#but shes also human. and humans have just as much capacity to hurt as we do to heal

[imfinereallyy]

@henderdads posted this about domestic fluff and I realize that I love this trope and I just don’t write enough of it, and I wanted to give her a little treat to read. Mostly because her tags when she reblogs on my post give me absolute joy, I laugh every time.

Two things might come as a surprise when getting to know Steve Harrington. The first being he didn’t actually like parties. He likes making other people feel good, wants to make them happy. Hence why for years, he lets Tommy and Carol wreak havoc on his house. It makes them happy and, for a short while, makes most of Hawkins High happy. Steve, in retrospect, has learned to regret this since he has now gained a reputation for being a party king, despite not throwing one in years, but he knows all too well how hard it is to let go of a high school reputation.

The second surprising fact is that Steve Harrington hated his birthday. Well, maybe hate wasn’t the right word, but he has incredibly low expectations for his birthday. Either everyone forgets his birthday, or somehow Steve is reminded that he is an inconvenience.

“Sorry sweetie, your dad has a business meeting that day.”

“Dude, I have a baseball game in that night could we do something another day?”

“I’m late! I know, we stayed up all night playing D&D. I even forgot to call Suzie!”

Steve isn’t necessarily hurt per se when these things happen. He knows that some people, more than others, are really trying. That it’s human to make mistakes. But Steve doesn’t like to get his hopes up; that’ll be much better than that.

There is also the more commonly now known fact that Steve doesn’t like being the center of attention. And birthdays come along with a lot of that. Sure, Steve wants someone to pay attention to him, really listen to what he has to say, but he has long since out grown the desperate need to have everyone look at him.

It is why it is such a surprise the upside down crew throws him a 24th birthday party.

Steve always thought something like this would upset him, but he is delightfully warm at the sight of all his friends, all of his family, inside Robin and Nancy's apartment screaming,

“Surprise, Dingus!”

Steve can’t believe she got everyone to say that.

After the shock of seeing them all packed like sardines wearing party hats, Steve can’t help but smile.

Eddie walks up to him, placing a hat on his head and a soft kiss on his cheek. “I tried to stop them,” Eddie whispers. “I know you don’t like parties, but they just wanted to show how much they love you. It was hard to say no.”

Steve turns to Eddie, a man who knows him inside and out and knows he can’t lie to him. “I thought I would hate this, but I don’t. It’s perfect.” He kisses Eddie on the lips, just as soft as the one before.

“Good, because I really didn’t try to stop them.” Eddie smiles into the kiss.

“Ew!”

“Gross!”

“Get a room!”

Various shouts across the room cause the couple to giggle and pull apart. Eddie flips them all off, “It’s been four years, assholes! Grow up.”

Eddie runs off to particularly chase Mike, who actually hasn’t said anything but did make a face, and Steve can’t help but be overwhelmed by joy.

🎉🦇🎉🦇

Hours later, after the cake has been cut and the presents have been shared, and his kiddos are definitely way too drunk, the party doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. And Steve, who is having fun but growing antsy since he slowed down on drinking years ago, isn’t quite sure what to do with himself.

He doesn’t want to ruin the fun or make anyone think he didn’t have a good time. This is one of the best birthdays, if not the best one, he’s ever had. But Steve is getting overwhelmed and worn out. He isn’t really tired, but being social has reached its capacity for the night.

Even so, he can’t help but laugh at Robin as she tells a story about the most recent disaster of her sign language class, where kids keep accidentally swearing instead of the proper words.

Eddie catches his eye across the room; he looks happy as he talks to Hop and Wayne. But even mid-conversation, across the sea of people, he tugs his helix piercing over his right ear twice.

It’s their signal for, “Do you want me to come over?”

Steve rubs the scar over his left eye twice, “Yes please.” It means.

Eddie excuses himself and makes his way to Steve. “Hey, baby.” He interrupts Robin mid-rant, who makes a sound of drunken protest. “Did we feed Mrs. Pierson’s cat today?”

Another signal, which translates, “Do you want to go home?”

And Steve knows he can just tell Eddie yes, and they can stay at the party, and Steve will have fun, and he’ll be happy, but it isn’t what he wants. What he wants is to be at home with their own cat Beelzebub, snuggled up in their bed. So Steve says, “Shit, I don’t think we did.” Yes, please. Let’s go home.

Eddie acts quickly. They make their rounds, say goodbyes, and make their excuses. Everyone lovingly pokes at their forgetfulness. The couple insists everyone stays and enjoys themselves. Steve thanks everyone with individual hugs.

Steve and Eddie hold pinkies the entire walk home, down the streets of Indianapolis. The dark night blanket of night, and the never-ending sound of the city, keeping them safe enough to risk the intertwined digits.

When they make it home, they say nothing. They unwind slowly. Sharing kisses, delicately take off each other's clothes, hum into each others mouths. There is nothing rushed, or rough; they have time now. There will be moments for that later.

And in their journey from the front door to the bed, Eddie kisses the place where Steve’s shoulder and neck meet. It’s his signal for “I love you.”

Later, when they are tangled up in the sheets, heavy breaths slowing down, Eddie’s arms wrapped around him, Steve leans up and kisses the tip of Eddie’s nose. It’s his signal for “I love you more.”

Eddie’s smile back says, “that just isn’t possible.”

“Thank you for today.” Steve finally speaks out loud, playing with Eddie’s fingers.

“Oh, it isn’t over yet, baby.” And Eddie jumps out of bed naked, running out of the room.

Steve can’t help but cackle at his boyfriend's antics. There is a sudden thump on the bed; Steve peeks down to see their cat making his home on the end of their bed like he knows they are finally done for the night. “Hey, bee.” Steve scratches him behind his ear, earning a resounding purr from him. A little to the left, it means.

Eddie comes back into the room and dives back into the bed, bouncing Beelzebub but not startlingly him enough to move. Steve supposes he’s used to his father's antics. “Okay, I would tell you to close your eyes, but I know you’re not going to listen, so I’m just going to hand them to you.”

Steve giggles and grabs the pieces of paper in his hands and his heart stops. “Eddie.”

“Steve.” Eddie’s grin is wide.

“These are three tickets to see Madonna.”

“Yup.” Eddie pops his ‘p’ clearly proud of himself. “One for you, one for Robs of course, and one for me.”

Steve whispers in awe, “But you hate Madonna.”

Eddie brushes the hair out of Steve’s face, “Please, no one can hate Madonna.” Eddie’s eyes turn soft, “Besides, you love her, and you love me. It only felt fair to have us both in the same place. And you’d worry the entire time if I wasn’t there.”

Steve throws his arms around Eddie, squeezing him tight. Hoping he can translate how much he loves this man through it. Steve loves making other people happy, but no one has loved making Steve happy, quite like Eddie. “I love you so much,” Steve says once he leans back.

Eddie kisses the place where his shoulder and his neck meet. I love you. Eddie kisses the tip of his nose. I love you more. Finally, he holds Steve’s face and says aloud,

“I love you too.”

***

Was this perhaps inspired by the fact I turn 24 in a week and a half? Maybeee. I’m a lot like Steve in this where I have such mixed feelings about my birthday. I’m feeling a lot of anxiety about it if I’m honest, and I don’t have high hopes.

Unlike me, I don’t have a partner like Eddie, but Steve deserves the world and I wanted him to have some loving and domestic fluff. The idea that these two have secret signals is an important headcannon to me, and I would love to see others take on it.

I hope @henderdads you enjoyed this if you made it this far. It was a lot of fun to write. :)

#steddie #giving these boys the fluff they deserve #they have secret signals for everything #especially a ‘can you believe this guy’ one #Steve Harrington #Eddie Munson #birthday blues #stranger things #domestic fluff #happy ending #my writing #platonic stobin #Robin Buckley

[phantomonabudget]

We need to talk, Pham. Stop shaming Christine Daaé.

I have seen this behavior consistently for the 30+ years I have been a Phan. What's worse is that I see A LOT of it from grown women. I see posts calling her foolish for leaving Erik. Slut shaming her or calling her a gold digger. Calling her stupid, weak, or unworthy because a "real woman" (presumably the women posting these absurd notions 🙄) would have loved him better and been worthy of his awesome talent and capacity for love. 😳🤮

It's disturbing, disheartening, and disgusting. And it needs to stop.

First off, none of these characters are real, so perhaps let's take things a little less seriously in general. It's a fictional story. I get it: we all love it, and probably love the Phantom's character. That's fine....I've made a 20+ year career dressing as the dude, for crying out loud. 🤣 Maybe we all identify with Erik/The Phantom to some degree. Regardless of the version of the story, if the actors or authors do their job well, we *should* feel pity and compassion for him. But feeling compassion and completely ignoring the character's dangerous and abusive behavior are two very different things. It has the potential for some severe consequences in the real world.

By shaming Christine for leaving Erik at the end, you are potentially telling young people that staying in abusive relationships is the right thing. You make them think that if their significant other is talented, misunderstood, been abused themselves etc, then they should stay and love them into a healthy relationship. That if they just love their abusive SO harder, sacrifice themselves a little more or for a little longer, or keep putting that person's needs above their own, that the relationship will suddenly become this wonderful, euphoric experience. It won't. As a survivor of longtime abusive myself, I can tell you from experience: it doesn't happen that way.

Celebrate healthy relationships and enforcing healthy boundaries. Stop shaming Christine for fighting for and winning her life and saving the man she loves.

And please stop calling this a romance. It's the antithesis of romance.

I am sick of members of this Phandom completely ignoring Erik/The Phantom's behavior to justify their blind adoration. Erik is an abusive and dangerous character, and extremely toxic. He lies to and manipulates Christine using her trauma from her deceased father. He kidnaps her, multiple times. Threatens her and her colleagues. He extorts hundreds of thousands from the business managers. He endangers dozens of people with the chandelier crash, and effectively holds hundreds hostage for months or years at a time with his reign of terror at the Opera.

Then there are the murders. Several of them. Probably been at that for awhile so we can assume it's far more than the two we see in the show. We don't know his actual body count, but we do know he's adept and comfortable taking human life.

And yet, I see some mature phans out here completely ignoring all those things and still shaming Christine for leaving him. Why? Because he's "sexy" (author's note: PLEASE go re-read Leroux. Please). And he's talented. And has so much love to give. And is misunderstood. And society was terrible to him...so it's all fine. 😳🤮 She should have just stayed and loved him like he deserves to be loved. 🙄

Recently I saw a post shaming Christine and the justification was that Raoul was so much worse. He isn't. Is he a perfect character? No, not at all. Does he make mistakes and try to use Christine? In some versions, yes. Does he run around extorting, manipulating, threatening, and killing others? Also no.

Pleasw don't ever use LND!Raoul's character assassination as some kind of justification, because he's still the most sane, normal human being in that show, and Erik is still 1,000 times worse than Raoul in LND. Also, using LND as justification for anything makes for a very weak and uninformed argument.

"Hurt people hurt people." Ever heard that phrase? Abused people sometimes abuse others, especially if they haven't done the work to heal themselves. Their previous abuse does NOT entitle them to abuse others. That is always a deliberate choice and those choices have consequences. The dangerous, disgusting rhetoric I see in the Phantom community basically excuses toxic behavior because Erik was previously abused and nothing is his fault. That is simply not true. Those that abused me were previously abused. Didn't make my abuse hurt any less. And I made the choice to do the work so that the abuse stopped with me. Previous trauma is a reason for the behavior, but it is NEVER, ever an excuse.

And don't let the fact the dude can sing or that he's a snappy dresser blind you to his toxicity.

We can all enjoy the Phantom character's complexity and love him, while still acknowledging his flaws and holding him accountable for his deeply inappropriate choices.

We talk a lot more these days about trauma, toxicity, and self care. And yet, as a community, we still shame the character of Christine Daaé for doing the healthy, correct thing. The ONLY thing. And in doing so, we set a disturbing precedent for our young or vulnerable Phans who now might think that staying in toxic relationships in the real world is okay.

Please do better, Phandom.

#phantom of the opera #poto #christine daae #raoul de chagny #the phantom #erik #gaston leroux #andrew lloyd webber #the phantom of the opera #toxicity #phandom #phantom phans #fandom

[pix3lplays]

My apologies to everyone I bothered with my recent ramblings about hot robots, you know who you are-

Also note: I meant for this to be short um…oops

But anyways I’ve actually been thinking about it and??? Ok out of the three main hot robots (Svarog, Screwllum, and Sam (I know he’s not REALLY a robot but bear with me-)) I think I gotta say it…Svarog would be the easiest to pull for a human reader.

I mean Screwllum seems like he interacts with humans really well but honestly it’s hard for me to see him taking an interest in reader enough to make them his partner??

And we admittedly do not know much about Sam. But I’m leaning towards him being mostly disinterested in being with a human.

But Svarog? I think he might actually consider it. I definitely think he’d have a type though haha, maybe this is super specific but someone…parental if that makes sense?? He’s no idiot. He knows it would be to Clara’s benefit if she had a human parent. So uh yeah if you wanna be with Svarog you’ve gotta like Clara-

He needs a little house spouse haha~that might calm him down…

But for real I think you could pull Svarog if you tried really really hard.

Befriend Clara first maybe? That might be the strategy. Then suddenly he’s taking an interest in Clara’s new friend. I mean he’s PROTECTIVE of Clara at first so a lot of it is just making sure you’re not gonna hurt her but wait-you’re actually being very loving and kind and gentle towards her? You always listen when she’s upset or needs to talk, you’re human, like her, so you understand her very well.

Interesting.

Also something cool and worth noting about Svarog…his capacity to be gentle. He knows his own strength. See that one Clara animation where he twirls her around so gently. He has the capacity to physically interact with humans. I mean I feel like it’s a safe bet to say that Screwllum is aware of his own strength as well and can safely touch a human. But I bet that Sam would take a while to adjust to touching humans without hurting them.

But YEAH big scary robot husband and tiny human spouse. Very important to me.

Literally Svarog would treat you SO well if he was actually your partner. It would take a LOT of time and effort to get to that point but once you’re there??

Oh that gave me an important vision.

Human spouse sitting on Svarog’s lap. I need it so bad. He’s just casually physically affectionate with you. I adore.

His giant hand on the small of your back, or placing a hand on your shoulder when he’s feeling protective over you…

He’s so big I saw a size comparison of him next to Stelle (and Stelle’s NOT short lol) and he’s SO big like not just tall but BIG I’m OBSESSED.

Where was I going with this-

Big scary Robot husband who has a soft spot for his spouse and kid…

And I love how he’s like…a bit Rugged, especially when compared to the other robots. A bit Rugged but elegant ugh I LOVE it. Like Screwllum is a pretty boy robot haha but he still has substance because he’s SMART. Sam is a little more difficult because we don’t know terribly much about him but he’s…direct I guess? He’s a warrior and so he fights.

Anyways I need to build my Clara so I can see my robot husband…

Quick before my requests close someone send a request for Svarog or Screwllum I am BEGGING-

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #Svarog #hsr Svarog x reader #honkai star rail Svarog x reader #Screwllum #Hsr Screwllum #honkai star rail Screwllum #Hsr Sam #honkai star rail Sam

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

Insomnia and allergies are killing me (they aren’t anymore cause i wrote this part a week ago) so prepare for a bunch of Angel Dust facts that no one needs to know about and Vivziepop will probably end up ignoring!

