#'how about... you trust the woman who has been an antagonist THE ENTIRE GAME UP UNTIL NOW to be telling the truth & to be helping u' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lilliankoo · 7 months

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wanna play you like a game: jeon jungkook. 0

series masterlist!

pairing: villian? antagonist! tribe leader jk x princess! y/n.

trope: "he's mean to everyone but worships the ground you walk on" will absolutely do anything for you, strangers to lovers.

word count: 1.5k-ish (short caus this is an intro?)

warnings: nothing too bad lmao….yet. conditions, mentions abt blessings from a deity/goddess, power dynamics, talks abt manipulating a man *clears throat*, bowing, one forehead kiss 😘, controlling mother. I apologize if I missed anything.

author’s note: how dare i release a new series while titanic! is barely done.. english is not my first language so…, not a professional writer. im an occasional writer meaning I write when i feel like writing or get that random motivation so expect slightly late updates.

While humming one of the lullabies she used to sing to you as a child, your mother finishes braiding the pink ribbon in your hair. She reaches for the brush on the dresser and brushes your hair one last time. She looks at you, more like your reflection in the mirror, as she places her brush-clad hand on your shoulder. As you stare at her, your brows are furrowed and your lips are pursed. Your mother makes eye contact and adds, "You dread me now, but trust me, you will thank me later." "How can you treat your own daughter like this?" You ask her with grief in your voice but have given up fighting her for whatever reason. You have made the choice not to yell and cry at your mother's heartless decision.

Being the only daughter of “mir konvo’s” king, you truly don't have any other choice. you got to know yesterday that you are being "offered" to the head of the forest tribe, Jeon Jungkook; who is even more powerful than your father's entire empire and is known as the most powerful man. His forest known as “lav” completely encloses your "mir konvo", While Jeon Jungkook dominates the entire Lav Forest, your father rules Mir Konvo-which is also known as the “heart of lav” since its right in the middle of the forest. For hundreds of years, your kingdom and the Jeon tribe had a peaceful agreement under which your people were permitted to use the forest trail to conduct trade with other kingdoms, with no involvement on the part of the Jeon tribe. However, the Jeon tribe simply requested rice and gold as payment. This agreement has been effective for years, but Jeon Jungkook, the current tribe head, has destroyed it and established a new requirement. He now demands your hand in marriage or otherwise he will seal all pathways leading to the mir konvo, seize control of the kingdom, and assassinate the current king—your father—if you refuse. The entire country is aware of the forest goddess' blessing on the Jeon tribe, according to which no man will ever be able to defeat or oppose them. Which naturally leads to your father immediately signing the treaty and beginning the "preparations" for your marriage out of fear.

Now, back to your question. your mother sighs and stands in front of you. Holding your shoulders, your mother whispers quietly, "Listen to me and listen to me very carefully." "No man can resist a woman in this world. There is a reason a strong man like him would want to wed you. Take advantage of this, dominate him, break him, and make it difficult for him to live without you" she says while looking at you. The venom that drips from her words is quite evident, her jaw is clenched and her hands are digging your shoulders. And you exactly understand what she means by that. you pay keen attention to her words, thinking about them over and over again. looking at your frightened expression, your mother asks you, "Do you understand?" You take a cautious breath and nod hesitantly in agreement.

The entire palace is decorated and adored with white flowers. The orchestra plays a light tune- the atmosphere is serene yet tense. Everyone is displaying their fake contentment but in reality everyone is scared- including you. your father is standing near the window looking outside- his crown is not on his head, royal mantle no longer on his shoulders. from his disheveled hair to dark circles under his eyes- anyone can tell he is distressed. you walk over to him and stand by his side.

“What is on your mind, father?” you ask him. your father sighs deeply and looks at you.

“He is an evil man, your mother is not thinking-” your father’s words are cut abruptly by your mother’s voice.

“I am doing this because of the kingdom’s safety, no man can defeat him, you will die if you stand against him!” your mother shouts at your father. “you are not seeing this through my eyes, nothing will happen to y/n” she adds while maintaining eye contact with him. you stand there confused and look at the encounter between them two. He drops his head low and nods at your mother. He doesn't say anything but looks at you with subtle tears in his eyes.

The moment is cut short when one of the soldier’s runs inside to inform your father that they need to leave as soon as possible. Another condition jungkook proposed was that the marriage will take place in the forest and only three people can join- you, your father and your mother.

That's how you find yourself in a carriage with your parents. your mother is well dressed while your father is dressed modestly. The commute to the lav forest isn’t that far, that's why your carriage reaches the lav village’s entrance gate in 3 hours. you step out of the carriage and your mother quickly helps you fix your skirts and dress. There’s no man in sight to receive your family. Your father looks around to see if there is any member of jeon tribe and he sees no one. The atmosphere is too quiet and serene. The leaves rustle while the wind lightly breezes.

“the carriage stay here, come” a sudden voice of a man coming from behind you pulls you out of your trance. You turn around and see a man no older than 25, dressed in leather and furs, his left hand holding a spare, his long hair reaching his back. He is incredibly handsome- you can't deny that fact. The man looks at you then motions your father to follow him. You and your parents follow the man and enter the village- the route isn’t too difficult, the path is smooth with no stones in sight and you are sure that it was cleared for your comfort and ease. After 10 minutes of walking, the huts and houses start appearing. You can see people sneakingly looking at your family from their windows- some are whispering while others cryptically smile your way.

In some distance you can see a platform and a crowd surrounding it. The stage-like platform is only a few feet taller from the ground, and has two chairs in the centre. You can see few people standing on it having conversations- some are in serious conversation while others are laughing. you and your parents stand a few feet away from the stage and wait for the next instructions. you intertwine your hand with your fathers’ and squeeze it. you look around when suddenly everyone goes silent and falls to their knees- bowing at the person coming out from the big hut- situated behind the platform. The alleged man is dressed in black leather and furs, some of his hair tied back, there’s evident anger and fury in his eyes as he storms your way- in that moment, it is evident that the man walking your way is your future husband- jeon jungkook. Everyone around you is on their knees- including your parents. And out of fear, you bend your knees so you can bow too but suddenly someone grabs both of your shoulders and makes you stand straight. you look up in confusion and see him. Long gone is the anger from his eyes- all you see right now is love and affection. In an instant, Jungkook drops on his knees in front of you and bows. The entire village is bowing to him while he is on his knees for you.

your breath hitches because you do not know what you are supposed to do. Having a powerful man like Jungkook on his knees in front of you is a lot to handle. Your hands shakingly reach for his shoulders and you make him stand up. Jungkook stands up to his full height and towers above you. He cradles your jaw affectionately in both of his hands and kisses your forehead. you're confused and scared. Confused because he is not scary like he is described as and scared because he is alarmingly close to you. You avoid his eyes and look around. Everyone is still on their knees and you feel bad. You look at him and then the people bowing- and surprisingly he understands.

“Everyone stand up!” he shouts and everyone shuffles to stand up.

Then, jungkook smiles at you and your parents before saying “shall we begin the ritual ?”.

next: episode 1 - the pink ribbon

#jungkook fic #jungkook recs #jungkook fanfic #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook #jungkook smut #jungkook #bts jungkook #jeon jungguk #jk fic #jungkook possessive #bts fic

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burr-ell · 1 year

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i don't get Hopes fans' insistence that Claude was fixed by a white woman/man (Byleth) and that he’s better when he's used as a prop for a separate white woman (smellygard). Like they of course don't put it like that but that's deadass what they're saying when they attribute all of Claude’s positive character traits to Byleth and when they cheer so hard for Claude ruining his dreams in the service of a violent imperialist.

Claude and Byleth are better (and straight up GREAT) as equals who help each other grow closer to others and not "well Claude was completely evil until Byleth made him good" and he's DEFINITELY better as an antagonistic force against smellygard than a dumb yesman. like sorry to the Claude "fans" that want him to just be a dumb violent brown boy who only gets fixed by the good white characters but he's an amazing and good person all by himself 🚶

as a disclaimer, as a white woman i won't put words in the mouths of fans of color who like hopes!claude—and many do! but many also don't, at least in part for the reasons you mention, and anything i have to say on the topic will be echoing them. (@butwhatifidothis, for example, who's talked a lot about this specifically from this angle.)

i can understand the argument that byleth influenced claude to grow emotionally closer to people and his trust in her allowed him to break down the walls he would have kept up otherwise. but i think it's more than a little bit silly to attribute hopes!claude's behavior entirely to the absence of byleth. because we have canon proof of what claude looks like without byleth, and it's called "fire emblem three houses", a game in which claude a) doesn't try to take over anything even when given some good opportunities to do so and b) never even considers siding with edelgard. even "well claude didn't have the year at garreg mach" still falls flat when you consider that claude was already a clever and curious person before garreg mach, traits that are, by all accounts, largely absent in his motivations in three hopes.

hopes!claude only works as a tragedy, and even then i find it hard to believe. (and of course, having the series' first POC lord be the Tragic One in a fanservice game, compared to his two white counterparts who make off like kings by comparison, is pretty gross no matter how you slice it.) of the many traits canon claude has, "stupid enough to believe he can help edelgard conquer a continent and then starscream her" is not one of them. it's literally just edelgard's (equally stupid, but at least in-character) canon alliance with the slithers, believing she can turn around and destroy them after depleting her own resources bringing any potential allies she might have had to ruin, but with a golden deer coat of paint. i think that, as a golden deer fan, i can be forgiven for not finding that very appealing, even as an AU, and i'm certainly not paying sixty bucks for it.

seriously, Warriors + three houses could easily have just been another fanservice-y romp like the original, where the 3h characters get to interact with past canon characters and they're all friends and go on adventures together, yay!! but they didn't. they went the most financially foolish route possible and it's not at all surprising that fans weren't interested.

#'we thought this story would really touch people's hearts :)' ah yes found family engaged in a war of conquest. my favorite.#fe3h discourse #crit tag #seriously they couldn't make a serious 3h warriors story that ended happily bc it retroactively makes their bestselling game pointless #so why not just make a goofy dumb fanservice story??#bc sure it would retread the original warriors but you could bring in other main characters who weren't in the original #(characters who were locked out because of possible sequel bait. oops.)#like. fix some of the issues with original FEW's gameplay bring in ike roy and the twins + 3h characters and the og warriors cast #throw em all in a big tribute to the series and boom. done. it wouldn't sell like hotcakes but it would probably make decent money #instead they did this and the sales nosedived after the first week and kept dropping #sowwy bout it koei guess you'll have to simp for imperialist crab-chan on your own time

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finitefall · 1 year

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Some have been mentioning the Battle of the Bastards in their reblogs of my post, and I thought I’d give my two cents on it.

The thing is, Sansa’s loyalty to Jon can only go so far. Why? Because the writers needed their strong female character on the show. Many before me have been explaining why it could only be Sansa: D&D are sexists. We know this, there’s no debate about it unless you’re talking to someone very, very stupid. But the female audience of Game of Thrones couldn’t be entirely forgotten. So they needed their “feminist icon”, their “strong female character”, who could only be a main character to have a real impact and be significant.

That’s also why Sansa is whitewashed since the first season. They need her, because the other main female characters on the show don’t fit what they want in a woman, what the patriarchy wants women to be like, they don’t “conform to their gender” (like Arya, who they turned into a killer machine saying that most girls are stupid), they threaten the patriarchy and the status quo (like Daenerys, who’s definitely darker in the show even if we don’t talk about season 8), or they’re an antagonist (like Cersei).

Sansa is “traditionally feminine”, she doesn’t threaten the status quo, she doesn’t threaten the patriarchy, she’s not an antagonist, and she’s a “good victim” unlike Daenerys:

Without Littlefinger, and Ramsay and the rest, I would have stayed a Little Bird all my life.

(Sansa, 8x04)

Their strong female character needs badass moments. And show!Sansa stans will always remember when she was the one to save the day instead of Jon, when it was a woman instead of a man. She’s getting a leadership arc in season 6, because they put her in the North by changing her storyline in the books and giving her Jeyne’s. Because they love Sophie Turner in a creepy way, yes, but also because they needed her to go back North to give her a leadership arc.

When Sansa and Jon reunite, her efforts to convince him to take back Winterfell aren’t paying. Jon just died and came back to life, he’s done with the fighting, he’s just done in general. It’s only when Ramsay sends him a letter in that same episode that Sansa convinced him:

A monster has taken our home and our brother. We have to go back to Winterfell and save them both.

(Sansa, 6x04)

It’s Rickon. Rickon is still alive, Ramsay has him, and he’s their little brother. The rest of their family is dead, or presumed dead. Yes, Brienne saw Arya, but they have no idea if she’s still alive at that moment. No, right now the only family Jon has left is Sansa. He died, he came back, he doesn’t know why, the only thing he knows is that he doesn’t want to fight anymore. But Sansa came back, no matter that they didn’t get along at all when they last saw each other. And Rickon is still alive. He still has the two of them, Ramsay has the latter and is a threat to the first. That’s why he asks the help of the Free Folk, that’s why he tries to convince Northern Houses to fight with him.

I’ll skip the part where Sansa is absolutely unhelpful, gaslight both Davos and Lyanna Mormont, and think people will fight because she’s a Stark. Huh, no. They won’t, they didn’t. The ones who fought alongside Jon didn’t do it for her, and the Knight of the Vale didn’t do it for her either, but because she asked Littlefinger. They only did what he told them to do.

Back to trust and loyalty, she tells Brienne she trusts Jon:

Then why did you lie to him when he asked you how you learned about Riverrun?

(Brienne, 6x05)

It’s an interesting scene, because it ends here. Sansa doesn’t answer Brienne, so it’s up to the audience to guess the answer and people will have different opinions on what the reason is.

Before the battle, Sansa tells Jon they don’t have enough men (well, it’s not his fault that not enough Northern Houses will fight for you, Sansa), that he doesn’t know Ramsay like she does and will fall into his trap, that she needs to listen to him. And he does, actually:

All right, tell me. What should we do? How do we get Rickon back?

We'll never get him back.

(Jon & Sansa, 6x09)

She does know Ramsay. No, he won’t let Rickon live. But what was the reason that convinced Jon to fight Ramsay and take back Winterfell? Rickon. Rewind:

A monster has taken our home and our brother. We have to go back to Winterfell and save them both.

(Sansa, 6x04)

It was never about saving Rickon, and Sansa knew it. It was about taking back Winterfell, and revenge (no one can blame her for this, of course, I’d love to kill Ramsay Bolton). The fact is, at this point, the audience does wonder what Sansa is doing. Is she manipulating for her own gain? Does she not trust anyone anymore? We don’t know, and that’s not something the writers care about. What they care about is that Sansa is back North, they’ll take back Winterfell, and she’s having “badass” moments with some lines.

