#Some people are gonna want to work within the confines of canon because they like the canon
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A while back, I had this concept of a Metroid fanon, which I typically do for series I really like; Sort of flesh out, entirely in my head with no intention of actually writing it down, maybe just drawing, my own sort of take on the canon. An idea for how a larger story would incorporate and flow between these different games or installments or whatever, stuff that would happen in-between, and stuff afterwards.
Basically, I wanted to make a unifying storyline out of Metroid. Entirely in my head, of course. And I quickly found that one of the themes I stumbled across, an idea I ended up having a lot of fun with, was this idea of… the Niche, for sapient alien species.
Think of it like this; Imagine you’re an alien with a body type more akin to Kraid, being huge and massive and capable of hurling projectile weaponry. You want to be an accountant, and so does this other alien beside you, who’s more human-sized. You both have the same skills as accountants and are both paid the same for it, except!
You have much greater needs. Bigger body means more nutrition needed. Bigger body means more space to occupy, which means greater rent. You need all of your equipment to work at home with specially made for your body type, because sometimes companies prefer to work with a specific range of shapes or sizes amongst alien species. You ultimately make less than your fellow accountant, due to the particular expenses of your existence.
Of course, a friend brings up to you that some people need help hauling stuff around, and they don’t want to pay a lot for a big crew, or maybe it’s just easier with you. You’re huge and strong, you can help! And you became an accountant, partly because you weren’t interested in physical labor. But you’re clearly the best for it, and will be paid for it, so… You don’t have much options but to do this side job. It’s fine you guess, but you still have to work two jobs to keep yourself alive.
It’s the idea that some species have certain bodies better equipped for certain jobs, so even if they’d rather do something else, they’d probably be outcompeted by another species, and end up pointed back in their assigned ‘niche’ in society. It’s easier and simpler for the Federation to operate by this more confined system, where larger, bigger body types work labor and are compensated accordingly, while smaller aliens are expected to work in occupations that make the most of their small size, and are also paid accordingly.
You’re a human, adaptable and hardy, so you’re expected to be a footsoldier in the Federation’s military. You’re a Ceratopsid, time for you to be a leader! Phrygisians are unique for generating ice, of course you’ll have an occupation related to cooling, like a firefighter or even just an ice cream maker! You arguably have a social responsibility to make the most of your species’ traits, to do the job better than any other species could.
Of course, while the Federation DOES try to find a role and accommodations for every species it encounters… Not everyone fares so well. Some species, like the Urtraghue, are at an inherent disadvantage due to lacking any limbs. They NEED exo-skeletons in order to operate complex tools and machinery, so even if they do have the advantage of breathing in air and water, it’s still a lot harder for them to exist in a society designed around a certain body type.
So there’s a lot of themes of ableism and accommodation here, I feel. The idea of cities and societies built around a particular definition of ‘abled’ and those outside of it have the onus placed on them to adapt, not the other way around. Most species tend to rely on physical expressions, so for a species that emotes more with scents or sounds or even lights, it’s gonna be harder!
A lot of this just encourages aliens to keep within their own species. Stay segregated in societies built for people like them, and it’s easy for many to advocate for this. Federation supporters are alarmed because, hey, segregation is kinda terrible and merely encourages xenophobia!
Some species are prioritized on the job market for certain behavioral attitudes. Others for their physique. Trafficking is a HUGE problem in the Metroid universe, for example Ridley’s species. They’re fairly few and obscure and not represented well by the Federation’s database, which already struggles to provide comprehensive info on every species. So it’s easy for them to fall through the network and be kidnapped and sold, seen as ideal and powerful weapons for their regenerative abilities, flight, fire-breathing, durable skin, etc.
At some point, Samus has to team up with another member of Ridley’s species, Varyn, to save someone who has been trafficked for this purpose. And as they discuss, Varyn and Samus both have to ruminate on the inevitability of their roles; Ridley’s species feels built for combat, so of course that’s all they’ll be encouraged to do! Maybe that’s why Ridley ended up like that… And, Samus of course points out that people CAN make exceptions for themselves, and it hardly excuses his atrocities and evil. Varyn agrees, but she does bring up the inherent tragedy of it, the biological determinism.
Likewise, we have Racklas, another member of Ridley’s species. She’s a judge and when Ridley is captured by the Federation at some point between Samus Returns and Super Metroid, for all his war crimes he’s still entitled to a fair trial. And Racklas is appointed because the Federation reasons that to make a trial as fair as possible, Ridley needs someone who could relate to him, it’s the same idea behind “a jury of your peers” and whatnot.
Samus obviously does a double-take on Racklas and Racklas can’t totally blame her. But she does make a point that she explicitly does NOT want to be a fighter like her and Ridley’s species are expected, nay destined according to others, to be. But when Space Pirates crash the trial and successfully rescue Ridley, Racklas has to use her larger strength, fire breath, and durability to protect others. She’s hardly a fighter and has no combat experience, but her powerful physique compensates for that.
And it makes Samus reflect on HER niche in society. She was trained as a warrior, she’s known as the hunter by enemy and friend alike. And then she becomes part-Metroid, a creature designed, meant to slaughter the X parasites. And while I wrote this back in 2019, it goes well with Dread and the revelation of Samus’ Metroid powers, her ability and responsibility to use them accordingly. And Raven Beak’s whole motivations and rhetoric, the Chozo are inherently evolved for war and should embrace that.
Is that what Samus’ destiny is? Is that what her contributions to society will be? Killing and slaughtering? Sure people can justify she’s doing it to the ‘bad guys’, but she remembers the Metroid genocide of SR388. Is that the only way she can be a hero? Obviously people NEED to fight, people can’t always rely on peace. And theoretically, Samus could always just live a peaceful life, in a world where her Metroid powers weren’t particularly necessary; The X are (probably) extinct and there are other weapons for other enemies out there.
I actually explored this idea a bit with my fanon on the Kriken Empire, who believe they have conquered these limitations of the Federation’s system through their alt-modes, eliminating any need for other species’ contributions. There’s the idea that individuals end up best-suited for certain roles and occupations, and are expected to dedicate themselves fully, permanently to those roles in the caste.
Ideally, the Kriken do not want any niche in their glorious empire to be looked down upon, because we ALL play an important part…! Still, it’s uncomfortable even if that did work out, because what if talent doesn’t correlate with passion? What then? And it’s part of Trace’s whole anxiety and his twisted coming-of-age arc that he and every Kriken goes through. The process to determine who fits where and the potential flaws in the determination, as well as the larger issue of its permanence and even general principle.
Humans occupy an interesting position in that they’re both enforcers but also oppressed in their own way. Yeah, they have the weapons, they act as the main bulk of military. But they’re the ones sent to the front lines, expected to be the first and most common to die in the grinder… Doesn’t that suck? Some humans are fine because deep down, they still have some power over others! Others hate it, because regardless of how they feel about species lower on the list, they recognize they’re still being bossed around themselves. But most humans don’t want to threaten their guaranteed place in society, either.
It’s basically an intergalactic ecosystem. A bunch of different species come into contact, and after years of working things out, inevitably sort themselves into certain roles, not exactly by intention. Survival of the Fittest, as it was called by the humans, or other names by other species, because they’re all familiar with the concept, without influence from aliens. Given the idea of predators and hunter, the Chozo’s connection with nature, and the discussion of ecology with the X and Metroids, as well as invasive species, I suppose this is thematically fitting.
And as I brought up before, this is why some species prefer to isolate and group together, to stick to societies adapted to themselves. So there’s definitely themes of nationalism, community, and belonging going along; Trace’s fervor for his Empire, Spire’s search to find her lost people. Is Samus human or Chozo? What do various Space Pirate species fight for, or members of the Federation? The Mawkin are dedicated to a specific idea of Chozo culture, a particular memory they work to preserve. Can Dark Samus be said to have a ‘people’ she belongs to, what of the all-assimilating threat of the X?
Obviously this doesn’t quite have its one-to-one parallels with real life; The difference between an Asian and a Hispanic person is nowhere near as drastic as one having wings and the other having echolocation. A lot of this is admittedly a thought exercise, hypothetical, on how different alien species would end up interacting and organizing themselves after a while.
But there’s definitely correlations to racial stereotyping, as well as disability accommodations and the lack thereof. The discussions of ableism and societies built around a certain type of behavior, expression, and existence is DEF intentional. So, and forgive me if I’m patting myself on the back here, I guess it still has its applications to real life, as the arts always do beyond just entertainment.
In the end, I guess I’m too lazy to properly write any of this in the form of an actual story. So I guess that’s why I’m going to write it as such here, better here than nowhere I say!
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Hi, I've been reading your comic and I really like it.
My question is: how Ty was created? I don't mean biologically, no, I mean what came to your mind while creating a bear oc. I'm a huge fan of bears myself, so Ty being one got me curious.
If you feel comfortable, could you tell his origins? That's prolly some stuff that are gonna be shown ahead in the comic, but I wanted to ask nevertheless.
The simple answer is it was like 3am and that’s usually when stray ideas spiral out of control.
Okay if I remember right it began almost two years ago when I was very very lost in the ducktales sauce and we were talking about the characters constantly. So we had been on the topic of the triplets and how they’d develop as teens to adults and then the subject drifted into romantic orientation or lack thereof and potential relationships they might have in the future. When it came to Louie we were just like “ye he gay.”
While we were talking about that, I brought up a silly little scenario about Louie having a notable interaction with some boy at school. I guess what the notable interaction entailed would be a spoiler. The angle that hooked us on this relationship dynamic is a spoiler. (Even if plenty of people who went deep diving have found their answers on the matter. I’m still gonna try not to bring it up on the blog.) but you’ll find out soon. So the idea of Ty’s character started with “Somebody who could work off Louie.”
But then I was like “yeah ok sure fine I know I just brought this kid up to be funny but now I’m invested in him. Who is he? Lets flesh out this Boy At School. It’s 3am let’s go apeshit.”
And then I wondered if I could make this kid a canon character. Maybe a lesser used one. And I remembered that some of the talespin characters were intended to appear in season three. Now I hadn’t watched talespin much at the time so I didn’t pay much attention to the announced characters. For some reason I thought they were Baloo and Rebecca? I had just briefly looked at the image of them like once. So then my train of thought was like “okay so if Baloo and Rebecca exist in dt17, so does Kit Cloudkicker.” I knew a little bit about Kit Cloudkicker. And from what I knew, he matched the personality of this Boy At School that we were messing around with. I thought it was a perfect.
I figured out like a few minutes later that the adult bear I thought was Baloo was actually Kit so we had to regroup. But I was already attached to this angle we had so the regroup was basically just
(I just think Artsy with their Kit icon being like “idk him” is funny)
The name “Kit Jr” did not last long because it was stupid as all fuck but by this point it was 4am so be nice to me.
The fact that we made Ty into an OC made things WAY better cuz it opened up for way more creative freedom. He wasn’t confined to the restraints of canon characterization and I could do whatever I wanted with him. This early stage of his characterization was definitely inspired by young Kit from Talespin but he became so much more than that. Artsy had started designing him the day after and then drew up a bunch of him. Which just added fuel to the fire. The next few days I spurted out essays upon essays about Ty. Everything about him. He was a fully realized person within a week. There’s so much life to this kid, I stg. I’m really excited for the comic to explore every facet of him. He has a lot of facets.
But yeah that’s why he’s a bear. He was based off a bear character. If he had just been an OC with no links to any other character, a bear probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind.
I’m guessing by his “origins” you mean where he came from, in universe. Like before he landed with Kit and whatnot. I’m delighted you’re interested but that’s private information for the moment. But we will get to that.
Thank you for your question! This was fun to talk about!
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Hello, please excuse me i came here to talk a bit and share with you my experience with the "fandom" in which Satoru and some other certain characters tend to be mistreated in. Right before i had to shut off from many many parts after i learned how 80% don't really seem to understand any of the characters i would like to talk about how before it almost altered my view on them, almost.
So first it was about that one comment of Gege's where he said that Gojo is not the type to have a girlfriend and will never het one, likewise i agree with that, he has never shown interest in anyone throughout the story, apart from maybe Suguru. Now you know that there are all sorts of shippers and one of them being cishets that are all about pushing heteronorm onto him even if it doesn't make any sense to do so. Which reminds me of that time where i saw someone talk how Satoru already has a trope set up for him, that trope being Utahime and solely because he "teases" her unlike anyone else according to them. The deal with the truth that Utahime dislikes Satoru, even if it's not genuine will somehow always be ignored and replaced with whatever hopeful or wishful thinking fans have just so they can latch onto any so called crumbs. I don't wish to be a downer but doesn't Satoru still respect those that are strong? The fact that it became like a reflex to make fun of someone just because they are still unable to rank up is telling, and someone will try and convince me that he does it because he wants to protect her lol also as much as I'd like to jump on that copium about a minor character's only purpose in the story is to be some sort of romance subplot, I'd have to stop right there, people will ignore the fact that Satoru is not exactly an empathetic person, not saying he's not but he certainly doesn't have it in him to recognize others emotions in order to draw the line. Does the whole idea of jjk jump over their head? Isn't Gege trying to express the misogyny that's rooted within it?
People will bring up how they've known each other for 10 years and how she is the one he trusts the most lol, forgetting altogether that she was the only person he could actually go to in Kyoto that is an adult cause other characters weren't available back then. Isn't it admirable that she at least tolerates him? They work and trust each other because it's part of their job, Satoru has put trust in other people aswell, Shoko, Ijichi and Nanami especially.
Point is, i had to confine my self into a small part of the place where people actually think rationally and not with their shipping goggles because if head canoning is all they have then i said everything. Like using or nit picking every little thing and turning into something to fit a delusional stereotype such as "Mappa showcased Satoru ending his phone call with Utahime at 3:41 in that episode, we can reverse it to 143 so it means i love you" and I'm thinking, how is that relevant? Even if it was any other person I'd too find it extremely stupid, choosing to end the phone call at that exact moment just to show some coded message? I'm gonna end the rant here because that was still one hell of an experience i had and the amount of stuff i had to filter from my search list is horrific. But tell me what do you think? Do you think that Satoru likes anyone? Or is that just fans coming up with their own hcs because they like to self project? Because not a single take did i read from them before that wasn't an outright reach.
Hello, dear
Those are a lot of ideas, let me go little by little.
Regarding Gege’s comment about Satoru “I don’t see Gojo being faithful to a specific woman” I have this post. Holding to what that phrase means without too many assumptions it means that Satoru wouldn’t have a monogamous relationship with a woman. Of course, Satoru is a character with development so if we considerer that comment with the context that provide the character, we can assume that Satoru is not hetero. This conclusion is the result of considering his relationship with Suguru, and the possibility that both were in love. So, we can think in Satoru being in any spectrum except being hetero. However, it doesn’t take women off from the equation, he could be bi or pan, for example.
About gojohime like a ship, I would first give an overall consideration about ships. A ship doesn't need to be close to the canon or canon, ships are meant for fanfics, fanart and etc, are the result of fans imagination so there will always be some quota of invention. Even couples that are confirmed in canon, get fanarts and fanfic where they do things they haven’t done in canon, so there is always some invention. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean at all that any ship is equally valid. Ships that romanticize any form of abuse or/and oppression are problematic, and people can’t expect to avoid the problem just by saying that “fiction is fiction”.
Back to gojohime, as you say this ship is misogynist because it is the result of the idea that love can prevail even over the lack of respect. This is what being named in gender studies as “the myths of romantic love”, it built an imaginary of what is love and what is a romantic relationship that naturalizes the inequality of man and woman and the violence in it. There is no evidence that Gege is implying the idea that Satoru could have romantic feelings for Utahime or otherwise. As you said, the “evidence” provided by the people who push this ship canonically are weak and with no foundation.
What I found interesting on this matter is how fans read a story. If I have to give a quick interpretation of why these fans ship gojo and utahime, or built their fanfic about Noaya under the idea that he just didn’t find the “right woman”. I would say that it is not just a matter of not understanding the story, it is a matter of having internalized imaginaries like “romantic love”. How a person reads a story is directly related to their culture (there are research in the anthropological field about this). In our cultures, the idea of “romantic love” is very strong, and requires a lot of self-deconstruction to imagine other ways of love outside the naturalized violence of patriarchy. I purposolly refer to it as a part of cultural matrix because people tend to think that is inherent to only hetero relantionship, but often some forms of it prevail in non-hetero relantionship. However, is in the lgbtiq+ field and feminism where you find the strong critics and the praxis of other forms to understand love. In summary, the issue about gojohime is reception and representation.
Satoru is meant to be a character who is perfect at everything except his personality. I wouldn’t say that Satoru is a misogynist character like Naoya, but he reproduces what's call as micro-machismo (micro-misoginy). Those are ideas, forms, or ways of acting that are misogynist but aren’t performed by the person with the intention to be misogynist. And it happens because we have been socialized in this culture.
