#and how people would moreso try to avoid the 'bad end' which i understand and appreciate bc thats usually what happens

[spacedlexi]

people who think clem surviving makes no sense are so funny. "they were literally foreshadowing her death the entire season" let me introduce you to the concept of a red herring. she tells lilly she isnt lee and shes right. the narrative was forcing her down that path, a path she saw as an inevitable fate waiting to take her too, but its a narrative broken by aj, who is also his own person and not S1 clem

"it happened to lee, and itll happen to you" lilly tells clem she'll die protecting aj from some mistake he makes, when in reality his defiance of her will is what saves her life after she had already accepted her fate. he breaks clem free from the lee cycle and they get their relatively happy ending. good for them

#anyway in the commentary they talk about how they Were going to have a death ending but didnt like the idea of the good/bad ending #and how people would moreso try to avoid the 'bad end' which i understand and appreciate bc thats usually what happens #so instead they gave us both :) idk why some people seem to have such a huge problem with that #they broke the cycle :) the ericson kids broke the cycle by being a loving community :) they all break the cycle by refusing the delta #lilly and minnie were both lost to the cycle. lilly with her dad and minnie with lilly #minnie couldnt let go. clem almost did the same and it would have killed her too. but aj makes a Choice and it saves her #god even tho clem is noticeably happier in s4 shes still so gd depressed and Tired. she accepted it so fast im so glad he saved her #like idk you saw her come back on screen after that massive fake out and you got Mad?? i was crying twice as hard #i know ive made this similar post before but like i still see this criticism in 2024 and i just have to laugh now #it speaks #twdg #i just love the narrative threads of S4 bro.... seasons 1 and 4 are two sides of the same coin and i love that. its satisfying

[ruby-whistler]

Alright curious anon here. All this is /dsmp /rp from here on out unless otherwise specified and is refering to characters. If i make any mistakes or am misinformed please let me know! So by the cat was nothing compared to mushroom henry i was meaning more toward the fact that the cow was killed as a punishment for something not worth or ok for it to be killed for at all and the fact that it belonged to tommy, wheareas the cat was killed more to annoy dream and belonged to tommy. (1/?)

alright then another lengthy reply, here i come! /lh /dsmp /rp

Dream also did not seem to mourn the cat much, shrugging it off with a "just more motivation to break out".

it was killed to hurt dream, not to "annoy him". it doesn't matter who it belonged to, c!dream was attached to it and it died, which had an effect on him and also further proved his point about attachments being weakness and caring getting you hurt, and it's still very sad.

you say that it was not ok at all to kill mooshroom henry, but the cat's death wasn't ok either, so i really don't see your point.

again, i disagree it was "nothing compared to" either way. i never meant to compare them in the first place, i was simply talking about the cat and c!dream so i don't see why it is in any way necessary to drag c!tommy and other dead pets into this. /nm

also, it isn't true he didn't mourn it. he is a very reserved person who doesn't show his feelings much, that's true, but the cat death still changed the way he acted afterwards, as well as the attempts he made to prevent it. he didn't "shrug it off", he yelled about it because he was understandably upset.

You mentioned that propganda was used to make dream seem like a tyrant, could you specify a bjt? Cus im a little confused srry /gen. Because the most i can remember from the lmanburg era at least is him being called a b'tch or other similar insults. You also mentioned how trauma responses can be differet which is true! I agree! Do you have any ideas to what caused dream the trauma?

wilbur would continuously make him out to be some sort of oppressive, tyrannical force, in front of his troops - a prime example of this being the lyrics of the l'manberg anthem itself and the l'manberg declaration of independence.

actually! here's a nice thread about l'manberg's establishment complete with links, timestamps and evidence :]

i also said in my previous post what could've possibly caused it, but since the character intentionally hides his emotions from the public, it would be difficult to see how things really affected him - which is why the way his spiral went is the majority of the evidence that would imply it, however it does make sense within the story as well with what i mentioned last time.

I would like to note that for sapnap at least had reason to leave dream. Some examples off the top of my head are dream leading an angry fundy to sapnap's pets on purpose, resulting in some deaths, dream assisting tommy in burning down sapnap's effiel tower where he got engaged to karl, and dream giving tommy either mars or the other fish at the battle of the lake. Idk about george tho other then the whole mexican lmanburg/el rapids thing and decrowning him

c!sapnap was actually at fault for most of this, and it wasn't really ever betrayal on c!dream's part.

c!dream is a mediator and he wants to stop everyone's conflict - c!fundy was angry because of c!sapnap's actions, and hence it made more sense for c!dream to centre him on c!sapnap's animals instead of running around killing everyone's pets (at that time, all c!dream knew was c!sapnap did something really bad and c!fundy wanted beckerson / mars from him, which were also his and c!george's fish).

c!sapnap was an instigator, and in multiple conflicts during the time as well as before he'd align himself against c!dream. he isn't "loyal" per se, he causes chaos and the reason c!dream helped c!tommy was because, c!sapnap, again, killed his pet. the first l'manberg war and then the 16th are signs of the fact that c!dream and c!sapnap were willing to fight together in actual war, but these small conflicts where c!sapnap continuously picked fights weren't about personal loyalty, nor did they seem to affect their relationship at all.

c!george was never really hurt by c!dream either. the dethronement was him very obviously being a guilt-trippy drama queen, but, well, that's just the character. he had stolen the l'mantree while he was supposed to be the diplomatic figure of the greater smp, which is why c!dream was justified in - very politely, may i mention - taking the duties off of him (seeing as he was also trying to keep him safe and c!techno had already assassinated him once).

Im pretty sure i remember cc!sam stating that his character never canonically physically tortured dream during his subathon but take this with a grain of salt as i am looking for the clip currently. So to the best of my knowledge dream did not have a physical contact trigger during tommy's visit which! I rewatched the vod and dream actually was first to hit tommy and i can give you my full writing downs but 10/12 of the phy-

you never finished this point because you had to go do something, but i'll reply to what is here at the moment (i suggest writing these down before sending next time, or even writing them out wholly before sending a single one could help avoid stuff like this).

i am 95% sure that the reason cc!sam stated this was because people were suspicious he had already been doing what c!quackity was doing after - torture within the storyline itself is associated pretty much only with what c!quackity is doing, so that's what he meant, just to clear up confusion - the starvation or terrible conditions haven't been retconned, but it was direct torture (like c!quackity is doing) people were asking him about.

i never said c!dream had a physical contact trigger at all, i don't think he had that, though he probably will after the torture.

huh, ok, i'm gonna have to rewatch then, but i remember c!tommy punching c!dream a lot and him just telling him to stop and only punching back to get him to stop. trigger or not, getting hit isn't very pleasant, if you know what i mean.

You mentioned tommy stealing dream's armor unprovoked. Do you have the vod or a general idea of the time so i can find it? Like before lmanburg after another event so and so because if you do not have it i can find it but any help is appreciated.

i am pretty sure you can find the video on cc!tommy's channel! there are also recaps of the disc war on youtube :]

I wanna talk a little on why the Final Control Room was so messed up. For starters, with the way the room was designed. It was small, and had labeled, empty chests with each person's name on them as a mockery. The next reason is that its bascially a kill box.

It's fairly inescapble with the stairs being ones you have to jump up, slowing anyone who climbs them down. The final reason it is messed up is that it is shown to have caused every person who died in it trauma. With tommy there are several examples, the time he saw it with techno, the way he refuses to go near it, the exposure trauma, etc. Fundy also appears to have trauma, as when the Red Banquet executions began, it can be seen as him being afraid of dying last again.

It can Be thought as tubbo having trauma because he buries most of his issues and pretends to be ok. Moreover this event took at least one of each person's canon lives, making it the most canon lives lost EVER in a dream smp event. (This is not hate on any of the ccs btw i loved this scene and its one of my personal favorites). Plus the fact Eret's betrayal just literally happened, giving at least Tommy and Wilbur canonic trust issues.

i wouldn't call the chests mockery? it was a trap. people had traps on the smp before. it was a trap in the middle of war, supposed to end said war by killing them all at once rather than individually which would be a lot more bloody and difficult.

i agree c!tommy and other people might have post-war trauma, especially if they were young during the time, but i think that's because the final control room was "messed up", moreso because the war itself was. it all happened fairly instantly as well? i don't think c!fundy would be able to realize he was the last one standing within the two second before he wasn't.

it "can be thought" and it can be interpreted like that but besides c!tommy there isn't much evidence for them "all" being traumatized by the final control room. of course betrayal would spark trust issues, i understand that.

The probation was humiliating in my opinion because dream was Sending tommy anatgonizing messages through out the whole meeting, plus he had to write a review of his day every single day, which fundy mocked him for.

i mean, it was definitely a strike to his pride, but he was being extremely uncooperative so i don't really blame the other members of new l'manberg trying to teach him to listen for once? of course i know c!dream was riling him up, and that should definitely be considered. i don't think it would be as humiliating if c!tommy didn't make it, is what i'm saying.

for the tommy being toxic to fundy? At least for the examples you gave, to me personally they come acoross as either in a meta way being the cc's bantering or in canon being the characters having banter. If you can send the post with the clips so i can read the tone better that would be cool but if not i will try and find em.

no, these were all in canon. canon isn't only when c!tommy is being nice, it's also when he's being a jerk. /lh

the first one was him threatening c!fundy about kicking him out of l'manberg and undermining his self-worth, and the second one was him trying to get c!sapnap to vote for them via bullying c!fundy.

i found these from a transcript focusing on c!fundy's character, so i don't know exactly where the first one is from, but the second one i am pretty sure is from when the elections were starting with the whole cabinet battle deal and all of that.

there are other instances, and all of them are canon. his personality was never being nice or compassionate, so i'm not really surprised? he still cares about the people he cares about and is very brave, y'know. but this part of his personality is definitely a valid reason for people to dislike him.

I hope the exam went well :). Hope u have a great day! (Ps i think theres something called a submission box to send in pictures? Am not entirely sure sry)

it would've gone well but my work-speed is a tad too slow for the schooling system (considering i'm three years younger than my classmates,,, probably that's also a factor) so probably not despite the fact i knew everything and would've aced it if i only had more time. i did as well as i could so i'm not worried about it, but thanks!

i think you're thinking submissions. sadly, i tested it and it doesn't work on anons, so idk how you'd solve that, maybe make a burner account?

Curious anon here one point you may wanna include in the redemption essay is that c!tubbo or c!tommy do not necessarily have to forgive him. What's important is that he recognizes what he did was wrong (exile, beating tommy to death, manipulating them both, etc) and does his best to make amends. Hope this helps! Can't wait to see your essay

it's out, idk if you've seen it yet, and i think i included enough of that so hope it's all good! :)

the mcc update video is out if you are an mcc enjoyer. It's very neat, if you wanna check it out

yeah! i am a fellow mcc enjoyer, saw it already, thanks for telling me though, i'm really hype for today.

Allo curious anon here sorry if the lots of asks bother you. I was just curious if i could share an interesting post i saw today about c!dream :0 (not necessarily negative i think? More of a statement of an often-confused canon)

sure thing! i don't know what you mean by often-confused since, the entire fanbase is very confused always, and often selection bias plays into the perception from both sides, but sure :]

you also sent in a thing for the other anon who said they didn't know what c!dream did that bad; pretty sure they couldn't really be alerted since, not sure if they watch my blog that closely, but i'll summarize your points just in case and add some notes;

the repeated blowing up of l'manberg (in my mind that's largely a positive since i,, despise that country, but fair enough), revealed c!ranboo as a traitor (they seem to be friends so i also,, think that might've been planned between him and enderboo), sent ghostbur away (i don't think c!dream knew it was dangerous for him and wanted to actually hurt him, but idk), participated in fighting against c!sapnap when he killed people's pets (that's only negative against c!sapnap and didn't seem to hurt him much at all), and then the whole vault scene where he was allegedly planning to steal people's things (though saying he would & being stopped beforehand and doing it are two different things, frankly).

so i still agree with the other anon that a lot of the hurt he did "to the entire server" (he only negatively interacted with like,, a half of them) is exaggerated both by the characters and the fandom, but i guess that's a consequence of most people seeing him as a threat to everyone's happiness rather than a complex personality.

Also he was aware of the butcher army going to kill techno but only got involved because he saw an opportunity to get a favor. (As he knew in advance due to him telling techno to get a totem, watching from afar instead of interveing or manipulating tubbo out of it)

i don't understand this at all, i'm sorry. how do you know he only helped techno in order to get a favor? last i remember he was only doing it to protect and strengthen his alliance, and techno came up with the whole favor thing entirely on his own. you might've not watched techno's perspective or their prior interactions, idk, but this really is a misinterpretation in my eyes. /nm

sorry if that is overly dream negative i just wanted to let yall know cus you seemed unaware -curious anon

nah dw, i watch the smp and i watched all of these things happen so, wouldn't say unaware, but thanks.

#long post #my asks #curious anon #tw torture #tw animal death #c!dream negativity in asks #nothing aggressive though #so safe to read

[milfjensenackles]

castiel’s top 13 taylor swift traxx

1.7k words | read it on ao3 

“What’s this?”

Dean looked up at Cas from his desk chair, confusion apparent in his curled lip and furled eyebrows. Cas had stalked into his room a moment before and unceremoniously dropped a small rectangle on the table in front of Dean.

Cas gave Dean a small, close-lipped smile while rubbing his hand over the other repeatedly. “It’s a mixtape. Like the one you made me.”

Dean flipped the mixtape over in his hands to read what Cas had written on it. Apparently Cas was getting a lot of use out of the rainbow pen set Sam bought him last week, because ‘CASTIEL’S TOP 13 TAYLOR TRAXX’ was spelled out in bright purple ink on the front of the tape. Dean smiled at Cas’ loopy handwriting before clearing his throat and asking, “Taylor?”

“Taylor Swift. I know your favorite artist is Led Zeppelin and you shared their music with me, so I wanted to return the favor. Sam taught me how to make the tape.” Cas beamed proudly at this accomplishment.

Dean almost grimaced but caught himself so he wouldn’t disappoint Cas. “That’s great, Cas. Thanks. I’ll check it out later.”

Satisfied with that answer, Cas folded his hands behind his back and left Dean to himself again.

