#i guess it's in that universe lol no real content here in that regard but it's cool

[possibilistfanfiction]

Prompt: “please stay”

it's rained more lately in los angeles than you ever imagined it would; you've been to the desert and lived through a summer here, the haze in the air and mirage on the pavement and a few days where it just never cooled off. but it's dreary and damp lately, parts of the city flooding, puddles everywhere. cold winds have blown in overnight, swathes of loose palm bark in your yard when you had looked outside.

it's still cold and stormy; the sea, you're sure, is angry outside — grey and infinite in its depth. most days, the wonder of the world sits in your wrists, in the junctures there, in the small bones beatrice knows all the names of. most days, the wonder is in everything: the orange poppies blooming along the hillside, and the perfect amount of lime in good guacamole, and the way beatrice tastes like cinnamon when you kiss her in the afternoon, lazily, like you've always had time.

but some days it sits heavy along your spine: you spent an eternity — eight months, earthside, but you don't know how to measure that, not really — in darkness, in nothingness, in white space so bright your eyes burned.

you didn't sleep, or eat, not like here. the halo in your back burnt and burnt and burnt, and the divinium through your organs, taken out by unknown hands, had left gaping, excruciating wounds, which eventually, because you stayed so, so still, turned into painful, barely-healed scars, half shrapnel, half burn. there was nothing, and you were nothing, and you missed your mom and your sisters and your friends and beatrice, with her steady shoulders and her reluctant laugh and her gold eyes.

it's still dark, still early, the dawn inky blue outside, stretching as a bruise against the pale skin of the sand. you roll over in your big bed — safe, piled with a soft white linen duvet; a mattress that beatrice had ordered specifically for your spine after consulting jillian and then making a spreadsheet of pros and cons between different brands and models — and take a deep breath. it's here, and it's now, you remind yourself, touch your fingers to the worst of the divinium scars, puckered along your right ribs. you place the palm of your hand against the worst of it, the opposite of stigmata, maybe, and breathe into it, let your chest expand all the way into your belly, all the way down your spine, filling your heartspace.

and then you look at beatrice, the duvet down around the middle of her bare back. the tan of her skin from the sun, the black tattoo down her spine, her hair — short and dark and messy — and the peaceful planes of her face, delicate despite it all. calm, and unworried, the bow of her lips and the freckles across her cheeks. she had told you, excitedly last night, how incredible the swells were supposed to be this morning, because of the storm, but you look at her and you think of riptides and not being able to swim and how this world, this life, bold and bright, wouldn't be much different for you than nothingness if anything happened to her. if she wasn't here with you, to eat really good ramen and grumble her way through terrible movies and steadfastly do the laundry.

you scoot closer to her, drape an arm across her waist and kiss between her shoulder blades. you've learned that bea is easy to awaken but almost impossible to really wake up when she feels relaxed and safe — but sometimes you think you know each other differently than anyone, a familiarity that has saved the world a few times over. in one of the classes you audited — philosophy, which had mostly been awful and full of gross white dudes — you had learned that recognize meant, really, to know again. to know again, and again, and again, like the veins mapped across the backs of your hands or the hue of a lover's eyes.

she stirs and blinks awake, slowly, and there they are: brown, so smart, with flecks of gold that light up in the sun, that you know even in the dark dawn.

'ava, are you okay?'

her voice is rough with sleep and slow and beautiful. you're so, so greedy, wanting this life and the next with her. you wouldn't renounce it for anything. kingdoms and realms could fall at your feet before you said anything of the sort.

'please don't go surfing this morning.' your voice is a little wobbly and she shifts onto her side, fully, to face you, concern etching a line between her brows. she looks around blearily, her features and posture sharpening in a split second.

'did something happen?'

'no,' you say, and leave the but something could alone; something always could. instead, 'i just — it's stormy, and i want to sleep in with you here.' let me love you like this, you think, and press your lips to the scar on her shoulder before you rest your forehead against hers, run a gentle hand through her hair. let me keep you safe. let me keep you warm, in this room in this bed in this house in this city of angels where nothing can hurt you, where i won't let anything touch you, not ever again. let me wake up to you again and again and again.

she doesn't fully believe you, that it's nothing, but she relents easily enough, trusting that you'll tell her if you need.

'please stay.'

she sighs, kisses you, touches the same scar against your ribs. 'okay,' she says, just like that, and you breathe into the palm of her hand.

#this is exclusively bc there's been more rain this winter in LA than i have ever seen it's wild & DELIGHTFUL but yknow. vibes #avatrice #avatrice fic #wn #warrior nun fic #prompts #butch bea 🥺🫡 #i guess it's in that universe lol no real content here in that regard but it's cool #ava's gotta be fucked up a LITTLE u know #anyway sky full of song ‘in a city without seasons / it keeps raining in LA’ #me rn

[laufire]

april reading meme!

BOOKS

We Will Devour The Night by Camilla Andrew. The version I read is available in the author's ko-fi (aninkwellofnectar), and the final version will come during fall of this year. I've talked about this saga before (The Essence of the Equinox), and I still recommend it to those of us who like complex characters (especially female characters), gothic horror, and lush prose. This is a sequel, and I like it even more than the first instalment. It gets deeper into the darkness of the world and it's an amazing read. The third and final part has started been posted on ko-fi as well, for anyone interested.

Why Does He Do That? Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft. I wish I could make everyone read this book. It wouldn't fix everything, because it runs against a lot of people's deep-seated belief systems, but maybe it would make SOME of them start second-guessing those beliefs... Anyway. A MUST read in terms of abuse and intimate partner violence.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I read the book for the first time about 15 years ago, and only reread it now. I loved it even more than the first time. The atmosphere, the revenge tale, the love story between Catherine and Heathcliff, all the ways these families' lives affect the others, how you have to parse through Nelly's account of events... I still wish I could hit Lockwood in the head with a stick lol. Just once. Not even too hard! But hit him in the head, I would xD

COMICS

Batman: Huntress/Spoiler - Blunt Trauma. One of those "it could've been so good if it was good" comics. It would've had to NOT been written by Dixon, of course. His ideas about these two characters are palpable here. He's met real women and girls, I know this, but he's completely failed to take anything from these meetings into account to understand them as people. And boy, does it show in his writing.

Green Lantern: Willworld. I've had this comic in my list for aeons and I moved it up when I found out its author would be writing Jason's upcoming ADITF "what if" story starting July. I really liked this one, and how it showcased Hal's character. It's not a guarantee I'll like his Robin Lives run, because comic writers have biases and blind spots and huge gaps in their knowlege regarding certain characters, but "he seems to be a good writer" is already a huuuuge leg up compared to most modern Jason content lol.

JLA: World Without Grown-ups. This was interesting because I've watched the Young Justice (cartoon) version of this premise, which is VERY different, from the villains to their goals to the handling of the crisis (since the cartoon had an established teen team), down to the emotional beats (the Zataras). They're too different to be compared, tbh. This one was quite fun though, and it made me feel very fond of Bart. Also Tim's parasocial relationship with Jason's memorial made an appearance LOL.

Colin Wilke's appearances. I am MOURNING this kid. He has like 9 appearances (and a couple of them are barely a few pages) but each one is gold. Bring him back. Make HIM Damian's best friend. Integrate him in the storyline!! His character and his dynamic with Damian had so so much potential. I am definitely going to include him in my fics.

Batman: Li'l Gotham. (plus the two stories introducing it in Batman Annual #27 and 'Tec Annual #11). A couple of things conspired (including me finding out there's a version of Colin in this lol) and I ended up reading it while I was sick. It's mostly fun fluff (as opposed to just corny fluff) and a quick read without much meat in it, but a few things nudged the inspiration muscle and Dustin Nguyen's art is adorable.

Batman Tales: Once Upon a Crime. I liked this one more than the above! It follows in that universe (a Gotham where everything is smaller and cuter lol), mixing it with some fairy tale vibes. Pinocchio!Damian is A Concept. Although my favourite story was "The Snow Queen", with Mister Freeze. The art goes into a whole other level in all of these, but especially that one.

Batman: The Chalice. Bruce Wayne receives the Holy Grail. I read this one in my list of Talia appearances and hers is the part that interested me: Ra's wants the Grail to make her immortal, like him, and Talia tells him that she has no desire to live forever. Her words are "Having lived my life in your company, the prospect of eernal life is not the attraction for me it might be for another." There are A LOT of things you can read into that sentence, and one of them, to me, is the idea that death to Talia would be an escape from Ra's, which is... interesting. Sidenote: this one was written by Dixon, who once in a while gets his wired crossed and is not wholly terrible with female characters xD

Ghost/Batgirl. I hadn't heard of Ghost before but I'm kinda curious after reading this mini run. I found a lot of the concepts it worked on (resurrection, mind control, etc.) quite interesting, although I ended up feeling the execution didn't delve too deeply into them. It's an story I might want to reread and pick apart at some point, though.

JLA: Tower of Babel. Yeah, THAT arc lol (also part of my Talia-reading). I also read JLA Secret Files and Origins #3 (in May, though), which shows Talia's whole thoughts on it as she steals the plans + some of the consequences the whole thing has for the other bats whose teammates no longer trust them (Dick, Tim, Barbara) + the wording of Bruce's contingency plans (which btw includes acceptance of lethal methods against Clark lol)... he certainly got off easy after this añsdlkfjasdf. Honestly, imo, the most selfish, cowardly thing he did was walking out before the JLA could tell him they'd voted him out. I know he and the comics probably won't frame it like that afterwards, but that's how it felt to me. The very least he could've done is face his teammates.

#reading meme #books #comics #dc comics #my thoughts #dc thoughts #id in alt text #captioned #the essence of the equinox #why does he do that #wuthering heights #batman: li'l gotham #colin wilkes #jla: tower of babel

[gayspock]

guys im peckish

something that always kinda.... i dont wanna say it frustrates me, bc i understand WHY its the case & i know its the better choice for most works... but i suppose, kind of? itches at me??? is the way AI in sooo much fiction is solely ever used with regards to comparing it to Humanness. and tht makes total sense- its not always abt exploring AI conceptually in of itself, but moreso using that as a means to explore deeper Human themes and again sometimes thats just better to leave it as that

but nonetheless it itchessss sometimes, yknow, from like a worldbuilding perspective to me. & also just... i dont know. when i hear ppls conception of what AI is in general- and in all fairness, AI in of itself is such a nebulous term - i get well. frowny. bc again its always such a ... human lense.... and idk maybe im being #autistic #compsci girlie but it sometimes just feels so... LIMITING and detrimental, and kind of misunderstanding like- when it comes down to it, ai? its math... ITS MATH. you know that right? all the way top to bottom its just freaking mathematics, its algorithms...

but anyway it just feels like. its HOLES in the fictional world sometimes. like- the actual sophistication behind developing something that's intelligent enough, and ON PAR with a thinking, feeling, freaking person... and for that to become, like, a widespread THING... like it sooo rarely ever lines up with the rest of the technology within the world they set it in?? bc theyy clearly on ever thought- mmhm mhmm (nods) thinking machines. they just programmed people immediately. went from A to B. and sometimes there's like in-universe reasons for things but like other times its crazzzyy like...

bc before we'd ever get to THAT point so many other, complex things would already have commonplace AI applications does that make sense. one billion specialised problems that could have been solved ten times over. or well maybe solved is the wrong word but it would have changed the face of technology soooo much... and i guess sometimes there IS in-universe reasoning for it- it could be a limitation of resources, it could be an issue of knowledge and understanding, it could be other societal influences that stop it, things such as policies that prevent it from being totally pervasive- but thats literally kind of what i mean, like... bc those are GOOD points but not always present . and they could be rlly interesting points of discussion and contention just there that kinda gets neglected

like im watching BSG and i keep thinking abt the only reason the galactica survived is because its more "out of date". and its like if eel like theyre always so vague about what technology theyre actually compromising on, here. or like... hell what technology did all of humanity compromise on after thefirst war... wheres the lines? is it JUST cylons? or were there compromises on everything? and how did they reel shit back?

like im thinking even just roslin and her cancer. already, like... in real life... ai has a LOT of medical applications. idk-i still kinda want to do a PHD in some sort of bioinformatics one day, LOL, if i'd ever get there but like... whilst i guess its mostly diagnosis and screening rn, my point is, i cant imagine how much more medicine could have advanced??? surely ir'd be unrecognisable. even just in terms of developing drugs, and medicine- genomics being sooooooo data dense, there's leaps and bounds that can be done with AI, or even research facilitated by ai. like if you have the capabilities of programming something as sophisticated as human consciousness, with that level of logic and reasoning....

LIKE ... its like again sth very human. this human idea of intelligence and what that means, and thinking of ai in a totally human capacity when its like. idk how to describe ittttt. i guess its like- there are so many tasks that a human cannot do that a machine could do, BUT it would be easier to have a machine implement those tasks, THAN achieving sentience with a machine??? like... no. a person could not piece together a human genome from data BUT a machine could quite easily.

and even just that like- squitns. i think im talking in circles my WHOLEEEE point is just... AGAIN. worldbuilding wise i feel like sooo much drops the ball there like bc writers dont rlly understand the full applications of artifical intelligence and what it can do and wahgh... im sniff... im just rambling arent i [goes into a corner embarassedddd]

#Egg.txt

[musical-chick-13]

CERSEI AND MISA. okay thanks. wait also Near. if you please,

CHARACTER BINGO LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOO

Cersei

I need to clarify that when I say, "I can fix her," I mean "I would make her feel loved and happy and special," I do NOT mean, "I would make her stop Doing Crimes." Why would I want that. She did get a lot of truly excellent content in the show, but I do think they underutilized her in the last season, unfortunately. DEFINITELY underappreciated by the fandom. And the "crack my spine" thing is probably not the most accurate way of phrasing my feelings, but it was the closest option to "I'd gladly let this character murder me." I'm not putting "pretty privilege" because while in my objectively correct opinion she IS the most beautiful woman of all time, this fact did not do her any favors in either canon or fandom. Also, lol at "probably a deep-seated reason," there are definitely many reasons and I know EXACTLY what they are. And although--given the feral (derogatory) nature of this fandom--I probably shouldn't discuss Cersei irl, I love this character SO MUCH that I just. Always do anyway. Literally I am incapable of shutting up about her.