Some of these are headcanons and some of these are canon facts so they will be colourcoded as such! Headcanons will be blue and canon facts will be red. Anything that relates to real spiders will be listed with a 🕷️! Some of these will also get a little doodle from me

Much like an average spider, Angel can feel and sense when storms are coming. These freak him out and will make him curl up on the ground.🕷️

Angel is sensitive to vibrations and especially sensitive to stronger ones like lightning and earthquakes. (Hell does not have earthquakes.) Stronger ones make him paranoid and nauseous from his organs moving around.🕷️

He definitely needs glasses to see far away but doesn’t bother since it hardly becomes an issue in daily life.🕷️

Jumping spiders change how they see btw! Less light = more detail, More detail = less light.

Vision Examples:

He can also see behind him but I don’t have that angle so this is the best you get

Sleeps curled up.🕷️

Also follows lasers! Not in the same way a cat would, but any interesting movement in his peripheral vision will cause him to turn toward it to see it better.🕷️

Can see ultraviolet light.🕷️

Dresses up Fat Nuggets on Halloween. And basically every other day. Seems to have a preference for the witch hat

Owns a skateboard??

Why do his eyes glow pink why can he do that on command

Can dialate his pupils at will I guess

Molts. Basically like shedding but if you also had to scrub a chunk of your skin off. Lasts 1-2 days.🕷️

Occasionally yells at his brother on the street

Currently still under the impression his sister is alive. She also probably found him after he overdosed.

Struggles to keep track of time

No idea what half the letters in LGBTQIA+ mean

Recently learned what a pride flag is

Angel has small retractable hooks/claws inside his palm that he can use to hold onto surfaces.🕷️

Angel hates people crying around or on him and will push them away or distance himself.

Examples:

Angel is very skittish around fire even though it cannot hurt him.

Hates the smell of citrus fruits.🕷️

Angel has two fangs (primary for injecting and liquifying food) on the roof of his mouth, much sharper papillae in the back of his throat and a second set of venomous fangs near the deeper in his throat that are to inject larger food and paralyze it but there is the rare occasion where the fangs stab his own throat and he collapses for a few hours after getting the fangs unstuck and he just lays there until it wears off and it kind of looks like he's dead cause there’s probably blood in his mouth but hes fine /hj🕷️

This is more of a food safety precaution. If he ate something live he would inject it with venom if it wasn’t dead yet, but he does not do this so these fangs are basically pointless and he might as well just get them removed at this point

Angel DOES have lungs! I know this seems like a very basic fact but some spiders have book lungs! Different from ours they don’t breathe the same way we do, just like how spiders don’t have blood like humans. This is me being a nerd, but we have seen that Angel has mentioned his lung capacity and he has the ability to cough as seen in Episode 5 (I think its 5 dont quote me on that) This means he cannot have book lungs since if he did he would not be able to cough, nor would he be able to sneeze or hiccup.🕷️

Angel is likely right handed in his top pair of hands, left handed or ambidextrous in his middle pair, and as for the bottom it seems like either ambidextrous or he just doesn’t like to use them for actions at all.

This is like half headcanon but also I pay way more attention to this shit than Viv does so Im basically right all the time

It doesn’t get super cold in hell Id assume, but on the rare occasion it gets colder or the AC in the hotel is on really high that is one of the few times Angel will use webbing and will wrap himself in it and crawl under a blanket and stay there. If it’s really cold or he plans on being in a cold area for maybe a week or month or so he might go into diapause to conserve energy, warmth, and food. (This can also happen when he has sudden sharp changes in diet and during daylight savings)🕷️

This will be updated again I can feel it in my bones. Hopefully this can satiate you all while I move house 🫶

#hazbin hotel #angel dust #angel dust redesign #hazbin angel #hazbin angel dust #angel dust and fat nuggets #angel dust hazbin #angel hazbin hotel #angel dust headcanons #hazbin fat nuggets #hazbin hotel fat nuggets #fat nuggets hazbin #fat nuggets hazbin hotel #fat nuggets #character analysis #character study #hazbin hotel rewrite #my art #anti vivziepop #tw overdose #cw overdose

[hantii]

What up hoes, there is a criminal lack of Pentious fic in this fandom considering how popular he is so if anyone is looking for things to write about:

He is one of the oldest characters in the whole damn cast. How does that affect his relationships with the other characters? How has he survived so long without being exterminated?

He, Al and Vox have clear similarities in style of dress. While Al and Vox are both powerful overlords, Pentious isn’t, yet both Vox and Alastor know Sir Pentious and haven’t killed him. What is the relationship there? Did Pentious have more power in the past? (I like the idea of a fallen/disgraced overlord. He essentially went out of date and represents the danger that Vox’s technological progress poses to Alastor.) Sir Pentious saw the rise of most of the powerful overlords in the series. I feel like there is a lot of hidden knowledge and wisdom in that head of his.

The EGG BOIS. What are they? How were they created? It was said in an ancient stream that he had help in creating them - who?

What happened to make him so distrustful of other people? It seems like he has been backstabbed many times.

His and Cherri’s dynamic!! I could speak for hours about this. He is painfully genuine in his feelings. Cherri has a lot of trauma surrounding romance, and is implied to have had an abusive and/or bad relationship with her ex boyfriend. She leans on sex for intimacy because romance is a traumatic area. She probably thinks that anyone with an interest in her only wants her for her body, not for herself. There is such an interesting dynamic to explore and slow-burn pre-slash, because as much as we love to see them deep into romance territory, realistically this would be a slow and rocky start because of mutual trauma. Gimme.

Pentious, Angel, Husk and Niffty dynamic. Gimme fluff, gimme hurt/comfort, gimme bonding.

Human Sir Pentious, because his design is banging and we live for Victorian steampunk vibes.

There is likely a wealth more ideas that just can’t think of immediately. My other faves are Vox and Alastor, and I think their popularity comes from their charisma, but also the potential of their complex characters. They are both likeable villains, so of course there will be many intriguing things to write about. I just wish people explored Sir Pentious’ capacity for complexity more too. His endearing redemption is a blessing and a curse, because he is so widely adored by fans, but not with the same intensity as the intriguing villains. Before the show proper came out, there seemed to be more people actually taking the time to understand his character and its complexity - his capacity for really interesting narrative. New fans are missing out a lot with their shallow understanding. And there is only so much we long-term fans can create unfortunately :(

#sir pentious #im on my knees begging for more content of him

[dyns33]

A bit jealous

Another Dream x Hob!Reader 

Even if he refused to admit it, Y/N had very quickly noticed that Morpheus was a jealous, proud and possessive being.

In a way, this was quite normal since he was a millennial, eternal creature, a king ruling over his kingdom and his subjects with care, therefore feeling responsible for them and doing everything to keep them safe. Their happiness was a plus, and their love was not a necessity, even if he smiled shyly when he felt that Lucienne or Matthew really cared about him.

Obviously, since they were together, Y/N could not escape this primary need for control and protection.

Morpheus didn't hate his dear lover's friends, but he was suspicious of them, wanting to make sure they were worthy of her, that they weren't going to put her in dangerous situations, and above all that they weren't going to hurt her.

Secretly, he also had a vicious fear that she would prefer the company of one of them to his own. Because even if they were both more or less immortal, it was not enough for a couple to work, and he was confident that he had many faults. His previous relationships had cruelly demonstrated this to him.

     "Nobody is perfect." Y/N had reassured him. "Not you, not me, no one. There are bound to be times when we disagree, when we argue. It's happened before. But I love you. You love me. With patience and dialogue, everything can be arranged. I'm not going to leave with someone else just because you annoyed me a little."

     "I have often heard that I have no patience, let alone the capacity for dialogue."

"No, boss, I said you had little capacity for dialogue, but sometimes you can find the right words."

     "Thank you Matthew."

    "Well, I would have enough patience for both of us then."

This reassured the master of dreams a bit, even though he continued to be jealous of her friends, and of the time she spent in the waking world, away from him. He sometimes visited her because he missed her too much, and to please her, although he was not comfortable, away from his kingdom.

Things weren't necessarily better when Y/N was wandering around the Dreaming. Because while he cared for his subjects, Morpheus also grew jealous of the attention his lover gave them.

Lucienne, Mervyn, Abel, Cain, Goldy, all the dreams and nightmares she had had , they all felt their creator's cold, accusing gaze on their backs, which made them tremble.

Of course, he didn't say anything, he didn't punish them, that would have been absurd. He just sulked, the rain falling for hours in the Dreaming, until Y/N finally came back to him.

     "You're ridiculous." she said each time, smiling and kissing him.

     "And you spend a lot of time with my subjects. Which is a good thing, I'm glad you like them, and they like you. But sometimes you spend more time with them than with me. Like Matthew. Here and in the waking world."

     "Remind me who asked him to watch me ?"

     "That doesn't mean he necessarily has to talk to you."

     "Poor thing, I'm not going to leave him out in the cold when he could be next to me on the couch. And before you say it should be you on the couch, that's not his fault if you are busy in your palace."

Y/N was certainly Matthew's favorite human, who had decided that she was the best partner his boss had ever had, even if he hadn't met any of the other. It didn't seem necessary to him, the others had left, while Y/N was still there, which was already an immense proof of her love for his great, but silly boss.

If he loved her so much, it was because he saw how happy the couple was, but also because the immortal woman took the time to listen to him, kept his secrets and did her best to reassure him. when he thought he was not a good raven.

If he couldn't be as good as Jessamy, and therefore not be Morpheus' favorite, he could be Y/N's favorite, and that was enough.

Seeing how more serene his raven seemed with his lover, Dream didn't try to separate them.

A friendship he had more difficulty accepting was the one she had with Hob Gabling. The project of his dear sister was a handsome, charming, funny man. Although it was yet another thing he refused to admit, he liked him. Which was a problem, because he considered him to be a real threat.

As an immortal, charismatic, and celibate man, Hob could please Y/N, and Morpheus regretted introducing them.

These fears never went away, but Hob never attempted anything with his lover. Respectful and polite, he told her about his experience as an none dying human, asking her what she had been through. They realized that they could often have crossed paths.

Soon they were like brother and sister, which was a good thing. Except when Hob behaved like a big brother.

     "I hope Morpheus treats you well. We sometimes talk about it with Death, and he can be really insufferable. I tried to be his friend once, and he left looking constipated. Because he's emotionally constipated. Sometimes I'm sure I see him in my dreams, staring at me with a scary look."

     "Morpheus..."

     "I'm not necessarily in all the dreams, there's no proof that it's actually me."

     "He ever told you about Shakespeare ? I need to tell you about Shakespeare."

     "It's late, we should go my love." Dream said standing up, putting his coat on her shoulders because it was cold, that he knew she liked his coat that contained the galaxy, and that he liked to see her wearing his clothes.

     "I'll tell you another time !"

That night, it snowed in the Dreaming, which made all its inhabitants panic. Snow wasn't really a good thing, even worse than rain or storm.

Lucienne ran up to Morpheus, who was standing on the balcony, with Y/N.

     "My Lord... Are you all right ?"

     "Yes, why ?"

      “It... It's snowing ?"

     "Oh, yes, sorry." Y/N answered with bright eyes. "There won't be any snow in my town this year, so Morpheus is giving me some here."

Like a child seeing snow for the first time, the immortal woman then turned her attention back to the snowflakes, while the Master of Dreams only had eyes for her, smiling tenderly at her excitement.

This moved the librarian a little, as well as the other dreams. Only Mervyn complained, because he was the one who was going to have to clean up. Even though it was nice that the boss was happy, he didn't have to put snow everywhere !

There remained Dream's family.

The beings who annoyed him the most in the world and for whom he was ready to do anything, because family was sacred, even when he wanted to kill some of his siblings.

Destiny never sought to meet Y/N, which was normal because the eldest of the Endless never got involved in anything. This reassured Dream, while saddening him a bit. He wished his brother had shown some interest in his lover, indicating that she was as special as he thought.

It was natural for Death to become friends with Y/N. Since Death became friends with almost everyone, and she was the one who offered her immortality to please his brother.

Morpheus was always scared when they were together. He was afraid that his sister would say embarrassing things about him, but also that she would decide to take back her gift. She had promised she wouldn't unless Y/N asked her to, but anything could happen.

So he was never far away when they met, trembling when his sister touched Y/N, and hoping he showed her enough love that she never wanted to leave this world.

Since he was happy, Desire, Despair and Delirium had to try to ruin everything by approaching the source of his happiness. Morpheus would never understand the behavior of the youngest members of their family, their childishness, and the need they had to harm him.

He went to see each of them in turn to remind them that their quarrel should not affect other people, and that if they hurt Y/N, or tried to separate them, they would be in serious trouble.

This somewhat calmed Delirium and Despair, who just wanted to have fun teasing him, but were smart enough to be afraid of his wrath. He wasn't sure Desire had listened to what he was saying.

Once, it was obvious that Y/N had encountered Destruction. This startled all of the Endless, who turned their attention to her, much to Morpheus' chagrin.

     "What do you mean, you think you've met my brother ?" he asked her slowly, feeling the gaze of the others on them.

     "Well, Lucienne was telling me about him, describing me as he was, his behavior, and I remembered that one day I met a guy who looked like that."

     "That doesn't mean he was my brother."

     "It was during a war, in Eastern Europe. According to the years, either he hadn't left yet or it had just happened, I'm not sure. I was walking around the world, avoiding attracting attention, and while I was in a bar, he offered me a drink. He said, 'for an intrepid traveler, who has come a long way for a long time and who must need to breathe a little'. He added that he knew someone like that, his brother. That I would no doubt like him and that it would do him good to meet me for a chat, at least once in a while. "

     "... You met my brother." sighed Morpheus, who used all his powers to prevent the others from entering his kingdom and asking Y/N a lot of useless questions.

     "He was nice. Very tall too. Are you all taller than humans ?"

     "No. Only when we want to be."

     "He said he was going to miss you, but he couldn't stay."

Dream said nothing. He had never understood Destruction's departure. It was selfish of him to abandon his kingdom like this.

     "I think I understand." Y/N then said, shaking her head.

     "Don't take this the wrong way, but it would surprise me."

     "Death explained to me about your jobs, and what happens if one of you dies. They are replaced, and the new one is not really new. You, but not you. Your brother was tired after a long road. He wanted to rest, while seeing that the world was destroying itself very well on its own. But he didn't want to die, and become someone else. So he left, and yes it's a little selfish, and he never said that you have to do the same. We saw what happened when you were locked up, it's not possible for you to leave, and it's sad in a way. But he's no longer there, and there is always war, wickedness, chaos. He saw that it would not be a problem for him to leave, except for his family."

The explanation was convincing, but Morpheus didn't really listen to it. He just realized that his brother had spoken more with Y/N than with him, and that made him a bit jealous. And maybe it had been easier to talk to a stranger, easier because Dream had refused to hear what he had to say, easier because Destruction knew who she was and she would mediate. 

