Fandoms Make Me Insane :)

Fanfic and hyperfixation blog, half insane. Anti-AI. Anti-Fascist. Be a decent human being. My a03 is GoldFox99 if you want to check out any of my works on there!

[ubercharge]

look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry

[literallybyronic]

@petermorwood

[petermorwood]

I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

[ubercharge]

i could not ask for a better addition to my meme post than blade education thank you so much

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

It’s not fantasy anatomy, but knowing stuff about the objects you put in your fantasy world is also very important

[zarithial]

@ncat

[amethystskeleton]

Hi! I have been reading your teen wolf fic 'To be Led by a Liar' and I must say it is the best I have read in the theo/liam section. I have been waiting for months for it to update. I just want to ask when can you come back to this fic? I don't want to pressure you into writing as soon as possible, but I do want a clarity on what to expect from you. It's amazing by the way. It would be unfortunate to see it not get completed.

Hiiiii omg thank you for the comment, this made my day and was lovely to receive. I’m so glad that you have been enjoying the story! To be quite honest with you however, I am not sure when I am going to be returning to it. When I started writing it, I was deep into my Teen Wolf obsession and while it still does live in my brain like an oversized wolfy parasite it just hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind for a while. My phone had a pretty bad forced reset a little while back and it caused me to loose a lot of the fanfics that I had saved up over the years (not an ao3 issue I had just had them all downloaded and filed on my phone which was what I ended up loosing). Unfortunately with those went a lot of my motivation to keep up in my fandom circles, with that I’ve also been pretty busy with school, work, and other personal projects. Not to say never because I really do never know where the world/my brain is going to go next, but I think for the time being that fic might be getting put on hiatus or whatever the ao3 term for it is lmao. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to get back into it and fully finish it out as I would like to be able to see it in its full glory someday. But it probably won’t be any time immediately soon. Thank you again for the kind words and the support! 💜💜💜

[wordsnstuff]

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[sillyedboy-deactivated20180115]

Come join the “I’m on a government watch list after researching for my RP character” club!

[amethystskeleton]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

(Excerpt from Chapter Eight):

Leon was on his feet in an instant sprinting for the sink, “Arthur those aren’t candles!”

“What are you talking about? You had light coming off of them just yesterday!” He dashed back past him, a full cup of water in hand and dumped it over top of the smoking light bulb. There was a loud sizzling noise before finally the faint flames ceased and a large puff of smoke arose from the bulb. The faint light that it had been emitting vanished from the room.

“Now how are we supposed to be able to see?” Arthur demanded crossing his arms over his chest. The side of his face was slowly reddening from where Leon had hit him. Leon was wishing he had hit him a little harder now. Without dignifying Arthur’s comment with a response Leon set the cup down and walked over to the light switch on the wall. He flicked it on, watching as the light from the overhead light flooded the room and Arthur’s eyes widened in shock.

[amethystskeleton]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

After throwing together the fastest sandwiches that he had ever made and getting Arthur to sit back down on the couch Leon set to work looking up any possible way to get ahold of Merlin’s address. In the end he found a website that charged €10 to reverse search an address from a phone number. The website was a little sketchy but in the end it did connect the number to a beach house on the other side of town. About a fifteen minute walk away. After doing a google maps search of the place Leon confirmed that it was not some dilapidated warehouse that was about to kidnap him and Arthur and sell their organs for money on the black market. Unless of course said black market sellers had the money to buy a beach house in which case they were probably screwed. Leaving the part about the potential organ selling out of it, Leon explained the situation to Arthur once he finished his own sandwich.

[elegantpersoncreation]

Ball lightning while visiting a parking lot… Ball lightning is a rare phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter....

[heathyr]

imagine being in the wilderness in 1542 and seeing this shit. i’d believe in will-o-the-wisps too

[amethystskeleton]

😅😅 yeah that’s not terrifying at all

[amethystskeleton]

(Excerpt from Chapter Six):

Leon flicked on the small desktop lamp to get some more light into the living room, turned around and froze. Arthur was nowhere in sight. The blankets had been tossed off to the side of the couch and there was a clear indent on the pillow from where Arthur had been. He had since vanished, Leon’s note still lay on the coffee table untouched.

Ice rushed through his veins and before he even knew it, Leon was moving. Grabbing his keys off the hook and bolting out the door. Where Arthur could have possibly gone, Leon had no idea. All he knew was that he had to find him. For a second he froze in the hallway, daunted by the choice of which direction to begin searching for Arthur, but a small spiral of light caught his attention. His neighbor across the hall had a ring camera which was activated and aiming directly at his door.

He pounded on the door, heart hammering in his ribcage. The man who answered looked rightfully very concerned.