(Sadly, I am in the middle of writing something that Puts Her In Situations. But it's not anything beyond what she already experiences in canon, and it'll all be okay in the end. And most importantly, I 100% know this is not fair, so she gets to get away with murder. As a treat 🥰)

Misa

.....I just realized that the "need them that is concerning..." square might have been intended as like. A sexual thing. When I had interpreted it as "I need to see this character on my screen as often as possible." I am too lazy to edit the bingo board and reupload the picture, so just know that I meant the second thing. 😅

So THIS time, when I say "I can fix them," I mean, "She's my bestie and younger sister, and I'd make her go to therapy." Why does the "projection" space have a circle on it? Don't worry about it. I don't think I'd put her at "white noise" level because that is a VERY specific character tier for me, but I need. I! NEED! Her to be okay. EVERYONE IS SO MEAN TO HER EVEN THE GUY WHO CREATED HER CHARACTER. There is so much there!!! The way she never processed her trauma! The way she deconstructs the idea of obsessive devotion/the manic pixie dream girl! How a retributive MURDER that wasn't even about her at all is the only thing she has ever registered as a Positive Act! The way that these things coalesce into a dissatisfaction with life so great that (barring one specific, immovable goal) no kind of success or admiration is ever enough!!! She just wants to be loved!!!!! One of the most viscerally universal human emotions!!!!!!!!!!! Like, it was very obvious that Ohba didn't care about her at all, but guess what!!!! He accidentally created a really interesting and complicated character anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm totally FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (For more thoughts, go here.)

WATCH THE MUSICAL, THEN YOU'LL ALL GET IT. (<-is foaming at the mouth and barking like a rabid dog while scaling the walls)

Near

"Probably a deep-seated reason" once again, lmao, like I don't know exactly what the reason is. (The way this has been true of all three characters.........) PEOPLE DON'T LOVE HIM ENOUGH. HE'S THE BEST LITTLE GUY, BUT MOST OF THE TAKES ARE SO BAD AND UNFAIR. WHY DON'T PEOPLE GET IT???!!?? (Okay, there's definitely a general idea/theory regarding why. As You Know.) Not really sure what I mean by "I can fix them" here, but there isn't a "I want to make sure they have support and are okay at all times" square, so I think this is close enough.

SO many times I have said, literally out loud, "He's just like me for real." So um. There's that. And Near might not be a war criminal/mass murderer/etc., but I would still like to emphasize that he has never done anything wrong ever in his entire life. :)

#thank youuu 💜 #ALSO about cersei's 'pretty privilege' thing: one of her biggest Issues™ is being told as a child that someone prettier than her will #eventually ruin her life #/ALSO/ also I have a general rule that I do not talk about dn irl because I do NOT have the emotional fortitude to handle running into #certain pockets of this fandom like that is NOT a risk I am willing to take #(tbh some of my opinions I don't even put ~ONLINE~) #(which I'm well aware that that's gonna be Ask Bait but trust me GENUINELY it's better for all of us if I don't say anything) #multi t(ASK)ing #this was so fun!!! I hope more people send characters in 😊

[phillipgallant]

I ran a John Cena vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi simulation, two out of three falls, extreme rules, and Cena won. It was probably the best of the ClashMania series I threw together. I got a few good spots where Tanahashi retreats to a corner to be like “what do I have to do to keep this guy down?” and two where Cena catches Mr. Tanahashi going for a High Fly Flow; one time he slammed Tanahashi and the next time his lifted him up to his shoulders to give him an Attitude Adjustment for the win. It was really cool to have those worlds collide, in those universes, and be so representational in January 2021. I’m having a hard time putting together another real experience like that with WWE 2K23 right now, as most of the NJPW guys I have downloaded from community creations don’t look as much like their guys as 2K19 community creations did. WWE 2K19 community creations were of a very professional quality, like spot on, and the offerings found in WWE 2K23 is very amateurish by comparison. I’m afraid I have to play another waiting game, to see what the community can do in years to come. I guess WWE 2K23 will be my wrestling simulator through to 2025 or something, that’s what I need from it with regards to community content, so I can write my own stories featuring the players from NJPW. I’m afraid the only place I can find NJPW represented in video games through license is in an offering from the Fire Pro series in 2019 I think, when NJPW was awesome hot still too. I think NJPW’s in a bit of a transitional period 2022 - 2024 as they have to find programs for returning young lions, deal with the fallout of a major faction split, deal with defections, fill spots left by exiles, and so on. Exciting, boring, surprising, wonderful times in NJPW right now as a fan. Putting together a full NJPW roster on my WWE 2K23 simulator may not be possible until late 2023 or early 2024. This would have to be a roster that has quality to their characters that the WWE 2K19 NJPW community creations roster I had assembled had. It’s kind of weird being in this place where I’m trying to make up my own game within a game, and I have some of the game, but have to either work to make up the other half, or wait six months to a year. So here I am. Navigating this complex web of interests and representations, lol. I can’t accurately project what NJPW would look like six months from now, as history is being made monthly!

#phillipgallantmedia #phillipgallant #author #phillip gallant #phillipgallanttumblr #phillip gallant media #writing #writer #tumblr #illustrator #artdirection #artdirector #wwe #NJPW #wrestling #pro wrestling #ps4 #simulation #simulations #simulation software #Sony #PlayStation #branding #brandwars #brands #brand #John Cena #hiroshitanahashi

[not-active-blacksapphhicmaddonna]

⋆✮⋆all the info you need⋆✮⋆

call me ace, 24, queer/sapphic, they/them

hey y'all! very excited to be starting a blog dedicated to writing fics etc.. this blog will be *mainly* fics and reblogs of gay shit i like!

info about this blog:

here's the serious ones -

this blog is/rules & boundaries:

100% anti-racist. there will be no tolerance for anti-blackness, derogatory comments towards black women/people in any form, respectability politics, colorism!!!!!!!!!, featurism/texturism, or any other general fuckery surrounding blackness or other people of color point black period. come correct.

100% trans/nonbinary friendly and safe. there will be no tolerance for transphobia in any regard. period.

we 100% acknowledge and disarm privilege in this space.

i'm always down for conversation, but please remember that google is free and not to be an ass. respect goes both ways. 🫶🏼

this blog is 18+. minors do not interact. i will not respond to messages from people who's age i cannot see in their bio/pinned post or otherwise publicly posted on their account. i will not write requests for anybody under the age of 18.

this blog will contain sexual content (smut, references to sex, gifs/images if applicable at any point, may be included in replies/answers to questions, etc.).

i probably don’t know you in real life but even if i do, i work full time and have a life to attend to. if i don’t respond right away/complete a request, don’t be rude or assume i’m ignoring you!! and i’ll treat you the same. 🫶🏽

BLACK WOMEN/TRANS PEOPLE/PEOPLE PERIOD ARE NOT A FETISH. if you’re non-black and here because you have a kink/fetish for black women/folks, don’t.

here's what I won't do -

i will not write: race play, anything romantic/sexual between a minor and an adult, anything involving r@pe, sexual assault, incest, or cnc kinks, anything that romanticizes self su**ide/self harm, ea*ing dis**ders, or anything else that feels like it will be harmful/pointlessly triggering/create a negative effect/perpetuate stigma etc.! also no trauma porn surrounding racism/homo-transphobia, etc etc etc.

however -

i will: provide trigger warnings and content warnings on every fic/writing, credit for anything i've been inspired by/use etc., use active consent with any collaborations/outside parties, be open to accountability or critique and make any necessary adjustments if i cause any harm, and provide a word count on each writing piece. 🖤

any of my boundaries are subject to change at my own discretion and i reserve the right to rescind my consent at any point for any reason in any situation.

here's the fun stuff!

some of my current ships/headcanons/emotional support characters or celebrities/actors or just interests etc. -

wenclay! (bianca barclay x wednesday addams) - wednesday, tv show

aneka x ayo - wakanda forever/black panther, movie(s)

pretty much ANY AND ALL characters played by lashana lynch or just her by herself (I would do anything for this woman🧎🏽)

shuri x riri williams - wakanda forever/black panther, movie(s)

gracie from skins uk!

character/person x reader! has been a style i'm just recently getting into!

anything that has to do with black vampires (i will make so many of these characters, sorry in advance fr LMFAOOO)

some original characters butttt nottt toooo muchhhh for rn

so many more!

story types/formats:

one shots

short/long chaptered series

drabbles

non-canon/head canon/alternate universe

canon compliant

fluff

smut

angst

whatever i feel like fr

ALL MY MAIN CHARACTERS ARE BLACK. PERIOD.

this is a queer space, specifically a sapphic one. i will never write anything cishet based/oriented. I probably won't even write background characters as cishet but maybe I guess lol.

i'm suuuuper down for requests! just send them to me through an ask. i also have my submissions on. please don’t submit anything that goes against what has already been stated!

✩ i will give a very slight priority to non-anonymous asks, but i will answer/do all of them as long as they're within my boundaries!✩

pretty much i'm just yearning all the time. lets commiserate together.

i'm very excited to start writing again, and i hope y'all enjoy! please ask any questions and i'll get back to you asap! also please drop any feedback y'all have on any story/fic, i'm desperate LMFAOOO

thank you for reading!

love a black woman from ∞ to ∞ fr 🤝🏽

[genderisareligion]

Recently told I have “tunnel vision” regarding my current world view. Lol. Probably because this person knows I’m a “TERF.” I really should change this url but the joke has a point that I still think should be said: “gender” probably works best where it belongs in languages like Spanish and not universally applied to the entire human species which has too much variation to try and categorize like that

When I tag my reblogs with things like “kill all pornographers” I’m aware that technically the word “pornographer” would include those people like couples who gladly film themselves fucking and post it and consent every time they do it. Do those people deserve to be dead for that? Nope. My point is that the rape crisis happening in and often because of porn is such an extreme crisis, to me on the ground here watching women right and left be traumatized by it, that I personally would rather the entire industry go away or at least go away until all it consists of is the privileged minority who really genuinely want to make sex on film their job. Never going to be my thing but go off I guess. My point is that men who get off on the pain and humiliation of women and children and feel no remorse are sociopathic and subhuman and should be separated from the rest of us normal people for our safety. Whether it be by death or prison or isolation on island somewhere lol I don’t care I just want people to wake the fuck up to how little the severely porn addicted and the billionaires churning this content out care about humanity.

When I say “kill all pornographers” I’m reflecting the amount of hatred men are showing us when they all but say “kill all women” in their porn. No, that’s not the message in all of it. But it is in enough (snuff porn is an entire genre) and there are enough enablers and those willing to turn a blind eye that it exists at all, and sue me for thinking it shouldn’t because it’s dangerous when there are real women dying constantly at the hands of men in real life, why do y’all need to watch it on a loop online too?

Like sorry for not being desensitized to women in pain? How is that “tunnel visioned”? I’m a former watcher of this shit because I thought being closeted was reason enough that I should just ignore the horrific shit I was constantly scrolling past and just get mine. That’s why I get on this and another blog and shit on the porn industry constantly. I’m no prude and I can speak from experience. I did all the rationalizing and the “she must be fine it can’t be real.” Then I did the research about how often it is real and critically thought about it all and made the decision to be openly critical of it. I know technically sometimes she really is fine. I’m wildly concerned about all the women who are paid to lie about being fine.

One of my favorite books is the S.C.U.M. Manifesto because so many people refuse to believe it was satire. When I say “Valerie Solanas was right” do I mean that her misandrist society exactly as she wrote it should be instituted tomorrow? Nope. She was right about how painful it would be for men to imagine themselves in our shoes for a day. They hate that book and KAM sentiment because they know they’re lucky as shit the tables aren’t turned and being afraid of a woman isn’t manly. She was right that people would take her literally and ignore the meaning, which as I read it was that something urgently needs to be done about male violence against females and the culture that upholds it.

Is it “tunnel visioned” of me to say sexism is defined as the oppression of males against females? Am I saying that I think females are incapable of mistreating males? LOL no. I’ve mistreated males. Females have often mistreated me. I am fully aware of all of these things and aware that there is a much worse pattern of male on female violence than there is the reverse. The FBI crime statistics on rape agree with me.

Idk man I’m just sick of “SWERF” and its cousin “TERF” and being told I'm biased or a bigot for wanting something drastic to be done about sexual violence. Dworkin really went the fuck off when she said

#shadow.txt

[prof-peach]

if fans wanted to include peach in stuff they write, would that be okay? and how would they write peach's personality? aside from "FIGHT ME" anyway, i think that much is a given lol. i only really write the anime characters 'cause that's what i know, but it sounds like it'd be kinda fun to try making a version of ash that fits into this blog's universe! nerf'd Obviously, but i think she'd probably appreciate how hands-on he gets when training his pokemon!

Ok, I get a lot of these messages, and I often hear folks wanting to throw peach into their stories and comics and writings, and I will always simply ask that if it’s published online publicly, to be linked to it so I can snoop and enjoy the content too. If someone asks about her in your work, let them know about the blog I guess? But literally I love that people take this stuff, these characters and stories, and make new stuff with it. No ones making money off my work here? So where’s the issue? Go for it buddy, knock yourself out, I’m all for it.

For you, and all the others out there who want to add peach, and other characters to your world building, I will give you a detailed rundown of the main lot, and how they behave, what they do, how they function. You can use that, use bits, or use none of it, I do not mind at all. If you’re creating something, you’re in control, not me.

