crawl on land is as a result different from everything else. Their ink-based physiologies and transformation ability are new evolutionary innovations; these probably can't have been picked up from Alterna, or else they'd be far more widespread. Numerous other details of their evolution also made them stand out from all the other species. That's why Inklings and Octolings had the "fresh vibes" that allowed them to become the apex species; their evolution had more natural influence.

This isn't to say that they didn't feel some influence from Alterna, though. The ancestors of Inklings and Octolings did come into contact with DNA from the crystalloids, but that had very little influence on them. There was no uplifting to be done - by this time they had already developed intelligence, were living on land full-time, and even evolved the ability to transform. Instead, the only crystalloid DNA taken in were tiny fragments of the human DNA, and all it did was make their terrestrial form a little more superficially humanoid. Perhaps this is related to the cephalopod ability to edit genes before they are expressed: maybe the rest of the incoming crystalloid DNA was snipped away before it was taken into the genome.

[Editor's note: As well as the above-mentioned differences from the other marine life, I have a few other reasons for separating Inkling/Octoling evolution. First, this is my way of reconciling Splatoon 1-era lore on Inkling evolution with what the Alterna Logs tell us about the marine life as a whole. Second, I have a lot of evolution headcanons for Inklings and Octolings that I don't want to jettison. Third, I think it would be funny if the most humanoid-looking species (well, half of the time) were the only ones NOT uplifted.

As for what happened to Inklings/Octolings: I'm basically saying that their humanoid forms naturally evolved looking "xeno", and all the Alterna DNA did was push them to what they look like ingame.]

(Now you may ask, if Inklings and Octolings were not uplifted the same way as the rest of the marine life, what would a cephalopod that did get uplifted look like? Well, consider the nautiluses. Like all of the other marine life, they resemble an anthropomorphic "adaptation" of their ancestor. Their limbs are more clearly derived from nautilus tentacles. Gnarly Eddy's "arms" aren't even attached to the rest of the tentacles he's using as limbs)

(Honestly it would probably look like Octodad.)

As a side note, Salmonids evolved completely naturally. They seem to have a biological immunity to taking up the Alterna DNA, and thus saw none of the uplifting the other marine life experienced. Instead, they're going down yet another evolutionary path towards life on land; they're roughly at the Tiktaalik stage. Thus, Salmonids retain a much closer link to the water and have a very different form of intelligence from everything else.

Back on topic. As these newly-sophont marine species spread across the globe, inhabiting every environment from temperate rainforest to tropical desert, distinct cultures and ways of life developed. But predominant above them all were the cephalopods. Indeed, most of these species soon melded into the dominant Inkling culture, most notably jellyfish. Inklings had soon become the dominant species on the planet.

Log 7: Ebb & Flow

One day, three curious compartments began eroding out of a wall of mudstone. Unbeknownst to the now society-forming marine life, these were ColdSleep chambers, sent into cryostasis eons prior by Prometheus Manning and buried, perfectly preserved, under rising seas. Unfortunately, Manning's ColdSleep chamber had become compromised before burial - he died peacefully in his dormancy. By the time that Inklings discovered these chambers, the one containing Tartar had long since cracked, and it had escaped. But one remained intact. When it was opened, out came Judd - now the last mammal living on earth. The uplifting process, millennia spent in ColdSleep, and the intricacies of the feline brain mean that this intelligent cat had picked up a new ability - telepathy. The local cephalopods soon realized the value of this cat's brain. Judd soon became the arbiter of victory in the activity that would eventually become the modern Turf War. This event became commemorated as Year 0 on the Mollusc Era calendar.

Tartar, the intelligent blob that had slunk out of the now-open ColdSleep chamber, moved forward with its prime directive: pass on its knowledge to the next intelligent species. According to its observations, the smartest species present on the planet were the cephalopods - the Inklings and Octolings. But although initially pleased with their candidacy as a successor to humanity, as it watched their culture and civilization developed, Tartar developed a deep loathing for them. How could such an intelligent species be so focused on such superficial matters? Perhaps Tartar's view of humanity was skewed by its hard-working, forward-thinking creator. Spurned by these developments and thousands of years of loneliness, it developed a new objective: create its own intelligent life. To do this, it would need to collect DNA from a wide variety of organisms. After a long, long period of planning, Tartar eventually moved into a network of subterranean caverns - which became the Deepsea Metro - and from there developed its plan, taking the guise of an old telephone to avoid suspicion. It would convert the Metro to its own testing grounds, designed to select the most viable marine organisms. It would then blend them up and absorb their DNA into itself, taking whatever the best pieces were. Eventually, he'd have a complete genome, from which it could spawn a new super-organism...

Log 8: Muck Warfare

As Tartar developed its plans, life for the marine organisms continued blissfully unaware. Over the centuries, the Inklings and Octolings learned how to develop weapons with which to fire the ink their bodies produced. Zapfish were domesticated as a source of electricity. The salvation of the Splatlands from a great flood became commemorated in local folklore, which gave great importance to three prominent families: the Shark, Moray, and Manta Clans. Mass Salmonid migrations (known as the Big Run) came roughly every 70 years, wreaking havoc on cephalopod settlements that happened to be in the way. Major cities were established: Inkopolis, Splatsville, New Sardine, Tailfin City. And Judd oversaw this all.

[Editor's note: These events are all based on Sunken Scrolls.]