Why Satoru tease Utahime? Satoru doesn’t hate her nor is indifferent to her. If Utahime called for help he would help her without problem. He teases her because it is easy for him, since she is weaker and she is annoyed by his teasing (doesn’t have a point to tease someone who doesn’t mind, in teasing there is always something kind of sadistic). But he has his limit, if we go back to his jokes, they are jokes that Satoru believes are harmless. And I said “Satoru believe” on purpose, because what we think is not always what happens. To be honest, there is not enough information to know if Satoru’s jokes had a major impact on Utahime. I believe the biggest consequence is the fact that she dislikes him and won’t ever be her friend or lover. However, Utahime doesn’t hate Satoru (the absence of love doesn’t imply hate and I wish people would understand that). Of course, in her bio it is stated that she hates Satoru, but in other characters it is stated they hate some type of food, so let’s not take that so literally. Utahime hates Satoru in the sense that she hates to spend time with him, but she doesn’t wish him death or is willing to actually kill him or do great harm.
Fans are very radical, if it is not white is black, people's emotions tend to be more complicated than love or hate, and those aren’t the only feelings inside of us. Utahime dislikes Satoru, but she thinks of him like an ally.
Back to Satoru’s bad personality, more than putting him like someone who is not empathic, I would say that he does use his privilege of being the strongest to be annoying. Basically because nobody can punch him to make him shut up. In my opinion, and I can point to a lot of evidence, Satoru is an empathic person. I believe the problem is that people think that empathic people are always with a hand over their hearts and sweet words, which is wrong. Empathy is nothing else than the ability to understand and share the feelings of other people. Is not a six sense like some people in tumblr are portraying in their post. Satoru does understand other people's feelings like we get to see in his interaction with Megumi, he knows exactly why Megumi did what he did in the baseball game and he even understands his mindset about himself and sorcery. Plus, the fact that he is doing all this to help the next generation to have a better life than he has is the result of his empathy. Satoru’s dream is altruistic and that is something we can relate with solidarity and empathy.
Some people believe he only cares for the strongest and that is wrong. He wants students to become strong so they can take care of themselve and make their way in this world. Besides, we have no evidence of him mistreating weak people like the Zenin clan did. Probably most of Satoru’s students are weak, however he seems to do the same effort for any person. Plus, it is impossible to understand why he chose a different path from Suguru if he only cared for the strong.
About your question, if he likes someone, he was in love with Suguru, I believe there is enough evidence to support this idea. Not only an interpretation of his whole arc, also the description of Satoru’s ideal type and Satoru’s first thoughts about Suguru when they met that are commented in the fanbook. Those are like some hints that help to confirm this idea. No matter if you think their love is romantic or platonic, the love is there.
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Okay, so like Ace Attorney recently ate my brain. And I have never played any of the games. This is the true potential of the internet at work people. Anyway.
I keep thinking about my very specific images of Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth, and the relationship therein. This is gonna be a long one because I can't be assed to make it more coherent than the mess it is in my brain.
So. Phoenix is obviously from a very loving and supportive family except they absolutely loathe the law and law professionals. Phoenix is trans and his family is super supportive, allowing him to express himself even from a young age. Unfortunately, Phoenix's new teacher isn't so great. Is actually a bit of a piece of shit and has been isolating Phoenix and so the poor boy has spent the first couple months of being out being harassed by his teacher and classmates. And that is part of why the trial sticks with Phoenix so much. Because Miles stands up to not only the students, but the teacher and all of the vitriol they've been leaking as well. And he doesn't just drop Phoenix after. He still wants him around and as a little kid that shit sticks with Phoenix far longer than it does with Larry and Edgeworth. Also, unfortunately, if you've got one asshole teacher, you've likely got a few nearby, so Phoenix's family does their best to support him and they offer to transfer him and do what they can, but Phoenix as a child is afraid to move and never see Edgeworth or Larry again so he doesn't. And then when he starts writing letters, he finds he can't stop because they become confessionals of a sort and a place where he doesn't have to be on guard and can know that the person he is writing to is accepting of his identity even if he does wonder from time to time if maybe Edgeworth no longer accepts him.
Anyway, then canon, yada yada. Lets talk about Miles now. Miles is depressed, okay. And he writes that note (you know the one) completely literally. But here's the thing: Miles knows the trauma of finding dead bodies. Has probably seen the mess they leave, and doesn't want to cause more harm than he already has. So he writes the note and packs the pills/blade/etc into a suitcase and takes a flight to Europe where no one that knows him will have a chance to stumble upon him. The turnabout is this: on the plane over he gets into an argument with his seat buddy. Its no one important, but the key info on him is that he is in therapy and sort of off hand brings it up and Miles, who was not raised with a pleasant idea of therapists and such starts an unholy row with him, blatantly projecting his own insecurities and perceived weaknesses on this poor man. The flight attendants have to separate the two and the man spends the rest of the time in first class. Miles spends the rest of the flight getting dirty looks from everyone else. By the flight's end he is frothing at the mouth and the man's assertion that therapy is not something for the faint of heart has been burrowing under his skin. He gets off the plane and rather than immediately commit he thinks he might as well make the source clear and winds up at the empty von Karma estate. He spends the night with a blade on his wrist and voices in his ears. But he doesn't move.
He falls asleep and he wakes from a nightmare he can't recall and it is noon the next day. He doesn't eat, he doesn't move. He just lays there and thinks. He thinks about Phoenix, Franziska, His Father, von Karma, all the lives he's sent to prison after measuring them against a false scale, and he thinks of the man on the plane. He thinks of the things he said, the ring he noticed on his finger, and the husband that was brought up at some point in their altercation. He thinks a lot about what it means to be and Edgeworth and what it means to be a von Karma. He picks up the blade and he puts it in his suitcase. He starts to research Therapists. Because he is going to have the best therapist in the business if he is going to do this. (He just kinda goes for the one with the most academic accolades that is willing to do home visits or move of some shit, anyway) Miles Edgeworth starts therapy and it goes horribly. Miles hates it viscerally and he doesn't feel like his therapist understands. (Which they don't. They keep trying to convince Edgeworth to see and actual trauma specialist and find someone that he clicks with rather than coming back to them). His therapist is worth their name though, and Miles is actually hospitalized due to being a danger to himself. For all that he loathes this, it does eventually allow him to meet with an actual trauma specializing therapist and finally maybe understand what the big deal is. He still hates it, but he finds the therapist that actually suits him and things get a little better.
The first thing is he stops living in the von Karma estate. He admits its a bad place for him to be at the moment and so he moves closer to his therapist and gets a rental flat. Second he gets a new wardrobe. He's been using his stuff left at the von Karma home and all of it is his flashy very "von Karma" wear. So he goes and gets new suits tailored in his preferred style and he pays for them and wears them because he realizes he likes them and not because he is trying to emulate his Mentor. This step is especially a big deal because it is the first moment where he is able to really define who "Miles Edgeworth" is outside of the confines of the courtroom. In all this, of course, he is also figuring out who he is within the courtroom as well. After committing to his therapist and recovery, he goes back into Law in Germany and really tries to define why he still wants to be there. I like to think he spends some time in small courts as a defense attorney assistant while trying to redefine his place. Anyway, eventually Miles decides he wants to remove his old stuff from the von Karma estate. He might move in his new stuff but for now it is merely removing the old, giving him the space and option of a new start. In clearing his stuff he winds up in the storage space on the household and there he finds an old suitcase.
The suitcase is Miles's from when he first came to the household. Von Karma had told the staff to pitch it when they first arrived and apparently whoever was on duty that day was kind enough to save it for later. Miles has a bit of a breakdown on seeing it and has a rather sharp set back in his improvement. He finds himself staring at the knife again. Because he never put it away. He still doesn't. But he doesn't touch it, just looks. Miles fights his way back out of the hole and in doing so removes all of his things from the estate except that little suitcase. Its the last thing and he opens it to slowly deal with the contents. Most of it is children's clothes, some expired toiletries, but buried in the deepest part of the case, wrapped lovingly in an old bowtie is his Father's defense attorney badge. Miles doesn't have a breakdown this time (yay!) but he does spend the next week unable to sleep for the sheer intensity of his nightmares. He carries on though. He slowly and surely patches together who exactly Miles Edgeworth is and what he wants to stand for. And that little gold badge stays folded in the bow tie and tucked in the deepest corner of his latest suitcase. He throws out the knife.
Once again back to canon, he returns doesn't tell anyone shit, and slowly relearns Phoenix Wright and what that man means to him. Hazakura temple, all the gay vibes, until the disbarment era. Lets stop by Phoenix again, shall we?
Phoenix is disbarred and for the first so many years he is genuinely friends with Kristoph Gavin. None of this "oh i always suspected shit", he believes in Kristoph, because that's who Phoenix is. At this point Edgeworth is still in Europe and a large part of that is so that he can continue with his therapy. But he does drop everything to talk to Phoenix once he hears the news. He immediately knows that something is up because Phoenix would never and he believes in him more than anyone else and he is offering to do everything in his power to make this better because Phoenix is worth it and Miles love-- woah. that's a new emotion. what the fuck is up with that. So anyway Miles realizes that he has some less than platonic feelings and he wants to run back to Europe and his therapist and figure out what it all means, but above all Wright is his Friend dammit and he owes him so much. But on Phoenix's side, he sees how far Edgeworth is offering to go and he turns down all of the things that would cause Miles's life to be disrupted. He does accept the knowledge and shoulder to lean on that Edgeworth offers, but Edgeworth doesn't need to move continents or anything. Besides he has Kristoph here to help. And Miles kind of hates all of this situation, but he knows that he truly doesn't have the kind of knowledge and pull to really be of service not to mention his new discovery is not doing his health any favors. So he goes back to Germany and Phoenix stays with Kristoph.
Now Miles is in Germany figuring out how to manage complex emotions and romantic relationships, while Phoenix is working with Kristoph, who becomes Kris, who could maybe be more except Phoenix isn't sure it would be fair to him since he has become more than a little hung up on Edgeworth since he came back from Europe. And because when Edgeworth asks him to Europe he jumps with no forethought. He gets Kris to watch Trucy and jets off to spend time with Miles. They do their amazing duo routine and Edgeworth comes away from the encounter knowing that yes, he very much would like a romantic relationship with Phoenix. Okay. Now how to go about it. Meanwhile Phoenix gets back and sees Trucy and this is when he realizes that Kristoph is dirty. Trucy tells him about something she saw while she stayed with him and something clicks and Phoenix has a mild breakdown because of how much danger he just realizes she might be in. He calls Miles at some point during this and Miles talks him down. He falls asleep and in the morning he doesn't shave. He smiles and gets Trucy to school, then sits in the office and tries to figure out where he goes from here. That afternoon there is knock at the door.
Miles Edgeworth does nothing half way and has flown to Phoenix just to be able to help him figure out the next steps and comfort him. Phoenix is officially gone for this man. The two talk and scheme and eventually hatch their mad plan to rebuild the entire fucking system. Miles will use his distance to research and provide information, Phoenix will keep an eye on Kristoph and start building what he can here. In all of this Trucy's safety comes up. Phoenix actually considers sending her with Miles. Miles puts that idea to a stop real quick, though he does mention doing more visits and such. Trucy is very happy to hear about this and demands to go every time. Phoenix says something along the lines of it being more expensive for two people to fly and joking that it would be cheaper if they just let him keep her in his suitcase. This is how Miles Edgeworth returns to Germany with a solid plan for the future and one Magician more than planned. Trucy obviously sneaks into his luggage and somehow makes it with him to Germany. In doing so she finds the badge in his bag, and despite the intense scolding she gets, the two are finally able to really connect and bond as Miles opens up to her a bit about his Father and what he has gone through.
Eventually Trucy gets back where she belongs and despite a few more hijinks over the years things progress via canon. Edgeworth and Phoenix have both accepted their feelings but have yet to act on them as neither is in a position to properly be with the other as they wish. So they flirt and argue and love each other intensely as only the best of friends and trauma buddies can. It all pays off and Kristoph is arrested. Phoenix is innocent, but he is unsure about going back into law. In this case, Kris was kinda the last proof of where blind belief will get you and it isn't just a façade, Phoenix is a lot bitter at the larger world and himself. So he isn't in the greatest place mentally, and Edgeworth sees it. And for the first time he thinks about reaching out to someone. Especially because this is Phoenix not just a random stranger on a plane. Then he finds he has the option to take the Chief Prosecutor position, and he finds himself staring at his Father's badge. He thinks on the years and his growth, and he talks with his therapist. And he decides to move. He takes the new position and seeing Phoenix struggle so close he finally shares about therapy. Not all of it. Nothing really just that he goes and has since the year-they-do-not-speak-of and that he is looking for a new one in the city and maybe Phoenix would like to help him. Because he values Phoenix and his opinions. Phoenix does eventually wind up in a therapists office and it is a mess, but it helps.
The two reconnect more strongly than ever and shortly thereafter Phoenix agrees to take the Bar again. Miles supports him in this and watches as he struggles and groans but makes it through. And at the same time he watches him heal a bit from the atrocities of the past 7 years. When Phoenix passes he is over-joyed and that night finds him holding his Father's badge and slowly thinking. Turning the idea over and over he can't bring himself to ignore it. He walks up to Phoenix in the office the next day and with all the drama of a marriage proposal give Phoenix his Father's badge. Apollo starts to realize exactly what sort of shit he signed up for. Especially when Miles turns up a couple weeks later and attempts to strangle Phoenix with his own tie and demands having the badge back because What The Fuck. An Orca. You Absolute Dumbass.
This is the point where my ideas dry up. Because where I leave them is pining idiots that are actually doing pretty ok. I figure they eventually get their shit together, but only after inflicting immense suffering on their co-workers and the legal system as a whole with their obvious pining and flirting. I barely know Apollo but watching him suffer is just more amusing than it should be. Also Miles is Autistic and it actually is part of what allows him to bond with Trucy.
#ace attorney#narumitsu#wrightworth#holy hell#what the actual fuck.#this was just like#bouncing in my brain for a few weeks and wouldn't leave#why is it so much#maybe#i feel like i blacked out#seriously#what the fuck#miles edgeworth#phoenix wright
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Arthurian Legends in the Witcher ‘verse
Those who know me know that my first and truest love is to Arthurian Legends and everything else comes second. Like... it’s the special interest that stays while hyperfixations come and go (tho uh, been with the witcher for a WHILE now, though have changed fandoms within that). I did a study abroad in England while in college just to study Arthurian Legends. Spent my 19th bday at King Arthur’s birth place in Tintagel. Everything I know about medieval(ish) warfare and city planning and history and shit is ‘cause of King Arthur. Hell, my entire concept of leadership is informed by my version of Arthur. So yeah, I’m big into King Arthur.
Which OBVIOUSLY means I need to bring Arthur into the witcher. And because I’m a nerd, it’s gonna be very informed by reality to give it a little depth. Soooo:
Arthur of Undvik (aka Skellige is Wales now)
Okay, some folks may not know this, but the original (insofar as we can say) Arthuriain Legends come from Wales, not England. In fact, the invaders Arthur was fighting off were the Anglo-Saxons. This is really important context because the ‘original’ Arthur wasn’t a king - he was (we think) a war chieftan. It was only later when England (and later France) adopted the legends that things became more... imperialistic? Sort of? There was always an element of war, but originally, it was in the context of uniting the Bretons in order to fight off the Saxons. But when Christianity was brought in later, a lot of stuff was added and changed to align with that. Arthur became a wealthy (blonde, white) king with knights in shining armor to command. Those knights had Christian chivalric values and were noble and brave and went out searching for the holy grail and killed non-Christians, ‘cause that was the “right” thing to do. I mentioned imperialism because this is where it starts to come in - instead of uniting to fight invaders, the knights fight in holy wars (there was an obsession with placing Arthur directly in history when he’s probably actually an amalgamation of many people and originates waaaaaaayyyy before England or Christianity), and they spread their values wherever they go, because Camelot is PerfectTM and Moral (nevermind that the stories are mostly about the hollowness of some of those morals). tl;dr - the parts of the Arthurian Legends you’re probably most familiar with were additions made MUCH later by peoples who had technically stolen the legends from Wales. Those peoples were primary England and France. (Like Lancelot du Lac? Yeah, as you might be able to guess, French invention, because the tales needed more romance)
Okay, so how does this relate to the Witcher? In the Witcher world, I say that Arthur is the jarl of Undvik and is legendary in Skellige because he united the Isles to fight against invaders from the continent. To your average Skelliger, Arthur is Theirs and also he’s a warrior, not a poncy ass king.
But the legends weren’t confined to Skellige and as they spread across the continent, changes were made. Most especially, the Toussaintois people fell in love with Arthur and claimed him as their own - and gave him all those trappings of “civility” like a crown and a dazzling breastplate and knights in shining armor who live up to all the ideals of a romantic hero.