But he was jealous, jealous of his brother for buying his lover a drink when she wasn't his yet and he was too stupid to come and see her more than once every hundred years, and jealous of Y/N, who had been able to see Destruction for the last time.

     "... I can be a bit proud, jealous and possessive."

     "A bit ?! Boss, you..."

     "Matthew." Y/N muttered, gently shooing him away. "It's good to admit it, Dream. It's a step in the right direction !"

     "I have no intention of changing that."

     "It's still good." she repeated with a forced smile, visibly disappointed, but still thinking that he was adorable.

There had already been a lot of changes since Morpheus' return, and since he had been dating Y/N. It wasn't so bad if he didn't change more, as long as he could control himself and just stare at people in their dreams.

#Sandman #morpheus #morpheus x reader #morpheus fanfiction #morpheus imagine #dream of the endless #dream of the endless x reader #dream of the endless imagine #dream of the endless fanfiction

[rainstormcolors]

top 5 seto kaiba moments

Oh, you sent this right away!

Okay, so my top favorite moments are prone to shifting around based on various things, so I don't consider these set in stone. But here are some, in my opinion, outstanding Seto Kaiba moments:

Seto, after being defeated and knowing he's failed over and over and over -- in so many ways, just staying as a heap on the ground in Pegasus' dungeon until *something* inside him makes him stand up and move forward again. He can still stand up and move forward.

I feel the 3 pages we get of Seto backstory within the manga at Death-T are absolutely outstanding and it's kind of astonishing how so much is explained and contained and implied and ambiguous all in those 3 pages. This is a bit of cheat to include the whole thing so if I have to pick one specific moment in this backstory, Seto challenging Gozaburo to chess as Gozaburo smirks is the moment I suppose as it's so crucial and telling and life-changing. It could be said it was the first time Seto offered his "life chip" to try reaching what he wanted.

There are many good Seto moments, so choosing five is difficult. But this moment where Seto feels compassion for Isis and is taken aback by this capacity for compassion that maybe he didn't realize he had. But he does have it. And how this compassion is brought out by Isis admitting that she's failed. And how everything in Seto's story and all the threads he's been holding meet in this moment. And how emotions and people are strange to Seto but he does gravitate to them, even if he thought that part of him had been lost and destroyed. It is still there.

"For him," is also up there as a powerful Seto moment within DSoD. But this agonizing heartbroken lonely expression from Seto as he realizes Atem isn't here is poignant and harbors the heart of the movie, and how this is a character who can't admit it but is desperate for human connection to this lost person and is devastated by this absence that he can't deny anymore. And Seto might deny it but his heart does break and does hurt and does feel lonely.

This moment is one of the whole series' most powerful and vivid moments. This and Seto walking backwards to the ledge after this vision. It's like the backstory where I feel these two moments are inherently linked so I don't really feel it's "correct" to list the hallucination and Seto stepping to the ledge as separate moments. This entire beat of storytelling is vibrant with heavy emotion and character, of the heart and the mind, and is complex and desperate and human and aching and it's not about "good" or "bad" but how Seto survives -- in the sense of how he gets what he wants by offering his "life chip" to be chopped and being able to live on despite offering his life chip and living with that.

Thank you for the kind ask! I hope these were okay as answers.

#seto kaiba

[rei-caldombra]

The time hath come! For a passionate post of one of my favorite series Demon Girl Next Door / Machikado Mazoku. (above image made by me)

Just wanna say right away that I adore this show and I am largely just bringing up positives. This is a gushing post that ended up being super long. And reminder that my writing isn’t meant to be all encompassing and describe the show in every detail. So if there’s something I mention about the show that intrigues you, you should check out the source material (and if I encouraged you to do that then I've succeeded!)! This will contain direct spoilers. I do not bring up every single aspect of the plot and characters, but I bring up many of them. Skip to the end if you just want to hear a short conclusion. 

DGND is incredibly dense despite how simple it seems on the surface. This show is so much more than just goofy wholesome fun. 

When it comes to stupid moe derpy characters, i think Shamiko is one of the best examples of this archetype. She has plenty of personality aside from that. Some stupid characters feel like they only exist to be stupid for gags. They genuinely don’t seem like they can function as a human being on their own, to the point of feeling like they could be offensive portrayals of mental retardation. 

But Shamiko is well rounded. She is not JUST a character who is dumb. Her lack of smarts and common sense does actually have some explanation too. You learn that the curse on Shamiko’s family has a physical effect as well. Shamiko spent most of her childhood in intensive care at a hospital, her physical issues exacerbated by the curse. And Shamiko was not just taking on her portion of the curse, her soul had chosen to take on Ryo’s portion of the curse as well. Before she awakened to her demon heritage, she wasn’t even able to walk through her school without collapsing. She was not able to get a proper education very well before the start of the series.  She had less opportunities than most to get normal experiences. She also had little capacity to be physically active, which gives more reason for her being pathetically weak than because the jokes of her being incapable demand it. This strength of writing just gets better as the series goes on because we see her develop into a character that is less incompetent and less physically weak. Rather than riding on these same failure jokes, we actually see Shamiko develop into a character who is capable. She manages to defeat a magical creature on her own, Sakura (the character who set up this whole town and is the most important non main character in the overall story) basically passes the torch of being the town’s caretaker on to her, she is the leader of the operation and successfully uses her abilities to remove Mikan’s curse and save Ugallu. She starts out the series as incompetent and capable of very little, being liked but looked down on by most of the cast. But she grows to be respected by everyone, to the point where Momo and Mikan eventually do consider themselves her “minions”. She truly grows from a dumb and unconfident little girl into a leader that very capable people like Momo and Mikan see as an equal. She grows mentally as well as physically. She gets access to more magical abilities, she gets less physically unwell, she gets more confident in herself. 

Ryo is shown to be very smart, which makes sense in comparison to Shamiko because she was healthy enough to be in school. And she is not just naturally smart, she actually has the drive to be smarter as she wants to support her sister. Which you can say is her wanting to support Shamiko in return for how Shamiko took on her portion of the curse. Ryo stands out more than just the “smart child” archetype she fits into. DGND is filled with details that elevate even the minor characters into more than just archetypes. 

Shamiko still has the motivation to win and get stronger, but she realizes intentionally hurting Momo or another magical girl isn’t the way she wants to go about it. And she doesn’t want Momo to hurt herself to get her the blood either. Especially when we learn from the accidental blood offering that the result of using blood to lift the curse permanently weakened Momo slightly. Which by reading into the subtext you realize means she lost mana, which according to the way they describe magical girls in this universe, is her entire existence. This is one specific example of how dark subject matter is present in the generally goofy and bubbly story.  

I love Shamiko and Momo’s dynamic, it's the crux of this series and the appeal. Their “rivalry” quickly develops into basically being just a roleplay bit between the two. It changes from Shamiko wanting to physically beat Momo to effectively emotionally overtaking her. She wants to be respected by Momo and make Momo into her vassal. It still has the original intention of making Momo submit to her, but in a more intimate and consensual way. It doesn’t feel like the idea of defeating Momo in battle was forgotten, it feels like Shamiko’s goals and motivations naturally change. 

You really buy into Shamiko and Momo’s friendship because we get so much time with them together. There are other characters who are important and get screen time, but Shaminomo is the focal point. 

DGND is legitimately the only ship I care about in all of anime. Their personalities mesh so perfectly. Simplest way to describe them is tsundere x kuudere. I really want to put emphasis on me, someone who has never cared for shipping, am very into this ship. I live for cute fanart of them together. They have so many cute and funny interactions. The way their personalities flip on the stereotypes of a demon and magical girl are very good. Shamiko is incredibly pure, always wanting to help people and find a peaceful solution. On the other hand Momo is fairly dark in the way she thinks, being more conniving and directly confrontational when a situation comes up. 

There’s so many situations where the series has very obvious romantic subtext. And I fully buy into it, it works so well. Its romantic af. I also think their dynamic is written very great because you don’t HAVE TO interpret their relationship as romantic. You can see it as just very close friends. Or you can see them as having a sisterly bond, having the report of both argumentative and caring similar to how I’ve heard people describe sisters. The idea of Momo’s (not blood relative) sister’s core literally being in Shamiko also lends some credence to this interpretation. 

Do I think they’re gonna be in a romantic relationship by the end of this? Probably not. But that doesn’t necessarily mean this is trashy gay baiting. I think it being up to interpretation is fine when it’s backed up by good writing. And here it absolutely is. And even though I made the point that you could see it as unromantic, I just can’t lol. Just to give one example- Shamiko learns about the vassal contract (aka demon marriage) that her Mom and Dad went through and then immediately goes to Momo and says she should be her vassal. That scene has very obvious romantic intention and you cannot deny it. And this moment is not just some one-off thing to get the yuri fans going again, the idea of Momo becoming Shamiko's vassal is very important going forward from there.

I love these two so much as a couple. They have hilarious back and forths, their personalities mesh very well, we see their growing understanding of each other, they can be adorably possessive at times, there's is just so much endearing and charming about their dynamic. I finally understood how people who are super into a ship feel. 

All of the characters are at least enjoyable in some way, but the heart of the show is the main duo. And the show never really tries to go against that. If you don’t ship Shamiko and Momo that's fine, but to me it never really presents anyone else as super shippable other than Mikan, and It's very clear that isn't something the show itself is pushing. 

To quickly go on about other core characters- Lilith is really great, she is really cute and has a lot of funny jokes. And later on she ends up spending less time being the butt of jokes and is genuinely very helpful. Ryo is cute and her relationship with her sister is super wholesome, Mikan is really great and gets a lot of personality and more to do S2 onwards, Shamiko’s mom has some funny moments and has an interesting role, Anri is funny and a good goofball friend, Lico is a funny addition who grew on me a lot, Shirosawa has some funny moments and works as a straight man to Lico’s shenanigans (as well as being the only male character in the show), Sion was my least favorite at first but she also gets a lot to do later and gets more characterization than just “occult + science girl”. 

DGND has a much larger and overarching story than most cute wholesome shows do. And it’s written very well. It seems like this would be a mostly episodic cute event of the week kind of story, but its got a heavy story and complete continuity. Story details are spread out well, dripped in between various normal moments in the show. There are constantly little hints being thrown around about the history and background elements. A lot of things that initially seem like just gags actually end up being relevant to a later scene or the overall story. There are a lot of visual details that end up being used later. The story resonates very strongly because the characters are deeply involved in it. A simple story for this simply could’ve been “an evil threat enters the peaceful town and Shamiko and crew need to stop it” with some random villain. Instead, everyone is relevant. Shamiko’s father is involved, Momo’s sister is involved, Shamiko being in the hospital is involved. The town and the characters in it really feel like they have history, and that history is very important to them and the story. And the story does have a lot of dark elements to it. I really like how this very positive and upbeat series has these serious and dark accents that help to balance it out. It makes it more engrossing. It's a very good mix of goofy with enough dark and dramatic elements to make you pause and think seriously about what is going on. The show manages to have plenty of simple episodic bits where it's just the characters being cute and having fun, but not too often or lacking little bits that remind you that there's a serious story and deeper issues. The story generally just continues being interesting and engaging, it never really dips. There are lots of mysteries that you really want to know the answers to. 

One moment I like from episode 12 is when Shamiko, Momo and Lilith are talking about Shamiko becoming her vassal.

This just seems like a joke in the moment since they are calling out how Momo is much more like a Demon and should fall to darkness by becoming Shamiko's vassal. Later on this is exactly what happens, despite Momo declining becoming her vassal. But even if you did immediately think this is foreshadowing, when it does come back up it's not exactly how or when you would expect it. So, it's interesting and surprising whether you assumed its foreshadowing or not. This is just one of many moments and a more direct one where something you expect to just be a joke ends up being an important detail later that gets revisited.

A truly unique aspect of the town is how demons and magical girls are set up to not interact with each other. That is in order to apparently keep the peace. Shamiko is able to transcend this because she has Sakura’s core. So she is the only one who can unite all the magical people in the town in order to figure things out and protect the town. I really like this detail. 

To compare DGND to another one of my favorite series, the town of DGND feels similar to Morioh of Jojo part 4. Over time we spend so much time getting to know different places and people in it that it grows into a place that you can believe exists. You see all the moving parts and areas that make it function. You can imagine where people go and what they do outside of what's directly on screen. This is what is required to make a fully realized setting, and as a result makes the story very engrossing. Reaching this should be the main goal of a series that has a static setting, and I feel both these shows excel at this.

There is so much well written slow growth in the series. Shamiko and Momo opening up to each other, Shamiko growing more capable, Lilith being able to interact more, the characters learning about the history of the town. It's very satisfying and feels natural. Its distributed very well. 

Where many stories rely on big lore dumps, DGND never has this problem because of how well details are parceled throughout the series. Momo starts out as a very taciturn character you don’t know much about. Momo never goes on some long rant about her entire sad backstory in one moment. That isn’t necessary because if you pay attention during the dialogue, you can get all of it in a more natural way. As it comes out organically through her conversations with Shamiko and other characters and when the story actually demands that information. She doesn’t need to directly say that she is depressed because you can figure that out from how she talks and acts in little moments. She doesn’t need to directly say why she is not an active magical girl anymore because you can figure out that bad things went down from little moments in her conversations. The writing is not lazy and does not treat the viewer like they are dumb. It gives you the opportunity to speculate and figure things out yourself, then later when it makes sense for the characters to be direct, they clarify things. 

Putting great writing aside for just a moment, DGND is SO CUTE AND WHOLESOME. So many moments of the characters just getting along and having fun together that are super endearing. This show is just so charming and makes you smile. 

DGND is also very funny. Shamiko and Momo’s report is hilarious, especially at the beginning when they’re more at odds. There’s lots of silly weird gags, like puns and random goofy things. All over you can see little visual gags, like text on an object or a goofy item. DGND has a openly goofy tone that it presents confidently. One recurring joke that's really funny is how all the normal people react tamely to all the magical stuff that goes on. There’s a good mix of different kinds of jokes. There are also lots of gags parodying magical girls. I mentioned how I like how it has the negative perspective of magical girls to balance the positive aspects. The show continues to be very balanced by having magical girl parody as well as unironically cool magical girl things (mainly the transformations). It does its silly moments in good ways. Its goofy but doesn’t do it too much and make it feel like its random just for the sake of it. The anime mixes goofiness and story perfectly. I love the tone of this series so much. 

There isn’t exactly a ton of serious life messages, but there’s nice stuff about societal expectations and getting along with people. When it comes to the magical society, it's very clearly anti segregation and anti-stereotyping based on race. 

This show has the philosophy of “finding joy in the little things” that you see a lot in Japanese media. Such as the very poor Shamiko family still remaining happy. I’ve always vibed with this perspective and like how it's portrayed here. 

DGND is not the best-looking show visually in the animation department, but it is great where it matters, and the weaker parts are often played as a strength. The art is generally very good but the animation is very limited. But especially in season 1 the limited visuals are played very well. Whether it's the magical transformations still looking very good or using limited animation to do funny gags (like the EEEHHH gif you probably saw even if you did not watch the show when it first came out where they just wiggle around the static image). Imo the limited animation really doesn’t hurt the viewing experience. And it gets better in S2. All the magical transformations are really good. I think the coloring in particular for the anime are very nice. 