In roughly 1914 ME (Mollusc Era), border disputes arose between the rival states of Inkadia and Octaria, exacerbated by a massive flood that devastated a lot of Octarian territory. This strained their formerly-amicable relationships; in particular, the leader of the Octarians, DJ Octavio, sought to take Inkadia's resources by force to replace what was lost in the disaster. The resulting military conflict became known as the Great Turf War, and it was ugly. Though the Octarians had the upper hand at first, the Inkadian military, lead by Second Lieutenant Craig Cuttlefish and the Squidbeak Splatoon, proved victorious in the end. The Octarians were driven to a rocky "wasteland" to the north of Inkadia, scarred by flooding and warfare. As the surface of this region was not an ideal place to live, many Octarians moved to underground settlements, accessible through a series of pipes and kettles. Because racism did not go extinct with humanity, most Octolings were expelled from Inkopolis, explaining their rarity there. The Splatlands, meanwhile, remained a neutral party; hence, Splatsville has a longer history as an integrated city.

[Editor's note: Sea level rise couldn't happen fast enough to cause a war to rapidly break out. A huge flood - perhaps something like a glacial lake outburst flood - seems like a more likely explanation. It would explain why Octo Valley is surrounded by water, yet is seemingly inland.]

Log 9: Ever Further

One day, not too long after the Great Turf War, a curious object fell from the sky, crash-landing in Salmonid territory. Though these fish wouldn't know it, this was the Ark Polaris, the ambitious biological preservation initiative launched by humans millions of years ago. Near the edge of the solar system, its navigation system had become damaged, and after running out of fuel it drifted aimlessly in space for millions of years. By chance, it eventually floated back into the pull of Earth's gravity, and from there slowly careened to impact. The only survivor of the crash was Bear #03 - Mr. Grizz. He came to a terrible realization - he was on Earth, alright, but one ruled by marine life. And he was, as far as he knew, the only mammal left on this planet of the squids.

In his search for other surviving mammals, he came across the ruins of Alterna. It was a dark, corroded, and partially collapsed wasteland, but a few things still remained - including some of the crystalloids. With knowledge and skill developed over years and years of being alone with his thoughts, Mr. Grizz repaired Alterna's facilities and began researching the crystalloids. Upon discovering their potential for horizontal gene transfer, and spurred by his extreme loneliness, he had an idea. An awful idea. Mr. Grizz got a wonderful, awful idea.

He could use these to make more mammals.

Mr. Grizz further engineered the crystalloids, splicing in his own DNA. The result was a pathogenic organism, one that could induce the development of hair in any organism that touched it. This became known as "Fuzzy Ooze". Again, it moves, indicating that it's alive. You know how the Fuzzy Ooze is multicolored? That's what remains of the crystalloids' color-changing ability, gone haywire after Grizz's experimentation. Some Octarians that lost their way acted as test subjects, and as Mr. Grizz hoped, the gene transfer worked successfully - they grew hair.

[Editor's note: Again, it makes the most sense if the ooze makes you hairy through DNA. More support for it, and the Alterna "liquid crystals", being living things.]

(A quick side note: Remember above how I said that Salmonids were immune to the Alterna DNA that uplifted the other marine life? Because the Fuzzy Ooze was engineered from the crystalloids, Salmonids are also immune to the Fuzzy Ooze's hair genes. Hence why New Agent 3's Smallfry can eat Fuzzy Ooze and be completely unaffected, but if they touch it themselves they grow hair.)

But Mr. Grizz couldn't proceed far at first. In order to make the process actually feasible on a large scale, it would require require golden eggs, the fertilized eggs of Salmonids. Golden eggs served as both a power source and a conduit for the development of Fuzzy Ooze (and he also though they tasted good). Though he first acquired these by hunting Salmonids himself, he eventually settled upon a better idea. He could have others do the dirty work. Thus, he started paying locals to go into Salmonid territory and collect Golden Eggs for him, with the excuses of harvesting food and keeping Inkling society safe keeping regulators off his back. Grizzco Industries, as this business was known, became a wildly successful venture. The destruction caused by a previous Big Run had instilled an anti-Salmonid sentiment in much of the populace, and the average Inkling couldn't resist some extra cash. And so he sat back and watched the profit roll in...

So there remained three surviving organisms from the time of humans. Judd lived among the Inklings, providing wisdom and judgement. Tartar lurked in the depths of the Deepsea Metro, actively furthering its plans. And Mr. Grizz remained hiding in plain sight, biding his time.

(Lil Judd does not count as a survivor; he was cloned in the Mollusc Era from Judd's ColdSleep chamber, which Manning had retrofitted before sealing. This would ensure that, in case he didn't make it, Judd wouldn't get lonely when he woke up.)

Log 10: Fresh Start

And this is where we set our scene. After decades of neglect and DJ Octavio's poor leadership, the power grid within Octaria finally began to give out. Pressed to find an energy source, Octavio made a rash decision - steal the Great Zapfish providing a large amount of Inkopolis's power. This action caught the attention of the until-then-retired Craig Cuttlefish. Remembering his history fighting the Octarians, and after a complete lack of action from the authorities, he set out to form an independent vigilante group to invade Octarian territory and recover the Zapfish. He called it the New Squidbeak Splatoon - and one of the recruits was an adventurous youth from Inkopolis. Thus sets off the events of Octo Valley, and from there Octo Canyon, Octo Expansion, and Return of the Mammalians.

I hope you enjoyed this all! I'm happy to talk about anything mentioned (or not mentioned) above.

#splatoon #splatoon 2 #splatoon 3 #splatoon headcanon #splatoon theory #my headcanons #oc

[tolkien-feels]

Did Tolkien specifically state that elves were heterosexual or is it just some people?

(Like, I'm in no way trying to be rude, I just wanted confirmation since one of my friends ships Russingon, and the other said that elves were heterosexual)

Oh that's a minefield. I'll try to answer this as unbiasedly as I can, but keep in mind I am both 1) queer myself and 2) not interested in shipping as much as I am interested in other aspects of fandom. If either of these things makes me lean towards one side or the other, I will leave to your discretion as you read this.

I'll try to be as succinct as possible but we'll see if this doesn't end up long.

