To anyone in the TUC fandom who has looked at AHS and skipped it because they heard the ending is happy...
... and then assumed that it's just a wish fulfillment "ideal reality" kind of outcome of the TUC story that cuts all of the depth, pain, and realism ... Go back and read it right now.
Because that is not what AHS is. Not even close.
AHS is not "my version" of TUC where I just change whatever I dislike without regard for themes or characters in the original. Far from it. One of the main goals I had was actually to give more of the Underland. More characterization (that aligns with canon, although some characters develop in a different direction because of shifts in circumstances), more worldbuilding (that coincides with canon, adding onto it), ... just more, period.
The best way I can describe what it actually is is honestly saying that AHS is to TUC like Marvel's "What if ...?" is to the MCU. It is quite literally a "What if Henry had survived his fall at the end of "Gregor the Overlander"?" And I kid you not, 95% of the changes in the story, compared to TUC, are simply a result of exactly this change.
But the entire plot of the final book is different, right? Well, I didn't say that the consequences of that one change weren't substantial. They are. Without spoiling too much I can only say that Henry happens to be an optimist, and it also happens that an optimist was exactly what the TUC story needed to achieve a happier outcome.
Anyone who has actually read my version of the CoC plot will tell you that it is far from ideal, perfect, or pain-free. A lot more happens in the actual plot, but most of those new events are there to serve the dark, violent nature of war. There's so much talk about loss, and sacrifice, exploration of (also the dark side of) heroism, and whether "for the greater good" is worth it. There's corruption and death, injustice, and grappling with unkind fates and alienation/rejection.
Now, I will admit that I did put less emphasis on the societal pressure aspect of CoC, but mainly because that theme is a huge part of AHS 2 already, and it did not really fit this part of the story anymore. Instead, "Gregor against society" becomes "Questers against society" (quite literally, since they are — small spoiler — banding together to actually overthrow Solovet and bring about change.)
BUT ... if there is corruption, death, and the violence of war, how is it happier then? How can it have a happy ending?
Very simply because it is not only corruption but also redemption. Not only death and suffering but also growth and gain. Not only violence and breaking of relationships but also companionship, hope, and mending of relationships.
... The main change that happens to be so powerful it can give this series a happy ending without disrespecting or abandoning its original gritty violent core is ... a shift in mindset toward the positive. For Gregor, but also for everyone else. One of the main themes I added is the exploration of the double-edged nature of things: Everything has good and bad consequences. What we take away from it is what we choose to focus on.
Now you might see better what I meant by "All this series needed was an optimist" earlier. If there were someone to remind people of the bright side, to remind Gregor that his rager power does not make him evil and that he is never alone or choiceless, to embody this hopeful outlook and bring it out in everything ... I promise to you that this is all it would have taken.
And this is what I'm giving you.
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looking at the 'midseason trailer' and seeing roman fighting his siblings, roman shitting on gerri, roman working for fascists, roman walking proudly through ATN like logan did just two days prior... it's not surprising, but it is fucking sad.
logan's death will not free roman. instead, it will reforge the chains he's worn all his life, casting them in iron -- that's what roman deserves for thinking, for the first time in his life, that maybe he wants the chains off. that's what roman deserves for killing his father by not loving him enough, by not loving him correctly or at the right times. logan's death will not free roman at all. if anything, it will imprison him.
(as always, this got very long, so keep reading under the cut!)
this was the worst case scenario for roman. not just logan dying, but the exact way everything played out. he betrayed his siblings, he fired gerri -- for nothing. he could have been on the plane with his father in his last moments -- he refused. his last interaction with his father was leaving logan a voice message that called him a cunt -- the first time roman has ever, ever, questioned or stood up to his father, and also the last. we don't know what killed logan. we probably never will. but god if it won't feel awfully coincidental to roman: the one time he fought back against his father or even showed the slightest hint of doing so, his father died. is it likely that logan heard roman's voice memo and keeled over because he called him a cunt? no. but is it just as possible as anything else? entirely. roman might have killed his dad. roman murdered logan when he could've been on the plane with him holding his hand, if he were a good son. he didn't even tell logan he loved him. not that he needed to, it fucking oozed from his every pore and the desperate nature of that love was one of the reasons logan could never quite stand him -- but that's not the point. roman's one attempt at agency, at setting boundaries, at standing up for himself killed his fucking father.
