Sherlock: Zugzwang.

when people talk about writing ‘the next Lord of the Rings’ they think it’s all about the wars and the languages and the histories, and Aragorn brooding in the corner of an inn and the Balrog roaring in Moria and the ruins of Isengard, and that’s how we got Game of Thrones and several dozen cheap fantasy knock-offs every year, not to mention whatever nonsense the Amazon show is going to produce

but Tolkien’s wars and languages and histories stemmed from his love of creating - of words and history and mythos - and that love infuses into everything he writes, and if you miss that then there’s no way in hell you can replicate it

and the people who want to write the next Lord of the Rings because they want to write the next epic don’t get that the story is about the hobbits’ soft and simple lives and Bilbo’s poetry and Sam’s love language being food and Eowyn discovering hope after depression and Gandalf making fireworks for hobbits even if he is a literal angelic being, and Aragorn weeping over Boromir’s body and Theoden’s kindness to Merry, and Beregond betraying his most prized orders to save Faramir, and the unlikely friendship between Gandalf and Pippin, and the even unlikelier friendship between Legolas and Gimli, and Sam and Frodo singing to each other in Mordor, and Boromir sacrificing himself for the hobbits, and Sam’s simple love for Rosie, and the restoration of the Shire, and the friendship of the Fellowship surviving down through the ages, and peace after war and hope in darkness, and the love between a gardener and a gentleman pacifist being literally the only thing that saves Middle Earth

and that is why people who try to recreate Lord of the Rings by starting with war always get it wrong. you have to start with the love, or it’s nothing: just another empty history

Let me make this very clear:

When it comes to Hellenic Polytheism, there is no human religious authority, especially not one that stands before or speaks for the gods.

It does not matter what someone tells you. It does not matter if they claim to be a priestess/priest of X deity or a messenger for Y deity. It does not matter what their supposed past life was like. It does not matter if they claim to be the literal fucking Oracle of Apollo.

No one has the right to tell you how to worship the gods. No one has the right to assert their authority over your religion.

And most of all, remember that people can and do lie.

Reactions to tragedy

In real life, pretty much everybody reacts to tragedy differently. So why is it that every author has their pet reaction to tragedy that all their characters use? Not only is it unrealistic, but it takes away the chance for the characters’ different reactions to reveal things about themselves.

Possible reactions to tragedy (not an exhaustive list):

Distracting oneself with mindless activities

Distracting oneself with others’ humor

Distracting oneself by making jokes

Distracting oneself by reading/watching/playing stories

Distracting oneself with hard mental work

Distracting oneself with hard physical work

Distracting oneself with creative endeavors

Distracting oneself by chatting with friends about normal things

Talking to friends about the tragedy

Talking to authority figures about the tragedy

Talking anonymously with strangers about the tragedy (if possible)

Getting wrapped up in others’ problems

Staying unusually silent

Screaming

Crying loudly

Crying silently

Doing everything possible not to cry

Pacing

Taking unhealthy risks

Going for revenge against whoever one can blame

Punching random objects

Throwing random objects

Lashing out against friends and family members

Trying to prevent a similar tragedy from happening

Eating more than usual

Not eating

Taking mind-altering substances

Getting in unhealthy relationships

Isolating oneself

Obsessing over routine

Numbness combined with apathy

Numbness combined with going through one’s normal motions

Trying to get things back the way they were

Denial

No reaction at first but a reaction hits later in greater force

No reaction at all. Emotions relating to the tragedy just fail to load. Note that this can happen to anybody and does not mark a character as a sociopath.

Characters can have more than one reaction at the same time, one reaction after another, or different reactions to different tragedies.

THE ABSOLUTE STATE OF ARTHUR LESTER

I think it is hilarious that when Dazai left his little villain perch in the mafia, he couldn’t quite shake the innate urge to be a menace and his only outlet is tormenting select coworkers at the ADA (Kunikida) to feed the evil little monster at the back of his mind that does a delighted little victory dance every time he manages to make Kunikida’s blood pressure rise and it is hilarious to me that he actually gets twitchy when he can’t get a rise out of Kunikida and starts foaming at the mouth bc he needs his evil fix for the day

Miscellaneous Clark Kent headcanons as relate to my little fic universe, that may or may not ever come up because who knows:

Little Clark was really susceptible to childhood superstitions for some reason. He didn’t go under ladders, he did the salt over the shoulder thing, he did not fuck with that Bloody Mary shit like NOPE I’M OUT THIS SLUMBER PARTY IS CANCELED, LANA GET OUT OF MY HOUSE AND TAKE YOUR MURDER GHOSTS WITH YOU. He believes that he is over this as an adult but whenever his foot is about to fall on a crack in the sidewalk it actually stops like a half inch above the ground and hovers there. He does not notice he is doing this. No one notices, ever, because it is the weirdest subtle unconscious thing in the world. At least Martha’s back is safe?