Also this is such a minefield, like I've said, that I will disable reblogs because I really don't want to deal with discourse at best and actual queerphobia at worst.

The first thing is that traditionally, shipping has never relied on whether an author would approve of it or not. So "You can't ship this because the author says you can't" is not an opinion that would have been given much weight for much of fandom history. "Could this theoretically be canon?" is an incredibly recent development, especially when it comes to queer relationships. So your friend could and should ship whatever they want!

In terms of authorial intent, better read people than I could point you in the direction of a small library of literary scholarship debating how Tolkien portrays gender and sexuality. It's a complicated, nuanced topic.

As for what he's actually said... That's difficult to answer. I don't believe there's a sentence out there that says "Elves are exclusively heterosexual." Does that mean that they aren't? Well, not quite.

Maybe Tolkien didn't think anyone would assume anything but that they were heterosexual, and didn't particularly think he had to clarify that point. Or, alternatively, he did not think they were in fact exclusively heterosexual but was not comfortable with exploring that due to a myriad of factors, so he chose not to address it at all. There's no real way of knowing this, especially not without dedicating a lot of time to studying it, which I have not.

In terms of "Has he ever portrayed a queer relationship?" Eh. Also difficult to tell. There is a lot of ambiguity in how Tolkien portrays a lot of relationships, including heterosexual ones. I could make a case why a lot of his canonical, heterosexual couples are purely platonic, and a case why a lot of his commonly-read-as-friendship, same-gender relationships are romantic.

Also, just because Tolkien did not portray something "on screen", it does not mean it doesn't exist in his world. The Hobbit has no female characters, but presumably, there should be women in the world. So that's also not the way to go about it.

There are a few texts where Tolkien discusses how elves view marriage and sex, but 1) their role in canon is debatable; 2) they contradict each other and also other canonical or semi-canonical sources; 3) they tend to be framed in terms of customs (=what was socially expected among elves) rather than unbiased worldbuilding (=what Tolkien knew to be true.)

This distinction would not usually matter, except many people have proved Tolkien often enjoyed playing with the gap between reality and tradition. The most important texts about elves and love also tend to have a frame narrative of having been compiled or translated, so that's also another layer.

This isn't an intellectual exercise. This is actually important. In general, when Tolkien lays down a custom, you can immediately think of something in direct contradiction to it, and he often draws attention to these contradictions in the text itself. So it's actually very important, when reading these texts, to remember they are fallible by design.

This may all seem like I'm trying to rule lawyer. I promise you that is not what I'm doing.

Here's what I'm doing: I'm showing that to get to an answer, you have to dig so deep that I find it extremely unlikely that this is an important, unchangeable aspect of canon.

Tolkien did change canon over the course of his life - making dwarves more heroic, for example, and working on fleshing out female characters. If he lived forever, and came to think actually he wanted to have openly queer elves, he wouldn't have to break canon nearly as much as he had to in order to revise other things that he did revise.

Honestly? Sexuality in Tolkien's worldbuilding is almost a non-issue. The etymology of the name Maedhros probably bothered Tolkien much more than his love life. You need to break canon much harder to have bearded Aragorn than to have queer elves. If we're sticking to strict, strict, strict canon, we are going to run into contradictions all over the place (ask someone about how nonsensical Tolkien's math is), and I tend to take cues from the text to see what is important to pay attention to.

This is of course subjective, but like, I find Russingon much more canon-compliant (although I don't ship them) than if you were to tell me Fingolfin, who was married in Aman, married someone else in Beleriand. That is enough of a taboo among elves that it comes up, explicitly and implicitly, at several key points.

Now, I still wouldn't care, because I don't need Tolkien's permission to do what I want, but I would say that breaks canon much more definitely than the mere idea of queer elves.

(If anything, Maedhros and Fingon might run into a different taboo - they're too close kin to be in a relationship. But that's a rule Tolkien can't seem to make up his mind on. Which kind of proves my point.)

Having said all this... I would tentatively say Tolkien did not mean for any elves to be queer. But that understanding is informed more by my understanding of him as a person than by my understanding of canon, because again, this simply isn't something that comes up in a clear way. Or if it does and I'm just forgetting something, it's obscure enough that I don't think it really matters as much as issues people routinely ignore in the fandom at large (eg linguistics, or elements drawn from medieval literature.)

So while I do think people are justified in assuming no, there aren't queer relationships in Tolkien, I also think that's got to be the weirdest hill to die on unless you are bringing your biases to the text.

EDIT: Adding @pearlescentpearl‘s reply because it belongs here

Weighing in with a supporting thought! IIRC the clearest thing Tolkien ever said about elven marriage is that it’s *for the sake of children*, which is incredibly congruent with many of the histories Tolkien liked to study. Whether you were straight or queer, having children was incredibly important for a number of reasons and having children within some kind of formal acknowledgement of a union was useful for a. the pooling of resources, and b. the allotment of resources to descendants (inheritance). so for elves, if the purpose of marriage is ultimately for children, and the making of children involves both parents pouring in the strength of their spirits to nurture the baby, a marriage didn’t have to mean ‘I am romantically and sexually attracted to this person’, although undoubtedly common. it could also mean ‘this is the person I’ve chosen to procreate with and no other reason’, which still leaves plenty of room for one or both to have queer relationships outside the formal union they make children with, which is also congruent with a lot of historic practices

[spiegelgestalt]

Historical woman doesn't succumb to despair despite narrative conventions telling her to do so

the deep contradiction at the heart of Elisabeth the musical is that Elisabeth actually gave in to Death the way someone who gets assassinated has to give in to Death. That is to say unwillingly. She doesn't kill herself. And that is important for me.

More thoughts about that under the cut. And btw: if you ship Death(Tod) /Elisabeth I get it. It's framed as a dark romance and that shit is highly appealing. The thoughts under the cut are just my reasons why I personally find that pairing unpleasant.