The Knights of the Round Table
The Knights of legend actually are quite similar to the Toussaintois knights (which is not incidental). So it would absolutely make sense for Toussaintois bards and poets and storytellers to invent their own versions (think fanfiction, but on a socially acceptable scale; King Arthur IS public domain, for the record) and those would spread based on which the audience likes best. Take a couple generations and it’s easy to claim that it’s “the true story” of Arthur, not that Skelliger wild man. Plus, their version has all these awesome quests with noble knights!
What I’m saying is: there is AT LEAST one Skelliger who is ready to fight that Toussaintois twig over who owns the Arthur legend.
Anyway, this all came up because I was looking for a theme to name all of the Strays of Spalla’s dogs (of course the Duke of Dogs travels with a kennel!) and @useless-empty-brain suggested Arthurian knights. So obviously I had to make the legends canonically exist in the Witcher!
This also seems a good time to remind people that bards weren’t just musicians! They were oral storytellers and documenters of history. So these tales would probably be published, because the Witcher world seems to have a printing press (& I made Gaunter its owner) and mass produced books. But the main way people would hear about the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table would be through story and song. Each region probably has its own versions where they’ve substituted themselves in for the Skelligers or the Toussaintois, because what kid wouldn’t want to play King Arthur and pull the sword from the stone?
Holy shit, I’ve just realized that while I can play with historical versions of the legends, I can make my version the canonical Witcher one!!!! Heads up, yo, Arthur is not Christian, not straight, and actually thinks that commoners are people! (but no for real, I’m working on an original Arthurian legend novel and Arthur is trans and pan and a socialist)
Hmm, what would the impact of the continent’s own history have on the legends? Are some of the knights nonhumans? Or are most stories pretty notably anti-nonhuman? I shall have to think on this...
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Homestuck 2 has updated! Christmas is ruined!
Previously, on Homestuck 2: Literally nothing happened, and a non-trivial portion of the patreon supporters gave up and quit. Can this update pull a Christmas miracle and right the sinking ship of Homestuck 2? Probably not, but let’s find out!
youtube
We’re back in Candyland, having completely skipped over Karkat and John talking about Dave’s apparent death, because this comic is only interested in long conversations when they’re boring and not about anything at all. That’s alright, I got the gist of it.
When Karkat is finally gone, John still doesn’t move. It isn’t as though he has nowhere else to go, since there are quite a few places he might attempt to make himself useful, for better or for worse.
So, it appears to be morning now, meaning that John’s son has been missing in a war zone for almost 24 hours and I guess John literally forgot Harry existed?
Prediction: This conversation is going to end in some variant of “Where is our son?” “Oh shit!”
ROXY: hey john can u do me a quick solid
ROXY: actly idk how quick itll be but its definitely solid
ROXY: harry anderson says i just missed u being here but could u skip back on over?
What.
So, I went back and checked, and apparently nowhere is it explicitly said that Harry Anderson was also looking for the Vriskas, so I guess he....stayed home? Which makes sense, I suppose, but maybe a “Stay here I’ll go look for them” would’ve helped. I wasn’t the only one who thought Harry was out looking for Vriska too.
ROXY: sup
ROXY: follow me
ROXY: well were just going to my room so i guess technically u know the way
JOHN: haha ok.
John follows, trying to shake the ominous feeling he got from what she’d just said. He’d been in and out of this house a lot in the past few days. Why should this be any different?
Is Roxy....horny? Is the solid she’s looking for John’s dick? I mean, that’d make her saying Harry wasn’t available kind of weird, but I think this framing is a fake-out.
...
What the fuck is that lamp, Jesus Christ it’s awful. Just a cat’s asshole, facing the door.
ROXY: r u kiddin me rn egbert
JOHN: i’m not? unless you were, in which case yeah lets say i was also kidding.
JOHN: oh my god, i’m sorry, i don’t know why this making me freak out.
ROXY: i remember our past boot knockin with fondness but that is a situation im not interested in revisiting
Oh hey, it was a fakeout. Good job, Homestuck 2. You successfully implied something just through the art. Art which, by the way, looks a lot better than the last chapter. There are backgrounds and everything. I wonder if Chapter 15 was rushed out due to Hiveswap and that’s why it was so weak?
He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced?
I’m not the biggest fan of the way the narration is going JOHN IS AFRAID OF SEX WITH ROXY LIKE HE’S A TEENAGE VIRGIN AGAIN (LIKE IN HS1!) AND IT DOESN’T REALLY MAKE SENSE PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IT’LL BE IMPORTANT LATER, but okay, noted.
ROXY: u said ur house is gone??
JOHN: yep.
JOHN: completely.
ROXY: jeez
Heh. I like Roxy, still.
JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.
If this comic actually uses the phrase “home” and “stuck” in the same sentence I’m turning this blog around and we’ll go right back to Winnipeg.
ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit
Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.
ROXY: ok or just like push when i push
ROXY: we both got sick muscles
ROXY: no other adjectives necessary
I feel unqualified to talk about how hard Roxy is pushing the June Egbert thing.
....Is that the fucking portal from Hiveswap under a tarp? Also hi Candy Callie, appearing in HS2 for the first time. One of the Calliope’s is nonbinary, I think, but I honestly can’t remember and I think it’s Meat Calliope?
JOHN: do i get to know what that big thing under the sheet is?
ROXY: hmmmmmm no
JOHN: oh ok.
JOHN: are you sure? i mean, it seems like a pretty prominent feature of the room.
JOHN: space.
JOHN: wherever we are.
ROXY: and a totally mysterious n COMPLETELY inconspicuous feature it will have to remain for now
ROXY: we r kinda in a hurry here fyi
ROXY: and by that i mean
ROXY: we are in precisely the amount of hurry that means im excused from having to a that specific q rn
JOHN: right, sorry.
JOHN: i will pay no attention to the object behind the curtain.
ROXY: u catch on fast egbert
Oh thing HS2 has not been great at is that it has a lot of plot mysteries that are supposed to keep us enticed but they don’t really get implanted into the audience’s head (Remember Vrissy mysteriously collapsing that one time? Probably not, she did it off screen and the boys kind of laughed it off). This one’s hard to miss.
JOHN: so... this is all downstairs?
JOHN: it seems like you had a lot of work done.
ROXY: well no not x actly
ROXY: were in the old meteor
It’s kind of weird how this meteor keeps popping up like this.
CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.
This is an unexpected but not unwelcome direction for Callie to have gone.
CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.
CALLIOPE: how much do yoU know aboUt black holes?
Oh, wow, we’re going right there, then. This does seem like a bit of a reaction to complaints HS2 wasn’t shmoovin’ enough, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.
CALLIOPE: no, i mean, what if oUr whole WORLD was inside a black hole.
JOHN: ok.
A’ight, that got a laugh out of me
JOHN: ugh, i fucking KNEW it!
JOHN: i'm so sorry.
JOHN: i'm so sorry that i put the earth inside a black hole everyone. ):
I like this conversation a lot.
ROXY: iirc at least part of y u got so weepy was the fact that u couldnt believe a version of earth existed where ppl got 2 watch more mcconaughey films than you
JOHN: listen.
JOHN: i simply don't think you all appreciated the gift you were given.
Quite a bit, in fact.
ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love
JOHN: aw.
Roxy and John have a good dynamic.
CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.
CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!
JOHN: ...right.
John’s phone has very good coverage, since he was able to talk to Terezi in the epilogues, as we’re being subtly reminded of here with that ... before the “right”. I wonder if it still works after alt-Calliope left.
CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.
CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.
CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u
Okay, so we are now being explicitly told that living in the black hole is fucking with the characters and is part of the reason they make such baffling decisions, like Rose not telling Kanaya about Yiffy, or naming her daughter “Yiffy” in the first place.
CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.
ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point
CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan
CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.
CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.
CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.
CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?
So, the plan is literally for Vriska to be such a Huge 8itch that the black hole itself gets sick of her and yeets Earth C out of its own event horizon to freedom.
This is actually a great plan.
And that’s Hamsteak. This definitely feels like a bit of a reaction to complaints about HS2, but hey, I dig it, I guess? Definite improvement over the last chapter.
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for the askbox game: I know roughly where you stand on a good chunk of these I think but I like to pick brains anyway so I'm just gonna: ocelhira, bbkaz, snakemeryl (sn... sneryl??), vkaz, otasune (I just wanna know the answer to 3 in particular for this one eheeh)
takes a bow
aw hell yeah. i'm gonna do ALL of them!!
but maybe under a cut because it'll go for a bit
OCELHIRA -
1. What made you ship it?
love it. one of my favorite trash ships. 10/10. hatefucking their way through a decade of warcrimes
i am a huge sucker for angry, twisted, mutually angry relationships, and this has everything that i want: they're forced to work together towards a mutual goal for the man they both love while he sleeps, and they're angry, and jealous, and both awful people in their own rights. i love it
2. What are your favorite things about the ship?
i like seeing the multitude of ways that people fill the 9 years that bb was asleep with the two of them, and how they explore how they worked with each other and maybe started relying on each other more than they wanted to. but most importantly, i love the deceit and the knowledge that ocelot was still lying to him the entire time with the full intention of just dropping him like a rock for bb once he needs to, like ocelot always does.
3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
i've read a few fic where ocelot really does switch allegiances and falls truly in love with kaz, and betrays bb for kaz and v. i can't jive with that. i'm far too dedicated to ocelot's single-minded obsession with bb to let him ever fully change his allegiances. only work up some lovely lovely regret and conflicted feelings.
have my wonderful Ocelhira playlist
BBKAZ -
1. What made you ship it?
also love it. 100/10. 2 men, 1 braincell, 1000 war crimes.
what made me ship it is just all of their AMAZING interactions in peace walker. the relationship between the two of them just progressed in such a weird, but also weirdly natural way, and i can absolutely believe in their comradarie and affection
2. What are your favorite things about the ship?
i love how these two get along together like an oil fire. they drive each other to new heights, and new ideas, but also enable each others' worst tendencies. in the peace walker tapes, you can really see how well they feed into each others' self-involved echo chambers, and convince each other that the things that they're doing are not only good, but GREAT ideas. i wholly believe that bb would not have become who he was without kaz egging him on, both feeding his grandiose view of himself and his world-view. plus of course i adore how it all falls apart in the end and the end their lives as bitter enemies. perfection
3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
i always really really hate when people flatten kaz down to some sort of... battered housewife and bb into a manipulative, abusive husband. because bb was physically stronger and so came out on top of their fights, that must mean that kaz must be reduced to a quavering waif who doesn't understand that he's actually being abused and that's just... missing the mark on their relationship in so many different ways and i fucking hate it.
have my wonderful bbkaz playlist
SNAKEMERYL -
1. Why don’t you ship it?
I like thinking that they briefly got together after Shadow Moses, but obviously they didn't canonically work out. I'm going to say I don't ship it, just because I like working within those confines. i like thinking that they stayed together for a few months, but due to just... their mutual bad coping and disinterest in talking about their problems, Snake didn't have enough support to not fall back into his drinking and closing himself off, and Meryl got frustrated both with Snake not meeting any of her standards in a 'never meet your heroes' sort of way, and way too cooped up and lonely because she wasn't ready to wallow and write off her whole life.
2. What would have made you like it
i kind of like it just the way it is, honestly? like, i really like that they didn't work out, and that the spark that they had during Shadow Moses was based more on danger and adrenaline than actual compatibility. If anything i think i would have liked to just see a little bit more of what their time together in Alaska post MGS1 was like before Meryl left
3. Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?
i really like all of the interactions between the two of them, both in mgs1 and mgs4. also i just adore Meryl in general. she's perfect.
VKAZ -
1. Why don’t you ship it?
this is a really hard one. like... I DO ship it, but... I'm going to say no, just because i only like it under VERY specific circumstances and i very rarely see it done in a way that i like. i'm incredibly picky when it comes to vkaz
2. What would have made you like it
it's one of those ships that i theoretically go ham for, and when it IS done right it hurts in the best possible way. i think... i can never get into it when it gets TOO tender, and they actually fall for each other, or become...healthy, in any way? Like, v and kaz don't communicate. basically at all. throughout all of mgsv, we only see kaz fluctuate wildly between codependently thinking that v is the only person he can trust, the one who can fix everything, the reason he's been putting himself through so much hell for the last decade... and then being vicious and vindictive when v doesn't meet the standards that he's worked up in his mind over that long period. and v, lacking any and all of the charisma that bb had, completely fails to meet kaz at any point. his reactions tend to be anywhere between confused, hurt, or upset but patient, but never... connecting. they have none of the spark, romantic or destructive, that bbkaz had. they are two husks of people who used to exist, but don't any longer (in v's case much more literally so), clinging to each other because of a sunken cost fallacy and because they're all that the other has. but there's no point in mgsv where they actually seem to connect in nearly the same capacity as just bb and kaz ranting excitedly about international politics and their plans for the future. it's tragic, it's empty, and when people explore it like that, i love it. basically... for having chosen to say i don't ship it, i sure do have a LOT to say about it
3. Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?
i've seen a few fanworks that depict them in the absolute perfect way, and when it threads that needle, it becomes one of my favorite things. it's potentially the most poetic and painful pairing in the series and the people who can make it work KILL IT.
have my wonderful vkaz playlist
OTASUNE -
1. What made you ship it?
as opposed to all of the others, which i enjoy for their unhealthiness and tragedy, snake and otacon are perfect for each other and do an amazing job at learning and growing and healing together and it's absolutely one of my favorite pairings ever. the both of them had hard lives, and had made bad choices, and were having a lot of trouble connecting to other human beings in different ways. But they do such a good job of like... not perfectly, not without difficulties, but very realistically helping each other to become better and happier people
2. What are your favorite things about the ship?
watching their relationship develop between mgs1, mgs2, and mgs4 is so good. watching them become more comfortable as partners, and then become the person that the other understands more than anyone else, is just so heartwarming to watch.
3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
the next person who depicts otacon as a perpetually sobbing but also tender and understanding uwu softboi who needs big strong david to hug him and solve every problem for him gets both a kick in the teeth and a full transcript of every time that otacon has been kind of a sarcastic or passive agressive dick
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yo I'm gonna be a coward. I've read fan fiction since middle school, and during that time I've read some truly cursed things. I personally have tried to avoid reading mentor/student relationships cause they squik me the f out. But I've always been more treat the immortals like they are their apparent physical age for shipping. So people trying to lewd the pre pubescent with the excuse that they're immortal are obviously full of shit. pt 1.
pt.2 but shipping like Rukia/ Ichigo is fine cause they're the same apparent physical age and act with about the same lvl of maturity. While shipping him with Yoruichi would be sketch. So full disclosure I don't ship Sukuna and Megumi, I don't really see them having chemistry, and no one has written anything good enough to change my mind. But it doesn't freak me out like Megumi and Gojo. Would you be willing to write why you don't consider the vampire rule to apply here?
i’m not completely familiar with the vampire rule, but i would assume you mean that apparent age trumps actual age when it lines up with mental and emotional development?
personally, i’m not a huge fan of that train of thought -- i agree that it’s important to consider mental age when it comes to immortals or very, very old entities, but actual age is still important. and that’s because of the whole reason why big age gaps are fucked up, i.e an imbalance of power that can easily be exploited. adults have more experience, influence, and physical maturity than children or teens do, which they can leverage to groom or abuse a younger partner. as much as i will admit to not hating twilight that much (breaking dawn made me want to give myself a lobotomy though) and honestly sort of liking the trope of “human girl in love with an ancient supernatural being” or any variants of that, there’s an important distinction that needs to be made with it so it’s not awful.
the answer has little to do with mental age. it has to do with power dynamics.
for a vampire romance (which i’m just going to use as a general term for these sorts of relationships) it is absolutely necessary for there to be some caveat in place to prevent the supernatural party from just taking advantage of the mortal one. usually we don’t even think about that when reading or watching vampire romances, because how could such a charming creature of the night stoop so low?
but it’s important to note that vampires, in gothic literature, existed to fulfill a very specific role. the repressed victorians loved incorporating taboo subjects into their stories, for the steamy scenes i guess, but couldn’t easily do so within the confines of proper literature. one of those taboo subjects was r*pe, which they both found very hot in a forbidden sort of way and longed to explore in their writing without societal backlash, and if you cast an eye upon dracula or carmilla it’s quite easy to guess where those subjects ended up.