About an hour after Cas left Dean’s room, Dean put down the papers he was looking through for a case to reach for the mixtape again. Dean knew why he made that Led Zeppelin mixtape for Cas, but he didn’t think Cas understood human customs like making a mixtape for someone. His feelings for Castiel had become… complicated, as of late. Dean was terrible at expressing himself, but he’s always been able to understand his feelings a little more through his favorite songs. He recently realized (embarrassingly enough) that he had developed quite a crush on the former angel. He knew that he would explode if he didn’t do something about it, but he didn’t want to ruin their friendship. Thus, ‘Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Traxx’ was born.

The only tape player Dean still had was in the Impala, so he grabbed a jacket and shoved the tape into his pocket. He managed to avoid Sam on his way out, which meant that he avoided having to give a lame excuse for going to sit in his car for thirty minutes or so by himself. He opened the door to the Impala and slid onto the bench before pulling the tape out of his pocket and sliding it into the player. A twangy country beat immediately sounded from the speakers and Dean groaned. How was he going to get through a whole mixtape of just Taylor Swift? She was talented and all, but not Dean’s thing. The things he was willing to do for that angel. He closed his eyes and leaned back to rest his head against the bench, listening as a young girl’s soft voice began to sing.

I like the way you sound in the mornin’

We’re on the phone and without a warning

I realize your laugh is the best sound I have ever heard

Dean sat straight up at that, hitting his head on the roof of the car. He rubbed at the bump forming on his scalp while trying to process the lyrics that were still playing repeatedly in his mind. What did Cas mean by putting this song on a mixtape he made specifically for Dean? Probably nothing, he tried to reason with himself. This is just one of Cas’ favorite songs. It doesn’t have anything to do with Dean. Maybe Cas was trying to tell Dean that he was interested in someone else. Maybe Cas did understand the meaning of Dean’s mixtape and was trying to let him down gently. Dean had apparently been lost in thought for the entirety of the song, because as the final chorus filled the Impala he felt his breath catch in his throat.

Whoa-oh, I’m feeling you baby

Don’t be afraid to jump then fall

Jump then fall into me

Baby, I’m never gonna leave you

Say that you wanna be with me too

As the first song ended, Dean picked up the case the mixtape had been inside to read the names of the songs that Cas had listed on the back. The next one was called Sparks Fly. Dean smiled to himself at that, reminded of the night he and Cas had met in that barn covered with sigils. Sparks had flown, but not for romantic reasons, like Taylor suggested in the song. He guessed Cas probably took the lyrics a little too literally, as he did with most things. This theory of Dean’s was proven to be true, as a song that was apparently called Don’t Blame Me blared loudly, causing Dean to rush to turn the volume down.

And baby, for you, I would fall from grace

Just to touch your face

If you walk away

I’d beg you on my knees to stay

This one was a little too on the nose, Dean thought to himself. Again, he allowed his mind to wander, questioning the reason behind Cas’ decision to put this song on a playlist for Dean. It took quite a bit of effort to make a mixtape, especially nowadays. Dean would know. Cas would have had to painstakingly record the songs that he chose for some particular reason that Dean couldn’t determine so far. He allowed himself to fantasize for a moment that it was Dean that Cas so desperately wanted before shaking himself from his thoughts.

Dean had to admit, these songs weren’t half bad. There was even one about cowboys that was probably his favorite so far. Not that Dean’s biased or anything. The next song faded in softer than the others, which caught Dean’s attention immediately. He focused on the words, leaning forward slightly with his hands folded in his lap.

All these people think love’s for show

But I would die for you in secret

The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me

Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?

Dean frowned at these lyrics. Is this how Cas felt about himself? Did Cas really think that he brought only chaos to their lives? Dean supposed that Sam and himself hadn’t really ever said anything to suggest otherwise. He made a mental note to do better about showing his appreciation for Cas. The next few songs played through, and against his better judgment, Dean was starting to really enjoy himself. Before he knew it, the last song was playing, and the tape stuttered to a stop. He sat there quietly for some time after the last note played through the speakers.

He had two options here. He could be a coward, like usual, and let this mixtape thing be forgotten over time as they continue to dance around one another. Or he could confront his friend and potentially destroy their relationship. Eventually, Dean gathered his things and moved back toward the bunker.

Cas was in the kitchen by himself, drinking a cup of coffee out of a mug that said ‘Plant Daddy’ on it. Dean had purchased it for him as a joke when Cas got into gardening, and it immediately became Cas’ favorite. He had his reading glasses on along with an old flannel of Dean’s, which made Dean feel like he was going to explode for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Dean walked up to him and placed the mixtape on the table, as Cas had done to him only a few hours previously.

“Why did you make me this mixtape, Cas?”

Cas pursed his lips for longer than Dean could handle before taking his glasses off and standing up from the table to move toward the sink. He rinsed out his mug before turning back around to face Dean, bracing himself on the counter behind him.

“I find myself… able to relate to the words she sings, moreso than the artists that might be considered more ‘age appropriate’” – Cas’ hands went up to form finger quotes around the phrase – “for myself. Since becoming human, these new emotions have been very difficult to process. I feel like Taylor understands me. The songs I chose… I picked them because they reminded me of you. That’s what Sam told me humans do when they make a mixtape for someone they care about.”

Dean felt himself freeze. He looked down at the mixtape in his hand for a moment, before looking back at Cas again. He thought back to the tracklist he had already committed to memory. It all came to him at once, the lyrics flooding his brain.

My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hands

We’re driving down the road, I wonder if you know

I ain’t gotta tell him I think he knows

Please don’t be in love with someone else

Dean stepped forward, crowding into Castiel’s space. He opened his mouth, and nothing came out. Dean closed his eyes to steel himself, before opening them again and confidently saying, “I’m not in love with someone else, Cas. It’s you. It’s always been you. And I’m sorry if I’m reading the wrong thing into this situation but I – “

Dean was cut off by Cas, who had reached out and grabbed his face before crashing their lips together. Once Dean’s brain caught up to the rest of his body, he started kissing Cas back, pushing the angel into the countertop. This was nothing like Dean’s fantasies, which were always aggressive and usually the result of an argument or a near-death experience. This was achingly slow and sweet with the promise of more.

Cas was the one to pull back to breathe first. Dean followed his lips, wanting more. He would have gladly drowned in Cas. Cas noticed Dean’s eagerness and laughed softly. “I love you too, Dean. I made the mixtape hoping that you would understand what I was trying to tell you. Evidently, it worked.”

This time, Dean was the one to wrap his arms underneath Cas’ to pull him in for another kiss.

After what felt like an eternity, Dean pulled back and smirked, running his hand through Cas’ hair as he spoke. “So… you’d really ‘fall from grace just to touch my face’, huh?”

Cas rolled his eyes, but nonetheless gave Dean an endearing smile. “I already did, Dean. And I’d do it over and over again if it meant I could have this.”

#destiel fic #destiel #deancas #deancas fic #destiel ficlet #dean winchester #castiel #spn fic #lauren writes

[threewaysdivided]

How do you feel about Pink Astronaut. Personally I feel like Paulina deserved a little better than the writers gave her.

I'm 99% sure that's the ship name for Danny x Paulina, right?

(Which probably says a lot about my engagement with the shipping side of the Phandom 😅.)

TBH I don't have any strong thoughts or feelings about it either way.

In all cases I'm a very gen-focussed fan - my interests tend run more in the direction of character psychology, non-romantic platonic/ familial relationships, lore, mystery and theme. It's a personal thing but I just don't read romantic/sexual intent/attraction into character interactions unless they're explicitly framed/intended as such and the way much of the shipping community seems to do so goes completely over my head.

Which isn't to say that I avoid all ship-fics, or that there aren't a number of noncanon ships that I enjoy across different fandoms, but for the most part I favour genfic and when I do read shipfic they tend to be the stories that focus on personality, emotional chemistry and personal/emotional compatibility. And when it comes to thinking about "ships" myself I tend to lean more towards times when characters have canonically expressed that kind of interest, the reasons why they would be compatible/ find each other attractive, how they feel about it and what it says about them.

But back to Paulina:

I think you're right - as a character she (along with basically every human character outside of the main trio, the Fenton family and sometimes Valerie) suffers massively from underdevelopment because of the show's nature as for the most part an episodic kid's superhero-comedy with an ooky-spooky gimmick. Danny Phantom the show is a place where The Status Quo is God and the Rule of Funny/Cool/Drama supersedes everything, up to and including the characters and their consistency.

(You can even see this and the obviously conflicting visions of different parts of the creative team effect the main characters too. Danny suddenly carrying the Jerk Ball in service of a generic "don't be superficial/ materialism is bad" story in Livin' Large, how Tucker is basically learning the same lesson twice across What You Want and King Tuck, the multiple times where Sam's more abrasive negative traits are used as a source of plot/conflict but are never meaningfully addressed or developed because the writers want to keep using those traits for drama and eventually to use her character as the Morally Righteous Generic Love Interest Behind Danny's Heroism... et cetera et certera et cetera.)

Literally every character in DP is done a disservice by the show's writing and Paulina runs into the same problem. She's chained to the post of a very specific narrative function/ character archetype and never intentionally developed beyond what's needed to serve the Plot/ the Joke.

She's clearly written to be the Rich Plastic Mean Girl à la Regina George, and while there is a potentially very interesting character beneath that surface appearance - which we can see in places like Parental Bonding where she shows emotional intelligence by immediately clocking that Sam is actually jealous of Danny's attraction to her, and in her "if my skin is perfect, I'll be perfect" line from My Sister's Keeper which hints at some potentially significant appearance-based self-worth issues - the show itself basically only ever uses her "Pretty Girl" and "Popular A-Lister" status as a source of surface-level character drama for the trio and as a rare plot-convenient situational ally in dire circumstances. Her actions show a consistent characterisation but it's so rudimentary that it barely clears that archetype to become its own thing.

I think if Danny Phantom had taken more structural and tonal influence from Spiderman (or even something like Disney's Kim Possible) rather than Fairly Odd Parents - still keeping things mostly light-hearted but with some extra focus on character consistency and layering some ongoing character arcs over each season - there could have been a lot of potential to develop and flesh out Paulina as a narrative foil/ ongoing rival to Sam and her own character arc. It also could have added some more meaningful non-stereotypical female character dynamics, which are disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly lacking from a "for boys" Nicktoon headed by a man who named himself "Butch". But as it is she unfortunately falls into that No Man's Land for me, where she isn't developed enough to have much deeper canon worth investigating and isn't really thematically/narratively significant enough that I'd want to develop her myself for story purposes.

As for the Pink Astronaut ship itself, all I can say is that, at least for me, canonically it... isn't really one. At least in terms of what I personally characterise as a 'relationship'. It's stuck at a very shallow level; Danny has a superficial surface-level infatuation with Paulina because she's pretty and popular, and Paulina looks down on "geeky dork loser" Danny Fenton while having a superficial surface-level infatuation with Danny Phantom as "the cute ghost-boy who rescued her". There's no real sense of actual personal chemistry based on them knowing, appreciating or even seemingly caring to know who the other is as a character. None of their "romantic" hijinks really involve them learning anything meaningful about each other or even having a proper conversation. Paulina "dates" Fenton purely to piss off Sam, then "Paulina" shows personal interest in Danny but it turns out to actually be Kitten trying to piss off Johnny, and when she does show interest in him after the reveal in Reality Trip it's kind of obvious that it's because she's interested in dating Phantom and his secret identity wouldn't have mattered either way. And meanwhile Danny spends most of his time either too busy with ghost stuff to properly pay attention to her as a person, or he never really shows any interest or understanding beyond his fantasies about how she's very conventionally pretty (which he finds attractive/desirable) and popular (which he wants to be).

So while there's a lot of potential for people to write that ship in terms of them being two very different characters from different backgrounds who come to learn about each other as people, come to appreciate each other on a personality level and develop an actual romantic/emotional connection based on that... within the show itself that surface level is sort of where it starts and ends.

And like I said, I'm not a shipper. Even with the bigger, more canonically-substantiated ships I look for the personalities moreso than the romance.

So I don't really have any strong thoughts or feelings about it either way.

Sorry if that's not a satisfying answer.

But I do agree: like most DP characters, Paulina Sanchez has a lot more character potential than the writing allowed her.

#that was an awful lot of words for an #It's fine #I don't mind it either way #I'm just not really into shipping #I'd rather focus on exploring canon characterisations and personal dynamics over romance #Pink Astronaut #Danny Phantom #Paulina Sanchez #youmaycallmeyourhigness #3WD Answers

[myaekingheart]

As I approach a very raw and emotional arc in the story that I’m writing, I’ve been thinking a lot about comfort characters, coping mechanisms, and fandom. Specifically in the lens of curating your own fandom experience and trying to navigate other people’s perceptions of your comfort characters. 

Like, one of my favorite things about fandom is the fact that we have this tendency to so often latch onto characters that mean something to us or that we see parts of ourselves in. We get really, really attached to characters and fall in love with them and even create these fabricated narratives (that are sometimes also romances, self-insert or not) as a way to feel some sort of bond with these characters. We feel like we know them and end up feeling like we share some sort of fictional relationship with them and it can be extremely comforting. It can be extremely comforting using that fictional relationship and the stories we weave as a way to cope with things we’re dealing with in our lives, to work through these complex and raw thoughts and emotions in a way that foregoes more dangerous routes. The intrinsic value of hurt/comfort and even whump in transformative works in terms of coping with mental, physical, and emotional pain cannot be ignored. And this is great! The right to take a comfort character and use them as your own personal coping mechanism is truly one of the most wonderful things about fan culture. 

If this was all there was to it, then that would be fine. And if you’re kind of solitary in your fandom endeavors, then that’s likely all there is to it. When you start engaging in fandom and with other people, though, I feel like that’s when things can so easily go awry. Chances are, you are not the only person who takes comfort in a specific character. And you are not the only person who uses that character to cope and process through transformative works. It’s an amazing feeling to find someone who shares the same love for a character that you do, and who is on a similar wavelength as you in terms of using that character as a way to cope, and the things that you each use that character to cope with. But then there’s the darker side, when people use your comfort character to cope with things that make you uncomfortable. Or even just use them as a player in a story that makes you uncomfortable. It can be extremely difficult to be so deeply attached to a character and your own personal solitude in them, the idea of them protecting you from something bigger than yourself, and then so suddenly find someone else using that very character to create stories heavily focused on the very thing you’re trying to combat. The most common reactions, I feel, are typically anger, fear, confusion, hurt, distrust, disgust. A part of you might even begin questioning how well you even know this character to begin with, or if everything you’ve thought you understood about them was way off the mark and you’ve been fabricating this false, out-of-character idea of them. But more than anything, you begin to feel like the one character in which you sought comfort has been turned around to hurt you. And that can be an extremely distressing thing to try to manage. 

