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findafight · 10 months

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you're so right. i will never understand the hold rockstar eddie has on ppl. his character immediately becomes insufferable if he's super famous and successful, esp in no upside down aus where he never experiences some form of ego death/being forced to reassess his own bullshit. not to mention he is just not someone who would become uber famous like he does not have the personality to either pull it off or handle it well if he miraculously did imo. steve really screams child star to me tho in an au. plus his entire character arc kind of speaks to him being able to handle fame (ie the fact that steve is a v reflective, adaptive character that was capable of actually changing and improving his behavior even w/o knowing about the upside down originally) and knowing/learning who he should be surrounding himself w. like i firmly believe steve could actually handle being famous in a way eddie could not.

I do enjoy rockstar eddie to a point? it depends I think. Rockstar/musician aus are popular in fandoms of all sorts an I like them sorta...hit or miss? haha.

But you're right that it's become...idk over saturated? And yeah absolutely Eddie's ego death and the shattering of the Munson Docterine is kind of pivotal for his character growth. Like I know the duffers don't think Eddie's problem is that he's stuck in highschool clique mode (They seem to think his flaw is that he's a coward...which is a different meta but his reactions are reasonable to the situations he's thrown in), because they only think "jocks" are the problem there, but he is. Him realizing that actually Steve is pretty cool is the stepping stone to him not hating jocks on principal, and broadening and nuancing his view of people outside his assumptions on who are "Proper" nerds. No- upside down aus, regardless of any other trope in them, often fall flat for me in that aspect, yet always make sure to remind us Steve was a bit of a stuck up dick in highschool (until the beginning of grade 11) and it's tiring to nt see Eddie allowed to be wrong and have that moment of self-betterment.

And yeah, I can maybe see eddie becoming semi-famous session musician (not a musician that is a session musician AND recording/performing artist by themself like Glen Campbell or Marvin Gaye) through a series of events like. Playing one of his hyper specific songs at a small gig, someone in desperate need of a guitarist is there and sees he is incredibly talented as a guitarist, asks him to help as a session musician in like two days, he plays, someone at the studio is like hey. wanna be on-call for us? and eddies like sure. ok. So sometimes he's on hit records but they aren't his. royalties are decent from the amount of work he's done. He's a pinch hitter guitarist, and he's good, so he gets a rep in the industry for that. He doesn't seem like the kind of person that could thrive in the high pressure, has major deadlines, environment that being a famous musician woudl be. I mean a lot of rockstars aren't either and it's not healthy for them? I can see Eddie crashing and burning, which I know a lot of fics cover but I also find it super depressing haha. He would probably be too standoffish and anti-authority and possibly refuse outside input for stuff, so he'd be off putting in the industry. not that musicians are always pleasant to work with but i think you get it.

Child star Steve would be so neat tbh. Look I love famous athlete Steve. but also the allure of him being famous young... Maybe as a little piano prodigy? (I love piano prodigy steve hehe) or an actor? like canon era he could have been a Mousketeer! Maybe he did a couple movies (what if he was in a few cult-classic scifi movies...that the party just so happen to love....but don't pay attention to the name of the child actor in...or maybe he used a stage name?) And then him fading away and living his life a little bit, before he decides to come back into the limelight?

I think that often we forget that Steve's "come-to-jesus" moment happened without the upside down. He talked shit, got hit, and then decided that he owed Jonathan (and Nancy) an apology. No one made him help clean up the grafitti! He had no idea there were monsters he just had a shit 48 hours where he went off the handle and then decided he had been an ass and to fix himself. When he was 16! He'd have made these changes to himself without the Upsidedown. Somehow the party knew his full name, and I love the hc that he won a major game/championship for Hawkins as a junior/sophomore so was a minor town celebrity. These lend to Steve being able to handle the pressure without too major a fallout or a long-term downward spiral of self destruction.

Except (okay operating as like a post-canon thing, because I love canon-divergent aus more than no-upside down aus but could still work?) now he's battle scarred and obviously not the rosy-cheeked boy he was when he was a tween. I'm thinking maybe he goes back in '89? give some time to heal from the upside down and Robin is moving for Uni, he's obviously going with her, so he figures acting would beat dead-end minimum wage jobs. Or at least spice things up in between shifts. Maybe he starts with theatre, and decides to see if there's some screen auditions he could do. Maybe he still has people in the industry who remember working with him (he's a good team player and a natural leader) and they help in slip back in. He does some bit parts, a few semi-recurring characters. Maybe he's even on an episode of Law and Order, and people go hey! That guy who's crying over his dead girlfriend (he's a red herring) is the kid from that 70's scifi movie!

Eventually someone actually offers him a role without him auditioning, and it's a bigger part, a side character but one with lines and even a semi decent arc in a b-list movie. he's a good fit. Charming and handsome, plus there are some intense scenes and on set Steve's proved himself capable of handling most things and supportive of coworkers (actors and crew alike.) Except there's a shirtless scene. While his scarring isn't extensive, it's definitely noticeable and not as easy to cover up as the faint discolouration around his neck. it's hard to explain, and usually movies want flawless skin. He tells them this. They still want him.

So he takes the role. And he has a blast on set. He loves working as a team, and even though days are long, he feels everything sort of...coming together. A feeling that this is what he wants to do. that he was right to get back into acting even though he started so young because of his parents.

He makes lasting friendships with nearly everyone he meets on the set. There's a few child actors, and he tries to give them tips and pointers, and be a role model or support for them. he knows what it's like to be little and surrounded by adults a lot of the time, and feeling pressure to be perfect. (They think he's actually the coolest, even if he's also kinda a doofus.) (there's probably a scene where he picks up on of the kids, and then the rest of them on set want piggy back rides too...)

It's considered his comeback role, despite being a few years after he actually came back. The pressures of fame come back again, but he's older now, and he's killed monsters. He has Robin beside him. A few paps don't scare him. Everything he has to hide (besides his bisexuality...and maybe his shitty relationship with his parents) is covered up by the government anyways. He gets bigger parts, and gets an even bigger rep for being a delightful (if viciously sarcastic) and supportive co-worker, especially if there's kids on set. (child stars of the nineties will look back on working with steve and think he was one of the few adults to get it. to understand how big your emotions are as a kid and how most grown ups [often even/especially their parents] didn't let them actually feel what the were feeling, instead wanting them to be acting all the time, instead of only in front of the camera. How he told them to never let anyone do anything they weren't comfortable with, no matter who it was. How he'd stick up for them, no matter what, and would ask how they were doing throughout shooting. They'll look back on being on set with Steve and remember how even if he called them little shits when they tried to prank him or were goofing off, he said it with a wink and a smile.)

I'd say, (please forgive me) he sort of becomes a (90's era) Tom Cruise kind of actor (before he went on oprah and went viral for jumping on the couch and then only did action movies after that) (also steve doesn't become the face of a cult) Like he does action flicks, but can definitely pull his weight as a dramatic actor. (I realize that I already have a movie star steve au but thats a different era I can have overlapping headcanons for the aus!!) His cute heart-shaped smile and amazing hair entrances audiences. He can make emphatic speeches about justice and also carry at least two children out of a burning building. He has range.

idk steve going from child actor to highschool athlete to monster killer to broke thespian to movie star again entices me!!!

#findaanswers #anonasaurus #steve harrington #famous steve harrington #stranger things #steddie #listen. target audience or something #stranger things au #anon...you got me monologuing #finda's rambles #child star steve #eddie munson #forgot i did talk about him at the beginning

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ganymedesclock · 2 years

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Okay @ruthlesslistener I promised I’d get you back for the good meta so, Pale King emoting and body language headcanons, here we go! This is just sort of a disorganized ramble but I didn’t want to make it a bullet list due to its long-windedness.

I think he ends to leave an extremely aloof/deadpan impression on people thanks to his monotone whisper-voice that only very rarely cracks into a genuine emotion,

(and it does crack when he does that; he just does not have a smooth voice. Though, uh, hesitate to rush to make fun of it because part of why it’s so rough and echoing and bizarre is because wyrms use sonar. He can kill a mundane bug and stun a large creature at close quarters by ‘shouting’)

but his actual poker face is, ironically, terrible. The fact that he has basically no experience with wyrms or ex-wyrms and little self-awareness of what wyrm physiology or quirks tend towards means that he basically only hides his emotions by a fortuitous combination of that he tries to shame and/or rationalize himself out of having them in the first place (thus, suppressing his body language as much as possible) and that his social cues are alien to others.

When I’m writing him, I tend to take a lot of inspiration from a cat in terms of facial expressions. He stares a lot, often without obviously blinking; he has a notable prey drive that even if he’s not hungry or intending to hunt means he tracks fast objects and his response time is nightmarishly swift.

Since anatomically he’s almost nothing but spine all the way down, he’s extremely bendy and even kinda compresses by settling onto himself most of the time; his canon sprite is small but he can stretch out or periscope up on his coils to about Lurien’s body length. Pre-fall of Hallownest PK finds this absolutely mortifying and limits himself extremely to highly constrained movements any time he’s not in a life-or-death fight; both “not king yet” PK and RFR-timeline postgame PK do it a lot more, especially the latter after he cuts his robes and basically gives up on keeping his weird shrimp body out of people’s attention.

His face is almost entirely a rigid, inflexible plate. His eyes can blink and squint and such but even so, some of the way they blink is unsettling; he has three separate eyelids. I stand by the headcanon that his actual ‘mouth’ and jaw (complex pedipalps/mandible array with lots of rasping blades and little sharp stuff) is tucked under the point of his ‘face’. Opening his jaw fully means that his eyes are stuck pointed up at the ceiling and away from whatever he’s biting, but his wyrm self had the same problem basically all the time. His mouth assembly is highly dexterous and can operate by feel just fine.

Because of this whole de-emphasized face, he’s actually a lot easier to read if you know the tricks to look for. He talks with his body language more than anything facial and the former recontextualizes the latter. Squinting can be like a happy blink from a cat- “guard down, I’m comfortable,” or it can be an expression of contempt, and that contempt can be passive smugness or it can be “you are seconds from death”.

Happy blink PK is going to be otherwise relaxed and usually won’t have his face/eyes pointing straight at whatever he’s with; if he’s super relaxed he’ll unspool from his tense posture and spread out bit by bit, like how a very relaxed hamster will go flat as a pancake. Pretty much the only person who has this privilege reliably is White Lady, where half the time they’re together and not busy he’ll just be somewhere in the same space as her either with his back facing her or completely sprawled out somewhere near her “feet” (where her roots meet the ground- he likes to feel the pulse of energy flowing around there, it soothes him instinctively)

Preening/arrogant PK tends to have his head lofted; he’ll also relax there, but stay upright and the relaxation is basically patronizing whoever he’s talking to rather than a gesture of trust. His body is more tense and able to respond; which works as he is often arrogant in combat.

A pissed off PK is distinct from the others in that his head stays down the entire time and tends to make very unbroken eye contact with whatever the source of his anger is. If he’s sitting straight the hostility is still theory and not ‘practice’; if he’s hunched forwards towards a more horizontal / (all ‘sixes’) pose then he may or may not actually be about to follow through but he is probably thinking about what your entrails would taste like.

Progressively in RFR PK’s body language opens up a lot more and he starts making more casual gestures with his posture and with his hands especially. He also starts using face journeys as a form of communication (e.g. making eye contact with someone, looking at a second person, and then back to the first with a fractional eye-widening = ‘get a load of this guy’).

He does all of this without thinking about it and actually is mortified to have attention drawn to it long after he’s entrenched this as a habit. Now all of Hallownest knows you have feelings, shrimp. You have failed.

#Hollow Knight #Pale King #readmore #some of this is repeating older posts but it's good to do that from time to time

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weather-cluddy · 2 years

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I'm not too pleased with some of the new developments in Milgram, and I'm not talking about the reason Yuno was brought into the prison. Spoiler alert for the Milgram novel and Yuno's second voice drama.

So it seems like the main Milgram project might be heading towards the same "there are dead people in Milgram" scenario as the novel. To be honest, I'm not a fan; I feel like having all the prisoners fade away after their judgements removes a very interesting dimension to the meta-voting. It means that as long as we don't let them kill anyone inside Milgram, it doesn't matter if they're otherwise falling right back into the mental ruts that led them to murder (other than Yuno) to begin with. Presumably 'lost' still means deader-than-dead, soul lost forever to the void, but we don't even know if that's worse than being voted guilty. And considering how ambigous both the novel and most media in general are about the afterlife, we're probably never going to know.

I'd be more alright with it if it turns out not everybody is dead, but I also doubt that. It was exactly the case in the novel, and it'd create a big disparity between those who are at least theoretically capable of going home at the end and those who just get beamed up into the light. And having it be some sort of Purgatory does allow the writer to neatly sidestep the question of how the prisoners got there and where is the prison supposed to be located. All the stuff about brainwashing and telepathy and mysterious languages does require a turn towards either fantasy or sci-fi, and it's not looking very sci-fi so far.

I guess the one silver lining to this is that my MeMe theory about the bathtub scene actually showing a suicide just got a lot more likely. Honestly, I figure most of the cast died by suicide, since for most of them there's not other obvious factor that could've killed them and they're pretty messed up mentally by their crime. Shidou's case is the most obvious: not just because of his attitude, but because I've heard that being a doctor is a big risk factor in suicide. Not just because of the crazy hours and the inevitability of someone dying under your care, but because you have access to all the drugs necessary to die painlessly and know exactly what the right dosage is. Like, I realize it sounds super mean but more than once I've looked at Shidou and thought "How come you're still alive?".

(There goes another reason why I don't like the "everyone's dead" theory: If Shidou's forgiven character arc is supposed to be that he gets over his paralyzing self-hatred so that he can help others like he originally wanted to, having him just die at the end is a terrible conclusion. Even if they frame it as "Ooh, now that he's done good again he can pass on peacefully", it just falls flat. They're replacing the implicit promise of a future of hard-fought contentment and saving many people with vague heavenly imagery and "Well, he killed an unspecified amount of people but he also saved Mahiru, who is of course way more important because she's not a faceless extra. No reason to hold onto his guilt at all anymore, surely!")

Anyways, since for most of the characters suicide seems like the obvious option, here's some speculation about what the other prisoner's might've died of:

Kotoko: This one's easy. She's been attacking violent criminals and landing them in hospital but, crucially, leaving them alive to hold a grudge. All the martial arts skills in the world won't save you if you get ambushed by a bunch of armed people.

Amane: This dovetails into a mini-theory I have that Amane wasn't actually supposed to murder the person who got medically treated, it's just that she was desperate and jumped to it as an obvious and sufficiently extreme way to repent. Kinda like how Muu claims her murder was necessary in order to stop the bullying, even though if you think about it there's no way it would make her less ostracized (and if her goal was just to have people stop attacking her and not mending things with her ex-friends, she could've switched schools anytime). Therefore, I think Amane may have been executed as the cult took justice into its own hands, or accidentally killed while being heavily beaten as punishment or 'cleansing'.