logan dying would never have been good for roman, at least in his current state, no matter how the actual death came to pass. people often talk about abusive relationships as if the end-all-be-all fixer to abuse is independence, and it's not. independence isn't always enough to heal, especially not when it's forced upon you rather than something you choose. this is especially true for roman, i think. what roman needed was not just to gain his own independence, but to realize that independence and love are not mutually exclusive, that gaining one does not mean losing the other. logan's always hammered in roman's weakness, his wrongness; roman was never someone who deserved to be loved on his own terms. roman's never considered himself to be someone with agency and authority in his relationships -- he's been told over and over again that he isn't a real person, that there's something deeply wrong and unfixable in him, and he believes it. he's never set boundaries with his father or even his siblings because i don't think he really realizes he has the power to do that. he's simply there until people decide they no longer have use for him or want him around, and he'll always come crawling back after a kick because he doesn't realize he's not on a leash -- that he doesn't need to be on a leash. independence has been unreachable all his life, he isn't normal or real enough to be a real normal independent capable person, but if he grovels and shows his use enough, then maybe he can be loved. but his dependence and loyalty is all he's good for. independence means no love, no family, no relationships. and roman desperately wants, needs, those relationships in a way that none of the other characters do (or at least can admit to) -- he wants his father in his life, no matter what; he wants his siblings in his life, no matter what. but independence, being his own person, separating himself from logan's side means he'd lose everything else, everyone else. he's not good for anything anyways. it's not like he has other options.
...until the start of season four. that's why this is all so tragic -- more than anyone else, it seemed like roman was on the road to healing. it seemed like he was finally realizing that independence and love might not be as mutually exclusive as he's been made to think: maybe he could be independent while still having a relationship with his siblings and even his father. maybe he could have his cake and eat it too. he's realized that he's capable, that he has his own worth, and that he can be successful without living under logan's thumb -- and, more importantly, could still text him on his birthday and try to rebuild a relationship, this time outside of business. outside of "that room" in waystar royco. an actual fucking family relationship. that's what escaping the cycle would look like for roman — not complete separation, not a metaphorical killing of his father, but the ability to live alongside him, to have a life outside of him, to love his father without living for him. so simply removing logan from the equation wouldn’t help roman, not when what he needs most is to realize that self-respect is not mutually exclusive with love, that being your own person isn’t a betrayal, that family and love aren’t dependent on how low you can kneel and won’t be whisked away the moment you stand up. and for the first time in his life, it seemed like he was on track to discovering this. maybe he and the siblings could have the hundred, logan could keep going with atn, and in a few years down the line they'd all get together to talk shop and joke around and coexist -- for the first time, he had started to think of himself as enough of a real, okay person to be allowed to coexist with his family, rather than naturally subordinating himself in every interaction.
roman could’ve been his own person, could’ve escaped the cycle, could’ve started a business with his siblings and tried to heal, but now he won’t. he can’t. roman can’t become his own person now, not when his first attempt to do so is exactly what killed logan. it’s his fault. he fucked up and now there’s no dad. he gained his independence, but at what cost? love. that’s the cost. it always has been and always will be. nothing could be more detrimental to roman roy than the exact series of events that occurred in this episode, because just as he started to see a world beyond his father, logan dies -- proving once and for all that the only world beyond logan is one without him in it at all. that’s been roman’s fear all along and why he’s stuck so close to his side: roman loves and loves and loves and is terrified, terrified, of death. of loss. but in a moment of 'weakness,' roman wobbled (he tried to stand up to logan rather than just taking the kicks as he's supposed to, as he always has), and his father paid the ultimate price. there’s no more dad. there’s no reviving him.
…unless, of course, there is. unless roman can undo his error by choosing his father again, and again, and again. becoming logan is the closest roman can get to resurrecting him, after all. and besides, doesn’t he owe it to dad after killing him? after calling him a cunt, choosing not to be with him on that plane he ended up dying on? after forgetting to even say “i love you dad” before the end? roman needs to fix things. needs to make it like dad's still here. needs to make it like he didn't kill his own father by refusing him for the first time in his life. so roman will be the firebreather logan wanted -- he'll do ATN, he'll push for mencken, he'll do whatever it fucking takes to try and make things right. if it's his fault logan's no longer here, then he needs to do everything he possibly can to fulfill his dying wishes, to do what logan would've done, were he alive.
"dad can't die, he's dad." he can't ever die. he's immortal, and his immortality was solidified by the circumstances of his death -- logan will not die. he’ll live on in roman, as roman.
roman will make sure of it.