In Elisabeth the musical you can see historical truth run up against fictional narrative.

The musical so desperately wants to tell the story of a woman who wanted it all and succumbed to despair in the end. The natural endpoint would be the death of Rudolph. And so here she asks Death to take her. But the historical Elisabeth doesn't kill herself after Rudolphs death. And this creates a problem. For this musical to work this woman has to give up but the historical woman never gave up. She had two other children. And to one of them she actually had a good relationship.

(SN we run into a similar problem with "Rastlose Jahre" the musical goes out of its way to describe Elisabeth traveling around as miserable and it has to be for the muscial to work but you know i also would rather travel than be at Vienna's Court)

So historical Elisabeth didn't die at Rudolphs funeral so fictional Elisabeth can't die either. So Death for some nonsensical reason has to reject HER. (Not like this! He says - dude you wanted to push her into despair the whole play and suddenly you don't want to) Elisabeths last years of existence are framed as punishment and only stop once Franz Joseph mentions that Elisabeth belongs to him. After that death has her killed (/taken to him - he is Death after all) in a jealous rage. This is why the Death/Elisabeth relationship doesn't work for me. He never does anything for her. He's just some creepy dude who hangs around her, takes credit for stuff SHE did (I have feelings about "wenn ich tanzen will" let me tell you), tries to undermine everything she does on every point and tries to lure her into commiting suicide (I mean run away with him into eternity) and SOMEHOW Elisabeth is framed in the wrong for rejecting him.

But you know what I think: My girl has many faults but she deserves praise for holding out for so long and never giving in. because as a person with depression I relate to that message far stronger than to whatever the musical is doing.

[Yes, we are disregarding that one moment of weakness when her son fucking killed himself because of that creepy bastard..

And Yes I know the finale is kinda a romantic duet where they are singing how nice it is that they are together at last but I'm rejecting that canon because I hate it!]

#tw sui ideation #Tw suicide #TW death #Tod/Death #Elisabeth von Östereich #Rudolph #Hot take #shots fired #elisabeth das musical

[ot3]

hi i just finished disco elysium after repeatedly being exposed to it by you and i am incredibly grateful i did <3 you have some of the most compelling and thoughtful takes on media & characters/character dynamics i’ve ever seen so i’m super interested to hear any of your thoughts on harry and kim—they & their relationship is probably my fave part of the game. both are characters with a lot of depth and complexity that i think tends to be flattened by fans, but i feel sometimes i project qualities and depth that isn’t there (especially in regards to kim since we get pretty few peeks into his interior life—idk i think there’s a lot of conflict and contradiction within him, such as his need to remain in control vs an impulsive/violent/cruel streak, his clinging to status quo/authority vs rebelliousness, etc., but again i feel sometimes im reading too deep into things). idk curious to hear your perspective!

first of all i appreciate your confidence in me! very flattered to be called compelling and thoughtful... i do my best. i kind of went on a tangent here about how i apprach character analysis in general instead of talking specifically about kim and harry here... sorry...... sticking it under the cut because its long. and incredibly unfocused. once again sorry.

i definitely don't think you're overthinking it. i don't really think it IS possible to overthink something like disco elysium, which is both incredibly vast as a text [i believe the total wordcount for the game's script is well over a million words, although obviously you don't see anywhere near that full amount in a single playthrough] but also incredibly dense as a text. it's oversteeped in its own ideas and worldbuilding, to a wonderful effect. it doesn't spoonfeed you it's ideas or narrative, and you have to put in real effort to engage with it. and despite how desolate the game is i've seen few fictional worlds that manage to feel so alive just by virtue of the implicit depth and texture of their setting. the same can be said of the characters.

everything you're shown in disco elysium, you're shown with a lot of intent. we understand that kim is a rather reserved character who highly values his self control, which in many ways makes the things we do see of him exponentially more meaningful and impactful. The fact that these things you've listed are things prevalent enough with him that they do manage to bubble to the surface despite how he tries to lock himself down means they're things worth looking at.

also, in general i don't think there's such a thing as 'overthinking' a work of fiction at all. the idea of 'overthinking' implies that analyzing fiction is a sort of binary where you have either come to the correct conclusions about the work or you haven't. but of course that spits in the face of what analysis is all about. i think a better question than 'am i overthinking it' is 'what relationship does this interpretation have to canon?' i don't think it's possible to do media analysis 'right' but i do think it's very easy to do it wrong, and to me that comes down to whether or not your ideas about a work are arbitrary, or in conversation with the text.

i almost think about character analysis kind of like cuil theory, where each level of abstraction is one step further away from the explicit text of a canon. basically everything i think about a character could fit into this sliding scale

1 cuil - explicitly canonical things about this character. as concretely 'true' as anything is in fiction

2 cuils - things about a character that are implied or alluded to, to the degree where these facts are 'canon', but not explicitly stated. subtext.

3 cuils - 'negative space' character traits, things that are neither directly referenced nor alluded to, but make concrete, logical sense within the surrounding context. stuff that toes the line between subtext and personal interpretation.

4 cuils - hypotheticals. stuff that doesn't necessarily have any specific basis in the text, but isn't disproven by the text in any way. stuff almost entirely brought in to the text by an outside source.

5 cuils - hostile readings, where an interpretation of a character either contradicts or intentionally rejects something that can be said to be explicit canon, for whatever reason.

i think the 3 cuil stuff is by far where the most interesting character discussion happens, because this really all hinges on one thing: how much do you trust the person writing this character? do you believe have a complex vision for the character? how much do you trust them to write subtext? the idea of 'overthinking' something can come with the implication that there's nothing there to think about. but if that deep subtext is genuinely there, you're not overthinking it. you're just thinking. I think 'bad' character analysis comes into play when people attribute authorial intent to stuff that is really reliant on stuff they are bringing to the narrative that the author had nothing to do with. Stuff you bring to a text yourself isn't necessarily bad analysis or poisoning the well by any means, but being aware about what parts of your reading are impositions you are making on the text is critical.