And there’s one visual aspect of DGND that takes a lot of extra effort, which is the character designs. One visually distinct thing that elevates DGND above a lot of anime is the number of outfits the main characters have. It adds so much more personality. They feel so much more alive because it feels like they actually have a closet full of clothes. There is so much more effort put into the character design. So many series just have the characters in a singular outfit 99% of the time. Which is understandable because that's easier to draw and replicate. But it can make them feel more like a character that only exists for that singular thing. Characters only shown in combat outfits are hard to imagine in another scenario when they aren't on the battlefield. With school uniforms it's hard to imagine then without them. But with DGND the number of outfits we get for the characters make it easier to imagine them in a variety of situations. They feel like they have lives because they have all the outfits they would for people who have normal lives. Sometimes shows feel like time stops in between what we as the audience see, like the characters don’t have lives outside of what we see. But DGND in multiple ways avoids this issue due to its character designs and other details. This is an incredibly important point to me. I absolutely love this aspect of the show and wish more shows did this. I have a lot more respect for the art of the show because of this point. 

Another character design aspect that is done very well is Shamiko’s tail. Her tail is incredibly expressive and constantly moving and changing. It portrays a lot of her emotions and is a thing for us and also the characters in the show to react to. I love the characters, primarily Momo, reacting to Shamiko’s tail expressions. It really shows how Momo pays attention to Shamiko and makes the characters feel like they have more spacial awareness. Bring that up because I feel sometimes shows can make characters appear to only see or hear what the writing allows them to in a questionable way. Verbal example of this is when a character says half a sentence before getting cut off, and everyone acts like they heard nothing at all. The anime portrays the tail well, and further makes Shamiko a very expressive and an interesting character to watch. Which is very important for a main character. 

While there can be limited animation it still succeeds at making the characters be very expressive. There are lots of great faces.

I also like all of the openings and endings. One thing nice about them is that they don’t directly spoil anything like many openings tend to but do have little things that can make you go “oh i know what that creature is” or “I get that now!”. 

Now to the sound design, which is immaculate. The anime has the best sound effects of anything I’ve watched. There are so many great goofy sound effects that add to the character's reactions. My favorite has to be the train whistle toy used when Shamiko or Lilith is angry. The sound effects further add to how expressive the characters feel. The creators clearly had a ton of fun doing the sound design and it comes through. A fun goofy soundtrack for a fun and goofy show. 

The music is also very good as a whole. I usually don’t pay a ton of attention to background music but I’m obsessed with DGND so I do here. I think the BGM fits well with the setting. They sound very magical and fantastical while also sounding modern. It's very peppy and can get high energy with Shamiko’s strong reactions, while also being very low during the slower moments. And sad when it needs to. I’m not great at describing good music since I’m not a huge fan of music, so I’ll just say it's far above average in my opinion. My favorite track is probably Shamiko’s transformation theme. 

The voice acting (just talking about the Japanese voice actors, i haven’t seen a lot of the eng dub) is super good. Of course, Konomi Kohara is absolutely amazing as Shamiko. She is the master of cute anime girl noises and gives so much energy in her performance. She brings out Shamiko’s wide range of emotions and mannerisms extremely well. Momo’s voice acting is also extremely good, the soft but dull voice perfectly fits Momo’s character. All around the voice acting is excellent but the main two really have their personalities on full display from the voice acting. 

When it comes to anime vs manga, I do like the manga. But the voice acting, soundtrack and anime additions add so much for me. I have to recommend the anime over the manga. But if you are more sensitive to the anime girl noises type of thing and find it annoying, you will likely enjoy the manga more. 

—---Here’s a good spot if you are skipping to the end—----

Each individual aspect of the show is strong. The characters and the world are very dense and endearing with great drama and emotion behind them. If you are into light romances, you will very much adore the sweet relationship between Shamiko and Momo. If you enjoy light fantasy then I feel DGND provides a unique world with interesting interpretation of magical girls and demons. If you just like comedies, DGND will keep you laughing constantly with its silly gags. If you enjoy a detailed story that builds over time, you should greatly enjoy the story here. If you just want girls doing cute and wholesome things there’s plenty of it. I really do recommend this series to anyone. 

I absolutely adore this series, it's very close to my heart. It’s in my top favorites and I consider it my comfort show. Fanart of DGND never fails to make me feel a little happier. I love this goofy world and its endearing characters. I love the complex and constantly developing story. I love the wholesomeness with dark flavors behind it. 

I had a ton of fun writing this one! It brought me a lot of joy getting back into the nitty gritty of this series. I wrote a ton for this and spent way more time on it than my other posts so far. Hopefully it wasn’t too much messier than the others in terms of formatting, separation etc. It’s so long and I didn’t want to spend a ton more time just doing minor edits lol. But I truly did put a lot into this one, it deserves it! I really tried to put down anything I thought of well and remove very little. I could go on even more if I let myself, but I do not want to force it and have this take a long time. I've written enough, I'm satisfied.

Also if you want to hear more gushing about this show and get that episode by episode, I highly recommend Anime Slushie’s YouTube videos on DGND. I like their discussions on the show. And re-listening to them helped me to get the writing juices flowing. If we get a season 3 you better believe I’ll be doing episode by episode posts where I go into detail on everything. 

I want to end this by wishing the absolute best to Izumo Ito, the author of DGND who has been combating health issues. Thank you for all your hard work on this amazing series! Thanks for reading! Please check out Demon Girl Next Door / Machikado Mazoku! And please give us season 3.

#anime #review #manga #demon girl next door #machikado mazoku #blog

[raayllum]

Now, TDP doesn’t do this often, but occasionally they will overload character dynamic(s) with like, enough overt symbolism / association in order to centralize a third character’s arc. Think Janai with Amaya and Karim in S4. Karim represents Janai’s uncertainty, pointing out some of the inner thoughts she’d rather ignore and her people’s rising ‘concerns’ shown through dialogue. We also see this more discreetly with scenes like Janai taking off her crown as soon as Karim is in frame, and she spells this out for us in 4x09: “But I am uncertain, I am afraid. That’s why I thought maybe you and I... we could leave. Go live peacefully in Katolis. At least Karim would lead the people with some kind of certainty.” 

Karim represents one path she can choose, the arguably easier, safer path she could choose. And Amaya doesn’t quite represent the other one as clear cut (S4 requires some of her own steadfastness to fade in order for her to grow, too) she is the main proponent as she signs, “Forget Karim. This is not about him. What life do you want?” and expresses that Janai doesn’t have to choose between a life with her and a life as queen: “Just have two cakes.” 

With that in mind, let’s talk about 

Aaravos and Rayla as Callum’s Two Paths in S4 Beyond (+ Bonus Claudia in S2)

Season 4 takes literally every chance it has to emphasize Aaravos and Rayla’s thematic opposition of each other in Callum’s life, as well as the according parallels that come with it (down to having two separate scenes in which people think he’s going to talk or is talking about Rayla, and he’s actually discussing Aaravos). Callum is “the best thing [she] ever had.” He’s Aaravos’ “favourite,” a human mage tainted by darkness like all the others he’s dried up over the years. Rayla herself is the one to primarily identify this usage. Her own description of Callum in the past has also mirrored this one (minus the magic). 

Z: Aaravos could offer them access to the great mysteries of the universe. [...] Yes, mages were his prey.

She is also the one whose arrival turns Callum away from the mirror - away from the darkness - and toward the light. I don’t think I have to explain the symbolism too much on that one, especially not with Rayla’s letter also in mind: “Making hard choices and going to dark places is an act of love. It’s a gift. So please, let me give you this gift, Callum. Stay safe, and stay in the light” as well as Callum’s reflections from the S2 novelization in 2x08: “What sort of primal could glow in this dark place?”

However, if Rayla is the Light to Aaravos’ darkness (ignoring the cube on her shoulder for a second), what does that tangibly mean? Well luckily, 4x07 also spells this out for us pretty directly in tandem with 4x04. Rayla is the first to react to Callum’s possession, gasping; she’s the one who reaches out to Callum when he goes on his knees, backing down when his eyes are black in shock; she’s also the one who catches him once the possession fades. “Already tainted by darkness,” Aaravos claims, gloating over his control both literally in the present and in the future, “and destined to play right into my hands.” Aaravos is confident he’s going to win the game he’s playing. 

Callum reiterates this in 4x05 to Ezran and in 4x07 to Rayla.

C: You know, when he took control of me and used my whole body like a puppet? [...] When Aaravos possessed me at the Storm Spire, I felt so weak and out of control. I was his puppet. I’m not afraid that he’ll hurt me. 

(Perpetually screaming about the way it cuts back to Rayla solely when there’s the “Or hurt people I care about” line, but moving on.) 

So Aaravos represents Control and a pre-chosen Destiny. These things are terrifying to Callum, who has always prioritized and chased after strengthening his capacity to choose - and to choose how he contributes. Luckily, Rayla likewise spells this out and reminds Callum of it as well. If Rayla is his light, she represents his Agency. 

Not without her faltering (leaving in TTM and leaving him behind in other occasions) but agency and choice is largely what she’s always encouraged for Callum, down to agreeing to get his cube in 1x04 and being the first one to see his potential as a mage in the first place, which Callum acknowledges. 

This is why it’s so important that she rejects his request first hand in 4x07. Callum is so scared he’s trying to remove agency from his own hands by putting it (and his life and death) into hers, but that’s just going to exacerbate the problem. Rayla keeps on reminding him that his agency is in his own hands and how strongly he used to believe that: “Callum, you’re the ‘destiny is a book you write yourself’ guy.” And Callum to his credit tries to follow through on her advice by dropping the Key of Aaravos into the lava; he’s just currently unable to go through with it / to let go of it. 

And I also think it’s entirely intentional that Rayla is the one he’s asking to do this for. Not only in the layers it gives their interpersonal dynamic and understanding of each other, but specifically in the way it’s deliberate for future plot lines, set up, and payoff: if the crew wanted to, they could’ve had Ezran go with Rayla in 4x05, leaving Callum and Soren alone. Callum could’ve asked Soren, a crownguard sworn to protect Ezran and who has done so even when it means killing his family, to kill him instead, but Callum didn’t. The crew didn’t. They chose to orchestrate it like this. 

And, not to mention, they’ve done similar things with Rayla and Callum like this before, all the way back in S2. 

Claudia and Dark Magic

Now, S2 and S4 are very similar in the emotional arcs they give the bulk of the cast, especially Claudia and Callum in particular. Hardly anyone’s emotional arcs (outside of Callum’s sky arcanum) are resolved in S2, merely they are built upon and then driven further to provide a broadening and resolution (for now) in S3. I expect S5 to follow a similar pattern of resolving quite a few things, even if it will leave others disastrously open ended (especially if Aaravos gets out by the end of S5). 

But I’m getting off topic. Claudia in S2 very much represents one path Callum could take: he could choose to go home and sacrifice the mission, which he cites as being “the hardest thing we’ve ever done” as well as “the most important thing we’ll ever do”. He’s just learnt that primal magic without a primal stone is a nigh impossible path for him, and so Claudia offers her friend an alternative, encouraging his path as a mage in the worst way.

Callum returns to the dark magic book, literally and metaphorically, in 2x07. Seeing an old sketch of Claudia with her tome is what sparks the idea that dark magic is how he can help save Rayla in 2x07 (“I want to go down there with you and be the heroes who stop all the fighting, but I can’t do that! I can’t do anything”) in the wake of feeling helpless/useless. Then he uses her book outright to complete the spell. What he wasn’t willing to do for himself or his own ends, he’s willing to do to protect a loved one.

While, just like in 4x02, Rayla literally turns Callum away from his former path / friend / love interest. This is her mirroring Callum’s own choice of choosing her over Claudia - both in who to ultimately trust when it came down to the wire, but even as a future romantic partner. Not only in the scene on Phoe-Phoe in 2x03

but also literally within the pages of his sketchbook and future spellbook that, as stated, lead to the decision of him doing dark magic in the first place. Rayla, despite being a representation by and large of Callum’s path as a primal mage, is the hinge that causes him to chase it down on her behalf anyway and in spite of the fact he knows she would hate it.

By the end of S2, specifically 2x08 The Book of Destiny, it seems pretty clear that Callum’s has firmly shut down a more active pursuit of dark magic, with his infamous, “No, I get to choose who I want to be! Destiny is a book you write yourself!” and his subsequent connection to the Sky arcanum. Although 2x08 does give hints that Callum’s journey with dark magic and pre-written destinies is perhaps not entirely laid to rest, as it features these shots, I might add:

Paths Converging

Okay, so Callum was given choices represented by Claudia and Rayla in S2, refusing the temptation and possibility of being a dark mage, and thereby subsequently choosing Rayla. Now he’s being given two paths - one in light and one in shadow - in S4.

But without the same merits of temptation (at least for now) which is probably why Aaravos outright possessed him to begin with; Callum may need a different manipulation playbook than Aaravos’ other pawns. Okay, great? What does this all mean, though? Or least, what could it possibly mean?

Remember how I said Aaravos and Rayla are put in thematic opposition to one another for Callum in S4? Yeah - here’s where the symbolism gets a bit muddled, because Rayla shows up with the cube of Aaravos on her shoulder, glowing and pointing downward. In the first 3 seasons, the Key was more often shown with the Star primal at various angles, not necessarily right side up (the primal symbol itself) or upside down (Aaravos’ symbol). But that changes at certain key moments, specifically once the Key is aligned with Aaravos, and how all the runes are shown to be upside down in the dark magic dream. 

If Rayla showing up is truly meant to just be agency, then why have the cube - the same cube featured in Callum’s 4x04 intro, directly linking it to Aaravos’ control of Callum in some capacity - on her shoulder at all? And even if you’re like “well, they wanted to make sure you’d notice Stella making it glow,” the cuddlemonkey could’ve picked it up and not gone directly to Rayla’s shoulder, disassembling the shot. Or they could’ve, y’know, had Rayla with the cube on her shoulder right side - agency side - up. But they didn’t. 

This goes back to the Light and Dark dichotomy with both being represented by Aaravos. Dark isn’t always clear cut bad (just look at Claudia’s hair) and light isn’t always clear cut good (the cube flashing a bright light as Callum’s transformation into a literal pawn is completed). A chessboard has both black and white squares. Rayla’s explicit return, as said by Soren, is “kind of good and kind of bad.” Which brings us back to this exchange from the S1 novelization, as always, in which Callum and Rayla discuss moonberries and deathberries:

“So they look identical,” Callum said. “But they might kill you or they might save you.” “Exactly.” Rayla smiled. “Just like me.” 

Again, most of this points to Rayla saving Callum, and given that a large part of her clearly doubts her capacity to save anyone, anymore (“We can’t save everyone, Soren”) in ways that weren’t present in her youth, Rayla saving Callum from Aaravos’ brainwashing - Callum choosing her as his path, literally, over Aaravos, after all this foreshadowing, makes the most straight forward sense. Callum gets to choose and pick his own destiny (her) and Rayla gets to be restored as someone heroic who can save the people she loves (him, and possibly later on her parents). 

Which would be a perfectly happy ending - if we weren’t still on season five of seven. And if season four didn’t have a massive theme of resolving dichotomies, and reconciling dualities. 