And when it does seem like Ramsay is going to win, who is surprised to see the Knights of the Vale coming to save the day? Not the audience. Now, this has be done many times, like in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I absolutely love the Battle of Helm's Deep in this movie, and yes, the Uruk-hai seem to be winning. There doesn’t seem to be a chance for the men to win, even joined by Elves. But Gandalf arrives like he told Aragorn, and he brought Éomer and the Rohirrim cavalry. It’s a classic twist during a battle, and sometimes it works. The Battle of the Bastards is actually great to watch, but the issue is that, as mentioned by several people, Sansa who told Jon again and again that they didn’t have enough men didn’t tell him there were more men, didn’t tell him that she was gonna try to convince someone and not lose hope, and it’s being shot in a way that says: Sansa saved the day. Which, again, is exactly what the writers want it to look like, since they need their strong female character.

Did she? Save the day, I mean? Yes and no. Knowing more men would be here would have changed the battle plans. Men could have been saved. They could have used the Knight of the Vale either from the beginning, or when they decided to, as an element of surprise - either way, it should have been decided by the one leading the army. Why? Because that would have been smart, and that’s how a battle works. And for those who would think to argue this:

What should I do differently?

I don't know! I don't know anything about battles.

(Jon & Sansa, 6x09)

What does all of this mean, in conclusion? What can we say about Sansa and her actions? It depends, because the writing is just awful. Sansa being a good person who just doesn’t trust anyone anymore because of PTSD is all right. Sansa only trusting Jon is all right. Sansa becoming a player in the game of thrones who will put herself first and do anything to win is all right. But Sansa being a mix of all those different versions of Sansa doesn’t work, except for Sansa stans because what matters, again, is her having badass moments and getting a leadership arc, not good writing.

#GOT #anti got #anti sansa stans #anti show!sansa #cath talks

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musical-chick-13 · 4 months

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Who is the woman on your pfp? She looks very cute.

Ohhh, let me introduce you, my friend, to Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones, the Character Of All Time, and my FAVORITE character in any piece of media ever.

This woman is the most fascinating fictional construct I have ever encountered, and, although she is...not a good person, her struggles are so painfully real (and even, many times, relatable) that she feels the most human to me out of an entire cast of richly human, well-rounded characters. She has an extreme tangle of a bunch of different psychological issues, all of which manifest in some pretty unpalatable ways.

She gets angry and jealous, she acts out, she has an unhealthy dependence on alcohol and is part of the most intensely codependent relationship known to fiction. She feels so trapped in her womanhood due to the horrible way the society she lives in that she resents other women and has a hell of a lot of internalized misogyny. She has an over-idealized view of her parents while also having been influenced in all of the worst ways by her father. She leans on violence and cynicism and increasingly-ill-advised personal isolation as a way to try and feel some semblance of control in a dangerous, misogynistic world. She exemplifies this intersection of "being a bad person," benefiting from material financial privilege, and being incredibly sympathetic and disenfranchised. And she fully owns up to the fact that she does horrible things!! She believes that what she does is justified to survive and to prevent other people from hurting her children, but doesn't try to kid herself into thinking she's a good person; and there are not enough words in the multiverse for how much I appreciate that. She also serves as a deconstruction of the "Evil Queen" archetype, because what would push someone to act like that? How do we measure those actions against a world hell-bent on cruelty? How do we reconcile the fact that there's still a person under there, one who is also suffering and who also deserves to be viewed with humanity, just like everyone else?

And probably most significantly (for me, anyway, lol) she's an excellent example of an antagonist who is mentally ill but not Evil™ Because Of It. Her mental illness and the maladaptive things she does to cope with it (mostly by turning...just about everything she does into a desperate attempt to avoid feeling any more pain--from her violent grabs at power, to her feral protection of her children, to her alienation of most of the people around her, to her automatic and self-sabotaging distrust of pretty much anyone and everyone) simply lend context to her worldview and allow us to see why she chooses to act the way that she does. The suffering she experiences due to her mental illness is intentionally meant to be sympathetic and to humanize her. We're meant to feel for her, and the few people she trusts and/or genuinely loves (mainly, her twin brother; her children; and, eventually, her right-hand-man) are the ones who don't make a habit of calling her "mad" or treating her like she's "crazy." She still gets to affect the overall story and other major characters in significant ways, which...doesn't always happen for female antagonists or characters who are meant to be read as mentally ill. And she doesn't die prettily after two or three episodes before never being mentioned again, either!! She's an extremely important character all the way through the show. And though mental illness deeply affects her in many aspects of her life, it's not The Reason™ she's violent or hostile or dangerous. It's simply a characterization choice that helps us understand her.

I love her more than life itself. She's everything to me.

#mel screams about fictional ladies again #I didn't even get into the whole prophecy thing and how much THAT fucked her up. or the details of her feelings about her mom.#truly there will never be enough space in the totality of all posts I ever make to do full justice in explaining all the nuances #and characteristics and motivations of this one fictional woman #multi t(ASK)ing #cersei meta #(<-for blog organization purposes)#(I wouldn't really call this ''meta'' but that's my general umbrella tag for me discussing [i.e. yelling about] this character)

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visuallong · 2 years

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The banner saga characters

#THE BANNER SAGA CHARACTERS OFFLINE#

#THE BANNER SAGA CHARACTERS FREE#

It’s a bit of a shame that we never get to see any female Varl. The Banner Saga impresses with its nuanced characters overall and with several really cool women in particular. In a twist the main antagonist of the game is revealed to be female and out for revenge after the murder of her child. One of the greatest heroes of the Varl is revealed to have attacked the Dredge leader known as Bellower while she was giving birth. Yrsa is treacherous and if the player tries to trust her he or she will be punished for it…Īs the player progresses through the story it becomes clear that the Dredge are not the mindless killing machines that they’ve been made out to be. Lubin is portrayed as a spoiled child and it’s clear that Yrsa might very well be the one telling him what to do. She has seen the future and shows Rook what must be done to defeat the Dredge.įinally there’s Yrsa, a witch and right hand of prince Ludin. Halfway through the game the group is joined by Juno one of the most powerful seers in this world. She reasons that realizing this is perhaps what truly makes her a strong woman. However Oddleif declines stating that in this world more people will join their cause if the group is led by a man. Rook would actually prefer Oddleif to lead the caravan and tells her this on more than one occasion. Oddleif and the player have several conversations during the course of the game. She inspires other women in Rooks caravan and teaches them to become expert archers like herself. The chieftain of Skogr married her to bask in her father’s fame, yet she quickly ends up being the person really in charge of the place from behind the scenes. She hints that she was given a mans name because her father a well-known warrior really wanted a son. Oddleif is perhaps the most interesting character in the entire game. It is an interesting choice by the designers and one that I have a hard time faulting the game for. If the player goes against her wishes he or she will lose out on an achievement called “Innocent”. However Alette is very adamant that she doesn’t want to kill people. As such her portrayal is very much based on how the player wants her to evolve as a character. The player can choose to have Rook be an overprotective father or he/she can choose to let Alette grow and become a formidable warrior who in the end saves the day. Their relationship is something the player can very much influence by the choices he or she makes. The game centres around Rook and Alette, a father and a daughter. Those women you see in war are only there because the men who protested are now lying beneath a pile of loose stones and soil, feathered with hand-made arrows.” In fact, it is fair to say they were never accepted. The description of the Archer unit (all archers are female) is quite telling: “Women were not accepted for a long time when it came to joining in battle. The world is one that is least as sexist as our own, yet the desperation of the situation forces old prejudices to be challenged. When the Dredge invade, the humans and varl have to band together and flee their villages in search of a way to combat the oncoming horde. In this world humans live alongside horned giants known as Varl and are forced to fight as a mysterious race of stone creatures known as the Dredge attack their homes. The Banner Saga is a story based turn-based tactical game set in a fantasy world very much inspired by Norse mythology. (Note: this analysis contains major plot spoilers) But first a little bit about the game in general… I want to address the way this game portrays women. Bioware veterans and has a wonderful art-style reminicent of classic Disney films, but that’s not why I want to write about this particular game. The one thing that sets this one of the rpg video games apart from similar role playing games is that the best things in the game can be obtained by playing and not paying.Īfter launching this best online RPG games for Android, the game developers later added other features like real-time multiplayer, a town portal, and a fourth world.The Banner Saga was one of the first major Kickstarter successes a few years back.

#THE BANNER SAGA CHARACTERS FREE#

Other than that, the game is free to play. Its tap-to-move control makes it more like a vintage point-and-click Action RPG game and is better than thumbsticks any day.Įternium action RPG games come with in-app purchases and are all up to the player whether he wants to buy additional stuff or not.

#THE BANNER SAGA CHARACTERS OFFLINE#

To help the users during the offline period, the one of the top action rpg games lets the user download the content which can help them in offline mode. The RPG game is quite easy to play with its controls like “tap to move” and “swipe to cast,” the game is a perfect breeze. Eternium, one of the top new rpg games, can be compared to the great classics and is one of the best free games for Android.

#The banner saga characters

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scuttling · 3 years

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Bully

Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairing: Aaron Hotchner/Latina OFC Sophie Cortes Word Count: 2,249 Tags: SFW, Pre-relationship, Supportive Aaron Summary: A case in Chicago means the team is introduced to someone from Sophie's past. Collection: Sophie Cortes timeline, 0-6 Months at the BAU (See Masterlist for reading order) Link to AO3 or read below! “Alright, we’ve got a case in Chicago,” JJ says as they gather in the briefing room on a Wednesday morning. “The detective there is… how do I put this? He’s a real asshole, but they need our help, so just prepare yourselves for one of those.” She passes out the case file, and Cortes tenses beside Hotch, a shift in demeanor he can almost feel, though they are sitting a foot apart.

“Please tell me, just to ease my mind, JJ—it’s not the 54th precinct, right?” She looks up with a grimace, and JJ nods.

“Sounds like you know the guy. Detective Jeffrey?”

“Fuck. Yes, I know him.” She puts an elbow on the table, leans her forehead into her hand, sighs. “He’s like the anti-Hotch: cruel, impulsive, hotheaded, blames his failures on his coworkers. This guy is going to give us grief the whole way, especially if I’m there.”

“Is there a reason for him to be aggressive toward you? Did you pass him up for promotions, accolades?” he asks, and she looks up at him, frowns.

“He’s a misogynist, and a racist, for starters. Wanted a spot on the tactical response team and didn’t get it because he can’t take orders, which had nothing to do with me, but you know how narcissists project.”

“Nothing is actually ever their fault,” Reid says, filling in the blanks.

“Exactly. I was the most convenient target for his anger. So, of course I want to do my part, I’m just letting you know there’s a lot of hostility there so you aren’t blindsided.” The team seems collectively a little more tense—no one messes with one of their own—and Hotch nods thoughtfully.

“You’re with me while we’re there, then. If he wants to give you a hard time, we won’t make it easy.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She exhales, turns back to the case file, and JJ continues with the briefing.

He takes her aside once they’re on the jet.

“Can we talk for a moment?” he asks, standing by the open seat next to hers, and she gestures to it.

“Sure. Is it about what I said earlier, about Jeffrey?”

“Yes and no. I trust your judgement; if this guy is going to be a pain in our ass, I want to have a game plan going in so things move as smoothly as possible.” She closes the folder in her lap, nods, gives him her full attention. “First and foremost, you can not let him get to you.” She leans back against the window, sighs.

“I know. It’s just hard, like going back to high school and facing your old bully.”

“I get it. From what you’ve told me, this guy is going to have all of us on edge, but you know the precinct, the area, some of the officers; the team is going to look to you a lot while we’re here. You need to be firm, authoritative, but not antagonistic. Most importantly, you need to be confident. Don’t second guess yourself because of this jerk we’re dealing with.”

“I know that giving in and getting mad is what he wants, so I’m going to try my damndest not to give it to him.” She laughs a little, like it’s easier said than done, and he maintains eye contact, wills her to see how much he really does trust her with this. “I really appreciate this, Hotch.”

“It’s what I’m here for.”

“I know. But you show your faith when it really matters, and not everyone in your position does that. You should know how much it means to us.” Her words warm his heart, and not just because it’s her who’s saying them. He knows he comes off like a drill sergeant sometimes, but it’s all for good reason. He just wants to take care of his team, keep them safe.

“Thank you. The job is tough; I try to support you guys anyway I can.”

“It shows. Thanks for having my back,” she says softly, tilting her head, and then she sighs and smiles, sits up in her seat. He’s known her long enough to be able to tell when things are getting a little too heavy for her, knows she’s looking for lightness, now. “If we have time for drinks after this case, we have to go to Tito’s, just putting it out there.” Morgan hears her, leans over from his seat across the aisle.

“Tito’s! I haven’t been there in years.”

“Neither have I. They have the best portobello tacos in Chicago. Drowning in chimichurri,” she says to Hotch, and he smiles a little at her excitement. “Give me a Corona and lime and a plate of tacos and I’ll forget all about Douglas fucking Jeffrey.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” he says, and he spends the rest of the trip sitting between the two of them as they reminisce about their favorite things about Chicago.

He actually really enjoys it.

When they arrive at the precinct, she is decidedly less jovial, and Hotch immediately understands why, when he introduces himself to Detective Jeffrey.

“Cortes, good to see you again,” he greets, while his expression tells a different story entirely. “Are you his... assistant?” He pretends to be confused, and JJ bristles beside them at the implication, but Sophie remains impassive, doesn’t even look tense. It’s possible his pep talk had more impact than he thought.

“She is no one’s assistant, she’s a supervisory special agent with the FBI just like me, and she will be taking point on this case. I expect you to defer to her expertise,” Hotch informs him with no room for misunderstanding in his tone. Again, if she’s surprised, she doesn’t show it, just continues reading over the case file provided.

“No offense, but this is a serial killer we’re talking about. It’s worlds away from chatting up a meth addict CI in a McDonald's parking lot.” She does close the file at that, and it appears to him that she can handle personal insults just fine, but that jabs at her work are where she gets defensive.

“You wouldn’t have closed half of your cases if it weren’t for my CIs, and you know it. But I’m not in Intelligence anymore, I’m a profiler, and I’m good at what I do.” She crosses her arms, exhales, and turns away from him, a clear dismissal. “Hotch, Prentiss, and I will go to the crime scene. Reid and Gideon will meet with the second victim’s wife, Morgan and JJ will work victimology, and we’ll reconvene here.”

“You got it, boss,” Morgan says, taking a seat, and in times like these he is really proud of his team. He knows as well as Sophie what it means to show Jeffrey that an alpha male like Morgan will take her orders, and Morgan took them and ran. He hides a smile.

They are unfortunately stuck with the detective when they are rerouted to a new crime scene as another body is found, but Hotch isn't worried. It will be a great place for her to show him what she can do.

“What do we know about the victim so far?” Sophie asks Jeffrey, her posture open.

“Sheila Lapinski, 27, hooker.” Prentiss rolls her eyes behind his back. “No one has reported her missing, no next of kin anywhere we can find. Coroner puts her time of death between 3 and 5 AM.”

“Does she have a record?”

“Osele’s pulling it now,” he says with a sigh, and she stops scanning the scene, looks to him with a cocked brow.

“Then how do you know she’s a prostitute?” He chuckles, puts out his hands like the answer is obvious.