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Hello :3 and it’s completely okay if not of course but could you do a Kate laswell x chubby s/o, your work is amazing btw :)
Hello! Thank you! Don't worry, I've written about Farah with a chubby reader before, so I can do Laswell as well :-)
Laswell with a Chubby!S/O
As long as you’re healthy and doing just fine, Laswell really couldn’t care less about what you look like, so she really doesn’t mind you being chubby. In fact, to her it’s a sign that you’re eating well enough. However, she will sometimes make sure that you don’t gain too much weight by eating too much sugar or other things that are unhealthy for you. Something along the lines of diabetes can be fatal very easily, and she really doesn’t wanna lose you to something that could have been prevented. She won’t always go out of her way to make sure you don’t eat a lot of sugar, she won’t monitor what you eat either, but she will make you aware and wants you to be careful. I know this could cause some disagreements among the two of you, but she just really wants you to be well. However, that doesn’t mean she wants you to change, not in the slightest, she loves you as you are. As long as you’re healthy you can do what you want.
Laswell isn’t a very physically affectionate person in general, so she won’t really do much in regards to hugging or cuddling you and using you as a pillow. Sure, she’ll give you the occasional hug and squeeze you a bit, but she knows there’s a chance you might be insecure about being chubby so she won’t go out of her way to make you aware of your being chubby too much. You’re beautiful in her eyes either way, it doesn’t matter to her how chubby you are.
If you ever feel down in the dumps about it, she’ll reassure you that you’re lovely as you are, that you don’t need to lose weight in order to be the prettiest person she’s ever seen. And she really does mean it. Again, she won’t be too touchy with you, but she’ll use her words to convince you that you’re worth so much more than you believe, that all those people hating on you are simply too insecure about themselves to see just how great you are. Laswell loves you and it shows through her actions and her words. However, she will support you if you do decide to lose weight. Might sometimes allow you to have a cheat day or two, though.
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Shower thoughts on the family structure
Despite its current dominance, the single-income household has never been viable on a mass scale, outside of a few decades in the West, due largely to imperialism extracting massive amounts of wealth from the rest of the world combined with technological monopolies which have since lapsed.
Historically, in households where there was one 'breadwinner' and one 'homemaker,' it was because child labor allowed it to be so, because the industry of the household (the breadwinning) was linked into the domesticity: if you were a freeholder farmer, growing your food, farming, what we would now think of as a job, was in the same class of labor as cooking and cleaning, it was all part of the same system, we did not think of one as a job and the other as not. So, as children are often expected to help out around the house today, children back then would be expected to help out in the other productive endeavors of the household, like farming, or other forms of work. And children didn't typically go to school. They started working with their parents from a very young age.
So you hear a lot of complaints about how difficult it is to maintain a single income household, it's because when children are present, they are being freeloaders, generally; all of the labor they would have done to contribute to the household is offloaded solely onto the parents. And when they are not present, well, that was never very achievable in the first place with one person not earning bread, right?
We switched to a system where children do not work but we did not accomodate the switch to that system by altering the family structure to include a higher amount of laborers per household, which would necessitate a higher amount of adults living together for the family unit than just one man one woman. And we got away with it for a long time because of competitive advantages provided by imperialism, the industrial revolution, and so on.
That is coming to an end, and people are finding out that having kids is now a miserable experience that often makes your life worse, because of the financial and time burdens now associated with shepherding someone through the legal and social structures constraining and defining 'childhood.'
It doesn't have to be, though. We can envision alternative household and family structures that make that burden much less intensive. For instance, instead of marriage, some alternative structure in which a group of best friends bind themselves together and agree to live with each other in a shared household, which future spouses and children are incorporated into. (repping Terra Ignota here)
Such a structure could have one homemaker and three breadwinners because the duties typically assigned to homemakers have been made much easier than previous by technology. After spouses are incorporated in, you could even have a division between homemaker and educator, with one person whose sole job in the household of ~8 adults + however many kids is cleaning, and one person who is solely dedicated to day to day parenting and schooling. And in this structure it doesn't really matter how many people in society are gay or trans or in relationships that will otherwise not produce children because every household will probably have at least one straight couple and they can have as many kids as the household can bear if they want, which is the same amount of kids as a household with 4 straight couples.
Also a necessary comment here about how abusive the pre-industrialization family unit often was, being a child often meant being forced to work on the threat of extreme physical abuse or starvation if you did not. That was not good. Returning to that would not be good. We need something new.
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