So, peach doesn’t actually fight people as much as you’d think. She’s very aware most cannot and do not want to do that, and so she likes to keep to herself with regards to that aspect of her life, she doesn’t ask to spar with people, or even bring it up at all, but people ask her all the time, even if they clearly would lose or become hurt should she miscalculate during the fight. She looks at people like they usually create problems, and often has a somewhat reserved nature to other humans. You have to work quite hard to get anything more than formalities out of her. She will dead-pan handle people with blunt and very to-the-point statements, aid whenever possible, but very quickly get back to handling the Pokemon she so carefully tends. Her focus is clear, she’s all about hard work, her very small select family, and the Pokemon.

Her brutal, loud and brash personality only comes out with friends, family, difficult humans, OR any Pokemon. She will joke and laugh and play with Pokemon, but clam up around humans, maintaining tight body language and generally will be a little cold by regular standards. She does however have some weaknesses in this emotionless shield she puts up. When peach was young she was always angry, which swung so fast to sadness, back and forth. Her teenage years it just got worse and worse, it was crippling at points. She is to this day, full of fire and rage, even sadness, but now she has learnt to control it, to use it. When she sees that in others, it’s familiar, and she is pushed to drop the front, and be very real with the person. Underdogs I suppose, people who get bad reps, but deserve the same as everyone else. She can’t ignore it.

Once you start to pry open her personality, you’ll find she’s a lot more laid back and fun than originally appeared, you just have to work hard to find that side of her. She will meme reference, can’t dance to save her life, loves her coffee, and can be caught in quiet contemplation while gardening. This hobby is her calmest, and often is why she can stay so level headed when her quiet rage boils up again. Without time outside she will become grouchy, a little snippy, and lethargic. Will not go in the ocean for any reason other than life or death, is fine with ponds and rivers, or water at wading height. Likes the rain.

With regards to her training others, they usually have to tolerate her somewhat strict nature. She is a little....unforgiving, holds a grudge if you make a lot of mistakes, and has no tolerance for ignorance in the age of information that we all live in. In previous posts I’ve mentioned she’s only recently selected two students, after many years of testing kids who want to learn from her. Hundred tried out, only two have ever been approved. How she teaches is very fast paced, be prepared to get some scrapes and bruises, she will test your physical and emotional tolerances with intense tasks, carefully watching students like a hawk. Bad posture in your stance? She’ll be the first to tell you to sort it out. Not hearing your Pokemon partner? Right, now you spend the day without using words trying to communicate, let’s see how you like not being listened to.

This is a woman who has spent her life saying very little, and watching everything, she watches Pokemon and can see an issue from a mile off, and in battles, her observations are why she can react fast, and chose effective strategy to avoid damage and achieve results. Don’t let her body fool you, her strongest asset is analysing, watching, planning. Those skills have over the years transferred to people too. As a student, mistakes don’t go unnoticed with this professor.

Her methods are harsh but fair, and should you prove yourself, she will protect you with her life.

Because of her disinterest in kids and lots of noise, she does pass the training of students on to the other staff members whenever possible. Grey takes on the lions share of battle lessons, he is far calmer, more open and friendly, with patience for people, and an empathy that peach sometimes struggles to have. When you go through a lot of harsh training, and difficult events, it’s hard to change how you feel or think, with peach, well, she’s been through it. Most do not come out the other end in one piece, but she did, and it made her strong. You may think I mean strong like buff and big, and yeah sure she is, but I mean it mentally more than anything. Peach will not quit. She has learnt to destroy the boundaries that stop people getting hurt, gone is the fear that freezes you in your tracks, that feeling that you’ll pass out if you go one more step. She’s learnt to ignore it.

This means she’s a little forgetful at how it is to be normal, to be vulnerable and soft and squishy like students so usually are.

She has her issues, but for the most part, visitors get a laugh, a smile, a calm assertive confidence, and facts. She will indulge those who have genuine interest, or show a connection with nature, an understanding of the balance that needs to be struck for everyone to live well together.

Despite her many flaws, she’s fiercely protective, and will go above and beyond to defend the island, it’s staff, the Pokemon and the visitors. Injustice is her biggest gripe, along with littering, and she doesn’t stand by quietly if something happens that seems unfair.

You will not see her without Valka, her vulpix, close by. That Pokemon doesn’t like to be touched by strangers, at all, and will run the second someone comes at her with that intent. Peach will scold you for pushing yourself onto her, should you persistently try to get close to pet Val. They are in sync, if peach is sad, Val is sad, if Val is stressed, peach is stressed, and so on. They are inherently connected, it’s just been that long, the psychic bridge between them has been built, and reinforced over the years.

The only other Pokemon who follows her so endlessly is Booker, a teddiursa who’s pretty rough looking. He quietly trots behind, grouchy and stoic, they fight closely together a lot. He lost his mom a long time ago to poachers, and peach took him in, and changed her whole life for him. Not many people know, but Booker was the reason she left the rangers, changed career, and got so strong. Will tolerate people petting him but isn’t keen at all, grumbles a lot and tries to move away.

You may also need to know about the others, for the sake of writing, she here a few more bits that may be important to you, or others wanting to do this.

Grey is very tall, very burly, composed, tells bad dad jokes, is a bit of a goof if allowed to be. If he sees a pun, he’ll say it. Can’t help himself. Very nice guy to work with, good at keeping people calm and grounded. Pokemon are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, he gives off warm energy, and has inhuman amounts of patience. If you wrong his family however, he will snap back.

He grew up in the city, loves to swim and hike and cycle, can snowboard, is really sporty. A total brain box with held items, and boosting stats. He will explore many paths, to make sure visitors and students get the information they need, in a way that can be remembered and retained for later. Is a huge guy, but will get on the floor to play with a tiny Pokemon. Treats big “meaner” looking species like babies, very good with all pokemon.

His free time is spent either tinkering, swimming, or trimming his bonsai trees. This guy stares at screens a lot, so appreciates time away from them. Peach built him his own little greenhouse for his trees and tools, which he keeps clean and loves dearly.

His methods as a teacher are built around fun and games, he makes hard work easier to do by distracting trainers from the difficult bits, and focusing in on something more interesting or compelling.

His most commonly seen Pokemon would be a houndoom, Saxon, old battle veteran, retired now to herding and being a good boy. Very gentle, loves a pet.

Pari, now a fully fledged nurse, often oversees the labs front desk and pokecentre features, such as healing pokemon, and informing trainers who come to visit. Her skills with eggs and hatchlings is high, she’s great with younger Pokemon, and hands out good advice to trainers a lot. She’s not a fighter, never was, but can find any file, any study, any book, and any refrence you may need. A true bookworm, loves her romance novels, chat shows and upbeat celebrity gossip mags. Will cry at a lot of stuff, be it sad or happy.

She’s got a seriously upbeat personality, but if caught off guard or shocked, she gets a little flustered. Too much chaos will overwhelm her, but usually she’s on top of things. The years spent on the island have made her better at maintaining composure in emergencies. With lots of siblings, she’s very competent with others, and has a good ability to disarm cagey people with her jolly nature. Because of this, she can sometimes gain information from trainers that some of the more harsh professors may not have access to. Charming is a word for it.

Her partners are an eevee, and a happiny. They are quite sweet and well adjusted, the eevee gets a bit bouncy if you get it too excited.

#if you dont want to use the refs #im really cool with it #just enjoy yourself buddy #pokemon #prof.peach #peach talks #prof.grey #pari #dotaku island #dotaku staff #PLEASE #just ask me if you dont know something #or feel i missed something in what i wrote

[in-tua-deep]

Are you into my hero academia? What about an AU or crossover with tua?

UHHHH I am technically, like, peripherally? I watched some seasons of the show like two or three years ago and since then have simply absorbed all content through osmosis, reading fanfiction that has canon events, and my sister telling me about the arcs of her fav characters lmao

so a crossover hmmm

First of all you'd have to like, establish whether bnha is an alternate universe or just The Future If No Apocalypse with quirks being traced back to the descendants of the kids born without mothers

So let's say it's that - the glowing baby was the "first quirk" but the truth is people had powers before that. But - well, the Umbrella Academy was obviously a marketing gimmick to those in the future! There were even comics based on them

In the future, you might find some of those comics in museum exhibits dedicated to depictions of powers in the pre-quirk era, but they're just fun depictions and much less popular than, oh, DC or MCU comics which are also in the exhibits!

End of s2 doesn't happen I guess in this au?? No sparrow academy at least lmao. So, the Umbrella Academy stop the apocalypse (again) and the Commission threat is? Neutralized? Whatever. They decide to jump back to the future

Five warns them that time travel is a crapshoot, that he has no fucking idea when they'll land beyond some nebulous "future" because Five can at least control the direction if not exactly how long

Also, Five is like. Super tired. Incredibly tired. Homeboy still has a healing gut wound, time traveled twice, has been jumping all over the place, gotten even more injured, experienced paradox psychosis, and managed to undo time all in the space of like, two weeks. There actually more than that but we don't have time to get into how fucking tired Five is from his ~Month of Hell

Like genuinely this is like putting someone almost delirious from lack of sleep in the driver's seat of a car and expecting to get to your destination in one piece

But hey, the siblings are like "do it uwu" and Five has sacrificed everything for them already so why not get behind the wheel again

So Five jumps them, and of course something goes wrong because Five has pushed his powers like a great big rubber band and honestly it was only a matter of time before he lost his grip and it snapped back to hit him

So here be the umbrella academy: spilled out into the future like a cup of bad coffee.

Five probably isn't in too good of shape tbh, like they're hundreds of years in the future (but hey at least confirmation of no apocalypse am I right) in a world full of superpowers and Five is like. bleeding from his ears and nose probably idk

Let's handwave a little bit - Reginald made them all polyglots so the squad all speak varying levels of Japanese. Allison is the best at it, Five is second best but tends to use more archaic words bc he had missions in Japan back when he was with the commission, and Klaus is third best.

(Ben is the worst bc he decided when he was 16-and-dead that he didn't have to do anything regarding lessons and maintenance and hasn't given a shit since - but also he's dead so)

So you have a bunch of weird adults with a bleeding child in like, an alley who have appeared from nowhere

so of course heroes get involved

Anyway, the squad get taken in and Five is conscious but like, barely? And he's not going to let himself get separated from his siblings again fuck-you-officer and there is a lot of confusion

anyway detective tsukauchi ends up getting involved and ends up having to hear this batshit story and be like "...truth." which sends all kinds of people scrambling because fucking time travel? Like yeah, it's been theorized to be a possible quirk but there's no recorded cases of any sort of time travel that is for more than 24 hours let alone hundreds of years

"I'm an adult." Five says sourly, "I just happened to be returned to my 13 year old body when I time traveled one time."

"True." Tsukauchi says, feeling his soul leave his body, but like. absently. the way he does when he's called in at 2am after getting off of work at midnight.

"I'm 58." Five says.

"Lie." Tsukauchi says, because this is a headcanon hill I will die on.

"I'm probably 58, but it was hard to keep track. I'm at least 50." Five corrects.

"True." Tsukauchi sighs like these six (seven? they keep referring to another sibling and Klaus said 'ghost' like that was fine and it registered as true and Tsukauchi is not nearly paid enough for this) are not giving him a migraine by just existing

on the bright side there's like, probably protocols in place for individuals who are Legally Chronologically Adults but thanks to quirks are Not Physically Or Not Mentally Adults with tests to determine if the individual needs a guardian or not

though i'm gonna be honest idk if Five would pass the test bc he literally cannot take care of himself at all, has never paid taxes or understands how to exist legally, and also his emotional maturity is stunted as all hell. also like. we don't actually know how much being in his thirteen-year-old body affects his mental state but yeAH Five is vibing

anyway Tsukauchi probably phones a friend on this bullshit because Time Travel Child alone is probably enough for the Hero Commission to be like "find a way to control and use it or nuke it from orbit" and that's not even touching whatever the fuck Klaus is doing (shit gets real once 'dead men tell no tales' stops being true) let ALONE Allison's whole deal

on the bright side like, at least Vanya isn't getting side-eyed that much bc Big Destructive Quirks aren't exactly unknown? if vanya wanted to i guess quirk suppressors exist for that until extensive training on how to control a super powerful quirk happens

Tsukauchi in the group chat: Aizawa please I am literally begging you to take this bullshit on

Aizawa: in this economy? with my class?

RatGod: lol we'll take them ;3c

Aizawa: no

Anyway they probably end up having to live at UA while Five insists on trying to get them home still and everyone else is like "oh hey we used to be child soldiers as well! (:" and Aizawa is like "i hate everything about this and everything about all of you but also like nedzu is making me interact with you so :/"

nedzu is out here vibing like "lol i just don't want the hero commission to get their little paws on these time traveling fuckers, i think you should make then teaching assistants or something"

honestly the siblings are probably like. figuring out how to function in the bnha universe and getting like, legally registered and stuff while Five ferally refuses bc that's like saying he's giving up on getting them home and he can do this

Recovery girl tries to heal him a little when he arrives and he passes out for two weeks like, immediately bc homeboy is running on fumes and spite at this point

also i think on principle it would be REALLY FUNNY if the squad got to tag along with the class bc like. Five is thirteen and the class are all 15. this does not sound like a large age gap. anyone who has interacted with teenagers know that the class would squint at Five and be like "who is this sassy lost middle schooler."