“You know where we are. They’re like fleas around here, infesting, multiplying.” Cortes crouches down and lifts the sheet covering the victim, who is wearing a cardigan, pencil skirt, and flat shoes.

“She dressed like a prostitute to either of you?” she asks, looking up at Hotch and Prentiss, and he shakes his head, though he’s not sure why he’s surprised; the detective may actually be worse than she described him. Prentiss bends down, looks like she’s trying not to smile.

“No. She looks more like a school teacher, actually.”

“I’m telling you, they call this—pardon my French—” Sophie stands, crossing her arms, and cuts Jeffrey off.

“Pussy Alley. I know what guys like you call it. But you have no evidence this woman is a sex worker, and if she’s not, it’s extremely important that we find out how and why she was dumped here.” An older, bearded detective walks up to them, notebook open, and he smiles at her.

“Hey, Cortes. Nice to see you again, though not under the circumstances.”

“You too, Osele; these are Agents Hotchner and Prentiss. I worked with Osele in Intelligence way back when.” They all shake hands, and she nods to his notebook. “You have her record?"

“Yep, she’s squeaky clean. Not so much as a parking ticket.” Sophie shares a look with the both of them, and Jeffrey splutters.

“That’s—that’s not possible.”

“I think you’ll find that plenty is possible when you open your eyes, Detective,” Hotch can’t resist replying. Cortes crouches down again.

“There are no signs of a struggle. The bottoms of her shoes aren’t worn. Her clothes are clean, not cheap; hair done recently, not cheap.” Jeffrey puts his hands on his hips, all but rolls his eyes.

“Ah, there’s some hard hitting detective work.”

“You’re not even attempting to prove your theory that she’s a prostitute, so we’re disproving it for you,” Prentiss explains, pulling out her phone. “Easily. Garcia,” she begins, and she steps away from them to talk to the tech.

“What else do you see?” Hotch asks softly, meeting her on her level. “Anything that indicates occupation?” Her eyes are focused as she scans the victim, lifts her hand to examine her nails, her lip to examine her teeth.

“She has ink smudges on her hands, so she could be a teacher, but she could also be a receptionist, writer, accountant, secretary, bank teller… any type of administrative professional. She’s got a fresh manicure, teeth are in good health, so I’d bet she’s got insurance or has had it recently. No wedding ring, she’s too old to be on her parents’, so all signs point to a steady job.”

“Okay, there is no god damn way you can tell if she’s got health insurance just by looking at her.” She stands, and Hotch follows, covering the body with the sheet.

“No, you’re right, I can’t. It’s an educated guess based on analysis and not snap judgement. Do you have any insight into this case, aside from the fact that you think she’s a sex worker because of where she was found?”

“There’s not much to go on. Sometimes these cases go unsolved.” It’s then that Prentiss returns to them, and this time she is smiling.

“I had Garcia run our victim’s info, and it doesn’t look like she’s currently employed—no recent bank deposits, appears to be living off of her savings.”

“So not a teacher after all,” Jeffrey states, looking smug, and Hotch waits patiently, because he knows there’s more.

“Not right now, but she just moved to the area from a suburb called Evanston, and she was a third grade teacher there for two years. Private school, really nice place. Great insurance.” Sophie looks at her like something she said clicked, and she pulls out her phone.

“The ink on the heel of her hand could be from a newspaper; maybe she’s job hunting.”

“Wasn’t our first guy unemployed?” Prentiss recalls. “We should have Gideon and Reid ask his wife if he’s been job hunting. Could be a connection.”

“I’ll call Reid.” The fact that the victims were job hunting is what breaks the case. They work late into the evening, but they’re actually able to find the unsub—a man posing as a prospective employer only to people who are new to the area—relatively quickly once they put it all together.

The officers who remember Sophie from her time in Chicago are all clearly impressed with her and the team, and it makes him very, very proud.

Jeffrey clearly hates how quickly they solved the case, and he enjoys that, too.

That night, they do make it to Tito’s for drinks and Mexican food, and the team goes around the table and talks about their ‘Jeffreys’ in honor of Sophie showing up hers.

Morgan buys them all a round of Coronas in her honor as well, and later, Sophie offers to buy another; Hotch heads up the bar to help her carry.

“Since we’re here another night, is there anyone you’re going to try to see? Catch up with?” he asks while they wait for a few of the drinks. She smiles softly, tucks a hand under her chin thoughtfully.

“No, there’s nothing for me here anymore. Coming back, facing Jeffrey, was my last battle to fight, and you made that possible, so thank you.”

“It was my pleasure to see him knocked down a peg… and to watch you shine.” She reaches out, covers his hand with her own, which he did not expect, and nods back to the table with the rest of their coworkers, their friends.

“Come on. We’re going to have to rein them in soon. I could use a little back up.”

“Any time."

#aaron hotchner/original female character #aaron hotchner fanfic #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds #latina original female character

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bpd-shuichi-togo · 2 years

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Ngl op I'm rlly interested in your ideas 👉👈 [if you'd like to share them ofc 😙] I also wish to go a bit #insane <3

tee hee tysm and i am SO #sorry this took so long i'm #unmedicated if you hadn't already gathered. anyways erm this is gonna be a bit of a mess

i INSTANTLY forgot every single brain disease i've ever contracted when i saw this, but a few in no particular order as concisely as i am physiologically capable of being

babs-shuichi besties:

(no romo. obv. as babalon is a Grown Adult Woman and shuichi is a High Schooler) this specifically is what i was thinking about when i made that post actually. for the sake of concision i will try to reel it WAY tf in here (i've been meaning to make A Whole Post or several about this for at least a year) but like just to touch on how this isn't actually canon divergent even though they've never interacted on-screen. do you ever think about how in chapter 5 shuichi declares to claude that he has critical info on babalon re: her True Identity, which he offers to trade? and how in chapter 7 babalon pulls up on claude with DEEPLY personal information re: her abusive mother and gender issues that she basically only could have gotten from shuichi, while claude (who we see in chapter 9 is not beyond getting mean about someone's Tragic Backstory, and def wouldn't have held back on babs here when she is making digs at her abusive childhood & repressed dysphoria-) has pretty much nothing to shoot back with? almost like (PRE-CHAPTER SEVEN) shuichi withheld crucial information about babalon's Whole Deal from an official ally to his guild, who was giving him something in exchange for that information-- with whom maintaining at least a functioning professional relationship is beneficial to duo, with whom forming an outright antagonistic relationship is detrimental not only to him but to DUO-- while giving babalon (WHO DISCLOSED TO HIM HER ~TRUE IDENTITY~ AND PRESUMABLY ALSO THE TRAGIC BACKSTORY THAT COMES WITH IT) considerable information on her, and possibly also her in-depth knowledge of the game come chapter 8. like what the fuck and like all that could be nothing, but considering they're both people who are comically doting and unshakably devoted to the children in their care and willing to let the world burn for their families, who are underhanded and manipulative and scheming and operate basically entirely detached from what is and isn't considered moral, who are DEEPLY jaded by all the shit they've been through, and moreover who were deeply, horrifically wronged by people in The East™ & who rightfully want retribution for what happened to them-- it's just. more likely and more meaningful to me if it's. Not Nothing. i'm becoming totally incoherent like i think about them for two seconds and it's like i'm going to scream and cry and throw up <3. all that without touching on their potential as foils to eachother, their potential dynamics or how fucking FUNNY they'd be. it used to drive me INSANE that they didn't have A SINGLE ON-SCREEN INTERACTION despite all that + the fact that it's clear they interacted off-screen, but at this point i don't trust housamo to not like fuck it up somehow, so unlike with some other stuff on here i'm perfectly fine with having been robbed lol

the nineveh thing:

you know how arc views themself partially as joan of arc due to the experimentation they underwent giving them memories of being her? i think something similar should be the case with the togos. admittedly the fujimi academy experiments were intended first and foremost to achieve the effect of warping people's identities like that as a means of ~achieving immortality~ (followed immediately by forcing the kids to fight to the death bc the researchers LEGITIMATELY were just fucking around -_-), but it's pretty well established that using an artifact enough is inherently going to cause that memory overlap, eventually to the point of some sort of identity disturbance. and the togos have been connected to their artifacts since before they were born, so imo it's hardly all that out there to think their identities are impacted by their connections to their artifacts to a similar degree to arc's with theirs. now i say The Nineveh Thing specifically bc like, where everyone else's Other Selves would be People, i think shuichi's Other Self should be. Ancient Nineveh, the biblical city, personified. think like a hivemind kinda thing, a ~library~, a distinctly non-singular being amassed from the recorded experiences and observations of/embodying the countless lives that existed within Nineveh (up to a certain point, specifically the desolation of nineveh by g*d :[). Nineveh. if that makes sense tee hee <3. this ties back into both the babs-shuichi bestie thing in various ways (compounding their shared Fuck The East thing into pariah to ed*n solidarity, it follows from this that shuichi is likely doomed in a similar way to babalon but that's its own brain disease tee hee hee, etc), as well as the arc-shuichi roomie thing below (also just tacking this onto the end here but i'm just really attached to the idea of the kids who were experimented on/connected to their artifacts like. being subject to experimentation fundamentally changing you to some degree or another, often to the point where even your humanity is called into question, is kinda a Thing in this game and it's a bit under-utilized with the artifact kids imo. if they're like, literally connected to sacred artifacts then the Rules of those artifacts should be core parts of them in one way or another, which should be more apparent & set them apart a bit from their peers in some more noticeable ways. also i think they should all have eyeshine bc that would be neat and Uncanny) [edit: i stand by this but CAN YOU TELL I WROTE THIS PART BEFORE THE PROLOGUES DROPPED]

arc-shuichi roomies:

okay so! i fucking HATE the way arc's character gets handled post-chapter 8. don't really like a lot of aspects of how the finishers as a whole were handled towards the end of chapter 8 but the way arc's mental health specifically was handled is just so 😐 like how their being selectively nonverbal gets phased out/basically dropped and how they're somehow more well-adjusted after literally being murdered. but more than anything i fucking hate how come chapter 9-- after having Literally Died? and worse yet, after watching their entire family sacrifice themselves for them, again? and then coming back to the temple they were traumatized in and could only call home because their family was there, alone, and trying to summon their family back to them, and failing?-- they are (deep breath) somehow just Normal, to the point of being basically Snarky Teen #27. like i can't even put it into words how 😐 it is. they started off as a portrayal of trauma i really appreciated and that intersected with the story in really interesting ways. and then they were straight up magically made Normal And Well-Adjusted by their own death and the deaths of their whole family (aside from the one guy who killed them and then left) bc lw wasn't prepared to have them be both nd and prominent in the story. 😐 baffling exhausting infuriating and so on and so forth. anyways i also don't really like how lw is handling the whole thing with shuichi dealing with the aftermath of chapter 7/8 re: duo SO instead of whatever the hell all that's supposed to be, OBVIOUSLY the sudden (and like. designed to be especially painful for them specifically) absence of their WHOLE ENTIRE FAMILIES would leave both arc and shuichi (euphemisms voice) A Bit Unbalanced. so, in the interim between chapters nine and ten, shuichi, while working on the Project his brother has left for him, has to be forcibly hauled out of the colosseum on more than one occasion so he doesn't work himself to death in an attempt to avoid feeling any emotion. arc has been having a time of it since chapter eight. they complement eachother in their losses: taking care of duo was, on a basic functional level as well as the emotional, pretty much the only thing keeping shuichi going, and i definitely got the impression arc was, on a basic functional level as well as the emotional, dependent on babs & surtr. through some catastrophic lapse in judgement, their friends make shuichi basically move into arc's fucked up temple house in hopes of keeping them both at least semi-functional (and. Alive. but let's not get into that rn). and it's (euphemisms voice) a bit awkward at first, OBV. but they bond over like their shared status as survivors of horrific human experimentation that connected them to a sacred artifact and how they both need to sort through the fact that they and their families have Done Harm to others, that their families have Done Harm to them and/or vice versa, the ways in which their relationships are/were flawed and how they're going to make things better when they reunite with their respective loved ones (i just want like a decent exploration of family and hurt and forgiveness or lack thereof PLEASE lifewonders' approach to forgiveness is so MINDNUMBING)... maybe even... their shared connection to babalon... and so on and so forth and they're roomies and also friends :)

long-hair shuichi:

shuichi but he has long hair. his hair is long by the time the loop starts? ✅ he starts growing his hair out at some point midway into the loop? ✅ just! shuichi growing out his hair in defiance of the notion that he's something to be experimented and operated on. and maybe in a Gender way 👀....?

shuichi/toji #divorcees (HEAR ME OUT):

i'd like to say smth like 'i'm glad i've already #posted about this a little bit bc otherwise i'd have no idea where to fucking start with The Two Of Them' but i STILL don't know where to start actually, bc they make me feel INSANE. i'm so fucking mad. this used to be a JOKE. and then within fifteen seconds i Realized they're practically fucking soulmates or something. like the contrasts there are so..... toji has internalized that he's an Other, an aberration who must justify his existence in tokyo as something other than a human, whereas shuichi resents the notion that he is any less human for the manner in which he was conceived & despises those who mistreated him and duo on that basis-- and yet despite defending his and his brother’s humanity, shuichi isn’t the one to tie humanity to personhood and insists (in a deeply jaded way, natch) that humans and transients are ultimately no different. shuichi exclusively trusts and is ride-or-die for those he feels are alike to him, most notable with the whole "blood ties" thing (i wont get into my thoughts on The Bloodties Thing rn but there would also be chapter 7 when he's so moved by the protag's refusal to give up on shiro despite how utterly hopeless the fight against yog sothoth is [paralleling his own devotion to duo + the hardships he'd endured to ensure his safety and happiness] that he tanks a hit from yog sothoth to turn the tides, and if you've contracted this brain disease from me, his selling out claude to babalon); the sakimori's whole thing is hunting their own kind: toji, like his ancestors before him, culls his fellow "aberrations" to avoid being exterminated himself. the sakimoris devoted themselves to justice and the public order; the togos played a part in introducing SUMMONS to tokyo, knowing better than most what that would entail. but even with all that, think about it for a sec and in a lot of ways they're so alike. they start from the same point: a bone-deep sense of alienation-- shuichi's humanity-and-by-extension-personhood being denied bc of The Circumstances Of His Birth and toji experiencing the discrimination his ancestors faced for being oni so vividly he may as well have lived through it himself, shuichi expecting betrayal from damn near everyone except duo and the sakimori's understanding that if they didn't exterminate other transients and kill shadows they would be on the chopping block, etc etc-- that can be traced back to their ostensible guardians disregarding their wellbeing in favor of their utility, causing them both to form harmful relationships to their sacred artifacts & SEVERELY stunting their ability to connect with others and warping how they view themselves. they're Like That for essentially the same reasons. for bonus points, you can trace it back to their respective neglectful/absent fathers specifically.