I covered the picky eater thing in Christmas in Kansas but to be more specific his tastebuds are just really sensitive to certain chemical compounds? Not just in terms of things he won’t eat but also in terms of things that he expects to be there and he doesn’t really like foods that lack those things. Your two options to make him eat anything are to cover it in sugar, or cover it in garlic.

He goes through a lot of breathmints. Can you imagine if Superman saved someone and they were like “man i appreciate being alive but he had some really bad garlic breath”? He would be so horrified.

He has a ratty, fucked-up old shirt that he wears whenever he is making pasta with red sauce. Even Superman cannot stand against the ability of red sauce to end up on whatever you happen to be wearing. HE WAS SO CAREFUL THIS TIME, HOW DID A STAIN END UP ON HIS BACK THAT JUST MAKES NO SENSE. Clark Kent’s weaknesses: kryptonite, tomato stains.

His ability to perfectly imitate anyone’s voice was one of the first things to manifest themselves, but this wasn’t the kind of thing anyone noticed was weird. It definitely didn’t seem like a power. He was just a small child who could do a really good Kermit the Frog. He sang Rainbow Connection at a middle school talent show and all the moms cried.

He definitely has a playlist to cheer himself up and get pumped and it has Eye of the Tiger and You’re the Best on it. Probably also half the Top Gun soundtrack.

Clark Kent’s twitter is pretty standard snarky newsman except with more farming memes. No one can tell how ironic the farming memes are. They might not be ironic at all. Clark Kent might be really sincere, or he might just be so ironic that he has circled back around into sincerity. No one knows. He’s also really good at that thing where you retweet two things from a person that side-by-side reveal they are a dingus. I don’t know if there’s a word for that.

His Snapchat is all dogspotting, with occasional rare dance breaks. He’s a pretty good dancer since he found those YouTube tutorials. He does this thing with his hips that Lois finds deeply upsetting for reasons she cannot articulate.

Jimmy asked Clark how he got so fit once and Clark was like “uh, farming. farm. eyup.” But he kept pressing for deets and Clark ended up just telling him that he’d pulled a Milo of Croton??? He lifted a newborn calf over his head and then just did that every single day until he was lifting a cow over his head. Jimmy knows nothing about farming or cows or physical fitness and this seemed plausible enough to him.

He has a blog where he posts rejected articles and it is the wonkiest thing in the entire world because that is why they got rejected. Perry takes one look at these articles and is like “it will take more words than I want to pay you for just to explain the setup for this article and also there are five people total who care, in the world, including you”

He has to be really careful when he buys clothes because he needs to make sure that they aren’t too tight and he has full range of motion. He does not want to relive The Skinny Jeans Incident. Shirts that say ‘I flexed and the sleeves fell off’ are only funny until it happens to you, then they are just horrible reminders. Popped seams everywhere. There is no way to explain that without looking like a huge tool.

Even when Superman has a really shitty day he keeps it together until he gets home, but then he shuts the balcony door and peels off his costume and Clark does the Tina Belcher groan for like ten minutes while he takes a shower because he got covered in sewer mutant or space crab or god knows and UUUUUUUUUUGH. Fortunately the nice older lady in the apartment next door always seems to know when he has had a shitty day and she brings him pie.

She can hear his melodramatic bullshit from over at her place, that’s how she knows. They share a bathroom wall and it practically echoes. If she times it right he will answer the door before he has put a shirt on because he doesn’t want to leave her waiting in the hall. She does not know what his day job is and it definitely does not occur to her that he is Superman because her primary interaction with him is that he acts like a whiny bitch and she brings him pie so she can ogle him. She is a simple woman who enjoys life’s simple pleasures.

The Kryptonian language is really complicated in terms of tonality, context, word order, musicality, etc, and the written language reflects that. Things like the order things are in, how things overlap, colors, etc, are all important. So basically I really like the idea of his symbol being one that represents his family name and says that he is of the House of El. It’s really just basically his last name.