Aaravos’ control extending past the ‘resolution’ of the brainwashing plotline would also make sense. There’s more dramatics / more at stake emotionally if Callum is in his right mind and plays into Aaravos’ clutches anyway. Even the awareness of his possible fate from the start, even escaping the brainwashing, wouldn’t be enough to escape his Destiny. It also emphasizes Rayla’s loss. She did everything she could to possibly protect him, including leaving and hurting for two years, and then she shows up right in time to watch herself be helpless to protect him all over again. How’s that for tragic?

Which is to say: I don’t think, ultimately for the next arc of the story, that choosing Rayla or Aaravos is mutually exclusive. I think whether it’ll be what leads Callum to Aaravos’ possession, or what follows after it, Rayla will be what causes Callum to fall (at least temporarily) into his clutches or carrying out his plans. Kill you or save you. Light and dark. Callum refused dark magic until he felt like he was backed into a corner in S2, and going to lose her. Callum is also likely going to almost kill her and his friends. If Rayla is surviving that, and saving him, why wouldn’t he also be saving her?

Two cakes, where you save and free the person you love more than anyone alongside the person you hate and fear the most, and what’s worse, is that you both simultaneously gave him the tools he needed to do exactly this all along. 

#rayllum #devil and the lovers #the key of aaravos #tdp #the dragon prince #theme: destiny #where can i put it down? #mutual salvation theory #i need you to kill me #s4 #s2 #arc 1 #arc 2 #multi #tdp callum #analysis series #analysis #parallels #4x02 #4x04 #4x07 #2x02 #2x07 #popped off with this one i think #we're just gonna pretend this is coherent and move on #and i know i've repeated probably all these points before but #THEY'RE JUST SO GOOD. AND LOUD #AND AAH #tdp meta #cube hostage exchange theory

[fiapple]

something i love about huntress (1989) is just how succintly its opening scene builds up helena as a character & the overall themes of her narrative.

the comic opens on western society’s prototypical idea of a victim, a young white woman (that fact having its own horrid political history should be acknowledged)- fashionable for her era- walking alone at night, and being followed by a man with a knife.

Immediately, the scene visually cuts between the young woman & helena, tying them together in the eyes of the audience. it then plays out as so:

Huntress (1989) #1 by Joey Cavalier & Joe Staton

Both through the very explicit paralleling of the two women, and the lamp-shading thereof on the writer's part within the scene itself, helena is framed within the eyes of the audience as someone who herself has once been a victim. the creative team presents you with the one most archetypal examples of a victim they possibly could, though, again, the problems within the history of that fact can't be ignored either- one that for all its commonplace is still powerless and meek as ever, and said "our hero has once been her."

"I knew somebody with a name like that... a long time ago..."

By allowing the audience access information so early on, the creative team is quickly able to position helena as existent within a dichotomy of the struggle between the ongoing disempowerment of trauma, and the fight to regain one's sense of power thereafter, as seen through the lens of non-linear trauma recovery. It is planting the seeds of what will grow to be a major theme in helena's arc.

Additionally, it very quickly posits helena as a character who is, in part, motivated by the phantom of her own vicitimization. She is very quickly suggested to the audience to be a character that is doing this- doing all she can to fight, stave off, prevent acts of violence- as a form of penance both to herself and to the world for the moments in her own life in which she was unable to do so. It is put into the mind of the reader that she is followed by the wraith of her own suffering, and of knowing that the weight of trauma is one that others can also be forced to bear.

This is further reinforced by the immediate narrative focus the collaborators chose to place on helena as a figure of compassion. from her first scene in main canon, her focal point is the victim, so much so that when choosing to return to the scene to comfort the young woman, she is able to notice something as innocuous as a wallet and return it. Moreover, due to its atypical nature in the context of comics, the 'alley-way victim' being named with such a sense of gravity in this scene takes on an added layer of importance besides the aforementioned. The victim is humanized, emphasizing their centering in helena's concious motives. To further compound this, the first time we ever see helena speak on-panel is when she chooses to comfort this young woman. her words, her actions, her passion are all motivated by her own needs & wounds, yes- but the victim, the person being hurt, that is what is at the centre of them. if further evidence were required, one may even point to the fact that the first face we see at all is that of the victim's.

And, emphasizing the overall themes present within the introduction to an even more extreme extent, is the nature of the visual story-telling taking place on pages 4 & 5.

Page 4 begins with helena fighting the perp, her back turned away from the audience, but ends with her walking toward us, body language confident. This draws our attention both to helena's capacity to be imposing, to inhabit the position of the unknown in order to illicate fear, and to helena's individual power as a character.

Conversely, the first time we see helena on page 5, when her face is finally revealed to the audience, she is talking to the victim. It ends with her back to the audience, standing as if fixed in her position, taking up fairly equal panel space with her fellow as she watches helena k. walk off, and falls into a memory. this places the audience's focus on the fact that helena b. is just as, if not more so, consumed by her victimhood as her counterpart.

(this also sets up the following scene, in which we are given helena's backstory, exceedingly well btw)

Moreover, the visual choice to hide her face temporarily gives helena a sense of being quite guarded as a person, which will be expanded upon later, and shows that the dedication to character building started very early-on for Stanton & Cavalieri, which i really appreciate.

From the first breath of life given to her story, helena is deliciously presented as a byronic heroine- an unusual type of female character to see at all, let alone in comics- and it is done through focus on her agency as a character & her dominating sense of compassion for others.

Truly, I adore beyond my heart’s capacity just how much Staton & Cavalieri chose to dedicate their opening to showing just how much Helena is a character who finds the power to find personal redemption, empowerment, & rebirth- as violent and bloody as that rebirth may grow to be- in the ability she has to do good unto others, to try to allow them to retain the innocence that was taken from her by force & the closure she was denied. They put such energy into making it clear that she is a character so very deeply driven by a sense of compassion, one so consuming it may as well be keeping her heart in chains, and they portray it as equally served by her violence as tender-heartedness. it’s enrapturing, it’s enchanting. like, really, heart’s honour, i live for it.

#it really just is an excellent feat of teamwork & storytelling on part of staton & cavalieri #helena bertinelli #helena & trauma #joey cavalieri #joe staton #huntress v.1 #huntress (1989) #dc #this used to be a tag #gothamverse #dc meta #helena bertinelli meta #batfam meta #batcomics meta

[animehouse-moe]

Call of The Night Volume 13: The Sins of The Mother

Well, here we stand again. In awe of Kotoyama's ability. This started out as a romance manga between a human and a vampire, trying to understand what love is. I mean, that's still sorta the core to it, but it's grown to be so much more, to reach even greater heights, to dive even deeper into what is love? (baby don't hurt me). So of course, there's a mountain of content to talk about with this volume, and I really can't wait to get into it.

Kiku Hoshimi, an enigmatic character that only gets more and more inscrutable. An incredible pairing for Mahiru, in the written sense. Two people devoid of love in different ways, trying to fill those gaps with something that isn't real for either of them.

Mahiru, a young boy that could only ever be his older brother in his family's eyes. He was always missing something, always had a missing piece that made him feel different than those around him.

Kiku, a vampire that's unable to love. Desperate to find a way to reciprocate that feeling, she turns person after person, abandoning them in search of the one that she'll certainly love.

Together, they form an incredibly toxic relationship where Kiku, much like with all her other offspring, manipulates them into loving her. Mahiru looks to her for the answer, for the void that his mother has left in his heart. And Kiku is all to eager to plug that gaping hole with herself. To force her way into Mahiru's life, to take control of him by the heartstrings and bend him to her desires.

She rips him away from his mother, tramples all over her relationship with her son. She whispers sweet nothings into Mahiru's ear to stop him from doubting himself, to stop him from finding a way to exist on his own. She causes him to lash out, to disappear and deny the support and help of his friends. Because in the end, they don't matter to Mahiru. His past and trauma occupy a far greater space in his heart, a far more central piece to himself.

It's an incredible storyline that digs deep into the concept of love, motherly love, even. What children themselves desire of it to grow and become independent, and how parents can believe that a child is what makes them whole. That having someone to love that is yours will provide you with a sense of self and happiness.

And it's not just Kiku that we see in this volume in terms of mothers, we finally get to see Ko's own mother. A great move from a written perspective, it sets the stage for Ko to go through his own challenges in regards to parents, providing both parity and a dichotomy to Mahiru's experience. Where Mahiru is let loose by his own mother, Ko's appears to tighten the reigns.

And just to tie a neat knot on the concept of mothers, Azami's relationship with Kiku, and the subtitle of this post. The relationship between parent and child in Call of The Night is decidedly unique because they can also be considered "lovers" to some degree. It's very interesting in that sense because it blurs the lines between the typical behavior of each role and turns it into something incredibly fluid. Anyways, to the point. Azami burdens himself with the sins of his parent, Kiku. It's a very typical thing to do, and holds somewhat different meanings from both perspectives in Call of The Night. As Kiku's "lover", it's his duty to kill the woman that he's allowed to do what she has, and as her son, the burden of her sins falls to him. So, in one capacity he chooses to shoulder the burden, but in the other it's forced upon him. In a way, it shows that while Azami is undeniably Kiku's offspring, he chooses to accept the fact that he was at one point her lover (or at the minimum in love with her).

Now, onto the cool stuff! Kotoyama's art. Incredible, very much some incredible work. If you were to pick a concept to define this volume's approach, it'd be depth. So much of the layouts and character blocking aim to present a 3d perspective from a 2d plane, and it looks so insanely good.

Even just simple panels are approached in an incredibly unique way.

And then there's Kotoyama's penchant for perspective, which plays wonderfully with the effort placed in depicting depth in this volume.

All of these sequences just feel so alive. The character acting is really incredible in that sense. It feels like, rather than trying to depict a moment, we're given a snapshot of its flow. A picture taken as the characters move around and act out their story. It's a hard thing to really explain, but you can spot good character acting a mile away in manga.

And of course that character acting extends to the action. While it's not really choreography focused, you can undeniably feel the flow of the fights from Kotoyama's depiction of them. They most certainly focus on impact before movement, but it still reads so incredibly well.

Call of The Night isn't a dark horse with English audiences by any means, it's certainly not a flop or a niche title. But I'll be damned if it hasn't gotten near the attention and praise that it deserves. In terms of both action and romance series (as independent entries), Call of The Night completely trounces the average title out there, and ranks among the top series being published in English for each category. From start to finish, Kotayama doesn't waste a page, a panel, even a pen stroke through this volume, and delivers incredible work on a series that everyone (author included) doubted could go the distance.

#call of the night #yofukashi no uta #よふかしのうた #nazuna nanakusa #ko yamori #akira asai #anko uguisu #manga recommendation #manga reccs #manga review #anime and manga #manga #kiku hoshimi #mahiru seki #azami

[horizon-verizon]

I’ve always disliked Rhaena. She was a terrible, neglectful mother to her daughter and an abusive, cheating wife to Androw Farman.

*EDITED POST* (1/10/24)

Response to this post HERE.

The same guy who killed what seems to be a teenage girl because his wife came to hate him and wouldn't allow him to accrue more power or esteem through her position yet also wanted her to become politically subordinate to her out of jealousy and a fragile ego? Sure, let's go through this.

blankwhiteshield says this:

You can have an irredeemable and evil character that the patriarchy still suppresses and affects the psychology of immensely, rendering her a bigger monster. The commentary on the destructive capacity of static social constructs is not lost as a result. A character can turn into the devil of the story due to a world that ceaselessly strips her of her humanity, as well as as a result of the choices she actively makes.

And Rhaena was never actually evil or abusive or anything like these things BEFORE she's forced to marry Maegor, etc.

Her History (and a Pseudo-Summary of Later Explanations)

I perceive Rhaena to have been sensitive in her youth and then grew more bitter from the slights & abuses against her. The hurt becomes the hurter. It started as ner needing to be away from people towards the end of her life, especially when they expressed they didn't want her around and they had been with her intimately (romantic, familial, or platonic).

Though she started shy and always preferred to be either alone or with close friends, it is that reservedness that makes her value her bonds with a select group of people that makes their dismissals or betrayals hurt that much worse. Thus her lashing out, her brooding, her solitary runs, and her cold "bloodthirstiness" against Androw after she realizes he killed all her remaining friends. All ways for her to collect her perenially crushed dignity.

She marries Androw just to be close to Elissa and she never mistreats Androw until Elissa leaves. Then she lashes out.

She ticks off 3 of 8 behaviors of emotional abuse (in italics):

threats

insults

constant monitoring

excessive jealousy

manipulation

humiliation & ridiculing

intimidation

dismissiveness

And we know that it would have continued. The details we get, she:

continued to accuse/suspect him of helping Elissa run away and steal her dragon eggs

said that the "wrong Farman" ran away

laughed after her ladies laughed when he requested to replace a man named Bullock as the garrison commander

mocked him when she said how he couldn't stay on a dragon even if he tried after he declared they'd go together to the dying Alyssa

...but does this merit femicide and killing kids for your own growing self-loathing? (Reminder, femicide is different from just killing a woman. Femicide is killing a person because they are a woman and you wish to display dominance in destroying a woman & instilling their inferiority or subservient position to oneself, to punish her for straying from that role. Again, I explain how Androw falls under a femicidal person.)

Of course, Elissa left bc Rhaena already was in her state of bitterness and to kickstart her sailor-captain-adventurer dreams. However, if we argue that Rhaena shouldn't have put down a grown man's self-esteem and hurt both her lover & daughter so she could feel more in control...shouldn't we hold Androw Farman accountable for his crimes in response to those put-downs?

I think that the strength of Rhaena's writing is how human she is and is allowed to be by the narrative while showcasing how she pulled others into her misery with no coddling nor outright subtextual disgust.

In Rhaena, we get the raised question of what do we do with a victim who's BOTH fallen into darkness and then faces more of the similar thing they resented or has pushed them into the darkness? We also see the beginnings and consequences of female Targ abuse. I think we can appreciate Rhaena as a layered female character with many faults developed from abuses or ignoring those abuses, exacerbated over time while being the center of a story within a major one. Something we don't get often enough for women.

In Rhaena, we're getting a very detailed look into non-ideal motherhood, womanhood, and victimhood--from her and those she hurt.

She clearly has loyalty to her own family and house, cares about her kids as a mother (look below), but also seeks out any sort of compensation or some sort of justice for the suffering and sidelining that came from being a woman, and a woman in the wrong place of history AND being a female Targ.

She is quite literally our first account of what being a female Targaryen princess/royal family member is like (Alyssa Velaryon does not grow up royal or a Targ). She foreshadows & heralds the exclusionary/oppressive fates of Targ women, especially under war, and shows us the one way a woman (does not or cannot) deal with the fallout & decisions of others.

(Check out the quote way below of her criticizing her mother's decision to marry Rogar despite Rogar having abandoned Aegon when he battled Maegor above the God's Eye).

We remember that her brother Aegon was named heir over her despite her being the oldest child of Alyssa & Aenys. She did not complain or protest at this because she grew up in this patriarchal society and lived more or less privileged, surrounded by a lot of so-s-so--to great female friends as a princess and expecting to become Queen Consort one day, with the new family she grew with said husband. She is also the one to give her siblings Jaehaerys and Alysanne the eggs of the dragons they have while they are still in their cradles.