That said, every character exists far more fully formed in an author's mind than it exists in a text, just due to the nature of writing. little breadcrumbs hinting towards this more robust picture of a character get left in the text. how many of them are intentional, and how many of them aren't? does it make a difference if it was intentional, if you can still convincingly follow those breadcrumbs back?

in the case of disco elysium, i absolutely do believe it is intentional. i fully believe that the people writing this game could, if they felt so inclined, give us as complete a picture of kim kitsuragi as there's been for any other character in fiction that we might use as the metric for character depth. but the important thing about kim is that he's not the protagonist - his character journey isn't the point here. more importantly, he's harry's foil. Harry as a character is a gaping wound. Everything is spilling out of him unwillingly, and it's ugly, and it's horrible, and then here's kim who is all buttoned up and put together and everything that you as harry are not.

so now here's the trick. you as the player and you as harry want to know kim. almost instantly. i dont know anyone who hasnt been obsessed with this guy from the getgo. we're supposed to want to pick at his seams until we find the bits that are more human there. getting to the ending where kim will join you at your precinct requires these two characters to meet in the middle to some degree. Harry finds structure and function from kim's behavior, and kim begins to exhibit more humanity both in terms of showing more emotion and showing genuine personality flaws, both of which are things harry has in spades. wanting to dig that stuff out of kim is the point of kim's entire character. on a mechanical level as a game that looks like trying to up his approval of you through conversations and investigation. on an emotional level of connecting with a narrative, it looks like what you're doing; reading into his mannerisms and behavior and trying to puzzle it out.

#disco elysium

[aho-dapa]

hi i just found your account and i just realized we kind of have the same problem with sjm but went 2 different ways about it. i read the books in like a week during a depressing episode so i didn't retain all that much and the parts i didn't like i just replaced (mostly bc i felt like the books were lacking in so many aspects that i don't feel bad basically rewriting it in my head). but the way i went about it is mostly changing the characters i want to like (rhysand, feyre, nesta) and just pretend they didnt do things that didnt make sense to me or they had good reason to do it. i was always bored with tamlin and the high lord of the night court is so up my alley so i just make rhys a little better in my head. i hate that sjm set him up to be morally grey but didnt make the darker parts in the right place if that makes sense? like i dont mind questionable morals in a character if it's to protect their family or people which is kind of what sjm started doing but then made him kind of a bad high lord? and i dont think she even sees it like that tbh bc i know she loves rhysand so i think she left the shitty situations in hewn city and illyria like that to set up plot but didnt stop to think what it would mean for rhys to not do shit about those situations. i know some people have theories that rhys might end up being a villain and is just manipulating feyre and the sisters but i think that's giving sjm too much credit tbh. i think she really leaned into the romance and the rest kind of morphed into the background but honestly i do love romance so i feel like i ended not minding it as much as other people at times. i'd rather have romance than a messy plot which is what sjm gave us (especially in acosf). also none of her characters have that much depth to them (feyre, nesta and rhys are probably the ones that have more but their actions don't always match with how sjm led us to believe they were) so i dont mind just making stuff up in my head like for example mor, she barely has a personality so i made her up one bc i wanted my proper lgbt representation.

anyway im sorry im ranting on your blog like this but it's interesting that so many people can agree that sjm set up a good world but the plot and characters ended up falling flat. and it's funny that the readers end up making the characters more interesting in fanfiction whether it's making rhysand the villain or making up how i think sjm meant him to be

I completely understand!! When I first read ACOTAR, I did the same for Rhys and Feyre because I truly didn't mind them until ACOWAR and sjm's constant inconsistent character writing caught up to me and my suspension of disbelief.

Also I think rewriting characters her characters in our head to make them more entertaining or relatable is something this fandom thrives on. A lot of people like Nesta because they relate to her even if the cabin years are a narrative mess. I personally relate to Tamlin too because of this both because and despite how his character was written.

Yeah, I also don't really mind rooting her or liking morally grey characters or even downright horrible people because sometimes they're just more interesting to me personally. In a sense, Rhys has a bunch of contradictions that don't mesh well because of sjm trying to make him some paragon of moral goodness when his character never even functioned that way even in the beginning.

I also like the villain manipulation Rhys hc but I also don't think that's where sjm is going with it. She fumbled too hard with Tamlin’s arc of abuse to suddenly make the mastermind move with Rhys.

Tbh it's really fun (and tiring) making up new canon adjacent personalities for her characters. I think the maybe unintentional problem with this is that the fandom uses those characterizations in critiquing characters or even hating them.

#sorry for taking so long #got lost on the path of life #anti sjm #sjm critical #pro tamlin

[heart-forge]

and like related to the last reblog, I think marketing RPGs for a broad and generalized audience (rather than a hyperspecific audience that's here to play something like morrowind or a pathfinder-based game that require you to keep track of things separately from the UI) has kind of made it difficult for players to:

differentiate between genres, as many RPGs overlap too generously with FPS, and FPS try to gain an audience they aren't interested in catering to by adding RPG elements, to say nothing of something like Assassin's Creed which started as an extremely on-rails strategy-based narrative game and then slowly started adding RPG elements and open world elements...so of course some more hobbyist-minded, casual, or even just those that don't consider genre to be inclusive of game mechanics, players jump from game to game and are hooked in to experiences they don't really like because it's just not wholly what they're looking for. DA fans and ME fans have something in common, whereas AC Odyssey fans and DA fans might clash more strongly with each other's genre. Dedicated AC players might find DA combat boring and overly simple, repetitive, lacking strategy elements. DA fans might find their RP capabilities to be severely limited. These aren't actually FAULTS of either game, but they can be presented as such.