I feel like when I was a sophomore we were still like "freshman... babie" even though we were literally only one year older.

i think the difference between the umbrella academy and school kids would be pretty funny like. objectively the bnha kids are lowkey child soldiers?? like they're 15 and fighting villains but like, there's all this red tape and laws and stuff but,,, deku still be breaking his limbs in a child fighting ring against equally superpowered children for like. entertainment and sponsorships sooo

but also like Five would be like "oh cool when is the experimentation class"

"the what"

"you know, when your powers are pushed real hard by putting you in different terrible situations while your dad and sibling stand by with clipboards writing down the exact voltage it takes before you can't use your powers anymore when being electrocuted"

"hound dog's office is right there. therapy is available to you at any time. i need you to know this."

all might calls Luther "my boy" like one (1) time and Luther just breaks down crying probably because he is starved for positive attention

klaus and midnight get along like a literal house on fire, aizawa tried his best to keep them apart for as long as possible but god damn

(klaus: your name is shimura nana??

all might: immediately dies choking on blood)

i feel it absolutely necessary to point out that aizawa, present mic, and midnight are all like, 30? and the umbrella academy are all between 29-early 30s? they are PEERS but like. the umbrella academy are more chaotic due to childhood trauma

the umbrella academy probably get offered to like. also train to be heroes. i mean,, there HAS to be some sort of track for people who change careers right?? you don't have to cement your future as a hero when you're 15 i'm sure there must be something and the squad already have experience if they want to go be legal heroes

diego probably does at least?? diego just vibes honestly. diego gets momo to make knives during a team exercise and they just go feral on everyone else and it ends with diego highfiving momo and someone getting way to close to being stabbed for comfort

Five might just be. legally enrolled as an Actual Student? But also i think it's funny to picture the entire squad just. all in the back of the classroom with luther trying to fit into a high school desk as they take notes on the laws of The Future surrounding heroics

every word out of the umbrella academy's mouths just make everyone more concerned on principal but like, five and klaus are probably the worst offenders. Klaus just says whatever comes to mind with no filter and Five doesn't get what people would consider to be abnormal anymore like

Five: yeah our dad bought us when we were babies and experimented on us throughout our childhood in order to make an elite team of child soldiers superheroes, it happens

Todoroki: ...have you heard of quirk marriages?

izuku probably has an aneurism bc he's is the only person who might recognize them from the comics because you know ya boy extensively researched the idea of heroics in pre-quirk eras (batman was an inspiration alright???) and might dredge up a memory of a less popular comic series

Five: I can time travel but it is very hard, which is why we are hundreds of years in the future. And why I look like a child.

Kaminari: so are you a kid or not?

Five, serenely: whatever is most convenient for me at any given moment

Mina: hell yeah game the system

they have a brief lesson on astronomy and Luther raises his hand like "ooh! i was isolated on the moon for four years and did SO MUCH research" and then just gets up and starts infodumping like way too much information on the moon

Izuku sitting there like "damn if quirks hadn't popped up we could have achieved so much in terms of space travel. please tell me more giant man who lived in pre-quirk era."

Vanya finds out about the quirkless and is like "oh mood that genuinely sounds like my childhood, being ordinary in a house full of extraordinary people, and then i found out that i did have powers but only much later in life after i had already been emotionally scarred by the experience"

deku: vanya we have so much in common

iida and uraraka: concerned noises

aizawa: hound dog. therapy with hound dog for all of you.

there's probably some conflict with like, the hero commission wanting to get their hands on the time travelers?? but probably especially five and klaus as a) time travel and b) ghosts (the hc def has bodies they would like to stay buried)

five has a pavlovian reaction to anything with 'commission' in the name and hates them on site, probably plays into his age in order to become a ward of UA or something to protect him from the commission a little bit.

(this makes nedzu Five's legal guardian. aizawa has his resignation papers all prepped in a drawer marked 'in case of emergency' but let's be real, if nedzu wants to take over the world aizawa should probably be on the rat-bear's side of things :/)

five: ah, i do recall the inhumane experimentation that we were subjected to

nedzu, who was experimented on: haha same hat! want me to dig up the location of reginald hargreeves's remains so you can spit on them?

klaus: nah no worries we dumped them out in the courtyard unceremoniously like, a while back. how long ago varies for each of us because of time travel!

luther: you said hound dog's office was down the hall and to the right?

on the bright side, Luther probably feels like. way less self conscious about his body, partially bc of his fighting and all that in the 60s but also bc !! now he genuinely doesn't feel like a freak. no one even gives him a second glance. one of the teachers looks like a slab of cement with a face. gang orca looks Like That. there is literally a student with an entire bird head and goth aesthetic. Luther does not stick out at all

allison and shinso bond over having "villainous" voice-based quirks

allison and shinso having worn muzzles at some point in their youth as punishment 🤝

aizawa probably helps train vanya as well with the whole, being able to erase a world ending quirk safely thing he's got going on which makes for a very nice safety net

i don't think vanya would want to be a hero at the end of things though. maybe the assistant teacher in the music class or something?? all vanya wants is to be able to not end the world

i feel like as time goes by, five brings up trying to get home less and less. part of that is because like,,, genuinely what do they have to go back to?? Allison has Claire, but like. I'm 100% sure the first thing she did in the future was try track down Claire's records and found out Claire was like. fine. became an adult, had a family, probably became the ancestor of the first "quirked" kids who officially popped up after light baby. had a good life, died at an old age etc. etc.

they start settling into the bnha world with like, "we can always hop aboard the five express into where the fuck ever" as a plan Z if things go completely pear shaped (again)

i'mma be real, five himself doesn't give a fuck as long as there is a) no apocalypse and b) his family is alive. Like that's it. His bar is so incredibly low and yet his life keeps fucking trying to limbo under it

i just think it would be funny to have like, Five trying to get along with his "peers" and make friends while the siblings do the same but like, in the staff room

also think it would be funny for five to just walk into the staff room and get coffee occasionally.

a teacher: why is a student in here -

Five, sipping coffee: i'm an adult

nedzu like "what kind of guardian would i be if i didn't teach my new son all the tunnels around ua so he can pop out wherever"

five like "hey new dad can i put stashes of supplies all around ua of weapons, money, food, and other assorted things that might be useful if one needed to fight or make a run for it" and nedzu is like "haha just put your list of what supplies you want in your go bags on my desk and i'll critique it later!"

anyway a bnha/tua crossover would be incredibly chaotic but probably very funny

#long post #far tua long #tua bnha crossover #what kind of disaster is this #there are so many characters in bnha to even consider #there is no more apocalypse so five either chills the fuck out or his paranoia ramps up to an eleven #or both! #five teleporting into nedzu's office like: hey i wrote a 52 page potential contingency plan for if x happens #and nedzu is like 'wonderful!' and gives it back to five the next day with corrections and critiques in red ink #klaus ben and ghost!nana get along like a house on fire even if she keeps telling klaus that he's too skinny #ben: klaus is an absolute fucking idiot with zero braincells #nana nodding sagely while looking at all might: ah yes i know the exact type #diego and snipe become absolute bros like ride or die because why not #luther gets positive reinforcement and goes to therapy #also thirteen listens patiently to luther infodumping about space because i think that would be nice #five is either like 'i'm only thirteen uwu' or 'i'm fifty eight' and there is nothing in between - only what is most convenient #i feel like kaminari and mina vibe with five's brand of chaos #iida doesn't know whether to murder five for being a gremlin and disobeying so many rules or to be respectful bc five is technically old #aizawa is SO TIRED y'all #aizawa thinks vanya is going to be the good hargreeves but PSYCHE all the hargreeves are equally chaotic in different ways #five calls nedzu 'dad' for the sole reason that it makes every teacher and/or hero in earshot cringe in automatic fear #klaus also calls nedzu dad because he just thinks it's funny #five and nedzu have similar coping mechanisms so they vibe but nedzu also vibes with klaus's sense of chaotic humor #five gets talked into healthier coping mechanisms by way of 'keeping his cover' or 'preventing the hc from getting their hands on you' #aka five is not allowed to drink alcohol #five HAS gone to midnight and been like 'hey teach knock me the fuck out my brain is working overdrive and i need to not be awake anymore'

[cupofkey]

Yo same anon here! I didn’t want to make you feel like you were ghosted or anything but at the same time I didn’t want to reply with my account because I don’t really use tumblr a lot anymore. Tbh I’m not really very interactive with the fandom anymore either, but I kind of went on a nostalgia trip one day and found your account which I liked :) It’s hard to just compute how identity can me so complicated by history but I guess I try not to get to bogged down by it? 1/2

oh don’t even worry about it dude! I feel ya it’s all good, and this is a subject that can be so so difficult for us hyphenated people lol. always happy to discuss topics like that, and I don’t mind hearing lots from anons so dwdw :) I feel like identity is something everyone feels they should know 100% about themselves, but nobody starts out like that and getting there isn’t an easy task. time and age can help, but, yeah. it’s a huge mess. I feel you there.

ok but this is not cringe at all let me tell u... I have a super complicated but almost kinda loving relationship with being an american (summed up pretty well here i think). I feel that a lot, I am not an idealist in any way but I try to look at things from all angles and roll with it all. like I said I think time and age can definitely help here. but growing up is so fucking confusing and scary and I 1000% relate. I think just focusing on doing good with what you have is a great way to go about it, 17 is so fucking turbulent, like, I promise it’s not always gonna be this ?!?!?!?!?! I promiseeee. 

being VietAm especially is so... it’s such a space to be in, because the foundations of our ~hyphen identity~ are almost universally built from trauma. I don’t think many of our parents and relatives have really dealt with any of this conflict either, so def don’t feel bad abt feeling lost. I’ve discussed this with some of the other viets in my life and I think it’s really important to consider that collective trauma in all discussions about vietam identity. nobody talks about it. nobody wants it to be real. so the trauma just permeates through everyone’s lives and becomes so firmly rooted in our community, we get RVN nationalists storming the capitol holding the south vietnamese flag. we get vietam kids who are completely cut off from their heritage or past in the name of complete assimilation and escape from that trauma. idk it is super complicated it’s not just you and there’s so much to it. I still struggle super hard with this.

lol yes i love AsAm tiktoks I appreciate the energy. I appreciate the endless clowning on viet men. I appreciate their community. I will say probably a part of why I’m so fixated on maintaining my vietnamese now is because I completely lack that community? I live in a predominantly white area where I see a non-family viet person maybe... once every few months? that’s my way of coping, anyway. I’m definitely not perfect though and I think my accent’s been slipping pretty hard too TT you’re not alone I promise ksdjfksdfj. anyways yes japan colonizer and what about it

ah yeah this is super relatable to me. I mean, I’ve said this before, but I’m honestly not sure how I suddenly fell into the niche of “historical asian nations content”. my original focus was “everyone is a lesbian now”. I almost exclusively write AUs, the more AU the better, the more character focused the better, history might as well not exist for me and my writing. headcanon posts are the furthest I can go otherwise it’s just lesbian stupidity... and yeah, sometimes you just need the dumb lesbians. I’m definitely never inspired enough by historical hetalia to make actual writing about it. so yea you’re not alone here either my dude. this is not a read but I feel your confusion and anxiety radiating through and I promise promise you are definitely not alone here. I have super mixed feelings abt hetalia too,,,

yea idk if you’ve read my big vietnam post but the last part about diaspora is realness for me. the truth is that nationverse/historical is just too fucking complicated for me. there is just way too much that goes into this stuff to condense down into nation people, much less nation people who are actually likeable or, ya know, like real people and not inhuman beings. I am 100% a character growth focused person. that’s kind of moot when you have all these questions about like what does the nation even represent etc etc it just eats up my whole brain. like, I fundamentally can’t get with nationverse, which is why I will not be writing anything serious with it for the foreseeable future. (none of this is disrespect or judgment to nationverse creators, I 1000% enjoy yalls content, I just could never make it myself because of all the contradictions I would have to balance in my own mind.)

I kinda returned your rant with an even larger rant hopefully that’s okay djfksdjfksd. I hope this made sense and I hope it made you feel a little less alone with how ?!?!?!?!! you feel cuz I feel the exact same about all of this. like I said pls feel free to dm me on here or msg my discord key#9973 anytime, I am always up for chatting with fellow vietams, and incorporating these kinds of convos into my life has really helped me personally with processing all the complexities of my identity. it’s really fucking hard to do. like I said our families and community still have a long way to go in that regard. but it’s good to try. sending hugs your way <3

#ask #my thoughts #long post #rant #life stuff

[unculturedmamoswine]

I just finished rereading Tortall and Other Lands, and made a totally subjective ranking of the stories. I posted it on reddit but I figured, what the hell, may was well post here too. If i could put it under a cut I would but sadly I am on mobile.

11) Time of Proving

It's good and all; I especially like the concept that the protag, Arimu, has to live alone and map new lands for a year to show her value to her people in order to lead them. But I think I like that bit of worldbuilding more than the actual plot. Though I do think it's pretty cute that Arimu comes up with excuses to keep helping Sunflower. An enjoyable story that's just eclipsed by the greatness of much of the rest of the book.

10) Plain Magic

I like this story. I like the thread magic especially. However, I don't think it really shows us anything new from Tammy if that makes sense. The thread magic, the ignorant folks doing stupid things, the cool stranger whisking away a gifted protagonist to a new life, it's all familiar ground for Tammy fans.

9) Lost

It's hard to put this story so low on the list. It has a lot of qualities to love, but much like Plain Magic it seems like it does mostly what we've seen from other Tammy content. Adria is a girl good at math, which isn't that valuable a thing in her society. But people around her recognize that and take her away to a better place for her, Tortall of course. And we get the darkings, which, cute as they are, seem kinda.. OP. They were OP in Aly's books, too. Ah well, despite my complaints it's still really cool and a fun story. And I love the way it shows the effects of years of abuse and how it makes you feel small. The way Adria's father uses fear to control her whole family, and the way Adria gets away from him by showing her courage, those are important things. I feel sure someone out there was helped by this story, you know?

8) Elder Brother

When I did my ranking, I was baffled that this story was so far down. I really like this story. That's the trouble with ranking stuff you really like, I guess. Fadala is a cool character, Qiom is an even cooler one, and I love reading about Qiom struggling to live his new, more confusing life. Reading about him weeping over his last apples is somehow really sad? And it's very cool to read about a totally different part of the world in the Tortall universe.