so, for a proper vampire romance, it can’t just end in a straight up kidnapping or taking by force, both because that would be narratively uninteresting and morally corrupt. sometimes there’s a supernatural reason for it, like a protection that the mortal party has to prevent the immortal one from abusing their powers. for example, bella in twilight is immune to telepathy and later develops a shield power against all vampire powers, preventing edward from being able to take advantage of her or invade her privacy any more than he was already doing, fuck you stephanie meyer. sometimes the mortal party has a power of their own that, while relatively useless in situations where the immortal one can swoop in and save them dramatically, is very useful against said immortal party for whatever reason. for example, kagome’s status as the reincarnation of the priestess migoriko would theoretically prevent inuyasha from harming her; in a more explicit example, nanami from kamisama kiss holds absolute divine control over tomoe and could order him to stop if ever he tried anything she didn’t like. although there’s an age gap in those stories, it doesn’t feel like it, not just because of the immortal party’s mental age but because of their inability to take advantage of said gap.
can you see where this is going?
megumi/gojo is absolutely foul -- there’s the grooming aspect, the fact gojo knew megumi when he was five and practically raised him as a father, and the implicit power imbalance of a teacher/student relationship. there’s no question as to why it’s so repulsive to think about.
megumi/sukuna is equally repulsive, but really only when it exists in fan works. in the canon, sukuna doesn’t have the opportunity to so much as interact with megumi most of the time, let alone take advantage of him, and yuuji would stop that before it ever happened. it feels like a classic vampire romance because the power imbalance should, theoretically, be nerfed by outside circumstances. of course this isn’t the case in any sukufushi fanworks, because it would obviously be boring for sukuna to respect megumi’s boundaries and also to not date a fucking 15 year old from inside the body of another 15 year old, jesus christ. in sukufushi fanworks, which as i’ve stated is the only place sukufushi even exists, there is always something cancelling out the restraints placed on sukuna’s power, whether it be that he has his own body, takes advantage of “enchain”, is able to take control of yuuji’s body on his own, yuuji lets him out for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter.
there’s always something like that because sukufushi doesn’t exist as a vampire romance, it exists as something more like tentacle p*rn.
that’s not a sentence i ever thought i’d write, but i think it makes sense? it’s not supposed to be an actual relationship, it’s more like wish fulfillment for people with degradation and pain kinks. in sukufushi fan works, sukuna wields absolute power over megumi and takes full advantage of the age gap and power gap between them. just like how tentacle p*rn strips away the right to refuse in the face of absolute alien power and a language barrier that keeps consent from being withdrawn, sukufushi strips away megumi’s right to refuse in the face of absolute curse power and sukuna’s inability to take “no” for an answer. this is why all explicit sukufushi fics end with megumi being r*ped or nearly r*ped.
please don’t ask me how i know all of this. sometimes good fanfics have sukufushi scenes in them and i have to like, scroll past the paragraphs really fast to get back to the plot. it’s just that omnipresent.
in other words, megumi/gojo is more grounded in “reality” (not the reality of a functional teacher/student relationship, but the reality of a 28 year old man really being 28 years old) and absent of vampire romance justifications for the age gap. it feels gross because it is and also because there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be.
megumi/sukuna doesn’t feel that way at first, especially if you mainly see sort of canon compliant shipping of it. it’s really common and also never commented on when people joke about sukuna having a “crush” on megumi based on his lines of dialogue when he says he’s curious about him or whatnot. that obeys vampire romance rules, so it doesn’t feel weird. sukuna really doesn’t want to kill or harm megumi because he’s important to his plans later, so that’s out. yuuji would never let sukuna touch megumi with a 10 foot pole either, so that’s out. really their only interactions are hypothetical, besides that one time in shibuya, and even then literally nothing happened. sukuna didn’t want his pawn to break yet, that’s all. even when people overanalyze it they can’t really get any farther than “looks like someone’s got a crush on fushigurooooo” because that’s the farthest it can go.
if you start looking into sukufushi fanart or fanfics, which is about 95% of the content for sukufushi anyway because again, it’s not supported by the canon at all, vampire romance is replaced unceremoniously by tentacle p*rn. which is why i hate it so much.
thank you for coming to my ted talk
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Thank you so much for asking this!! And I do have some head canons for Peach! I wish he would appear more in the game (through texts,books, and paintings.) it even just texts about living in pitch darkness underground. But I am not a chemist or a biologist! So all these are my thoughts and opinions.
People used to live in the ruins underground. To me it gives me Metro 2020 vibes on monsters and people living in isolation. But as more and more people struggled to even survive, it gave way for some individuals to want to venture into ‘forbidden’ areas in hope of saving themselves, loved ones and people.
But we need to talk about the 4 histories of my time at Portia.
Age of corruption. This time period is a bit further than where we are right now. We are almost living this life but normal civilians don’t access to human sized robots (Ack) to do our house chores just yet. But the age of corruption is just humans living lazy, luxurious, and pampered lives. Which unfortunately when you have humans that get whatever they want with very little effort it makes greed and entitlement a big problem.
Day of calamity - entitlement meant war. Consider it like nuclear war. Humans created weapons to conquer and destroy neighboring cities. The smoke from the chemicals, and fires covered the skies. Chemical rain caused mutations in animals creating some of the monsters we see in the game. But the chemical warfare didn’t just Mutate animals...it also affected humans. Between the war and chemicals the human popular became sparse. Now I don’t remember if the game mentioned exactly what the smoke was that covered the world but I can only guess it was the chemical smoke. Which goes into
The age of darkness. Humans lived underground. My guess is because of the chemical smoke clouds which meant chemical rainfall. (Chemical rainfall is a real thing even now. Our real world is so infested with pollution that it rains out of the sky 💀). So humans to escape the nuclear chemical infested air (okay technically it’s the dust particles but I’m gonna say air), water, and rain they had to live underground because the air would be unbareable for humans. I like to think of Fallout for this. Like in fallout 4 with nuclear rain and how it hurts and Being near radiated water hurts. But with the sun covered away for so long initiate a nuclear winter. So humans now living isolated underground would cause problems naturally... finding a mate would be hard being confined to what group your ancestor fled with. Plants don’t grow well without sunlight, radiation is in the water, lack of vitamin D, and no proper ventilation for smoke, FREEZING temperatures and the threat of other creatures that lived underground.
The age of darkness is when the church of light was formed. In times of panic and fear religion thrives. Stephen Kings the mist shows how fast religion can come about in times of fear, and uncertainty. Which would have split our already divided survivors. The religious followers who believed religion will save them and the explorers who didn’t beleive saving would magically happen.
This is where Peach would have been born. He would have been born underground and he was apart of the explorers. He aided in the dangerous ruin dives to find technology that was salvageable. I feel a lot of people would have died finding all this technology. Because I think peach wasn’t a fighter per say as he was more of a scientist. It would have taken the combined work of an explorer/adventurer and scientists to get it all going. But peach managed to build a machine to dispel the chemical induced darkness. Which lead to
The day of the bright sun! Peach used the machine to dispel the clouds in as many places as he could. But of course it took decades before the clouds fully disappeared. But even after humans were finally free...humans went right back to war again for control. But now control for the ruins and the technology within them.
That was a quick and not so great overview! But now my head canons!
💻I don’t think Peach lived a long life. He would have been exposed to radiation and chemicals during his entire time exploring for parts, building it together and having to go to the surface to use the machine in the first place. He probably died a painful death and the radiation slowly but surely killed him.
💻I don’t believe he would be a church of light follower. During the age of darkness the church believed all technology was evil. But Peach believed and risked his life every day to find technology that could save them.
💻I feel he’s a nerd and not a fighter. Django says after Peach, people formed the civil cops and military over knights. Which I think means civil corps were originally people who aided in the ruins dives to keep the scientists (Peach) safe.
💻he popularized umbrella hats because he used umbrella hats so he could use his hands while protecting him from the radiated rain.
💻now for how he neutralized it’s I’m not so sure. I presume it would be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They had to build on top of the city to get away from the radiation. Which makes sense as to why Portia is built on top of the previous city that it was 300 years prior. But I think maybe Peach built some form of a a reverse osmosis, carbon air filter, and some Ion exchange to purify the water. Hence why Peach is a total nerd. Because I don’t understand science so much XD.
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The 100: 7x01 From the Ashes
Disclaimer: This post is about the episode of the show The 100, From the Ashes, the season 7 premiere, and only about it. In this post, I will NOT be discussing any original scripts, unused takes, bloopers, behind the scene photos or videos, scribbled notes exchanged between the writers, or any tweets, Instagram posts, SMS or e-mails by any of the cast or crew members, considering the fact that none of those things constitute the show’s canon, which consists of the actual episodes.
I will also not be discussing anything about the future episodes posted by any ‘spoiler accounts’, and, in fact, I am unaware of most of these things, since I’m trying not to read any spoilers. Please do not tell me any spoilers for future episodes or ask me about them.
I really enjoyed this episode, in spite of the unfortunate lack of Bellamy (which I was already expecting since what happens to him here was already spoiled by the trailer. Of course, I’m looking forward to see Bellamy again, and, before that, to everyone finding out about disappearance and it becoming the focus of the season. But until then, the show has quite a few other storylines to deal with, from setting up and delving more into the Anomaly mystery, to dealing with the fall-out of season 6 in Sanctum, and both of these were handled well, for the most part.
This episode in particular had really good characterizations all around - for Murphy, Echo, Indra, Madi, Raven, Emori, Gaia, even Jackson - and, of course, Clarke, who had an arc that took her tendency to try to repress her feelings to an extreme, until they exploded in a most memorable way. It will cause her trouble, no doubt, but it was great to watch, and something I had been wishing for for quite some time.
There is just one character whose storyline I’m still not sure how I feel about, because I’m not sure what the show is doing with him.
After the last season’s cliffhanger, there was some concern in the fandom that Bellamy would regress to being all about protecting his sister, after their relationship had been redefined with “You’re my sister, but you’re not my responsibility”. Some of that was really exaggerated: there’s absolutely nothing odd or surprising about Bellamy crying over his sister disappearing in his arms. Of course he loves her and wants her safe. But I was concerned they may regress his development if they make him forget about everyone and everything else in his life in order to impulsively jump after her into the Anomaly. However, that did not happen - Bellamy didn’t decide to go on his own, rather than tell others and make a plan. He was taken.
The mysterious people from the Anomaly seem to be able to control the Anomaly, and have some sort of a cloaking device, presumably connected to their suits and helmets, that makes them invisible to others. They also have some sort of a screen inside their helmets, with facial recognition of targets and commands. It’s all a bit creepy - these seem to be humans, but they are receiving orders the way a robot would. (It’s all very Terminator-like!) Maybe because they also have lost their memories while going through the Anomaly? Where did they get the info about who Bellamy, Gabriel and Echo are - was it from Octavia’s memories?
Memories and memory loss are obviously going to play a huge role this season. People who come from the Anomaly to Sanctum seem to lose their memories, except when the Anomaly is still there. Does this happen only on Sanctum, or at the other side(s) as well? How does the fact that the Anomaly sucks in radio signals fit into that? Hope had to use a message she put into her own arm to remind herself to “TRUST BELLAMY”. (Interstellar is mentioned a lot as an inspiration for this season, but this reminds me of another Nolan film, Memento.)
We also see Clarke spout knowledge about how the big mansion was built (by Russell for Simone, to remind her of her house on Earth), which she would know due to still having some of Josephine’s memories. And I’m sure that the fact Madi still has the memories of past Commanders will play a big role - specifically, the fact she has Becca’s memories, which could be the way to tie the present day story to the prequel/story about what happened during and right after the apocalypse. (She also probably knows about Sheidheda more than anyone else alive, which may play into the Sanctum story.)
It’s too early to judge Hope as a character, but the mystery surrounding her is certainly super interesting. Why do the mysterious people from the Anomaly have orders to kill her on sight (as opposed to capturing, which they were supposed to do with Bellamy, Echo and Gabriel)? Is it because of who she is, or what she is - is it about her actions, does she know too much, or is her existence itself that’s the problem?
I loved the Octavia cameo in Hope’s hallucination, with the confirmation that she was an “aunt” figure to her, a part of a found family with Diyoza and Hope. The Anomaly makes you see your biggest desire or biggest fear - and Hope’s biggest desire seems to be to be reunited with her family
Echo’s hallucination, on the other hand, is obviously about her biggest fear - so it makes perfect sense that it’s Roan who appears to her, as he exiled her from Azgeda. Of course biggest fear would be losing her kru and her king/queen and being left alone and adrift. I’m as surprised as anyone that I found Echo's scene to be maybe the best in the episode. But she did have some really good character moments in seasons 6, and this is IMO her best character moment so far, picking up from her red sun hallucination in 6x02, and flashback from 6x11. which revealed that even her identity as “Echo” is fake. It seems the show is finally doing the character development it neglected to give her in season 5, and addressing all the obvious issues with Echo’s development and her relationship with Bellamy. I think this confirms that it was indeed Echo talking to herself while hallucinating Emori in 6x02, since her hallucination of Roan tells her the same thing, that she is still just a killer following another master’s orders. We finally see Echo feeling guilt over the things she did in the past, including her betrayal of Bellamy in season 3. When she imagines him calling her out on betraying “the man she now claims to love”, is it just about her thinking the others would doubt her love, or is she herself questioning whether her feelings for Bellamy are really romantic love, or just loyalty to her current leader? Their relationship, especially in S6, often came off more as the latter.
(It was also really cool to see Zach McGowan again)
The timeline of 7x01 seems to have confused some fans, but I think it’s pretty obvious that, at the beginning of the Sanctum story, no more than a day (probably less than that) has passed since 6x13 - going by the facts that 1) the Anomaly storyline picked up minutes after the end of 6x13, and the Sanctum story was presumably happening at the same time, and 2) Indra had to explain the situation in Sanctum to everyone. The only thing that seems to go against that is that Russell is said to “not have slept” since what happened on the ship, which makes it seem like it’s been longer. Or maybe Russell was just being extra dramatic. “Oh, I have no slept for a whole day!” He certainly spent a lot of this (his last) episode feeling sorry for himself. At least he seemed to have finally realized he wasn’t the superior good guy in all of it (”Tell them I’m treated better than I deserve” - yes, indeed.)
Indra was great, even though poor Adina was forced to be an exposition machine for a part of the episode.
A common complaint I’ve seen among fans is that it’s weird that Clarke and others in Sanctum aren’t worried about Bellamy and co. I don’t understand this complaint, as it’s clear that very little time has passed and that Bellamy, Octavia, Echo and Gabriel must have told everyone they were leaving and why (though I don’t know how many details they told them about the Anomaly Stone). People have been gone for a whole day in season 6 when they just went to the Offering Grove (Echo in 6x06) or the radioactive shield (Raven, Emori and Echo in 6x05), which are within the confines of Sanctum and much nearer than the camp by the Anomaly. What are they supposed to do but wait for a couple of days for them to come back? It’s not like they can call them, when radios and other means of communication usually don’t work on Alpha because of the Anomaly sucking the signals.
In fact, their absence was mentioned in the picnic scene, when Raven toasted to “absent friends” and we got a reaction shot of Clarke (I know, Clarke, I'd be annoyed too if I was you, but Bellamy had to be all "I'm gonna go now and explore the Anomaly Stone while Sanctum is in chaos and you're in mourning for your mom" because the plot needed him to..., before Niylah toasted to the “departed ones” (which would include Kane and Abby) and we got a close-up reaction shot of Clarke trying to keep it all inside, as she did every time in this episode someone mentioned Abby.
The idyllic picnic by the mansion - everyone’s attempt to get some rest and nice time after everything they had been through - was such a contrast to the “powder keg” of Sanctum and the end of this episode. But it also felt fake - just as fake as the deception and lies that Murphy and Emori are Daniel and Kaylee Prime, or that Madi still has the Flame in her head - to keep the devout and Wonkru under control, respectively - and just as fake as Clarke’s attempts to convince everyone she’s “fine”. As usual, the song playing in the background (”Darkness” by Pinegrove) was very fitting:
Suddenly I find
I've got darkness on my mind
It's a question mark that keeps me looking
And it's never satisfied
And it's never what I thought
Saying I'm happy when I'm not
No, I got darkness on my mind
Leaning out the frame
When it's particulate and gray
I'm perpendicular to my whole being
When I lean a certain way
Saying I'm happy when I'm not
Finding roaches in the pot
Oh, I got darkness on my mind
Some people spend their whole lives looking
For someone who could understand
While meanwhile a lilac blooming
Sometimes on the driest land
And I know it's been a long time coming
I'm angry and I know that's weak
And I'm longing out that open window
For whatever it is I seek
[musical breakdown]
Some people spend their whole lives looking
For someone who could understand
And while meanwhile a lilac blooming
Sometimes on the driest land
And I know it's been a long time coming
I'm angry and I know that's weak
So I'm trying not to be so bitter
I'm just looking at it honestly
Well, I know it's been a long time coming
I'm angry and I know that's weak
And I'm longing out that open window
For whatever it is I seek
Some people spend their whole lives looking
For someone who could understand
While meanwhile a lilac blooming
Sometimes on the driest land, yeah
I like that there was anger, blame and conflict between our kru and that everyone didn’t just forget what happened last season (and for once, Clarke is not the one getting the blame!) It would've made no sense if no one was blaming Murphy, and it makes sense it would be Jackson, who was so close to Abby and who’s not particularly close to Murphy. It also makes sense there was disagreement about the method of keeping peace in Sanctum, and that not everyone would be happy with Memori cosplaying the Primes.