and back to their differences, how different are they, really? (for the love of god if you have it in your head that toji is inherently a better person than shuichi or was justified in his unconditional hostility towards him in the past, reevaluate i'm BEGGING. can't believe this even needs saying) how different is the togos screening the app-- which was going to get greenlit, one way or another-- from the sakimori's whole thing? in both cases it's perpetuating a system that is presented as benign/benevolent with it's harmful elements kept hidden to most (that is ambivalent at best towards them and their existence within it and will likely continue to exist even if they refuse to have a hand in it) and screwing over other vulnerable people-- in the sakimori's case, literally murdering them-- to secure themselves a more advantageous position because the deck is stacked against them. again, the both of them having complicated relationships to their artifacts that are both, again, harmful, but also deeply intimate-- and differ greatly from the vast majority of app users' with theirs? they're pretty much equally cynical and misanthropic, in one way or another reflecting the cruelty they had to endure until they're influenced by the protag's better nature. and as antagonistic as they start off chapter 7 towards eachother, by the end that's eased so much toji is willing to help shuichi search the dungeons for duo, and shuichi is willing to accept that help from him when earlier he refused even musashi's assistance. which makes me feel insane (the divorcees thing specifically comes from like. well first off the incredibly Antagonistic Exes energy of their interactions, but also i got the idea of the two of them at the towards the start of the #greenlight era being... not exactly on the worst possible terms, closer to their interactions later in chapter 7 than the earlier ones (and there was a weird mutual crush they were both too emotionally stunted to register it as such or act on Normally)-- before a very nasty falling out after shuichi (who wasn't yet quite as closed off) reveals that he's more aware than he'd been letting on about the true nature of SUMMONS and tries to warn toji against trusting h*gen and k*taro and he really doesn't appreciate him insinuating that people considered family would betray or abandon him (esp since he is on some level aware that's not untrue)-- let alone in concurrence with the whole SUMMONS thing-- and the rest is history)

this is one of those things where you need to be willing to disrespect lw's writing decisions to make it work w a few factors, first and foremost bc of how close they skirt to antisemitism with the whole togos greenlighting SUMMONS thing and how it gets framed like toji (who we know by now has an overly black/white sense of morality, is overly harsh in his judgements and excessively hostile towards those he deems deserving [AND LITERALLY IS/WAS NATIVIST/XENOPHOBIC OH MY GOD. LIKE ADMITTEDLY TOWARDS TRANSIENTS/NONHUMANS SPECIFICALLY BUT THE SUBTEXT ALONE SHOULD MAKE YOU AT LEAST QUESTION WHETHER HE WAS IN THE RIGHT]) was. 😐 entirely justified in both his past and present hostility towards shuichi because it turns out the brown people WERE subverting the government!! and then the parts that diminish the antisemetic undertones of the whole 'brown people bribing government officials' thing kept getting overshadowed by toji continuing to frame the togo's as untouchable masterminds and that just. 😐 barely being challenged or questioned like at all despite everything about toji's character and the fact that it's clear that everything involving the game is happening on a level above any of their the influence. like imo it's not unsalvageable if you do a bit of rewriting/reframing which only makes it worse tbh what the fuck was that in canon 😐. electric chair for that shit fr anyways i'm going to be honest i have no idea how coherent any of this post is. tldr as much as they contrast shuichi and toji are a lot alike and they have the potential for a really interesting relationship and i wanna see it develop in a less (genuinely) antagonistic direction.

SUPREME GUILDMASTER DUO TOGO, ULTIMATE GENIUS:

god. okay. (drags my hands down my face) okay. i'm going to try to contain myself here. this is one of if not the single most painful brain disease that afflicts me i already want to throw up. it presupposes that each new loop begins at the moment SUMMONS is released to tokyo which may or may not be actual canon i don't care, and also that duo's labcoat was originally from the facility he & shuichi escaped from. it also disregards the notion that the loops in tokyo were at any point "good" bc i spit upon lifewonder's writing decision, and presupposes that shuichi, inheriting the fate of one or more doomed entities, meets an unfortunate fate each loop, not unlike the finishers, but i won't be getting into that. what it boils down to is this: before the loops started, duo togo was a much livelier child and an absolute brat

when the two of them escaped, unlike shuichi, who brought nothing with him but his tablet and the clothes on his back, duo had the foresight to steal a labcoat from the facility-- if nothing else, it could be good to shield them from the rain. and when, finally, the two of them find their footing in tokyo and like Own Things, that reminder of their time in The East is- not thrown away but buried, tucked away in a closet or neatly folded in a box somewhere they don't have to think about it. and duo ditches the labcoat in favor of Literally Anything Else. for whatever reason, at some point shuichi develops some sort of infatuation with d-evils. as to be expected from one connected to the rule of Collection, he starts buying an ABSURD amount of d-evil merch, the vast majority of which- as is to be expected from his (Annoying) older brother- are gifted to duo. among the many such gifts his (Annoying!!) brother besets him with is a d-evil hooded blanket cloak, which he latches on to as his new Coat He Never Takes Off.

so, back to the Lively(er) Child & Brat thing. it might be a bit hard to imagine now, with the subdued, kind of burnt out air he has about him in the main timeline, but at the start of everything? having escaped the facility and with a home where he is safe and provided for, loved and constantly praised and encouraged and, as far as he knows, a step ahead of everyone on the way to winning the game? i can imagine him being a fair bit livelier. and my god, shuichi spoiled this little boy rotten. duo togo wasn't just a Genius, he was the Ultimate Genius-- and Ordinary People may have had his interest, but at the end of the day he was above them. he was the specialest little guy who made all the rules and gave the orders and was right about everything and got whatever he wanted because his big brother could and would do anything for him, and once they won The Game he would literally be on top of the world.

and then everything goes wrong. and then rights itself... and then goes wrong again, and again, and again. without a doubt duo's seen shuichi die, the fated desolation of nineveh or the smiting of menoetius, brought on by his own rage and hubris. or worse, a grave miscalculation, some stupid pointless sacrifice. how many times? how many times has he himself died, or worse? how many times has the world ended and dialed itself back, with him one of the only people to remember? what has he seen? eventually he decides he can no longer afford to be a frivolous child running around with a blanket over his head and he needs to start acting like a Genius, a real Genius. and he ditches his cloak and goes back to wearing the labcoat he carried with him from The East, tucked away somewhere in their house like a dirty secret, but so well maintained you'd never guess it had ever seen the rain or the filthy back alleys they'd ducked in and out of. and it doesn't fit him, but he just lets it hang off him however in a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he's too small for it because he's a Genius he needs to be a Genius

GAH. section cancelled i think you get the point. my head is going to collapse like a soufflé if i keep thinking about this. SUPREME GUILD MASTER and current-loop duo by @vegetarian-macan

💞 WEREBABS 😳:

i've decided that when babalon decides to go apeshit, she and therion fuse and she becomes a BIG scary fucked up demon werewolf lady. with big scary teeth and claws and fur and everything. let her diverge a bit from what's considered conventionally attractive for women. give her body hair!! give her sideburns!! make her sturdy!! make her INTIMIDATING. we NEED femme werewolves. tbh i still kinda can't believe they didn't actually go with this considering the whole Pig thing like it so easily lends itself to big bad wolf babs. and legit i'm still so fucking mad about this still like if lw hadn't chosen to be WEIRD about babs in the specific way that they had (probably one of the most egregious examples of lw undercutting their own story by being weird and gross. Babalon Is An Adult Woman), instead of whatever tf was going on in her 5-star card we could have had a huge evil weremilf card. like there was NO love for the lesbians. or for ME. light still exists in this cruel world tho. tumbler user juno @summonerscenarios (who i have subjected to this and most if not all of these other rants already) did this werebabs a while back and i haven't once stopped thinking about Her

#error.ans #error.jpg #error.txt #shuichiposting #bapyposting #poor little meow meow (french)#babsposting #recovering piglet #the formatting of this post is so broken tumbler is so functional </3 #tried to omit details that were /too/ particular tee hee hee... which cuts down on a lot of it in some parts hee hee hee hee hee #kinda a LONG post tee hee hee hee hee #anyways anon ily tysm. im VERY unmedicated its torment but id move mountains for you #greenlight = stop #j'accuzzi gang #face me i face you #ninnyposting

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cadykeus-clay · 3 years

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Would you mind sharing your thoughts about vex and Beau being cross campaign foils?

so!!!! first things first: apologies for taking weeks to answer this, finals + having adhd sometimes makes my brain turn to mush and forget every ask ive ever recieved. second of all, i’m assuming you sent me this bc of what i said in my vm vs. m9 how they view the world meta. and i’ll be real with you. i have exactly 0 memory of what was going through my head when i wrote that line, so i am simply going to type out a bunch of thoughts that i have on the similarities and differences between beau and vex and i hope that lives up to what you were expecting jsdflksjdksld

I'll detail some specifics in a moment, but overall, I think beau and vex share a very similar kind of trauma of exclusion in their formative years, that's caused them to have a lot of similar traits that manifest in different ways - for vex, she maintains control through her material posessions and beau finds an emotional control in her asshole-ness. I've broken this down into 5 points on which I think comparing the two really emphasizes that claim:

1. daddy issues: both beau and vex have awful no good terrible very bad dads. both syldor and thoreau can suck my ass. they both raised their kids with little love and impossible-to-meet expectations, alientating them and leaving them with lifelong feelings of inferiority and unbelonging. If beau and vex were to meet, i think they would have a very friendly toast to shitty dads, and then have a good drunk vent about it an hour later.

but, at the same time, the actual minutae of their trauma and the ways it manifests are nearly polar opposites. syldor wanted nothing to do with vex, or else wanted her to somehow become a full elf. her issue was that she would never be able to belong, despite her desire to, and as she grew up it lead to her being overly protective and even possessive of the people she found who DID accept her as she was.

With beau, rather than exclusion, her father created an environment of toxic inclusion. He created a role for beau to belong in, disregarding her distate for actually fulfilling it. And, as such, she ended up making herself into someone who could have no expectations and pushed away anyone who tried to set them up for her. In the end, they both came to love themselves by abandoning the woman their father wanted them to be but for vex it was the laying down of an impossible dream and for beau it was the picking up of a mantle she had feared to wear.

2. brothers: now, on the topic of family, I also think its really interesting how their interactions with their brothers play out. We've got vex and vax, tied at the hip til the very end and then some; and then we've got beau and TJ - decades apart and with beau barely acknolwedging TJ's existence. But, even that distance between beau and TJ didn't stop her caring for him when they actually met. She gave him lucky Jade, and she entertained the idea of kidnapping him to get him away from her stinko dad.

And I'd espeically like to talk about what she said outside the hag's hut - "I think Luc and TJ could be best friends", in comparison to the way Vex reacted when Vax told her was going to Zephrah with Keyleth for the year break. There's an aspect to the way they interact with their brothers that lets them slip back into those bad habits they formed growing up (NOT that i'm claiming vex and vax were like toxic for each other. but even good relationships can have unhealthy moments).

With Beau, when she offers to give her happiness so TJ can grow up safe, she's trying to take on the role she's ""supposed"" to fill - the big sister, the protector - because she failed to fill the one her father set out. And with Vex, when she grows jealous of Vax, it's because she's afraid that his leaving with keyleth is a sign that she no longer belongs in his inner circle, and she falls back on that childish, desperate desire to do anything to be accepted unconditionally.

3. romance: spoilers for 5 or so most recent m9 eps (115-120) if you haven't watched them ahead!!!! at this point, both vex and beau have an endgame romance - percy and yasha respectively. Obviously as the m9's campaign is still playing out, that could change, but like. yasha wrote her a love letter and they're officially going on a date so i'm counting that as at least endgame-track rather than just random flirting. What's interesting to me is that they both seem to flip between the SAME roles between their (in-game) general perception and their actual pursual of romance.

Vex gets characterized as a pretty big flirt, right? She's got the winks, the casual "darling". She's flashed grog her boobs on multiple instances with little prompting. Beau, similarly, has easily the most game out of anyone in the m9. She's slept with two guest characters and at least one more npc in the events of the game. Caleb made her a fuck mirror in her room in the mansion. And yet, in both of their actual romantic endeavors, they became the shy, uncertain type.

Vex only confessed her feelings when Percy was laying dead before her, and not an hour of game play before percy kissed her in the woods, she had a talk with vax about how she was pretty sure he didn't like her that way and she didn't want to pursue it. Beau, similarly, spent a very long time convinced that yasha wasn't looking for love after zuala, especially not in anyone like her, asked everyone in the party if they thought yasha ACTUALLY liked her, just to be safe, and then still terrified to ask her out after recieving a literal love letter. I'd argue this shift comes from that same sense of unbelonging - they're very good at pretending they fit a role but doubt their actual right to take it when the opportunity is presented. This time, the role is the lover rather than the daughter.

4. authority: Both vex and beau grew up shunned by the upper crust of society, and grew to mistrust those kinds of people. And yet, both of their arcs result in them assuming such a position. Vex, thrown out of high society gets her place as a baronness, and Beau, running from leadership of her father's business ends up a top member of the Cobalt Soul. There's not a lot here, but I find it interesting how both of their stories involve them shedding their baggage regarding authority and power and assuming it in a way that they feel comfortable in - invitation by someone she trusts for vex, and a promise of freedom of will and control for beau.

5. their deadliest sins: this is the point at which their similarities culminate and transform to a fundamental difference. despite everything they share - shitty childhoods, the small piece of family that's still good, flirtiness masking shy love, and a mistrust of those in power - vex and beau are such different characters because of their biggest vices. Vex, both in game and out, is "the greedy one". She's stingy with money, she haggles for everything, she mourns the loss of physical objects. Beau is "the mean one". She cares little for people's feelings if they're not in her immediate circle, she focuses on her tough guy image, she laughs at things she knows she shouldn't.

And, over the course of the campaign, as they find unconditional acceptance, they grow away from these traits (I won't say they grow out of them) because they heal from the things causing these vices to begin with. I've always been vocal about vex's greed being a manifestation of her class insecurity, and beau's asshole-ness stemming from her fear of being forced back into another position of complacency. And I stand by that now - all the similarities in their backstories are what tally up to these different women.

Despite her careful tally of party funds and her reflexive bargaining, vex is not cruel. she is not angry on her own behalf. She saves two boys from the market in the city of brass at great personal cost, she relinquishes an entire dragon's hoard to the devastated city of Westruun, she took the time to save a baby bear from a cage when she could have just cut and run after escaping her own. She's the first one most people go to when they need a shoulder to cry on, and she's devastated when they don't (thinkin about when Scanlan left). She carved "forgiveness" into the bow she stole from a man after killing him by proclaiming how much she loved someone, because she knew anger had no place in her heart.