7) Huntress

It's very cool to read a modern-day story by Tammy! I love the merging of modern times and the fantasy elements of our usual Tammy stories. It's interesting to see how Corey (I don't think we learn her first name?) isn't devout, and arguably isn't even a believer, but the Goddess still comes to her aid anyway. I suppose it's out of respect for her family. I love the touch of the Goddess wearing modern day running gear. But my favorite thing has gotta be the total utter batshit crazy Pride. What completely insane villains. It's very Tammy to cast the murdering freaks as a bunch of privileged rich douchebags who think they can do whatever they want if they prey on the vulnerable and those that society has deemed as valueless. Golly, does that remind you of anything? It's nice that this story takes a fairly strong 'murder is bad' stance, when even in real life plenty of people are ok with rapists and drug dealers getting murdered. And I like that Tammy shows, through the Lions' threats to rape Corey, that they clearly aren't killing 'bad' people in order to be good guys, but just so they can get away with it easier. Though you could argue that the Goddess killing all the kids somewhat undercuts the 'no murder' message...

6) Testing

Admittedly I probably wouldn't like this one as much as I do if it weren't for the context of it being a semi-autobiographical account of Tammy around the time she rewrote Alanna's books as books for teens. That being said, it's a sweet story that looks at how vulnerable kids can come to trust an adult in lives that have been tumultuous and hard. It's honestly such a feel-good yet realistic tale.

5) Student of Ostriches

I think this one appeals to the kid in me. I was always so enchanted by African animals as a kid and that never really went away. Kylaia teaching herself to fight and run using the animals of her home as inspiration is just unbearably cool to me haha. Though it is much the same as I've said about Plain Magic and Lost in that it's well-trod ground for Tammy, Student of Ostriches really works for me. And it's always nice to have a peek into parts of the Tortall-verse we don't often see.

4) Mimic

I think Mimic sticks in my head more than any other story in Tortall and Other Lands. Ri, Mimic, Grandpa, even the dogs and the crow are all great characters. The beautiful setting, with the great plain and the storms, the dragons, the compact between the village and birds, it's all so memorable. I love that it's about choosing to grow up, and how you can't go back but it's worthwhile and necessary.

3) The Dragon's Tale

Call me basic, but I love dragons! It's so nice to see a story about Kitten, so great to see things from her point of view. Not being able to speak for sixteen years sounds like a freaking nightmare, but she handles it pretty well, I'd say. I like that she clearly thinks of Daine and Numair as her parents, and she adores her bestie Spots, it's just so cute! They really love each other, and I will always be a sucker for stories about people who love each other. But it's not just cute, there's some great meat here in the form of new characters like Afra, Uday, and Kawit and, best of all for me, worldbuilding! I really like when we see glimpses of the Tortall universe that we could never have imagined, as with Beka's unusual wild-adjacent magic. Here we get to see Kawit and learn that she's another example of an immortal that humans overlooked when locking them away four hundred years ago (and we get to see more of Tammy's love of opals lol). I like the subtle implication that opal dragons may be almost a link between classic dragons and basilisks, what with the beaded skin and long long tails. We learn more about Kawit's unusual magic. We get an explicit confirmation of the fact that multiple colors of Gift= more powerful Gift. This whole story is just crammed full of fascinating Tortall content with a soft, gooey center.

2) Nawat

This story is heavy, which is why I like it. I enjoy it when non-human characters are actually characterized as being fundamentally different from humans. It's challenging for the reader and the author to connect with a guy who is considering killing his kid, but I think Tammy succeeds here. It's hard to watch Nawat struggle with the different parts of his life coming together, and sad to see him feeling like his heritage is slipping away. It's nice to see that he really will be able to teach his kids about their own crow heritage when Ochobai grows her first quill. It's also fun to see Aly through his eyes.

1) The Hidden Girl

This story is so good that it makes Elder Brother better just by existing. It's really cool to have Fadala and Teky exploring different attitudes with regard to their culture. While Fadala has an almost Alanna-esque rejection of what her society sees as feminine, we also get to see Teky appreciate what powers women in her society are afforded, and also see her work to change some of the things she sees as wrong. While Fadala isn't willing to play by her people's rules and elects to leave them behind, Teky wants something better for everyone in her homeland. Neither of these attitudes is wrong, they're just different reactions to institutionalized inequality. Like Elder Brother, The Hidden Girl shows us new and fascinating Tortall content in the form of the more monotheistic culture on the far side of the world, which is very cool. We've never really seen an oracle before, and it's a cool new 'badass girl' archetype to add to the Tortall roster. It's all just wonderful, knowing women are changing things all over the world in this verse.

#Tortall #Tamora Pierce #Tortall and other Lands #my post #long post

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Hey Lightning, I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something. One take that seems to keep returning every once in a while is the "Allura fell for Lotor only after he revealed his Altean heritage," but I know u and others have disproven this many times, which does reassure me. While I love Allura, I definitely think one of her weaknesses was her devotion to Altea and singing Alfor's praises, which sometimes became too much. At the same time, it bothers me when I see some ppl (1/?)

Continuing anon message: “ say that she thought Alteans were superior to all other races, and that when the colony plot twist happened, she became repulsed by Lotor's Galra side, which is why she rejected him. For them, that's why she forced violent memories onto an uncorrupted Zarkon, but somehow "saw the good/redeemed" Honerva, the Altean. I can kind of understand where they're coming from, but for me, it just didn't make sense that Allura suddenly had a change of heart considering for most of s8, she was angry and dead set on going after Honerva. Even with that, I think to a lot of her fans, s8 made Allura so ooc that she became unrecognizable, which hurt to watch. I guess for me it's hard seeing antis and people who don't like her claim that that's just how she is and has always been. Haha sorry for rambling, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, since your arguments ease my mind on a lot of things when it comes to Allura :)”

Hi, anon. Wow, thanks for your extended note! I don’t know anywhere in canon that Allura champions Alteans as a superior race. The definition of racial supremacy is a belief that inherent genetic differences between races determine cultural or individual achievement, with social/governmental policies championing intolerance of other races. To get Allura to fit into such a label:

1.      A viewer has to ignore or undermine all the evidence available about who the main-universe Alteans really were before main-universe Zarkon’s massacre of them.

2.      A viewer has to ignore or undermine how Allura actually responds to a variety of different races in the show, including her own.  

So let’s start with issue one. To support an “Allura was a racial supremacist” opinion, a lot of antis (and even non-militant, average viewers) are favorable to the opinion that Alteans as a group, including Alfor, were actually evil and violent colonizer elitists before Galrans killed them off. In other words, they question Altean victimhood, and this allows the militant antis to poison and undermine scenes of a woman mourning her home and her beloved family. And it just gets to be a really unsettling conversation, to listen to someone actually try to justify genocide. They’ll also have suspicions that all of our foundational backstory in the s3 finale was just “cleansed” propaganda from Coran. So if antis can undermine Allura’s entire race and family as corrupt, then they can intentionally undermine any of her canonical statements about or efforts toward peace. Which is hilarious, because this racist tactic applied to Allura is actually what a lot of antis accuse Allura of doing with Lotor.

For the record, I don’t think the show production team actually intended the subliminal messaging/cognitive dissonance that I’m about to discuss. The people who designed and developed this show are fans of robot kitties and aren’t PhDs in social issues. But I think there is a very serious issue about the portrayal of genocide victims that feeds into some very real problems in our world, especially regarding the concept of racial supremacy and conspiracy theories about genocide victims.

VLD tried to play with both genocide politics for edge™ points while ALSO playing with shatterglass theory (shatterglass meaning an AU where the heroes are villains and villains are heroes). Combining these two concepts into the same universe creates some incredibly disturbing subliminal messaging about Alteans that very closely mimics ongoing neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews. Nazis and other anti-Semitists justify their hatred of Jews by equating them as terrible villains out for world domination via some underhanded shadow control of the mass populace. It’s an incredibly malicious form of propaganda, because it works so terribly well. And what do you know, VLD plays right into this kind of propaganda. In the season 3 episode, Hole in the Sky, we’re faced with team Voltron confronting an Altean Empire that was actually evil and out for multiverse domination. And oh by the way, they’re using malicious shadow tech to control a mass populace.

It’s like someone on the production team read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then just copied/pasted that incredibly damaging and widely accepted conspiracy theory right onto Alteans for s3 funsies because edge content.

This is incredibly punishing, for the narrative to wave the carrot stick in front of genocide survivors that maybe some others survived—and then to suggest that Alteans were the evil ones all along. A shatterglass twist worked very well in Captain Marvel (2019) for a lot of reasons, for example, but it just doesn’t work well in the VLD universe given that the show explicitly portrays the genocide victims as evil and validates this concept. And this episode unfortunately feeds ongoing cognitive dissonance in antis that if AU Alteans could be so evil…how certain are you that they aren’t in the main universe too? On the reverse side, the main-universe goes out of its way to portray that not all Galrans are evil, and even that Galrans were the primary resistance (BOM). But in this singular episode, we see a united Altean empire. And the only Altean who moves to stand against it once the shine wears off…is Allura. There is no AU Altean actually shown in the Guns of Gamara. So Allura stands alone as an Altean against her own people.

For this reason, this episode doesn’t function very well as a shatterglass AU either, because the moral “flip” isn’t a mirror balance to main universe. The Alteans of the AU world appear as fully united in their evil plans. And then, no doubt, anti-alluras point out other quirky things about main-universe Alteans throughout the show—the violent language-learning system that scares Pidge, and the ancient Altean terraforming technology that Haggar activates, and the fact that Oriande is a hidden place that keeps out the less magical with a violent guardian. These details, when removed from main-universe world building, create a cognitive dissonance about whether main-universe Allura and Alteans were actually genuine in how they depicted respectful “peace and diplomacy.” So anti alluras who believe Allura was a racial supremacist really rely on this s3 episode and these details to uphold their conspiracy theory.

So let’s focus on Allura in this episode, because it says a lot about who she ultimately is as a person, and people have forgotten how she actually responded in this episode. Allura is unquestionably hopeful at the thought that her and Coran might not be the last Alteans alive. Pretty understandable. If I were the last human, I’d be darn excited to find out there’s more of me left, lol. So her experience as a genocide victim initially blinds her to the evilness of these Alteans. You can even see the ache on her face, of how badly she wants to believe their narrative of peace.

So Allura is initially star-struck that she and Coran are not the last Alteans, yes, and that somehow they’ve achieved a “peace.” She is also not afraid to admit that they would be valuable allies in the war:

And she’s not wrong there, considering that they have what appears to be extensive military resources and a robot force of their own. But she makes a critical mistake in assuming that “these are my people” means that they share main-universe cultural sentiments. The instant Allura hears Slav (so not someone of her own race) call these Alteans out as actually evil colonizers turning people into slaves, she begins to question the narrative she’s received.

In this instance, she actually affords the Alteans the same courtesy she afforded Lotor—the opportunity to deny the accusations.

But in the AU Altean’s case, they try to turn blame back on other parties. Allura listens to Keith when he grows increasingly fearful of what the Alteans might do to the others, and she tries to plead for actual peace:

And actually, this is a pretty interesting moment for Allura. She tries to salvage an alliance…until she realizes that their differences are irreconcilable, and that their definition of peace is inherently different from her own. This probably sets the stage for why Allura was so triggered by Lotor talking about peace while also killing people—because she’s seen people misappropriate that term before. And also probably informs why she trusts the information of both Keith and Krolia (both of whom have Galran blood, btw).

Ultimately, Allura turns against her own people. Violently:

When they get angry about her wanting actual peace, Allura draws a weapon against them and rejects them from her people. This mimics how she spends several seasons fighting an Altean Haggar/Honerva for her crimes, and how she turns against Lotor too.

So case in point here, Allura loves her people, obviously—but she also is holding them to moral standards regarding their behavior, which is something that a genuine racist doesn’t do. As a matter of fact, Lotor is the only person of Altean blood that Allura genuinely bonds with ever again in the series. She’s distant with Romelle, she’s distant with the s8 Alteans… In s8, Allura even says this about Luca, which refers back to her own mistakes she made with initially being star-struck by the s3 AU Alteans who came in “peace”:

Allura herself had been manipulated in s3, wanting so desperately to not be the last Altean alive that it initially blinded her to how Commander Hira was manipulating her. The plight of the s8 Alteans who are deceived by Honerva is inherently frustrating to her, because she can see herself in them.

Absolutely none of this correlates with Allura seeing or perpetuating Alteans as a superior race. At every turn, her own people continue to disappoint her, and she increasingly and progressively separates herself from them in hopelessness, because they’re so brainwashed that they can’t see they’re just cannon fodder for someone else’s military agendas. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a superior race, lol.

So let’s think about anti accusations here. Allura is a racial supremacist…but she’s arguing against her people who believe unquestionably in Honerva, another full Altean like herself? Nothing about that accusation makes sense with her actions.

The fact is, consistently from season 3 and onward, Allura is faced with her own people morally disappointing her.

The good news for the s8 Alteans like Tavo is that Allura is able to remove the dark entity Honerva is using to control him. Which allows other Alteans to “wake up” from being manipulated and try to make amends.

Regardless, Allura makes a very clear line that simply being Altean doesn’t make someone “right.” She sees herself fully at odds with her own people who are drawn in by Honerva’s lies. And she experienced well back in s2 (revealing Haggar as Honerva) and s3 (evil AU Alteans) that any given race, including her own, can house people who do bad things.

The fact is, she’s consistently and willingly drawn weapons against even her own people when they didn’t meet her moral expectations. So her response to Lotor isn’t particularly out of line there. She’s repulsed by a moral flaw.

And actually, Lotor himself wouldn’t have known this, but he very oddly echoed the AU Alteans by getting angry that Allura was angry over the means through which he was trying to get peace:

So Lotor actually reverts to the same logic of the AU Alteans—peace at any cost, just look at the results—

And keep in mind that the AU Alteans also manipulated Allura’s excitement about them, to get her to make the transreality comet usable so they could go into other realities. So Allura has felt betrayed and used before, by her own people.