It can be even more difficult when the version of this character that is so heavily focused on something that’s harmed you is widely accepted or at least presented in a fandom space. It can feel isolating, like you constantly have to watch your step and vet everyone that reaches out to you or follows you. It can be tiring. It can leave you feeling like you just want to remove yourself from fandom spaces entirely. A personal example: one of my favorite characters is very commonly presented in fandom in a way that feels very close to an incident from when I was younger that traumatized me. And seeing this character presented in this way can be incredibly distressing, disturbing, and disgusting. More often than not, I end up having this very visceral reaction that leaves me nauseous, angry, and self-conscious. Because seeing a character I love occupying a space reminiscent of someone who hurt me is unsettling, and even moreso when it’s so much harder to avoid. 

So that begs the question of what to even do about this, because I’m sure that this experience is universal to anyone engaging in fandom in one capacity or another. There are plenty of options. There is leaving fandom entirely, whether that means detaching yourself from your entire fandom experience or resorting to enjoy fandom quietly, silently, alone. This is an easy and safe option. This is like the abstinence of options. You can’t put yourself in the line of fire if you never engage in the first place, right? But it’s also incredibly isolating. It’s cutting yourself off of the positive experiences in fandom because the negatives seem to outweigh them. It’s throwing the whole thing in the garbage because one piece broke off. Another option is policing other people. This is considered in poor form. This is unhinged and unempathetic. This is the angry child stomping in the grocery store insisting that if you can’t have a piece of candy, then no one can. Because people are going to continue to write and create whatever content they want regardless of whether or not it makes someone else uncomfortable. Sometimes especially if it makes someone else uncomfortable, because that is the point that they are trying to make in their art. But also because so often the very things that make you uncomfortable are the very things are bringing comfort to someone else. It’s their way of coping, just in the exact opposite way as you. And policing them would make them feel the same way as someone policing you. It feels restrictive and hurtful and, again, isolating. So if you can’t stop other people from creating what you don’t want to see, and you can’t bring yourself to remove yourself from the situation, what other options do we have left? 

Managing your fandom experience is like a balancing act. It requires not censorship, necessarily, but well-intentioned warnings. Tagging and unfollowing and blocking and blacklisting. The only reliance this has on other people is for them to maintain courtesy by listing the contents on the front page like the ingredients on a package of food. Not everyone does this, which is another problem entirely, but the ones that do are doing all that’s required of them. The rest is up to you. The rest relies solely on your ability to blacklist your triggers, unfollow people who do share content that triggers you without tagging (which can be difficult when something that triggers you is very niche and vague, like a specific perfume or a woman with blue hair). Block people who follow you that share triggering content, even if you’re not following them, because we know that even them just appearing in your notifications and the temptation of looking at their content can be unnerving--despite how much we all certainly like to believe we have some semblance of self control. Blacklist the tags that bother you so that you can continue engaging with a friend’s content even if they share things that you don’t enjoy or want to see. Tumblr makes this easy with options like Xkit and Tumblr Savior. 

But what about other places? What about on Twitter and Discord and AO3 and deviantART? What about when you run into uncomfortable content that you can’t avoid? When all other options have been exhausted but you still just can’t escape it? What do you do then? I’m still trying to figure that out myself. I’m still trying to find a way to navigate certain unsettling waters in the most balanced and respectful way, while also respecting my own triggers and mental health. And sometimes it’s really fucking hard. Sometimes there’s more to it than just blocking and blacklisting. And I wish I had answers for what to do in those situations, but I don’t. Not yet. And I hope one day I will. 

All of this is just to say: fandom can be a murky and dizzying experience and sometimes you’re bound to run into things that make you uncomfortable, or things that don’t sit well with you. Sometimes you’re bound to run into interpretations of your comfort character that make you sick to your stomach and want to punch a hole in the wall and delete everything you’ve ever written and shot out into the world for reasons you don’t even quite understand. And sometimes all of that can feel really isolating, or like you’re just overexaggerating and being a wimp, or like you’re being a bad participant in fandom spaces. Sometimes it can be really hard to want to stay involved in fandom when curating that experience can feel like so much work. And because as much as you can tag and blacklist and block and unfollow, that doesn’t always completely erase the feelings that running into that triggering content comes with. You can do all of these things and still feel nauseous and angry and uncomfortable and like you desperately need to reach for the eye bleach. And that can be really hard to navigate, especially when seeing that content makes you feel separated from the one character you would turn to to actually cope with this. Sometimes it can begin to feel like the way you see this character or feel about this character has been irrevocably changed for you now, because all you see attached to them now is your trigger, and that really hurts. I wish I had answers for how to manage those feelings, or how to rewire the circuits in your brain and load an old save up, to cut out the moldy part of the cheese and enjoy the rest that hasn’t yet been spoiled in your mind. I wish I had answers for how to cope with those sorts of things, but I don’t. I just hope one day I will. 

#i'm probably going to delete this later #but i just needed to tap out a really shitty essay on some things that have been going through my mind lately #because sometimes it really can just be increasingly difficult to avoid triggers in fandom #but it's just something we all have to learn how to perfect and navigate properly i guess? #i don't know i'm just being stupid though #so don't mind me #long post is long #delete later #ramblings

[levyfiles]

I want to start a shyan blog but I’m so scared because I don’t know how Shane and Ryan actually feel about it which makes me nervoussssssss help

Ohhh boy, brace yourself, nonnyhunny. I’ve got some word vomit for ya

To start off with, I just want anyone and everyone who is currently new to navigating this terrain we call the internet to know one thing and that is this one very important concept. Embrace your own insignificance! The internet is a big place. I once read a post on here that encouraged new users to think of Tumblr itself like you’re walking into a Walmart. You’re not here to make friends and you’re not here to shop for everyone else; you’re filling your own cart with the things you need and like and if someone comes along and takes a long good look at the things in your cart and says, “WOAH there, eating trans fats is unhealthy for you! I never eat trans fats because of a big list of reasons! Stop buying trans fats!!” you’re gonna be both puzzled and annoyed because it’s your cart, your Walmart experience; why the hell do they care what you’re gonna get?

However! I get it, the internet is now comprised of six different websites/apps and if you’re on there, there is no way to avoid or curate a completely ideal sense that you’ve made a space that’s all your own. There are going to be people who disagree with you, people who decide they don’t like what you do, but ultimately, in the midst of all that, you’re going to find people who feel the same in whatever regard you express yourself and that’s why it’s important to just express yourself because otherwise you’re going to develop a lot of disingenuous connections with people who would likely try to ruin your life if you disagree with them on some subject or other.

Now with that whole disclaimer in mind, I also understand where you’re coming from. Putting myself in the shoes of someone just trying to participate in a new fandom where there is a lot of contention among the masses about the rights and wrongs of RPF and whether the concept fits in with a philosophical debate about human nature and the way we interact with each other, witness each other’s journeys. That’s simply it, however; it’s an ongoing debate and where philosophy and debate are concerned, I always hold the belief that an individual’s right to ground themselves and say “These are the principles I wish to abide by” is sacred and ultimately, no amount of anonymous hatred or shrieking messages of outrage is gonna change that until you yourself decide that the principle isn’t working for you personally. My principle is that it’s fiction; an AU to explore as valid and sweet to me as demon!Shane headcanons are, but moreso because I identify with queer love stories and friendships forged by strangely deep similarities and complementing souls. I also love personalities like theirs, love the idea of said friendship and what it would bring to a story about two human beings who meet by happenstance and end up building something world-changing together. Still, because I am just a writer and a consumer of media, that’s the nicest thing I can give myself, a fictional account of these things while witnessing the real version happen in parallel. I get to celebrate in the overlap of similarities the real world and my fictional account take and watch it inspire my friends and mutuals to build their own universes and it’s beautiful. 

With that point being made, I also understand the reason a lot of people are nervous about being open about shipping. The backlash from a bunch of strangers seems to take on a note that would make even the nicest person sound like a puritan about to hold some extravagant witch trials. Nothing more interesting than a person claiming to do good in the world using words like “exterminate” “cleanse” or my personal favourite “purge”. I’ve read rumours being spread about shippers that take on their own life especially because it’s human nature to let other people handle the research; it’s human nature to just take a believable narrative at face value. One rumour being that shippers of this fandom write stories where we kill off Shane and Ryan’s significant others. Myself and my friends who are avid readers of the ao3 tag know that that hasn’t been the case since 2016/17 and by all accounts, I have yet to find the fic where this happens (barring a tinsworth fic I’ve only heard about). Mind you, not many of us check out Wattpad but even there it’s more self-insert friendly with themes I can’t even stomach. 

Which leads me to the last point and the main reason you sent this ask, I’m assuming. Ryan and Shane’s personal thoughts on the issue. Now, it behooves me to supply screenshots and proof when I make a claim but let’s consider if instead from the perspective of two adult men who have operated online far longer than a lot of their audience. Given that I am the same age as Shane, I know what the internet used to look like and how far it’s come and RPF is not a brand new thing neither did it pop up out of nowhere when One Direction debuted. And just like fanfiction in and of itself had its pushback from media because of its demographic and absolutely because of its queer-leanings, RPF appears to get a lot of that same energy, but it’s not an inherently toxic past time. Much like any fandom activity, it can get bad because fandom is not a monolith; it’s a bunch of individuals enjoying a medium in the ways they have learned to. You’re gonna get some individuals who “do it wrong” and some who do it differently, but ultimately, just like the forums and the reddit threads Shane and Ryan trawl in their past time, there are circles you learn not to veer into and terms you learn to blacklist/block/mute. With that being an indication of where they’re coming from as internet creators, I am confident when I say that, as long as it’s not being mailed to them, linked or quoted at them, they don’t care. They would know something that gets popular on the internet summons a brand of transformative art and fiction but much like they tend to ignore thirst tweets in their mentions or the repetitive requests for the same things over and over. They’d see it and gloss right over it. Shane is the type who writes long essays on reddit addressing the things that bother him, Ryan is weird and vocal and an oversharer sometimes when it comes to things Shaniacs say to him (i.e. that Voice he did for the occasional Shaniac who approaches him). It’s just one of the incarnations of fandom that they choose not to engage with, which, good? Because it’s a fan-specific activity. Once in a while you get a creator who wants to interact with fanfiction and it goes sideways because not all stories are written for them, much like not all fanart is made with the mindset to share with them. 

It’s just a regular old fan interaction and community habit that builds bigger followings. 

All in all, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. Unless you mean to be in their @’s all the time or link them on discord, or put any of your content in their hands, they are not going to see it. They don’t care. What they do care about is that you’re watching, that you support them and send them encouragement because they’re creating their own medium of content and a bigger following means more people get to see it and extract something positive from it.  

#shyan #discourse #Anonybae

[eligos-venator]

In regards to Villainy

I’ve been watching the villain post make its rounds and reblogged it earlier quietly with a small rant in the tags about personal concerns of my own. It’s shown up multiple times since then to where I feel some clarification is required on my part personally, as Eligos’s writer.

Communication and mutual agreement is required on all sides in RP, and nobody gets a free pass to do whatever they please because of some label that helps define their typical position in a roleplay. My gear gremlin was made for me as a player to enjoy watching him learn and grow as a person, and to provide minor inconveniences for other players should they wish him to get in their way as a way to help provide character growth for their muses. Not to be some big bad boss who gets their jollies by harming others. And I will not change him to suit anyone’s personal tastes but my own.

Read on if you want to see my whole take on this. Or not.

Let’s start with what the definition of villain actually means, given it’s a vaguer concept than most would like to think:

Definition of villain

1: a character in a story or play who opposes the hero 2: a deliberate scoundrel or criminal 3: one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty

These definitions are a rough guideline, but overall, all it takes to fall into the category of being a villain is a willingness to oppose a hero, regardless of reasoning or intent. Even in a clash of two heroes, you could call one the villain in that particular story for how they oppose the other. It’s a matter of perspective. One could be the villain of a story merely because they aim for the opposite goal of the hero of that tale, even if both end goals are suitably noble in the scheme of things. We often see in literary works that the villains of stories oft have either selfish or noble intentions, and in the case of the latter, what turns them into villains is how they view the world and how they may have let other important aspects fall to the wayside in their single-minded devotion to their goal.

Rarely is it that a good villain is written to be cruel and harsh for its own sake.  The villain’s view of the world may be twisted, but there’s always an element of logic and reason, the same as you might see in a heroic character. Even initially good motivations and desires can be twisted into something absolutely horrendous and monstrous with the right pulls of the string in a character’s history. Some can have their world views changed for the better with time, while others struggle in vain to understand to the bitter end. But that’s how the cookie crumbles. Not all endings are happy, and not every character deserves a happy ending in a story book, especially so when considering how many that they have made suffer through their actions. But by that consideration, heroes aren’t above similar karmic justice as well, simply because they wore the mantle of hero. Nor are they automatically entitled to their happy ending. Harming others, regardless of role one sees themselves in a story, inevitably begets wrath and a desire for similar harm upon the one who originally inflicted it. And while that may lead to interesting interactions, it doesn’t always unfold in a way where things work out where each party gets their just desserts as people believe they should. We watch what happens as a story unfolds, and the job of the mun in roleplay is to portray the character as their motivations, desires, and ethics would bid them do, be it for weal or woe.

But there are additional aspects to keep in mind when roleplaying, and it isn’t simply limited to keeping to the character. Communication ahead of time, and discussing what is acceptable, what isn’t, and what one expects to come of roleplay with another, must all be done in order to ensure things go in a manner both parties are ok with what may happen and are on the same page. There never should be any ‘well that’s what my character would do’ bullshit when it comes to discussing boundaries and hard limits on what one finds acceptable versus unacceptable in roleplay. If you feel your character would not be able to be played in a manner in which you prefer due to said boundaries or rules, it is best to find roleplay elsewhere. To push or pressure one into ignoring their own personal comforts and boundaries is unacceptable. Even when walking up to someone, there still is an expectation of some communication on an out of character level should you intend to harm their character. This isn’t reserved only for villains to do. That’s placing undue burden on one player type while relaxing standards for the rest. All players must heed this if communication is to be healthy, in order to avoid crossed wires. 