That all ends with her uncle usurping her husband, which is ironic because, again, she is the oldest AND she wanted to leave to protect their twins. So we should understand that at one point she came to the idea that her life could have been totally different if she had been Queen/heir apparent, as a succession crisis still occurred.

Then she's forced to marry that same uncle who she probably believes betrayed not only his rightful king but his entire family through the murder of her brother-husband, the "marriage", threatening her daughters, and killing her brother (Viserys). And of course, Maegor would have raped her through the entirety of their forced marriage. Later on, her mother aids Jaehaerys in further passing her over for another son--yes partly for the survival of all her surviving kids, but again it's not so much Alyssa as much as the passing over after all Rhaena was forced to give up (below). Alyssa and Rogar explicitly planned against the possibility of her becoming a regent for one of her daughters (as they both were thought as Aegon's heirs) ["The Year of the Three Brides -- 49 A.C."]:

I don't know if she, in real-time, understood that this was the reasoning behind Rogar & Alyssa's thinking, but either way, she looks like she observed that she was being treated as more of a threat than someone Alyssa gave birth to and someone who would have done anything for her family. Her claim became the thing her family used against her. And she became more and more resentful of the exclusion and "subtle" betrayals/sidelining.

And was it truly Alyssa's fear, or Rogar's, that Rhaena would come back to wrest power through her daughter? Who is the one to try to kidnap Rhaella and force her to "confess" that she is Aerea after he failed to get Aerea or convince the others to back his plans to usurp Jaehaerys? Rogar!

More likely, he convinced Alyssa that this was the case so he'd be more in control and isolate/distance Rhaena from her family. She saw through him before anyone else! ("Prince into King"):

Her and Jaehaerys, his making it clear that she would not gain Dragonstone based on her own autonomous claim to the throne but on his permission as king--have their own sort of betrayal, even though he had his own pressures to show others his strength and authority he could be a "tough but fair" king. Again, she didn't ask for the throne, but the thing that would be given to who is the next in line to the throne.

At this point, Aerea was Jaehaery's heir presumptive (not "apparent"). Jaehaerys had no children and Rhaena had just come from the machinations of the Lannisters--her moving into Dragonstone and being recognized as one with a claim would have given her more power against those seeking to use her. Plus, again, her daughter was considered Jae's heir. Hence, when Jae took that last dignity/remnant of something that could-have-been from Rhaena, she sought to claim back her own daughter...especially since she might have known that Jae would just eventually sideline Aerea if/once he had kids. (From her perspective)

Jaehaerys took her asking for Dragonstone as an indirect challenge to himself (not that she was opposing him so much as her doing it at all reminds others that because she is the eldest of Aenys' children, others around them could advocate or use her despite her being female....just as Rogar tried to when he tried to usurp Jaehaerys), and I think Rhaena was offended by his even thinking to suspect or throw out a hint of accusation. As well as his extra pains to make sure she was his subject and not his equal or peer in the full eyes of everyone. There is where she'd feel humiliated simultaneously.

Yes, Jaehaerys was trying to solidify his place in a time when people doubted him right after defeating Maegor, but it is not about him so much as him distrusting her. With her history. Doing it purposefully in front of "outsiders" and potential betrayers (Rogar and the other courtier & nobles) looking for any weaknesses--as if she were not family, as if she weren't the one who gave him his egg as a baby as if she'd actually care enough to try to usurp him. Why not talk to her beforehand, get her into a conversation about their plans going forward so he could broadcast his own control. Thus also strengthening the idea of her symbolic outcast-enemy status to the public. For all Rhaena's self-retreats and brooding, she had much to brood about.

In other words, kinda like Maegor (for it would remind her of Maegor, I think) Jae chose power over family...or really, he was very shortsighted when it came to a problem like this, chose to take advantage of his female relatives while also excluding them from most political decisions and chose the easier, exclusionist way (bc against, he continues this into his death, alienating most of his female family members but also opening the way to the Dance through that exclusion or sidelining).

With Alyssa, his mother becoming his regent and marrying the man who would have usurped him through his connection to Alyssa, I also think that he saw it better for him to consolidate power away from his female relatives bc they could marry men who'd compete with him.

Even with Alysanne, you can see where he reaped the benefit of her intellect, or would have ignored some of her claims and demands if she hadn't been the right kind of insistent (the drinking water of KL).

Her Marriage & Androw's Character

She definitely cheated (if you define cheating as going out for a partner whilst having another on a monogamous relationship despite only marrying them for security), but I don't really feel she should be shamed in the same way we should shame Robert Baratheon, Aegon II & IV, Aerys II, and just ASoIaF men in general for cheating. I do not care that Cersei cheated on Robert multiple times.

Even if Robert didn't abuse Cersei, I wouldn't care about her cheating versus his cheating because Cersei, while she definitely has her ego, cheats to reaffirm the autonomy ignored since childhood AND to try to use her lovers to her own political advantage during her marriage to him. That and how the marriage itself is an arrangement for politics, not for love or intimacy AND women are expected to not practice the same sexual freedoms men do, not even allowed to have their own lovers without ruining their reputations and social value. She also might (and this is a big might) have stayed faithful or devoted to Robert (or at least would feel some guilt in her affairs) if not for his clear preference for Lyanna ANd his philandering throughout their marriage. It comes from a need to have the power men have in her society. Robert cheats because he just feels like it and thinks he's entitled as a man/king. Cersei is from the thought that she should have that kind of power, that entitlement, and though she does not, she will claim it and also do it for her kids' sake....too bad that her classism and cruelty far outstrip her own perception of her capabilities.

The other thing is that Rhaena was very likely a lesbian who could sleep with a man if she was "asked nicely" for politics if the husband was pleasant enough, and/or if it benefited a relative as long as it also didn't ruin her autonomy, esp after Maegor. People of the same sex cannot marry each other even in Dorne, and they can't openly live together as a couple. And if she wasn't lesbian, she'd still be a bisexual woman who got her most important and most positive relationships from those with women. When that happens, romance, sexual desire, and platonic love can and often blur. Especially when there is no safe room to really explore/reflect on those feelings in one's youth or adulthood.

And of course, she fell in love with Elissa and wanted to be close to her.

What exactly could she have done except use marriage as her cover? Yeah, that's unfortunate for Androw, who probably thought that she was in it for him and romance (he wasn't very bright, too), but his feelings don't invalidate or erase the conditions I've described nor do they really compare or level with Rhaena's position as a wlw woman. The condition of entrapment for a woman like Rhaena.

Rhaena says this of why she married Androw ("A Surfeit of Rulers"):

I do not think their marriage was ever a real one, in terms of romance or having a close bond ("Birth, Death, and Betrayal"):

Though they began as pleasant acquaintances, she always had stronger love and care for his sister, not him. Rhaena knew that she'd be pressured into remarrying even after Maegor's death to shore up Jaehaerys' (really Rogar's authority and stake in Jaehaerys' rule) own power through connections to specific families. This is why Rogar was angry when she married without his permission.

He even was already choosing people of his own family to arrange a marriage b/t her and them for his own power! ("The Year of the Three Brides-49 A.C."):

So her rationale & goals in marrying Androw: If she had to be married, she would choose the guy who she thought wouldn't make things difficult and oppressive for her, which includes marrying a guy far beneath her powers and rank PLUS an easygoing guy. Remember how she rails at Rogar for basically consigning her mother, Alyssa Velaryon, to death instead of just being happy with the male child she managed to birth to him before? Her disapproval of Jaehaerys for dismissing her with Dragonstone, his castigation of her threatening Franklyn Farman even though he's the one who told her he would just throw out Aerea if she ever appeared just as he did to her. Maegor's forcing her to marry him and raping her for months, the fear she could have lived with all those months.

She did not marry him to love him nor hurt him intentionally, but she married him to avoid marrying a man who could drag her into heated political conflicts and to be closer to Elissa without it causing too much suspicion/to keep female intimacy without suffering patriarchal violence. Androw was placidly kind (in the beginning and what she thought) and didn't ask as much from her as other noblemen would have. Until later...

Androw became (or failed to hide that internalized envy and inferiority complex) the very sort of man she tried to avoid, incel-like. Here is a quote of him and his justification for killing all her friends ("Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"):

Meanwhile, these are descriptions of Androw as a person both before and a little after his marriage to her:

A lot of emphasis was placed on his:

his lack of really wanting adventure, the opposite of his sister whom Rhaena loved and preferred just as a companion (their incompatibility, not just his inferiority and lack of appeal) -- his incompetence as either a warrior or a "learned" man. going back to the inferiority part, let's be real, how much appeal does a person with no talent NOR any ambition have? If you don't have talent, at least have intelligence or curiosity or ambition. If not the last one, at least some of the others. And he's illiterate so no discussions about stuff they could read, has no hobbies to speak of or that we see. It's not just Rhaena who sees no appeal in him; apart from seeing that he is powerless in Dragonstone bc Rhaena shows her indifference to him, others around Androw have not been his friend or whatever for ALL of his life. Again, he's not that impressive of a person.

And he never seemed to really care or notice this (or expressed such) until people began to really mock and disregard him on these things alone and he was outside of his own birth home, where he'd not really experience people making fun of him probably bc his brother and father would not have allowed it, or he wasn't so much in people's view for them to dwell on his shortcomings.

Mark that part about him spending his time in the room with the Painted Table with the map of Westeros. He started to dream of conquests or those masculinized activities of power and domination.

The women weren't just mocking him without observing a legitimate change in him, as cruel as the book (written by male maesters) tells us they were about it. They were mocking him bc they see him try so hard to grasp power; too obviously try to show he's the "boss", the "man"; for not understanding/accepting who has the real power (Rhaena); AND probably bc they are so used to seeing a man have all the power and are enjoying the reversal, their advantage over him.

While one may think that it's understandable and justified for him to want more respect or power in a place where people constantly denigrate him...what he does to get revenge and get back control doesn't match the wrong(s) and was itself misogyny-motivated AND again, he was already turning to the feudalist hypermasculine ideal of violence against women and children as a way towards "dignity"...something that Aemond will grow up as part of his male, princely entitlement in his own mass/spree murders and subjugation in the riverlands.

Mind you, he decided to kill only the women around Rhaena, not any of those men who the maester said also mocked him.

Here are 2 quotes about that ("Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"):

And this is what he says to her after she is hugging the corpse of her cousin and youngest companion, Lianna Velaryon:

So why is he an incel? Because he feels he is entitled to her time, body, and company even to the moment where he kills all her friends for being her friends and not "respecting" him, though they were never a real couple; like Rogar to Alyssa (who had been castigating her until he finally insults her in front of the council when he proposed usurping Jaehaerys), Androw wants to be the lord to his wife instead of the husband to her "over"-lady. He wanted that traditional, patriarchal dynamic, and what's so absurd is that he expected it after all those months of being married to her...instead of thinking about that before marrying her, when she had been a Queen Dowager and showed her personality at his home island.

Now, this is not to say Rhaena should have let her daughter splash shit water on his head without suitable punishment since he hadn't done anything at that point to either her or Aerea to warrant such anger that the book tells us. It's saying that:

she already grew to distrust men of her not being able to deal w/the sexism...once more, we need to remember that Maegor raped her & threatened her child's life

her distaste for him grew because she couldn't stand his Elissa-like face

there may have been some words b/t them when they fought the two times they fought she could never forgive (we don't know for sure bc we aren't privy to that from the book but it is a possibility)

she suspected him of helping Elissa take Dreamfyre's eggs bc she knew that he was likely to help his own sister, they weren't close themselves, she and Elissa were on the rocks, AND he probably was already showing signs of jealousy at their bond...too eager to establish something she could never have with him

and as a result, she withdrew into her circle of women, those she had always been able to find some sort of substantive emotional support and less unpleasant surprises -- thus her further distancing from him and refusal to really castigate her people from disrespecting him

he either developed an inferiority complex after being mocked OR he always had one but it really got triggered when Elissa's absence made him more aware of how others thought he was out of Rhaena's league and disrespected him on his own lack of those qualities that his society expects of an aristocratic man

Add the boiling pain and betrayal above and you have a person who can't tolerate their husband, another person asking things of her or who w/could.

Retrospectively, I also headcanon that Rhaena felt this envy growing in him whenever they were together and this was one more reason for her to separate herself from him. That he made some sort of demands from her to treat him more like Andal women are expected to treat their husbands...despite her outranking him (if not in powers but in the title), their seemingly non-close relationship, and his seemingly being fine enough with that to even agree to marry her in the first place.

Androw wasn't a helpless child. He seemed content until they had to leave Fair Isle on his own brother's orders and was more exposed to others' thoughts of his subparness. Despite the rank, Rhaena can't do much for a person who doesn't attempt to self-improve (it's told the maester was the one who tried to get him to at least be more learned). And she felt she shouldn't have to, bc again he wasn't a kid and she probably felt she gave/worked enough for the wrong people.

Rhaena as a Mother

Apparently, or maybe, Rhaena was never a child person. However, remember that this is the same woman who:

begged her brother-husband to run to Essos to take their kids away & protect them from Maegor, specifically stating she prioritized the girls' lives over his claim, the latter of which she had already said she prioritized over her own life

laid her life on the line to protect her two daughters from Maegor by disguising them and voluntarily entering KL/the Red Keep to be married off to him, even with no expressed protest....also accepted the chance she'd be tortured

in her forced wedding, saw that her kids were taken nonetheless and let go of any thoughts of really going against Maegor while they were hostages -- and thus had to live as hostage herself to her uncle for months

spent an entire year or so on Dreamfyre looking for Aerea when she ran off with Balerion or in a sort of guilt-desperate state...in spite of her condemnations of Aerea taking & bonding with her father's "killer" AND before that, yes "raged" but also not being able to sleep after Aerea's disappearance

Adding to how she has spent a long time apart from her own kids for their safety AND was already less inclined to want to interact with kids in general, her kids may have become "less" her own while she brooded over her other family. now you've got a very complicatedly angry and emotionally repressed person as a parent.

Yes, she eventually stifles Aerea in her anger at her siblings and mother, hatred for Rogar and refuses to even consider how the girl feels about her leaving what she thought of as home. Only to ignore her most of the time unless it is to yell at her for her disruptions and troublemaking. And her other daughter tells her that she might not have been a great mom, but she was glad to be her daughter if only to become a septa and "serve" the Mother (one of the Seven).

These are valid conclusions and worth being frustrated with her. I just hope that we're not looking at her as if she were an evil entity for the sake of being that way or because she was just selfish. I happen to think she was in the wrong time with the wrong people and no idea of how to get them to really acknowledge her own crap, so she chose to cope by ignoring them and barrel over her own emotions.

She seemed to already have the sort of inclination or predisposition where she compartmentalizes her feelings until the danger passes or when she's insulted. And the more times she gets insulted or put into danger, she claims up and tried to maintain her dignity. When someone asked her why she didn't cry over Aegon's death, how she "coldly" goes through the wedding when Tyanna insults her and brings out her kids, how she talks to Franklyn Farman, how she sullenly warns Jaehaerys about trusting the admiration or regard of the other lords as if she knew he wouldn't listen, and how she points out Jaehaerys' anxiety of her in the same tone.