And Beau, Beau is a bitch and she's harsh, but she doesn't hoard or protect like vex did. she spends her money without much of a second thought. She pitches in to help her friends buy a ton of glowsticks, and she loves to indulge in material desires like drink and good food and the nicer inn room. She's a member of an organization that's about making knowledge public rather than guarding it. And, though this may be controversial, I think her position with bowlgate of "its not our problem what cali wants to do with it", her long-standing mistrust of their alliance with the bright queen and and more recently with the tomb takers of "i want to go in and talk, rather than assuming they're antagonistic, even if it puts us at a disadvantage" are both examples of this non-possessiveness too - she has no need or desire to get involved in controlling what other people are doing.

so, i guess the general conclusion here is: vex struggles to let go of things, of money, of people. beau struggles to let herself be known in case she gets wrongly interpreted again. they both fight feelings of inadequacy, they both fight the feelings of not belonging, of 'doing it wrong', they fight the perception of them as shitty people because of the shells they hide in despite their absolute hearts of gold. but at the end of the day, vex's story is one of having to lay down what could never be hers so she can carry what is, and beau's story is one of allowing herself to be known so a place can be made for her.

#hope this is what you and that other anon were looking for jdsflkdsajfsaldfsa #critical role #vexahlia #beauregard #long post

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aros001 · 3 years

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Going in blind: Watching season 4 for the first time. Random thoughts.

I never said anything about it before but I love Shadow Weaver's DCAU Batman eyes. They're so expressive.

Episode 1: Okay...I wasn't expecting Catra to do that. I mean, it makes sense. If she has leverage over Hordak then she's basically in charge of the Horde and that's what she's wanted (or at least believes she wants) since episode 1. It's an aspect that made her a good antagonist, that she's not blind to the evil of the Horde, she just doesn't care as long as she herself is secure. Which naturally begs the question, when the rebellion and the princesses are crushed, when the Horde is on top, when Adora is dead, when Catra finally has everything she's ever wanted...will she actually finally be happy? Somehow, I have my doubts.

I definitely feel for Glimmer in this. When you go through as big a loss as she did you need to be able to feel and vent if you're ever going to get through it. It doesn't have to be right away but everyone doing everything in their power to avoid the topic entirely can make you feel like you're going crazy. It'a especially bad for her since it unintentionally makes it feel like everyone is acting like it doesn't matter that Angela is gone when it clearly means everything to Glimmer.

Episode 2: I actually had a potted cactus plant once. Accidentally forgot about it and left it outside for an entire winter. Once the snow was gone the cactus looked like it had melted.

I kind of want to see what an interaction between Double Trouble and Clayface from the Harley Quinn animated series would look like. I'm guess Catra was just testing how good Double Trouble was as a doppelganger because it doesn't seem like she did anything while Adora was being distracted, though I suppose that could be a reveal in a later episode.

Not much to say except that I love how buff Huntara is while still clearly being a woman. Like, women can have a variety of different body types, as this series and Steven Universe show, and Huntara's build isn't just, like, Bow's body with lipstick and ponytail and the animators calling it a day. No, she looks like a freakin' jacked adult woman.

Episode 3: I didn't figure out the Flutterina = Double Trouble twist until a minute before it was revealed, so good job there. Before that I was wondering if Flutterina was some fan's original character where they won some contest where their OC got to be in the show for an episode. She was giving off some weird self-insert vibes. That twist made it all work though. It's honestly not a bad plan. Shapeshifters haven't really been a thing in the series before now so there's no reason to suspect it. Even if they did they'd probably be expecting it by way of magic or technology, while Double Trouble's seems to be a natural ability.

I like that even though Bow is definitely the goofier one of the trio he is still consistently shown as competent. That's never in question. He was very heroic and reassuring to the villagers this episode. I get why those kids idolize him so much.

Catra's having guilt over what she did with the portal and to Entrapta and her response is basically to just double-down. She doesn't know any other way to be. Not going to lie, I am kind of hoping we get another moment in the show where Adora just completely overwhelms Catra with the sheer power of She-Ra. I'm not saying like brutalize her or anything but just something where Catra is made to realize just how powerful Adora is and that she could just destroy Catra if she had a mind to do so.

Episode 4: Well, I was saying I wanted Adora to do it but I guess I don't mind Glimmer being the one to get some good shots in on Catra. Like I predicted, Shadow Weaver's moving in to become her teacher like she was with her father. Honestly I like that that was more Adora's problem than Glimmer using her as bait, which she seemed to get over pretty quick. Yeah, it was kind of a heartless thing to do but it was an understandable tactic and she clearly outright told Adora that she did it and why afterwards, which at least means she's still being honest.

It occurs to me that Glimmer and Catra may be the ones running parallel right now. Both are basically leading their respective sides of the war. They both have lost someone very important to them. And both are trusting someone they probably shouldn't. Both even have outfits that've been updated in the intro. The difference is Glimmer's just trying to deal with a bad situation while Catra's is entirely self-inflicted.

Minor thing but I like Glimmer's new outfit this season. I'm sure this is the intention but it makes her look older and more mature. A little more muscular in some shots too.

Episode 5: Heart of Etheria project. No idea what that is but assumedly whoever's a part of it doesn't like Light Hope and Mara being friends. Sounds like it's very much interested in She-Ra being just a warrior, and perhaps a tool, for the greater good. It does make me wonder though how much Light Hope remember from when she was rebooting. Even if she deleted the Mara memory she could potentially still have the memory of her and Adora watching the Mara memory, as well as Adora asking to be her friend.

Episode 6: Yep. Scorpia; definitely favorite supporting character. There is something kind of funny about her whole "Scorpions are loyal" line when you remember the story about the Frog and the Scorpion, where it stings the frog despite it meaning death for itself as well simply because that is its nature. But finally we're having someone go save Entrapta, and I can only assume at some point Scorpia's going to access the power of the Black Garnet.

The parallels between Catra and Hordak are definitely at their max here with that speech of hers to him. She's basically trying to convince herself that she doesn't need anyone, the timing of which is appropriate since she just drove away Scorpia and now truly doesn't have anyone. Not that I blame Scorpia, obviously. Like Adora before her, however good you believe someone can be and that you can help them, at some point you just have to cut the toxic people out of your life. You have the right to be happy too.

And man, Bow is just the best. He saw something was wrong between Adora and Glimmer and defused the situation like (snap) that, pushing them to talk like any sane person would.

Episode 7: I'm sure it is just because I've seen way too many TV shows and movies (both animated and live action) that don't do it but it is just such a relief to have a show where the characters just TALK and LISTEN to each other. It doesn't solve all their issues but they're at least not being stupid and freakin' petty. It helps the drama feel a lot less forced and contrived.

Episode 8: A little bit of amusement in Bow thinking at first that Glimmer and Adora didn't even notice he was gone despite them coming to his rescue very shortly afterwards, given Catra is only now realizing Scorpia has left and assumedly she did so a while ago. Bow and Sea Hawk hadn't been gone for that long so it's not unreasonable Glimmer and Adora wouldn't be worried about their absence (Bow was literally talking about "me time" when they last saw him), while Catra is only noticing Scorpia's absence now and it was because she wanted something. Like Scorpia said, she's a bad friend.

Kind of ironic given that a lot of Catra's issues are the direct result of Shadow Weaver giving her very little love growing up but it does seem this tough love is probably what'll get through to Catra the best. She might finally stop making bad decisions and lashing out if she's forced to live with the consequences of them, like Adora told her last season.

Glimmer gets a bit of slack from me since she suffered through a huge loss, that being her mother, and then was immediately thrown into being queen right after. It'd be hard for anyone to be 100% on their game and well-adjusted in a situation like that, and I buy that she was on some level resentful of Adora for coming back instead of her mother, even if unintentionally so. What definitely helps is that Glimmer very clearly and immediately regretted what she said to Adora. Like Catra she's lashing out but unlike Catra Glimmer recognizes some of the damage she's doing and knows, at least in this case, that she went too far.

Episode 9: Now that I can see the design in color I definitely prefer Mara's She-Ra with pants to Adora's She-Ra with shorts. Honestly, while the differences are pretty minor, I do think Mara's She-Ra design is overall a lot better than Adora's. Sharper shoulder guards. Bigger cape (especially the cape, I love capes). I don't know, there's just a lot that clicks with it and I wouldn't mind Adora getting a similar outfit later.

Madam Razz definitely had a Yoda feel this episode. I was very much expecting her to start wacking Mara with a stick over the sugar like Yoda did with R2. Though while that was Yoda acting crazy, for Razz it's because she experiences time out of order, and I don't think I've ever seen that concept taken to this extent, or at least done this way before. There are characters like River Song from Doctor Who, Professor Paradox from Ben 10, or even the Reverse-Flash who interact with other characters in time out of order but those characters are still on a linear path from their own perspective, even when travelling through time. Razz is just bouncing around her own timeline, seemingly not even any real reason or cause to it like Subaru from Re:Zero. Clearly she's not just remembering things oddly because her talk about things of the present are heard by people in the past and have an effect. I wonder if maybe the reason why is because Razz was at ground zero of Mara's actions and this is a side-effect of pulling Etheria away from the rest of the universe.

Bringing more Star Wars into this, it basically sounds like the Heart of Etheria project has turned Etheria into a magic Starkiller Base; storing power that'll be unleashed to destroy whole planets. And jeez, I think this was the first time I really felt creeped out by Light Hope when she was talking to Mara.

I'm looking forward to seeing what it means that the First Ones only made the sword and that Etheria made She-Ra. If that's the case, why is only the sword able to bring out the She-Ra form? Is it like MCU Thor's hammer and the weapon was just meant to help him control the power he already had? Or is what we think is She-Ra not actually She-Ra and that form that Adora and Mara take is just a stand-in for the real thing?

Episode 10: It didn't even occur to me until now but Double Trouble's capture is another blow to Catra's circle of "friends" too. They were at least able to make her laugh. One less person for her to talk to and just...really just distract her from her thoughts.

It's a good dilemma this episode presents about what to do with the Heart of Etheria. The safest and probably best option is to just dismantle it, like Adora and Bow want, since it could easily lead to the destruction of the entire planet if it goes off. Not the mention there's so little they know about it and what it was intended for and the one person who can potentially tell them, Light Hope, they were warned not to trust. But it's not hard to understand where Glimmer is coming from in wanting to use that power to fight the Horde. They're already losing the war and now she knows Hordak Prime and his FAR more powerful forces are on the way. Tapping into the Heart is a huge risk but she's not seeing any other paths for the rebels to win. It's a really good dilemma, with good arguments presented from both sides, and I buy this widening the schism between Adora and Glimmer.

Episode 11: I have mixed feelings on King Micah still being alive. On the one hand there's a lot of good potential interactions we can now have with him, primarily between Glimmer and Shadow Weaver, and he is a fun character. But on the other I can't help but wonder if this kind of lessens the impact of what Angela gave up to overcome the false reality. Part of what made it so emotional was that she had to accept the person she loved was dead and not coming back...except now we see that he wasn't dead and now he is coming back. Yeah, their family lost out on years together and that does still carry some emotional weight but I was already also half-expecting Angela to come back later in the series because she's stuck between dimensions, meaning there's a chance she could still be alive. If both Glimmer's parents come back then that really feels like it takes a lot of weight out of her story. But I guess we'll see what happens.

Also, why did the Horde exile him to Beast Island? Why not just kill him?!

Episode 12: So the Horde exiles Micah to Beast Island instead of killing him. The First Ones protect their secrets by sending their bad tech to Beast Island. Does no one know how to just destroy things in this world?

Ohhh, I am so looking forward to next episode. While it's debatable whether Glimmer should be going through with her plan she is at least being smart with how she's going about it. Double Trouble was being paid by Catra to work for the Horde, not out of any sense of loyalty. Glimmer has the resources of Bright Moon at her disposal so it's reasonable she could pay them more to switch sides. Double Trouble was very good at sabotaging even a group as tight-nit as the heroes, so Hordak and Catra are probably easy pickings with all their issues.

Episode 13: ....WELL THAT AIN'T GOOD!

I'll admit, I had a little bit of an unintended laugh. After all we've heard about Horde Prime, like this shadowy all-powerful monster, I wasn't expecting the fabulous flowing dreadlocks and smoothness. Credit where it's due, man has charisma and charm, which goes a long way in helping your big evil world conqueror not be a very flat character, because it's doubtful he's going to have the same kind of sympathetic motivation as Hordak or complexity as Catra to keep him elevated.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Double Trouble kicking at Catra while she's down. Adora and Scorpia were honest but they never wanted to hurt Catra. Not so much with Double Trouble and they just shove reality into her face. Everyone leaves Catra because of Catra. She's the common factor. It's her fault and no one else's. Again, I don't know for certain if Adora and Catra get together at the end (Catra would have a LOT to make amends for regardless) but Double Trouble was definitely implying Catra had feelings for her with the way they put Catra's hand on "Adora's" cheek while talking about how she left her.

I like that we see Glimmer's plan actually working at first. The princesses get a massive power boost and decimate the Horde forces. But the minute it starts going wrong she immediately admits Adora was right and she tries to stop the energy flow. I imagine having her there with Catra was intentional by the writers. Despite some parallels, Glimmer can actually accept her failures and work to try and fix things. Unlike Catra, she didn't blame Adora for things going wrong.

So the sword allows the First Ones to control She-Ra and the energy she'd be absorbing from the planet. Assumedly that means there are at least some parts to She-Ra that have nothing to do with the First Ones and thus maybe Adora can still use some of those powers without the sword.

Season 4 verdict: Yeah, the show keeps getting better, though I will admit last season's finale had me more emotional, but that's a bit of an unfair comparison given everything that happened in that finale vs. this one. This is definitely the series hitting its darkest hour, where it feels like EVERYONE lost. Not just the rebels but the Horde as well. The sword and Light Hope are gone and She-Ra (for now) along with them. Glimmer and Catra are basically prisoners. Hordak's probably going to have his personality stripped away. The Fright Zone is in ruins. The only one who's gained anything is Prime.

Really looking forward to what the final season has in store, especially since there seems to be the implication that Catra just saved Glimmer's life.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/o1j5gk/going_in_blind_watching_season_4_for_the_first/

#she ra #she ra spop #random thoughts #reddit repost

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kswhateverspace · 3 years

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The Ruby and Christina Discord Drama

To my followers who have no idea what this is about, feel free to ignore this if you’d like. This is a long post showing everything that went down with the kicking of 3 members in a discord I’m a member and Admin of. I will share a bit, and then the rest will be under a cut.

Jaye (hernameisjaye/ @reneesgoldsberry) and I didn’t feel it necessary to address the kicks of the server publicly and just thought things would die down and people would move on. That doesn’t seem to be the case and so while I don’t want to give any attention to Krow (grimreich666), the continued attack of Dandybear has made this post necessary. On December 9th, 2020, 1 member was kicked from the discord. Michele (kerozenangel). She was kicked specifically because of this post she made

It was incredibly rude to all the writers in the discord and also @/everyone about it. The removal at this time was specifically to protect the mental well being of the writers who occupied the discord. In addition, for being continually antagonistic in discussions with other members.