Murphy himself had a really good characterization in this episode - we saw his grief and his feelings of guilt. While he tried to defend himself when blamed that he didn’t know what Russell would do, when left alone, he blamed himself for various actions that led to it, which is something Murphy from a couple of seasons ago wouldn’t do.
It’s great to see Raven looking more like her old, pre-season 6 self, and even better to see that her self-righteousness has gone. She’s more like the old Raven but without the snarky b1tchiness. I’m glad that she got called out by Murphy on her “Miss Morality” role from last season (which never really made sense, pre-time jump Raven was never a moral compass of the group, she was smart, pragmatic and could be as ruthless as anyone).
Another major theme of the Sanctum plot were the new beginnings. Clarke pointing out season 3 feels like another world seems almost like the show going meta and pointing out to the audience how much Clarke and all these people have lived through and been since.What is Sanctum now after the Primes have been defeated, with Children of Gabriel coming back home and clashing with the Devout - brainwashed and loyal followers of the Primes, with the rest of the Sanctumites in between? How are Wonkru and the 36 Eligius prisoners going to start again on a new planet moon? (36?! Wow, so they really suffered heavy losses in that gorge, too, when there are so few left?) Can Grounders be without a Commander? Gaia without her religion? Can Madi be a normal kid, without the Flame - or is that even possible while she has to pretend to still be Heda? The title From the ashes seems to refer to that - and maybe the end of the episode means that you have to burn down the old beliefs and old idols to build something new?
Mothers and daughters were another theme. I liked that Madi mentioned her biological parents (well, mother) on-screen for the first time, since the fandom tends to forget about them and ignore them too often. Madi was unsuccessful in her attempt to make Clarke share her feelings with her - maybe because this conversation showed a big difference in how they see each other? Clarke thinks of Madi as her child, but Clarke has never had a child before, while Madi had parents and suffered their loss; Clarke assumed Madi was talking about her and what happened in S6, but Madi always calls Clarke “Clarke” rather than “Mom”, and tried to connect to her on the equal level, as another daughter who’s lost a mother. Maybe it’s exactly because Clarke sees Madi only as her child that she feels she must be “strong” for her all the time and not show grief.
There was an unexpected parallel between Indra and Clarke in how Indra also tried to suppress outward expressions of grief when her partner - Gaia’s father died, which clearly wasn’t healthy and caused a rift between mother and daughter. (I’m not sure about when that happened, i.e. when Gaia first decided to become a Flamekeeper. I guess it must have been before the timeline of seasons 1-3. So Gaia’s dad is probably not the man that Indra recognized in 2x15 as one of the Reapers? I’m still angry that we never got any resolution to that storyline and that the Reapers were forgotten after season 2.)
The one thing I’m not sure about is Jordan’s characterization and arc. I’m not sure what the show is doing with his exactly, and I’m afraid that they’ll try to leave it ambiguous just how much he is or isn’t brainwashed. 6x13 made it very clear that he has been “adjusted”, which Russell confirmed here, and Jordan’s “adjustor”, who was creeping behind him in the season 6 finale, was very present and active in this episode, and clearly still had a big influence on him. At the same time, we learn that Jordan does not believe in the divinity of the Primes - instead of that, his hallucinations made him see something connected to the mystery of the Anomaly, which Russell describes as something “greater” (almost like he has finally found God, of sorts, after all, which he talked about 236 years before when he first landed on Alpha)? The good news is that it means Jordan will have a role in the Anomaly story, rather than being the advocate for the Devout. What I’m afraid of is that the show will gloss over the fact that Jordan was brainwashed - whether or not he came to believe that Primes were gods, he certainly did a 180 from despising Primes as murderers, being outraged by their actions and knowing very well that Priya was not Delilah but someone who took over her body; to (just a few days later, after “adjustment”) spouting Prime propaganda about the “peaceful” society they had before the Bad People from Earth came (that’s the peace they had when they regularly murdered their people to steal their bodies, left babies to die, and made them go crazy and kill each other from time to time) and having some kind of attachment to Priya herself and her mind drive.
At least, I hope that Russell unceremoniously smashing the mind drive means we’re done with that storyline. I loved it, it was my favorite storyline of the show, but it’s time for it to be over. It makes no sense that anyone is still letting Russell keep his mind drive, for starters. When will they realize they need to destroy these things?
- Clarke’s way of dealing with grief over her mom’s death was certainly unhealthy - repressing her feelings even more than usual, trying to be calm, composed, logical, to do the things needed to keep peace. In her last scene in 6x13, Clarke was open about her grief with Bellamy, looking to him for comfort, finding comfort in his arms and his words. But now he’s absent, there’s no one else she can be that open and vulnerable with. (The only other person Clarke looked for comfort to was Abby.) It’s nice to see that she and Raven have mended their friendship with Raven, she is starting to develop a new one with Gaia over their mutual care for Madi, she has mutual respect with Indra, she’s known others - like Murphy or Miller = for years, since the Delinquent days... and they all want to help her, but she’s not opening up to anyone, not even Madi. She thinks she must be “strong” for all of them, and her Head and Heart are unbalanced - she’s repressing the latter, until she finally explodes.
I love the scene of Clarke finally losing it and beating up Russell (I had already seen it in the trailer, and it was my favorite moment) and then crying while holding Abby's clothes. I don’t know about anyone else, but I love seeing an angry, emotional Clarke, letting it all out, especially when it's anger at people she has every right to be furious at. We haven’t seen that from her since early season 3 (when she yelled and spat in Lexa’s face over her betrayal). It had bothered me for a few seasons that Clarke - who used to be vibrant and could be impulsive, angry, hold grudges, yell at people in seasons 1-2, had become so repressed and muted due to her constant self-blame. I’ve had enough watching Clarke look sad while other people keep yelling at her and blaming her. (The only other instance of Clarke being furious was her hurt and rage at Bellamy and the slap in 5x09, but that was more of a silent, “internally screaming” rage/hurt, which turned into Clarke being emotionally frozen for the next couple of episodes, until learning he was alive. When Clarke is keeping everything inside and not yelling, that’s when she’s in the worst emotional state.)
It is, however, so sad that she still blames herself, too, for her mother’s death, whispering “I’m sorry”, the same way she whispered after seeing her father floated.
My only problem with the scene of that stupid palace burning down is that "mistakes" is a serious real understatement for what Russell has done. I know, I know, this will cause a lot of trouble in Sanctum and Clarke will probably have to go back on some of these decisions to keep peace. But there’s really nothing morally wrong with deciding to execute Russell - not only does he deserve it, but he’s arguably even an exception from the general objection to death penalty, since he’s lived several times the normal human lifespan, by stealing other people’s bodies. And the palace burning down is a symbolic way to send the message that the old power structures are gone - which Clarke pointed out when she said there will be no kings or queens anymore.
Sheiheda taking over Russell’s, or rather his latest host’s body, wasn’t surprising, as that was the most popular theory. But it was cool to see Sheidheda’s creepy mindspace again and Sean Maguire as the original Russell. The bodysnatcher got bodysnatched. That’s something like poetic justice.
I just have to post this because it’s such a beautiful shot!
Rating: 8/10
#the 100#the 100 season 7#the 100 7x01#from the ashes#clarke griffin#john murphy#jordan green#bellamy blake#echo kom azgeda#madi griffin#the anomaly
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I love you Matt hcs so much! So much inspiration for mine too!
Have you got any post-cannon hcs? (Maybe angst/Whump one? But that’s not so important I would love to hear any ^^)
Thank you sm!! :D
All right SO, my main niche in the fandom is fleshing out the Ace Attorney prison, examining the relationships between all the characters there, fleshing everyone out, considering their character arcs, etc. It’s definitely something I put a lot of thought into and get excited about ^^
I imagine there being three main prisons:
Prison A
The canon prison shown in Ace Attorney Investigations: 2. Prisoners are allowed one animal companion, there’s a supplier with influence over the warden (and, imo, the guards as well), it’s overall a prison that can be interpreted as more relaxed--with limited corruption, due to the fact that, in my opinion at least, Sirhan Dogen wouldn’t put up with much BS. Although he can’t control everything, Dogen has a decent amount of power that he uses to make his prison livable.
Prison B
This is the opposite of Prison A. Damon Gant is in charge, but in a different kind of way; after being Chief of Police for so long, he still has a lot of power and connections, and many officers hold respect and / or fear towards him. The prison is a hierarchy of power and control with a lot of corruption, and anyone who doesn’t work for Gant is in danger.
Prison C
The women’s prison. Dee Vasquez has the upper hand here, due to her outside connections with the mafia. She handles things in a more manipulative, underhanded kind of way--isn’t so much focused on the prison at large, but moreso on securing her own matters. She uses protection or exploitation sparingly, and when she does, she deflects attention off of it as much as possible. While the prison isn’t as horrible as Prison B, it’s not as safe as Prison A.
Now that the environment has been established, time to get into the details about Matt:
Matt Engarde went to Prison A.
In Ace Attorney, fame and riches seem to make little difference when it comes to putting someone behind bars. However, the game does show that it can add complications, and affect things to a certain level. With that said, here’s how I imagine things went over with the arrest:
Things are a whirlwind of chaos and fear and pain at first, but it doesn’t take him long to get a deal set up with the prison. Sometime within the first week of his imprisonment. Thankfully, this is done quickly enough that his assets haven’t been transferred to his parents, yet.
His sentence is 10 years. No death penalty or life sentence, because the deal is that, for each year that Matt Engarde is alive and healthy, the prison receives $500,000. This would give them ample reason to take measures to protect him from De Killer.
Matt doesn’t have an endless amount of money, and he also doesn’t want to be stuck there forever. In his mind, hopefully De Killer would be behind bars or dead by the end of those 10 years, and if not... well, he’ll figure it out when he gets there.
He’s given the cell down the hall from Sirhan Dogen, the infamous assassin. This scares the HELL out of Matt at first, but the guards assure him that it’s for his own safety:
However, since he’s placed in this cell before the deal is made, there was an ulterior motive as well. Due to the fact that Shelly De Killer is another infamous assassin, Warden Roland considered it a possibility that he’s one of Dogen’s outside contacts. If Dogen were to rat out Matt’s location to him, the prison would be prepared to capture and arrest De Killer, and it would be confirmed that they had been contacts.
Obviously, Dogen could rat him out no matter which cell he’s in, but it’s more convenient to place Matt there as bait since the hallway is monitored so heavily--they’ll be prepared to restrain both De Killer and Dogen if/when that time comes.
If the deal were made beforehand, he likely would have been sent to Prison B; even though it’s a harsher atmosphere, no one in there is presumed to be a contact of De Killer’s. While he could have been transferred at this point, it’s decided that they’ll stick to their regular plan, just with added precautions and safety measures.
Matt, although suspicious, never has any sort of confirmation that he’s being used as bait--at least, not until years later.
BUT ANYHOW.
Interactions and Reputation
I get into it a bit in this fic*, but the gist is this:
There’s no point in continuing to act charming when everyone knows it’s BS, and any chance of Toughness or Good Standing he could have had are kinda... shattered by his frequent (very loud) panic attacks late at night.
For the first year, he doesn’t bother trying to make friends. He doesn’t care about them, they won’t care about him, and he’s not interested in playing a tug-of-war with power dynamics when he knows he won’t always necessarily come out on top. So he’s kind of a loner here. Occasionally entertains himself by picking fights.
*(Spoiler warning for AAI2 in the fic I linked!!)
Character Arc
From this point, I can see it going in several different directions. I have two different fic AUs where things turn out differently in each one, and I also have an extensive role-play I did with a friend of mine. In terms of imagining his “canon” life and his future, I definitely learn towards the events that transpired in the role-play, so I’ll focus on those.
(My friend and I made a post analyzing his personality and character arc, so most of the things I’ll mention here have been mentioned in this post in greater detail. HOWEVER the post is EXTREMELY long and also contains major spoilers for AAI2. So if you want to avoid spoilers and also want a summed up version, feel completely free to just read the summary below!) (oh also, with relation to the post I just linked, tw for?? a variety of common triggers)
I should mention that this might not be COMPLETELY spoiler-free, but I do avoid saying the spoilery name. It’s hard for me to accurately gauge what is and isn’t revealing, since I already know all the spoilers haha.
And, without further ado:
-Everything about his world has been turned upside-down. Instead of being adored, he’s despised. Instead of being the one with power, he’s the one under the thumb of others. Instead of a life of comfort and privilege, he’s confined to small, uncomfortable areas, and is barely paid anything for his labor. Additionally, he could be killed at any moment at any hour at any location--and this is something he’s forced to endure for years on end. The entire situation is incredibly stressful and traumatic for him.
-About a year after his arrest, a guy moves into his cell with him. Things align in just the right way that a friendship of some sort is formed between them: the guy is friendly, pretty, relatable, into some of the same hobbies he’s into, and he has power within the prison walls. It’s beneficial to form a friendship with him... and the guy isn’t annoyed with him for his (now much less-frequent) panic attacks, but rather, shows sympathy.
-Neither of them particularly trust one another, but they enjoy each other’s company.
-Humans need comfort, and Matt is no exception. Under the intense trauma and stress he’s enduring, it’s all too easy to form some sort of bond with the nice guy who dances with him and pets his hair and holds him.
-It’s important to mention that Matt is rendered unable to do his usual power & control shit. And he especially can’t get away with that kind of stuff when his new cellmate shows up. The guy is Very Alert to underhanded behavior (due to his own underhandedness + the fact that he’s dealt with one too many bastards), and is quick to call Matt out on even minor things. So Matt’s options at this point are either:
a.) try his manipulative shit and lose any small amount of power or comfort he may have had, with an added risk of retribution
b.) resist all forms of connection / interaction with other people, and just be miserable and alone and scared all by himself
c.) be friends with the guy WITHOUT being a shady douche, and getting to enjoy the comfort and benefits that provides
-So... YEAH. Long story short, he makes friends with the guy. And, also, lowkey catches feelings for him.
-Matt also makes friends with Simon Blackquill a couple years later (and that has its own backstory)
-His previous ways of moving through the world do not work at all here. In the end, Matt’s main goal is to get what he wants, and to feel good. With the circumstances, he has to completely change his approaches in order to meet that goal.
-Matt may be cold and uncaring towards other people’s emotions, but it’s clear that he does have very intense emotions. He shows much more vulnerability and pain now than he used to, because doing so makes him more sympathetic to his friends--but he also needs to learn to not be as manipulative about it, and to actually consider the other person’s emotions instead of making it all about himself.
-He does ultimately decide to make the overall changes necessary for healthy interpersonal connections, since it’s in his best interest to do so. It’s not easy, and he hits plenty of road bumps along the way. It definitely dredges up a lot of shit, a lot of painful emotions; he’s extremely self-protective, and genuine vulnerability is hard and frightening.
-The tl;dr is that he’s dragged through a healing arc, kicking and screaming the entire way.
That’s what his life in like in prison, overall! There’s a ton of aspects and details, but I figured it’d be best to cover the basic storyline ^^
I also have thoughts on how things would go after he’s released from prison.
...OH SHIT I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO MENTION THE SHELLY THING LMAO
I’m gonna make a post where I detail out what happens, and then link it here when I finish.
Edit: Here it is!
#Matt Engarde#aa post#Matt#thank you for the ask!! and thank you to everyone else who's been asking too aaa#I'm so happy people are interested in my headcanons#aaprison
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ELDAR PART 2:
#5 EXODITES You know that army everyone says their going to do, and then you never see anyone doing it? You know that concept that seems kind of bizarre and niche, but is always kind of fun when you think about it? Lets cut the bull, do you know about the Exodites? Yeah you know the ones I mean. The Eldar who where smart enough from the get go to realize that shit was gonna hit that fan. And by hit we mean, the shit was a dirty nuclear bomb, and the fan was spinning at Mach 10, and no one within a 1 million light year radius of it was going to not get shit on them? The Eldar that if they had a proper army dex, would probably be Toughness 4, Strength 5 and could break an Aspect warrior over their knee? Well fear not, because the Chaos Druid is here to tell you how it may be possible to have these “Salt of the Earth” Style Eldar as a force.