Yuno: She tried to perform an abortion herself, presumably from finding out she was pregnant too late for legal abortion, and died from complications It could also be something like being murdered by a jealous client, but I feel it would really undercut her whole "I knew what I was doing and it was my choice" thing. You could say the same goes for accidentally killing herself by doing a medical procedure she had no qualifications for, but at least that's her own choice and not the unintended actions of a third party.

#milgram #tw suicide #tw child abuse #tw religious abuse #Though really the last two are only very briefly touched upon

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bitimdrake · 3 years

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hello! my contact with with batfam stuff is mostly through fandom and i've recently seen people complaining about the whole 'tim liking coffee' stereotype, but i can't really understand why it annoys people. i know it doesn't have any real basis in canon, but is that all? or is it because of the characterisation that usually comes attached to it? or something else?

hi! Yeah, so, even compared to other fandoms, comics fandom really tends to make the characters ooc (presumably due to the number of fans who've never engaged with the source material nonetheless enjoying the fandom, with a side of all the influence from non-comic adaptations of the character). And in response, there can be a lot of annoyance (or sometimes outright anger) from those who do read comics and are desperately trying to find fan material that is...actually about those canon characters they got attached to. So that whole environment does exacerbate things to begin with.

When it comes to the "coffee addict tim" thing in particular, I think your guesses are pretty accurate. I'd basically boil it down to three things:

(1) As you say, it doesn't have any basis in canon--but it's super prevalent in fanon. And any fanon characteristic that gets popular is always going to become a hot topic, however (un)important. If the coffee thing only cropped up in sporadic fics, I don't think there would be any broad debate about it. But it appears everywhere, so strong opinions form.

(2) Sometimes (not always, but enough to be notable), "coffee addict tim"--or really any 'food obsession' fanon, or fanon in general--makes characterization super flat in fics. Like, think of the number of fics/posts/meta you have come across where Tim is coffee obsessed and sleep deprived and...that's it. Those are the only traits he gets. Tim appears in this scene? Better mention how he's exhausted and looking for coffee!

(3) Relatedly--and imo this is the big one--as you've guessed. the coffee thing has a REALLY strong likelihood to tie into this greater fanon characterization of Tim that just doesn't look anything like the comics character. For example:

Fanon Tim is dependent on his coffee habit. Canon Tim not only barely ever drinks coffee, but--like his entire family--is wildly opposed to having any kind of substance dependence or lack of control over his own body. These are contol freak health nuts, y'all.

Fanon Tim drinks coffee because he's always tired. Canon Tim just falls asleep in ridiculous places at ridiculous times, which is also OBJECTIVELY funnier and I can't believe fanon didn't latch onto that.

Fanon Tim is so constantly sleep deprived that his whole family finds it wild and shocking and is always concerned over him. Canon Tim is pretty much on par with the rest of the bats, and his canon friends and family don't find it that notable considering their own experiences.

In fact, Oracle Babs is the only bat I can think of who's regularly seen drinking coffee. And Dick is the batkid most likely to follow Bruce's bad habits and work himself to the bone without breaks.

Speaking of, Fanon Tim is sleep deprived because he does nothing but work work work all the time and refuses to take care of himself. Canon Tim misses out on sleep because he's trying to juggle vigilantism with a regular life as a high school student--and iirc, after he drops out of school and becomes Red Robin, we don't seem him having any more problems with sleep.

Red Robin Fanon Tim is also busy work work working at Wayne Enterprises. Canon Tim is the CEO in name only and I literally don't think we saw him working in the office even once. The only WE work he does is very part-time for his passion charity project, the Neon Knights.

Despite not taking care of himself and constantly appearing fragile, fanon Tim is nonsensically also the most badass and clever guy ever. Canon Tim (usually) follows so much more logic here--when he's exhausted because, say, he stayed up half the night as Robin and the other half doing homework, he ends up not operating at his best and making dumb mistakes. When he's cool and badass and executing plans perfectly, it's because he's gotten enough sleep and food to be in that top shape.

And then other little non-canon details are typically added in fanon--Tim being super pale, having constant dark circles, acting like a zombie in the morning, keeping a coffee maker in his room, etc.

Additional fun facts because I hate shutting up: Dick is canonically a capable cook, has no single favorite food established, and as far as I know has never stated any preference for sugary food. Steph loves waffles a normal human amount, and her comfort food is mashed potatoes. Tim is a little rich boy, but he learned how to make genuinely good soup from his step mom, so I have faith he can learn how to cook in general if he sets his mind to it. Bruce once burnt soup and also failed to make an edible tuna sandwich, so I have no faith in him at all.

(PS: If you are curious about getting into comics and seeing what Tim is like, but overwhelmed at the number of places to start, Robin vol 2 (1993) is gonna be your main source for Tim characterization. Alternately, Young Justice vol 1 (1999) is focused on the whole team rather than Tim specifically, but is a fun and consistent run the whole way through. And I'm always happy to give more detail!)

#i never want to tell people to stop having their harmless fun #but i am also one of said comics readers desperately trying to find fic about Comics Tim Drake instead of Fanon Sadboi Timmy #so i try really hard to tread the line there #but i do really love talking out the canon/fanon differences so feel free to return with more questions if you like :)#dc #*#*dc #tim drake #robin #red robin #ask #anon #canon vs fanon #10to2

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

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Into The Unknown, Part 1

... I have no self-control do not perceive me

Marinette stared at the pile of bright red, yellow, and green clothes on the ground. It was all she’d done in the five-ish minutes since she’d portaled onto the scene. Just… stared.

It wasn’t like there was much else to do, anyways. Red Robin was currently beating the absolute fuck out of the person that had the audacity to disintegrate his brother right in front of him. It wasn’t like she could even fix it because the witch had been out cold before she had been able to pull Red Robin off to get a hit in so she could use her lucky charm.

So, she stared.

It was weird. She could almost feel a person inside the clothes but… maybe that was the residue or the ashes or whatever gets left behind when you zap a person out of existence? She didn’t really want to check, to be honest. Gross.

Eventually, though, she hesitantly leaned down and brushed her hand over it, trying to find the energy and get rid of it because it was really uncomfortable --.

… oh hell no that pile of clothes did not just fucking giggle at her.

She narrowed her eyes and carefully lifted up the bottom of the shirt, only to yelp and fall back. She scrabbled on the gross Gotham alley ground until her back hit Red Robin’s arm and he was forced to pause or risk hitting a meta (which would not have been good for his health).

“What?” He hissed.

She swallowed thickly. “That’s a child.”

“... what?” Red asked, all the anger bleeding from his tone in his confusion.

“We let Batman’s kid turn into a baby,” she whispered… then, it sunk in more. “We let Batman’s kid turn into a baby.”

He straightened on top of the thing that was really more bloody pulp than person at this point. “What do you mean ‘we let Batman’s kid turn into a baby’?”

But she didn’t really get a chance to answer because the baby chose that exact moment to be sick of being suffocated under all the armor and pushed it off.

Red Robin gulped. Because, yep, that was Robin as a baby. Batman was going to kill them.

Except he wasn’t going to kill them. Because Batman doesn't kill. No, Batman would find something even worse and that would suck.

The baby -- Robin? Should she still call him that mentally? -- giggled at their pain. Like an asshole.

They were so fucked.

He’d let B’s favorite kid get turned into a baby. Was there a way to get unadopted? Because if there was it was totally going to happen. Or maybe his dad would just cut him off because he was 19 now and could just get kicked out.

No. Nope! Not going to happen. No. He could fix this.

“Okay. Okay okay okay. We need a plan,” he heard himself saying.

Ladybug scoffed. “We? I was barely even here, this is on you.”

“Leave me alone to deal with this and I swear to god I will tell B that you did it.”

She paled. “You wouldn’t. No way.”

“Yes way. So, help me think of something.”

The baby giggled and started crawling over and both of them averted their eyes because, unfortunately, the child did not get baby clothes to go with his random transformation. Baby Damian didn't seem to care as he reached them and started climbing on Ladybug since she was closest. At least it wasn’t him. He did not want to see his adoptive brother’s… ew.

Ladybug made a gagging sound and then quickly summoned a lucky charm. She kept her face turned away as much as her neck would physically allow as she fumbled her way through swaddling the child in a polka-dotted blanket.

And then her shoulders slumped a little. “Great. Great. This is… great,” she muttered, picking up the bundle o’ baby.

He let himself look down now that it was safe.

“Alright, we need to go to another dimension where time moves faster,” Ladybug said after a few seconds. “And then we wait for him to age… fifteen-ish years. Best way to not make Batman notice.”

“... what about us? We also age.”

“Huh…? Oh. Right. You’re human.” She pulled off the glasses she was wearing and blinked a few times before handing it over. “Congrats on your upgrade. The tiny horse god is named Kaalki. She likes cake.”

“The tiny --?” He let out the world’s manliest screech as his eyes landed on the floating bug horse hybrid thing holy shit no no no no no the sci fi movies didn’t prepare him for this shit.

Kaalki looked a little offended but then her eyes landed on the baby and she gasped. “Aw, baby humans are always so cute.”

“Great, Kaalki, you take it,” said Ladybug.

Kaalki did try, to her credit. It just so happened that the approximately one-year-old baby was a lot bigger than the… whatever she was. Tim was refusing to believe that this was a god. Too many implications. He already had something to have a breakdown over, he didn’t need another thing right now, thank you very much.

Tim rested his head in his hands but he had more things to worry about than the blood that he was accidentally streaking through his hair.

“Okay. Okay. We can go to another dimension and try and raise him. Maybe we can make it have a ratio of one month here for every year there so any differences could be blamed on that.”

“Ya!” Said baby Damian. He probably didn’t actually know what was going on but he sure seemed excited so that was cool.

Ladybug sighed and nodded. “Great. You get food and money and clothes and I’ll take this lady to the cops… and I guess I’ll watch the kid until you get back because your dad cannot know.”

They shook on it.

This may be the dumbest idea that she’d ever had, and that was saying something. She didn’t know if she could trust Red Robin on this one, they hardly ever worked together. What if he just left her alone with this kid and let her try and figure this out on her own?

No. He wouldn’t do that. He was the last person known to be with Robin. Robin going missing would be bad for him, too. And, besides, she was pretty sure that he was a duty-driven person based on what she’d heard, she just had to hope that he saw this as his duty, too.

She turned the baby in her arms to get more comfortable as she waited for him to (hopefully) come back.

Part of her wanted to try and find someone from this world to reverse this but she didn’t know any outside of her, Adrien, Alix, and (now) Red Robin. Not on a personal level. Not enough that she knew for sure that they wouldn’t blab to Batman about it.

So, no, this is what she was doing.

But she had things to do. So, she pulled out her yoyo-phone-hybrid-thingy and wedged it against her ear.

“Chaton,” she said the moment he picked up. “You’re alone, right?”

“Uh… yeah?”

“Great. I, Ladybug, relinquish the Miracle Box and name Chat Noir the new guardian.”

“WHAT --?!” He didn’t get to finish as a box dropped on his lap and knocked the wind out of him.

“Just for, like, a year and a half. Sorry. Bye!”

“DON’T JUST ‘BYE’ ME WHAT THE --?!”

She hung up and closed the yoyo, hooking it back to her belt and ignoring it when it started buzzing again.

She looked down at Robin, who was squinting up at her. She returned the squint. Why was this baby so quiet? She didn’t get it. Surely, he should have been crying at this point.

“Do you still… remember things?” She asked, hoping against all hope that maybe he had retained his memories at the very least.

Robin smiled at her, but it was the blank-eyed baby smile that meant he wasn’t really understanding her. She bit down a curse.

Great. So, she’d not only gotten a baby but she’d gotten a fucking weird one. Great.

Tim left a note for his family saying that he, Damian, and Ladybug were bored and were going dimension hopping. His family would probably be suspicious but, hey, at least it wouldn’t be his problem for a good fifteen years on his end.

And, yeah, he knew this was probably one of his dumber plans but… it wasn’t the dumbest. And he was always one to commit when it came down to it. One time he had faked being shot and dealt with crutches for an entire year just to convince Vicki Vale that he wasn’t Red Robin. He had no fears that he couldn’t see this through.

Ladybug, though? A total mystery. She did nearly everything on a whim as far as he knew. She hopped from city to city fighting crime for absolutely no reason outside of boredom and made up all of her plans on the fly. No, he was a bit concerned about her ability to keep doing it.

So, he went as quickly as he possibly could. There was no rhyme or reason to what he was grabbing. He was just… putting stuff in there. There was money and three watches to help them move between dimensions, yes, but there was also a fanta orange and a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and exactly seven pairs of socks.

… yeah, he had the necessities. Probably.

He nearly got out the door before he realized he was still in his crime-fighting gear and he quickly shucked it all off and tossed it into the tub so the blood wouldn’t track any more than it already had. He did not need to avoid Batman’s wrath only to end up on the receiving end of Alfred’s.

He pulled on the first hoodie and jeans he could grab and looked around to make sure he hadn’t left anything of importance.

Okay. Now he was ready to go.

Marinette was awkwardly bouncing the baby when Red Robin finally showed up.

… not that she would have recognized him if she hadn’t felt Kaalki hovering in his pocket. In her eyes, he was just a random white guy wearing shades in the middle of the night.

She glanced up at him and gave him an awkward smile.

“Ready?”

He smiled back and held out two watches. Neither fit baby Robin so she prepared herself to choke out a literal baby holy fuck what even was her life.

“Which dimension should we go to?”

“Preferably one without miraculi,” Marinette said. “I don’t want to know what happens if there’s two of the same god in a dimension.”

He nodded slowly. “Probably best if Batman doesn’t exist, either, he’d probably notice my existence.”

“... so… no heroes at all?”

“Looks like we’re going cold turkey,” Red Robin said in a tone that was probably supposed to be joking but just came out flat.

She pushed herself to her feet and waited as he scrolled through the millions of dimensions.

Finally, he came upon one and she added the coordinates to her and Robin’s watches.

She readied Robin’s watch against his neck and tried to ignore the kid’s sudden squirminess.