Jaye and I are not big on public warnings in regards to someone’s character and the way one thinks. The only thing we correct is off topic discussion and only if it gets out of hand. Behind the scenes we talk a lot if certain members are acting up, and mentally keep track on how many instances are occurring, if behavior seems to be improving etc. You don’t see it, but when issues arise it is discussed, usually in length, and then we decide how to proceed. We also don’t publicly report when a complaint is sent to one of us about a member, but we have been sent them and they are taken into consideration.

On December 11th 2020, 2 members were kicked from the discord. Krow (grimreich666) and RVCBard (eshusplayground)

There is quite a bit to unpack here, but I am first going to address the tumblr post Krow made. I never planned on replying, just letting it go. But Krow continues to antagonize a member (dandybear) of the discord who had NO involvement in her removal from the Discord and it’s time all sides are put out for those who are not aware, or those who don’t have the full story to judge. I will be addressing the youtube video at the very end of this post.

I’m going to address the tumblr post in question in sections.

“So it has come to my attention that we cannot have a civil conversation in the Ruby and Chirstina Fandom. Nearly a month ago I gave up my own small Ruby and Chirstina Discord to join another manged by Kswhateverspace.”

Civil discussions are had all the time, what occurred began as a civil discussion until Krow made it personal by telling Jaye to learn her own black history. That was the reason for the kick. Personal attack. I will post screenshots of the entire encounter at the end. As for managed by me, I am just an admin, and did not start out that way. I offered to help organize the discord and tried to create events to make things a bit easier to navigate and more fun. I originally invited Krow to this discord after seeing people asking for links on tumblr to it.

No one was asked to give up any server, it was simply an open invitation.

“I thought that the community would be a good place to vibe with other members of the Ruby and Chirstina community. At first it was welcoming until I started writing my own Fan Fic for the Ruby and Chirstina ship. It had been users by the name of Dandybear and Agent Sheryl and a few others started to bury the work I posted and they would shade me, barely would I get comments on my work because they would fill the submission page with there personal conversations.Now I’ve written two novels professionally and I am working on a third and out of my 15 years of writing I can safely assess when somebody is trying to blackball or bury someone’s work because there work isn’t meeting up to snuff. And as for me I always supported their work because Christina and Ruby content benefits everyone, now I didn’t get into AO3 for the comments I did it because I love Chrisby.”

This is completely not true. There is a channel I created dedicated to posting work only, exactly to prevent the burying of work. Krow would actually break the rule from time to time of that channel, which is that it’s for links to works only, not discussion of said works. There is a separate channel to discuss. Despite the breaking of the rule, I never actually removed her creator role and instead just let it slide. Also, “Shading” never occurred.

“Yet it was only a week ago that me and a few others we noticed the mean girls clique right away as it consisted of Danybear, Frankie, Kswhateverspace and Agent Sheryl, who had came from my server to join.”

I want to address this on a personal level. I have literally spoken to Krow on a voice call, for 2 hours, with Frankie also in attendance, as well as Agent Sheryl. We had been doing the drop a random pin on the map game and it was a pretty fun time. Prior to this instance, I didn’t have the most favorable view of Krow as she tended to not have a filter when posting and I wasn’t always comfortable by what that was, however, I take my role as admin seriously, and in particular being a white woman in a predominantly black server, I never wished to step on anyone’s toes or out of line. Any worries or concerns I ever had or have, I always defer and clear with Jaye. After this game, I became more comfortable in general with her presence in the discord, but she continued to post fairly unfiltered views that would generally derail a discussion etc. and overall behavior within the discord did not make for a very comfortable place a lot of the time. I say this as myself, and from fellow members at the time of instances. I was at war with myself on this a lot of the time because I was the one who invited Krow, but no one can predict how people will be or mesh.

At this part of the post I will address Krow’s accusation that Dandybear “shaded her”. The screencap Krow uses at the end of her post.

In case it isn’t clear, You is a tv show and not literally @ Krow in case that’s what was thought.

“The egregious abuse of power there Admin and Owner Hernameisjaye is sickening; as her rampage all started on Thursday when Jaye went on a rant saying that Christina was racist. And to me and another black female members acknowledged her opinion but we disagreed with it as we had watched the show several times and understood the premise of the timeline within the Jim Crow Era. Not wanting to fight we had calmly stated our disagreement to her baseless claim and yet she still would not let up even after we have both took the high road as mature adults to leave the conversation.”

I will let screenshots of the entire discussion speak for themselves. I will preface the screenshots with the rules of the discord, which were last edited on December first.

I’ll speak on rule 6 here.

“In the event that we decide to kick/ban a specific user, that individual will receive a message from the admin team notifying them of the final decision.”

At then end of the day, Jaye and I decided to not inform those who were kicked the reason. It wouldn’t have changed the result and in all honesty, we were tired. If an issue wants to be taken up with that, it’s valid. However, no result would’ve been undone.

In most channels on the server, there are pinned messages about what a channel is for as well. This channel was always intended to be a difficult discussion channel, and those that enter are agreeing to engage in difficult discussions as it relates to the show. Krow broke rule 2 by making it personal. You can see the whole chain below. As for RVC, she made it clear she was no longer comfortable in the server and didn’t trust the admins, and decided to turn a situation that didn’t directly involve her to be about her.

After this, RVCBard was kicked. Throughout the life of the discord RVC was consistently combative and antagonistic towards members who’s views or opinions she didn’t agree with. Or if someone disagreed with her. It was an issue that would flare up often, but looked past because we wanted the server to be inclusive even at the detriment to the overall health of the server. We received multiple complaints from different members about RVC with the average complaint being that she made the user uncomfortable due to her approach to different discussions in varying channels. All of the above was taken into consideration that night, and was essentially the final straw.

And despite not being comfortable with approaching mods, she sent me the following after all this went down.

For clarification, I was not present at the time and woke up to multiple messages and had to catch up on my own.

In the past, RVCBard had contacted me with an issue she saw in the server.

I talked it over with Jaye, and it was decided thirsting channels would be created to help address the problem. I show this as an example of good faith that when issues are brought to our attention, we look into it and do something about it if we’re able.

“It wasn’t long ago nearly 48 hours after I lost a family member that was dear to me that this mess ensued, I didnt carry my personal issues into conversation as I enjoy Christina and Ruby as a get away. Yet it is damn near sickening how an Admin can kick someone without warning because your losing an arguement. This isn’t an after-school special and it’s sad that this show that delivers it’s take on Black History and pain cannot be understood even by the simplest of minds, as they are too busy oversexualizing and insulting the Ruby and Chirstina Ship to understand that we see Christina and her flaws as well. I own 2 Discords myself and NEVER would I go out my way to make somebody feel uncomfortable like the way they did me.”

I was offline and asleep for the majority of this night. And this was the reaction to the news of her family member.

While the loss of her family member is tragic, and I sympathize with the loss, it is not a free pass. The kick happened because of hostility and personal attack. With a history of problematic behavior.

I wish to highlight this part from that paragraph

“as they are too busy oversexualizing and insulting the Ruby and Chirstina Ship”

I honestly have no idea who this is supposed to even be at. The entire discord is dedicated to Ruby and Christina. Oversexualizing? Really? Acknowledging Christina’s racism, in whatever form it presented itself in, is in fact seeing Christina and her flaws.

It is at this point I’d like to share the message Krow sent me after her removal and my response.

Now onto the video that was posted Jan 1st, 2021 that has resparked the drama. Which, the video is actually the worst offense done so far. I will address particularly awful points with timestamps that you can reference for yourself. Credit to @femeivor for helping with grabbing timestamps as I’ve stayed up incredibly late writing this all up.

To highlight the targeting that is going on in this video, I would first like to present the controversy surrounding LITTD chapter 5. Dandybear upon receiving valid criticism of her story replied with the following, which Krow decided to piggyback on.

With that shown, let's get onto the video titled “Dear AO3 Fanfic Writers”

1:41 - "there was this whole thing where they couldn't have a mature conversation as adults and decided to kick me and several other group members out for not feeling that way"

- If you’ve made it this far, you know how exaggerated this is.

2:10 - Says a couple of writers from the server are "abyssmal and you know it comes from their fucking area"

- Spoiler alert, at the end of this video she says her discord is a place to not be judged.

6:54 - huge rant about people having Christina be William in their fics even though that's canon compliant

- For this I shall simply copy and paste her own fic’s summary:

- When Ruby get's the chance of a lifetime to change her life working under Tic's strange yet introvert distant cousin Christina, she gets more than she bargained for. As Christina a well known lawyer struggles to free herself from her fathers abusive shadow after the death of her brother William and her elder brother Caleb; she seeks to gain control over the lodge her father has denied her as his only heir. Yet first Christina must clear her father and lodge members names a task that seems all to impossible under the watchful eye of her fathers righthand-man; yet such a task is proving itself to be difficult as she is taken by her new P.A. As Ruby finds out how to read the strange yet alluring Christina, a waiting William comes to make her dreams come true yet are all dreams true; yet she is sucked into into a world of wizards and dangerous turns. Can love come at such a time, or will the half-truths threaten to rip the two apart?

- I will also add here my OWN comment on said story

https://archiveofourown.org/comments/357964615

8:00 - straight up calling out Davenports, just not by name.

8:30 - says it's "disgusting" to have Christina spend a lot of time as William which is, again, canon compliant

11:00 - calls some fanfics "crap" and "torture porn for the soul"

11:14 - "I'm not trying to stifle creativity!"

- *stares into the camera like I’m in the Office *

11:33 - calls out a fic for including attempted rape when she has previously praised a fic that included CSA

11:50 - "you don't really understand these characters, you don't really understand her at all"

- Christina is not given some EPIC backstory in the show and literally no one knows that much about her. Only what we can perceive and deduce. Aka, tons of headcanons from everyone.

13:00 - now telling people what they should be writing instead

13:34 - mockingly calling out Dandybear again, this time with more than one fic

14:10 - once again telling people what they should be writing

14:30 - mocking people for writing smut then says “I don’t caaare - I mean I like that - I love smut….is that it?”

14:55 - "and I notice that some of you guys start out so great in your fics and then it goes down hill!"

- Is this encouragement or stifling creativity?

15:13 - calling out another fic

- I’m tired, are you tired?

15:33 - "Who the fuck writes this shit? Oh my fucking god! Are you guys just dumb? Are you guys stupid?"

16:00 - "Some of you wanna tag and say 'this is a Ruby and Christina Discord server [mocking noises] and if you don't agree with us we're gonna kick you out for no fucking reason!' You know? Shut the fuck up!"

- And if you’re THIS far, you very well know the reason and it definitely wasn’t NONE

16:16 - "you obviously don't know what Ruby and Christina mean to real fucking die hard fans"

- I personally love a classic gatekeep.

17:06 - "But for some of y'all to write these disturbing, disgusting fanfictions"

17:54 - calling writers racist for including racist characters in their fanfics for a show that included a lot of racism.

18:41 - says people are wasting her time because they're writing fics that she doesn't want to read.

18:49 - "This isn't for all fanfic writers. This is only for a couple of 'em. You know who the fuck some of y'all are. And shame on you for even doing this and writing this and trying to fucking push this kind of fanfic and this garbage off."

- If you’re gonna keep beating a dead horse and bringing up drama that you created again and again, start saying people’s names instead of hiding behind blanket statements.

19:07 - "And that's the whole problem why I decided to do Krows Korner. Because I'm so sick of these fandoms and even some of these professional writers running their ass around here, delivering garbage and people being a bunch of sheeple to say that this shit is the greatest shit ever. Honey, it's either you have dyslexia or a reading complex because I'm not really fucking seeing what you thought was so great about this fic."

20:20 - "Join my Discord server if you wanna know the full, TRUE story about what happened at the other Discord server and how these people supposedly claim that they love Ruby and Christina but they support a racist fanfic writer who clearly does not understand about black relations, but lies and decides to be a dick every-damn-where"

- The clearest target at Dandybear herself is in this rant here. Which you can recall above from the screenshots I posted, that when confronted with valid criticism, aims to do better because we all have room for growth. Including racists characters can always be tough because they are uncomfortable characters as they are meant to be, but run the possibility of being too much. However they are not a direct reflection of an author’s view.

20:52 - "If you wanna join a fandom on Discord that doesn't judge you for liking what you like as Ruby and Christina, and even if we disagree, you know, still not have fear of being kicked out because you disagree, come join my shit. It's not even worth the headache, sweetie."

- Interesting take after making a whole video attacking writers/people you hate from your previous discord after you were removed for breaking rules aka personal attack. “doesn't judge you for liking what you like”

21:30 - "I don't care any fucking more. The drama is done, it's settled"

- Considering you have brought this drama up again, after your removal on the 11th of December 2020, I think you might still care.

21:33 - "I figure I would clear a record, basically, to what happened. And, you know, signify the issue that these motherfuckers is crazy. They're crazy as hell."

Everyone at the server had moved on and enjoyed the holidays, but this video has reopened a closed case due to the clear targeting of a writer who happens to be popular. Almost this whole video is an entire disguised attack towards her.

I sincerely hope this clears the air on everything that happened and continues to happen. You have the full story and can judge for yourself whether or not the kicks were justified. If you feel they weren’t, that’s fine and you can now join a new discord server of more like minded people. This continued targeting of Dandybear is unacceptable, and those of you in contact with Krow should not be allowing this to continue. Dandy is a real person like all of us, and if you have a valid criticism of her fic, you can do it in a rational manner. Or stop reading. Like every person ever has done in every fandom ever. Dandybear had no involvement whatsoever with the kicks of the server, they are simply a member and a writer in the fandom and this has gone too far.

If you feel like this server isn't the place for you anymore, I encourage you to find a new place to express yourself in the best way you'd like. We all came here to love Ruby and Christina and have a place to do so in an organized fashion. If you don't like the rules, or consider this place unsafe, I hope you find a community that aligns more with your interests and world view.