-First off, the lore. The Exodites as we all know, where those Eldar who, at the time before the fall realized what was going to happen, and after trying to tell the rest of their race that the liberal agenda was a bad idea, went fuck it and took off for the distant Eastern fringe of the galaxy. Abandoning much of what their race had achieved, these highly attuned seer like Eldar went and settled many a wild and dangerous world. You could say they where Mountain Men of their race. Minus the Buckskins. When establishing a concept for your army, it should be important to note these sorts of things, and mayhap research our own real world history, looking for those who left behind more advanced surroundings to wander the wilds and tame or become a part of their new surroundings. Besides, whats not to like when coming up with a how did your army tame mutha fuck’n dinosaurs for an army concept than to read about people who did much the same thing?
-How to represent it? This is the big hurdle to Exodites. GW never did give these backwoods space elves a codex of their own (sometimes I wonder if they where meant to be a mirror to wood elves from WHF) and so you have to be able to work a little bit of magic to bring them to the table. There are two ways of doing this: 1: Use a community created and tested Codex. This one is pretty simple. There are loads of communities on the net who enjoy making non-official but professional quality dexs that never existed, or that did and got left behind. This can be a good place to start if your unsure what exact kinds of units and characters you want to try and represent on the table. 2: Do a “Counts as army.” While this may seem a bit less interesting than going out in search of a quality fan made dex, believe it or not, counts as armies and models are some of the funnest challenges in the hobby. After all, who says you have to stick to one area? When it comes to a race as wide spread as the eldar, you can use all kinds of lists to represent your Exodites. From IA books, to the various inner factions and old codexes, you have a wealth of pre-made stats and rosters for your army, and it may even inspire you to create a Home Brew Dex of your own for use with friends and fellow Exodite fans, it can even be a group project!
-Modeling. Ah yes the next big hurdle in your quest to make this awesome idea come to life. But lucky for us, in this day and age of vast miniatures Renaissance, your never short on companies who produce all sorts of models for use in creating your own flavor of Exodites. Even the GW ranges can be put together via the various universes and factions to give rise to a unique and conversion heavy Exodite host. It’s these kind of armies that GW once upon a time used to really try and get their community interested in. Your own imagination is the only limit when making a fully converted army, and since everyone likes Dinosaurs, dragons, and laser guns, well, who isn;t going to have plenty of models ripe for bits fodder and base construction?
-So then next, whats your theme? After all, Exodites can be as various as their craftworld kin. They don’t all have to be from the same sort of planet, or even have the same sort of unit arrangement. Think first to yourself, what wild and possibly feral world has my army tamed and guards as their own? Are they Jungle style folk, Eldar survivalists of the deepest jungle worlds know to the galaxy who could give catachans are run for their money? Taming giant lizard like creatures and avian like Dinosaurs for use in war, while using mainly Stealth and Guerrilla style tactics against invaders, blending seamlessly into the Jungle foliage to strike while using the elements of their home world to wear down an enemy, Maybe they are a desert folk. Having traversed the sands of a barren wasteland planet in the style of Dune. (Dune….Eldar. Ok I may have to do this now) and have grown hardy and strong from the unforgiving conditions. Training and using burrowing and dangerous desert creatures such as serpentine lizards, Scorpion and draconic scalies of fire and ash to their use. Able to blend in and traverse the known ways of the sands to out maneuver and flank their foes foolish enough to come after them (and now I also want to watch Lawrence of Arabia). An alpine people would also not be a far stretch. After all we have seen plenty of Jungle Exodite concepts. So what about their Highlands dwelling kin? Eldar who live off the rock and timber of a giant temperate and sub arctic worlds. Strong of limb and able to survive the cold and wild temperaments of their chosen homes. Going into battle atop heavy plated and massive dino/prehistoric mammal like hybrids, battering their foes aside by ferocity and strength much like our own history’s hardy people of the mountains regions. Truly when creating an Exodite army, any hardy and primal like folk of our own world can serve as an excellent source for theme and character.
-And that leads us to story. Yet another thing that can have infinite possibilities based off your own imagination. Are your Exodites of the first migrations away from their Stellar Empire? The ancient and proud ones who fled the fall of their doomed race and have since held onto life and world for thousands upon thousands of years? Are you a young and newly aspiring tribe of Exodite travelers, having only just now in recent years and light of galactic events decided it best to leave the constraining confines of a Craftword and forge a new and hard destiny for yourself? Are you a sanctuary to Outcasts and those who have been forced or chosen to leave their homes in the Craftworld or even the Dark City. Do you dream of rising once again to dominance, or have you accepted the humble life of survivors and exiles. Are your Exodites proud warrior like people, given over to tribal customs of battle, honor and glory in combat? Or have you attempted to become a peaceful and conservative folk, only drawing a blade when pressed by outside forces. Do you count many of the ancient seers among your ranks, or do the physically strongest and most warlike lead you? Have you shunned all forms of technology or do you harbor much of your ancient relics and tech for use to give you an edge over your environment and enemies? Again, the sky is literally the limit with the number of ways you can forge your own unique brand of Exodites. That is, at the end of the day the fun of non-official, but canonical armies.
#6 CORSAIRS Everyone’s thinking it I’m just say’n it. Pirates! Ah yes, corsairs. Eldar Corsairs no less. A throw back to the original concept of these ancient Space Elves from the Rogue Trader era, where the Eldar, much like Orks, and even Chaos were cast in a more “Raider, Pirate, Freebooter” light than as giant interstellar empires of their own. And if I may be frank, my favorite style of all Eldar. Corsairs are in a league of their own when it comes to lore and the table top. If Craftworld Eldar are the Boomer parents, and the Dark Eldar are the teen goth phase kids, while the Exodites are the redneck uncle you visit during summer vacation, then the corsairs are that cool older sibling who always seems to have a few rings in his ear, rocks out to old style metal music and owns some sort of sup’d up car you love riding in. Over the years the Corsairs have had many attempts at army lists and most have fallen by the way side with each passing edition. So what is a pirate to do? Break out your Space Rum and lets find out.
-Find your inner Outcast. This is the best place to start. Of all the Eldar sub factions, Corsairs are considered the Outcast. Too liberal minded and self serving for the Craftworlds, not into back stabbing, court intrigue and BDSM which counts the Dark Eldar out, and still too fucking full of themselves to go and play salt of the earth farmer with the Exodites. In all things the Corsair is the embodiment of the classic pirate trope. Those who live outside law and country. Content to ply the stars and do as they wish, when they wish, and save their own skin above all else. This type of “Sandbox” mindset can be used to create an eldar force with limitless background, style and character possibilities.
-What sort of pirate be ye? That’s your next question. Being Self sufficient and serving, Corsairs fit just about any niche you can think of when it comes to reaver like style. This also means they can be found just about anywhere, with just about anyone. Are your Corsairs a club for eldar only? Or have they allied to other even more unscrupulous characters? Corsairs can be found raiding alongside the likes of Rogue Traders, other alien species, and even among chaos warbands and Ork freebootas! And the reasons are just as varied. Are your pirates proud Corsair Princes/Princess’, plying the stars on an ambitious mission of their own? Are they fallen from grace renegades who have or will fall in with any dirty crowd? Are they the ruler of a pirate kingdom all their own, or do they sail the stars in a single infamous vessel like pirate stories of old, ravaging and stealing as they desire? Are they survivors of a larger group of CW Eldar, hiding amongst Exodites and teaching them the old ways of your people while trying to accumulate enough power and followers to rebuild what was lost? The options are almost limitless when forging a narrative for your Corsair warband.
-What is your goal? In the end, many a Corsair is an individualistic character. Shunning the Narrow dogmatic path of the Craftworlds, and refusing to become a corrupted sadist like the Drukari, they live a life of self fulfillment and ambition. So what motivates your band of pirates? Do they seek a sporting challenge as arrogant reavers of the stars? Are they after the ancient glory of their Race’s past when they ruled over the galaxy? Maybe perhaps they are altruistic, and ally themselves with whoever they foresee being a benefit to the galactic order of things. Fame and fortune? Women and wine? A warrior code dedicated to Khaine, or another esoteric group of reavers worshiping the many faded or forgotten gods of the past? Nefarious allegiance to chaos, or maybe a darker order of things. Maybe perhaps just indulging your own hedonistic desires without care to share them with others. Again, a corsair can have many a goal, which makes for all sorts of unique concepts regarding your army.
-Models models models. Ah yes, models, and what to use for your physical army on the table? Fortunately we live in a time where not only is there quite an expansive range of Eldar style models, both official and third party, but there are other factions with models that can be used to further augment your Corsair warband. The options are many. Maybe you use a combination of CW and Dark eldar models to achieve a rough reaver/noble look. You can also dip into the Human side of models, utilizing Necromunda and RT faction models to give your eldar a much more grounded and space faring/gang like look. Even fantasy Elven ranges can be used to boost a more primal look to your Eldar, or perhaps Out of the way factions like Mechanicus and Warcry warbands can be augmented with Eldar models to produce some very unique Tech mash ups or tribal like appearances. Not to mention older far more grim looking GW models from Ebay can be used to add a spice of old to your model ranges. However you choose to do it, make sure your models are cut apart from straight up CW or Dark Eldar style figures. After all, your above that kind of crap.
-Now we come to the final question, how do we play this army? As I mentioned before, there are older Corsair lists under official publishing one can use, as well as no doubt a bevy of fan made content. Like the Exodites, the Corsairs can easily be used as a counts as force, with even more options as you can pull from a number of different books in order to create homebrew allies and piratical alliances with your army. Once you have down how to create a list, its time to ask, how will yours be a unique pirate band? The cornerstone of any crew of pirates is Speed. After all, no need to hang around and risk your own neck am I right? This luckily is the Eldar’s forte, and can be done in numerous ways without too much overlap. On one hand, taking advantage of Eldar Air power is an awesome idea for Corsairs. Not only have they used in pass incarnations many of the powerful aircraft of the Eldar race, including the feared Void Dragon, other smaller editions have been made of time such as the handy Wasp, and fast moving Jump pack corsairs. Building off this concept, corsairs can utilise the various armies of the Eldar to kick into high gear. Between the DE and CW books, there is a wealth of fast moving raider vessels, teleporting and deep striking units, as well as high initiative and deadly close combat infantry. Depending on your list and homebrew rules, you may even have options to add other races in for flavor, such as Ork Meatshields…..I mean Ork allies that are very useful and cared about. Human RTs that can use various codex designs to function as an extra bulwark of strength and toughness and even Chaos elements if your feeling like you need the warp on your side. Maybe your corsairs favor Jetbike and light attack craft tactics and are made up almost completely of such units, along with jump infantry to help support your already fearsome maneuverability. There’s even ways to create an Eldar Corsair force that deploys almost exclusively from Deepstrike, entering the table at any point, ready to strike the enemy’s weak spot or run circles around their more cumbersome units. Always remember the enemy can;t hit back if they never see you coming, or are too slow to catch you!
It can be said, if the Exodites are a Modeling enthusiast’s dream, then the Corsairs are Narrative army creator’s playground. Enjoy Pillaging the stars fellow pirates!
I can only hope this lengthy entry has given some of you new perspective or even just revivied old ideas on how to create and Eldar army of unique or simply enjoyable design. Sometimes I do feel as if Eldar are bottlenecked into repetative lists and story styles that leave little to customize, and rarely seem to fire the imagination. So really, these Pointy Eared ones arn’t just simple ELVES IN SPACE. There is little limit to what one can make of so many different aspects of this once great and powerful race.
As Always, Happy Hobbying!
#warhammer 40k#warhammer#eldar#xenos#exodites#corsairs#lore#insperation#hobby#miniatures#gaming#aliens#pirates#art
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001 pathologic
Even if it says “Pathologic” I’ll mostly be talking about Pathologic 2 and specify if it’s not the case. It’s just where most of my experience lies since I’m not done with Pathologic Classic HD yet. ^^
Also I’m putting this one under a cut because… man. That got long! Like way too long, I thought I could do this one very quick and now two hours have passed and I’m still writing it! Dear god, these are a lot of questions!
Favorite character:
... It’s Dankovsky. We all know it. I mean I went into the game being like “I’m pretty sure the tragic asshole character is gonna be my favorite...” Credit where credit is due, I persevered until the day 11 conversation. But we all would have known that Marble Nest would have gotten me anyways so.. Yeah. I especially love his dynamic relationship with Artemy in Patho 2 and he is just a fun and complex character, that I really love to think about and who has made some terrible decisions while still staying sympathetic for me. Also the mix of science and dreams is just something that I find interesting and also can kind of relate too. Love that stuff!
Least Favorite character:
In Patho 2 it’s Oyun. The way he talks about the Kin makes me really uncomfortable. The animalistic portrayal is for me one of the biggest flaws in the game and he is the worst offender. And yeah since he is one of the Kin, I’m probably not the one who should judge... But I don’t know... from what I’ve heard that seems to be considered a problem by the fanbase in general...
Outside of that I also think he’s just structurally very badly included in the game? He appears very late and is hostile in a way that doesn’t really make you engage with him. And I was way to stressed and didn’t get enough opportunities to actually talk with him to really make a connection (though one reason was, that I didn’t give him my house in the first run. Didn’t want to, so I had the pleasure to walk to Shekhen every time to meet him.) Even without the very questionable undertones his constant ranting about strength and leadership didn’t really appeal to me in a game, where leadership just far has only proven to fail everyone in a time of crisis. The way he is revealed as the murderer is kind of weak, since you either figured it out long ago or the game just randomly tells you... He just is very unappealing to me.
Vlad the Elder also fucking sucks. But at least he as well as the game are so open about it, that it’s easier to ignore while the game seemed to make me want to like Oyun, while I really couldn’t so this one makes me a little more salty.
5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):
1. Artemy/Daniil: What a shocker! Narrative foils who have an actual rivals to friends ark in the game and a shitton of sexual tension within it! What’s not to love?
2. Lara/Rubin: I just think they deserve each other. Both of them are very hard working and prone to giving up themselves for the greater good but they are also harsh to others. I think they would apreciate each other but also reign the other person in and care about them.
3. Daniil/Rubin: I just want Rubin to be happy, okay? This one is more a Patho 1 thing, but they really appreciate each others work and I really like how they interact in the Bachelor route. They care about each other and they share a lot of struggles and actually a more similar view on the town and the world than Daniil does with Artemy. Also again we have two very hard working people here, who would have a lot of bonding over weird science projects. (Even if these one are worse at reigning each other in and fights would be pretty horrible to the point of needing a mediator because non of these two are talking to each other and maybe only stoop down to writing very passive aggressive letters...)
4. Notkin/Khan: Also more of a Patho2 thing, since they act way more brutal in P1 and also do not really reconcile. But in P2 they seem to care and immediately bury the hatchet when shit hits the fan. The whole house of the death quests shows them more as bickering friends. And I have a soft spot for bickering friends romances, okay? Also this one is obviously only two teenage boys having a crush, no shitheads allowed here!
5. Yulia/Eva: I cannot really chose between my favorite w/w pairing, there are so many good ones! Right now it’s Yulieva again. They are tragic, they are soft, they are so atmospheric and fun to write! Also I just love Eva and think she should get as many girlfriends as she wants.
Character I find most attractive:
Uhhh... I don’t know I find their models beautiful but there are not a lot of them I find specifically attractive. I guess it’s between Daniil, Artemy, Lara and Yulia for me. Daniil get’s the most ridiculous style points ever but... too old for me specifically. I think Artemy is really attractive but I think his outfit is also really unflattering ... Lara is so much my type and so is Yulia! (Though why didn’t you keep the short hair, queen, it would have made this choice so easy!) I think I’ll have to go with Lara, because I first saw her and just went “I love you” immediately?
Character I would marry:
If I assume that the other person would be as happy with our arrangement no matter who I chose: Victor. He is the perfect husband by definition and I want to learn more about time magic. Though this marriage would remain very much platonic and also very much sexless... he is way older than I am and that is disregarding that time is weird for the Kains. Also we have to consider Nina’s continuing existence... okay I don’t mind that one at all.
Character I would be best friends with:
My first instinct is to say “man all of these people would despise me”, which is such a Pathologic mood. I think I would be best friends with Eva. I think we would get along well and we’d have much to talk about. Also, her house is cool and we could go stargazing!
A random thought:
I love Dora! She is the worst and most iconic child caretaker of all time and I want to talk about her! The whole baby thing and the way it’s delivered to Artemy is already great but then she just silently takes the baby and gives the reward when you’re there the second time? The time she takes Grace away is genuinely such a good dialogue and a tough decision so that’s great but then, she manages to actually get Grace adopted by a dead person, if Peter is dead! And then she may think it’s Andrey WHO IS DEAD TOO! Seriously, who hired her! I know the entire town is falling apart but man! Dora sure as hell doesn’t help the case. But she tries her best! I think. I hope.
An unpopular opinion:
Oh I have a lot of unpopular opinions, but I think most of them should get their own post, where I can explain in details and a bit more serious what I’m actually talking about. But here’s a small one:
Okay ummm… please my fellow burakhovsky shippers, please don’t get mad but… uuuumm…
…
I like the first Bachelor conversation in Patho2 better than the one in Patho1.