“3… 2… 1…”

They were gone in a whirl of blue light.

~~~~~

@nathleigh @peachmuses

#yes i wrote timari parenting dami #for no reason #while in the middle of a completely different fic #but listen #... its cute??#yeah no i have no excuse #i just wanted to write cute things ;-;#into the unkown #maribat #timari #timmari #timinette #shutterbug #tim drake #red robin #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug

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pocketramblr · 3 years

Text

other main character meta- Ochako, pt 1

“Could you send me there?” you ask, while i blink, confused. “The world where someone else is the main character? not because i have any hypocritical biases against the one i got, just curious how the fandom meta changes.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” I nod, thinking, before tapping my wand against your forehead. “Let’s start with Ochako.”

"I'm going to warn you now- I will have to slightly adjust the plot like I did with Mirio, just to actually let her be the main character."

"Yeah, that checks out." You nod, thinking about certain arcs where the female fighting teams get no coverage while the dudes get four different backstory reveals and full fight focus.

"Very well."

The show begins with a brief narration by the girl of quirks and super hero fights- all flashy. Then it zooms out to show the destruction, and a small construction team moving in as Ochako explains that just as there are new careers in society for heroes, there's also a bigger market for construction companies, one of which her own family runs.

"I've always wanted to help them with it, and my quirk would be useful"- a tiny, adorable Ochako finally appears, making rocks in a park float- "but to get a work license like that is expensive and selective- you've got to make a lot of court appearances and convince them why is a good idea and won't destroy the economy. It's much easier to get a hero license."

Then she explains: "Of course, once you have a hero license, you can make a lot more money than just by helping the company. Especially if... Your family company isn't doing very well." A series of tired but loving parents are shown working all hours to make ends meet.

"I want to help them- my parents. They've done everything for me, and they deserve a break. So that's why I'm going to be a hero- their hero."

The training montage is quick, using her quirk during school in training, after school in secret, around the house. She saves up money too, and studies, aiming for a scholarship.

She applies and tests for many hero schools, and the exams all vary widely.

The first episode ends with her looking up at UA, her final one, the one she really hopes to get into.

"Oh, that's nice." You nod. "And we even get to know her parents' quirks here."

"Yep." I agree. "In general, there's a lot more of a look at the financial side. It's pretty interesting."

"And the fandom?"

"Well, certain people get praised for the bare minimum, but I'll admit having a female lead is super uncommon for shonen jump." It's an improvement, though it's up in the air how much of one it will be. "There's also, because we saw a lot more hero schools, a ton of "students at different school" fics, either because they were expelled or because of the danger UA gets into."

"I do kinda feel like this universe is lucky for that sort of world building." You nod.

"It's very cool to see the takes on the aus. But, I will say there's a cost for this world building- the AfO stuff reeeeally comes out of nowhere and tends to not be popular with fans."

The next episode starts, and Ochako helps a boy from falling. "Love interest alert!" The fans notice quickly when the cute boy blushes and doesn't manage to say much before she walks away.

"They caught on quick." You note.

"And they aren't wrong." Not that it's any real feat to be right.

The exam starts, and Ochako is off in a flash. You see a few glimpses of future classmates- Iida, Aoyama, Kirishima.

She does well, racking up villain points and rescue points, until she's a little too ambitious and falls into the rubble. Her nausea is well established by now, everyone knows she's at her limit.

She can't get up.

The green haired boy comes back and stops the zero pointer.

And breaks every bone in the process.

Ochako saves him in return, lifting up the rubble and stopping his fall.

And then vomits violently afterwards.

"You know, I think quirks suck, actually." The fandom tends to agree on this after that episode/chapter. "But it is interesting that there's such a price for the powers, balances it really well."

"Ha." You shake your head. "They caught onto that, quicker."

"Yep." I can't even say it's more highlighted here, it's the exact same way it was shown in our universe- down to the sparkling rainbow puke.

"Though..." You can't quite imagine that's the only thing the fandom is saying isn't actually that great.

"Ding ding ding." I nod. "Did our own main character get treated just like a damsel in distress? Sure, she saved him back, but that just meant she could have floated away on her own in that time, even if it made her sick. Better that than dead. Is it the sexism?" I shrug. "Most decide to wait and see a bit, and by the time they work together in the first battle exercise figure it's a pretty even split between them saving each other."

"So no sexism?" You get happy at that thought.

I cough. "Ah, no. Both in the show and the fandom. You wouldn't believe how many grown men complain about the lady mc, even as they keep watching."

"And have her body pillow."

"Please don't make me think about that." I cover my eyes, but don't deny that it's true. "Anyway, yeah. Get ready for a lot of people to point out that even though the main character is a girl, every single other girl is flat as cardboard so far and that she only has developed friends that are guys."

"Hey, they aren't flat-"

"In the first season? Yeah they are. Unless you meant, physically, in which case..."

"I didn't." You protest. "But I guess I can see your point, at the start."

"Right. Let's continue on."

Uraraka goes to Present Mic to offer her points. The man pats her on the head, and skyrockets to the position of fandom dad.

"It's all about Dadmic and then Dadzawa here," I explain. "The fans were very disappointed to learn Mic wasn't her homeroom teacher, but yeah... He got a huge head start before Dadzawa fics got going."

"Nice. And it's all fanon?"

"Yeah, it may be a good thing he's not actually in it much, or they might realize how much they just made up on their own."

Then she gets accepted in, on hero and rescue points- she's third place overall, and she gets the scholarship.

On the first day of school, she actually gets to know her love interest's name- Midoriya!

There's also the quirk assessment, which really leads to the "expelled to another school" au and the "fire Aizawa and replace him with better Mic" aus, the first of which lasts much longer in the fandom use, but the second one was just as passionate for a while.

Iida becomes the second friend, and gives her the "Infinity Girl" nickname- which actually is the fandom assumption of what her hero name will be for quite a while, a la 'ground zero'.

Then it's time for All Might's first appearance on screen, to much applause of the students, and the announcement that they get their costumes.

During the first battle exercise, there's a lot more lingering camera work in the changing rooms. Ochako gets to expand a lot more on how she didn't want her costume to be that tight. It's uncomfortable, especially when she thinks about wearing it in front of everyone.

"Oh, I forgot she didn't like it at first... Does she just, get used to it here?" It sounds horrible for the plot to just say 'get used to it' to the main character being sexualized by costume makers outside of her control, especially as a child.

"Not on my watch." I mumble, waving the wand. "Don't worry, she'll actually get more costume changes each time, like some other characters."

"Oh good."

Mineta, regrettably, still exists. You find the fandom manages to be even more violent in his removal.

The battle does even out the opinions on Midoriya, as well as lead to a boost in Iida's with his charming little attempt at thinking villainously.

And cements Bakugo as rather hated. No one has really liked him, when the first thing he did was blow up at Midoriya, then get revealed to have called him a cruel nickname all this time. And then specifically hunt him down because all he cares about it beating him up.

"Yeah he's not gonna get a lot of fans here huh."

"He sure never gets first place in the popularity poll." I agree. "Most consider him the subversion of the rival trope to show is just stupid and violent and in real life, people like that don't go anywhere."

"Most?"

I look away. "How dumb of a discourse do you think you could see today?"

"Oh please, show me." You lean in. "It's nice to not have to deal with it in my universe, so I don't care."

The discourse is such.

Bakugo is gay-coded for Midoriya, the violence is a result of him being shoved off for a girl's love interest when she should be single and independent, and the homophobic creator is vilifying all gay people by saying they are predatory to poor straight boys with refused.

"They............... What."

"If it makes you feel better, that's a very brief minority of the fandom. My favorite response to it was "he's not gay-coded, he's bully coded you sanctimonious sumph of a shmuck.""

"Oh good," you sigh. "I'm glad we don't have to deal with actual queerphobic tropes like that."

I stare at you.

"What?"

I sigh. "Nothing, put a pin in that until I bring up the predatory bi thing with Toga."

Your eyes widen, and you start to have some regrets.

"Anyway, we can talk shipping later. Time for more."

The 'exit sign Iida' gives him a boost in being shipped with Ochako, (as well as Yaoyorozu) and also the general idea that "Ochako has two hands."

That one hand can have a boyfriend with a lot of cash to spare for her and the other is also played with.

"I missed the main trio, like this." You smile as they walk off into the sunset after school.

"Yeah." I agree. "Anyway, time for some near death experiences."

The USJ marks the start of the gradual, gradual growth of Dadzawa fics. It also focuses far more on Ochako, Mina, Sero, and Iida having to think strategically to get around Kurogiri. It's only after Iida escapes that we cut back to a slightly abridged version of how Midoriya was doing, then the other kids, before help arrives.

He does still through his first non bone breaking punch though, which makes the audience happy.

All Might saves the day. Aizawa is battered afterwards. Many fans start out by saying they were disappointed, since this was supposed to be the first big fight, and the kids didn't do much. Many others say in response that's the point- we're looking at first years, they had to think and help each other, but in the end they had to rely on adults.

And then the sports festival is announced. They want to do well, because this is how they get work-week placements, which could become internship offers.

Ochako thinks about Hado Nejire, the only intern of a top ten hero, and senior at UA, along with a few others who are on the up and up. She's determined.

"Really? You're bringing in the big three early?" You ask, glancing at my wand.

It's not sparkling.

I cross my arms with a huff. "Look. Nejire is at this point the only intern in the top ten, she would have been recognizable to the students for that, even if they didn't recognize the big three (which really means that they aren't actually called the Big Three by everyone, or at least not a wide enough group for it to be as big a deal as it's treated. Anyway.) But she wasn't, even if she should have been the most famous of the bunch, considering the coverage the first years got in just their first night. That's because a certain someone doesn't actually think of his female characters much, but he has to in this universe, so."

"Ok, yeah, that's fair. So does that change the sports festival?"

"Not... Much." I admit.

“What?”

“Well, keep in mind in the first universe, our main character didn’t make it past the second round in the one-on-one’s. So she’s not exactly guaranteed a win here either.”

You have to nod, admitting that is true.

“And the conflict isn’t so much about having to live up to any predecessor or breaking down some people’s walls via breaking bones.” I tap my wand against my chin, thinking. “There really is two- one about Midoriya, and one about Ochako’s parents.”

“Oh?”

“One, there’s been the Uraraka’s not happy about how much danger Ochako’s been in. Its been hinted at in the phone calls, but really shows up when we get to see them at home before the SF for the first time since she moved for school. They aren’t sure if she can stay there herself, or if the right thing to do would be to pull her out and maybe try a smaller school.”

“I suppose that's fair, if they haven't been able to actually see her or her progress.”

“Right. The second one is- well. in this, Izuku’s win of the first round, and then breaking out of brainwashing, is more about really piling on how good his mind is- all that brain power. This adds more pressure when we see Ochako being offered a plan from him to beat Bakugo.”

“Oh that does sound neat.”

“Yep- but of course, she still refuses. It’s held up as a worse thing, strategically, initially- but then she comes up with a plan that Midoriya confirms in the stands is better than his, and proves to her parents that she’s smart and skilled enough to handle continuing at the school.”

You smile. “That is a cool arc to do, i guess, if very not traditional. But what about all the character setup and growth with Shinsou and Todoroki?”

“Oh, Shinsou’s largely gets delegated all the way later for the joint training arc, where Ochako’s team is directly against him. Todoroki...” I begin to giggle.

You wait for me to answer, getting more concerned the longer i laugh.

“Pocket?”

“Sorry, sorry, yeah. He actually tells her himself in this canon, a bit after stain. Oh! right, i forgot- the cheerleader incident.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. of course they need this merch opportunity! But yes, it happens. The... shall we say, non-body-pillow portion of the fandom, generally saw it as the end of any goodwill to Kaminari, who had previously been seen as a tertiary possible love interest, since he’d flirted with her on the first day. Flirt, but harmless, and unlikely to be important. Then there was that breach of trust and international embarrassment, and anyway he’s basically the second least likely in 1a to be shipped with her now.”

“Wow. So none of that changed?”

“Well, the setup wasn’t under narration from Todoroki about how his mother was bought for her body and how much that sucked and impacted her and the family while on screen we see multiple girls tricked into barring their bodies and its treated as a laugh instead?”

You stare at me. “I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”

“Neither am I.”

“So, the Todoroki reveal?”

“Right. So, first you need to know the Stain thing- the claims he has against ‘false’ heroes focusing on money is better spotlighted. After Stain’s arrest, Ochako hears a couple of sidekicks at Gunhead’s agency-”

“Wait!” you interrupt. “She still interned with Gunhead? Then what was the point of showing Nejire and Ryukyuu earlier?”

I try not to massage my forehead. “To build up to it. She only made it to the first of the final round, she couldn’t get an internship with a top tenner yet. She’s also got to learn how to disarm someone who fights with a knife. These things build up over more time, small steps.”

“Ah.” You’re satisfied, and let me continue.

“Right, so, Overhears a couple of them talking about Stain’s philosophy and ends up just feeling really bad about it for a bit, trying to figure out if she’s actually being selfish or a bad hero for, you know, wanting her family to not be crushed due to capitalism.”

“Poor girl.” You shake your head in sympathy, the freeze. “Oh. did not intend that pun.”

“It’s alright, i know what you mean. And yeah, she bottles it up for a bit, until the second day back at school. Then Iida reminds her that him bottling things up last week got several kids in mortal danger, and she begrudgingly admits that he has a point and tells them about what has been bugging her.”

“And they comfort her?”

“Well, Todoroki also offers to tell off Kaminari because at this point his mention of stain upset both her and iida, but yes, A lot of reassurances.”

You squint. “I feel like shippers.”

“You’re learning! Yes, Todoroki is just a bit behind Iida in terms of popularity shipping with her. and she does basically get shipped A Lot with each girl in her class too, like imagine double to triple the amount with each girl now, and for the minor guys- but yeah. There’s a lottttt of ships. This was basically called ‘todoroki’s introduction into ochako’s harem’ in the fandom.”

Shipping. fandom just can’t escape it.

“So, then she learns about Todoroki’s past? oh, and what about Hosu? Does she- and everyone else- actually think Endeavor saved the three??”

I snort. “Oh, no. Todoroki’s flat ‘yeah my father totally helped us, as you read on the official report’ basically tipped the fandom off that something else had. But nothing confirmed either, you know? Filling in the hosu gap is another trope in fics that is pretty common.”

“Neat.”

“Yep. But yeah Todoroki tells her his backstory a bit after his introduction into her ‘harem’ of friends. It’s really played up more to caution Ochako- its alright for her to want to help her family, and to work for money to do that. But Rei accepted the marriage offer for money for her family too, and it ended up breaking her. Ochako has to accept a balance- she can work to help her family, and its good, but there are some things she cannot morally do to help them, and other things that she shouldn’t do because she has to take care of her own health first.”

“Ohhhh.” You hadn’t quite expected that, but you sorta liked it, now that you thought about it.

I smile. “It is pretty neat, yeah.” I glance at my watch. “Look, i hate to cut you off, but this post is gonna end up thrice the length of Mirio’s and i think tumblr might stop me, so we’re gonna have to do a two-parter.”