know what to expect at all. AC Odyssey was marketing made a big deal out of the romance system which had never existed in any prior game, out of the RPG elements, out of the ability to choose your gender....which was a big deal within their own community. for DA players approaching the game because they heard RPG elements, there was disappointment: the romance system wasn't robust and had no effect on the story, the main plot line stopped being important once it was over despite the potential presence of your family in your life, and your ability to choose how to shape events wasn't on par with a game built around an enormous branching narrative system.

so, fans of dedicated RPGs might expect more games to acknowledge and include their RP choices, even though these games aren't built to care and are largely built of an audience looking to 100% stealth a level. the addition of RPG elements could be annoying to players who are looking for a min-max combat experience, which is what makes more modern TES games frustrating for the old guard who want the same kind of extremely granular lore-based world building of something like morrowind, which is less approachable to casual players who want to be able to experience a limited story where they know their role and can play it without a master's degree in the daedric language.

a lot of the complaints or the wishlists of people I see in the tags for ESO, especially as TESVI is more and more obviously a total hypothetical at this stage and more fans are seeking out new content despite the intimidating MMO aspect, are wildly unrealistic. a large scale npc affection system isn't feasible: they have the companion system now, but even my wildly unrealistic pipe dream of them adding npcs to the companion system is a little silly (although I maintain that it would ultimately be profitable). it's based, however, on their love for a different genre of game that has the same core concept as this MMO. no, the game can't keep track of my minute character choices or have wildly altered world states from player to player: if you want something like that, then you need a contained singleplayer experience.

so I guess this is just to say that demanding ultimate canonical power as a player is wildly unrealistic, not fun, and mostly the domain of people who have trouble accepting things as real without some authority over the decision, but MCs can absolutely have character arcs even when the game never acknowledges it. that doesn't make it less true: the game just has to avoid doing anything to contradict it, and even then, the player has the power to ignore AND flesh out a lot of stuff. it's why the old fandom was less interested in canonical, creator-acknowledged facts: because nobody needs authority to imagine something.

#talkForge #and it ties in with just because you've never written your OC's story down in a formal way and had it viewed and well liked doesn't make it #less real or less valid in your own mind

[guileheroine]

maybe thats basic but korrasami for the ship game. if youve already done it what about kya/lin?

korrasami - ship it

what made you ship it? the archetypes (esp korra <33), i thought it had good bones. temporary estrangement and gay awakening, prime subvarieties of friends to lovers. putting meat on the bones thru fic made me stick with it, now i basically just have my own version

what are your favorite things about the ship? characters deriving sth positive from women they're different to/oppositionally placed in the narrative. the ways i interpret them being alike vs. different: i think they have more core affinities than might appear (sheltered, resultant naïveté + loneliness, open-hearted, idealism wounded by circumstance), but they present and operationalise in v divergent ways, so there's space for curiosity and learning while having a foundational kinship/solace. this word is ruined but there's sth pure? about each that they'd value in the other if they themselves feel fraught. none of which need be romantic but they're hot girls so

is there an unpopular opinion you have on the ship? it would have a smaller but more compelling fanon afterlife if it wasnt ~canon rep, but greater good, i know! also bi4bi that isnt m/f is rare and fun so thats usually my treatment of them, but idc if ppl have sexuality headcanons that contradict canon, it's not going anywhere

kyalin - don't ship

why don't you ship it? i personally can’t see it working! my instinct is that they’re too different—there's a stick up lin’s ass obv, and kya reads to me as hippy dippy in a slightly brusque and bristly way rather than one that might help ease in people that don’t already feel receptive to her. basically, they're both probably defensive in a way that would make that initial gulf hard to bridge into actual intimacy. i also really don’t like the thing of dating your brother’s ex, this narrow second generation social/dating pool that sequel series always seem to have. meet other people that are not family friends, queens

what would have made you like it? idk, probably not much. maybe if they interacted more there would be something to jump off

despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it? from what ive seen, it’s actually really cool that a fanon ship of two middle aged women has so much traction! for all its weaknesses, lok didn’t skimp on the milfage and that's wonderful

send me a ship

#i did both for being a year late 🫶 #korrasami #kyalin #portokali #ask meme #clearing the drafts

[scarlet--wiccan]

You didn’t mention Jean as one of Wanda’s friends, which I get (the core of their friendship was in first class and a lot of people aren’t sure if those are 616 canon or not) but do you have any thoughts on their relationship? The thought of them being friends as teens, more or less falling out of touch, but eventually being able to understand each other better than perhaps anyone else because (NSTW quote about reality warmers who are women) is interesting.a

Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think they have much of a relationship in canon. Their interactions are pretty limited after Wanda and Pietro depart from the Brotherhood. It's disappointing, but that's the truth.

I wouldn't assume that First Class is canon, but I think it is technically set in Earth-616. I guess I read it as a retelling that doesn't necessarily contradict hsitory, but isn't very faithful to it, either. I do think that this interpretation of their relationship makes a lot of sense, but, if we're going strictly by the text, Jean and Wanda were not a part of each other's adult lives in any meaningful way. That shouldn't stop them from reconnecting, though, and now would be the perfect time. They're both alive, they're both, you know, stable, and the X-Men are based out of New York rather than Krakoa, so it's not like they couldn't cross paths or just hang out.

Jean wasn't present during the Decimation, and Wanda, to my knowledge, was never involved with the Phoenix stuff until AvX, so they've got a lot to catch up on. I've always wanted to believe that, learning about the Decimation in hindsight, Jean would have empathy for Wanda and be willing to advocate for her or be her ally in any of her efforts to make things right. You know, if Jean was there during Children's Crusade-- if Emma wasn't the only psychic present to take Wanda's testimony-- I bet things would've gone differently.