Which brings us to concerns people run across in roleplay. There indeed are players who play a character type due to the power fantasy, and do not properly communicate with their fellow players, nor keep in mind what they may face for their actions. Please note how I did not specify sides. In my time in roleplay, I have seen many players of heroes pull the same exact thing that they are so quick to accuse villain players of: ignoring what consequences they would logically face for misdeeds and attacking others in the street, as well as attempting to kill without communication or agreement on an OOC level, on top of trying to maim and cripple characters in permanent ways over small slights, such as spilling a beer on them, or harsh words exchanged. All of this, with not a single word of communication or planning ahead of time. One person falling into one side or the other between ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ does not give them a free pass for such behavior. It’s reprehensible behavior no matter who does it, and using the OOC information that someone happens to play as a character on the other side of what one considers good or evil as reasoning for a free license to do so is even moreso. Actions have consequences, no matter what side you are on. It is better and more interesting roleplay to roll with the consequences of a muse’s actions than it is to straight up ignore them. Talk shit, get hit. Hit someone, be hit in return. No party should expect a blanket immunity due to what they consider themselves. But neither should players feel they are given an automatic pass or ability to control the fate of another’s character. That’s still up to the writer of the character themselves, regardless of how much you may dislike the character being portrayed.

In particular, I’ve seen a disturbing number of individuals who feel it is within rights to execute player characters with zero communication out of character, and it’s mostly the players who play the ‘good’ characters saying this. If you feel you have an innate right to execute a character played by another, without any sort of communication ahead of time, you may be better off writing by yourself than with others. No player is allowed to force character death on another, regardless of the roles played. You may discuss and plan, and plot ways any encounter may go, but the moment one tries to bully or force another player into killing their character off, regardless of why, they have gone too far and should not be surprised if the player in question chooses to remove themselves from the roleplay or ignore it entirely.

In regards to the claims of that the guards would not allow such characters in, that is ignoring just how vast a city is and the limited number of troops that would be there to patrol, in comparison to the rest of the populace. What we see ingame doesn’t necessarily correlate to the actual size of each location, as areas have been limited in size both due to technical limitations of the game as well as to ensure a relative amount of convenience for the players.

Certainly, should a character with a bounty and known face get noticed for their deeds or a guard is called for, they should be prepared to potentially face consequences for their actions or try to escape. Actions have consequences. But one cannot simply whip up a dozen super-powered city guard NPCS to try to execute another player simply because they dislike that the player is not playing the type they want them to. Especially if the character in question may not even have a wanted poster or have done anything that would warrant the guard’s attention. That is gatekeeping roleplay at its finest, deciding who should be where based on personal preferences with little regard to others beyond personal feelings. By that sort of standard, any player who disliked someone else could do the same and merely claim that the face is close enough to a bounty that they should be killed on sight. Better to alert a player of a guard character and let them handle it, if you do want to have guards interfere, or plot with said character’s player to see how guards can be involved and then step in if they are agreeable to such. If not, drop it and either watch, or ignore. Whipping up random NPCs to do your bidding and to try to force someone out of roleplay without any discussion will not encourage people to do as you expect, and instead is more likely to earn you a spot on the block list.

Often times, a player character that falls on the villain side of the spectrum may not necessarily have a bounty because they have handled their personal situations or misdeeds in a way that keeps them under the radar, or they are skirting the line between legal and illegal. Assuming that all deeds are known and skipping straight to confrontation is poor form at the least and is considered metagaming. No player gets a free pass to do that. Many villain players have rules that one must adhere to when engaging their characters precisely because as players we’ve all seen people assume what our character would and wouldn’t be let known, or what they would say, and then run with it without even a word to us as the player of said villain. The rules we have are used to avoid such mischaracterization and help ensure that communication is healthy on all sides. Players of both sides get particularly upset when key details are left out and things they do not want nor did they agree ahead of time to are sprung on them.

Finally, a character does not represent the writer. A character may adore strawberries and peanuts, but the writer may be highly allergic to where they are sent into shock even on mild contact with either of them and thus loathes them. And what a character may think of said foods may also differ drastically between what the writer thinks of them as a result of those differences. This is the difference between in character and out of character. I explain it as such as I have seen the community grow progressively worse over time in understanding that what one’s character may do may not necessarily reflect the writer’s view in real life at all. Too many see a character that is morally questionable and believe that the writer behind them will behave in the exact same way as the character, and that how the character may see things is no different than how the player does. If you struggle to comprehend that a character does not necessarily represent the player, then you misunderstand what roleplaying is. It is not merely and only inserting yourself into a game setting down to the last detail. You may do that, but others have just as much right to write out something different, and approach a character not from a perspective of how they themselves feel, but from a point of analyzing of how someone who experienced the history forged for the character might behave and in doing so explore the resulting mindset.

Such history may scar a character or traumatize in a way that brings out behaviors that the player themselves would never consider till they sit down and consider just how the character may respond after all factors are taken into account. Just because one character hates something or someone does not mean that the writer does as well. Darker characters and villains often have traumas that skew their views to some degree, but just because the writer has taken the time to consider what that may result in does not mean they require therapy themselves as a person or that they share those same views or ideals. To say so and paint all players with such a broad brush and claim them to be mentally unwell is disgusting and indicates that, as a player, one cannot separate themselves from their character enough to comprehend that others are able to portray views other than their own personal set of beliefs held as a person. It also discourages dialogue, as it shows an innate, hostile bias, and there are not many that are willing to put up with such hostility and narrow-mindedness as it is being aimed at them as a person and attacking them as a person rather than disliking the character forged. You cannot expect someone to willingly listen and try to see your side when attacked on a personal level for little more than having made something you dislike seeing in your personal roleplay. If you dislike it, don’t interact or involve such a character in your plot line. If they ask for your view, you can always provide constructive criticism, but if you offer it unbidden you should not expect it to be listened to or taken. Especially if it is very clear from how you approach it that your problem is personally with the player and not the details or how they portrayed the character.

As a personal example, Eligos would be categorized as a villain. He works for whoever pays him the most as a minion, and while he mostly does perfectly legal work, he absolutely has done less-than-legal work and then carefully covered up his misdeeds after by pulling the strings of the people who owe him favors. He is considered a villain mainly as he will do whatever he is allowed to within his contract in order to succeed, and often times finds himself working for the wrong [losing] side because his messed-up priorities led him to see the extra money offered as indication of good faith in his abilities and also valuing him as an asset, and not being able to see why acting on behalf of someone he thinks valued him more is a bad thing. He will work with anyone if he’s given a good enough reason or money, or against them if someone else makes a better offer. He won’t kick puppies or harm kittens, or hurt anyone unnecessarily, and if it does boil down to combat, it’s something I absolutely discuss ahead of time to find out limitations and also what one desires to see happen, so that personal growth for the character he is facing off against or with has that opportunity to grow and learn as a person. If someone says they dislike something? That’s now off the table and no longer up for discussion, period. But by virtue of his poor life choices and habitually finding himself on the wrong side of conflict due to his values, he is a villain, through and through.

But playing a character like him isn’t a simple power fantasy made to flex virtual muscles. There’s easier and simpler options, and if I wanted to do that, I’d have just made a hero, as those characters tend to not be analyzed so hard for compliance as villains are. If Eligos had been made to be some stupid power fantasy and nothing more, he’d not be yeeted into a wall half as often as he has by both those around him and his own tools malfunctioning. Nor am I mentally unwell and think the same way he does, simply because I let him say and do the shit that he does. I personally dislike many of his life choices, but do find it amusing to watch him go, and then pile on karma later for all of his misdeeds so he regrets his actions later. He’s an arrogant little gear gremlin who exists to help further stories of others while providing entertaining moments. Just because one individual personally may not see the karma carried out or get to execute him simply as they dislike him doesn’t mean he gets away with no consequences for his actions. As the player, I decide how to punish him. Not others. Him being a villain does not strip me of that right and give it to you simply because you dislike seeing him around.

#mun speaks #mun rants #villain

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Dual Dreams - A Sora, Donald, and Goofy Fic

Part two of what I wrote for Sora’s birthday.

Summary: For Sora's birthday--years after the Master of Masters is defeated--Sora, Donald, and Goofy decide to go on a fun adventure... but only to get pulled into a new plot, dealing with dreams. The antagonist has to do with dreams, as does all the worlds: first world is Inception, though it's not a one-to-one copy of the film.