“That’s fine.” You are gracious for what you’ve gotten so far, and do have questions that you’re excited to see answered for the rest of the series. “It’s been fun.”

“It has been.” I agree. “Lets take a break, but you can ask me any questions too, before I return for part two.”

#other main characters meta series #seriously u may send questions i will try to adress in part two #but yeah wow that got long #see you in part two

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

Note

Hi being reading your RWBY metas and loving them and I wanted to ask that in one of them you mentioned disliking the speech Blake gave about the living embodiment of a word. Could I ask why did you dislike the speech and what would you change about it?

Hello! You know, you’re the second anon recently that has said they’re reading old stuff and I’m just like, oh no... what past nonsense have I written lol

I can’t remember anymore if my reasons for disliking the speech years ago were different, but the reasons I don’t like it now are two-fold. First, it just sounds ridiculous to me. Yeah, this is a hopeful fantasy show that eschews “realistic” dialogue for inspiring one-liners, but this moment is a little too much for me. People don’t talk like that. Friends don’t talk like that. If you’re sitting across from a guy you’re close with, talking about friends you admire, you’d probably mention some of the things they do that has resonated with you. One thing I might do instead is have Blake bring up the easy courage it took for Ruby to introduce herself and then continue the conversation despite how obvious it was that Blake wanted her to leave. It’s pretty much nonexistent in the text, but RWBY could pretend that Weiss actually had an arc regarding her racism and how proud Blake is that she overcame that. Have her talk to Sun about the image burned into her brain of Yang throwing herself at Adam to protect her and the mixed feelings wrapped up in that image: gratitude, guilt, more pride, fear for the future. When you talk about the traits you admire in a person, you think back to the moments that showed those traits at their best.

Instead, we get a speech that sounds like... nothing anyone has ever said. Who sits down with a friend and diagnoses all their other friends with A Trait?

Okay, well, I remember getting to know Ruby and thinking, "This girl is the embodiment of "purity." After a while, I saw Weiss was "defiance." And Yang was "strength"... At first I thought Adam was "justice," then I thought he was "passion." But over time, I realized I was wrong. He wasn't any of those things. He was "spite." Not "hatred," not "rage," "spite."

Moments like this show the writers’ weaknesses, imo. Rather than painting scenes for the audience to picture and draw their own conclusions from — or still have Blake draw some conclusions for herself — we’re just told what each girl is. Ruby is pure, Weiss is defiant, Yang is strong, Adam is spiteful. Blake has cracked the code! But of course, that’s also ridiculous. Alongside this coming across as a very awkward “The writers want to craft something #deep rather than giving Blake a distinct voice while chatting with a pal” issue, I hate how generic and limiting these descriptions are. Yang is strong? ... so are the rest of her teammates. Weiss is defiant? ... so are the others. Ruby is pure? Arguably so are the others! (Even though that description in particular is pretty inaccurate nowadays and we’ve seen the seeds of that for a long time). Despite telling us precisely what each girl is, this scene nevertheless fails to tell us anything about them. We already know all this surface level stuff — that Ruby is the cutesy minor, Weiss is full of stubbornness, Yang has a big personality and punches things really hard — and by Volume 4, we’ve reached a point where we realize that the group is actually a lot more complex than that. So why is Blake reducing them to these basic traits again? Especially in a Volume where Ruby is struggling with the loss of her purity after The Fall, Weiss is no longer in a position to easily defy her father, and Yang is grappling with how weak she feels after loosing her arm? Blake’s speech denies the human complexity we know is there by reducing everyone to one, single trait. She even goes so far as to say that Adam “wasn’t any of those things,” justice and passion, even though everyone watching the show realizes that it’s his desire for a warped idea of justice and misplaced passion have led him here. We also see his rage and hatred on full display. Of course they exist in him! It’s the same reason why I’ve crafted headcanons to explain the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter because I’m like, “No one can be sorted into a category based on one, supposedly defining trait. People don’t work that way.” Yet Blake does exactly that, in a scene that’s supposed to be inspiring, but really falls flat. So yeah, I don’t think the dialogue comes across well, the scene fails to accomplish anything about our cast, and it may actually reject a lot of what the audience has already discovered for themselves.

#rwby #mymetas #Anonymous

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bokunoheroanalysisforthefuture · 3 years

Text

And the last chapter of the first volume! Though technically there’s after-chapter content that will be in a separate post from this, but for now, what matters is finishing up the quirk assessment and getting into the battle trial!

Honestly, it’s a good thing that I just shoved all the opening arcs from before the USJ together into one tag, because this chapter literally goes from the quirk assessment into the beginning of the battle trial stuff, and trying to separate them out would have been a mess and a half. Better to just have it all in the ‘opening arcs’ tag.

...weird title for something that only comes at the end of the chapter, but whatever, it’s not like we don’t see that happen later on in the series as well.

[No. 7 - Costume Change?]

And we immediately come back to where we left off, with All Might realizing what just happened and what Izuku did and even why! One of those little peeks that remind us that All Might is very smart! Also god, him with a small fanboy moment over how proud he is of his kid and how cool that workaround was, mmm this is the Dad Might content I signed up for.

Izuku is still standing firm, even with his finger swollen and damaged, biting back the pain. Ochako is cheering about that record, Tenya notices Izuku’s finger is damaged and thinks back to the entrance exam, calling it a ‘strange quirk’, Aoyama says it’s stylishly done, and Katsuki is brain broke.

I’m sorry that’s just so fucking funny. He is such a goddamn gremlin, but he’s also completely shook. He thinks about how quirks never manifest past age four, but somehow Izuku has a quirk.

He then recalls Izuku saying ‘he earned this’ and gets pissed, blasting forward to demand an explanation while Izuku freaks out-

Only for Katsuki to have his quirk cancelled by Aizawa and also get caught up in the capture scarf.

Beauty. Grace. He’ll bite off your face.

Katsuki notes the cloth is stiff, while Aizawa tells him that it’s a capture weapon made of carbon fibers and a special alloy wire, then tells Katsuki to stop using his quirk already. Which is interesting; can Aizawa sense when people are trying to use their quirks while under the effects of his? If so, is he sensing the aborted movement of whatever quirk factors exist, or ???

(All I’m saying is that that is some possible fuel for a Dad For One connection but for Aizawa instead of Izuku… you know, just in case.)

As we sort of saw from the last chapter, Aizawa’s quirk has the side effect of giving him dry eyes (he was putting eyedrops in his eyes after using his quirk on Izuku). Izuku thinks that sucks since his quirk is so awesome. Aizawa lets his quirk and scarf drop, telling the class to prepare for the next event.

Katsuki is standing where he was stopped, glaring at Izuku who is holding his hand while Ochako worries over him and his finger. He’s caught up in a flashback (which again, reminder that this is chapter 7 and we already have flashbacks), thinking about how up to then, Izuku was just another pebble in his path. We get a brief cut to a memory flashback (not a chapter flashback) to when Izuku and Katsuki were still friends, and Izuku was waiting for his quirk to come in still, and then repeats that Izuku was only supposed to be a pebble. Single track mind, much?

Discord:

Ah, that good Bakugou discourse. This is why you do this stuff in a server with friends.

Izuku narrates a short passage of time - over the rest of the events - while handling the pain of his injured finger. Aizawa tells them it’s time for the results, with Izuku thinking about how he’s going to get expelled because the only record worth mentioning was the throw, and how the endurance running failed hard because of the pain. Aizawa says he won’t explain the process behind the scoring process, just that they reflect performance.

And then he reveals he was lying about expelling someone.

The trio’s faces. Aizawa’s manic smile. The trio’s faces. And Momo there like ‘what did you expect?’ God, I can’t help but giggle.

Izuku just fucking ascending to a new plane of existance here.

Aizawa turns to leave, saying they’re done there and that the documents about the curriculum and whatnot are back in the classroom. He then calls out Izuku, who is shaking in panic (probably about Aizawa changing his mind again - I wonder if teachers before UA pulled that sort of ‘syke’ on Izuku… yikes.)

Instead, he just gets handed a pass to the nurse’s office (not even filled out fully, incredible) and then turns and walks off.

The class is left to stare after Aizawa in bafflement, with Izuku’s narration noting that he’s safe for the moment, but still has too much he can’t do, and that he’s literally starting from the bottom - but here’s there to learn so he can get closer to his dream!

Class rankings:

And- ah, he walked past All Might, who calls him out as a liar. Aizawa either didn’t notice him watching or didn’t know it was All Might specifically who was watching, but either way calls it ‘wasting time’ - which makes sense when all the teachers know about his time limit that he’s spending there watching Izuku the kids do their trials.

All Might notes that April Fool’s was over a week ago, and that the ‘rational deception’ thing falls flat when he expelled an entire class of first years the previous year. Aizawa discards those with zero potential, but he went back on his word here, and then asks if he sensed Midoriya’s potential as well. While giving Aizawa finger guns. Have I mentioned this man is a complete dork yet?

Aizawa catches onto the ‘as well’ bit, and determines that All Might’s supporting the kid - which isn’t his usual style. He then starts walking off again, saying Midoriya doesn’t have no chance, but that’s all he’ll say on the matter. He then says that if the kid had no prospects, he’d cut him loose, since it’s crueler to let someone chase half-baked dreams.

All Might determines quietly that it’s Aizawa’s way of being kind, but out loud states that they can agree to disagree. Meanwhile, in the background, Sero and Sato notice All Might, which probably leads to class 1a going after him and him fleeing for safety.

We transition to when Izuku is heading home, with him exhausted because of his trip to Recovery Girl. Tenya checks in on him, and Izuku says he’s fine, with us seeing a temporary flashback to the nurse’s office. Izuku notes his finger’s better, but he’s exhausted all of a sudden (he doesn’t remember last time since he was unconscious).

A couple of things:

Kamui Woods pez dispenser

Oh, so if he doesn’t have stamina he’ll die! Good to know! :)

Anyways, Izuku thinks about how he can’t keep going on like this and has to figure out how to regulate his power fast. Tenya goes on to talk about how Aizawa had fooled them, making them think that was how it was, only for it to be a deception. (The irony that the mercy was actually unplanned all along gets to me.) Izuku is more relaxed around him now that he realizes Tenya isn’t scary, just super serious.

Ochako rushes over to catch up, asking if they’re heading for the station. Tenya calls her ‘Infinity Girl’ and Izuku repeats it mentally in surprise. Ochako introduces herself, and then brings up their names - though she mistakes Izuku’s name for ‘Deku’, because of what Katsuki said during the test. Izuku corrects her with awkward hand gestures, saying his real name and that the ‘Deku’ is just Katsuki being a bully.

Tenya and Ochako both acknowledge this, with Ochako apologizing, and then mentioning how ‘Deku’ sounds like ‘do your best’, and that she likes it. Izuku goes beet fucking red and immediately replies that Deku is fine, with Tenya chastising him for not showing backbone while Izuku calls it like the Copernican Revolution and Ochako questions who Copernicus is.

The narration takes over, noting that even if there’s a lot he can’t do, he’ll do his best, but having All Might and even some friends behind him… it’s more than he could have asked for.

Good children. Best friends. God, these were the good days… more OG Dekucrew content please and thanks.

We get one panel of Toshinori that Izuku’s got no time to rest, and that tomorrow the real test begins. Then we’re onto the next day, aka the first day of actual classes - and oh, right, UA has clubs, that’s something that’s easy to forget when we never see it with the hero classes. I mean, considering that the actual hero training classes probably overlap the usual club hours, not surprising, but still.

Present Mic is shown to be the English teacher, trying to get the kids in the spirit of class, but pretty much everyone is finding it boring - asides from Izuku, who is actually trying to answer the question mentally, even if not out loud. The narration notes that the mornings are for normal classes, and that lunch is top-notch food for dirt cheap in the cafeteria (as cooked by Lunch Rush), and then hero training is in the afternoon… possibly after lunch? Which isn’t great when people could end up throwing up. Ah well.

These fucking dorks. Two peas in a quirkless-to-superpowered pea pod.

And of course, more meta from the class on how All Might’s drawn differently.

Anyways, All Might gets into Hero Basic Training, how it’ll mold them into heroes, and that there’s no time to waste as he shows off a card reading ‘battle’ before stating that they have battle training.

Have I mentioned he’s a dork? There’s more ham here than in Shatner’s performances in the original Star Trek series!

Katsuki is thrilled with battle training, of course. All Might notes that for battle training, the class will need - as the wall clicks and opens several drawers with numbered cases, each with contents in accordance with the quirk registry and the special request forms fill out before admission - costumes! Which the class is super hyped about. Izuku is holding his backpack in excitement, and All Might orders the students to come out to Ground Beta in ranking order once they’re changed, to which the class agrees.

As he takes his leave, he notes that looking good is important, and to look alive, because from today on, they’re all heroes! We also get some nice transition moments showing pieces of people’s costumes, with Izuku being the last one out as the rest show theirs off.

So cool! And what a way to end a chapter and a book! And a nice nod to the prototype costume for Izuku. Time to say goodbye to it before the end of this arc.

Next time, I’ll try to get through all the bonus stuff for the end of the volume, and then we can get into the battle trial proper! Looking forward to that.

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bbq-hawks-wings · 4 years

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Am I seeing things, or are Hawks’ legs in his Shifuku page kinda odd looking? Those baggy pants really hide how thin they are, they appear sorta crooked and curved??? Is it just me, or do you see it too? I’m squinting so hard to see where the pants and shoes end, it’s around the thin-belt like perimeter on the shoe right? Are his pants outside the shoe or inside it, is the white stuff part of the shoe too? That’s an odd design, I’m so sorry I’m still on the bird feet agenda-

You know what, I've been craving writing some slightly meatier meta lately, and this is just the kind of topic to scratch the itch. Spoilers ahead for the manga.

Now, I've mentioned before that I don't think Hawks canonically has bird feet. I do like the idea of him having more obviously avian traits, but besides his wings, eye markings, and hair texture I think anything else is all subliminal in canon. That is to say, this isn't "Haha, you're wrong" but more of a, "It is with a heavy heart I regret to inform you" kind of deal.

And with that, I regret to inform you his Shifuki page leads me to believe he has very lean human looking anatomy in what looks like wide-legged straight jeans that are bunching around the neck of his high-tops. Nevertheless, I do posses an explanation for what you're seeing as well as my evidence Hawks has normal human feet.

To address his curvy legs, it's simply a quirk of human anatomy that at the right angle the human shin appears to angle inward. In drawing - especially gesture drawing - a common principle is to stagger "curved" and "straight" lines to create a natural and organic flow to the body. This picture I found of a male and female dancer demonstrates that very well.

Thanks to the calf and knee muscles anchored around the joint and tapering out to more sinew and ligament tissues which lie close to bone around the ankle you can get this curvy shape (usually between 3/4 and 7/8 rotation like in his left foot pictured below) and the whole leg tends to generally slope backwards at the knee when standing straight. The clothes he's wearing also play into this illusion because of the way fabric will fall and bunch when influenced by gravity and friction with itself and the body.

Likely, he just has a very lean kind of muscular build unlike the beefcake Endeavor or peak All Might are sporting. He's built to be fast and light, not powerful and immoveable.

As for his feet -