I will say that, while there are a lot of parallels in the way they are treated by both the narrative and many of their peers, Wanda and Jean's life experiences are not that similar. I think Wanda actually has a lot more in common with Madelyne, although, of course, when you get down to it, Maddy and Jean's stories are very intertwined. Still, Wanda's magical experiences, plus the trauma around motherhood, are much more similar to Maddy's arc, and I think the way Wanda and Maddy have both recently taken full control of the forces which once controlled them is super cool. That said, there have been some hints that the Phoenix is coming back around to Jean, so maybe all three of them will be in that position soon.

Anyways, with the Treehouse, Maddie's Limbo Embassy, and Wanda's Emporium all being in New York, these characters are all accessible to each other in ways they haven't been in a long time. I would love for writers to take advantage of that and give those three women more opportunities to spend time together and help each other out. The stuff about chaos magic and the Phoenix from AvX was kinda silly, but Wanda's ability and warp and distort pretty much any kind of power, not to mention her Nexus abilities, would certainly make her a very useful ally for anybody contending with the Phoenix. Maybe next time Jean is tapping into her higher powers, she'll get in touch with one of her oldest friends.

#and yes I realize the Emporium is not in NYC but the point is it's close and these people all have portals and teleportation. #jean grey #wanda maximoff #madelyne pryor

[bloody-wonder]

First of all, thanks so much for sharing your books recs and reviews. I love reading your blog (especially since I did not find many books blog that as good as you in tumblr). 💐🥰

Can I ask your opinion on something? So, I saw some discussion on why shounen series (or series with strong bromance vibes) have more romantic vibes than BL manga/mahwa (MLM books). (Sorry, do you like any BL manga/manhwa or shounen series?) And I kinda agree. But what do you think?

Sorry for this random ask, feel free if you want to ignore this ask....

wow thank you! i love sending my bookish posts into the void and i love it even more when the void expresses its appreciation haha

i didn't know about this discourse but in general i agree with the controversial (?) opinion that non-canon queer-coded or homosocial relationships oftentimes make for more compelling ships than their canon counterparts. one could argue that it's bc something that is just out of reach feels more appealing than something that you already have but in regards to my personal frustrations when reading romance stories and plotlines it often comes down to how the relationship of characters who the author already decided are going to fall in love has little room to breathe beyond that - the sword of damocles of romance is constantly hanging over them and determining their entire narrative. there's little intrigue in that bc when you're an experience reader or a genre-savvy media consumer you know exactly how it's gonna go, bit by bit.

furthermore, i think it's interesting that women and people who used to identify as women when they were young are likelier to write an explicit romance or a canon queer relationship bc they have been socialized to value that type of fiction and in doing that they will, whether by intention or not, regurgitate all the possible tropes and clichées which doesn't necessarily make their original story a compelling romance. by contrast, people who grew up socialized as men have been taught to suppress emotions and value no homo male bonds with their bros which is why a stereotypical cishet male sff author will 1) write an absolutely yucky romance for his male lead and his female love interest, 2) rather die than acknowledge that queerness exists and 3) pour all the most profound and intense feelings his conscious and subconscious mind is capable of into the depiction of the male lead's relationship with his male sidekick. ambiguity tends to make things more interesting so no wonder people will feel more drawn to a ship that is ambiguously homosocial in eve kosofsky sedgwick's sense rather than to a ship that is merely a love story between two people of the same gender.

which brings me to my last (more personal) point: as someone who has been socialized as a woman i am slightly obsessed with romance. however, as someone who identifies as aroace i don't find most romance books or even romance subplots relatable or compelling. this contradiction is a source of constant frustration that accompanies my reading experience - i often seek out romance books bc i do so enjoy a good love story and end up disappointed and alienated most of the time bc of this built in failure to connect with fiction that is written by allos for allos. for example, i have tried to take refuge in historical mm romance bc i figured that neither comphet nor modern identity politics would spoil the magic of two people falling in love for me in this case. however, having read quite a few of those, i have noticed this compulsion the authors have to 1) let the reader know by any means necessary and as soon as possible that the characters in question are in fact into men and 2) state explicitly that these men find each other attractive - a compulsion that speaks to the allo experience of being aware (most of the time) what type of person you're attracted to and being able to interpret a perceived connection as romantic or sexual attraction almost immediately. a compulsion which i, as an aroace reader, find utterly bizarre and terribly frustrating. not to shame allos for how their sexuality works or anything, but i think trying to convince the reader that two characters are into each other without relying on these two conveniences would be a good writing exercise.

by comparison, a relationship that is just allowed to develop without its participants interpreting it as a romance (bc the author who wrote it didn't intend them to at all) feels like freedom. yes, it's unfortunate that they won't kiss or fuck in the end of all that quality time but ah well, i can go to ao3 for that. and yes, if they're not canonically queer it's not real rep etc etc but i think that by now we have all understood that media consumption is not activism and queer rep in your favorite tv show will not bring about the age of tolerance. what i'm talking about in this post is why it sometimes feels like queer fiction fails to depict queerness and romance in a compelling way.