So when she says this:

Yes, it’s a reference back to how Zarkon manipulated his friends in order to get access to the quintessence field, at the explicit cost of potentially killing his own people. But it’s not without understanding that yes, Alteans can be just as manipulative and betraying as Zarkon. Because she’s experienced it, again and again.  

As a matter of fact, six out of the eight seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender feature villainous Alteans/Alteans on the wrong side of the war, and we continuously see Allura punished again and again for wishing that Alteans still lived.

No wonder she wanted to die.

This is something that I find uncomfortable about the narrative of the show. Previous iterations of Voltron did in fact have a “blood on everyone’s hands” perspective, such as within the ages 16+ Dynamic Comics. However, Arusians/Alteans in those old Voltron narratives were not victims of genocide. VLD turns Alteans into victims of the worst racial crime possible and then also consistently portrays them as inherently antagonistic to genuine peace efforts in some way, instead of focusing on the evil of the oppressors.

And this is such a double whammy for Lotor’s characters as well, given that he was abused by his parents and threatened with slavery via his Galran culture, and that he was half-Altean too trying to connect to his lost culture.

As a matter of fact, the larger show’s narrative interest in “victims as antagonists” makes it such that when we see victims try to enact actual justice, it feels almost jarring. Let’s look at that s8 Zarkon moment you brought up as an example, where Allura destroys his innocent perspective by showing him his evil deeds.

The s8 Zarkon is a weird topic because 1) This Zarkon actually doesn’t exist outside of Honerva’s mind, so how he has any kind of actual free-will is beyond me, unless someone wants to argue that Honerva actually cursed his true soul just as she cursed the other paladins. It’s hilarious too, because Honerva-mind-Zarkon also calls Honerva a psychopath, so I guess now Honerva is psychoanalyzing herself using her dead husband as the vehicle, while also discreetly helping the paladins to stop herself—

ANYWAY, using this Zarkon as a “proof” of Allura’s “racism” is also cherry picking in the weirdest of ways. Is she angry about his horrific and incalculable crimes, including even how he betrayed the OG paladins and ruined his own planet? Absolutely. Does she want him to be aware of his crimes instead of having to pretend like nothing’s wrong? Yes.

But notice here, this Zarkon actually shows remorse. He is actually crying over those memories and recognizing that he had done something wrong. And Allura can work with that. In fact, out of everyone standing around and doing nothing, it’s Allura who gives him a second chance and offers an alliance with Zarkon in order to stop a crazy Altean: 

Keep in mind too, Honerva didn’t have memory loss at the end of s8. She knew exactly what she’d done and had given up and had to actually be convinced to do anything halfway constructive. That’s a very different circumstance than mind-Zarkon had, who jumped at the chance to do something to fix what all had happened, and gets even morally righteous about it, calling his own wife a psychopath, lol.

So generally, antis who believe Allura was a racial supremacist haven’t watched the show holistically. We see her hold the same standards to her own people as she expects out of others. This show would look incredibly different if Allura were a true racial supremacist.

Ah, you ask. Okay, so we’ve refuted the big pieces of “evidence” used to incriminate Allura. But what about all of those weird details about ancient Altean history? The violent language-learning program that scared Pidge? The violent terraforming tech that almost kills Voltron? The concept that Alfor tried to play “police” over the Galra and actually blew up their planet? The Alteans’ ongoing discussions of “peace and diplomacy” and spreading it throughout the universe while they happen to sit on a massive load of ancient power?

The s3 finale and other facts throughout the series very heavily smash the claim that our canon, in-universe Alteans were evil colonizers like the AU Alteans. The biggest piece of evidence to the contrary is that the Altea we know was one (1) planet. You counted right. One planet. Not an empire, but a singular planet. The s3 finale corroborates this, showing Altea as being largely isolationist from a military perspective while Daibazaal and Nalquod warred "for generations," right in front of their salad.

So some viewers would have you believe that Alteans were these big bad, intergalactic police state colonizers. But for all of its great power and knowledge, the singular planet of Altea didn't even canonically interfere in the wars of its own galaxy for actual millennia? And looking at the screenshots upon the stabilization of the alliance, Alfor is revealed to not have had experience with a neighboring culture. His face while exploring Gyrgan’s homeworld is an indication that it’s all rather new for him too. So again, we have evidence showing that Alteans were not colonizing or even functioning as a police state.

Note here that in the s3 flashbacks, the show confirms that it actually wasn’t just Alfor who suggested an alliance. All five leaders had common interests in protecting their galaxy from even worse threats, so all five came together at the same time. This is actually the first piece of evidence we have of Altea entering into some kind of intergalactic military agreement to stave off said worse threats.

And all of this is on top of a history where in s6, the Galran Archivist confirms that the Galran Empire had existed before Zarkon for 3,000 years, with times of “expansion.” It’s very easy to see that Blaytz’s people were actively fighting off Galran occupation of their homeworld within this past.

And that’s actually what I think makes Alfor and the OG paladins some pretty interesting characters. Here, we had colonizing Galran empire setting down its sword and accepting the value and space of its neighbors. Here, we had master alchemist Alfor giving up military power within their group by acknowledging Zarkon as the superior strategist. Here, we had Blaytz who had previously been battling Galran occupation…fully accepting the Galra?   

So the OG Paladin backstory represents a pretty incredible alliance that removed a lot of intergalactic toxicity and helped heal broken bonds. But it required all five leaders to agree to that. Alfor did not throw his weight or power around within this. There were several checks and balances here.

But this backstory also helps to explain some of the quirky details about Alteans. Their planet existed within an active war zone, and it’s very likely that they’d had to fight off Galran occupation just as Blaytz’s people did. So the violent robot trainers and fear-based language learning systems start to make sense. Alteans weren’t just simpering people playing harps all day and eating grapes. They were actively prepared to defend their planet and their culture.

So when Allura says in season 1 that Alteans were “spreading diplomacy” across the universe, the only pieces of evidence we have of that is the OG paladins themselves, in which Alfor was a big part in creating that alliance—and then possibly the Alteans with the Balmerans, given their deep collective rituals with that planet while the Galra literally just came in and ripped the planet nearly to death. Allura tries to mimic what it means to accept and interact with a culture without changing it well in season 1, when she stumbles through trying to respect Arusian culture and its demands on its people. Also, there is a big fact that antis like to overlook:

The fact is, despite the untold numbers of civilizations we interact with across 76 episodes, no outside race remembers Alteans as evil colonizers. If they were really so big and bad, we would have heard it, like, “Man, yeah the Galrans are bad. Just as bad as those Alteans, back in the day.” Or something. But nope, nothing.

So I heavily question the history of Altea as an ancient colonizing race. If they were, then Altea wouldn't have just been a single planet with limited resources to fight wars in even its own galaxy. All of this supports the idea of Altean children being raised to fight--because they were preparing to defend themselves when/if diplomacy fails.... But the fact that the Balmerans see Alteans fondly and that literally every other race we run into is explicitly suspicious of Galrans and not at all of Alteans says something.

I think the only piece of evidence there might be for a genuinely colonizing ancient Altea is the use of terraforming technology, as mentioned in s4. Haggar discovers it and activates it to try and kill Voltron--and she nearly succeeds, because said tech destroys the entire crust of the planet to reform it. But you have to step back for a second and wonder--if ancient Alteans were so powerful, why was Alfor struggling so hard to even hold his own planet together in the midst of all these other cultures warring and larger threats? If they had this technology--and they did know about it because Allura recognized it right away as ancient technology--why the heck wouldn't they use it? Or were they using it, and it was to reform uninhabited planets to help sustain displaced peoples? Why is it, if Alteans were so terribly bad, we have no record across ANY of the many alien races being cautious of them? Even Galran Lieutenant Lahn snapped at Allura only because he was jealous of the general security she had back on, you guessed it, explicitly Altea. There's a lot of potential explanations for a positive use of terraforming technology, and the evidence against colonization and Altea committing omnicide against other races is incredibly more aligned with the other details in the canon.

And even Alfor’s creation of Voltron and the blowing up of Daibazaal—that’s something that antis like to position as evidence of his police-state ways to underhandedly control other cultures.

So let’s tackle those too while we’re at it.

Honestly, I know people like to hate on Alfor, and I do think his character picks up some misogynism just from the writers....But I don't think he was as much of a controller as people think he was. He was already in an alliance with four other leaders to try and stop bad things from happening in their galaxy. That meant they were expending incredible amounts of time and resources to accomplish that end—resources that were not renewable and may have been straining various planets. We know that he started building Voltron with Zarkon and everyone else's blessing because he called them "clean ships," but it's only after the rift creatures attack that suddenly Alfor's perception of Voltron moves from "clean energy" to "omg we need a more powerful weapon against this unknown enemy.”

So these are his intentions BEFORE he discovers rift creatures are a threat to the universe. While Zarkon states that these new ships are to be endlessly powerful for the Galra Empire, Alfor shames him by offering what his desire is for them:

  After the rift creatures nearly destroy Daibazaal, intentions change.

So here, we see the game change in a BIG way. Voltron is not just about offering a more renewable way of sustaining peace-keeping efforts. Alfor is now adjusting and finishing these ships with the explicit knowledge that if they are not powerful enough, then Daibazaal and the Galran people will die. Alfor’s got a LOT of pressure on him now to deliver a mighty and powerful weapon to stop this new threat. So even his creation of Voltron as a superweapon involved using it to protect people from imminent death—not to police them.

And about Alfor blowing up Daibazaal—once again, it’s Alfor trying to clean up Honerva and Zarkon’s mess. Honerva had convinced Zarkon that the rift needed to be wider, and so Zarkon deceived the paladins into widening it.

So keep in mind here, at this point in time—the rift was destabilizing and eating an entire planet. The entire universe was now at stake. Alfor had to choose between a bad fix and an even worse option of allowing everyone to die, but he very clearly evacuated people before destroying Daibazaal, as part of his promise to keep Galrans safe. So that no one would have to die.

And as a matter of fact—about that terraforming technology. How sure are you that Alfor didn’t intend to use it to build Galrans a new home? It’s entirely within the realm of acceptable conjecture that he allowed for the existence of that technology because it could restore what had been lost.

And here’s where the story gets really screwy and feeds into some anti hate. Because when Zarkon wakes up as a zombie, he desires more quintessence as zombies do.

So he’s pissed that Alfor just cut off his gateway, and he manipulates his people:

And it’s here where we get the idea that Alfor was an evil controller. The idea came from Zarkon, who—we can look around pretty easily and see that he was not a man of honor, ultimately. Even if you chose to not believe the s3 finale flashbacks as being objective, there’s something wrong with Zarkon. (It’s clear that the show thought using Coran was a smart way to shell off massive amounts of info, because clearly if this were truly in Coran’s perspective, we would NOT have had intimate looks into Zarkon and Honerva’s bedroom as Zarkon is tending to her, like omg.) Numerous sources, histories, and cultures outside of Coran confirm that Zarkon hit a point of no return on the evil scale, and that he projected his own blame for Daibazaal’s destabilization onto Alfor in order to raise up his new regime in the name of Quintessence™.

So at the end of the day, even Alfor was a victim. But yet somehow, various antis choose to believe Zarkon’s victim-punishing narrative because said antis can’t or else refuse to connect one scene to another since it undermines their justifications for why they can hate on Allura. And that’s not so much an issue with the story itself as it is just poor critical analysis or malicious weaponization of content against other fans.

Now, at this point, we’ve talked about Allura and we’ve talked about Altean history. I have numerous other posts about Allura’s interactions with other races and Galrans and overcoming trauma to give the entire universe a second chance. So if there is anything in this show that suggests Alteans were in any way a superior race, then it’s probably within the show’s own worldbuilding. The show contradicts its own definitions of what quintessence even is by suggesting Alteans have “bluer/purer quintessence” in order to justify why Lotor would even be trying to sacrifice them for anything. The show-championed concept that Alteans have a bluer, purer life force above all other people, and that only Altean energy could interface with the fabric of space-time. Now, this is a problem in the later seasons’ world building itself. And you know who wrote that in? The production team. So once again, we do have racial issues in this show, in ways that shows like Star Wars desperately try avoid by showing racial diversity in who has Midi-chlorians.

That said, I’m not a perfectly woke storyteller either. I think every story and show is going to have something problematic™, but with VLD it’s very clear that its disrespectful handling of genocide politics and shatterglass conspiracy theories, on top of its weird master race angle created the perfect storm. These mishandled and quirky details have created a cognitive dissonance with the provided narrative, resulting in some people in the anti fandoms to champion what aligns very closely to actual neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews, who according to them are not victims but instead the true perpetrators of all bad things. For the sake of the antis, I’m pretty sure they’re not intentionally looking at VLD this way and are probably just looking for any easily graspable reason to hate on Allura for interfering with their ship or something.

But this kind of subliminal propaganda that undermines victims, and the effect it has had on fandom morality politics, is deeply concerning to me. I really wish that we’d had an opportunity to respectfully and critically discuss this with the production team of the show, because a Y7-FV show about “strength in unity” should NOT result in us needing to have a conversation about people walking away with neo-Nazi-ish propaganda sentiments against genocide survivors. Like. Clearly, VLD is fictional, but it’s feeding into a real-life beast that it does NOT need to feed. And it’s keeping alive ongoing conspiracy narratives against some of our most vulnerable populations on the planet.

So, we need better stories. We need a production team that, if they’re going to get paid to do something involving portrayals of genocide and politics, that they need to do their research on those topics. Nobody is going to be perfect with a creation, but VLD validated some very damaging things—and it ALL is something that could have been fixable. I think it would have been incredibly validating to hear the production talk about and accept that these were issues that cropped up unintentionally, and to hear them confirm that these issues are not the sorts of things that VLD was supposed to champion.