[Sketch updated thanks to an inaccuracy caught by someone who brought it to my attention]

I've traced over his anatomy and roughly sketched typical bird anatomy next to it. Now, the severity of that backward angle has plenty of play in it seeing as we're talking about fantasy Frankenstein anatomy and the fact that some birds do sport very tall, straight legs such as this fancy, leggy, showboy:

(The world of show pigeons is wild, y'all.) But more important to me is the structure of the toes.

Most birds are anisodactyl, meaning that they have three toes pointed forward and one toe pointing back. Birds of prey - hawks and eagles in particular - are, exclusively anisodactyl to my knowledge. Relatively few types of birds have toes that all point forward, and those that do are usually adapted for a specific lifestyle.

Glance back up at the shape of his foot that I've outlined. The shape is completely flat in the back where his ankles connect to his feet and his sneakers don't look any different from a standard shoe for human feet which would make me wonder where that rear-facing toe is supposed to go. Even if this toe was supposed to be small, I'd be concerned for space as well as his center of balance given how tightly long, thin toes would have to be bunched up in that shoe and then support his whole weight as he walks and is generally active. His shoes are also consistently shaped and behave human throughout the series and in any frame we see of him. If anything, the fact his feet appear so small further supports the idea they're boring old people feet.

Further evidence are his hands. Hands and feet are normally radically different body parts to begin with, but my point comes from a character design perspective. Hands are much more visible so if Horikoshi wanted to make Hawks' design to be "a little bit of bird everywhere" as the bird feet would support it would make sense that we'd probably see the presence of talons, scales, longer and bonier fingers, etc. But once again, his hands are no different than yours or mine so it doesn't make much sense to think Horikoshi is secretly hiding these bird feet in his shoes where it's harder to make an excuse to show them off when there's nothing to see under his gloves.

If Horikoshi really wanted to push the bird anatomy hybridization he probably would have gone with something a lot more like this picture Kadeart drew which combines more feather interspersed across his body with scales and talons integrated into more otherwise human anatomy. (Seriously, go check out her stuff if you haven't already. It's a gold mine of quality Hawks content.)

In other words, I'm not against Hawks having more hybrid anatomy, I just refuse to believe it's canon because if turns out to be true that's some weak sauce and we were robbed when we could have had THAT. 👆

#spoiler!hawks #bnha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #bnha hawks #hawks #hawks bnha #hawks mha #mha hawks #takami keigo #keigo tamaki #she speaks #let's talk hawks

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tired-college-student-writing · 4 years

Text

Tim’s Secret Weapon pt. 12

I’ve been slightly obsessed with @ozmav ‘s Damian Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng pairing as of late, and just saw a post that has inspired me more than anything else has in months, so I felt the need to write it

Summary- Tim has always seen the numbers floating above people’s heads, been able to perceive their threat levels with a single glance. After being a hero for so long he thought he was desensitized to seeing high numbers above people’s heads until Damian brings a new friend home.

Part 1

Part 11

Part 12(HERE)

Part 13

____________________________________________

Jason had started cackling as soon as Tim explained why he was cross, pulling the ring from his hand and tossing it back to its proper owner. Damian Bruce and Alfred were intrigued by the prospect by the fact Jason was predestined to be a miraculous wielder. Dick, on the other hand, was pouting at Jason being ‘officially more of a cat than him.’

“You’re not a black cat,” Tim snapped, using the door frame to stay upright, glaring at the stark white number over Jason’s head, “He may claim he’s all about destruction but it’s who he was made into not who he is at his core.”

“What?” Jason huffed, “You’re the one that said my number went up to 15! I’m a cat now, I’m leaving the birds to join Selina.”

“No,” He nearly growled in frustration, staggering over to the couch, “Adrian is the real cat here. At his core, he’s sweet and kind and trustworthy, but he also has chaos at his center. He can destroy a person he believes deserves it without a second thought, tarnish a reputation permanently with no remorse if he believed it was the best course of action, manipulate a person into behaving how he wants with precision and grace without anyone realizing that the ray of sunshine would be able to do so. He’s literally destruction. You aren’t like that Jason, not at your core. You’re a true holder, but you aren’t a Black Cat.”

The room was silent as he finally finished and he couldn’t help, but look around at their stunned faces with confusion. Even the Kwamis had frozen from where they had been whispering on the side table, glancing between each other and Tim.

“What?” He snapped, too tired to deal with anything else tonight.

“You’ve only just met Adrian,” Kim drew out, “And just spouted off stuff I never knew about the sunshine boy with such confidence I’m pretty sure you’re not lying.”

“What do you mean? Of course, I know that stuff, can’t you guys tell it too? That’s just what I can tell from observing if I really wanted to know anything important about him I’d have to do research,” He explained with a groan as he leaned against Dick’s shoulder.

Dick just looked down at him in amazement, “No Timmy, most people can’t tell that kind of stuff just from spending a few hours with someone.”

“Huh? You guys never acted like I was crazy before,” He pointed out looking at his brothers.

“I always assumed you researched our targets before we needed the information,” Bruce hummed, “We had meant to ask you how you knew some of the skills you had listed when you had never met the heroes before making the entries in your journal.”

“I mean I did look up some stuff, but isn’t most of that stuff common knowledge?”

Jason snorted, “I didn’t know Bruce spoke Portuguese before reading his journal entry, replacement. I can say with confidence that there’s no video footage of B or Bats speaking or reading Portuguese anywhere or any reason you should know that before I even kicked the bucket.”

“I…” Tim tried to think back, to why he knew this information, where he had put together the man had known so many languages.

“Tim,” Marinette piped up, “What languages does everyone in here speak?”

“French and English.”

His deadpan earned an eye roll from her, “No, I meant past that. Start with your family and then my team, tell me all the languages. Go.”

He was skeptical of what she was trying to do but decided not to question it, “All the bat speak Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and BSL. Bruce knows Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch, Cantonese, and Greek. Alfred speaks German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Polish. Dick speaks Romani, Romanian, Dutch, and Russian. Jason has Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, and Russian. I can do Japanese, Romanian, German and Polish.

Damian knows Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, and is just short of fluent in Romanian.”

His eyes turned to the Parisian teens, ignoring the surprise at their extensive list of languages, “ Adrian knows Mardiran and Japanese. Chloe knows Japanese. Kim is fluent in Vietnamese and is nearing passable in German. Max knows Korean and Safan. Alix knows Ancient Egyptian and Arabic. Kagami knows Japanese and Mandarin. Viperion knew quite a bit of Italian but wasn’t quite fluent. Marinette knows Italian, is nearly fluent in Arabic and… actually, I’m not sure what the last one is, but it’s ancient, something close to Sino-Tibetan I think?”

Eyes flashed around the room, before settling on Tim.

“Seriously?” Tim groaned, “None of you knew that?”

Jason's eyes flashed to Damien, “Since when do you speak Romanian?”

He scowled, the tips of his ears burning, “It was going to be a surprise for Grayson, I was hoping to be fluent by his birthday…”

Marinette broke in before any of the brothers could make a comment, “Tim, Damien only practiced Romanian when he knew everyone was out of the house. Nor should you know about the Guardian Language.”

“Guardian Language?” He whispered, head too fuzzy for him to process more than that.

She winced a little, “When the role of Guardian was handed over to me, the language of the Guardians was basically downloaded into my head. It allows me to read the Guardian Grimoire and perform the spells within it to heal kwamis, fixing broken miraculous or create potions to allow them different abilities they don’t usually possess. Usually, there’s a lot of training to be able to deal with the new knowledge being shoved into their heads but my gaining of the guardianship was more than a little unorthodox so I had to deal with migraines for about six months after. I had to decode the secrets for myself even with knowing the language.”

“I don’t even know what the Guardian is,” Tim whispered as the truth set it, “I really shouldn’t know this stuff about you guys…”

“Another aspect of your power, no doubt,” Alfred cut in, “Hardly the worst thing in the world for a detective to have intuition-based knowledge of the people he’s looking up, hmm?”

Tim laughed, “Thanks, Alfred.”

The butler merely nodded, “However, I am fairly certain Master Tim hasn’t been truthful about how much sleep he’s gotten this week and a miraculous drain is dangerous even when well-rested, I suggest suspending this discussion until a proper hour?”

Damien gave him an innocuous look, “ You tried to lie to Pennyworth? Are you completely braindead.”

“Panicking over my secret being out means lots of comfort coffee,” He groaned back as he attempted to bury himself in Dick’s side.

“Go to sleep Replacement,” Jason huffed, as Dick pulled the other man to his feet. Zombie Tim's duty was something they all had plenty of experience in. It wasn’t long before he was stripped of his costume and sweatpants and an oversized tee pulled on over his bike shorts.

Tim barely registered the lights being turned off as he was bundled into bed, half asleep already.

When Tim arose the next morning he was surprised to see it was only 8 am, seven hours after when he remembered his brother’s getting him to bed. Typically, after the kind of crash, he felt last night he needed a solid thirteen hours of sleep and two cups of coffee to feel this alive again. His answer came from the tiny horse resting on the nightstand.

“Kaalki? What are you doing here?”

“Kwami healing,” She offered in an attempt to be nonchalant as she floated up in front of him, “ Tikki is best at it but every Kwami, barring Plagg, can offer some form of rejuvenation to those who need it. My way of healing is to replenish the energy that has been lost in a timely manner. It was the least I could do after causing you so much distress last night.”

Tim frowned and offered a flat hand for her to land on, “Don’t do that, there’s no blame on you or Marinette or anyone else. Accidents happen, and it’s not like there’s an instruction book on miraculous and metas.”

She fidgeted, “I believe you are correct but I still felt bad for causing such harm to befall you.”

Tim just shook his head, “Either way, thank you. I feel amazing right now.”

She smiled, “Perhaps if you hurry you can join your family for breakfast, I heard they were setting out to leave soon.”

He quickly pulled on his clothes and did his morning routine in the ensuite before entering the main room where his family froze in place as they were pulling on coats and shoes.

“What the fuck are you doing up?” Jason hissed, ready to force him back into bed.

“Kwami magic has its perks,” Tim defended, hands raised in surrender as Kaalki floated next to him, “I feel more awake then I have in years.”

Alfred grinned, “Ah yes, I remember how Duusu would help us relax after battles. Well come along then,

Marinette squinted at him judgingly, trying to figure out how he was allowed out by his family before Kaalki darted from his jacket over to Max’s. Instead, she just huffs and begins leading the entire group of heroes towards her parents’ bakery, Damien quickly falling in step to her left, glaring at Adrian who had fallen into step on her right.

“SO, replacement,” Jason drawled, dropping an arm around the short brother’s shoulders, “I didn’t get to ask last night cause you looked more zombie then me, but if I’m not a cat, what am I?”

“I don’t even know where to start with miraculous,” Tim huffed, pushing the older man away, “Where would I even start with which miraculous to give to you?”

“Well, how about we give you a starting point,” Adrian asked, turning to walk backwards so he could look at them with a twinkling smile, “Miraculous are broken into two categories, indirect and direct. Direct miraculous powers affect the target of the power directly like the Bee’s venom freezing someone, while the Indirect affect the world around the target, like the Horse’s teleportation. The Black Cat and Ladybug fall outside of the groupings as they’re both direct and indirect. Indirect users can’t use Direct miraculous effectively and can even have adverse effects of transforming too long and vice versa. So does Jason feel like a direct or indirect holder.”

“Indirect,” Tim started, finding the words just started flowing as he stared at the 11 swirling about over his brother’s head, “Jason’s cocky and more stubborn than the Blue Boyscout if you get him going, but he’s also loyal to a fault and filled with so much determination I’m not sure whether to be scared or impressed. No matter how angry he is at someone, or how much he thinks they deserve the consequences of their actions he will be there to protect them by any means necessary. He may talk tough and act stupid but he’s unbelievably wise with instincts unparalleled by normal humans when it comes to trust and how to get out of sticky situations. He can and will kill, but only if it’s the only option left to make it out of a situation alive.”

Jason scowled and pulled on the end of his jacket sleeve as he looked away, “Geez, rip me open why don’t you?”

“Hey, you asked,”

Marinette stared at him with a cryptic eye, “No, he’s right I can see it. I think I know what miraculous to give you.”

Tim’s attention fell away from the conversation as Jason tried to pry the newly found information from the young Guardian. Because that was the least of his worries.

Not when his eyes landed on vibrant blue hair, strikingly familiar, attached to a man sitting on the wall around the Seine, strumming his guitar absentmindedly.

“Found you,” Tim said, causing the man in front of him to smile up at him.

“That was quick,” He laughed, the thick gothic steel-colored 13 made his blue eyes take on a silver hue.

“It’s easy to spot such a high number when most don’t reach past six,” He shrugged.

“You and I aren’t very different, you know?” Steely grey 13 offered, looking back to his guitar.

“I think the masks gave that away,” Tim mussed, “I’m Tim.”

“Luka, Luka Couffaine,” Steely Grey 13, Viperion, Luka offered easily, “And I meant past the masks.”

“How do you mean then, Luka?”

The younger man looked up at him and waved a hand at the chair across from him, “How about you take a seat, Uccellino, and we can compare notes on what it’s like to be meta.”

____________________________________________

Taglist: @vixen-uchiha @iggy-of-fans @mewwitch @roseinbloom02 @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @mochinek0 @royalchaoticfangirl @09shell-sea09 @mystery-5-5 @derpingrainbow @aloha-posts-stuff @hauntedfreakdeputyhero @maribat-archive @blue-peach14 @kae690 @zazzlejazzle @vincentvangoose @be-happy-every-day-please @xxmadamjinxx @celestiacq @peculiarlylostdreamer @dani-ari @melicmusicmagic @themcclan @nyctamaximoff @nataladriana9 @drama-queen-supreme @miraculousbelladonna @urbanpineapplefarmer @graduatedmelon @lexysama @hecate-hallow @ki117h3dr4g0n @vinerlover @interobanginyourmom @bluefiredemon @imanerddealwith @tinybrie @clumsy-owl-4178 @shizukiryuu @whogavemeaninternet @schrodingers25 @lunar-wolf-warrior @urbanpineapplefarmer @xxmadamjinxx @crazylittlemunchkin @littleredrobinhoodlum @rougemme @dur55 @phantommeow12 @kand-roo @silvergold-swirl @officiallyathiana @completelypeccable @redhoodsdoll @nataladriana9 @mariae2900 @northernbluetongue @sturchling @thesunanditsangel @reyna-avila-ramirez-alreanaldo @bobothyross @taoiichii @magnitude101999 @magicalfirebird @nataladriana9 @panda3506 @aquariusrunes @woodland-queer @sayarock121 @mindfulmagics @magic-miraculous @my-name-is-michell @naoryllis @slytherinqueen2432 @ilovefluffbutsmutisalsogreat @captainartsypants @nanakeid @legendaryneckjudgestudent @smolplantmum @the-real-ginakid @nyaabinch @elmokingkong @gentlemanoftimetravel @whitennerdiest@imbrium-mare @tired-butterfly @corabeth11 @aestheticnpoetic @amirahevens @sassakitty @letterlust @whats-she-gonna-post-next

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captain-azoren · 3 years

Text

Legend of Korra books 3 & 4

Finished rewatching books 3 and 4 of Korra. Here on my thoughts on them and the series as a whole after seeing it again after so many years.

I think books 3 and 4 are pretty solid. Aside from a few flaws, I think 3 is the overall best with the best pacing. I think a big issue with book 2 was that it was trying and failing to juggle a very big cast and multiple subplots that made it feel like a mess. That’s not an issue with 3 or 4, where every character has a relevant purpose and plot threads come together more naturally.

4 does this a little bit worse as I think the plot kind of starts and stops a couple of times, but it’s not terrible. Kuvira’s build up as a villain is very shaky when compared to Amon and Zaheer, but still better than Unalaq’s arc going down the drain. It really does seem like the worst parts of her villainy are told and not shown (those being the reeducation camps and slave labor). I think they could have shown at least one of these camps instead of just seeing the escapees that Varrick and Bolin meet.