…
Okay, look. I love the “left hand right hand” line as much as everyone else. Wouldn’t have missed it and loved it in Pathologic Classic! And I also think it’s a shame that Daniil’s homosexuality got dialed down. Totally agree with that.
But!
I really love them starting out on the wrong foot. Their whole dynamic of having to establish their relationship makes their journey and the scenes where they actually reconcile again so much more powerful to me and I love how dynamic it is. And having the two of them completely clash underlines for me how much they have to try and develop to be more comfortable and confine in each other. It’s a great starting point! Also the scene is hilarious in it’s own right. The whole buildup to it where Artemy is in such a desperate position to find out his own kind-of-brother wants to murder him… starting this whole thing with “you owe me” and the whole “Vorakh” thing. It’s really great how in retrospect it’s just a really fucking bad start and a trainwreck of the Bachelor trying to sound competent but from Artemy’s perspective it’s just utterly horrible because the whole town wants to kill him, his father is dead and this stranger is talking some bullshit! Yeah, nobody would have any patience and so the situation escalates immediately! It’s great storytelling and absurd and… I really do love this scene and it’s dynamic and I think it's a great first interaction! (Even if it is sad if people think that they now get the Bachelor. Which… dynamic storyarc… complex character. But I think most people will get that eventually, if they just engage with the whole storyline.) It also makes it a bit more genuine when they actually do act friendly, because you can see, how they act, if they’re not trying. In P1 the Bachelor’s dialogue can feel manipulative rather than friendly and while that has it’s own positives, I just prefer the more dynamic approach of their relationship.
To be honest, I think both conversations fit in their own games nicely. I just prefer the overall approach to their relationship arc and I also think it’s just less clumsily written and a bit more memorable apart from the very first line. And while I love it in Patho 1 I couldn’t really see it and it’s sudden intensity in the writing-style of the second game, so I also do not really miss it specifically in their interaction. It’s great were it is but it wouldn’t enhance the situation here.
My canon OTP:
Victor and Nina. This man just loves his powerful evil and passionate wife and I respect that. I think the way they are described and how Victor would fit in makes this combination so interesting to me. He is quiet and capable and you can really imagine the whirlwind Nina still appreciating him and... it’s so cute, okay? They are in love!
Non-canon OTP:
(Oh my god, there are so many pairings where my brain goes “what do you mean, they aren’t canon???)
I think Lara/Eva is a really cute pairing that sure as hell isn’t alluded to in the Canon at all. Lara deserves Eva’s positivity and her view on the potential of the soul could be really cute. And Eva deserve her practical care and consideration. Also they are both talking about how they do not know what to do with their live and since they both arrive at this rather depressing conclusion very differently, they might be able to help each other!
Also they could play matchmaking with the local doctors together and I find that hilarious.
Most badass character:
Aglaya. There isn’t really a competition. (Okay Clara is also really badass and one has to mention Aspity for just dying when she feels like she should make a point and for being alive whenever she has something really important to say... that’s also pretty badass and she also is in general.) Aglaya is so powerful and intimidating and armed with metaknowledge. She even knows about her plot armor (and how long that will last...) Do not cross this lady, you will definitely regret it! (Okay the true answer is obviously Teensy. But shhhh…)
Pairing I am not a fan of:
I’m not really a fan of Aglaya/Artemy especially in Patho2. I just cannot get over her immediately opening the gallows and then breaking Grief down. Artemy in Patho2 doesn’t really feel like a person who would appreciate either and he gets like really upset about Grief without it getting really resolved. (And Aglaya is very unapologetic about it, which might be a part of the truth since we don’t know what happened but still doesn’t help the case.) Also they talk very businesslike and like Aglaya is just making plans which Artemy in mind which doesn’t feel like a good baseline even if she appreciates his insight. It’s still only one person making the decision in the end... But I also totally get the appeal and they are both stubborn, have an interesting way of seeing connections and their worldviews are very interesting together especially, if we think about P1, so I also get shipping them! I’m just not the biggest fan myself.
Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):
Uhhh... Hm... There is not really a character I find completely broken and I’ve complained about Oyun enough... So I have to go with Aglaya and only for the reason that I find the ending where they leave town pretty forced. (I’m sorry, I don’t hate her! All of the characters are so amazing, she only has some writing choices specifically that I didn’t like! But I still think she’s cool!) I actually kind of like that it exists and I think the way it plays out is very heart-wrenching and honestly amazingly made but the whole way to get to the decision feels a bit awkward to me just because both of their duties get weirdly lampshaded without making the meta entirely obvious. Either just shattering the fourth wall here or making the situation way more desperate for both of them would have done the trick, I guess.
I in general would have loves, if her meta would have been used a bit more explicitly. It felt a bit gimmicky to make her cool at times and while Artemy might not be the route for that... there ideology talk in Patho1 sure as hell managed that. Their dialogue is still good but I had very high hopes while I approached it. I do know that there is more behind the meta and I wish we could have seen a bit more of that then her offhandedly mentioning it. She never really engaged with her struggle and never allowed Artemy to really engage with it, what also made the whole town fleeing scene a bit jarring, especially if you didn’t play the first game.
Favourite friendship:
I mean the whole apple basket gang friendship, obviously! Is there really another friendship that competes in the game? I love their dynamic and I also love how torn apart the friendship is and how they are only beginning to reconcile even at the end of the game. Not all is good yet but they stay hopeful and I think that is a very strong message.
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Weekly Recap | August 12th-18th
Sorry it’s a bit late! Here’s what I read in the last week :)
~
Complete
Water Landing by romanticalgirl (Modern AU | 8K | Teen): From the prompt: My dog is the size of a mini horse and forcibly knocked you into the duck pond for that hot dog you were about to take a bite out of.
here is no mistake by amethystkrystal (Post-Endgame, canon-divergent | <1K | General): Bucky Barnes is worthy.
we were running riot by steveandbucky (canon-divergent, TFA | 2,4K | Explicit): The train is still running at full speed. Steve swears under his breath. He almost just lost Bucky.
Have You Seen This Person? by fallendarlings (Post-WS | 2,5K | Teen): Missing persons fliers start showing up in Steve's apartment. They have his face on them and they're written in Bucky's handwriting.
💙 Collar Full of Chemistry by 2bestfriends (Modern AU, BDSM | 188K | Explicit): Steve is very rich and desperate to feel in control of his life again after a recent divorce has left him feeling bitter and lonely. When he keeps crossing paths with a disaster twenty-something, an unconventional solution presents itself. Bucky is very broke and can’t seem to catch a break, especially after some asshole fires him for one fucking mistake. So of course, it follows that he should sign a contract agreeing to do everything and anything that same asshole wants for a whole year in exchange for a payout that could finally change his life for the better.
💙 the way you slam your body into mine reminds me i’m alive (but monsters are always hungry, darling) by voxofthevoid (Shrunkyclunks, Avenger Bucky | 3K | Explicit): Steve doesn’t wait for an invitation, bodily pushing Bucky out of the way and kicking the door shut behind him. Bucky wouldn’t put up with that shit, not normally, but Steve lays his hands on him, hot and huge over bare skin, and then there’s teeth closing in on his throat, and Bucky can’t think. (Part 4 of couldn't get the boy to kill me)
tell yourself this is how it's going to be by belovedmuerto (post-CW | 25K | Mature): Steve is absolutely one hundred percent not going to cry himself to sleep.
Good Friends by eadunne2 (Evanstan RPF | 3,8K | Explicit): “I was just wondering what you think about the fact that everyone thinks you’re dating?” “I mean we’re good friends so, thanks but no thanks.”
Happy Birthday, Sebastian Stan by dixons_mama (Evanstan RPF | 2,5K | Explicit): Chris surprises Sebastian on his birthday, and things take a turn that neither expected. Maybe birthday wishes do come true.
Something Simple by Catchclaw (Evanstan AU | 2,9K | Explicit): Chris woke up with a hangover and a half-hearted hard-on and a softly snoring dude in his bed.
My Arms Are Open by dixons_mama (TFA | 2,9K | Explicit): When Steve sees that Bucky is struggling after escaping Azzano, he decides to do all he can to help the love of his life recover.
Starbucks by lockedlocke (Modern AU, skinny Steve | 4,3K | Explicit): Bucky presses the middle button on his phone again, and then once more to unlock it. He instantly taps the white text bubble in the green icon, goes to the chat he’s got with Steve and starts to type. He presses send before he even realizes what he wrote. “I will suck your dick if you bring me Starbucks.”
Parade Rest by caleprwrite (Shrinkyclinks | 12K | Explicit): Bucky can be a cranky asshole, but Pepper knows best just what he needs. Bucky will get it whether he likes it or not. And he'll say thank you. Enter Steven Grant Rogers, Massage Therapist and friend to Pepper Potts.
In Repair by sablier_bloque (post-Endgame | 3,8K | Mature): In 2023, Steve Rogers lays down his shield, joins Twitter, and finds purpose beyond the battlefield—with Bucky Barnes at his side.
WIP
💙 Like Real People Do by 2bestfriends (Shrunkyclunks, canon divergent post-Avengers | 59K | 9/10 | Explicit): Seven years into an isolated retirement after the Battle of New York, Steve has carved out a place for himself in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. He has a best friend (his dog, Lady), a frenemy (a local black bear named Rufus), and a cabin in the middle of the woods, an hour’s drive from the nearest town. As November comes to a close, he heads into town to pick up supplies and ends up with a stowaway.
we miss being ruffians by napricot (Post-WS, canon-divergent | 67K | 12/? | Explicit): Assorted snippets post-they're gonna send us to prison for jerks 💙. Chapter 12: Maybe there was some modern context Bucky was missing. Not that it mattered. What mattered here was Bucky’s innovative new plan to combine winning date night with pranking Steve. Because what was better than getting Steve all hot and bothered? Getting Steve hot and bothered while mildly terrorizing him with terrible Captain America merchandise, that was what.
💙 This Side of the Blue by notlucy/ @notlucy (Mermaid AU | 27/44 | 97K | Explicit): A trick was the only explanation for what Steve saw floating there. This figment of his childhood. This myth. This legend. Within the tank, the siren bared its teeth.
Solitary by exclamation/ @jessicameats (Canon divergent | 38/? | 94K | Mature): The Winter Soldier has been a prisoner of SHIELD for about a year and a half, placed in solitary confinement under strict security when it was clear he wasn’t going to respond to the best interrogators and deprogrammers SHIELD had available. When Fury asks a newly awakened Steve Rogers to assist, Steve is hesitant. He doesn’t understand why Fury thinks he would have a better chance of getting through to this guy than all the people who have tried and failed.
💙 Political Animals by crinklefries, Deisderium (Modern AU, politics | 1/9 | 5K | Explicit): Okay, so the real problem is that you shouldn’t fuck your arch-rival, political enemy, and the person you loathe the most in the world where you work. Or like, at least, you shouldn’t keep doing that.
Re-Read
Flying Practice by cyclamental (Dragonriders of Pern AU | 11K | Explicit): Bucky gets his ass-cherry popped, an allegory heavily inspired by the Dragonriders of Pern. So, you know - First Time, but with dragons.
💙 some days i (wish that i wasn't myself) by notcaycepollard, Roga (Evanstan AU, journalist Seb, actor Chris | 6K | Mature): The problem, Seb never meant to say out loud, has always been that if he got Chris Evans’ dick in his mouth it would definitely end up making the story.
mere colors by brostucky (orphan_account) (Soulmates Uni AU | 27K | Teen): That’s when Bucky takes a deep breath and shoves his way through the crowd.And, really, it’s that moment that shit starts to hit the fan.
Stars Out Of The Blue by luninosity (Evanstan RPF | 6,3K | Teen): Chris Evans accidentally kicks Sebastian Stan off a broken helicarrier set on Monday afternoon. It’s the worst moment of his life. Monday evening, however, contains the best moment. Indisputably. Ever.
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anyways, since the idea won’t leave me alone here’s my pitch for a prince of the galra keith au where lotor doesn’t exist and canon is just a suggestion i guess. (under a cut part ways in bc uhhh it’s like 3.7k words. rip.)
for starters: krolia is human and zarkon’s his dad. a nightmare idea, i know bc uhhhh the same thing that occurs w thinking about how lotor exists is uhh “zarkon fucks?” yeah. yeah he does. which uhhhhh yeah. but bare w me here, bc he’s still an utter dick in this au and krolia is still a badass.
in this au, krolia was married to mr shirogane and had shiro before leaving earth on a garrison solo mission to pluto. she collided with a stolen galra ship manned by a prisoner who was trying to flee the empire, though the galra ship wasn’t damaged her ship was completely destroyed but she managed to survive for the prisoner to bring her aboard. together they tried to escape the empire, but they got caught. the prisoner was executed and krolia was taken to the arena.
(earth believes she crashed her ship in the rings of saturn, and honor her death. no solo manned missions to space anymore, and certainly not to places humans haven’t been before. it also delays plans to send more people up there, so the next manned mission isn’t until shiro’s mission to kerberos. mr shirogane dies a five years before that mission.)
there she fought viciously and won literally every single one of her fights with only a dagger she’d earned early on in her battles. even when they provided bigger weapons, she always came on top with just a knife which earned her high praise and approval. enough to gain zarkon’s attention.
idk why but he forces her to marry him, and when shiro’s 9 years old and krolia’s been in space for 5 years, keith’s born. he doesn’t actually go by keith at this point though because i doubt zarkon would let krolia name him that. not quite sure on what he’d go by though i quite like kyix of discordiansamba’s burgundy. krolia wanted to name him keith, and so calls him that when they’re alone as a secret nickname.
keith doesn’t look fully human. a la lotor style i guess, he looks human but has purple skin and yellow sclera. pointy zarkon-ish ears and fangs. he’s still tiny as fuck though and doesn’t grow, to which he’s furious about bc galra are big and he’s a shorty but no one mentions it to his face otherwise he’d stab them right where they stand.
krolia tries her best to raise him w good morals and lessen zarkon’s influence on him but she doesn’t fully manage it. he’s willing to please zarkon even if he’s not cruel about it, and he does wish for the best for the empire but knowing that his father’s reigned for over ten thousand years, he knows he’s probably never going to sit on the throne himself. doesn’t prevent him from getting all the training a prince would need (including a lot of combat training).
he’s never told much about earth because krolia finds it hard to talk about. she does tell him about humans as a species and teaches him the three earth languages she knows, korean (her native language), japanese (mr shirogane’s native language) and english. she especially doesn’t tell him about shiro, but she does say that she left a husband and her family behind on earth, that she misses them a lot.
back on earth, shiro goes to kerberos when he’s 26 (two years older than canon) and they still get caught. most canonical events in the year time zone go almost exactly the same. shiro gets sent to the arena, matt and sam still get sent off to the camps before matt’s broken out by the resistance, katie goes undercover as pidge, and lance and hunk are just regular dudes, but lance is in fighter class straight off the bat.