The greatest tragedy of all of this is the potential that this show had to really champion some great and validating messages, and the potential that we as a fandom had to come together and do something that fandom was meant to do—which was celebrate the things we love. Because that’s why we’re all here. That’s why this crazy tumblr of mine even exists. It was supposed to celebrate things.

For that reason, I’m going to end this here. I’ve written several responses now as to my thoughts on the inappropriate narrative lens of the show, its contradictory and damaging worldbuilding about the purest race, and how it champions demonizing or punishing genocide survivors again and again. Within all of that, I’ve talked at length about Allura’s character and behavior over 8 seasons and how she built even empathetic connections with militant Galrans like Commander Lahn. In fact even her own homesickness is how she emotionally connects with Lahn, because she understands that desire to call something one’s own. To have a home. A family.

I now really would like to get back to writing stories that I find meaningful to me using these characters and these worlds—and trying to find the hope in all of this darkness, haha. And maybe with any luck, I can hope to do VLD some justice, knowing that I am still on a learning journey as well.

But I appreciate your note, and I hope this very extensive response helps to settle your questions and concerns once and for all regarding VLD Allura. If you should have any remaining questions, please feel free to reach out via a private message to discuss. Thank you!

#Volron #VLD #Allura #VLD Critical #Alfor #Zarkon #Honerva #Lotor #I hope this helps explain my perspective #I think this might have to be my last refutation to the Allura as racist/racist supremacist conspiracy theory #at a certain point #people either watch the show holistically or they don't #you can't convince an anti #so this meta will probably not help an anti #but if you're sitting on the fence and felt drawn in by anti propaganda #then I hope that maybe this post provides an alternate perspective #and one that tries to be more holistically fair to all 8 seasons of the show #and to the intentions and general oversights that can occur during production #Ultimately it doesn't matter if someone likes or dislikes Allura as a fictional character #we need better entertainment that can handle these hard topics and handle them well #And we also need a fandom who's willing to look at all of the information and not weaponize it to specifically demonize and silence others #Maybe a family TV show shouldn't be appropriating conspiracy theories from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion #real-world fans are incredibly vulnerable to such conspiracy theories #and it creates a lot of real-world strife as a result

[onf-headcanons]

Christmas special : Idea dump (And thank you all for the support during 2020!!!)

A/N : And sorry again if my phrasing looks like I am drunk lol. Was trying to get everything out from my head. Cos 1. is busy with company year end  2. cannot make time to elaborate and cannot decide which member to be the main character of the idea precisely yet.

OK LET’S GO

 1.   Growing up together since mothers are bff. Knew each other some extent, but did not really consider each other as potential partner. Reader  did not get too close to member because member is too popular among girls.So them two just minding their own business and having their own life going on. They do occasionally text and (ONFmember) occasionally brings reader mother side dishes to reader. Reader got cheated and broke up with ex or reader found out the relationship was just a wager of truth or dare game, once your ex had your first time, he broke up with you. 

Reader was upset and tried to get themselves drunk. And even maybe slightly traumatized so they attempt to wash away traces of their ex. (Even though it is already been months they lost their virginity). Maybe while being drunk, reader called ONFmember and murmured weird stuffs like hey why we did not get together, if we did I think I wont get hurt like this etc etc

Reader had the notion to erase ex from themselves and (ONFmember) offered themselves. Actually with a selfish thought, so that reader does not have sex with other people, and also hoping erasing the ex traces will be a remedy for the heartbreak. It continued for sometime (maybe after 3rd time) until one day reader realized they actually very much relying on (ONFmember) and not sure if it is love. Then reader tries to calls off, thinking it wont have a good ending. But then (ONFmember) confessed. 

(current thoughts on which member to be main character :  Changyoon, Jaeyoung )

 2.    (ONFmember) is reader’s   superior. You both has been virtual chatting via an app and did not know that you two already knew each other in real life. Even established a virtual relationship and calling each other s/o partners. 

It is a secret that you own and no one around you knows about it. Your superior did notice your changes after the relationship established (majorly because the virtual you and the real life working you has a different personality, more like you display a more matured self during work) but he did not pry in further regarding your private matters.But his doubt got deepen further because even though you did not upload pictures of yourself to your status/profile.news feed, some corner of interior designs do suggest it is the same office. Cues in one day the other party suggested to meet up. You think it was not a big deal, maybe you think it just a chance to meet a friend (to delve deeper actually you are not that serious about the relationship. To elaborate, because you clearly understood it is not reality afterall, and from the tone of the other party, they are mature enough to differentiate that too) 

And then when you two finally meet, then you found out your Internet bf is reader’s superior. (Note : If you actually had a few complaints regarding your superior’s sternness during after work, then this would be a new way to get to know him more i guess. Lol it will be even funny if you did mention about your complaints towards your internet BF)

( current thoughts on which member to be main character : Hyojin, Seungjoon... hmm not sure if to integrate this idea to other members of ONF in Office AU as well )

3.     Not sure to categorise as soulmate or ABO yet. So one day universe established reader and  (ONFmember) as soulmate. Or even better, reader and  (ONFmember) are actually past life lovers but end up tragic ending. reader did not have the previous memories, but not  (ONFmember) 

Another plausible setting could be a universe reset, no one noticed but only reader or ONF member, depends.

He is very eager to let reader fell in love with him again. On one hand you does not want them to be caged by the weird past memory shit, but then reader also cannot help but falling in love with them again. (Maybe its just reader lost confidence because he is popular among girls)

( current thoughts on which member to be main character : Minkyun)

If reader are the one who have the memory not  (ONFmember), after several confirmation, you decided to let go because they seemed clueless. Could be you struggling to forget them. But still cannot help yourself to care about them. 

Or, end up with  (ONFmember) falls in love with you even without past life memory recovering. Maybe at first reader might wanna push  (ONFmember) away because kinda feels not fair and not right?

( current thoughts on which member to be main character : Yuto)

4.   An idea dump that high chance I wont be working as it is a borrowed idea from my SVT fanwork idea, so i will be merely sharing the idea.

(ONFmember) is a prince of enemy country. The heir of reader’s country also reader’s sibling was assasinated/killed in battle. Either you are a daughter or you are not suitable to be the heir to begin with.. (if to follow 100% of the idea it will be ABO/royalty, and reader would be an Omega while ONF member will be Alpha.)

a. reader is a royalty who isnt favored by their own parents. They are sent to the enemy country without reader’s consent or,

b.With family member being held as hostage by the king, reader is a look-alike substitute of the royalty who supposed to marry the prince as a gesture of sincerity for piece treaty. 

Also reader was instructed to assassinate (ONFmember) during their first night/or any time restrictions. Might include end up finding out reader and  (ONFmember) is soulmate, it might have a hint/nuance of Romeo and Juliet but not gonna fully go that way. Either reader eventually falls in love and lead a happy life or this could end is a very tragic way where reader sacrifice themselves.

( current thoughts on which member to be main character : Seungjoon, Yuto. Was thinking Jaeyoung fits too but I already had him in another proper ABO/royalty AU so I will take him out for this one)

A/N: The dump ends here, so HAPPY CHRISTMAS to my fellow followers and those who celebrates it. And wishing you all a bright and wonderful 2021!!

Looking forward to provide you more contents in 2021!!

#onf #onf headcanon #onf headcanons #idea dump #scheduled #queued

[jinxofthedesert]

Hi there!!! It is the same anon that requested some fic recs ☺ Thank you so much! I may give them a read! They look very interesting! But tbh I'm looking for fics that deal with some more in-depth approach to the twins' psychology and character (I don't mind the romance. In fact, I think it's a really interesting plus to the story when handled well).

(Below this is the rest of the messages, put together. Farther down, below the line, are my responses)  

 I’ve usually seen that the twins are portrayed as soft, loving and caring guys with their partners without real motives for such drastic change of dynamics in their twisted personalities. I mean, the usual Valeska centered fic goes like this: they meet the OC in Arkham or during their childhood in the circus and for some reason they reunite in the present, and then it is just the twins somehow falling for them, changing their whole way of being and only wanting to bang the OC the whole time (without taking into account the lack of the OC's inner conflict about loving such twisted men, because these OCs usually are "sane" and good people that somehow are dragged into the twins' world and for some reason they just fall in love with them without questioning it). But for me the least realistic thing about these fics is that the twins become super nice guys all of a sudden. I mean of course there can be character develoment and growth (up to a certain point), but I haven't really found a story that contains such deep explanation. Let's face it, they're still psychos no matter what, even if they have a partner.  In the last season we get a glimpse of how Jeremiah treats Ecco, someone that he used to appreciate and care for deeply, and she still meant little to him. So it doesn't add up to me when the twins are magically turned into these super sweet caring guys while their twisted, evil and manipulative side is completely ignored. I am not saying they can't love, I am just saying that they surely have their own twisted perception of what love is 🤔 Sorry for my rambling, damn, it took soooooo many comments hahaha!!! OMG, Sorry!😂😂 I had a LOT to say 😂😂😂 But I just find these characters very interesting and I would love to read a story with a more realistic approach to the construction of their personalities (and their twisted way of loving too!). Let me know, please, if you happen to know about some fics/authors 😘 thanks again! 

- - - - - - - - -  Hi again, anon! I’m sorry my list of content in the previous ask wasn’t exactly what you were looking/hoping for. As of right now, besides the ones I sent you that may delve a little bit below the surface, I can’t think of a true ‘character study’ type story that I have read so far. But, again, I usually stay in the area of romance so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are such fics out there under a different genre.

I’ll be quite honest, it’s been a very long time since I’ve read any oc/(input character here), including ones with the twins. Normally, I forget they exist until someone brings it up or I stumble across one on Tumblr accidentally. I do agree, the twins suddenly changing for an OC (or anyone) can be a bit unrealistic but from my years of reading and writing, creating stories with such things is a bit of ‘wish fulfillment’ which, to be honest, isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes a reader just needs content that is kind of good-feeling type fic (though not in a sense of how murderous the twins can be but in them getting some kind of positivity in their lives, whether it be through an OC or another character in the universe). When I wrote Oc’s at the beginning, it was either wish fulfillment for me or simply just wanting these characters I adored to finally have some kind of happy ending which they probably did not deserve, at all. 

A reason you might not find such content is also because, character studies are hard. Especially if you don’t have a complete picture of the character. With the twins, a lot is just coming up with stuff, imaging their past and how it still affects them, even if, on the upper layer we’re shown, doesn’t portray those scars left behind. 

With Oc’s, they can usually be pretty hit or miss. It’s not like you’re taking an already known character with known flaws and putting them in your story. Those characters have a foundation already built. For an Oc, the writer has to literally make someone from the ground up, which is equally as hard without making them seem too whiny, too mary-sue like, or just too problematic. This can leave a lot to be desired which can create something unrealistic as well. That’s why I usually only look for content centered around characters from the show, instead of Oc’s; like with Bruce and the twins because canon-wise there is already something there (depending on how you look at it and write it). 

In regard to Ecco: firstly, I think it’s arguable what type of relationship she even has with Jeremiah when we first are introduced to them. We’re shown some concern on his end when she’s clearly been hypnotized but this can be seen as a boss concerned for an employee, an employee who he’s probably had for awhile now and is one of the very rare few who he trusts to an extent. However, we just don’t know much of anything about their relationship or past together. She might have hardly seen him, only contacting him through phone calls and text messages; she may have only brought him supplies through the maze and never was in his inner personal areas. This treatment is all possible given how Jeremiah is quite literally a paranoid mess before the spray, no matter how well put-together he appears. And, if we’re to compare this to his eventual obsession with Bruce Wayne, we can take a guess that Jeremiah and Ecco probably didn’t get very deep with this connection they had. Mainly because with just a few compliments, Jeremiah is invested in Bruce, something we don’t see with Ecco before or after the spray. So we have Bruce enter the picture (someone who has run into his twin on multiple occasions, a fact Jeremiah must know to some extent with his paranoia probably leading him to constantly check newspapers and the news for info on Jerome) and, if you look at things from Jeremiah’s perspective, besides complimenting him, Bruce looks at him and only sees Jeremiah. And this would be baffling to Jeremiah if he knows the affect Jerome has had on Bruce, for him to look at Jeremiah and not see his twin after everything would be just as big a compliment as anything because it’s differentiating him from his twin. Someone who has probably feared being compared to his brother, for people to look at him and only see Jerome (such as what occurs with Jim and Harvey only hours prior). Because of this, when compared to Ecco, we can deduce that either their conversations never went in such a direction, or she hardly had the extended physical contact to ever bring up Jerome or compare or compliment. If so, it’s possible with how Jeremiah is that something similar could have happened with Ecco. And this eventually leads into the spray where his only true attachment is not Ecco but with Bruce, especially, after his initial spray, Jeremiah’s hatred for Jerome is far worse than it had been before, making Bruce’s assessment of Jeremiah simply being himself and not his brother, far more endearing as well. So, in comparison to Bruce, Ecco means absolutely nothing to him, a means to an end. 

I’ll admit, reading content where the twins are somehow in a relationship (with an oc or canon character) while still being rather insane, are quite interesting. However, for stuff like that to work in a compelling and ‘actual’ way, characters like that have to be bent because these characters logistically working in that kind of environment may never be realistic anyways. This can be worked around of course, but it takes so much time and effort; even now, as I write my stories for Gotham, I’m still trying to work around how to make these ships work for the twins because they’re stubborn and although they have obsessions they, at their cores are not good people and while they may try, seriously try to better themselves, there will always be slip-ups.

I do agree, they can love but it would always be twisted in some way or another (look no further than Jeremiah with Bruce). They’re also a lot of fun to take apart and analyze or try and come up with a type of background that works with all the hints we’ve been given. Background-wise, the twins are really something a writer can make their own which is an interesting concept.