I still think the Red Lotus are the best antagonists in LoK just for having the best arc overall. They had Amon’s intrigue, stayed consistent in their motivations like Kuvira, and they have the most dimensions overall just from the little bits of interaction we see of them. What’s more, they didn’t disappoint me in the end.

The Colossus I didn’t mind or find out of place. It just doesn’t bother me when the show has had Koizilla and giant drills in AtLA. I can understand how the mechanics of it work as well. I didn’t feel like my suspension of disbelief was broken considering everything else. I think fans who dislike it are more bothered by it breaking the setting further away from fantasy and into sci-fi.One question though, why does a spirit energy canon need a rifled barrel?

Mako is a much better character in 3 and 4 because he’s finally allowed to be someone other than a love interest. His interactions with Bolin can be really fun and it’s kind of a shame how often they’re separated. I also noticed on a rewatch that he does make a good detective, having good perception and coming up with ideas. It’s better than the pro-bender he started out as and probably his best strength.

I think I actually like Mako now whereas before he was the most forgettable, and I think he deserves some looking into. A lot of the hate comes from him being put into really tough spots where he just can’t win. Mako goes from being extremely aloof to being a loyal but beleaguered straight man to the group.

Raiko I feel similarly to Mako. I think he’s another guy who keeps getting put into tough spots with no easy solution. He doesn’t really deserve hate either, and honestly probably made the best decisions he could as a president (I know from experience how bad they can be...) Him being hated and voted out in the comics seem like Bryke was over correcting, something they seem to do a lot.

Suyin I have mixed feelings on. She really does seem like someone Bryke really wanted fans to like and agree with, but they shilled her a bit too much and at the expense of Lin. Su’s apology to Lin at the end of their dispute felt kind of half-hearted, and despite being justified, the whole thing is framed as Lin being the one in the wrong, stuck in the past, unable to move on after Su had changed. We don’t see Su change though, and Su keeps acting like what she did wasn’t that big a deal, so it falls flat.

What’s more, Su continues being a big presence into book 4, and I think I have to agree with Kuvira that Su should have at least done something to help the EK out. It really does make Su come off as kind of a cowardly hypocrite who’s so afraid of looking like a dictator that she doesn’t even try to help. She doesn’t want to be treated like royalty or an authoritarian, but if you look at Zaofu the place is already set up like a small kingdom, with the Beifongs being the divine bloodline descended from Toph, the strongest bender to ever live. Su is a queen in all but name, and if she was so afraid of looking like a dictator she could have just given up the power like Kuvira was supposed to have done. Su just rubs me the wrong way from start to finish, and it’s partly because the show doesn’t challenge her or make her change. It just expects us to see her as being right, and she just isn’t.

Bolin being a lava bender I remember being really excited for, because it was something I predicted when I first saw it years ago. I don’t have a problem with how he discovered it. It’s not the best way I’d like see someone discover a new power, but I think it’s better than when Korra finally got airbending (though that didn’t bother me too much either). It just kind of made sense to me and finally gave something else to stand out besides comic relief.

The air kids got better in 3 and 4 too. Meelo got less annoying, Jinora was more fleshed out, and I actually really like Ikki in book 4.

Now Korra and Asami. I think Korra is maybe at her most static in book 3, but her arc in book 4 is the most interesting as she had to build herself back up. I don’t agree with some of the things that are just told to the viewer, like how she needed to learn from her enemies. At the finale Korra says she had to suffer to learn compassion, but it’s not like Korra wasn’t a compassionate person already. Korra’s arc seemed more centered on dealing with trauma and finding her purpose in a world that seemed hellbent on telling her she wasn’t needed. I don’t know if that was some kind of meta commentary, but it does work.

I do like Korra’s overall development from where she was in book 1. If I had to put it into words, I think her story is about trying to fulfill a role that she’s been groomed for her whole life, trying to live up to expectations, pushed into doing what others want her to do, failing those things, then finding the strength and resolve to achieve success on her own terms, even if it’s not what everyone wants. Korra gradually learns to stop being a tool for world leaders to use to keep order or power. It’s not always done well, but it’s there.

It’s nice to see her and Asami be friends after the love triangle stuff. It’s kind of surprising, but they didn’t really interact all that much in the first two books all things considered. Asami doesn’t change a whole lot throughout the series, but her reconnecting with her dad at the end felt satisfying.

I’ll be honest, I never really saw Korrasami happening and didn’t view much of their interactions as being romantic in nature. I think only the letter writing and their reunion seems a little shippy, but not very obvious. That said, I can buy the two of them finally realizing they might be attracted to each other at the finale, as a beginning to their relationship. The real problem is that shippers and even Bryke overhyped this moment up as it being ENDGAME rather than treating it as what is was, a spark of attraction. Korra and Asami aren’t in love yet, they’re just going on their first official date.

I do like them being together though. It seems a lot healthier than other potential relationships, and let’s be real here; Asami NEEDED something to make her happy because holy shit has she be through a lot by the end of the series. Dumped by Mako twice, almost lost her company and lost her dad after she forgave him. Give the poor rich girl a break.

So, final thoughts on the series as a whole; it’s not as good as AtLA, but that’s mostly on the execution. LoK was messy and had issues, but it did eventually smooth things out after a lot of course correcting. There are things I don’t like, but not enough for me to write it off, and it has plenty of strengths that make it deserving of a watch if you keep an open mind.

I remember ThunderCats 2011 getting a lot of flak too, and that’s one of my favorite shows ever despite its glaring flaws, so I really can’t work up the energy to trash LoK. I know plenty of people can connect to it even if I don’t, at least not fully, and I honestly do believe that overall LoK’s strengths outweigh its flaws, even if it can be inconsistent and unpolished.

LoK may take place in the same world as AtLA, but it is a very fundamentally different series, and beyond a few very core basics of storytelling I think it’s a little unfair to compare the two. It’s not the masterpiece it could have been, but at the end I still enjoyed it. I might have more thoughts later, but these are what I have for now.

#Legend of Korra #The Legend of Korra #lok #tlok #korra #mako #bolin #asami #asami sato #korrasami

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amuelia · 4 years

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I'm not sure if you've ever mentioned anything about this but how do you feel about show Roose? I was really sad to see his character get cut so much but I really like his voice,,,,it's a good Roose voice ( also it's CRIMINAL how they took away the Bolton's pink like they don't even wear anything but black in the show 😭😭 ) (( also also I absolutely love your art YOU MAKE SO MUCH GOOD ART OF UNDER APPRECIATED CHARACTERS ITS SO GOOD TO SEE 🥺😭♥️♥️ ))

I think the actor is very handsome and talented! I like reading his Interviews, he seems very intelligent and you can see the thought he put into his character and his scenes. He did a great job with the material he was given, and i think it’s very understandable and professional that he read the first books but then decided to focus his portrayal on the show scripts, because the way they wrote him was too different.

Did you read the books before you started filming? I read the books before I started. Well, I read two of the books, and then I stopped actually. Because the character in the books is very, very different to the character in the show. The core differences were he spoke with a whisper. He never raised his voice. He had no emotion on his face. I remember there's a [line] that joy and laughter were very similar. So you couldn't play that. It's fine if it was the Roose Bolton show, you could do something like that. The character was not written like that at all. So it kind of did me a disservice reading the books. So I put them aside and just concentrated on the character in the scripts. - Michael McElhatton, IGN interview

But also, in the end, what he mentions about the difference is part of why, as a book stan, the show version doesn’t interest me that much; it’s not even about him specifically, but just a general thing all the show characters share. Just like most other characters they adapted, they completely suck the fun out of the character grrm wrote - no leeches, no icy eyes or pale face, no pink house sigil; ending up with a character that pretty much looks and acts like every other dude. I don’t need Roose to look like Dracula (as much as i love it, the long dark hair for example is not book canon, since his hair is never described), but he should be memorable! Instead, i often hear that people new to the show don’t remember his s2 scenes, or mix him up with other regular looking dudes like Stannis, or otherwise don’t remember him. One of grrm’s biggest strengths is how with just a few traits he makes every character memorable and distiguishable; think about any random character and youll probbaly remember at least one “special trait” that sets their appearance or personality apart from the rest. The show completely falls flat in this regard, ironically making it so that the books make better use of the “visual medium” than the show does.

Apart from that, visually the actor is ok; Considering a Dance with Dragons came out at a similar time as the first season and the casting process takes a while, I don’t blame them for leaving out some details of his character descriptions (for example his “ageless” appearance or the small close-set eyes are only mentioned in aDwD). His height (175cm, influenced my hc for the book version) and body type are close to the book, though i wish they’d left him clean-shaven like in s2 for the entire show. He has a bit of a long face which fits with the book’s northmen. He’s no Supermodel but i heard him called handsome frequently, so idk if that fits with the book description “not handsome but not quite plain”; i love interesting faces more than conventionally attractive ones so i can’t really judge objectively. Voice is imo too deep (imdb also calls it “commanding”), i imagine him having more of a mid range voice; and the actor also just talks normally instead of being notably whispery/quiet.

In terms of characterization, as the actor hints at, I do not think they are written very similarly. Roose in the books is a character who is ruled by an underlying fear/anxiety that drives him to, at all times, ensure his own safety and health (I elaborate on this more in this meta); The show version the way i remember it does not show this a lot. He doesn’t have the leeching scene and if he has scenes about being obsessed with health they werent prominent enough for me to remember (maybe the Jaime scene included some book dialogue?). He is serious, but he does not act emotionless to hide his feelings (Though the show scene where he says he doesn’t drink was a nice touch; it is not completely congruent with book canon, but brings across the same idea that he wants to be in control of a situation and his feelings).

For a bigger example: Show!Roose’s characterization in the Red Wedding episode shows him acting very confident and in a great mood, bantering with Cat, and staying in the room the entire time while wearing chainmail; while in the books he barely eats and doesn’t talk to Cat, is shown exchanging threatening glances with Walder, and leaves early to ensure his own safety only to return fully decked out in armor to give Robb the final blow. In the books, imo, you can see that he is stressed out by the situation; because while he planned it very thoroughly with Lothar Frey, it is still a great risk for such a cautious man to take, and he needs to trust that Walder doesn’t backstab him.

Bolton had made a toast to Lord Walder's grandsons when the wedding feast began, pointedly mentioning that Walder and Walder were in the care of his bastard son. From the way the old man had squinted at him, his mouth sucking at the air, Catelyn knew he had heard the unspoken threat.

They are not necessarily great story-changing differences, but to me still paint a different picture of his character. People always say “oh a character doesnt need to look exactly like the descriptions as long as the actor works for the story, oh you dont need to adapt every little character detail as long as the story is intact”, but do this too much and somewhere along the way you lose what makes the character themselves. The small details and human traits are what makes me love a character, so if those are missing i end up not seeing them as a an adaptation of the same guy, even if the plot is similar. I do think there are scenes in the show where you can see the scriptwriter read the books and put in some of the book characterization, but the general direction of the character is still different.

I also loathe the s2 change that had Arya as Tywin’s cupbearer; it removes one (/two) of Roose’ best chapters and also the one that establishes a lot of his character traits and Red Wedding foreshadowing. The Tywin-Arya scenes are everything wrong with the show; changing scenes arbitrarily to prop up fan-favourite characters (later culminating in stuff the s7 wight hunt), bad “feminism” (like Arya saying “most girls are idiots”), having characters act OOC to be more “likable” or “sympathetic” (like that weird “fatherly” way Tywin acts towards Arya), ignoring how people in that time period and universe act (as if a man like Tywin would even glance at a servant), etc etc... here is a great post on that scene by @turtle-paced.

As far as the post-s3 scenes go I’m not a fan (though i did not rewatch those a lot, so feel free to remind me if i forgot something). i don’t like that they made Ramsay the main character of the plot, with Roose merely as a supporting role side character; the books give Roose a great arc starting in aDwD that imo is needed as a continuation of the Red Wedding plot. They pretty much cut out the Winterfell aDwD story (one of my fave storylines in asoiaf) entirely and replaced it with forgettable scenes. Replacing Jeyne with Sansa not only makes no sense for Littlefinger but also for Roose, since that makes him antagonize the Iron Throne. His death scene was so bad that it makes me hopeful he will have a bigger story in the books, and that they just culled him because they wanted to thin out plots like they did with Mance, Barristan, and Stannis.

Though in the end, while i don’t like the show’s writing and visual direction, i do still thank them for making the Boltons such prominent characters; They seem to have gained a lot of fans through the show, and are regarded as very important characters (i even see them in some “great houses” gifsets). They are of course also important in the books, but not as prominent/central as for example Ramsay was in s6. So even if they are adapted badly (Show Ramsay is especially bad), if they make people interested in their book counterparts, it’s still some sort of a win in my book.

(Also, thank you so much!! Glad you enjoy my art ❤️❤️)

#asks #asoiaf #roose bolton #meta #game of thrones #Anonymous #not art #long post

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panharmonium · 4 years

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more rambling re: that last post (+ the merlin/will fic survey overview)

because i generally refrain from reading fic while i’m actively writing for a fandom, the only real ao3 reading i have done for merlin is my survey of the merlin/will ship tag. and the only reason i undertook that survey in the first place is because while i was doing an introductory cruise of the various merlin tags during my first exploration of the fandom (after i finally finished S5 and was able to start looking into fandom dynamics without fearing spoilers), i noticed that a LOT of the fic tagged with this ship was also tagged merlin/arthur, and despite the fact that i personally am more interested in gen stuff, i started to get both suspicious and annoyed about what i was seeing. but i also wanted to have the data to back up my annoyed feelings, so i made a little spreadsheet for myself and then just filled it in whenever i had time to kill and wanted something to do.

the data, when i eventually finished, backed up my annoyance pretty much as well as i expected, which was disappointing, but not surprising.

to clarify - i’m not annoyed by the fact that will and merlin don’t have a whole lot of material in their ship tag. will only showed up directly in one episode; i don’t expect him to be a popular subject. what i AM annoyed by is the fact that there are actually more merlin/arthur fics in the merlin/will tag than there are fics that actually focus on...merlin/will. by, like - an extreme margin.

(the rest of this is just me griping about fandom trends. popping it under a cut so folks can just move on with their days if this isn’t relevant to their interests.)

The Numbers

two quick notes before i get into the nitty-gritty:

1) i originally did this survey a few months ago, but i updated it this week with fics that have been added since then, so the numbers are current.

2) some of the data below would probably vary slightly depending on who was conducting the survey, so there’s a bit of wiggle room in either direction. the criteria i had to use [aka what counts as just a ship ‘mention’ vs actual content] would be subject to reader interpretation, obviously, but even with that, i do feel that most stories fell into pretty clear categories.)

so, without further ado -

total # of fics in the ship tag: 145

number of fics that are inappropriately tagged (meaning either will himself or merlin/will as a ship does not actually appear [which is kind of bizarre, but which i saw happen surprisingly frequently], OR where there is only a brief reference to will or past!merlin/will and that’s the extent of their inclusion: 50

number of fics that are duplicates of works already in the tag (ie podfic), or (in one case) a meta podcast about the show: 5

so, that brings down our total number of fics with some sort of actual merlin/will content to 90.

of these 90 works, only 17 of them are actually focused on merlin/will.

everything else in will’s ship tag, including the 54 works from the previously discussed "incorrectly tagged” category, is either a) fic where will is dumped, broken up with, or otherwise passed over in favor of arthur (and very occasionally gwaine, at least once mordred, once percival, once arthur and gwaine in a threesome, and once CENRED, which i’m sure will would be especially thrilled about), or b) fic where will is only included as a previous/ex relationship (again, almost always in lieu of arthur).

moreover - of the 17 actual merlin/will fics, 7 still end with will dying or the relationship ending for reasons other than him being passed over for arthur. an additional 4 are <1000 word PWP snippets, generally written for old LJ summer pornathons, one of which still somehow manages to be...you guessed it - all about arthur.

in terms of actual one-shots/full fics where merlin/will is the endgame/non-dead pairing, there are only 6 stories.

i repeat: will gets six earnest stories, IN HIS OWN SHIP TAG.

i repeat once again: will, in a non-dead, endgame form, gets 4% of his own ship tag.

The Content

the in-fic trends are frustrating, if you actually like this character.

the asshole. will is an abusive boyfriend. he is a jealous ex. he’s a shitty friend. he’s a stalker. he’s manipulative. he’s emotionally abusive. he’s physically abusive. he dumps merlin for someone else. he cheats. in one fic he’s so mad at merlin that he outs merlin’s magic to arthur. in multiple fics, i watched him literally go off the rails and try to murder somebody.

the fuckbuddy. they’re just messing around, guys! no, of course it’s not serious! they just do this for fun! of course there’s nothing to get in the way of arthur’s inevitable arrival! no sirree!

the unrequited. will is actually in it deep for merlin, but merlin doesn’t feel the same. this does not, however, prevent merlin from using will for sex, companionship, comfort, distraction, etc - until arthur shows up, when will either steps aside in deference to merlin’s all-consuming passion for arthur or is dropped like a hot potato.

“not even will.” that sentence. over and over again. merlin had never felt like this before, not even with will. nobody had ever understood merlin like this, not even will. even in fic when they were like. married. or engaged. fanon arthur pendragon must be truly mind-blowing, y’all.

dead long-term relationship. will was merlin’s husband/fiancé/long-term partner. now he is Dead. merlin getting together with arthur is what allows merlin to Heal. (these stories sometimes contain some variation of “not even will,” as discussed above.)

lastly, in a related phenomenon:

who are you and what have you done with arthur pendragon??? i suppose in a way it’s nice to know that will isn’t the only one who gets the OOC treatment, but it is still really...something, to read fic where will is twisted into an unpleasant, abusive, canon non-compliant version of himself, and then to see arthur, on the very same page, transformed into a gentle, solicitous, kind, caring, equally canon non-compliant angel. fanon!arthur is more worried about merlin’s well-being than literally anyone i have ever seen. he is so invested in merlin’s emotional health. he is so concerned about merlin’s boundaries. he says things to merlin that no version of arthur pendragon has ever - EVER - in any universe, thought about saying to anybody. he wants to hear all about merlin’s problems, and he’s all about taking it slow and making sure merlin feels comfortable and loved and worthy and safe (from all that horrible stuff done by that horrible other guy; that must’ve been so hard, merlin; ‘it’s okay, i’ve got you now’) - the man is utterly unrecognizable. and you know what? it’s okay! it is fine to make your characters as OOC as you want. it is fine to make them better/nicer than they were in the canon. sometimes we all want that, right? it’s fanfic! have a ball. i will never tell anyone to stop writing what they like, and i will NEVER interact negatively with a fic i don’t care for. EVER. do not do this, people - click the back button and move on with your life. but i reserve the right to be annoyed, in my own space, about a persistent trend of will and arthur’s canon functions being flat-out reversed, in service of merlin/arthur. not in the sense that canon!will is particularly gentle or sweet, because that’s not the case - but in the sense that will, in canon, is the one who actually cares about merlin’s best interests, whereas arthur is, quite frankly, the ass. a lovable ass (sometimes). but an ass nonetheless, and one whose relationship with merlin is, from start to finish, an unhealthy, oppressive mess.

The Point

the point of me typing this up is not to say that what people choose to write is bad or wrong. this is fanfic! you can write whatever you want. you can make characters as OOC as you want. you can create as many AUs as you want. i don’t mind fic authors writing stuff i don’t personally care for; someone else probably loves those stories! and i am never going to interact negatively with anything i don’t personally enjoy - i am going to let people continue to have fun in their own ways, and i am going to grumble about my frustrations in my own space, and then i’m going to direct my energy into writing stuff i would personally like to read.

the point is just that i needed a brief second to complain, on my own blog, about my most familiar bbc merlin nemesis (otherwise known as ‘single-ship ubiquity’). and what i mean by this is that it is REALLY FRUSTRATING that other little relationships are not even granted the tiniest concession of owning their own ship tags, in a fandom that is already so SATURATED with merlin/arthur content. like - even if i’m generous and use the number 17 for the number of actual merlin/will fics in the tag, that still means 88% of will’s ship tag is actually fic about merlin falling in love with people who aren’t will (*cougharthur*). eighty-eight percent! of his own ship tag!

(to put it another way - the ship tag isn’t supposed to be where you go to watch your character get repeatedly dumped or left behind for someone else, okay? it’s supposed to be literally the opposite of that.)

will’s ship tag is already tiny. and almost all of it belongs to arthur. moreover, a significant chunk of it uses will as a convenient villain (completely contradicting every canon aspect of his characterization), when in the actual story will dies to protect arthur (who he doesn’t even like) and then lies to save merlin (at the expense of his own reputation, and despite the fact that he personally thinks merlin returning to camelot is a bad idea). his behavior in canon is selfless, and wholly committed to merlin’s welfare, and yet in his ship tag he gets treated like trash.

the kid can’t catch a break. and it’s such a pervasive thing that even though i personally am primarily interested in merlin and will as friends (i am pretty romance-averse in general when it comes to media, and i have never written anything that isn’t gen, for any fandom, ever, in my life), i am also so indignant on will’s behalf that i’ve basically become invested in the well-being of this ship as a matter of principle. it’s not my main thing, and it’s not necessarily how i view the canon-verse, but i am SO IRRITATED about how virtually all of will’s shipfic has been taken over by merthur (and about how maligned will is in his own tag) that i have actively committed myself to supporting merlin and will together in as many AUs as possible.

(this is basically like when i trained myself to love allison argent after teen wolf killed her off. i did that out of spite, y’all. it’s the principle of the thing.)

so, y’know. all i am saying is that i think will deserves his share of happy endings, and i think it would be nice to see fics where he is not just a stepping stone on the road to merthur or an unrecognizable parody of himself.

more importantly - EVERY merlin ship deserves to have a tag that isn’t completely swallowed by the local fandom behemoth. merlin/arthur already owns three quarters of the archive. a gargantuan oil tanker like that can afford to let the little rarepair canoes float down their own streams in peace.

#tl;dr version:#GIVE MERLIN AND WILL THEIR OWN FICS 2K20 #I WILL NOT REST UNTIL THIS INJUSTICE HAS BEEN ADDRESSED #(y'all think i am kidding but i have already walked the walk ok)#(i am currently the internet title-holder for 'most words dedicated to this relationship')#(it might be the platonic version but if you don't think i will stretch myself and try something new)#(then you underestimate just how aggravated i am)#(and just how much i want this kid to get everything he deserves)#the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #fandom

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tobeornottotc · 4 years

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The hidden rules of TKEM and why understanding it will help you understand the show.

The rules of TKEM and why understanding it will help you get the show.

Being in the TKEM is so reminiscent of the first time I realised how deep shows could be and how cunning their creators are when forming a whole new universe/rabbit hole to fall into. My first ever show to do this for me was the Disney show in America called Girl meets world. I remembered how much we hated at first the first season, how we cringed at the plot lines, the quotes and the whole meta aspect of the show. I remember the first time I noticed the gateway, a couple which was so secretly hidden in subtext that kept jumping at me and in my need to understand why I felt this way I went and researched other people’s thoughts on this. To my surprise other people felt the same way I did. In the next season we had the full plot twist, this couple had been in love with each other for at least 2 years, and no one knew. But once we understood the rules of this show, going back to season 1 felt like a slap in the face, it was there all along, the reason for why everything was confusing was done on purpose. Sorry for going of tangent, but that’s also what happened with me with TKEM episode 1-6. This was the show I waited for all year, I am obsessed with Kim Eun Sook, not even because of her deep writing but because of all the love stories I have been addicted to because of her. She knew how to make me be obsessed with a new world and she made Korea look so amazing. So, I waited and by the end of episode 6 I was devastated I couldn’t understand certain choices in this drama and it made me very depressed honestly. Until I finally noticed a gate way, I mistakenly stumbled like I always do into knowing one of the rules and then I fought to get to the bottom of it. And just like I was heavily tricked by GMW, TKEM did the same and I am so grateful I didn’t stop watching it. So, for all of you confused about the show, here are some things that could help you understand this show even more. I call them the rules that the show seems to be following. Everything is done on purpose. Let’s begin:

Why TKEM is so confusing

1. The confusing storytelling and jarring world building and Taeul’s polarising character.

This was hard for me during episode 1-4. I remember sitting there wondering why on earth everything was so confusing, nonlinear, and why it felt rushed. I understood that KES stories can sometime feel like this, no plot at first before she hits you with the reveal. But this story felt odd and didn’t pick up the plot until episode 6. I also why watching things in Gon’s POV was so confusing, why did he know so much and yet so little? Why did we not understand why he was acting the way he did. Until I finally got the first rule, the story isn’t in Gon’s POV. The story is narrated by our Present Taeul who’s reminiscing about the story whilst she interrogates Lee Lim. This is the first scene we are introduced to in episode 1. That’s because we’re in a flash back being narrated by Taeul. As Taeul in our current episode figures out more about the two worlds, the mythology and the plans Lee Lim has we get more information then. Remember in the first episode she is really confused by Gon, she refuses to believe in the world, and everything feels to bizarre. It’s the same way we feel about the show from those episodes, we feel frustrated she doesn’t believe Gon but at the same time we also find him so ridiculous.

I have another post about this but TKEM uses Alice in the wonderland as a base (GMW did this as well), it uses both books Alice in wonderland and through the looking glass. I had previously thought that because Gon is our main character, and he goes into the parallel world, he is our Alice. I was wrong. Taeul is our Alice in Wonderland. She also states it to Gon when she enters Corea the first time. When Alice first enters wonderland, she is confused by the bizarreness of Wonderland. Just like again for the first 5 episodes we are, everything makes no sense, Gon speaks gibberish most of the time using mathematics and science, he’s also very annoying. This is because Taeul is flat earther, she believes in things that she can see, so the first introduction to Gon and other’s is simply crazy to her, she is adamant that its not true. So, we wait until she goes to Corea and finds out that everything is right. Once she explores Corea we finally start to see a linear storyline, we slowly start to understand more about other things like Lim’s goals, her real feelings for Gon, we finally get to start to notice that the show is withholding a lot of information and its slowly coming together. This is also because Taeul is trying to solve the murder mysteries connected to Lee Lim, as she learns more we also start to see more about his goals. She’s our source of information, she’s privy to some parts of the soul but only when she takes part in it. That’s why we don’t understand why Gon chased after the white rabbit it was so odd, because that’s all she knows he did. She also doesn’t know how time travel plays into this, so as Gon figures out about this, its because she’s also starting to recognise it too.

This is also why time is so nonlinear to us. The flashbacks make no sense, some of the stuff like Fate (yoyo boy) are to cryptic for us to get. Taeul doesn’t yet know their part in this. I think its also why we don’t see a lot on Prime minister Koo either, because all Taeul probably knows about her at this point is the girl who wants to marry Gon for his throne and the girl who she admires for being in power. This also happened in GMW, the audience in the first season saw things through a 12-year-old girl’s perspective so everything felt cheesy, cringy, and nonsensical. It’s done on purpose, we the audience just like Taeul feel like Alice in wonderland, the more she gets to understand why the rabbit is running and is going to be late, the closer she gets to that trial at the end of the book, the more she grows up, the more the story starts to make sense. Taeul’s earth is no longer flat, things are now being pieced together so we also get to know more about that. Be Patient. The directing is done to make you think things are being overlooked, because Taeul is also overlooking important hints.

2. The directing is wacky. There are too many characters that are pointless.

This is another thing that really annoyed me the first 6 episodes, the way the director uses the nonlinear timeline. Especially when we don’t have any information for why we should feel a certain way. An example of this is Taeul running into Gon’s arms when the whole episode she’s been hating and fighting with him or when she breaks down in episode 10 when he appears and kisses her before leaving. What we know is that this doesn’t make sense, we don’t understand what’s making her do this because we normally find out in a flashback of the first 25 minutes of the next episode. Because the next episode is always a week away. We the audience feel cheated and simply confused.

Funny thing about this is once you understand this show is about time travel. The director’s choices start to make sense, we have so many timelines already showing up, Gon can travel back in time, and forward, just like we the audience also end up doing. The normal ending of the even episodes is us in the future of Taeul’s narration before we are flung back into the past in the next episode to get what happened. It’s done-on purpose.

Another confusing thing about the show is the way the director shows us the two different worlds. This show is chucked with so many side characters, it’s like Goblin whenever he goes to help someone, or the grim reaper goes to take someone’s life. Unfortunately, while it worked for Goblin in a linear narrative, this show has the rule of two, there twice the same amount of characters we know, they have another parallel self in a different world. With the directing its hard to know when these worlds differ, we are always confused by the characters we don’t know where they belong to. But that’s because Taeul doesn’t know at that moment about Lee Lim’s plan to replace the dopple gangers, just as the two world are bleeding into each other (remember Eun Sup feeling the heat of the hot chocolate of Yeong on his iced tea), we get even more confused as to where everyone is from. That’s what Lee Lim is doing replacing everyone in a different world and making them become part of that world. The director does this by withholding information about the side characters so we just as Gon and Taeul are confused by who they are and why they are important in certain worlds. The director is doing this on purpose. Its meant to be confusing.