Dual Dreams Sora’s PoV "You know... despite all the journeys we went on, we never did one for just fun," Donald was telling Sora now, as he examined the sword that Master Yen Sid said had said he should try. But with the way his eyes kept darting back towards “Save the Queen”, Sora couldn’t help thinking that Donald was going to stay with his beloved wand in the end. "That's a good point!" Goofy chirped, as he scarfed down his hot cocoa and then some chocolate cake as fast as he could—nearly knocking over the pastry that the Master had put on his table in such a decorative way. And Sora wondered if Goofy was trying to get both chocolate flavors in his mouth around the same time. Maybe they tasted good together? "Sora, what do you say to us doing that for your birthday?!" Sora considered this offer for a moment as he drummed his fingers on his right leg. He was trying to make this birthday perfect, despite some dreams he'd been having lately… and it had been ages since he'd paled around with these buds of his. Sora nodded his head almost instantly. "Sure! Sounds good to me!" And he let his hand fall atop the other two’s, as they yelled out their standard “All-for-one and one-for-all!” And they boarded the gummi ship for a long journey… but only to be spit out of it before they reached their intended destination, and instead ended up in some strange location. "So, what's this world we're at this time?" Sora asked as he got to his feet and saw a strange mirror standing before him (wait. Hadn’t he done this kind of thing before? And even though he barely touched it with the tips of his fingers, it shattered into a million pieces as if it had never been there to begin with. Sora could have been wrong about this… but this place was very dream-like to him, and already it was worrying him that he had gotten off track already somehow—as he had during his Mark of Mastery exam—and that it would lead to the trapped girl he didn’t know how to feel about, who he was having so many dreams about lately… They weren’t romantic dreams, or anything like that—no, Kairi was the love of Sora’s life and always would be—but rather like a poor soul was reaching out to him for help… but he didn’t know if he should give it or not, because he also got the sense that she was evil. And here Sora had partly come on this adventure to try and avoid all of this anguish! "I don't know," Donald quacked, bringing Sora’s thoughts back to the present, as he led them to a sinking bridge that looked more like it belonged in Shinjuku, than in the way this place had just looked: as if it were a part of La Cité des Cloches. "But it reminds me of an animation I once saw!" "It reminds me... of dreams I’ve had," Sora said, as he remembered how he’d dreamt about falling through his shattering heart platform, among other things "Gawrsh," said Goofy, as he pointed out a man and girl, who were suddenly before them. "Why don't we go talk to that man with the nametag 'Cobb'? The last place we went to on our final quest had ‘cobs’. It can't be a coincidence! That seemed like a large leap in logic to Sora, but since Goofy was, perhaps, wiser than any of them, he thought he'd hear him out. The trio walked over to this Cobb person... and Donald and Goofy received odd looks from the new people on the scene almost immediately. "Who are you?" the woman with the curling brown hair and sharp honey- colored eyes asked Sora and his friends as she seemed to deeply analyze them. "Cobb… are these three part of one of the dream levels?" "Dream levels?!" both Donald and Goofy choked out at the same time, as they gave each other a look before then sending Sora one—clearly worried that he was falling into the depth again. And their concern for him touched his heart. "Do ya mean we're too deep in some place, and there's no hope of resurfacin’?" Goofy asked sadly, as he bowed his head and his ears sagged (Sora's heart went out to him). Meanwhile, Donald was tapping his foot impatiently and muttering something under his breath, that Sora heard—and when the brunet's eyes filled up with wonder and he gasped at the duck's genius, he realized he was right--"I bet this is one of those worlds where they think things happen in the mind and not the heart!" "…Look... as great as all this is. I got to find Mal- I mean finish this mission," said Cobb. But his assistant was already looking at the man incredulously as his first words seemed to catch up with her. "Your thinking about your wife is going to jeopardize us all!' And though Sora really had no idea what was going on here—as per most of his world visits, really—he could understand how the girl could be right. He, after all, had allowed his feelings for Naminé to endanger Donald, Goofy, and himself. And even possibly Naminé herself. So, Ariadne, as Sora would later learn her name was, was right. But he also understood how love made you do crazy things. Sora wasn't in love with Naminé anymore—and really, he never had been. It had always been Kairi for him. And he'd certainly done more than enough mad things for her—but still. "No, she won't, Ariadne. I'll make sure she stays in limbo but doesn't pull us into it. And if these guys are really here to help us—sent by Saito—we'll see if they can help out Arthur give the kick to the others with no gravity. Come on!" So with that, Sora, Donald, and Goofy found themselves following their new friends and getting a bit of a summary of what was going on. It seemed they'd all been right in assuming they were in some sort of dream thing. And Donald had been correct in thinking that this world dealt moreso in minds, than in hearts. Some rich man called “Saito”,  wanted the heir to his rival company to dissolve it. And Cobb, Ariadne, and some others, had been sent here to implant the idea into the heir, Fischer’s, head. They had kidnapped the man... and somehow linked up all of their minds together, to try and access Fischer’s subconscious. But since even in dreams, you were always somewhat aware and would fight to protect yourself and your secrets, they needed to go into the deepest level of Fischer’s mind in order to get the idea to hold. But the team needed someone to monitor them on each dream level, so they'd be able to “kick” awake, those who were in much deeper. But in the area where an “Arthur” was on guard, it seemed like he really needed help! And as the group went back to the level of the dream this “Arthur” was on—the third one, maybe?—Sora found himself wondering why he, Donald, and Goofy were here. Every world he had gone to during his previous destiny had happened for a reason—Kingdom Hearts had made sure of that—so Sora tried to guess why he was in this sharply decorated hotel space now... as they fought both “dream security” and Heartless. The only thing he could figure, was if he was meant to find that, perhaps insane, purple-haired-girl from his dreams, and this would somehow lead him there. But that wasn’t important right now! What was important was defeating these Heartless, as always. Sora was surrounded by Soldiers, Neoshadows, and Wizards! And Neoshadows were bad enough on their own... but when you added in Wizards' tough magic and Soldiers headbutting you, it made an already bad day much worse. And ugh! He felt out of practice in using the Keyblade, too. Maybe he’d spent too much time being lazy with Kairi and Riku lately! "Graviga!" Donald yelled—in seeming to have noticed that Sora was faltering—and he succeeded in defeating most of the Wizards, thankfully. And Sora just had to give a few of the ones that had been struck by Donald’s magic, and that hadn’t disappeared yet, one more hit before they were also gone for good. And later, Sora would be glad Donald had dispatched those Heartless so easily. Because they were some of the most skilled magical users, after all, and magic was connected to the mind... which was where dreams were stored. At least here. So, Sora didn't know what kind of damage they could have created, if Donald hadn't prevented it. But Goofy wasn't to be upstaged in all of this! When he seemed to note that the tall, dark man in the tux was getting distracted in worrying about Ariadne right now, Goofy defeated all the Heartless around him with a well-placed Goofy Tornado—and also knocked out some “guards”—and then told Arthur in a very intelligent way, "Gawrsh, Mister Arthur... I know ya like Ariadne, and are worried about her for tha’ there reason. In fact, it's like my little Maxie with his first crush! There wasn’t anythin’ he wouldn't do for Roxanne... But if you can't rely on yourself in danger, rely on your friends. Alright?!" Arthur seemed... a bit uncomfortable with Goofy standing close to him and telling him this, as he blinked his eyes open and closed a few times—what was with some of the worlds’ denizens acting so uncertain around Donald and Goofy? Sora didn't get it—but clearly listened to his words. Arthur regained his focus and did a pretty good job of defeating some more Heartless that showed up, just by punching them. Ariadne whistled. When it seemed like he’d finally gotten it back under control, the trio went with Cobb and Ariadne to the next dream level... which seemed to be an icy hill with a hospital at the bottom of it: which was probably where the most vulnerable part of Fischer’s mind was at, if Sora had to guess. Aaaaaaaand Sora and his friends were getting shot at from it. And Sora deflected each one of them with a sigh—as he had Xigbar’s arrows during the Keyblade War—as Donald used Thunder magic to try and keep them at bay, and Goofy tried to block them with his shield. Meanwhile, Cobb and Ariadne—and someone named Eames, Sora was learning now—were trying to reach the hospital while they were covered by Sora, Donald, and Goofy, and the snow was only a gentle pat on them, instead of the tornado it could be. Truthfully? Sora really hated guns and bullets, and he was starting to regret that he’d unwittingly signed up to spend his birthday around them. He had first been introduced to them through Clayton trying to kill the gorillas. And thinking of what would have been unnecessary deaths upon innocents, made Sora think that if it started to get too much for Donald and Goofy… he would jump out into the open, to try and better defend them. But fortunately, he didn’t need to. Cobb, Ariadne, and Eames came back with glowing faces—making it seem like they’d accomplished their task—and all firepower had stopped. "Alright. You guys go back to the surface, I’m going to look for Sait- Mal." It was Cobb who had said this, of course, as the famous Mal appeared on the scene... somehow having Fischer on her, and stabbing him before everyone’s very eyes… Making Sora tear up and almost feel like he was going to be sick. And what was worse, was that Sora got the sense that the girl he was dreaming about was a lot like this, too! “Are they dead?” Donald whined. And it sounded like he was also about to cry, perhaps in imagining Daisy as the one being stabbed instead of Fischer. As it stood… this trio was just so done with death. “No. Taken into the deepest part of dreams, where you can forget you’re doing that there: limbo. But I can save him and Saito,” Cobb explained, just as Sora muttered how Mal looked like the girl he’d been dreaming about, because he seemed unable to stop himself. And at that, Goofy frowned slightly—as he tried to get his feet out of the snow—and gave Sora a lecture. "Sora… if this is somethin’ like one of Xehanort's plots, let us know! …It's always when ya keep info to yourself, that ya become lost!" And even while Sora tried to focus on the bad right now—as Mal despaired that Cobb had forgotten her and didn’t want her anymore, as she turned the tundra to island: to limbo, apparently—he thought his heart might soar, in knowing just how much Donald and Goofy cared about him. And then everyone was falling into this last dream level, so there was nothing of the ice from before above them and so that they were trapped. ... The island that Sora, Donald, Goofy, Cobb, Ariadne, and Eames were on, wasn't like Destiny Islands to Sora. It was like if Destiny Islands was... colder—and wasn't a burg of light—and had much darker terrain. And the place was literally colder, too… The Keyblade wielder knew it was silly to think this—because he'd yet to be near an ice burg, or anything like it—but in his imaginings, Sora thought this must have been what a body of water in the arctic must look like. The water here was such a white-ish blue, too, and didn't look like it would change at all... and Sora missed seeing water reflect the yellow or pink of the sun. Ariadne—though she did look angry for her part—didn't start yelling at Cobb for leading them here by being unable to let go of Mal, like Sora thought she would. Instead, she—and Eames, for he was motioning with his hands for Mal to go to Cobb and talk and work it out—just implored to Mal, "If you're from a part of Cobb that actually loves him... or if you think you can imagine what the real Mal felt for him, please let him go." Huh. Mal was from a part of Cobb’s head that had tried to recreate his loved one? Well, if that didn’t remind Sora of his unintentionally creating Xion, he didn’t know what did. But it was like the other story he was in now, too… of- of Alma, Sora had to admit. Because as he understood from his dreams… an entire group of people had been put into her special mind and forced to believe they were in reality. Could that have been happening here, too? Even more than what this group had thought they’d tampered with? "And you let us go too, Alma... if you're there, and somewhat controlling Mal here." Alma was the girl that Sora had been seeing in his dreams—or so he thought; the audio was sometimes hard to hear—and he was starting to gather that she had some sort of the same manipulative powers as Naminé… And lo and behold, Alma made an appearance through Mal. And while Sora thought that she might look at him angrily, for destroying her plans—or at least try to—she actually seemed uncertain at first. But after she didn't seem to know what to do with herself, she then looked mad... and then had Mal come flying Sora's way as she did... but Sora had still seen the look that had said it all. "Alma- no, Clancy. I think that’s the name you prefer? I can help you!" But it was too late. The violet-haired-girl—purple. Oh, how that made Sora think of his love, Kairi—was already gone (and Sora could only hope she'd found her Donavan, Perry, Miss Sayee, or even Shari. Hadn't he dreamed of them, too?), and Sora was now in some sort of building with his friends, that was being torn apart. Eames and Ariadne had at least found Fischer, it seemed, and Eames attempted to jump out of the building to wake up—or Sora presumed—and take Eames with him, but he missed his hand as he was going out of the building. Any of the rest of them would have to jump out with Fischer soon, then… if Cobb ever got over his guilt at seeing “Mal’s ghost” here, so they could join Eames. "Cobb!" Ariadne begged with more desperation in her voice than Sora had ever heard from anyone before. "We managed to do what we set out to! Let's get out of here! Now! You can see your kids again! Think about them! Because if you don't act now, you'll be trapped here forever!" Sora was about to step in and tell Cobb to take it from him: it wasn't a good thing to chase dreams, but before he could Donald was quacking and ruining the moment! "Who's Alma, Sora? Another girl who you like?" "No. She's not, Donald," Sora said deadpan, while Goofy laughed, despite everything. "She's a girl who's trying to hurt us, I think. Jeez! I have my head in the game, alright?" And just as Sora and Donald were arguing, Cobb seemed to arrive at the point Sora and Ariadne (and Donald and Goofy, of course) had wanted him to, without any more help from them... which was good, because maybe this meant it would finally sink into him—it was himself deciding all this—and he could let go of all the pain. Hopefully… "You're not her. You're not Mal. You're the best I could come up with, but with all the facets of her... I couldn't even come close. You're a poor imitation, and I’m sorry that I made you this and you can’t be more than that… But I'll leave this poor imitation behind to see our real kids, if I got any of Mal right in you… that should make you happy." Mal's face then was only upset for a second, Sora thought, before it gave way to happiness before she disappeared. And if they had been in a tornado before, they certainly were in one now as the "creator of this world" vanished. "Cobb," Ariadne said surprisingly brokenly, as Sora had thought that Cobb had finally arrived at the right place. But Ariadne was motioning to Sora, Donald, and Goofy that they should say something to him, too, so maybe not... "You have to come now." "I- I will," he promised, as he knelt at the ground where Mal had just been. And with that, Sora was starting to doubt his intentions, too. “Are you sure?” both Donald and Goofy demanded at the same time, as they stepped closer to him. "I- I promise!" Cobb said with much more urgency this time, as he held up a dreidel. How peculiar... "I have my totem." And Ariadne nodded with a small smile, kicked Fischer out of the building, and purposefully fell backwards out of the stories high skyscraper herself. And Sora, Donald, and Goofy—in assuming she had a better idea on how to escape this dream than they did—followed suit. The trio came out of the last dream—limbo—first, and then they were at the snowy hospital… the hotel… and finally on that highway once more. But though Sora, Donald, Goofy saw the rest of the group getting pulled up even higher than that, they didn’t move that way themselves. So Sora could only hope that the team would be okay... And then- then Sora, Goofy, and Donald were somehow in the office of someone who seemed to hate his job? Which should have been fine, but... "I have a bad feeling about this, guys..." Sora muttered, as an equally scared Donald and Goofy put reassuring hands upon Sora’s shoulders. And somewhere out there, a “manipulative girl” laughed.

#kh #kingdom hearts #trinity trio #sora's birthday #sora #Donald duck #goofy goof #donald #goofy #Sora Donald and goofy #fanfiction #my writing #mine #Shanna writes #my work #oneshot #future fic #post-canon

[st-just]

Yet More Worldbuilding

While I’m certainly not writing anything like a novel, I am at least trying to write something more consistently this month, which is probably going to mean a lot of D&D worldbuilding. Because hey, I find it oddly relaxing. 

So, here’s a bit of a snippet on an actual location for the campaign, told all episotlory style 

Despite what the schoolchildren and preachers say, no one really believes the Queen-Empress rules the entire world. No matter how invested people are in saying that she should, because her great-grandad murdered something precious and a Hierophant and Archangel told him so. Still, after literal months of going from one worthless village of pious dirt farmers to another, it’s a real reassurance of my sanity that my destination still bears all the scars of conquest, and obviously used to be something more. Which is a way of saying I’ve finally arrived in the Southern Marches, and managed to spawn a couple weeks devouring local histories.

[...]

What’s now called the Southern Marches was once (as a great many preachers have seen fit to tell me) such a fertile paradise it would have left our dear Republic a howling desert by comparison. Naturally enough, they became a nursery and cradle for humanity to grow into something worthwhile-and like every land full of worthwhile people, it did eventually progress into something impressive. Warring city-states and grand monuments held together by nothing but the iron will of a Hero-King. Primitive empires remaking the map in blood and bronze, their private gods growing fat from sacrifices made half a continent away. That sort of thing. (You’d think it’s riveting, really, even if its just however many centuries of different people doing the same things to each other with the same tools. Still, I’ll see if anyone down here has ever stumbled on publishing the better Epics, maybe if I can send you a copy).

From what I’ve gathered, things continued along that vein long past the point where ‘stitching a dozen cities together only for your spoiled brat of a son to lose it all” was anything worth writing home about, but eventually things get interesting to justify this whole trial of a trip. Priests were as much of an infestation here as they were anywhere else, but the sect who ended up dominant here at least weren’t cowards about it. Maybe it was everyone being so painfully aware that as soon as they died everything around them would fall back into a pile of foraging misery and nomadic raiders, but the local high priests and mystics dedicated themselves to the study of the soul, just how it’s bound to the body and the world, and how far the gods gifts allowed them to manipulate and control them. (The official Imperial histories call them ‘the first Witch Kings, who damned all they ever loved.” So I like them already. If I manage to bring back anything interesting, the museum is going to be facing their embassy).

This is really where necromancy as something we understand got its start. All very primitive and wasteful and absolutely drowning in pomp and circumstance, of course, but then I suppose I’m really not one to complain about that last bit anyway. Conquerors feasting upon their enemies lifeblood to secure their soul’s bonds and keep themselves in a permanent prime of their life. Scholars letting their bodies waste away but linking their soul and mind to some grand idol and using some unlucky peasant’s spirit as the structural support for the connection. (And my favorite) A particular genius of a archpriest who was ritually entombed and disemboweled, each important organ sealed away in a different chamber with a different attendant. The next day he was hale and hearty, all material concerns shunted off to the entombed acolytes. (Before you ask, yes all of them were some variety of parasitic. The world likes death, no matter what your new beau says. Have to break something more fundamental than a soul to get away from that).

Anyway, things go on like this for a long while-all the delightfully holy blasphemy only getting moreso, with irrigation networks and temple cities maintained by six generations of peasant souls kept in their corpses, and (possibly related) swarms of hungry shades who could possess nomad families and have them helpfully walk onto the sacrificial altar, and battles decided when one queen tore the entire opposing army’s souls from their bodies and consumed to turn into something bad enough that putting her down was some sort of international crisis (Yes I’m looking for any sign of where she’s buried).

Nothing fun really lasts in this part of the world, of course, and before anyone tried using a dragon for raw materials or possessed an angel or anything similarly sublime, the Empire came calling. Well, properly speaking a particularly vainglorious Witch-King conquered his way up a fair chunk of the continent, and gave the Hierophant of the time enough incentives to invent the concept of a holy war in response (Which is fair, as as far as I can tell he’s the ultimate root of the whole vampire problem they’ve been dealing with since. Still, always vaguely offended one of ours didn’t get that prize).

Everything after that’s literally scripture, and I won’t bore you with it except to say that at least some of those painters must have realized that all those ‘monsters and horrors’ they spent so long lovingly painting were just much more interesting than another spotless crusader. How it ended is the really famous bit, of course-the court of immortals meeting the King-Emperor at the gate of their fortress, all poetic hubris and boasting and threats, and him showing how actually HE’s the gods favourite toady and shaking half a continent to pieces to drown half of the place and bury the rest in ash and sand. (They built a church on the spot it’s supposed to have happened, because of course they did).