This turned more so into a long ramble of writing and Ocs and lots of Gotham lol but anyways, I wish I could give you a story to fit your needs. I quite hate when I have an itch for certain fics and I either can’t find them or the number of fics is so daunting that I don’t dare even try. I would recommend just going through them, possibly looking for complete content first, or ones with high hits or kudos (depending on the site you’re searching on) because I don’t have any at the moment I can suggest. 

(Honestly the ideas for the twins never stop coming lol, perks of their backgrounds and everything else being so hazy.)

I hope some of this message was at least interesting lol and I do wish you luck in finding good twin content that delves into their character or, maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will publish something like that soon! Either way, I hope you find something 😘

#anon ask #anon #Gotham #I don't even know what this became to be honest #I had wayyyy to much time to just think on this answer all day long since i had no access to my computer #and this is what I got lol #Valeska twins #Jeremiah Valeska #Jerome Valeska #Ecco #Wayleska #character study? A little? #oc's #writing #basically oc writing can be really difficult or not #Jeremiah maybe could've had a deeper relationship with Ecco or maybe she just wasn't his type. Who knows #I do stand by my thoughts on him first meeting with Bruce though cause it just adds another layer to his character that I rather like #Gosh I hope this entire message makes as much sense as my brain thinks it does

[thelazyhermits]

Have any of y’all ever heard of the Amnesia otome game series? It was also made into an anime, but I don’t like to talk about it cause I’m still salty about my boy Kent only getting one episode with the heroine while everyone else got two or three episodes with her >>

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t, one of the bachelors, who’s named Ikki, has these eyes that make anyone who looks at them fall in love with him. I was thinking how neat that would be for a hero’s Quirk cause the hero could literally stop a villain by charming them lol I’m gonna put the rest of this under a read more to avoid clogging up your dashes. 

The reason I brought this up was because I came up with a funny idea for the TABF universe. Say there’s a male hero who has this Quirk, and he is very popular with women because of his Quirk which he can’t turn off. That’s why he always wears sunglasses. For the sake of being convenient, let’s call the hero Charmer. 

The plot of this little idea is Fortune encounters Charmer when he comes to visit UA as a guest speaker. She accidentally looks at his eyes when they’re uncovered, but for some reason he cannot explain, his Quirk doesn’t work on her.

This has never happened before. Charmer immediately becomes fascinated with her because she’s basically the first person to be truly unaffected by his Quirk. Just like how Ikki wants to date the heroine because his eyes don’t work on her, Charmer wants to go on a date with Fortune because for the first time in his life he can interact with a girl who doesn’t automatically love him because of his Quirk. 

While Charmer comes across as a playboy like Ikki, he really does want to experience true love one day. He wants to find someone who will love him for who he is as a person not because of his Quirk.

So, this results in Charmer spending the whole time he’s at UA, trying to flirt with Fortune. Unfortunately for him, he never gets a chance to ask her on a date because of her bodyguards.

As you can probably already guess, Aizawa is not a fan of Charmer. Charmer’s basically a hero who stands out and often basks in attention--the kind of hero that Aizawa dislikes the most. 

And, of course, Charmer has a reputation of being a real playboy. So, needless to say, Aizawa wants him nowhere near Fortune.

Present Mic finds Aizawa’s protectiveness hilarious, but he also agrees that Fortune should be protected. Midnight thinks they’re being too protective since she doesn’t think Charmer is that bad of a guy. 

In regards to the students, pretty much all of the guys disapprove of Charmer, thinking he’ll take advantage of their teacher. The girls are divided between wanting to support Fortune’s love life and wanting to protect her from unworthy suitors. 

Shinsou wants Charmer gone as soon as possible and is willing to sabotage all of the pro hero’s attempts to ask Fortune on a date. Todoroki is much the same way. Monoma is another student Charmer has to watch out for. He’s probably actually the worst haha

Fortune has no experience with romance, so unless someone flat out says they’re interested in her, she won’t figure it out. She just thinks Charmer is flirting with her because that’s what he does with everyone else, which is technically true. 

Charmer quickly realizes that the odds are against him when he has all these teachers and students foiling his every attempt to spend time with Fortune. Fortune, of course, is none the wiser because the others are being very subtle with their sabotage.

Finally, at the end of the day, Charmer manages to ask her to walk with him on his way to the entrance. He brings up to her that she’s the first he’s met to not be affected by his Quirk.

Instead of asking her on a date like he wants to, Charmer first asks if she currently loves someone since that’s an idea that’s been on the back of his mind the whole day. If she’s already in love, that would explain why she didn’t fall for him.

Meanwhile, the students and teachers are all in different hiding places surrounding the area, watching to see how things will proceed. Much to everyone’s surprise, Fortune says that she does. Cue several people making choked sounds in the background XD

With a big smile, Fortune says, “I love my students, Eraserhead, Present Mic, Midnight, and everyone else here at UA. They’re all really important to me. I love them a lot.”

That’s when Charmer realizes that his Quirk didn’t work because she’s already got so many people to love. Right now, in this part of her life, her heart’s already full so it’s not looking for romance. She’s content and can’t be swayed.

So, rather than ask her on a date, Charmer decides to hold off for now but promises to keep in touch with her. It’s after he leaves the campus that a crying Kirishima, Ashido, Uraraka, and Hagakure come out of hiding and run straight for a very confused Fortune to hug her. 

Everyone in hiding heard her words and were very happy because of them. Shinsou and Monoma are just glad that means they won’t have to worry about more suitors for a while since Fortune clearly isn’t interested. Aizawa is also secretly relieved.

While they all want to be supportive of Fortune’s love life, the students aren’t quite ready to share her with someone else XD

#TABF #man this got long #I'm sorry #I just really wanted to write this out #the kids love their sensei so much #only someone really amazing should be able to date her #they have very high standards haha #it would be so hard to impress shinsou and monoma lol #I could see todoroki and bakugou wanting to challenge whoever wants to date her XD #aizawa is very protective of his TA #but won't ever admit it #he doesn't want her to date till she's thirty lol #midnight is worried about fortune's love life #because of all these protective people haha #mic wouldn't normally be super protective #but he's wary of charmer because of his playboy status #all the guys are wary because of that lol

[schtroumpf-a-lunettes]

under cut because long!!! this is roughly a discussion of like, children’s media (or something propped up as children’s media/parodying a kid’s show) being depicted with grimdark and/or mature content or w/e. I both agree that these ideas are often completely unoriginal and boring and stuff and bad. but also it can be done right and have plenty of merits. and in saying that, that’s not what my fic is trying to do as well though

I think I’m edging (relatively) closer to looking like a little bit of a hypocrite if I agree with the notion that portraying characters from children’s media in dark situations tends to be boring/unoriginal/edgy and I don’t know how to, fully express how much that I... well for one thing that’s not.. what I ever really want to go for. many of those kinds of portrayals are generally irreverent, wildly OOC, edgy for the sake of being edgy, purely for shock value. Sometimes the person doing it doesn’t rly know anything about the source material beyond the most basic surface level, and it furthermore can be boring if it doesn’t offer any meaningful commentary. ofc those things don’t usually intend to offer meaningful commentary, they just want the shock value of something like “haha the SMURFS but VIOLENCE/ADULT CONTENT, wild right???”, and they achieve that very basic goal, and it can be boring. it doesn’t tell us anything, it’s just, shock value and that’s it.

Ok I mean... it DEPENDS, sometimes (plenty of times) I actually find the Subverted Kids Show trope incredibly enjoyable, but like, hm. some ways of going about it are more tasteful than others. I guess part of that is personal preference though I do think there is a small amount of objective guidelines involved too

and you can still make insightful commentary on a text aimed at children through a Subverted Kids Show Format while having the characters be ooc! Robot Chicken smurfs (which I will discuss more in other posts) for me oscillates between making a surprisingly good commentary sometimes and mindless (but fun(ny)) scenes to, very tasteless/bad scenes that don’t do much imo. well its goal is to be funny and that’s it I guess, and it hits that goal some of the time

I guess the exact opposite of the surface-level shock value joke can also be super boring though. a text/theory that takes itself super seriously and tries to explain to you how Actually This Kid’s Show Dark! can possibly be even worse. e.g. “characters in kids show are just trapped in purgatory/it’s all a coma fantasy!!” or whatever. But I think, part of what would make a thing like that Bad is a fundamental misunderstanding of core parts of the canon and/or a... lack of regard for canon in the sense that you’re really willing to sit here and write of everything that the characters have ever been through as being Meaningless because it was all just one character’s dying memories? that completely robs the text of its power. Like saying Homer’s been in a coma since like season 5 of the simpsons. As a certain podcaster that won’t be named said because I have, a lot of bones to pick with them lol - there’s something so redundant and pointless about saying “everything that’s happening in this fictional show isn’t real”. what does it realistically.. add, kinda thing.

But I don’t think there’s cause to be automatically dismissive of anything that tries to.. approach children’s media from an angle where you can construct it as being just a little bit more sombre than it looks like on the surface or something? idk. because there can be worthwhile things to explore that make interesting commentary on the text, where you NEED to introduce less-than-happy concepts to derive them. (Sometimes the kind of commentary that deconstructions try to make is, not so good and misses the mark, although it’s not always the case.) there’s one argument against this which is like, Why can’t you just let kids have things? It’s not that deep. You’re trying to put a sinister spin on something when... it’s just not necessary. Why add to the darkness of the world. let people, especially kids, just have this bright and pure thing.

And I completely agree with that sentiment, honestly. The smurfs are good, happy, innocent, that’s the way they are and should be, don’t try to take that away from kids or people. Like 80%-90% of my enjoyment of the smurfs is all about that, I’m in full agreement, I just want happy little innocent elf society adventures and I’ll be happy. Although. It’s not like smurfs was always happy. there are plenty of tearjerker moments in the show, plenty of disasters and bad things happen to them (that they readily overcome by the end of the episode). and here I guess you also have to avoid patronising kids in thinking that only happy and nice stuff can be for them. as in, the smurfs does have really sad and upsetting moments but that Obviously doesn’t make it Not For Kids.

I think that in addition to that, slightly darker themes can be explored and exposed under certain extreme circumstances if smurf society was subject to it. And I think this in no way invalidates their tranquil, happy status quo and good nature as a society as we know it. Also it just so happens that my inspiration for fic happened to revolve around negative ideas instead of positive despite me, in fandom, just enjoying the positive/light-hearted usually (I think?). whoops. but these kinds of outside-of-canon things don’t do anything to the canon, canon stands as it is. I try my best to stick as close to canon as possible kind of, as a kind of canon purist, haha, in terms of characters and realistic reactions.

another thing is, for a positive kid show like smurfs, to have something really bad happen might seem off, but, one of the things I want(ed) to explore is “if x thing happened, how would the characters deal with it?” (I think this point will be, more pertinent to the next smurfs fic I have lined up once I finish the current one I’m working on. heh, heh, heh.)

I mean really bad stuff happened in the cartoon but it was never too extreme and it was resolved by the end of the episode normally. so for something long-term... yeah.

I also think occasionally I’ve done like. stupid smurf stuff that is kinda ooc over the years. and part of why is I think something happened where I was so anti-doing that that it kind of looped back around to the point where I Did it because, of course, I acknowledge how far-removed from canon it is that it therefore doesn’t mean anything, or something like that. and It Amused Me. and sometimes shock value smurfs at least done Somewhat tastefully is amusing to me too for that same reason because (if) it’s harmless fun or something

now this whole thing I’ve written up is mostly general thoughts and not actually much related to my fic. just, writing the fic has got me thinking about this kind of stuff so some of it is vaguely related. But fundamentally I don’t want my fic to be super dark. in fact, there are many very dark storyline paths that I could have taken which I actively chose not to, because those paths were not what I wanted this story to do. I just want it to be a fic where the smurfs experience a lot of hardship that they struggle to overcome, and I want to keep it very closely aligned to canon where I can, while other stuff changes, with.. time. Like yea there are definitely some dark elements though haha. But I’ve read some dark smurfs fic and haha.. don’t think mine really shapes up.

Like this whole post might sound like me being defensive or something, but it’s not because the premise of my fic isn’t “Edgy Grimdark Smurfs” or anything like that, and therefore that’s not a concept that I need to defend for my fic. and I don’t need to be on any kind of defense because nothing anyone else has said has prompted this post, haha. I didn’t set out to write Dark smurfs fic, I set out with an idea of some challenges the village could face and followed through with how I thought the village and its inhabitants would/could react to them, or some of the possible ways the village could react to them. And IF the results turn less-than-smurfy, I still follow up on them if I think it is realistic to the canon for it to happen and an interesting path to explore. Like I’m not really taking the world and adding/forcing dark elements in, I’m bringing out underlying currents that I already saw present when observing the society in the cartoon. Maybe I added some stuff to flesh things out, but the core ideas I bring out have basis in the cartoon imo. Anyway yeah like 70% of this post isn’t related to my fic, just kinda general thoughts type thing as I said lol.

Oh yeah also it’s like - I want my fic to still remain mostly in-tune with the show, I want to do my best with that. I don’t want darkness-induced apathy or for it to feel like it’s too far out of line from what is plausible. in-tune with the universe and the characters, but exploring stuff you wouldn’t necessarily pitch to young children at the same time type thing. And I’m not going out of my way to do that, moreso I’m not imposing that restriction on myself in terms of what I write. I’m tryin’ my best, haha. like, setting out to write grimdark fic is fine, but it possibly requires a different audience and authorial approach compared to what I feel is the approach I want to encourage for my fic. both approaches and writing styles are valid, just different type thing. I’d hate to turn people away if they’re not into grimdark stuff when it’s not what I was going for or w/e

#I don't want the fandom to judge me because like #I'm one of you!! I agree!!!! hahaha #take this I'm adding it to the queue and it's rly late lol so sorry if it's not so gr8 lol #just sum thoughts