3. The powers of the flute is so confusing. Lim’s plans make no sense and for the first 6 episodes he hides doing nothing but being ominous in the background.

The title: The King Eternal Monarch

Points to consider:

· The word eternity is defined as something that keeps on going on and on and doesn’t have an end. This is the biggest rule of the show, Gon is stuck in a cycle/loop where he must keep on ruling and fighting for the throne. This is what the show is about, that’s why the flute is so important, and unbreakable sword his father has gifted him. They are artefacts representing Gon’s plight to keep trying to control his reign. He’s the noble blood that’s fated to keep doing this repeatedly. So the question is how? We know this, it’s time travel. The first 6 episodes is about Gon learning about the powers of the flute, he recognises time is important, he recognises that the person who saves his life comes from the future, he knows that person is connected to Taeul because of her id card. He understands this because he understands science and maths, that’s why he speaks in scientific and mathematical terms at the beginning to Taeul. He was explaining what this show is, it’s a sci fi, its going to focus on sci fi themes such as time travel and parallel dimensions. From the beginning the show has explained using Gon’s lexicon that this is all about time travel, its about the character getting to the point where he must save himself again. Taeul is the reason why he’s doing this. That’s why she’s the person he searches for, for 25 years.

We have two people fighting for the throne to be king. Monarch is to do with the royal family and the control over a government. The fight for the throne is the whole plot of this show, just like in through the looking glass, Alice ends up mistakenly in a battle between the two queens, it’s the same thing. This is a battle for the monarchy, with two different people who have different reasons why they want the throne. Gon however is the king we know; this story is about him through Taeul’s eyes.

4. The pointless conversations with characters and confusing scenes.

Literature is used as devices used to help us understand what’s going

I already have posts on this, but each story mentioned, each book helps us understand and foreshadow this whole show. It also makes us understand more about the show. There are so many stories mentioned, the myth of the manchipasseok and the dragon king, (the flute), the wonderland series, King Arthur, the book about flowers (the book Lady Noh reads), the poem Gon reads (Invoking the name of the dead), Greek mythology on the fates (the yo yo boy). Kim Eun Sook does this in all her fantasy stories, in secret Garden it was little mermaid but the man as the mermaid, in Goblin it was the mythology of the grim reaper and Goblin, the poem about first love etc… She does this to help the audience not feel cheated by the ending of the show, she already has told you what’s going to happen. This is exactly why the directing choices are the way they are, the plot is told the way it is. Each of our characters are connected to a tale. If you need to know more look at my posts about Things to know about TKEM to know where its going.

5. Their relationship is rushed and confusing.

This is solved by knowing how the subtext and the mathematical references explains their relationship and why it’s so fast.

These are also used to tell you about the rules of the show. The maths theories are not my strengths, but these are so important. Gon has mentioned Taeul’s role in the story by telling her she represents the number zero when he confesses to her. He’s again reiterating that this story is happening because of her, she’s the most important factor in this whole show. There’s so many mathematical references that I can’t analyse but if you’re able to do so, you’ll crack more about each of the characters especially why Taeul and Gon act the way they do.

There’s also subtext which everyone has been missing out on. I believe in the theory that our current timeline is not the first time Gon and Taeul have interacted. This is the reason why Taeul easily falls for him once he shows her evidence of his world. She already felt those feelings before, and she recognises it but she can’t explain why. Therefore, Gon instantly chases after Luna as the white rabbit without any explanation, something is making him do this, he’s used to doing this. I’ve spoken so much about Lady Noh and Buyeong also knowing about this too, they know Gon and Taeul have done this too many times, and they remember, why they do I don’t know. There’s also the red balloons I mentioned in the land of frozen time (the pink sky land that has no sun or rain) I think they represent how many times we’ve been through this loop before. If Gon and Taeul have known each other longer than centuries, it would explain why all he wants to do is find her, and why she easily accepts her fate to love him and be with him. The way they act shows you that subtext is important in understanding the show, why she moves away from his hug when he first approaches her like she’s expecting it, why she can’t stop thinking of him, why she talks about her tragic fate and then rapidly tells him she loves him so they speed up their relationship, why easily runs to him after he goes back to Corea. She loved him also from the beginning.

The songs and osts are also important to understand the subtext. There are many songs portraying Taeul’s thoughts when she first met Gon. I have posts on this. There are so many songs foreshadowing the ending of the show, and the whole eternal loop of the show. Gon’s main purpose is to find Taeul he does this by always opening the gates. Taeul’s main purpose is to wait for him because it’s her promise to him. (Listen to please don’t cry and dream, maze and orbit read the English lyrics). Therefore, Taeul and Gon don’t build their relationship slowly, they’ve already passed that stage in their previous meetings, that’s why he proposes to her in episode 2. He knows this.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I didn’t even go into details about the fight for justice and Fate and destiny as a rule as well of this show. But my other posts talk about these two.

#the king eternal monarch #the king: eternal monarch #lee gon #kim eun sook #tkem

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jedi-order-apologist · 4 years

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Hello there! Could you maybe put together small SW novels recommendation list? You reference books often and I assume you can suggest a few good ones that shed light/give more insight into the Jedi culture. Thank you for your blog and have a good day 💗

Thank you! I hope you have a good day too.

I actually haven’t read that many Star Wars books, all things considered - there are a lot, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the prequel era stuff, let alone the rest of the franchise. I only recently started getting into the books, and there’s probably a lot more really good ones out there that I just haven’t had the chance to get to yet.

What I could do is go through what I have read and give my opinions on those. So far, in no particular order, I’ve read:

- The novelizations for the prequels and some of the original novelizations for the OT. More on my thoughts on those here (and specifically for the ROTS novelization here), but in summary: TPM novelization is a bit weak, AOTC novelization is decent and really helped sell the romance to me in a way the film fell flat for me, ROTS novelization is nothing short of phenomenal, ROTJ novelization is also pretty good, I don’t remember the ESB novelization enough to say anything on it, and I never read the ANH (or technically just Star Wars) novelization. I’d say they’re worth checking out at least once.

- Shatterpoint. I really like this one, it deals a lot with Mace struggling with the dark side, and it captures the idea of falling to the dark side as something rooted in defeatism, which really resonates with my interpretation. There’s quite a bit of discussion of Jedi philosophy and why they do and believe the things they do (or at least how Mace Windu sees it) - I’ve cited it before in my meta because I think it lays out pretty well why they resist the dark side. It also deals a lot with the costs of war - especially psychologically. There’s also a decent element of Jedi as family through the father-daughter relationship of Mace and Depa. On top of all of that, it’s very well written (same author as the ROTS novelization). I strongly recommend this one, though be warned that it is a very heavy, brutal book - oh, it’s not completely bleak, and it has it’s moments of humor, but it is not a happy story. It ends in victory, both in the immediate situation, and with Mace coming to terms with some of what he’d been struggling with, but I wouldn’t call it a happy ending, more that…well, as Mace says, he’s the last one standing.

- Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. I read this one most recently, and I made a long post on why I absolutely loved it. It’s not perfect but I think it’s the best portrayal of the Jedi in the books that I’ve come across so far - this book really goes hard on the “Jedi as family” idea, which I love, and there are really good conversations on (and inspiring examples of resisting) the dark side, and working through but not giving into grief. Everyone should read this book, it shows the Jedi as an inspiring people with so much tenacity and compassion, doing their best. And it eviscerates every bit of nonsense about the Jedi (and especially Yoda) being “emotionless” or “loveless”- it’s full of amazing passages that are absolutely perfect responses to these notions, direct refutations of them even (as well as refutations about the idea of the dark side having any kind of merit at all) because they get slung around in the story by a lot of the characters. If I could only pick one Star Wars book to suggest someone read, it would be this one, absolutely.

- Kenobi. Do you like Westerns and a sad Obi-Wan with a chronic hero syndrome that doesn’t help him with the whole ‘staying under the radar’ thing? If yes, you will probably like this book. It doesn’t really get much into Jedi culture, since…well, they’re dead, and most of the book is written from an outside perspective, not Obi-Wan’s. I think that was a good choice, because while he’s understandably going to be very sad during this time (it takes place during his very early days on Tatooine), constant exposure to that, in my opinion, would overdo it and wear out the audience. So the outside perspective of how sad and weird he is, where the characters don’t understand the context behind his behavior, but the audience does, works really well. I have some issues with it - for instance, while it’s kind of hilarious how much everyone wants to jump his bones in this book, I do wish that they’d kept the chemistry between Obi-Wan and Annileen strictly platonic (and the language around romance in this book rubs me the wrong way). And how people find out his last name is a bit contrived. But it’s a decent read that I’d recommend.

- Jedi Apprentice (series). I’d recommend this with the caveat that you have to go into it keeping in mind that it’s written for younger readers. Which absolutely does NOT mean it’s all fluff and sunshine and rainbows, very far from it (I call this series “Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Collection of Childhood Trauma” for some very good reasons, and the fact that he tries to sacrifice himself to suicide-bomb a door open with the slave collar wrapped around his neck before he even gets taken on as a padawan is just one of them), but there’s a lot of stuff that…doesn’t feel like it was explored fully to an adult reader’s satisfaction. It has a lot of the usual kind of fridge logic that often comes into play with kids’ media, and while it was written to be favorable towards the Jedi, that fridge stuff gets taken by fandom as reasons to criticize the Jedi quite often. More on that here.

- Cloak of Deception. This one’s…okay? It does spend quite a bit of time with the Jedi, but it feels pretty surface level. Luceno’s strength is in the fantasy space politics; for whatever reason his character interactions always fall flat for me, though I’m not sure if I can articulate why they’re so unsatisfying to me outside of a handful of good moments. But if you’re looking for a look into the politics leading up to TPM (or at least, Legends take on it), this is (one of) the books to look at. I say one of because I actually read Darth Plagueis first, and there is a bit of overlap.

- The Approaching Storm. This is the lead-in book to AOTC. It does a decent job with a look at the Jedi, I think, with a few snags (Barriss straight-up heals brain damage/mental illness to the point of complete personality changes, which seems way outside Jedi abilities to me, and there’s a bit of “maybe we shouldn’t take people from their families” angle instead of the Jedi as family angle). Also for some reason it refers to Barriss and Luminara as humans. And while the book tells us a lot about how important it is that the Jedi negotiate this conflict, most of their actual obstacles are getting places, with the negotiation itself getting glossed over. But it was a decent read, I think.

- Labyrinth of Evil. This is another Luceno book, this time for leading up to ROTS. The character interactions worked a little better here - or at least they had more of their moments - Anakin basically going “Marriage what marriage I don’t see a marriage” in front of Obi-Wan was pretty damn funny…and everyone knows the “infinite sadness” line that follows off of that. I’ll be curious as to what the current continuity gives us for what set off the invasion of Coruscant, because this (as part of Legends) gave us a pretty good reason for it. I’d recommend it, again, for the examination of the political situation, and there’s some decent action in here too. There’s a few insights into the Jedi but it’s hit or miss whether I agree with them, and they’re not the focus.

- Darth Plagueis. This one’s probably the best of Luceno’s books (that I’ve read), but it’s not Jedi-friendly. Most of that’s because, well…it’s from the Sith’s perspective, so they’re not going to be very pro-Jedi. I’m mostly okay with that because a lot of their criticism of the Jedi is very clearly coming from an obviously bad faith position (”the Jedi let the Republic decay” the Sith say as they devour a man’s heart and talk about how the Sith need to make all the problems of the Republic worse), although there’s one scene at the end that I really don’t like because it appears to really claim that the Jedi would’ve told Anakin to never talk about his mother, which doesn’t match up with, well, AOTC, for one thing, or just my impression of them in general. But what this book does do well is a look at how the Sith influenced the political situation, and a lot of midichlorian lore (seriously, this book feels like a middle finger to prequel hate - “oh you thought the fantasy space politics were boring? You thought midichlorians were stupid? Here’s why you’re wrong”). Luceno’s way of doing character interactions actually serves this book really well, because the Sith are able to be written as the focus characters without making them sympathetic in the least. If you’re looking to get invested in characters, probably not the book for you, but if you’re looking for fantasy space politics, it’s pretty good.

- Rogue Planet. This one has a good interpretation of the Jedi, I think, though you do have to contend with the “written before AOTC” issue of authors not realizing that Jedi weren’t supposed to get married and have children. But I liked the look at how they handled discipline - Anakin gets in trouble, and he’s brought before the Council, and the whole process is about questioning him to get him to realize and admit what he did wrong, not punishment. They then make the decision to redirect his energy into something productive by sending him and Obi-Wan on a mission. Also, Anakin sees a Jedi therapist at the end of this book, so it’s a good one to throw back at anyone who claims that the Jedi never helped him or that the Jedi don’t do therapy. But…plot-wise…it’s a little weak, mostly in that not much is resolved because it’s mostly setting up for stuff that won’t pay off until much, much further down the line (as in, whenever the Yuuzhan-Vong show up). The ship-growing thing was cool though.

- Wild Space. If you’re looking for a ridiculously dramatic Obi-Wan whump fic that’s one step away from sticking Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Bail in a foursome, this is the book for you. If you’re looking for things like accurate characterization, an interpretation of the Jedi consistent with the films, believable interpersonal communication, or an actual plot…you will be sorely disappointed by this book.

- Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth. This is the sequel to Wild Space. It has a second part, Clone Wars Gambit: Siege, which I have not been able to bring myself to read, which probably tells you all you need to know about my thoughts on the first one, though you can read more about them here. In short, I strongly do not recommend this book at all, and find it to be pretty terrible characterization (even though it’s played for sympathy) of the Jedi and especially Obi-Wan. Wild Space at least has absurdity going for it. Stealth does not.

And that’s it! That’s all I’ve read so far. I’m sure not everyone will agree with my opinions, but in terms of my personal recommendations/non-recommendations, this is what I have.

#book recommendations #or not recommendations as the case may be #discussion #jedi #on jedi culture #Anonymous

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