Thankfully, once his ever-so-blessed highness finally got carried off by a chorus of weeping angels, the succession crisis that followed was brutal enough to let some more reasonable people float near the top. Oh, the Marcher Lords he made out of his favourite crusaders still make a big show of swearing to draw and quarter anyone caught trying to unearth what’s drowned and buried, but it’s not like any (...most) of them are dumb enough to avoid realizing that half the expeditions of the last decade were sponsored by the current Queen’s dear old dad. So really as long as I can afford all the bribes, the main threats so far are all the other tomb robbers.

As always, send more money, more men, and anything close to current fashion that will survive this climate. Will write again when I find some concrete lead.

Your Beloved Younger Sister,

Lia

#writing #worldbuilding #rpg #D&D

[ardenttheories]

Hey been a while, love the rebranding you’ve been done and it’s nice to see you still going! I don’t know if you’ve done a Prince of Light yet, but if not would it be possible to get your hot take on what they’re all about?

Hi! I’m glad you like the rebranding; I’m still not 100% done with it, but when I get the time (maybe Sunday?) I wholly intend on adding a little more to it when I get the chance. Definitely the theme, if nothing else. 

Now, onto the hot take, right off the press!

The Prince of Light is someone who Destroys Light, which is Awareness, Perception, Information, Importance, Probability, Understanding, Knowledge, Clarity, Truth, and literal Light. 

Princes of Light are highly secretive people. Everything about their life is kept safely in the Shadows, Hidden from view and quite impossible to ever figure out. You may never know their True likes, dislikes, favourite foods, age, hair colour, eye colour, skin tone - either because they will Lie about it, or utterly ommit all Information regarding it. 

Do you know what ethnicity the Prince is? What religion? Not at all. Whenever the topics come up they are surprisingly Vacant, and don’t seem to want to talk about it at all, regardless of what side of the debate they might be on. You might not even know the basics of what they look like, where they live, whether they have a family or not - they’re complete enigmas, and enjoy the Confusion that surrounds their being. 

In essence, they have no desire to be Known at all. 

They likely act as if they Know nothing or are rather dim, when in truth their ability to Understand is significantly more impressive than you’d expect. They’re quick thinkers and witty Players, but they don’t want anyone to know that. Their Information - even on aspects of their own Intelligence or Self - is theirs and theirs only. 

They leave no footprint behind. You couldn’t guess anything about them from conversation, and they don’t tend to talk about anything that’s Important. All the big topics of the day, all the greatest concerns, even just something that you’re actually trying to talk to them about. They will completely talk you around it until you’re back in the safety of Irrelevancy. 

They honestly might just be the sort of person to Know random and completely Irrelevant facts. Did you know that a duck’s womb is spiralled? That squids have beaks? That a lobster’s nervous system is so similar to a human’s that our antidepressants work on them? They refuse to focus on anything of substance, but at least you get to know this. 

When they do find something of Importance, something with Meaning, they may overanalyse it to the point that it suddenly becomes Meaningless. Some things are only Important because they are left vague - such as endings to movies that are meant to make you think about our society and the path it’s going down - but the Prince of Light won’t settle just for that. 

They will pour over it for as long as they can until it has an answer, whether or not that answer is right or True or even what was Meant by the creator. That, or they just completely disregard any actual Meaning from something and take it literally, and enforce that as the only potential. There is no deeper meaning here; there is only what is on the surface. The Truth is Obscured from view, and that is how the Prince likes it. 

They keep to the Shadows as much as they possibly can, and do everything within their power to Destroy any potential for them to reach the limelight. If they’re part of an Important family, they’re likely to be the blacksheep that tends to avoid every camera, every headline. Their existence is debated by the paparazzi and more fiction exists about them than Truth. They very much prefer it that way, too.

Overall, I think, Princes of Light have such an aversion to Information because they much prefer being a Mystery, surrounded by Confusion and never Known. They dislike anything that could even potentially Reveal who they are, the Truth of their being, and similarily dislike any sense of Importance. It is an underlying terror of being Exposed that leads to them overcompensating by Destroying everything that’s True. 

As with all Princes, in Destroying their Aspect the Prince of Light leaves behind the purest form of Void in its place. 

The Prince of Light destroys all Relevancy and Information, and even moreso Relevant Information. If something is Important, or has Relevance, or is meant to Be, then the Prince can and will Destroy it. Something that could have saved the session will no longer have that power because its fundamental Importance is lost, and something that should have been an aid to another Player, something that might have helped them grow, will be deemed Irrelevant and completely Ignored. 

Relevant Information will be Lost completely. Information may be able to survive, but Meaningless facts and fanciful stories are not the same as actually Knowing what you’re doing. The Prince of Light will leave utter Confusion in their wake, as their coPlayers will have to try and navigate a session riddled with Void - spots of Darkness of Information that they have no hope if filling in. 

They can Destroy Clarity, which may be metaphorical and physical. People might find it hard to Understand anything the Prince is saying because of how they say it, being talked around in circles until they eventually give up, Knowing even less than they did before. 

They might lose their actual ability to Understand anything, to read between the lines and to extrapolate Information. More physically, they may lose some ability to see while the Prince is around; not to complete blindness, but the Clarity of the world around them will start to fade, and they might find that everything goes a bit blurry. 

They destroy the Truth by spreading Lies, creating a web of them until the Truth is completely Obscured. The web becomes so tangled that nobody can figure out what’s True, what’s half True, and what is a flat out Lie - and only the Prince themself can Understand anything that’s going on. 

Of course, they can also just destroy the concept of Truth from something. It’s more metaphorical, once again, but imagine knowing that something is True until the Prince destroys its fundamental Truth. 

There is a door in the doorway. That must be True because we can see the door in the doorway. Except now it isn’t true. The fundamental Truth of the door is gone, and now it will either simply not open, disappear completely, or open to absolutely Nothing. 

They have a tendency to completely disregard things if they don’t like them or don’t adhere to what the Prince wants - which is usually complete isolation and Darkness. This can have its severe downfalls, naturally; if they disregard the point of the session, the game can never be won, and they will likely refuse to even think about stuff like Godtiering or fighting the Black King because of how Important those events are. 

On the other hand, they could destroy the Importance of fighting the Black King - meaning that there’s literally no need to do it to win the game. 

As a general rule of thumb, Princes of Light also hate Light. They’re very likely camera shy, photosensitive, or are susceptible to migraines in bright Light. They’ll do everything in their power to Destroy Light - either by physically Destroying Light sources such as lamps, or by using their powers to cast an area in sheer Darkness. This Darkness cannot be naturally removed, as it is an Absence of Light; even trying to shine a Light on it wouldn’t allow what was one there to be seen. 

That does, of course, mean that they can blind people, too; Destroy the ability for the eyes to take in Light or to Comprehend what they’re seeing, and you have both a literal and metaphorical blindness. Pretty nasty stuff on the second one, honestly. It’d be like knowing you can see, that your eyes are still working, but never being able to process the shapes and colours in front of you. 

In the same vein, they could also turn things - including themselves - invisible. How they do this would depend on the power and control of the Prince themself, but this could be destroying the Light around them, destroying their own Relevance, or destroying their Importance. It could even be a mix of all three - in which case, the Prince could even Hide from someone’s memory.

Additionally, destroying Probability or Importance can be both a good and bad thing. It’s the sort of thing that gave Vriska her Luck; she wasn’t actually Lucky, just so Important that nothing could go wrong. 

The Prince of Light would be able to Destroy a person’s Importance, making them a lot easier to defeat. If they can take away the Importance of an Ogre as a higher-levelled enemy, then they’ll be a hell of a lot easier to defeat. The same with Denizens; Destroy their Importance as bosses and they’ll be as weak as Imps. 

They could turn people or things into background characters using this power, which would be good... if they didn’t do it to their Players. Unwittingly using this power would make their team completely Irrelevant, turning the Players into something that isn’t vital for the game’s progression. Consorts probably wouldn’t even recognise them as heroes, and they’d horrifically struggle to get anything done because the game wouldn’t activate certain events for them.

Light’s focus on Fortune can also become a bit of an issue, as that means the Prince could completely Destroy the Fortunes found throughout the session. For instance, the Grist Hoards, or powerful weapons, or even just favourable Grist drops from Underlings. It can, however, mean that they Destroy the Fortune of their enemies, too - such as the potential for the White King’s Scepter ending up in the Black King’s hands. 

It’s a session that could, therefore, completely avoid the Reckoning, should the Prince know what they’re doing. 

 To become Realised, all the Prince has to do is recongise the Importance (ironically) of Light.

They need to Understand that some Light must be left alive. Some Truths have to be known, some Information left in the Light. Some people and things must be Fortunate, or Known, or Relevant, and some things must be Clarified. Some Perceptions must be left in tact. 

This Prince starts to let themself be seen more. They’ll divulge little pieces of Information about themself, maybe take some selfies. They won’t spend all their time in the Darkness, and will actually start to get involved with the people around them. 

If pre-Realised they cover themselves up almost entirely - or even wear a mask - post-Realisation they let themselves open up a bit more. They still find comfort in not being Known, but they let their likes and dislikes shine through, let their face be seen, and tolerate the Light just a little more. 

They’re still not one for the limelight, per se, but they do at least let themselves have some form of Importance - be that in the overarching story or in the lives of their friends. 

They Lie, but only to cover up Truths that shouldn’t be seen - little white Lies that are kinder to people than Knowing the Truth - and they only outright Destroy fundamental Truths that are going to hurt the session. The Truth is that they’re Doomed? Nah. Not today, SBURB, the Prince of Light isn’t vibing with that. 

They Destroy Perceptions only when they are negative or toxic, such as whether people see someone bad as something good, or when multiple different Perceptions of the same topic causes infighting in the group. Leave only one unified Perception behind - whether it’s True or not - and the group is more likely to stick together. 

In the same vein, Destruction of Clarity and Information would be aimed much more towards enemies than friends. Destroy the ability for the Black Royalty to Understand their plans, and they can get away with anything beneath the Dersites’ noses. Destroy the ability for Imps to collect Information on them and - for instance - Clubs Deuce wouldn’t have known that Jake was allergic to peanuts. 

As a Realised Player, their ability to Destroy Light would get significantly stronger. This could reach the point of them being capable of Destroying the Green Sun - something that is both fundamentally Important and one of the hugest Light sources known to man. 

I think, too, if we go in line with Homestuck’s narrative concepts, they could just... Destroy the Narrative. Light is all about the Story, the Plot, the flow of things to the Conclusion of a long and extraordinary Tale. The Prince of Light could Destroy that. They could Destroy Plot points that are harmful, characters that would have caused significant issues later in the session - hell, they could Destroy the story itself. 

Whether that means the idea of a Story - that they have their lives written out before them, therefore allowing them to act freely and randomly outside of the Narrative structure (going a bit more Candy than Meat, for instance) - or just destroying the Story itself - our ability to see what they’re doing, because they would be Obscured from our view as something Real and not a piece of Media - is entirely up to interpretation. It is incredibly powerful, though, and is definitely more of a Realised, late-game ability. 

Hell. They might even be able to become a narrator, just to Destroy the sense of the Narrative itself. 

So, overall, they’re still a Shadow-lurker, still Mysterious, still shy and quiet and Hidden from view - but they’re much more comfortable in the Light. They aren’t as terrified of being Known and become much more aware that some things are Important for a reason, some Truths have a right to exist. 

#ardenttheories #prince of light #classpect analysis #long post// #Anonymous

[apogexnarchive]

A STUDY OF KEIR

This may not make 100% sense to everyone because I keep Loki’s full narrative mostly to myself, but Keir’s one of my lesser known muses because he’s so quiet (I really do try to get him to open up more but he’s so mellow and prefers the backseat in everything and ofc the rest of my muses love the spotlight/are significantly louder) and I felt this was a good glimpse at just how important he is in Loki’s story and to/for Loki himself.

Also this is 100% rambling nonsense. It was in a docs of mine and I thought I’d copy/paste. Tried to clean it up a little but it’s a definite glimpse into my chaotic af mind hahaha

Foil to Odin? 

Their similarities:

Both best friends with Loki, like brothers (previously, for Odin)

Both dedicated to their work/people

Both highly regarded by their people

Interesting thought: Odin has Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory) but Keir is all three combined.

Odin chose his people and work over Loki. Keir is faced with a similar decision many times. Choose a people he loves dearly or his best friend. It’s a difficult decision, moreso as time goes on, and in the end he realizes he’s too devoted to Loki to wholly give himself over to a job that doesn’t always appreciate him. It’s possible, though, to care for your people without sacrificing your friends and loved ones, but it may mean sacrificing your position/power.

Plus, it’s possible to make the decision without harming another in the process. Odin made his decision with Loki’s kids and he undeniably made many enemies as he did so. He created a wound that will never heal.

Keir worked hard to get where he is today but being the King’s advisor wasn’t something he ever anticipated becoming. When he came to Loki with a broken wing it was because he was injured. And lo and behold, Loki was the man he had been searching for all these years. His job was to locate their rightful King, plant him on the throne, and then carry on, but instead he became Loki’s advisor and closest friend. It wasn’t a job he’d deny. He knew what his people needed and what they didn’t need and if being put in a position of considerable power meant he could enable that change then he was going to take it readily.

He’s been considered an outlaw because of his task to basically uproot the Council (oligarchy) and replace a King at the head of the Monarchy.

Bc of this he was on the run from higher figures for a while (and at such a young age--20s or so), making it hard to have a proper life. Something he wasn’t really upset about, but it certainly affected his relationship with his family. So here we see him already choosing his people over relationships.

His people were suffering, tho, and he knew no one else would rise up to take on this task and he figured he was entirely capable (his mentor said so), and thus he did. If he failed, then he would fail his people.

He did make new friends along this path (he met Lini and Arlo and Vig and Siafi and co, two of which continued on with him high into the monarchy. Loki chose Lini personally for his guard and Arlo rose ranks as an adept hacker and weapons specialist).