If Starfleet gets to have replicators then Krypton gets to have replicators and Jor-El definitely stuck one in the ship so his son would have, you know, food and clothing. But only Kryptonians can use their tech because they’re who the neural interface is designed for so whoops they got real lucky that Kryptonian babies love milk from Earth goats. Clark only started using the replicator later but it only knows how to make Kryptonian things and only some of those are useful to him.

Okay so here is where I tie those last two bullet points into something fucking dumb that you will take out of my cold dead hands: Clark got the costume out of the replicator. It didn’t necessarily understand what he wanted though? Like, the concept of a costume didn’t really translate, but it got the idea that he wanted an active uniform, so that is what it made. It’s brightly colored and has his last name on the front. Clark is wearing a Kryptonian football jersey is what I’m getting at. Later Kara will be VERY confused by this. Imagine ending up on an alien planet and meeting your cousin and he’s been fighting crime dressed like a quarterback.

Most telepathy does not work because different neural patterns. Diana can only manage it if she uses her lariat and even then it’s like trying to lasso a freight train that does not stop. It’s extremely disorienting. J'onn has just accepted that Superman can hear him but he’s not going to get anything back. It’s like the psychic equivalent of a dial tone for him. He’s trying to call his bro but their family has dialup. He tries not to fuck with it because he doesn’t want to poke around in Superman’s head blind and break something.

Clark can’t type with super speed because he’ll break the keyboard and the computer can’t keep up. Instead he uses shorthand along with a custom set of AutoHotKey macros and it is honestly infuriating how fast he can get things written with this setup. But also if he doesn’t have AutoHotKey on whatever he’s typing with then sometimes Lois will get an email like: ll] dyk f pw mde a dec wrt t $l stry? ]ck

A woman was told by her therapist to try talking to at least one person once a week but she decided to cheat by just talking to her empty apartment under the guise of telling Superman about her day because lol he can hear everything allegedly so this definitely counts and is what the doctor was going for with this. When she has to go to the hospital for a medical emergency she comes home and there is a note on her counter wherein Superman explains that he was worried because he hadn’t heard from her in a while, so he swung by to check on her. When he found out what happened he watered her plants and fed her goldfish and also that cat that he thought might be hers (she does not have a cat). She is completely mortified because she was just being full of shit she did not actually believe he could hear her oh god what all did she even say and whose cat is this???

Look if you are in Metropolis and you loudly say HEY SUPERMAN there is a very good chance he will hear it even if he doesn’t mean to. He is not trying to eavesdrop, that’s just what happens when you yell someone’s name in earshot.

He doesn’t wear the costume under his clothes because you may have noticed a running theme here where the universe is conspiring to ruin his clothes and leave him running around shirtless all the time. I mean thank god for the rest of us but he would rather not risk someone spilling their drink all over him somehow and suddenly his shirt is transparent and you can see the big S. It’s bad enough when it happens under ordinary circumstances. How often can one man get drinks spilled all over him? You would be shocked. Shocked. His eyes are up here, Lois.

I love the idea that everyone who meets them assumes Nicky is the calming force for Joe, who can come across hot-headed.

But Joe more readily shows his anger because he has a healthier relationship with it. He knows how to let it out in bursts, how to feel anger and not let it consume him. We have it confirmed in Tales Through Time — Joe knows how to process anger and let go of vengeance in a way that Nicky struggles with.

Nicky may overflow with a kindness the world is not worthy of, but when he sees a terrible injustice? When something pushes him over the edge? He’s the scariest and deadliest motherfucker of the entire team, no question.

Joe is the real calming force in their relationship. God help anyone who incites Nicky’s wrath when Joe isn’t there to pull him back.

i didnt realise ao3 was started in response to lj deleting account relating to p//edophi|ia and they explicitly support the posting of such works yikes

GUYS HOLY SHIT

THE MADLAD ACTUALLY DID IT!!!!!!!! @mageless WROTE A FUCKING FANFIC FOR THE TMA REVERSE TIME TRAVEL AU. I’VE READ IT LIKE 5 TIMES AND NOW YOU NEED TO TOO. RIGHT NOW.

here’s the link

@ponderingpebbles I know you haven’t finished tma yet so you shouldn’t read it, but I need to brag about it to you. I’m literally losing my mind.

also normally I would ask permission from @mageless , but in this case they can’t do anything to stop me from illustrating their story.

Yes! yes to all of this!

Percy is such a complicated character and such a good one andi find a lot of people dont understand that because in fandom he is mostly relegated to 'the annoying one'.