[maybeiwasjustjade]

The way Teen Wolf (and subsequently the McCall Pack and Parents) treated Theo is probably one of the most interesting dynamics in the whole show.

And by interesting, I meant downright hypocritical .

Because sure, we can’t kill or plot against people, but hey! Let’s also have the main characters constantly work with adults who did in fact hurt them, torture them, and even murdered them! Let’s have other murderers running around teenagers without problem. Or have them date almost murderers and actual murderers. We’ll even hand out second chances and thirds like candy on halloween!

Allison. Chris Argent. Peter Hale. Aiden. Ethan. Deucalion. Hell, half the McCall Pack at this point.

But hey, we draw the line at Theo fucking Raeken.

Let’s start with Theo’s vague childhood and the events leading up to his the Dread Doctors taking him. The story itself is so nonsensical that it’s a wonder we never actually got the whole true story.

1. We know there must’ve been something wrong with Theo’s health from a young age. No child would believe his sister wanted to give him her heart unless that child has a potentially soon-to-be fatal heart disease.

2. Teen Theo is very different from baby Theo. Enough that Stiles was able to guess that teen Theo wanted something from them. If baby Theo was a burgeoning psychopath or sociopath, Stiles would have mentioned it. He didn’t; baby Theo must’ve been a normal little kid before the Dread Doctors got their hands on him

3. Tara’s death. This happened around 4th grade. We know he was nine. Valack insisted that he was ten, but Theo himself admitted the Doctors were already manipulating him by the age of nine. We don’t know how long it was before that they started whispering in his ears.

4. Theo’s parents must’ve been quite absent. All the other Chimaera subjects were kids that were taken because no one would notice them gone for long periods of time. A nine year old going missing is a lot more obvious than a bunch of 15-16 year olds. So they must’ve manipulated him either during sleep time, or after school. Either way: where the heck were his parents?

Theo might be a good liar, but I don’t believe for a second he killed Tara because he wanted to. Or of his own free will. The Dread Doctors got into his head and manipulated him into doing it by focusing on his desperation to live.

A nine year old boy is abducted and tortured into a living science lab experiment. He spends the next 8 or so years being their only success. He’s exposed constantly to death and blood and torture. He’s raised to be the perfect spy, and was probably tortured into mastering his tells. Remember: at 17, Theo had more control over his shift and powers than even most adults. He was able to hide and manipulate his chemosignals. He was able to keep his heart steady despite lying constantly. Body language, eyes, tone—all manipulated to such a degree even Malia was fooled.

That is not a talent that comes naturally. That is not something a teenager should be able to do, not to mention do it so well he was able to manipulate so many shifters at once. That is something you could be trained and tortured into doing, though.

So you get a traumatized, brainwashed baby spy with murderous tendencies, who is self-serving to a detriment because he spent nearly a decade under the thumb of murderous scientists who could kill him anytime they deemed him no longer necessary. I’m not surprised Theo ended up the way he did: no one lives true that without accepting the need to do the worst possible things to survive.

What I don’t understand is what makes Theo so different from all the other antagonists/anti-heroes/villains that the McCall Pack considers him irredeemable and thus deserving of death.

They forgave Allison for Boyd and Erica and Isaac.

They accepted Chris Argent and his history of spilling innocent blood.

They let Peter live and worked with him after his return in S2. After S4.

Meredith Blake literally got people killed via a deadpool.

Deucalion was healed and allowed to go free despite the carnage he wrought in his revenge.

Nobody hunted down Gerard after needing his help in S5. Or made sure he was indisposed.

Aiden and Ethan were allowed to walk free.

So why Theo?

Kira sent him to hell. The entire McCall Pack stood there and did nothing while he was killed, even when he begged for help. Malia constantly threatens to kill him without remorse or care. Scott told Liam to put him back underground, essentially killing him again.

Oh, but this is the same pack that hands out second chances like candy! Who refuse to take lives or even consider it a possibility. Who works with murderers and killers without issue as long as it’s needed, with far less protest than they did Theo in 6A.

Or is because Theo’s the only one that succeeded, and they can’t accept they lost? This miraculous, spunky, rag-tag pack of teenagers who somehow survived against all odds…lost miserably to a teenager their age.

Even the adults showed more disgust and disdain towards Theo than, again, the literal adults who’ve hurt and killed kids before. You never saw Stilinski threaten anyone the way he did Theo, did you?

Or is it because unlike everyone else, Theo couldn’t really be manipulated? No loved ones or best friends or exes and lovers; no parents or sister alive to be used against him. He had no bridges to be burned, was already operating like a dead man walking.

I just find it funny that Theo had to stay dead and gone, but Peter was placed in Eichen and Gerard in a care home.