So with each thing, she became more and more withdrawn while also seeking to keep what she thought she could keep close to her close even if they themselves began to either feel suffocated by her or felt they were losing pieces of their own life (Aerea [being heir presumptive and life built at KL] & Elissa Farman [her dream of being a seas-sailing adventurer]).

And a huge motivation for Elissa to leave Rhaena would have been Rhaena's private hurting her. Why stay & put off your dreams when the person you love has changed so thoroughly as to even (maybe, I headcanon) take it out on you? I don't hate Elissa for leaving Rhaena to start a new life...just for taking the eggs to do it when she knew that it would put Rhaena in a mess with her other family and even could disgrace her in the public eye.

All of Rhaena's self-suppression would come out, built up and vitriolic. And it's important to trace its development so we don't add to that dismissal or misjudge and simplify her.

I also find it fascinating how alike and different Aerea and her are and how they respond to the isolation both experience. Aerea, like Rhaena, grew up expecting to have one of the highest ranks and/or positions of power available in Westeros. Aerea also felt abandoned by her mother when she expresses to Alysanne how she did care her mom's friends died. Aerea also had many friends/acquaintances and was happiest around them. She, like Rhaena, regarded Elissa Farman as one of the most important persons to her and their loneliness, even with Aerea being the one to actually beg Elissa to stay while Rhaena let her leave the second time asking. Both are stubborn and become more and more sullen. And both mistreat others in their loneliness and trying to feel more in control against a relative: Rhaena against Alysanne and Jaehaerys by wanting Aerea back and Aerea throwing poop on Androw as well as pranking and harassing others. Aerea learns from Rhaena, but she eventually just does what Saera hopes she could have done and takes a dragon for her own freedom...tragically ending with her own painful death. While Rhaena did not die as painfully, she does die pretty much alone and miserable in her attempts to get back control. A little less sympathetically as she had more power over Aerea still refused to listen and communicate with her kids, but similar in intentions and thematically. It's also funny how like Jaehaerys she acted here, pushing away a daughter for her own selfish ends to never see them again. At the same time, it was only a matter of time before Aerea was pushed away and out of KL when Jaehaerys finally had children to become his heirs, as many expected and hoped for. As I said in the first section, Aerea was just Jaehaerys' heir "presumptive", not his "apparent" and he seemed very glad to foist her onto Rhaena. What sort of disappointment would Aerea have had if she had stayed and Jaehaerys had kids? Yes, they didn't know that Jaehaerys was fertile and would go on to have many children, but even Maegor would have had kids (if it weren't for Tyanna) the ever-present plans of a monarch and their subjects include children to be their heirs. Whether or not Rhaena felt and anticipated this and acted either for herself or for both her and her daughter or how much she really thought about her daughter's future for its own sake, I believe that it's cool to think about the probability that Aerea would eventually inherit Rhaena's frustrations of being passed over and abandoned, rejected on account of her gender.

Rhaena was a complicated woman. She already didn't have patience with kids but loved her own. She loved her family and was fiercely loyal, but after some abandoned her, she also always tried to claim some dignity for herself and forgot what it was like being a child and/or helpless in the process. Needed a partner who was either as bold or bolder than her, yet used her rank to overpower them into staying with her despite knowing sailing was her dream.

Comparison to HotD!Alicent

Why the comparison? Because I feel someone might bring this up if they took the time to brave my ridiculously long post AND HotD's Alicent also goes through sexual abuse and neglect or abandonment by family. Both's bad problematic behavior toward those they love or have loved comes directly from their abuses, some that stem from societal and familial misogyny. Both do not really consider their friend's/partner's (Rhaenyra and Elissa) needs or desires to feel less lonely or to make power moves. And Alicent of HotD is told to be wlw, if not lesbian.

However:

HotD Alicent is not well thought out as a character and has more internalized misogyny than Rhaena. Rhaena does not hurt her lover nor wife from wanting to deny her own womanhood, Rhaena has shown to be quite the opposite of a misogynist (threat to Rogar).

HotD!Alicent empowers her male relatives to hurt more people because she feels she has to as a woman basically totally succumb to patriarchal ideology even in her sending that damned note to Rhaenyra, while canon!Rhaena has been trying to keep and get power for herself in spite of the men around her.

Rhaena is not a simple queerbait wlw character, her relationships with women are not queerbait: her sexuality is believable as presented and her relationship with Elissa Farman is obvious because of the background information for both, how they got together, how Rhaena came into her own, why they were attracted to each other...it all is well written, coherent, consistent, and comprehensive.

She is smarter than HotD!Alicent and more aware of the motivations of others around her, and the politics around her as well.

Finally, Rhaena's core motivations remain clear and consistent. No compromising of self-respect while searching for constant, mutual love from her peers.

In other words, Rhaena's life and psychology are written way better and comprehensively than HotD!Alicent's AND she has way less internalized misogyny than Alicent.

Quotes

#1 ("The Sons of the Dragon")

#2 ("The Sons of the Dragon")

#3 ("The Sons of the Dragon")

#4 ("Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I") & ("Jaehaerys and Alysanne -- Their Triumphs and Tragedies")

#5 Rhaena & Jaehaerys about Dragonstone and Aerea ("A Time of Testing"):

#6 And then we have this moment of Rhaena seeing her daughter again after Maegor's gone ("Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"):

#7 Her against Rogar and the Succession ("A Surfeit of Rulers"):

#8 Finally, what she says to Alysanne when she suggested taking Aerea back to KL ("Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I"):

#asoiaf asks to me #rhaena targaryen (aenys' daughter) #fire and blood characters #perfect victim post #rhaena targaryen (dreamfyre's rider)'s characterization #fire and blood #asoiaf

[starleska]

Beach Ken as a mint-condition boxed doll: a heartbreaking Kencanon 💔

Barbie is the kind of movie that’s going to inspire a thousand interpretations, and i wanted to play around with some of the ideas within!! don’t take this too seriously - i do think the Barbies and Kens are more like physical representations of ideas, but it’s still fun to think of them as characters 😉 spoilers for the Barbie movie below!!

so the brilliant @avatarmerida/Allisa came up with this fascinating bit of lore for Ken...that Stereotypical Barbie is not really ‘his’ Barbie, and that Beach Ken really ought to have a Beach Barbie has his counterpart. Allisa posits that Weird Barbie may well be Ken’s original Barbie, prior to her weirdification 👀 check out this behind-the-scenes picture from an apparent deleted scene:

i think this is a marvellous theory that ties up some very interesting things about Ken’s behaviour in comparison to the other Kens, and especially why the other Barbies and Kens seem to be quite comfortable with one another (even if the other Kens also felt rejected enough to follow Beach Ken on his patriarchal bender). we get a lot of Ken’s inner workings and self-loathing in a cover of a song he sings to Barbie, ‘Push’ by Matchbox 20:

'Said, I don't know if I've ever been good enough I'm a little bit rusty, and I think my head is caving in And I don't know if I've ever been really loved By a hand that's touched me, and I feel like something's got to give'

here we can see that Ken’s deep-seated insecurity isn’t a recent development: he isn’t sure that he has ever been good enough. he makes references to never feeling like he’s been loved ‘by a hand that’s touched me’...this supports Allisa’s idea that Ken has never been played with, or was/is neglected in some way compared to the other Barbies and Kens in Barbieland. i wonder if the ‘rustiness’ he’s referring to is actually his capacity for intimacy. 

if we run with Allisa’s idea of Weird Barbie being Beach Ken’s Barbie, we have to ask: is Ken intellectually cognizant of ‘his’ Barbie being missing, or does he experience this void in a traumatic kind of way - a deep, sinking, emptiness in his gut? the way Ken’s jealousy manifests makes me lean towards the latter, especially with the way that the Barbies and Kens are largely ignorant of how they relate to the dolls that humans play with. here’s a related thought: isn’t it curious how Weird Barbie, the Barbie who has arguably been played with the most, is the one who knows about the human world? this connection seems consistent: the more Stereotypical Barbie was thought about/’played with’ by Gloria as an adult, the more aware she became of the human world. if we take that bit of canon and work backwards, we have to ask...what would happen to a doll who has been played with the least - or was outright neglected? let’s take a look at some more lyrics from ‘Push’:

‘Said I don't know why you ever would lie to me Cause I'm a little untrusting when I think that truth is gonna hurt you And I don't know why you couldn't just stay with me You couldn't stand to be near me When my face don't seem to wanna shine Cause I'm a little bit dirty, oh, well Don't just stand there, say nice things to me' it’s possible that not only is Ken only vaguely aware of why he’s in so much pain: he could be less aware than another Ken with a missing Barbie would be, because he has been played with the least. although the other Kens are about as insecure and dumb as you’d expect from dolls designed to be accessories, our Ken specifically seems to believe there’s something wrong with him: that Barbie hates him and that it’s down to the way he behaves or just is as a Ken. he moves from describing himself as ‘a little bit dirty’ to begging Barbie to do something, say anything that would make him feel good about himself. everything Ken does from his scary jealous-dancing to his upending of Barbieland shows off how badly he wants to be noticed. Ken isn’t just touch-starved: he’s intimacy-starved.

i don’t think this damage is interchangeable with the other Kens; as of the time of writing, it seems that Ken is unique in Barbieland for not having a Barbie as his counterpart. whether or not the other Barbies and Kens were designed to be together, or were paired together during play, it appears that our Ken is the only one without a Barbie who reciprocates his affections in some manner, or understands they are ‘supposed’ to be together. we see this in his song ‘I’m Just Ken’:

'I have feelings that I can't explain Drivin' me insane All my life been so polite But I'll sleep alone tonight Cause I'm just Ken, anywhere else I'd be a ten Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blond fragility?' those feelings that are driving him insane may not be unique to Beach Ken, but i think either the size of those feelings, or Ken’s capacity for dealing with them, is. the other Kens (notably Simu Liu’s Ken, or ‘Ken 2′) seem relatively well-adjusted (for Kens) until Ken returns with knowledge of the patriarchy. perhaps it’s because we are supposed to focus on Beach Ken’s emotions, but it does seem like our Ken has a disproportionate amount of self-loathing, anxiety, arrogance, and a desire to be loved. why is he like this compared to the other Kens? well, i think that our Ken has the wrong end of the stick. he believes that there is something wrong with him - that he is dirty, defective, or broken in some way - but it’s actually the exact opposite. i think that while his counterpart Barbie - Weird Barbie - was played with and loved a great deal, that our Ken was kept in the box, and has never been played with once. 

what would happen to a doll in Barbieland whose self-esteem and understanding of relationships hinges on the way, or how much, they’re played with? when i say i think Ken is a boxed doll, i don’t mean a collector’s item; i’m inclined to believe if he was, he would be able to feel that love the way Barbie could feel how she was played with. i think it’s more likely he’s still boxed, and was forgotten about and never opened. doesn’t it make sense that Ken has so much rage and self-hatred whilst looking physically ‘perfect’, whilst Weird Barbie is more than content despite her body being so physically altered? there’s nothing to suggest that a boxed doll couldn’t exist in Barbieland, but i wonder what that would do to a doll’s psyche...we’re having a real Toy Story moment 😭 hell, we could take this a step further! the emotionally volatile, restrictive, stunted aspects of Ken’s personality could be down to his never having been played with. this could be why our Ken is so insistent that he isn’t allowed to be on a certain part of the beach. this could be why he considers himself ‘fragile’. this could be why Beach Ken wears his emotions on his sleeve and looks visibly more upset than any of the other Kens. self-actualisation was achieved for both Stereotypical Barbie and Weird Barbie because they were thought about, played with, acknowledged...and above all else, Ken craves acknowledgement from Barbie. he ‘only has a good day if Barbie looks at him’. when Ken tells Barbie, ‘I only exist within the warmth of your gaze’...he means it 💔

that’s the idea!! i hope i’m making sense with my ramblings 🙈 fanfic authors, fanartists and theory-makers, feel free to go nuts with this silly little notion...as much as i adore how terrible and arrogant and sexy Patriarchy!Ken is, i would love to see some stuff exploring this angst and him finally getting all the love and attention he deserves 😖💖

#barbie movie spoilers #ken #gosling!ken #beach ken #barbie #barbie movie #starleskatalks #long post

[vaguely-concerned]

the previews of nona the ninth have started a full on brainworm rave within my cranium by just like... laser focusing in on my mercymorn & augustine feels. and since I have several of their main scenes bookmarked on my audio book app (I am normal), I started going over some of them again and like... wow they’re fucking me up from their very first scene together.   

what really stood out to me this time is that augustine goes up to hold the eulogy for cytherea specifically to lessen john’s pain; in response to god’s grief augustine takes on the task/responsibility of easing it as he doesn’t for either mercy’s or his own. while mercy talks he mostly just listens, respectfully, even (for the first and last time don’t worry lol). I think he probably did care about cytherea in herself too, as much as his motheaten hollowed-out heart allows for at this point (he seems to be quite upset by someone messing around with her body, even aside from thinking it’s mercy doing it), but when you read how the scene goes down augustine only takes an active part in response to john’s distress. he rests his hand on john’s shoulder in comfort and he gets up ‘like it hurts’ to say the words for cytherea. this pattern they apparently set up from the very beginning where mercy confronts john with the harsh truths he doesn’t want to acknowledge -- “There they go, John“, “She said, ‘We had the choice to stop’” -- and augustine smoothes things over in the wake of it, removes discomforts; still does the board meetings he hates for him, as it were.

like. holy shit. imagine having eldest daughter trauma (gender neutral) with god himself for ten thousand years. “Come, swear your loyalty, my son—my brother—beloved—Lyctor—saint.” no boundaries buddy you can only be something in relation to me!!! ‘he could have gone anywhere, but he stuck with me’. what a mess! what an absolute mess, especially knowing it’s been like that right from the beginning. he gave john (and john’s dreams -- his empire) everything: his life, his time, his loyalty, his brother, and john took it. john took it all, including mercy at the end, like she was just another... thing no one would miss. what a brilliant dark mirror of what gideon thinks she wants harrow to do to her but which a) harrow has the soul and sense not to do or want and b) would doom them both if it actually happened. the subtexual/implicit mirrors of the process of lyctorhood just aaaaallll over this empire john has built around him, even & especially with those closest to him. NO normal vibes on this haunted fucking space station I’m going to create an interpersonal dynamic that is so incredibly toxic and insidious it takes you thousands of years to figure out something’s very very off and by then it’s waaaaay too late, we’ve all got rivers of blood on our hands by now and no clean water left anywhere 

(also “Ten thousand years, and I never heard her say an unkind word, except when it was very funny. She loved us unguardedly, all of us, which showed both her patience and her enormous capacity.”

the ‘my bones will rest easy next to your bones’ speech deservedly gets a lot of recognition but I’m always struck by the dry mundane loveliness of that description, the resigned rotted fondness. and he immediately undercuts it by kind of dunking on loveday too which is soooo... *tirls hair around my finger* ahaha nooo stop you’re such a shitty human being you’ll make me completely obsessed with you ;) )

augustine will be like... *turns up to not be the worst person in the room only because john and mercy are also in said room and they’ve got a pretty level playing field going now after all these years, has a moment where after a whole book of a sort of glib mean-spirited ennui he suddenly says something so hauntingly beautiful and profound you get dizzy, goes back to being the worst person in the room again like nothing ever happened* and then you just have to live with ‘Bury me next to you in that unmarked grave, Joy’ forevermore. 

augustine and mercy praying only for their own cessation at the end and not even getting that. their best friend and dad and spouse and boss and king and god... is god. and they couldn’t even get that unmarked grave together. I just. hello darkness my old friend etc.

tl;dr: someone on the internet had to be an augustine stan by sheer law of averages and I am devastated again and again to find that it is me. I am that person.