I don't understand how people can love and idolize the twins when all their page-time is of them playing cruel jokes and being basically the same person duplicated,

AND THEY ALMOST MURDERD GRAHAM MONTAGUE BY PUSHING HIM IN THE BROKEN VANISHING CABINET BC HE WAS GOING TO TAKE POINTS AND LAUGHING ABOUT IT WHEN HE REAPPEARED 4 MONTHS LATER CATATONIC AND TRAUMATIZED FOR BEING STUCK IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE AND HAVING TO APPARATE HIMSELF WITHOUT TRAINING OUT OF IT. He splinched himself and got lodged in a toilet because at that point he was brain damaged and you shouldn't be able to apparate within hogwarts He barely survived. He was unresponsive for months. And the twins never show remorse or turn themselves in for near-manslaughter or do anything but laugh.

Against that what has Percy done? This boy became Junior undersecretary to the minister at 18 and left because his family never tried to understand or even like him. He was young and disrespected and left. Wouldn't you do the same?

Percy rant because this blog needs more posts

Listen, Percy Weasley is a member of the Weasley family so as much as you dislike him atleast respect the fact that Percy exists because if you don't that is just insulting to the character to pretend he doesnt exist.

And if you do that you're as bad as the movies where Charlie wasn't there.

Next-

I think I resent the twins a little is because there is absolutely no character development shown. Apart from Gryffindor traits(brave, courageous, etc) and being funny, the twins wouldn't exist.

Notice how I say twins because there is absolutely no difference highlighted between them. They're both same or similar. All these differences are headcanons by fans. That's not what pisses me off the most.

The fact that there is no remorse or guilt for the pranks they play. There is no apology for sending Percy dung. No apology for catering to Ron's acronophobia. No apology for anything.

And when Percy comes back, Fred says he's a moron. Okay maybe that's brother talk but seriously?

There's no growth. They were immature when they were little and still immature at 20.

And then there's the whole leaving from school. I mean you are in your last year. All that is left are your exams but you make the reckless decision to leave immediately. After which there are no consequences of your actions. Your parents forgive you and all is well.

The twins never receive any punishment which obviously bolsters their confidence and they become more wild.

Percy is a good person and a good brother.

If someone insults you constantly and it's your own family who does so. Imagine

In your mail you receive animal dung.

You get trapped into a pyramid

You overhear your brother talking about how you're the worst person to their best friend

Your father laughs at you and doesn't show you respect.

Your father accuses you of betraying them

Your father tells you you got the promotion due to him and not from your hardwork

Your brothers take your things and ruin it constantly

Your brothers make fun of you in front of your boss

Your brothers and sister throw food at you

You have a special nickname known as git which is not used fondly

Your gf is in a coma and you overhear your brother making fun of her.

You are accused of being an accomplice to your boss's illegal work and are about to go to court for a trial and your family is not bothered.

So you're tired of the torture. You leave.

And besides your mother noone tries to contact you.

Why should Percy return?

Let me make this very clear:

HIS DAD OR ANY OF HIS SIBLINGS DID NOT TRY TO MAKE AMENDS. THEY DID NOT CARE.

They weren't even worried about him DURING A WAR?????

So when I say Percy shouldn't have to apologise first I mean it.

Another thing

People who believe Percy left his family over a promotion.

Did you not read how Arthur accused Percy of being a spy?

Did you not read how he was treated by the twins?

Did you just ignore how Ron talked about him?

Did you ignore the fact that they believed a villain supposed to be dead was alive?

The entire Magic community believed that Harry was lying?

Did you not read how everytime he talked people kept shutting him down?

Did you not read the way his Dad kept disrespecting him?

It wasn't about the job. It was about the lack of respect in the Burrow. It was about the way he was ignored. It was about the way he is made fun of for being different. It was about the fact that being quiet is wrong. It was about how being smart is wrong.

It was about how Percy didn't fit in the Burrow and noone bothered to comfort him about it.

Finally people who believe that Percy was responsible for the Chamber opening.

1 question -How ?????

How is Percy stopping Ginny from telling Harry about the diary equivalent to opening the Chamber?

People who believe this, I can't waste my time on yall. I seriously can't.

And the real ending-

People who hate that Percy is alive and Fred dead.

Listen you're allowed to have favourites. But hating someone because they lived instead of your favourite character is too much a stretch don't you think?

You can have your opinions. You can dislike Percy. All that I'm asking is that you find legitimate reasons to dislike him.

Don't hate him for surviving a war.

I'll just like to end this with:

I relate to Percy Weasley and I believe that he is one of the best complex side character written and we should appreciate him more.