(to earth, shiro crashes the ship and dies just like his mother did. which is......all kinds of sad to think about.)
except when shiro lands on earth, the garrison trio decide to break shiro out on their own. they then steal a jeep and head out into the desert, finding a nice guy who owns a shack (canon keith’s father but not in this au, who im gonna call mr fireman bc he doesn’t have a canon name). he’s been doing some investigating some funky stuff (the lion), and lets the kids crash at his place bc kids shouldn’t be wandering the desert w/o any supplies at night it’s dangerous.
anyways, the shack conversation all goes almost exactly the same w mr fireman taking keith’s place. he goes with the kids, but he doesn’t get in the blue lion, she doesn’t let him in. mr fireman parts ways with the kids friendly-like, and the four of them head off to arus.
things.....largely? stay the same? when it comes to stealing the red lion off the ship, they actually have to get the lions to drag it out of the cargo bay because they don’t have a pilot for it but as long as the lion is out of the empire’s hands, that’s all that matters although allura does try to pilot it when sendak’s ship is destroyed. due to having no pilot, they can’t retrieve black for shiro. so they only have three active lions, but three lions are still pretty powerful.
from there i haven’t exactly worked out all the kinks but somehow they get in contact with rebels from their steady liberation of galra-controlled planets. they do small targets, taking out the weakest on the fringe of the empire and build up footholds while building the coalition. shiro fights with them on the ground, and using the castle with coran and allura when it’s not possible. sometimes he rides along with the other paladins.
sometime before they go the galactic hub, and skipping over crystal venom entirely, they join forces with the rebels and the coalition to pull off a mission to kill zarkon. they’d received intelligence to suggest that he’s visiting a less secure ship, to oversee a project for a few days. instead of taking the lions and just blasting the ship to pieces, they decide to infiltrate and take him out stealth like to guarantee his death.
only the information is faulty because it’s keith there instead of zarkon.
when they learn that keith is zarkon’s son.......they kidnap him.
their goal was to hold him hostage and/or interrogate him for weak spots in the empire, but somehow they end up thinking “hm maybe he can be redeemed bc his dad is literally an asshole and ehhh he can’t help who his parents are?” so they give him a chance....tentatively.
keith, seeing this huge opportunity to sabotage his father’s greatest opponents and eventually steal the lions back for his father, takes this absolutely for granted and fakes his redemption. he basically pulls a lotor, and ends up helping them in certain areas but sabotaging them in others. he’s unable to report back to his father for spying purposes, but he does leave clues and/or hints to weaknesses somehow. all the while, the real reason for these things going wrong isn’t thought of.
all the while, the paladins are trying to bond with keith. trying to get him to redeem himself, and they end up really liking him even though he’s still rather a loner, doesn’t pretend to be nice and trains like every day. he particularly gets along with shiro, the two of them forming a close bond that keith had not planned or counted on.
allura is the only one who’s still suspicious of keith. she’s not....hostile. not really, she pretty much acts like she does in canon when keith’s heritage gets out. though they do have a few moments where they could maybe see eye to eye. she’s still apprehensive and unwilling to think that zarkon’s son could be anything but evil.
this pays off when she investigates a major hit to the castle that renders it unfit for battle for a time and finds that keith was responsible for it.
at this point, keith has been seriously reconsidering his allegiances. thinking that maybe the right thing to do really was to redeem himself and help out voltron and coalition. he’s not completely blind to the shitty things zarkon did, he’s well aware but he figures that maybe getting his father’s approval isn’t worth all the suffering of others nor something to desire.
allura attacks keith and calls him out in front of everyone. providing evidence of literally all the times that keith’s fucked them all over. the team feel betrayed, keith is super guilty, and allura’s just pissed. keith doesn’t get a chance to explain before he’s thrown into a prison cell on the castle to wait until voltron can contact the coalition and decide what to do with him because it’s clear that zarkon hasn’t exactly been hurrying to find him.
but then zarkon attacks the castle of lions with a massive fleet headed by haggar, a force that’s way too much for just three lions to take on while the castle’s defenses are still down. the whole team is in trouble and it pretty much starts to seem like zarkon’s gonna win and the paladins are gonna get killed.
until the red lion reaches out for keith.
so he breaks out of prison (that he could have done within minutes of being confined there), and heads to the hangar. he jumps in and uses the element of surprise to disable the fleet enough to make them need to retreat.
the paladins are freaking out because uhhhh who the hell is the pilot of the lion? they do a little sound off like “allura that’s not you? coran? shiro?” but then keith uses the lion to communicate and basically says “sorry i broke out jail”.
when they get back to the castle keith awkwardly does a heartfelt explanation of his plans and how the paladins actually did sort of make him want to redeem himself and realise just how much zarkon needs to get murked and stuff. he apologises for fucking them over and he even offers to go with whatever punishment they decide to dish out with no retaliation.
the team go off and talk for a while. debating if they could really trust him anymore. allura is adamantly against it, pissed off that he’d already betrayed her trust after all zarkon did and the fact he piloted her father’s lion. lance joins her, upset he trusted him at all. pidge and hunk are apprehensive, pointing out that the lion must have seen the good in him to choose him. shiro believes in what keith’s saying and has faith in the kid to actually redeem himself.
they tell him he can stay but the only reason he’s not dead and/or serving time in prison is bc he’s the red paladin. they make a lot of rules about what he’s allowed to do and not to do though, which keith doesn’t enjoy but he doesn’t complain about them. one of them is that he’s only allowed to fight the empire in the red lion and no on the ground stuff.
now that the team have the red lion’s paladin they awaken the black lion and they form voltron for the first time. it’s badass, and the liberating of planets goes even faster than before.
the paladins start to bond again even slower than before bc they need to rebuild that trust. it goes....pretty rockily considering the fact that keith is still pretty prickly in personality, and the others aren’t entirely convinced he’s actually changed sides. but shiro is essentially the only one that actually makes any headway in rebuilding the trust/relationship.
one night he asks about keith’s mom. bc human far out in space? as far as the team knew there should have only been them and the holts, so he’s definitely curious. keith tells him about a pilot who’d been picked up in their solar system after their ship got destroyed and took them as prisoner. he tells shiro all about his mom and what she taught him of earth.
but shiro. he starts to wonder who on earth this pilot was. because, uh, only very few pilots have gone missing in space and one of them is important to him. so he asks her name. keith replies krolia. shiro asks “as in...krolia kogane?” and keith’s like yeah.
shiro mentally freaks out, doing mental acrobats all over the place but his thoughts mostly boiling down to a mixture of “HOLY SHIT MY MOM’S ALIVE” and “HOLY SHIT I HAVE A HALF-BROTHER WHO’S AN ALIEN PRINCE”. he manages not to let keith know he’s freaking out, and excuses himself.
they end up doing a covert blood test and yup keith is shiro’s half brother. this earns him points in “okay yeah he’s capable of change if we warm up to him”, so the team start to treat him more favorably, not that keith is aware of this new revelation. so it’s common knowledge to the ship minus keith. shiro tries even harder to bond w his little brother, bc uhhh yeah he’s never had a little brother and he definitely likes keith so far even though he was a little evil for a while.
keith at some point expresses to shiro why he’s fine with not telling zarkon that keith’s on the paladins’ side. that his mother would most likely be killed for turning him against zarkon due to the fact that paladins are humans, and that she’s still at central command completely unable to get away. like a glorified prisoner because, well, she is.
shiro suggests to the team that they pull off a rescue mission to free krolia, not only for keith’s sake but for shiro’s sake too. plus the fact that she’d been a prisoner for twenty three years. which then kicks of the finale of season 1. (yes we’re still in season 1. it should have been way longer than it actually was.)
things go largely the same, except that in allura’s place it’s krolia. when keith charges at zarkon his identity is revealed to him. they manage to rescue krolia, keith fights zarkon and thace destroys the shield holding them in place. they don’t go through a corrupted wormhole though.
then there’s a cute heartfelt reunion between keith and krolia. during which keith emotes more than he ever has in front of the paladins, who have pretty much all accepted that yep keith’s a good guy now considering he almost fought to the death with zarkon.
but then shiro steps up and calls krolia mom which confuses the fuck out of keith, the only one who doesn’t know. krolia shakily says “Kashi?” and they tearfully hug, krolia completely caught off guard that her other son wasn’t on earth where she left him. keith is confusion until krolia explains, and keith asks if that means shiro is his brother. they say yes and they have a big old threeway hug, to which lasts for like an hour because its big family bonding time. everyone is happy for them.
you’d think, huh is this the end of the au? this is pretty long already.....nope!! we’re just getting started!!! (this thing is a monster......hence why im never going to even attempt to write it out lmao)
we go into season 2 where krolia starts to talk to the others about the rebel galra group that she helped and kind of joined called the blade of marmora. she tells them that there was a galra named thace who kept her in the loop about keith, and the goings on of voltron. she tells them that they would be a very good ally in the fight against zarkon.
shiro then backs this story up with his memory of how ulaz helped him escape jail, and says that they should trust them. the team tentatively agree, but decide not to immediately go to them and focus more on building the coalition. krolia pulls keith aside and gives them a knife that they had given her to protect herself as zarkon prohibited her to carry weapons. its keith’s marmora blade that she was unable to activate because of her lack of galra blood, but they gave it to her to protect herself anyways.
canon largely stays the same for a while. zarkon still does the tracking thing, except when allura and keith go out in a pod, krolia comes with them. they have a little thing where they make clear with each other where they stand and end up having a little fun despite the tense atmosphere until the castle is attacked by zarkon.
when the team meet up with the blades, keith demands why they didn’t help krolia themselves. they’d already proved with shiro that they could free prisoners if they wanted to, and demands to know why they didn’t risk it for krolia. he wants to know why they never took a bigger part in taking down the empire and why they never stepped forwards to work with voltron themselves instead of letting the team come to them.
kolivan says that he only gets the answers, an alliance between them and gets to keep the blade if he joins as a member of their order and take the trials. keith accepts. the rest of the blades however, don’t like the idea that the son of zarkon was joining up and taking the trials. but when keith passes and pretty much immediately tries to kill memory zarkon on sight, he proves himself to them. the blades ally with the coalition and voltron.
again, season 2 goes quite a lot like canon. except!!! in the finale they actually do end up killing zarkon along with haggar and shiro doesn’t go missing! hurray!!!
but. that means with no prince lotor, and a dead zarkon instead of comatose zarkon, there’s no one to lead the empire. hence a kral zera is called.
(here is where i mention i have vague memories of s3 onwards and haven’t seen past s4. so i don’t...actually know how most canon events from here on out go in explicit detail. its all pretty vague.)
the plan from there is for keith to attend and win. if he gets crowned the new emperor, he could officially announce the end of the war, and significantly reduce the amount of fighting the resistance would have to do to bring peace to the known universe. the coalition & blades don’t fully trust keith however, thinking that once keith is on the throne he’ll just betray them.
keith understands and explains he doesn’t actually want the throne. he suggests that they just kill everyone on the planet when the kral zera is called, with no more candidates, the empire will be severely fractured and would still be easier to defeat than having a leader. in the end, they go with the idea of having keith become emperor, but the coalition there in case people fight back against his orders.
keith wins, some back down and obey and some don’t. the coalition and voltron take down those that fight back, and from there it’s a lot of “keith orders galra to release planets and those that don’t, get liberated by the resistance”. its a lot of politics where keith frees all the prisoners of the empire, lets them get back to their home planets and finds sam returning him to pidge and matt.
he sets up a colony in an empty solar system for the civilian galra to live governed by the blades, while he sees to it that those that were soldiers are put on trial and punished for their various crimes.
again, still not entirely sure what happens in late canon, but i guess from there it does the whole...sendak takes earth thing? but it’s actually a pretty easy mission considering they have the might of the entire coalition (which is almost the entire universe at that point) and the blades and voltron. but after the defeat of sendak there pretty much isn’t any opposing galra resistance to keith’s reign? so from then on it’s just the paladins, allura, coran and krolia back on earth experiencing things.
krolia busts into the garrison like “hey guess who’s not dead! also meet my alien son who’s king of an entire race of people, and my other son who’s leader of the universe’s most powerful weapon also with a sick glowing arm”. the garrison sweats under the pure power and skill the three of them exude. especially when krolia utterly annihilates all records on their simulators/actual ships. and then keith and shiro join in on it too and they end up giving them all the awards and accolades bc no one is going to top that ever.
the paladins go to disneyland. keith is still technically emperor but considering the blades have been overseeing all galra activity anyways, he’s not really needed. so he just bums around earth for a while, getting to know the other half of his heritage that he never really got to.
krolia meets mr fireman and they end up getting together bc krolia deserves good things and a desert hermit who helped get shiro back into space and eventually to her with is a good thing. they still live out in the shack tho bc mr fireman is committed to it at that point, bc he ended up living there through sendak’s invasion pretty well.
and then uh i think that’s pretty much it. keith is a normal teenager, allura and coran get puzzled by human shit, lance reconnects w his family, hunk does too and cooks a bunch of food and pidge works w the garrison in making it less shitty while also just tagging along with whatever dumb things they decide to experience.
end of au!!!!
#shut up danni#voltron#long post#jesus this thing is long as fuck#now do i tag shit so that people will actually see this thing im really really proud of or do i just...not in an attempt to make it seem#like i don't really care about this au even tho i worked hard on it#bc i don't wanna try too hard but uhhhhhhhh#keith kogane#voltron legendary defenders#prince keith kogane#i guess i'll throw down a few tags#idk if they'll work but worth a shot i guess#hey#hey if you like voltron pls reblog this i worked hard for like an hour or two to write this out#idk my general writing tag
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@satanica ‘timeline’ + 2 the timeline in which they never met who would become the most influential or important person in their life, or that person was taken from them before they were capable of forming memories. prompt | accepting
a timeline in which vinnie never met mallory.
gonna go ahead and tag @tragicher in this bc mal has changed vinnie so much
the fact of the matter is that without mallory, vinnie’s life would - at least in vinnie’s eyes - probably be a lot less tragic considering that if he’d never met mallory he never would’ve gone to the house of mazes. of course, there’s a lot of things mallory added to his life that changed things for the better: he actually has friends, he’s opened himself up to the idea of falling in love, he’s gotten somewhat famous, and he actually leaves barren falls reasonably often. these things all are a huge change from what he’d be like if mallory had never become his friend.
mallory and vinnie first really spent time together/became friends in high school when vinnie’s parents hired her as a tutor for vinnie. so let’s say, in this timeline, vinnie actually put the effort into school and his teachers were happy enough with his behavior that his parents never hired mallory to tutor him and he never became friends with her - and by association never became friends with billie or jude.
in high school, things aren’t particularly different. he still has to sacrifice hailey to be initiated into the cult, but there’s less guilt associated with the act afterwards. without his friends hailey had been his one and only real relationship outside of the confines of the cult, but now that she was gone the cult and his family had 100% influence over him and his mental state. still in his formative years, everything around him changed everything within him so simply. by the end of high school vinnie would be a complete spoiled rich kid, lacking in empathy and quite unaware of how things work in the real world.
college is somewhat the same. much like in his real canon he goes to college in barren falls, though in this verse he doesn’t even consider looking into any ivy league schools beforehand. he’s perfectly content to stay in barren falls, knows that his future is there and he has a simple life lined up. he never joined the podcast, so he never spent long periods of time outside of barren falls. he still traveled, but it was mostly for things his parents wanted him to do or to places he could go schmooze with other rich people. his social circle was exclusively people who were exactly like him, just other rich kids with parents that planned their lives out, growing into rich adults who didn’t know a thing about what life was like for anyone else.
a hugely important thing he misses out on by never befriending mallory is that he never goes into the house of mazes. this, simply put, leaves vinnie much more mentally stable than in his canon arc. firstly he’d already been a bit more mentally sound, at least in his own perception of himself, because he didn’t feel any guilt about the things he did. he doesn’t feel a huge amount of guilt in his canon arc, but he does feel some - especially over hailey. in this au he’d never felt particularly guilty about what happened with her, had been conditioned and brainwashed by his parents to believe that it wasn’t a particularly terrible thing.
on top of all that, the house of mazes was something that made him show a lot more humanity and empathy. he’d been through so much suffering in the house of mazes which made him ultimately a softer and kinder person, though it also made him a much sadder much more vulnerable person. in this timeline that never happens, and vinnie never deals with any of his fears - though it’s notable that his biggest fears when he went into the house of mazes were revealed to be the fear of losing mallory and the podcast gang, especially if it was because he did something to them, whereas in this timeline it’s entirely possible that mallory continued research into the cult with vinnie not being there to stop her, and it’s entirely possible that it could’ve led to mallory dying at the hands of the cult - possibly even by vinnie’s hands - and in this timeline that wouldn’t even make vinnie blink an eye.
vinnie wouldn’t be as scared of falling in love in this timeline, though he’d be less interested in the idea. even in his canon timeline generally love is not something he’s focused on, the boy far more interested in hookups and one night stands. this is only amplified in this timeline, especially since he never would’ve developed feelings for mallory, and the thought of love and settling down isn’t on his mind until his parents put it there. when his parents eventually tell him to settle down they pick someone else from the cult that they think would be a good look for vinnie.
by this point in time vinnie’s in his mid - thirties. he probably never had the nickname vinnie and was always simply called vincent. he’d get married to a girl named paisley carrington, ten years younger than him but a member of the cult and an overall sweet girl - not very smart, but a good trophy wife and someone who was very similar to vincent for the most part. they aren’t in love, but they seem to like each other enough and that’s all that they need.
vincent runs for mayor, only one person running against him but they ran knowing they wouldn’t win. as mayor vincent still does exactly what his parents did, still does as his parents told him. he runs the cult the same, nothing really changes.
eventually he has kids of his own, treats them the way his parents always treated him since he never really learned anything about being a good empathetic person through mallory. he raises them to be a part of the cult, they go through the daycare, neither vincent or paisley having any idea of what a childs life is supposed to be like outside of being raised for the cult.
this got very long but tldr: vinnie would be Very Different if he never met Mallory, she and billie and jude have made him into a much better person than he would’ve been otherwise. and while vinnie’s career path is still similar in his canon timeline the steps it took to get there and the people he’s surrounded by and the way he runs things is very different when mallory’s around.
#this got long and proof reading? idk her#i decided almost at the end that vinnie would never be called vinnie without mal around but never bothered going back#to change the times i wrote vinnie to be vincent#and also writing vincent felt Weird#「 iii — headcanons 」#「 i — answered 」#「 i — answered memes 」#diiavola
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