His story ends with a broken wing and Loki’s begins with one. Keir is wounded in his flight from the Council and others under their command to take him down. He’s able to escape so as to avoid being killed, but he’s uncertain if he can live on his own with a badly broken wing. This is where Loki finds him and takes him (under wing ha ha) to mend him and basically rehabilitate him. Under the assumption obviously that this is just a regular ole bird.

Faced with Loki’s healing abilities and watching him day to day, he comes to find out that this is the man he’s been looking for all this time. Funny how fate works like that ha ha.

Once healed and about the be released, he reveals himself to Loki. They talk. MAYBE Loki has raven blood in him. Faint, but enough, and that raven blood belongs to an old King. There’s no other heir alive. OR Keir thinks, this guy is exactly what I need to take back my monarchy. And if you help me, I’ll help you.

And in the end, Loki ends up King and Keir’s his advisor.

The two are able to patch up the mess the Council has created, though it takes some time. Vasilija’s part of the guard by that time and her existence is enough to qualm a lot of the others so peace can be regained. Siafi is planted in a higher up position, replacing a conspirator. Lini is part of the guard under Vasilija. Arlo still holds his rank. Vig didn’t want anything grand so he’s out travelling.

In the end, Loki doesn’t want to be a King forever. Once he has his kids, he just wants to focus on being a dad. And Keir doesn’t want to abandon his people to the same mess as before.

So the two basically change the government entirely. No longer a monarchy but a direct democracy, enabling the people to have considerably more power. And the leaders in charge are elected officials with equal power. They reestablish the White Ravens, as well, who act as powerful leaders overhead that are only used in duress. I.E. if a decision cannot be made in regard to a problem, if war is to be declared, etc. These White Ravens are their link to the people. They do not make decisions as their own individuals, they contact the people to find out what their consensus is and then use that decision. They’re a mediary, essentially.

With the government no longer at risk of becoming a dictatorship or an oligarchy again, Keir is at peace to semi-retire, or at least abandon his now null and void position, to focus on being HIM.

He will forever and always help orphaned ravens tho lbr.

Keir can be very headstrong and determined. Though he greatly values rules and laws, he understands that sometimes they must be broken for the betterment of others. Also it’s unavoidable when friends with Uni and Vas anyway.

He is entirely capable of humor. It’s dry sometimes, but not always.

He’s phenomenal with people. He knows how to talk down a situation or talk them out of danger or appease all parties present simply with the right words. Loki is NOT good at this and thus relies on Keir a lot for these moments. Not to say Loki’s bad at it, he’s just not remotely as good as Keir.

Keir greatly dislikes the mistreatment of others, especially over differences like race and sexuality etc. He will ALWAYS fight for his people to have equal rights and for their voices to be heard.

It’s difficult to anger Keir because he’s generally so calm and lax in all situations (you have to be considering all he’s been through), but when he’s angry he’s ANGRY.

He is gud boi and we lov him 2kforever okay don’t hurt the baby boi.

#↑ — character study ( keir ) #☾ --- the ADVISOR ( keir ) #[this is v long]

[vedj-f-bekuesu]

2019 in Retrospect

2019 has been fairly quiet, so I decided to start off this year by looking back on it. I’ll be dividing it by main fandoms/characters/ships because this year there were actually some new ones. That hasn’t been the case since, like, 2013. 

Sonic the Hedgehog

It was an...alright year for Sonic. TSR was fine but too light on content, Mario and Sonic Tokyo felt like a step down from Mario and Sonic Rio but was still alright, and I have not played SEGA Heroes (and haven’t bothered with the Chao in Space short). Lowest spot for me was the IDW comic; the Zombot arc has had one interesting story so far, but the rest has had either bad writing (primarily aimed at Shadow’s turn) or it’s just been wallowing in its bleakness in a way even Shadow the Game didn’t. Then again, I find zombie stories uninteresting to begin with, so no duh I’m not interested in a Sonic take on it. 

Chaotix kind of mirror that. Vector’s managed to get a good showing in, batting 3 for 3 on the game front, and having a key role in two of them. And like I said before, the Chaotix have genuinely had the most interesting stories within the Zombot arc, although with Vector and Charmy turned this may become more limited. Speaking of though, Espio and Charmy have had weaker presences. Espio managed to get into all three games in some form but to a lesser extent (one just by name), and Charmy was really left behind. 

As for Vecpio, it’s been pretty bare for canon material stuff. Espio got mentioned in TSR as contributing the report that reveals Dodon Pa’s true role (with him and Vector being the key to making everyone shut up about him being suspicious, proving they’re best as a team). And Mario and Sonic Tokyo has something if you headcanon some stuff; when Vector talks about the medals, Espio is the first person you’re directed to. Nothing is said by Vector about Espio in text, but you can implicate that Espio was chosen first because of his strong link to Vector, being the first one Vector would trust to compete at a gold level. Other than that? Dry. And with no announcements for Sonic games in 2020, this may just continue. 

Crash Bandicoot

On the reverse side, we have Crash Bandicoot having a really strong year. CTR:NF came out (which is a remake of my favourite Crash game) and has been doing gangbusters. On top of this, it has been going out of its way to revive pretty much every dead character in the franchise, to the point that we have RIlla Roo back in the fold (something I genuinely didn’t think would happen 19 years beforehand). 

Skipping straight to the shipping for this, I wouldn’t have imagined it for Crash ever, but there’s actually some in-game material for me to latch onto for DingodileXKomodo Joe! Dingodile has been pushed into a more jovial character since N-Sane Trilogy, being even more doubled down on in CTR:NF. However, for the past 20 years Komodo Joe has managed to avoid being given traits closer to Espio. This game finally catches up to him, and does it hard. Seriously, his character took a hard turn for the stoic badass Espio did after Heroes, and when did Joe ever use Martial Arts magic ever? Aside from making that dynamic naturally more matching, Slide Coliseum joins in the fun with the visual upgrade. It has holographic projections of a trophy girl repping a couple of racers dancing each, and guess who the devs felt could be paired up for how they go together rhythmically? That’s right, my reptile boys. Man. 

Super Mario Bros

What a weak year for Mario for me. What Mario got for new games this year were Luigi’s Mansion 3 (which I’ve not played), Mario Maker 2 (which isn’t new story content and doesn’t interest me in the slightest), Yoshi’s Crafted World (which I forgot was a thing) and Mario Kart Tour/Dr Mario World (which...um). 

Because of this set-up, Bowser hardly got anything to do so he’s really been on the backburner. Considering how he’s been pushed in the rest of the decade that’s saying something. In fact, the most character stuff he got was in Mario and Sonic Tokyo, and even that was mostly just alright (I think Bowser Jr got the best deal out of that).

Spyro the Dragon

Spyro was alright, but this one’s more understandable. With 2018 being the big year for Spyro’s return, 2019 was a rest for the little guy. That being said it wasn’t completely quiet; Spyro Reignited Trilogy finally got its port on the Switch, and to tie in with that Spyro got an appearance in CTR:NF. 

Because of the latter point, Gnasty Gnorc got a surprisingly strong year. Not only having more people learn about his glow-up in SRT, but bringing over that petty and angry character to CTR:NF. Seriously, his bit in the grand prix intro video is great, and he has more lines in his racing quips than any other game. 

OK KO

I don’t think I made a post about OK KO on Tumblr (or maybe I did one, I can’t remember). But I did manage to get into this just before it got cancelled so there’s that. 

I maintain that the Sonic crossover (aka the first thing I really knew about OK KO) didn’t give me a good impression of the show.It just seemed like “here’s the Sonic and Eggman dynamic but with more cartoon shenanigans*” and it spent more time making endless Sonic references. While some were deeper cuts which actually were impressive, most were references I could see in pretty much any Sonic-referencing material. It wasn’t until I decided to look up more info on Lord Boxman sometime after because I wanted to check if N.Gin was an influence that I found out the plot of the actual show (crossover notwithstanding) was pretty nuts and way more up my alley. 

Speaking of, there’s Voxman. Whereas other ships on here I have to dig through material to construct nuggets from them, this was literally in the text. And why not, they have a good dynamic and are usually the most fun to watch bounce off each other. And I still like the fact that if KO and Lord Boxman were the Sonic and Eggman parallel, the story ends with Eggman becoming Sonic’s stepfather. Let’s see IDW tell a story like that, it’d be better than the Zombot stuff. 

*I think that was the point but still. 

LEGO

Man I wouldn’t have thought they would have remade LEGO Racers but the one they made this year was gre--

Okay no, this year basically reignited another flame that I thought was snuffed out like 16 years ago. For a brief history of me and LEGO, when I was six I had a freestyle box which I used to make an elemental superhero persona. I played with this until I was 11. Before then, my sister got some LEGO Harry Potter sets (which we still have in the loft), I played LEGO Racers a lot (and wasn’t very good at it), and I owned two random other LEGO sets (the trike from Life on Mars and Lava from RoboRIders). 

After that, I only dabbled in LEGO when there was a Sonic set done for LEGO Dimensions. I did try to play more into it, but it was really prone to crashing in certain worlds so I eventually got frustrated enough to stop playing it. Sometime in the interim though my sister started enjoying LEGO films without me knowing, so when February came around I was dragged to see LEGO Movie 2 when all I wanted to see in 2019 was Toy Story 4. Dad insisted on it since we rarely have family outings. In retrospect; 

LEGO Movie 2 hit me in a way a piece of media hasn’t for years, or even decades. It’s shot up to be my third-favourite film of all time. And it’s revealed to me that LEGO is shockingly good at making endearing characters. So much so that breaking it down (pun not intended) has to be done by theme.

LEGO Movie: Part of the reason why I didn’t get into LEGO earlier was because I did see LEGO Movie back in 2014 when my sister was given it on DVD (she wasn’t into LEGO then) and I wasn’t impressed with it. In retrospect, I can appreciate what it did more, and I bring it up because it’s what makes Unikitty, Benny and Metalbeard so endearing when combined with what happened in TLM2. Lucy’s okay (moreso in the sequel), Emmet’s cute, President Business is fun but the MVP is definitely Rex Dangervest, who’s this feral monster but with Emmet buried away deep inside ready to flesh him out. When I make LEGO stories, I just have Rex change his mind on rescuing himself after getting the dinosaurs, and instead wreaking havoc in the present. This kills Emmet off in any story I do but it’s a worthy sacrifice. 

LEGO City Undercover: As a video game person I’m kicking myself for not getting into this before. Frank Honey is the best; he’s adorable and weird yet still feeling very much human and basically the Emmet of his city. Rex Fury has grown on me lots since my initial assessment of him,it’s infectious how much fun he has with being a criminal (while Vinnie is more fun when not doing criminal stuff and Chan seems to be more focused on doing criminal stuff as a job. I also think his calmer side is criminally (no pun intended again) overlooked). Also Ellie is underrated, she is the best straight man you could ask for. 

LEGO City Adventures: As I’ve said before, pretty much everyone in LCA is adorable, especially Duke and Harl. Still hoping for more Daisy time in the second season, she could be a riot if played properly and not just a Fendrich stooge. 

Ninjago: Coming in with the hot take here; I prefer the movie version of Ninjago to the series. I think the problem with the series is that it has so much baggage from before the series started to iron out some of its issues and cliches that it’s kinda hard to get into as a new person, whereas movie Ninjago is a lot more approachable and written better off the bat (although I do see why it wouldn’t go down well with existing Ninjago fans). This all just makes me think of that moment in series 11 where Nya sees her worst fear of being normal in an artefact and it shows her movie self, almost as a take that. It just makes me think the show writers are salty about movie Nya kicking show Nya’s ass in being a better character. Also shout outs to Kai, Cole, Zane and Lloyd for being great characters as well (Jay is cute in the movie, his show self can be punted off a cliff for all I care). And I am with the movement to have Cole come out as gay (or at least bi if they want to keep Tournament of Elements I guess). 

Nexo Knights: This show is regarded as another Ninjago wannabe, but it feels very different to Ninjago to me. So much so, there’s not a single one of the heroes I don’t like and they all need to be cherished. Macy gets props for being the best female character to me, Aaron is probably my favourite now and this is a house of Clance for future reference. 

So, with all that being said, what do I think of the prospects for 2020? I think it’s going to be quieter than 2019 to be honest, since there’s a lot winding down, and on the game side there’s been zero announcements. Crash and Spyro having a rest is understandable, Sonic’s going to have to get past the movie before gearing up for 2021 probably (for the record I have no interest in the movie) and Mario just needs to try harder. And with OK KO dead, only LCA is holding the fort for guaranteed new content I want to engage in right now. 

You know what would be fun though? Series 20 of the minifigures theme is due at the end of this year. Wouldn’t it be awesome to use the occasion to give some phsical minifigures to characters who never got them before? LIke, Rex Fury somehow still has enough demand to be a persistent feature in the customs market, give him an official figure (especially since he’s the only character from LCU that’s not Chase that’s even appeared in merch outside the game). Or let Sky Lane get her LEGO Universe look in physical form to go with her LIXS look. Or heck, finally give Rocket Racer his original look, that’s how I discovered the minifigure world in the first place!

#VEDJ-F talks #a lot #2019 #sonic the hedgehog #Crash Bandicoot #Spyro the Dragon #super mario bros #ok ko #lego #vecpio #tagging the vecpio because this is still a vecpio centric account at heart #but please I do not want lego chaotix that would just look weird

[nothingofnotereally]

Unpacking Rebirth!Talia’s Upbringing

Okay so…. Can we talk about Rebirth Talia al Ghul? People who aren’t familiar with her history, her almost 50 year history at this point, and more importantly aren’t familiar with it in depth often have no idea why it is that Talia fans think that her treatment post Morrison, but even moreso post-Rebirth, is a radical rebranding of the character they’ve known for so long.   And I could talk about that, and maybe one day I will, but today I’m going to talk about something different, but related.

I’m going to talk about Talia’s background in Rebirth, how it accounts for her being a dramatically different character than she was in her classic form and whether she’s still salvageable as anything other than a mustache-twirler.

I. The Demon’s Daughter

Let’s be clear: the little we know of Talia’s rebirth childhood is absolutely horrific.  Pure nightmare fuel.  While their traditional dynamic was troubling and problematic, it was also loving in its way, and Ra’s was controlling of her, while also protective of her.  Now, instead, we have this:

This issue has been out for a while, but I haven’t seen anyone really unpack what it is Talia is saying here, because we’re all focused on the stupid swordfight with Selina. But look at what it is Talia is saying and what it means about her upbringing.