#asks #book tag #sometimes it's just like #no no THIS is queer #THAT is just two people of the same gender in a relationship #the specific examples i have in mind rn are empire of the vampire and the winnowing flame #the banter between gabriel and jean-françois is just inherently better queer content #than that what's his name side character's storyline #that one tentacle harness scene in the bitter twins is queerer than all the canon queer love stories of the series combined #something else i didn't discuss here is how diversity being used as a marketing tool in publishing instantly kills the mood #it's like that one oglaf strip - if we both know what's happening it ruins it #hashtag gaystream ig

[lupon]

I agree and as a theorist/fan, many of the theories we've seen here came out to be wrong as well as the narrative reading. So it is rather *interesting* when people just circled back to their same mindset here instead of just a little bit stepping back and reconsidering/re-examining the narrative and writing choices. And the only 'theory' that was right was about Will being gay, which was pretty much the clearest writing thing out there. You're also right that sometimes it is easier to got into something way too much that you start missing the more obvious build ups. Like the monologue thing was pretty much foreshadowed (aside from it also being leaked) but many bylers said it was not gonna happen because ''it was expected''. Yeah... it was expected because it was heavily hinted. And the vol2 reaction came from ignoring the more obvious narrative choices and writing decisions and sticking to fanmade theories instead.

Yeaaah I was definitely one of the "It's too heavily foreshadowed to happen, they must be trying to mislead us" bylers. Even Henry/Vecna being the same person was something I thought was too obvious to actually be true. I feel like people don't think about how the majority of the audience doesn't dig into the show like we do, and that the writers understand that and will make a lot of obvious foreshadowing and hints for them to notice. I'm starting to realize ST is simply a very predictable show, and I don't hate that, but it was hard to accept.

It's frustrating how many people seem to cycle back to the same theories every time despite canon repeated contradicting them. People are so dead-set on what they want the story to be, and will do just about anything to convince themselves they were right all along. (I mean this in the nicest way possible, considering I was one of these people)

And YES omg people saying they must be right about Mike because they knew Will was gay, like... That was very oblivious and most people in the ga have known since s1. Genuinely, how many byler theories have been right? I can't think of a single s4 theory made by bylers that actually happened, other than Will being gay and in love with Mike. Lonnie showing up? Mutual Mike and El break up? Will having fire powers? Cali gang being chased around by the government? Swing set painting? A gate opening in Rink-O-Mania? Bylers have been wrong about a lot of things.

I'm hoping s5 will address everything it needs to, with Mike especially. His sexuality and mental health are all heavily up for interpretation right now. And I don't want them to keep it that way, having Mike himself state his feelings would eradicate (most of) the arguing in the fandom.

#i think part of it is that most bylers are fairly young #at least on twitter i know most are 14-16 #but damn i wish theyd at least think critically about how wrong a lot of their theories have been #same goes for midlevin shippers #byler #mike wheeler #mike wheeler is bi

[armorabs]

doesn't the first movie make plabs/sandkraren kinda go down? science plankton/Karen don't feel any remorse for getting Mr. krabs frozen (though not by plankton) and sandy getting mind controlled?

with no disrespect meant, in what capacity do you think either of those things actually matter, and in what way do you think they actually render either relationships impossible?

if you're sending me this ask i have to imagine you've been here a while, must have observed what i post about to some degree. and to look at myself as an outsider may, i just have to ask... what part of "non-continuity gag cartoon consisting of 250 plus episodes that has become a larger franchise with multiple movies, several games, books, and comics, all of which make use of a confirmed multiverse consisting of many dimensions and alternate timelines" do you have difficulties with?

do you think it wise to take absolutely everything at complete face value as having any kind of permanence - that everything is conceptually inflexible and non-negotionable? it's not like we're talking about a continuity-driven narrative series with a solid canon like avatar or something. do you think that it actually matters, when any little detail can and will be contradicted at a later point, or already had been before then? may be, again, at a later point?

actually, when was the last time the first movie had any real impact on the franchise as something with lasting consequences? when was the last time the concept of the first movie being the end was actually treated as or acknowledged as being a finite end, rather than "the originally planned stopping point, that clearly did not work out that way in the long term?"

alternatively, do you think everyone and everything in the world is completely static and unchanging? that everyone thinks and feels the same way forever? if you try to reconcile a cartoon characters feelings with how a real person may feel things, how permanent do you think any thought, feeling, or relationship is? and how much do you expect a writer of a theatrical film for a non-continuity gag cartoon to anticipate how a character may develop in future episodes of the cartoon its based on, or the relationships they might form?

when the first movie came out, they hadn't established that plankton and krabs were childhood friends, yet. the movie might have been different if they had thought about it before, but it also might not have been. we don't know, because they hadn't thought of it yet. that's a completely hypothetical scenario. and when the first movie came out, karen was a side character who was not yet allowed any independence or personhood outside of plankton, had no relationships outside of plankton, and was for all intents and purposes... an accessory, to plankton. and now she isn't. trying to reconcile the karen that exists now with the karen who existed then is a fools errand. and likewise trying to reconcile the relationship between plankton and krabs that existed then with the relationship between plankton and krabs that exists now is also... a fools errand.

because uh... weirdly enough, characters evolve the more you write them, and the more you invite others to write them, and explore them - and weirdly enough, people too shall change when their circumstances do. so thats a really fun and weird combination. and also theyre characters in a non-continuity gag cartoon like those words have meaning and you've got to understand what those words mean if you want to have meaningful dialogue about them existing in any capacity.

with that said: you want me to reconcile the rest of the series with the first movie? i already have! it's called the timeline theory, which had already been confirmed.

to further elaborate this specific point: the karen of the first movie never met sandy, and so she doesn't think that much about it because why would that specific karen have reason to. even though the karen of girls night out is best friends with sandy, and even though the karen of frozen face-off chose krabs, spongebob and sandy over plankton in a heartbeat. and the plankton of the first movie might not be able to reconcile his differences with krabs, but the plankton of the second movie could, and the plankton of the third movie could too. that the existence of multiple timelines and dimensions has been confirmed inherently reconciles these seemingly contradictory notions. its like wondering why peter parker is married with kids to mary jane watson in one comic but married with kids to gwen stacy in another: good lord, does it even matter i'm not talking about voltron here

#IS THIS THE KRUSTY KRAB?