#ruby x christina

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gayregis · 4 years

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It may just be me but the way I was introduced to Yennefer by tw3 made me dislike her and I didn’t really get over that until I started reading the books because CDPR didn’t really give her much depth other than being snarky. Like she’s so much more than her wit and for that reason I will be asking her to stomp on me

yeah, cdpr did yennefer a really large disservice by portraying her as snarky, bossy, and rude to geralt, not caring about his opinions on things a lot of the time and basically being this incredibly one-dimensional “i have my own plans and i don’t have to explain myself to anyone” type. which isn’t even what yennefer in the books was like, the only time she “hid her plans” from geralt was in the last wish when she was literally the plot’s antagonist. after she and geralt become close, she’s incredibly giving to him and while she still has her insecurities and is still afraid to share some of her vulnerabilities, she doesn’t just block him from information in a manipulative fashion. after those four years in vengerberg, they practically knew everything about each other.

and every other NPC in tw3 is always commenting about how yennefer’s such a bitch. like all of the wolf school witchers make fun of her, i think cerys calls you whipped or something. literally when you begin the game, vesemir insults her to your face. that’s a pretty misogynistic creation of cdpr, because in the books yennefer had been to kaer morhen multiple times and she was never there uninvited, and thus it should be assumed that she was well-liked. in actuality the one that the wolf school witchers are annoyed by is triss, who lambert constantly mocks.

this isn’t helped by the fact that so many tw3 fans call yennefer a bitch and manipulative and accuse her of being abusive to geralt in the books/games and tell everyone to go romance triss instead because she’s so sweet... as if geralt and triss ever had a consensual romantic relationship and as if geralt ever had any actual romantic interest in triss, as if triss didn’t betray them all by siding with the lodge of sorceresses to kidnap ciri and not care if yennefer or geralt died in that process.

sapkowski had some moments in the books where i think his definition of “spicy relationship” were more definitions of red flags for abuse, but it’s much like the whole of the witcher, in that there are parts that suffer from their male authorship of the 90s’, but overall it is an overwhelming positive experience. if you accept yennefer throwing fruit preserves at geralt, you also have to accept geralt sleeping with underage essi daven and shani, and i am personally retconning all of these things. if you retcon those things then yeah they do have a pretty good relationship in the books (especially during the scenes in time of contempt and lady of the lake) and it’s sad to see their relationship reduced to “i like you because you make bad puns sometimes,” instead of “we deeply care about eachother’s being and we are able to be vulnerable around each other.”

i’m currently redoing the last wish quest in tw3 ng+ right now and i am just... blink blink blink... at how they approached the lore concerning how yennefer and geralt’s relationship originated. geralt’s wish didn’t make them fall in love, it just intertwined their fates. and then they died, the end.

the worst part is that yennefer’s relationship to ciri was entirely wiped from tw3. yennefer’s relationship to ciri is way more important than yennefer’s relationship to geralt, but they just removed it because they wanted to make an equal playing ground for triss and yennefer. but like, yennefer becoming ciri’s mother was such a big step in development as a character for her. that demonstrated not only what love she was capable of but why she hid it from the rest of the world and wasn’t eager to dole it out. it develops her because she becomes a more mature and selfless woman and focuses less on how she has been victimized in her life, rather focusing on the well-being of her daughter instead. yennefer did EVERYTHING for ciri, she fell into torture attempting to save her, and she prolonged the torture by not willingly giving information about geralt and ciri.

then cdpr erased all of this and had ciri distrust yennefer by saying she doesn’t trust her and thinks she has plans for her... like what? where the fuck are you getting this from? why are you slandering yennefer like this? and having ciri trust avallac’h, a fucking aen elle who was one of her kidnappers and assisted in her being raped multiple times and is weirdly obsessed with her because she’s the descendant of lara dorren, who he had a crush on or whatever? remember that time he fucking gripped ciri by the neck to shut her up? yeah, i really trust this guy...

also as a sidenote. i am apalled by what cdpr did to yennefer’s hair. that is NOT fucking stormy curls, that is a salon blowout. and don’t say it would hurt our computers to run a more book-friendly hairstyle, because i use book yennefer hair mod reworked and it runs fine. idk WHY the fuck they did that to her because the concept art looked way better...

(unrelated, i kinda hate the “step/stomp on me” meme but i’ll let it slide)

#yennefer #the witcher #tw3 #ask #anon

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iamnmbr3 · 5 years

Text

That’s it?

That’s IT.

Look. Look. This is Game of Thrones. I never expected a fluffy ending where everyone lives happily ever after ok? But I didn’t expect a full on tragedy devoid of hope or logic, where everyone’s character arc gets thrown away either.

I love Sansa being Queen in the North. That was probably the best handled part of it. But she’s all alone, without her family or love. The girl who dreamed of romance and suffered so much is left to bear the burdens of rule all alone.

And Arya. Arya whose ENTIRE ARC has been about reuniting with her family, who beautifully connected with Gendry, the one person who she trusted when she was fleeing Kings Landing, and who truly saw her, that Arya, decides to just leave??? What happened to the “lone wolf dies but the pack survives” huh?? Speaking of which. She never even reunited with Nymeria, who is symbolically (and in the books also literally) an integral part of her identity.

And Gendry. He’s just left to rule the Stormlands, even though he has no interest in ruling and no training for it, bereft of the woman he loves and isolated in a position of power he doesn’t want and is poorly prepared to handle? Who does that remind me of? Oh right. ROBERT BARATHEON. So what? The whole cycle repeats again?

And Dany. Look. I’m not a diehard Dany stan (or at least I wasn’t; I think the show’s grievous mishandling of her character may just have turned me into one out of spite) and I think it could have been interesting to watch her good intentions gradually lead her down a morally ambiguous path until she strayed too far into darkness and became an antagonist. But that’s not what we got. The show often downplayed her flaws from the books, and emphasized her empathetic and just side. I found it ironic that Tyrion’s speech in which he listed her past moments of violence to try to justify her sudden turn towards genocide, mentioned only instances in which she had killed very evil people in defense of innocents. Yes, she killed them brutally and you could say that her single minded and blood thirsty justice could have eventually led her down a very dark path. But “could have” is not “did.” Her going from defending the helpless and the innocent to burning them alive in the space of two episodes is just character assassination plain and simple.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on and on and on about the wasted potential. About how Brienne filling in Jaime’s pages in the book was a beautiful scene...that was ruined by the context preceding it. Namely that he suddenly and inexplicably reverted to season 1 Jaime, cruelly used her and then left her crying. I could talk about how depressing it is that no one. Not a SINGLE character. Got a happy ending. I could talk about the logic flaws. Um. What happened to the Dothraki??? I could talk about the problematic nature of a homogenous white nation being terrorized by mostly dark-skinned foreign conquerors.

I could talk about how the individualism and uniqueness was stripped away from every character or how the time jumps felt abrupt and the episode rushed. How it’s never explained why Yara doesn’t try to get independence for the Iron Islands. How the beautiful music and cinematography don’t make up for the fact that dramatic moments like the Iron Throne melting didn’t feel earned and how the fact that they didn’t lay out a clear system for choosing their kings (who exactly votes? how many votes does the king need?) may doom them to just repeat the bloody cycle again.

But what’s the point? I’d be here all day if I listed all the problems. Anyway. Canon is cancelled. And that’s the tea.

#come scream at me. i am shook. and not in a good way #my post #current mood: empty #got #got spoilers #game of thrones #game of thrones spoilers #random musings #gendrya #daenerys targaryen #arya stark #jonsa #Sansa Stark #ASoIaF #meta #game of thrones meta #Jon Snow

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

Text

Darkwing Duck Reviews Halloween Special: Fungus Amongus and Ghoul of My Dream

Happy Halloween! Halloween Havoc races to the finish with another Darkwing Double Feature! Love is kinda crazy with a spooky girl like Morgana, and in this case ��kinda crazy” means a board of ghouls stealing pizza, sentient mushrooms, grumpy spiders, student lone debt, and a gremlin who somehow sees himself as a valid romantic option. It’s a Darkwing Duck Halloween under the cut.+

We’ve made it! While I got less Halloween reviews done than I would’ve liked, I’m still happy with the ones done and there’s still two more to get in the pocket before the day’s up. So with Halloween today it seemed fitting to talk about the Justice Ducks resident sorcerer and Darkwing’s Girlfriend, Morgana Macawber. Morgana was the only one of the four to stick around as a recurring character out of the four Justice Ducks: Gizmoduck would show up once more after the four parter, and sadly Neptunia and Stegamutt just seemed to vanish but the crew clearly liked Morg a lot and her relationship with Darkwing, so she stuck around for the rest of the series, and is even the focus of the final episode “Malice’s Restaurant”, as well as a sizeable part of the comics. And it’s easy to see why as Kathie Sourcie had great chemistry with Jim Cummings and Morgana’s very presence, being a sorceress raised by the munsters and living in a creepy mansion, allowed for diffrent stories than what Darkwing usually dealt with. While magic didn’t feel like it contrasted with the world, as Darkwing’s world feels like your standard superhero fantasy kitchen sink where anything is possible, most of his foes were either super villains or the kinds of super spies you’d find in a comic book. So fighting ghoouls, goblins, and Satan himself, yes that’s an episode that actually happened, no it’s sadly not on Disney plus, and yes I will be covering it eventually, was a nice out of genre experience and a nice way to put our daring duck of mystery out of his element.

She brought something diffrent to the table, both forcing Darkwing to grapple with letting someone into his life, and with having something to focus on other than Gosalyn or crime. So I wanted to see how this plays out, so expect me to cover all her episodes and not just the Satan one or the Valentine’s Day one, though like my Tom Lucitor retrospective, expect this one to also take some time. So with that all set up, Halloween is the perfect time to begin our journey with her first two episodes.. and Morgana’s Villian Career. Yeah while she only had about 9 episodes to her name, 2 of them are as a Catwoman or Black Cat style antagonist, someone whose likeable and who are hero is attracted to, but is on the wrong side of the law.

She eventually came around, but it’s still an intresting way to start things and an intresting dilema for our hero I wish stuck around for just a smidge longer. These aren’t bad episodes with Ghoul of My Dreams being a pretty good one. If I had to guess though the reason the dynamic fizzled out.. is they simply didn’t have a lot of ideas of how to use her as a bad guy. Part of the reason i’m covering these two episodes together is that they follow basically the same plot beat, the only differences being Darkwing meets Morgana in the first one and they know each other in the second, and that the evil entity who ends up turning against her she works with is different for both. The third act is also entirely unique to each episode, so it feels less like them lazily repeating themselves on an episode and more like they genuinely realized they didn’t have a ton of ideas for Morgana as a villain and thus had her reform with the Justice Ducks two parter. And I can’t blame them: fan would get annoyed if basically every Morgana plot played out the same, and this way she could know Drake’s secret identity, and thus allow the stories to use Gosalyn, though I do wish she’d shown up in one of the villian ones just to see how that played out. But still her time as a Villian is there, and is even a plot point in the valentine’s episode, so let’s see how it played out and see what I think.

Fungus Amongus

The plot here is fairly simple: there’s been a rash of mysterious thefts in St. Canard, and Darkwing is stumped.. until Launchpad asks if they can go for pizza, because he’s hungry and Darkwing is the terrible kind of boss that doesn’t’t care about meal breaks. It makes our hungry hero realize that each of the thefts are connected to PIzza Toppings, and after thwarting the bats and spiders stealing some anchovies, figures there’s only two left: Green Peppers and Mushrooms, and so he decides it’s time to split up gang and while Launchpad guards the peppers, Darkwing goes to visit the head of the mushrom company, who naturally turns out to be Morgana. The two end up taken with one another, to the board’s annoyance as Darkwing is onto them and could stop their whole evil plan and they want to just murder his ass and be done with it. But Morgana proves seduction’s a bit more useful as she sweetalks our hero into leaving, and points out given he’s also a creature of the night in a sense, she plans to turn him.. or kill him if she has to. More on that in our next episode. The facade dosen’t last long as Darkwing goes to help launchpad at the pepper place, and ends up finding out oh no the hot lady he met five minutes ago is bad! While the board plans to feed Launchpad to mutant mushrooms, while Morgana seemingly turns Darkwing into her mindless slave.. but really just played the board and switched sides, not wanting to hurt the guy she just met because he’s cute, they defeat the mushrooms and the board who turn into mushrooms in the light because....

The day is saved though we do get the one standout bit of the episode. Darkwing despite his attraction to her, wants to turn her in, while Morgana simply teleports her house away. And thus the dance begins. As for the episode... as you can tell by how brief I was... for one i’m not doing my usual died in wool recapping for these two to get them out on time. And i’m also not because this one.. is pretty thin. The mutant mushroom and boards’d esigns are cool and Morgana is intresting.. but having seen Ghoul of my Dreams first.. it’s just not as fun, funny or good on the Morgana Darkwing dynamic. Morgana just decides because she wants to ride that dick she’ll be good for a moment, and throw away her hard worked scheme, and the board is turned into mushrooms because.. well see the lex luger pic above. It’s not a TERRIBLE episode, just not a terribly intresting one. It has good elements, but they just don’t come together well and the pizza scheme isn’t as funny as the episode thinks it is. I can kinda see why this one was buried deeper into the series and Ghoul of My Dreams is where they put focus. I just don’t have a lot to say about this one, it’s just bland and uninteresting. It’s kind of why I just sorta plopped it next to Ghoul, I needed to review it for completion’s sake, but lord if I can think of a lot to say about it that isn’t tied into the next one. So since I can’t...

Ghoul of my Dreams:

Now this is better. The basic plot is still simple but allows for a lot more intresting set pieces: It’s a slow night in St. Canard, to Darkwing’s natural annoyance, until a bunch of fire fighters start sleepwalking and throwing gold to some spiders and bats. Something is afoot and since the bats belong to Morgana, Darkwing goes to investigate her. Granted we just MET eek and squeak, but it’s easy enough to assume Morgana struck again off screen and some time has passed. And i’ts honestly what makes this episode more interesting: now it’s more of a cat and mouse game, with Morgana using their chemistry against him, but still being genuinely drawn to him and not wanting to hurt him. It’s better than “I met you five minutes ago might as well throw away my money for you”. Instead Morg truly likes Drake, but wants to keep doing crimes to, in easily the best joke of the entire series “Finally pay off my student loans”.. which makes her already not really a bad guy. I may not haves em but I know people who do. Those loan people do not play around. It’s investing and Sourcie and Cumming’s chemstiry really makes it pop. Sourcie really is what makes the character, giving her energy, sedcutivness when called for and a really sympathetic quality that makes her face turn, sudden as it is, believable. It’s why I really like the character. And I get why some don’t: Her romance with darkwing is sudden, her face turn is even more sudden, and she gets in the way of Drakepad shippers. The first two are valid criticisms, while the last one is understandable.. depending on motive. If your just bummed this relationship you don’t like is forced into the show and gets in the way of the one you actually enjoy.. trust me...

BEEN THERE. And far far worse.. I didn’t start up an entire retrospective on the guy who DIDN’T get the girl here for nothing. But if you say “oh well it’s homophobic or you hate gays” if you don’t ship drakepad, which I have actually heard for both this ship and delpad.. kindly go fuck yourself and stay away from my posts. It’s NOT homophobic to ship a character who is CANOCIALLY into women, with a woman. Launchpad had a girl of the week or two in ducktales, Drake’s attraction to morgana is canon and he also had some ship tease with Neptunia. They both like women.. but there’s nothing saying they DON’T like men, don’t want to date men, or aren’t attracted to them.

Been waiting to reference Schitt’s Creek at some point here now i’ve started watching it. It’s biphobic to say this sort of harmful shit, and it doesn’t’t help there are plenty of gay people who genuinely believe bi and pan aren’t sexualities and harm their own community by doing so. Saying this kind of shit just fuels their fire and bi people like me and pan people like my firend have a hard enough time with straight people being dicks about this. You should know and be better. Don’t bring that shit into this fandom. We’ve already ridden incest out on a rail we don’t need this. I already put up with enough bullshit being a loud house fan and having to deal with ACTUAL homophobic ships like Sam/Lincoln, aka setting up a character you don’t know to be anything but gay, versus her girlfriend whose canocially been shown to be bi if preferring women, whose the proment and well like love interest of a woman, and pair her with her younger brother to clearly troll people. Now that’s a homophobic ship and that you shoudl be angry about, not “oh no the person who likes women in canon.. LIKES A WOMAN IN FANON”. It’s part of what made shiping delpad hard at times because people got really dumb about it to the point someone drew some very horrible fanart just to clog up the tag. Knock. it off.