#the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #nona the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth #augustine the first #mercymorn the first #john gaius #please understand that I am unhinged about this #seeing the john prologue and being like 'hm. have I misjudged him?' #and then looking alllllllll around him for how he affects those he 'loves' and going 'no. no probably not' lmao #I cannot explain to you the strange surge of joy I got just seeing mercy's dialogue in the preview. you could feel the... herness of it all #just from that #god why did I have to get attached to the horrible old war criminals there's not going to be anything good for anyone here fhksjdas

[windebris]

the mcyt gods of war

they dont really have names but for the purposes of this post ill go by The Blood God (technoblades god), The Red Kind (rens 3rd life possession arc), and The Brothers (aeor and exor from empires. yes ik theyre not war gods ill get to it)

in my mind, all mcyt gods of war come from the same source. think darkseid from dc comics; every darkseid is canonically Him, just different facets of the same guy. yes even the kids books and fanfiction.

so every blood god, war god, weapon related deity etc comes from the same source. violence is the same everywhere after all.

technoblades blood god is the most amorphous, i think. it latches onto a worthy soul from an early age, and this person becomes effectively the god themself. they are incredibly practiced in battle and they are Long-lived but do eventually die. theb the spirit of this worlds 'god' passes on to a new soul, another believer who has the capacity to take it a bit beyond whats sane. every blood god is different, some are kind and some frightenjng, some just and some cruel, but they all share the same ruthlessness and battle cry: blood for the blood god.

the red king is also more of a spirit than a being in that they have no physical form of their own, but they do have a personality that is all thwir own, so it can grow and change over time. they arent attached to a single person or follower, but are summoned via ritual or call from someone on the brink of death. the red king then takes over that persons body, helping them either achieve their goal or survive. the former works via contract and the latter via pure human will to survive merging with the red kings will to do the same. i subscribe to the hc from a popular hermitcraft fic (doc and ren otw to season 8) that the red king mellowed after he was summoned by ren because hed never been called to protect before, only hurt and target.

youll have to excuse my ignorance about these last two, im not as familiar w empires as i am hc and dsmp.

aeor and exor are twin gods, unlike the other war gods. i know theyre popularly headcanoned to be order and chaos, but id like to think of them as twin facets of war: cold and hot, calculated and passionate, frosted/hidden and blazing/seen. aeor became more favored in rivendell, and exor became more obvious as a result (to balance the forces) via xornoth becoming corrupted and the war being very obvious to citizens. i also think aeor being a war god makes my hc that scott grew antlers after becoming his champion make a lot of sense; sacrifices must be made for war, after all, and the pain of one man is nothing next to the suffering of a nation.

a common thread among the mcyt war gods is an affinity for temperature (all: blood god and the arctic, red kind and red winter, and aeor with scotts ice powers) and a motif with some warm blooded animal (this ones more shakey: techno being a pig is solely technos and not really the blood gods trait, same with the red king and ren-- the brothers being stags is the only solid connection).

this idea first came to fruition bc i thought it might be cool if rens red winter was the same frost that took over scott in empires; the same god ruining/saving their lives. technoblade came in because you cant really touch one blood god without mentioning the other, and well. here we are.

i imagine every blood god/paladin/host/etc has a passing familiarity with the others but not much else. enough know how to give a nod of respect, a sense that they are kin, but no names or specifics.

death, though, is the same for them all. she is kind, but she is unshakeable.

#mcyt #red king #third life smp #third life #blood for the blood god #technoblade #aeor #empires smp #empires s1 #empires scott #scott smajor #renthedog #rivendell #traffic smp #trafficblr

[dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night]

Tales of Iyuetse: The Enemy of My Enemy part two

Whumptember day 5. “What do you want me to do?”

TW: military, religion, old prejudices, mild misogyny, societal whump, referenced child labor, referenced teenage sex work, multiple whumpees, human whumpee, vampire whumpee, distant monarch whumper

"I've been assigned to show you around," Jaran said brightly.

He grinned at Marcus, not caring a lick about his terrifying fangs. Marcus was almost glad for the strong reminder of Jaran's nature. If it weren't for his razor sharp fangs, Marcus would have fallen for that smile in a heartbeat. Despite his faith, he fell into the sin of homosexuality far too often.

"We're nowhere near as organized as the actual military," Jaran continued, not noticing Marcus' discomfort. "But there are still rules that need to be followed."

"I'm good at following rules," Marcus said. "Don't step on the grass. Don't kill the vampires you're bunking with. Don't betray anyone to the enemy. Etcetera."

Jaran laughed sharply. "We don't care if you step on the grass. But it is best to avoid murder and treachery. Both will have your body skewered on a pike."

"Ugh…" Marcus fought down nausea at the horrifying mental image. "Do vampires really do that? I thought it was hearsay."

"It's less a matter of vampires generally doing that, and more that it's General Sabine's favorite method of execution. You should see some of the… forests we put up."

What a horrible thing to talk about. Fields of men skewered like meat on a spit, left to slowly die in the blazing hot sun. When had Marcus fallen in with such wicked compatriots? Even outside their actions, the very existence of his fellow revolutionists was an affront to God.

"What do you want me to do?" Marcus asked.

"Just follow me and I'll give you the tour."

Jaran turned heel and walked briskly down the dirt road. Marcus followed him around the small camp, taking stock of where they kept weapons and supplies. The whole place was an old ghost town, Jaran had enthusiastically explained, abandoned after the collapse of a nearby silver mine.

Despite the town's decrepit state, the revolutionists had made good use of the old homes and businesses. Many families of the revolutionists lived in the houses, filling them with life and spirit once again. Soldiers bunked in old general stores and banks, now filled with cots. Temporary tents were also set up for military use, as the few dozen buildings were filled to capacity.

"Does it bother you that we're standing above a massive silver deposit?" Marcus asked Jaran. "That doesn't sound very… safe."

"Better us than the enemy, I say."

This answer was as obvious as it was reasonable, and Marcus wondered if his question had come off as stupid. Well, it wasn't like any vampire was ever going to view a human as their equal. A little stupidity wouldn't hurt Jaran's already low opinions of him.

"Now that we're done with the grand tour, do you have any questions about our operation?" Jaran asked.

"Are all the families of soldiers living here in case the imperialists try to make examples out of them, or are we trying to train children to be soldiers?"

"Certainly not the latter." Jaran placed his hand over his heart. "As someone who has family here, including two young nephews, I can't stand the thought of them being put in danger. They're here so we can protect them."

"I didn't know vampires had families. I thought you couldn't reproduce."

Jaran scowled for a moment, before forcing a neutral expression on his face. "You're right. We can't, just another aspect of our condition. But luckily, my sister is still human. She was able to have children, unlike me."

Marcus understood that he had touched a nerve. In all his years spent hunting vampires, he had never once taken the notion that they might resent some aspects of their vampirism under consideration.

Now he saw how foolish that had been. And, if Jaran had a sister still living, he couldn't be that much older than he appeared. Frozen in time, never allowed the catharsis of aging.

"I'm sorry," Marcus said. "I didn't mean to be so rude."

Jaran waved him off. "Don't be. It isn't a big deal. Hey, why don't you come meet my family? I'm sure you'll like them. And you should start making friends. The more personal connections we all have with each other, the less likely it is for any of us to turn traitor."

Marcus didn't want to spend more time around Jaran than possible, but the idea of meeting other humans proved far too tempting. He needed to find others like them, even if they called vampires their kin.

"That sounds lovely, if I won't be a bother."

"Not at all." Jaran put his hand on Marcus' shoulder and led him towards the street of old homes where civilians were staying. "You know, I really like you."

"I- I don't think humans and vampires were ever supposed to be friends. But I'm glad you… care."

"Times are changing. If we win this fight, vampires and humans are going to be rubbing shoulders a lot more often. And even harpies, werewolves, merfolk, and who knows what else. I've been a vampire in a human family for a long time, and I'd like to be accepted in human society for a change. It can't be that different."

There were so many arguments Marcus wanted to make. How would Jaran get a blood supply after the war was over? Who would be willing to hire a vampire in the workforce? What human would want to see a vampire walking down the street beside them?

But he didn't say a word. Jaran had probably turned over the same doubts in his mind many a time before joining the revolution. There wasn't any point in Marcus rubbing salt in a wound. And who knew? Maybe God's plan really was to bring the different peoples of the world together, despite their differences.

"I hope you're right," Marcus said. "I really hope so. I want to raise kids in a world where they don't have to worry about going outside at night. And where I don't have to send them off to work in factories when they're only ten, just to keep everyone fed."

Jaran sighed. "You know, I was only fourteen when I… When I started sleeping with grown men and women, just trying to make sure my little sister got enough to eat. Please don't tell her. She thinks I got an odd hours job at a butcher shop."

Marcus didn't know how to respond. He kicked a small stone down the street, trying to keep tears at bay. Why did everyone have to get hurt so much? It was a child's question, but he couldn't help clinging to it like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. Nothing in life was fair, but what if they could fix that?

"I'm sorry," Marcus said, knowing how empty his words sounded. "I can see why you want to fight in this war. It isn't just about you or me, you know? It's about the kids."

"I'm glad you finally get that. I'm sorry to dump all that on you. I just wanted to say that I understood you. But there isn't any point in wallowing, we just need to win, even if we both die trying."

"You're right about that."

Marcus wanted to ask Jaran how he had gotten turned. What happened in his life to make him go from being a teenage prostitute to a vampire fighting in a revolution. But he was tired of being rude and nosy, asking too many stupid questions. They could have a nice night if he didn't run off at the mouth.

"Here's my sister's house," Jaran said.

He stopped in front of a house with two shattered windows. The walls were covered in peeling blue paint that complemented the parched yellow grass in an odd fashion.

Jaran opened the door a crack and hollered inside. "Jahda, I have a man over! You should get dressed!" He shut the door and turned to face Marcus. "Wait a minute. She's very modest."

"Of course." Marcus had no tolerance for harlots, so this was a relief to hear. He also appreciated how caring of a brother Jaran seemed to be in that regard. "I don't mind at all."

A woman, presumably Jahda, opened the creaking front door. Her pale pink niqab, covering all but her eyes and hands, gave context to Jaran's statement regarding her modesty. Marcus knew that most Christian men had no love for the women of Islam, but he saw them as servants of the same God.

True women belonging to the Good Lord were hard to find, and despite the differences between Christianity and Islam, Marcus respected all he met. He couldn't fathom how her relationship with her brother had remained so friendly after his corruption.

After all, vampires couldn't be Muslims anymore than they could be Christians. Even apart from their eternal spiritual separation from the light of God, both faiths had rules that were bound to be broken. Muslims being forbidden from drinking blood came sharply to mind.

Jaran smiled at Jahda, and Marcus could tell from her eyes that she too was smiling beneath her veil.

"Come in, please," she said, holding the door open for them both.

They both left their coats and shoes by the door, not wanting to rudely track dirt inside. The home opened up to a living area with several chairs and a sofa. A broom stood against one wall, having recently been in use.

Jaran scooped a brown cat up from the sofa so he could sit down, and she took it as an invitation to curl up on his lap. Marcus had always heard tale of animals being frightened by supernatural creatures, hissing and spitting in the presence of vampires. So her friendliness came as a pleasant surprise.

Marcus sat next to Jaran, annoyed by the need to touch him slightly from lack of space on the small sofa. Jahda took the rocking chair across from them, politely folding her hands on her lap.

"Jahda, this is Marcus, the new soldier I've been showing around town" Jaran said, scratching the cat behind her ears. "Marcus, this is my sister Jahda."

"It's a pleasure," Jahda said. "I'm afraid you just missed my husband and our sons. They won't be back until the morning."

"That's alright," Marcus said. "It's really nice to meet you."

"What brings you here?"

"Oh, Lieutenant Jaran- I mean, your brother invited me over." Marcus fidgeted nervously. "I just joined the militia, and he's trying to get me settled."

"Of course, he keeps inviting you soldiers into our home."

Marcus wondered whether he ought to apologize. Be couldn't tell from Jahda's tone whether his presence was intrusive and she was being passive aggressive, or if she was simply stating a fact about her brother and their life together.

Jaran's cat distracted Marcus from his anxiety by pawing at his leg. He gently stroked her fur, delighted to be in the company of such a lovely animal. She purred loudly, setting him at ease.

"My nephew Esam named her Cat," Jaran said. "Cat the cat. Eisun wanted to name her Kitten, but Esam was very particular about that fact that she needed a name she could keep as an adult cat."

Marcus chuckled. "Well, Cat is a very cute cat. How old are Esam and Eisun?"

"Esam is ten," Jahda said. "And Eisun is eight."

"Growing like weeds," Jaran joked. "Another inch every new moon, I'm sure."

Jahda cleared her throat, wanting to return to their prior subject. "So, Marcus, what made you want in on the revolution?"

Marcus wasn't sure if war was a proper topic to discuss with a lady, but he couldn't think of an excuse not to. He rubbed the back of his neck, then quickly stopped when he remembered the vampire sitting next to him, not wanting that kind of attention.

"My talents aren't in politics, they're in fighting. So, if I can't lobby a bill to make things a tiny bit more bearable, I may as well fight for the people who want to destroy the whole damn system."

"I can see why my brother likes you."

Marcus didn't like getting all buddy-buddy with a bloodsucking demon, but Jahda's words sounded like a compliment, so he accepted them.

"What did you do before?"

"Erm…" Marcus hesitated. "Vampire hunting mostly. Before that I was in the navy."

"War makes for strange bedfellows," Jahda said. "No wonder for that queer look on your face."

Marcus immediately tried to change his expression, and Jaran laughed.

"Sorry, I just-"

"The best of friends are always the unlikely ones," Jaran interrupted.

"Let me get you something to drink," Jahda offered. "It's chilly outside. Something warm would do you good."

Even at the mouth of Hell, there was hospitality and breaking of bread, from one person of faith to another. But surely they had all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, no matter which side of the war one chose to fight on. Whether to perform acts of evil or to permit them. Whether to throw a sinner to a pit of lions or risk them corrupting you in your attempt to save them.

"Some tea would be lovely, thank you."

Taglist: @hugh-lauries-bald-spot @whumpsday @whumpshaped @heavenlyeden @thecyrulik

#Abraham original: Hot off the press #Whump #Whumptember2023 #Whumptember day 5 #'What do you want me to do?' #Military whump #whump writing #Whump series #Human whumpee #Vampire whumpee #Religious whump #Christianity #Islam