[amethystskeleton]

Not to add more of a mess to this timeline but Stiles also tells Stilinski when he’s trying to get him to pull Theo’s record, that Tara died when Theo was about 7 and they left town when Theo was about 8. So if those numbers are accurate, then he would have been even younger when all this started happening, which just hurts all the more.

[amethystskeleton]

(Excerpt from Chapter 25):

There was a moment of silence before Theo answered, “someone seriously needs to teach you how to read chemosignals,” his own voice quieted to match the pitch of Liam’s. Although Liam only rolled his eyes in response, sitting up and scooching back slightly on the bed, pointing for Theo to join him, an odd stab echoed through his stomach at the casual comment. It wasn’t his fault that this was happening. Sick, dying, septic shock, whatever the fuck it was, it wasn’t his fault, Liam hadn’t done anything wrong.

Across the hall the water turned off, but the bathroom fan flicked on. Theo tapped the side of Liam’s knee with the back of his knuckles.

“Come on, get up.”

Liam frowned, “for what?”

The look that earned him was sharper than usual, “seriously Liam?”

“Hey sue-fucking-me, I’ve had a long day and I don’t want to be dealing with whatever this jeopardy game you’re playing is right now.” The words might have come out sharper than he intended but Theo showed no sign of reaction and so Liam refused to feel bad. Maybe just a little bad.

[dercolaris-deactivated20240605]

*Intense reblogging*

[halfdeadnarmy]

GUYS KICK HIM DOWN THE FUCKING STAIRS

[the-jason-todd-impreganator]

LET’S GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

[amethystskeleton]

Straight down the staircase to hell

[amethystskeleton]

And you know I’m right 😤😤

[amethystskeleton]

I viscerally need every single Teen Wolf Theo Raeken fan to go listen to Monsters by Seafret right now and imaging young Theo with a heart condition meeting the Dread Doctors for the first time.

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[azaraspirit]

what the hell? i could use some luck *hits reblog*

[worldheritageposts-official]

World Heritage Post

[monsoonsosoon]

reblogging again… need it bad lol 

[happymakerdonutfriend]

he came back

[amethystskeleton]

Could do with some luck rn 🤞🤞

[nightshine72]

I need you to understand that when I say "comments are appreciated!" I mean that I will reply to every one of them. I mean that an email with an ao3 notification has a higher priority than a message from my mother. I mean that I will have entire discussions in the comment section if you're up for it. Message me on tumblr and I will have the same discussions on an even more unhinged level. I will dissect entire personalities and ships and fictional political structures and worldbuilding with you. I will become your new best friend. You already ARE my new best friend. At the last battle, I would raise Anduril and say "For my ao3 readers" while a single tears rolls down my cheek, and dive into the fray. I would upload from beyond the grave if someone asked about the next chapter

[yellowballoondogs]

St John Allerdyce is such a character. He’s a bestselling romance novelist. He’s a terrorist. He’s gay (literally flaming). He’s mentally insane. He beat up a guy for having the same name and power set as him. He’s a journalist. No one knows his civilian identity. He spent years in prison. He’s a pyromaniac. He has a skull face tattoo. He bites people. He loves making martinis. He’s a boyfail and I love him.

[jasonloveheart]

Shameless ramblings pt. 5 5/9/2025

Feel free to send me any questions or ideas!

————————————————————————

Today, I’ll be touching on an issue I have with the writing of the show, specifically pertaining to Ian.

I don’t like how the show handled Ian’s relationships with old men. The whole Kash (ew) situation at the start of the show is one thing because Kash was written to be a disgusting pervert. He wasn’t meant to be liked, he’s meant to be a giant p3d0 loser. What I’m talking about is the whole situation with Jimmy-Steve’s dad. The show handled this as a matter of jimmy-Steve and his family issues, instead of addressing the fact that Ian was still very much a teenager. Jimmy was more worried about the fact his dad was gay rather than the fact he was fucking a teenager. What was especially strange was how none of the Gallaghers were even a little angry towards Jimmy’s dad, especially Lip. I feel like Lip would have been pissed, like the whole thing with the p3d0 women and how he didn’t want her around to potentially hurt Carl. The show treats Ian sleeping with old men as some kind of weird preference or just a bit weird, instead of the disgusting thing that it is. The most they give in catharsis is Mickey beating the shit out of old guys and keeping creeps from Ian but idk, just doesn’t ever feel enough for me personally.

Let me know what you guys think!

[amethystskeleton]

Let’s say it again for the people in the back 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

[fellshish]

Maybe if he was a little less fuckable we wouldn’t be in this mess

[amethystskeleton]

Theo dare I say 😔😔