And if your curious for my actual thoughts on Drakepad: in the classic series.. i’m not a fan, but I get it, and I do think they could work... it’s just. that Drake treats Launchpad really bad, including throwing him out of the house for a year without telling him why over something that really wasn’t his fault, not feeding him, not treating him as an equal after a while. This would have to change for them to work but I could see it happening, as the comics and one of the peisodes make a point that Drake can be a pretty shitty partner to Morgana too.

And just to show i’m equal opprtunity, despite shipping Delpad in the past, i’ve moved on to Penpad and Drakepad , ironcially enough, i’m not as big a fan anymore. LIke the above, Della just dosen’t respect launchpad as a human being. She was willing to keep the Halloween thing up JUST to scare children, looks down on him, and whie is his friend, is not all that close. I could see them happening, and do still think it’d be cute, it’d just take a ton of work and there are better ships for both. And yes I do ship Drakepad in the reboot, but there the two aren’t employer and employee, but equals who genuinely love and respect one another, listen to one another, and value each other. In the Reboot they have genuine chemistry and I could see them together, while in the original Launchpad and Morgana both really deserve better.

Now that’s settled, we get a fun scene of the two primping for each other. then flirting a bit, though Morgana, in AWFUL looking black lipstick wins with the move above and has her spider web launchpad, who hates morgana.. which is one part common sense given how darkwing gets around her and one part ho yay. But yeah this is pretty much Launchpad for both these episodes.

And darkwing dick is calling the shots so fair enough. But Morgana is once again nto wokring alone and is working with a creepy, well designed gremlin, named Nodoff... eh i’ve heard worse, whose giving her sleeping dust to knock out her targets and hits on her constnatly. Naturally he plans to betray her as soon as he can, and is likely only tolerating her because he wants to hit that. There dynamic boils down to this.

There’s also tons of fun dream sequences including one at the top with darkwing being confronted by his enitre Rogue’s gallery before seeing morgana, NOdoff using baseball on Morg’s next target and some great ones at the climax. It’s part of hwy I like this episode better: While someone using dreams for stuff has been done a lot, it’s given a creative spin here as instead of killing them, Morgana’s simply using them to steal. Good stuff.

Darkwing foils their first attempt, though gets blamed for it because St. Canard is about as grateful as New York when it comes to superheroes. Morgana knocks darkwing out with some dust via Eeka and Squeak and admits Nodoff is working for her, though fobids him to harm Darkwing. This.. dosen’t last and we get another great setpiece, of sarkwing on a high dive. Thankfully, Launchpad finds him, and they find Morgana, who gives off the student loans comment. But in the struggle to stop her, Darkwing accidently puts her and the city to sleep.. and Nodoff is now super powerful and imprisons morgana. Darkwing i s back at her house, wondering what to do, but the bats give him a clue.. by flying him thorugh the door to fight Nodoff. It goes about as well as you’d expect with him freeing Morgana.. then trying to murder them both. Darkwing however pulls an Elm Streett 3 and says to think happy thoughts and take control of the dream.. which ends up at Darkwing’s Wedding to Morgana to his horror..... remind me whose the hero again. The woman who, while doing crimes is trying to pay off unfair debts, or the guy who finds the idea of commitment horrifying.

Anyways we get some more great bits, I brush over them so I don’t ahve to talk about them conantly, including darkwing getting a cake on him, before Darkwing turns the tables by finding the hourglass full of the dust.. and in a clever finale, loading it into his gun and firing it on nodoff. This puts him to sleep.. which puts him in the real world, while Launchpad uses a giant alarm clock to wake everyone. They throw NOdoff back into the dream world.. for some reason.. and the episode ends iwth morgana kissing darkwing and the episode possibly having been all a dream.

This one, while I was again breif, is a classic, with a much more interesting dynamic. Instead of a morgana who goes from willing to kill we get one whose conflicted over things, who clearly wants to be a crook but may like darkwing more than that, as evidenced when he talks her out of taking Nodoff’s offer of riches. It’s good stuff and the gags are back to the show’s usual top notch level. It’s a creative, fun episode that really helps Morgana come into her own and I look forward to more of her. Overall i’d recommend skipping fungus amongus, but DEFINTELY check out ghoul of my dreams, as it’s throughly fantastic. I’ll be back in a bit for one last Halloween review and as always you can find my backlog on my blog. i recently covered Tiff of the Titans and there’s regular ducktales coverage every monday. Until then make sure to vote, wear a mask and check your house for gary busey till we meet again! Play us out Gerard Way!

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#darkwing duck #drake mallard #disney afternoon #morgana macawber #launchpad mcquack #halloween #drakepad #drakegana

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 4 years

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I really don’t get why people keep saying Allura was SO awful or horrible to Keith after learning about his heritage. She just gave him the cold shoulder for an episode or two, and it’s not like they brought this up later in the show as a way for her to hold some other grudge against him. People are just blowing it up as something bigger than it actually was. And like many people have said, her liking or “suddenly” being nice to Lotor wasn’t bc oH he’s Altean (1/2)

Continued anon message: “There were several moments between their first close encounter and him revealing his heritage which prove that trust was developing before then, but I guess people just overlook those (2/2)”

Hi, anon! Thanks for the note! Yeah, haha, this topic of “is Allura racist?” is an interesting one because for me, it boils down to looking at the show’s design decisions and details. And those design decisions came from real human beings who aren’t any more objective than the rest of us. So as a content creator myself (who feels incredibly human and and whose stories and portrayals are also imperfect by virtue of their imperfect creator), I have to recognize that it’s impossible to create a totally woke, unproblematic creative product—and it’s also impossible to ensure that everyone around the world interprets everything in exactly the same way, no matter how well-intentioned the project.

That said, I do think a lot of fans are victims of how this show may have manipulated/gaslit them to feel, not just about Allura but also about other characters and events as well—and that there are benefits to analyzing what went wrong with VLD.

My hope is that, as content creators and fans, maybe we can learn from VLD’s narrative mistakes or even better understand how two fans can have totally opposing interpretations over the same creative work. In the case of VLD, as I’ve mentioned before, the show uses a screwy and imbalanced narrative lens when portraying victims. To add to that, the show design also consistently undermines details foundational to the show universe (such as using an unreliable narrator to express what the show actually accepts as objective fact or history). This is important, because the way in which something is told/shown ultimately manipulates audience emotion for or against something. This gets into how propaganda and subliminal messaging work at a technical level. And when the narrative lens is handled in a biased way that undermines other story elements, audience reaction/interpretation gets messy, no matter what the stated events/facts are in the story. We are attuned to pick up on cognitive dissonances (inconsistent patterns) as part of our human survival instinct.

I’m not convinced that VLD dev team wielded the Power of the Narrative Lens very well—if it had, season 2′s portrayal of the conflict with Keith and Allura would have looked different.

In an s2 with a more balanced narrative lens, we likely would have seen at least flashes of Allura’s memory, showing some s3 backstory of Allura’s fear upon realizing that previously faithful Galran allies were killing multiple civilizations upon an order from their own kind...and coming for Altea next. Or maybe there would have been something/someone else involving Allura’s traumatic experiences so that the audience could have an empathetic, emotionally connective moment with her. We would have, in equal parts, still seen Keith’s plight as the suffering saint trying to figure out what being half-Galra means. And we would have seen the other paladins trying to resolve the conflict and understand how to recalibrate together as a team and a family.

Instead, in provided canon, we see Hunk (of all people, why Hunk?) make racist microaggressions at Keith, further alienating Keith without any recourse. And for Allura, the visual lens shows her making a cold glare at Keith without further explanation. It’s a very alienating moment. In season 2, you feel that coldness from Allura because the show’s visual lens aligns you to Keith’s gaze for several agonizing seconds, and the narrative bias of the animation is to show Keith as the singular victim in this situation. It is a very targeted, lonely, and disquieting moment for Keith. The other paladins and their reactions to Allura and Keith even feed into this. It’s not until s3 that we get an emotional glimpse into the omnicide of an entire solar system—and even then, that history focuses more on the motives of the instigators rather than showing the brutality experienced by victims. By that point, we’ve blown way past the s2 issue, which creates another layer of cognitive dissonance: that the situation doesn’t feel totally...resolved, somehow, even though plot-wise it actually is.

So I think there are indicators that the dev team’s own biases and agendas informed, at times for the worse, the very lens through which we consume the VLD story. I don’t think the dev team was aware what tackling genocide while visually portraying Allura’s trauma as antagonistic and alienating would result in? And I think this oversight gets into why some fans feel a certain way about literally anything in this show, haha. So I feel like we’re all victims of a show with amazing potential and incredibly fascinating elements but just…poor execution.

One other thing I have to give faith on when I have a disagreement with another show fan—it’s a 78-episode show. How often are people holistically watching and critically reviewing this show in order to catch every little detail? I’m pretty sure I can’t remember all the details either, even though I re-watched the show not that long ago. So there’s a whole other layer here, where fans have a separation from the source content itself. So take those emotional negative “impressions” people developed while watching s2 or any other moment where Allura has been less than the ideal woman (oof, fandom is so forgiving with men but so unforgiving with women), and then suddenly muddy those memories with 2 years of not re-watching the show holistically. Typically, the brain is better at storing negative reactions than positive ones. So if someone had a negative reaction to Allura’s actions with Keith in s2 or elsewhere, without an empathetic moment to balance it out, then that negativity is going to stick, and every detail to the contrary is going to fade out.

I know for me, I’ve really had to fight the memory problem because after over a year, for example, I was building up impressions about VLD history that actually were missing some important details from s3. And that was kind of a shock to me. So I do think selective memory plays a part in adding to a biased dissonance one might feel from the actual story.

Ultimately, this whole unnecessary fandom split on “is Allura racist?” is one reason why I feel that VLD—for all of its good things that I genuinely love so much—had a lot of troubling issues. Despite all the canonical good that Allura ends up doing and how she overcomes trauma to champion genuine peace for all, there’s subliminal messaging against her because of how the visual and narrative spins or hides things. And that issue has nothing to do with the characters but everything to do with the development team and how the show was written/directed. And that, I think, informs ongoing fandom perceptions of Allura and creates just some really painful and unnecessary messes, to the point of creating an overall inaccurate take like “Allura is racist” when in fact, she’s just traumatized from very real and significant abuses and overcomes that, even.

It really makes me, as a writer, try to look at my own stories and attempt to understand “why” I portray certain things as I do while writing—and if that lens portrayal is really the best one for the effect/message I want. Because the way in which a story is conveyed can really play mind games with the audience, and that might not be the right effect for a story that isn’t another Inception or Crying of Lot 49, lol.

#Voltron #Allura #Keith #VLD #Writing Techniques #Subliminal Messages #Biases in the Visual Lens of a Story #VLD had an incredible lack of empathy for victims #it shows in the very way it portrays their stories and then villainizes or undermines them #Thanks for the note anon!

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keen2meecha · 4 years

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gifted, a wip by yours truly!

Genre: Young Adult, Magical Realism, Is Superhero A Genre? (It is now!)

POV: Third person limited

Major Themes: Friends to Found Family, Mental Health, Eventual LGBT+ (multiple nonbinary characters in this book, and there will be queer relationships in the future), Genre-Typical Violence

Synopsis: In a world where people with superpowers - called Gifted - vastly outnumber those without - called Ungifted - Heroes are trained in specialized high schools to combat Villains. Never before has an Ungifted become a Hero - but Sofia Smith, a young Ungifted from a small town, is determined to change that.

Despite nearly failing the application test, Sofia finds herself accepted into Falks Academy for Gifted Teens, the most prestigious Hero Academy in the country. There, she is thrown into a fierce competition against new, capable classmates to prove that she belongs there as much as any Gifted kid would.

When an attack on the school leaves everyone frightened and confused, however, Sofia must set aside her own ambitions and work with her new friends to find the perpetrator or lose her chance at Heroism forever.

Status: First draft! Fully outlined, currently has fifty chapters planned (trust me, I know). First of the (Or Otherwise) series, which is intended to be four books but may end up being five.

Tags: Can primarily be found under #gifted, but I also play a lot of tag games involving this wip, which you can find under #tagged

More information under the cut!

The Core Five Characters:

Sofia Smith, the Ungifted protagonist. She’s spent her whole life training to be a Hero. The good news is that she’s really good at what she does. The bad news is that she gets a bit... focused on it. Some might call her single-minded. Others would call her a nerd. She would call herself committed. Fun fact: frequently tinkers with prank toys to make functional weapons.

Kruze Cinege, Sofia’s childhood friend turned worst enemy after an incident that neither of them is willing to talk about. He’s unfriendly and his fuse is nearly as short as he is, but if you can convince him to like you, he’s got a protective streak wide enough to hold back the whole damn world. Fun fact: he’s probably the best cook on the east side of the country, and he will kill you if you say anything about it.

Leona Kita, the girl who pops up during the application test and declares herself Sofia’s new best friend. Sofia... isn’t entirely opposed? She can talk the ear off of even the most patient person, about everything but herself. It’s probably normal. Fun fact: would kill a man for a fruity lollipop at any given point.

Rocco Gupta, the boy who by all accounts is entirely normal, even if he’s the only one who doesn’t flinch when Kruze blows up. He’s cheerful, he’s your favorite bro, his hair is the brightest shade of red you’ll always see, and he’s constantly sleep-deprived. Nobody’s quite sure why - again, probably normal. Fun fact: has pierced ears, although he doesn’t wear his earrings as much anymore.

And Vera Hesper, the quiet girl who’s got her own personal brand of unfriendly that keeps everyone else at bay. She would probably be overlooked entirely, if not for her terrifying competency and the blotchy burn scar over her eye. Worse, Sofia’s not convinced the scar was an accident. Fun fact: she has a special place in her heart for rosehip tea.

Honorable Mentions:

Romilly Quirke, a young woman who offers to mentor Sofia early on. She’s a new teacher at Falks, and no one can quite figure out where she came from.

Amadeus Black, a man who couldn’t seem to care less that by virtue of being a teacher he’s meant to care about his students. He’s a Hero, but only technically, and he was banned from being a class advisor until now.

Blitz, the best Hero in the country, both in terms of sheer skill and also because of how adored he is. His behavior as of late has been a bit... off, though, and no one’s quite sure why.

And then there’s the most frequent antagonist, known only as The Boy. Only three things are known about him: he’s a teenager of some kind, he never talks, and he seems to have it out for Sofia.

If you wanna learn more, this post contains more (different) information.

If you have any questions at all, drop an ask or even DM me! I’m always up for talking!

Taglist (ask to be added/removed so you can stay up-to-date with any excerpts or more in-depth character intros I may do): @dustylovelyrun

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