Talia is saying that, basically since she was a toddler, she has been physically abused, and forced to fight, by her centuries old swordmaster father.  In fact, her very first memory is bleeding from wounds caused by her father.  From then on, her life is a fight to survive against her own father, which I’m guessing was pretty damn difficult especially when she was an actual child.  And often, when she loses?

She dies.  Or rather, she is murdered.  Repeatedly.  By her father.  

And then he resurrects her and starts over.  

And about those resurrections?  It’s not like he just picks her newly killed body and immediately brings her back - check out that first panel on the second row.   Not only is she killed and revived countless times, he lets her corpse at least partially rot before resurrecting her, so that when she returns to life, she is treated to the sight  of her skin regrowing over her rotted flesh.  And as soon as Ra’s notices she’s alive again… they start again.

How long did that go on? Unclear, but she’s still fighting him as a grown woman in the equivalent of this time period in The Gift...

...so I’m guessing the answer is “it didn’t stop until she left him.”

To be honest, I’m not really sure what the Rebirth version of Ra’s and Talia’s dynamic even was.  The classic relationship doesn’t work at all with this backstory, and we’ve never really seen a lot of what the new paradigm might be since they’ve been out of contact since well before Rebirth.  But what we do know is, she was an active assassin from a young age.

Unlike Classic Talia who was actually never an active assassin at all:

We can also glean bits and pieces of information regarding her Rebirth upbringing from other appearances. Over in Silencer, we find out that despite her brilliance, the fact that she was carrying out assassinations for him, and the fact that she could defeat her ancient swordmaster father even as a child, she was never good enough for him: 

He was dissatisfied with her, and so he created metahumans using his genes to replace her.  Ultimately, this drives her to plot against Ra’s because... who wouldn’t?

It’s not entirely clear what her ambitions were, specifically but judging from this bit of Batman and Robin (New52, but seemingly still canon for Damian’s backstory):

It involved winning Batman over to her side and ruling the world through Damian.  This is further confirmed by her comment to Honor in Silencer Annual #1 here:

Where she indicates that Bruce is family to her, and still features in her future plans. What’s strange here is that she also says later that she intends to kill him personally, which is.  Weird and out of nowhere, but what else is new.  As a sidenote, Silencer is just strange because it ignores everything about Talia’s history not just in terms of changing her personality but in terms of ignoring the timeline of events, but... moving along...

Talia intends to form Leviathan to break free of him and pursue her own agenda.  But, while apparently finding her insufficient, Ra’s cannot let her go.  Not only that, he actively works to destroy everything she is trying to accomplish, including trying to kill Batman just because she desires him.  In fact, he also tries to have Talia herself assassinated:

Another thing is, Rebirth Talia is rather older than she looks, as evidenced by her having been an adult when she met Honor. 

Which means, in the end, we have a woman who was abused and repeatedly killed by her father, then thrown in a Lazarus Pit (but only after her body has lain around long enough to partially decompose!) and forced to repeat the cycle for who knows how long, but apparently quite a long time - decades, maybe centuries. Who even knows.  She’s been working as an assassin since her teens.  Despite her excelling and even surpassing him in various ways, he considers her inferior, and begins seeking to replace her with artificially created metahuman heirs.  Eventually, Talia decides she wants to break with him, and he responds by first trying to destroy everything she cares about and then trying to have her killed. 

OKAY, SO.  Nightmare fuel.  I genuinely can’t begin to imagine what it would be like growing up in that environment, and under the circumstances it’s certainly no shock that Rebirth Talia is warped.  

Even so, what stands out to me in the B&R issue is that, initially, even her wildest ambitions required her to exercise power through a man – it’s just her son instead of her father or her potential husband.  This says a good deal about how her upbringing, as well as her father’s fixation on marrying her off, has affected her self-image.  And for those who say Talia evidences arrogance and self-importance… yes she does.  Which is often a symptom of low self-esteem.  In fact even Narcissistic Personality Disorder typically stems from overcompensation for a feeling of worthlessness.

The traditional/original Ra’s/Talia dynamic had some elements of this story, but not all and not nearly to the same extent.  Furthermore, Classic Talia had something else - someone else - to love and look to for hope. Rebirth Talia does not.  Because as far as I can tell, in Rebirth, Talia and Batman’s relationship has very little in common with the conflicted romance they shared in their original stories.  And that’s how we transition to...

II. Beloved of the Bat?

So, Bruce Wayne.  

Again, the extent of their relationship in Rebirth is unclear, but it definitely isn’t what it was pre-Rebirth.  

The original Bruce/Talia story is basically as such:  Talia meets him when she’s kidnapped by Dr. Daark, and falls in love with him.  Bruce is also drawn and attracted to her.  This results in Ra’s deciding to test Bruce for suitability as Talia’s husband and his own heir.  Bruce passes, but unsurprisingly has no interest in running a criminal empire, though he does fall in love with Talia.  This leads to a rather intense on/off romance that ultimately results in Damian Wayne, and continues until Tower of Babylon when Talia finally tires of being stuck between her father and her lover and breaks away from both of them. With Bruce and Talia’s relationship having been called to an end (by her, mind you – one day I may do a writeup on Bruce/Talia and how often what happened between them is misremembered by writers and readers alike), Bruce becomes involved with Catwoman in Hush.  Even so, we see in Death and the Maidens that Bruce does still love Talia.

Meanwhile, Talia’s previously unknown sister Nyssa kidnaps and repeatedly murders and resurrects her (sound familiar?) until she more or less goes mad.  By the end of the ordeal, she can barely speak, and she willing to do anything for Nyssa to avoid being killed again.  This results in Talia disavowing her love for Bruce, which seems to be the catalyst for him to finally move on from her, though not without considerable pain.

Okay this is important to run down, because the Rebirth story has changed everything about their relationship.

Gotta love those evil expressions.  It helps us remember that she’s a heartless monster.

Anyway so, In Silencer Annual #1, Silencer does note that Talia had previously said she was in love with Batman, so we know that she loved him, okay.  But what does love mean to Rebirth Talia?  We can find the answer to that if we go back to Roles of Engagement:

She “loved” him because she considered him a potential equal.  That’s not really a bad basis for loving someone initially – and even Classic Talia’s love for Bruce was initially sparked from a place of admiration.  But while Classic Talia eventually grew into a more complete love for him, it seems like Rebirth Talia is still stuck on objective: seek worthy mate.  In fact, once it’s clear that she and Bruce are not coming back together, she just goes ahead and propositions Slade Wilson because she figures he can give her strong children, too:

Notably, this obsession with strong offspring sort of comes out of nowhere when Morrison takes over, but anyway, from that perspective it’s not hard to understand why Bruce’s feelings for her would also be somewhat muted in Rebirth:

Because while Classic Bruce/Talia was a love story that stretched for over 30 years in our time, and most of their adult lives in canon… Rebirth Bruce/Talia is repeatedly presented as a short infatuation on his end, and a dangerous obsession with genetics on hers. The above panel is from Batman #66, and is part of the Knightmares arc, which is important because while it appears to be Selina saying it… it’s actually Bruce’s thoughts about the women in his life coming out through his imagined version of Selina.  And to him, those women amount to nothing much – none of them even warrant a direct callout.  Everyone besides Selina is a “whoever.”

Interlude and Sum I

So... Classic Ra’s was controlling, possessive and dismissive of her at times, but he was also devoted, protective and genuinely loving.  The relationship was complicated and problematic but affectionate. 

Rebirth Ra’s is an abusive tyrant who repeatedly murders and belittles his daughter and, when she decides to break from him, attempts to systematically destroy everything she cares about and then have her killed.

Classic Bruce/Talia was a complicated romance between two people who genuinely loved each other, but were always separated by circumstances.  He loved her for years, and she loved him unconditionally, and they struggled over that from the day they met until they permanently separated as a result of her being brainwashed.   

Rebirth!Talia went in search of someone she considered worthy of her so they could have a genetically perfect child to conquer the world with.  Bruce briefly had feelings for her in a moment between romantic rounds with Catwoman.

My point is this:  Rebirth Talia has never experienced genuine love or support from anyone in her life, or for anyone in her life. Her relationship with the two men she traditionally loved, and whose love for her has imprisoned, empowered and defined her for much of her existence as a character, was utterly gutted in Rebirth, leaving Rebirth Talia’s life as a prolonged emotional void.  Which makes what comes next remarkable in some ways… and predictable in others.

Because this is where we talk about Damian.

III. Olympias to his Alexander

Now, I’m not going to get into the circumstances behind Damian’s conception because what the whole hell, there is absolutely no consistency there.  Various people are very invested in one or another of the myriad versions of his conception that DC has repeatedly retconned and revised, generally leaning to whichever one fits their preferred personal narrative, and that’s fine but objectively?  Absolutely no consistency, situation unclear.  So let’s just go with “Damian resulted from this mess.”

In Batman and Robin #0 we see that Talia basically raised him the way Ra’s raised her… with some major deviations.  She used his desire to know his heritage and know his father’s name as the carrot to motivate him to succeed, rather than the fear of death and pain as a stick to punish him  for failure. 

Talia does not kill her son, whom she duels with wooden blades rather than steel.  And she is not shown to physically abuse him… aside from the swordfights, which of course is already bad.  

Mind you, I’m not denying that his upbringing is still brutal.  What I’m saying is, placed in the context of her own upbringing we can see that she was trying to raise him with more kindness and greater love than her father had her – an improved parental style, but still reflective of the only style she, herself, has ever known.  

So it’s predictable that he’s essentially mistreated… because she literally has never encountered an emotionally healthy relationship and wouldn’t know how to raise him any differently even if she wanted to.  

But it’s also remarkable because despite that, you can see she is trying to be a better mother than Ra’s was a father, and not let Damian grow up feeling unwanted and unworthy the way she did, herself.

Unlike Ra’s, she never tells Damian he is insufficient – on the contrary, she holds him up as the chosen, a conqueror, and dreams of a future when he will lead with both parents at his back.  Remember, this is a woman who was never seen as worthy of inheriting Ra’s al Ghul’s organization, and she wants to make sure Damian knows the world is his to hold.  The bit about having both parents is important, too, because per Batman Inc, Talia felt deprived of her mother, whom Ra’s had discarded as soon as she was no longer useful to him.

In short, she does for Damian everything she wished Ra’s had done for her.  

But, in so doing, she falls into many of the same traps that Ra’s had fallen into: she doesn’t provide what Damian wants, or even what he actually needs.  Instead, she gives him what he asks for, and what she thinks he needs.  But for someone who grew up without love, trying to understand how to provide it is complicated, and difficult.  

Anyway, when Damian finally defeats her, she fulfills her promise and brings him to meet Bruce.  This involves a last ditch effort to unite their family: she offers to reform.  

But not only does Bruce reject her, ultimately Damian does, as well.   This is, from Damian’s perspective, completely understandable.  Who wants to live that kind of life?  But from Talia’s perspective she has now been rejected by her own child, in addition to her father and the man she hoped to spend her life with.  You can see the raw hurt this causes her clearly, as a woman who had always yearned for family starts having exchanges like this:

And while we’re at it, count Honor as another person who left her.

And to be clear here, I’m not saying they were wrong to leave her.  Rebirth Talia is not a good person, not a kind person, not really anyone I’d want to willingly hang around.  And yes, she’s clearly manipulating Honor with her affectionate words, although I’d argue this is largely because manipulation is all she's ever experienced and all she knows how to do. 

So, what am I saying?

Interlude and Sum II - Why Is She Like That?

Just to catch it all up, we have a woman who was abused by her father, including being repeatedly murdered and resurrected, treated as inferior and insufficient despite being Ra’s’ equal or superior in many ways, who spent her young life performing assassinations and otherwise conforming her behavior to her father’s demands only to discover he was creating alternate heirs because she’s somehow still not enough for him.  She has never experienced love, seemingly has no real understanding of what it is.

When she settles on someone she believes that she loves, she is ultimately nothing to him but a “whoever” - a temporary respite from the yo-yo relationship he has with another woman.  

Then Damian happens and, from her perspective, she raises him with all the love, pride and approval that she herself never had.  In an effort to unite the family, she also attempts to do what would please Ra’s - conform her behavior to Bruce’s preferences - but he still rejects her.  

Meanwhile, she has “adopted” Honor Guest, whom she also shows favor to, but who also wants to leave her, and ultimately does just that, without even saying goodbye.   

And then we have some.  Quirks in her story - some specifics that really bear looking at in greater detail.

Repeated murder and resurrection:  So how bad is that?  It’s bad.  The first time Talia experiences this kind of thing is in Death and the Maidens, which is probably no longer canon.  But okay this was Classic Talia and for comparison, this breaks Talia’s spirit so completely that she essentially becomes Nyssa’s puppet.  

She is literally never the same again, even after Nyssa is killed.  In fact, it’s this that turned her into the monstrous Talia that we meet in Morrison’s run to begin with, so we already know she can be broken by this kind of treatment… but let’s use another example.  

Let’s use… Batman.  

He’s got one of the strongest wills in DC, right?  Well, lets rewind to a story called Emperor Joker, where the Joker attained Mr. Mxyzpltck’s omnipotent powers which he uses to repeatedly torture and murder Batman and resurrect him every day.  

This completely destroys Bruce to the point where the Spectre has to erase his memory of it in order to make Bruce functional as a person again.

So imagine that happening to Talia, as a child, at her own father’s hands.  And not for days, for years. And that’s without even considering the method of resurrection, which brings us to…

Lazarus Madness: Let’s talk about the Lazarus Pit.  It’s a magical mystical ley line-powered bath that resurrects and heals.  We all know that.  But the thing is, that’s not all it does: it also drives the one bathed or healed mad. For a short time, they become superhumanly strong, and also overtaken with violent bloodlust.  The first Lazarus pit was used to resurrect a sultan’s son, who promptly murdered Ra’s al Ghul’s wife Sora.  Since then, Ra’s himself has been the primary beneficiary of its benefits, with interesting results… namely that Ra’s has been slowly going mad for centuries.  

Because even though the intensity of the bloodlust and madness fades, it never completely disappears, and cumulative effect eventually twists a person’s nature beyond recognition.  In his first life, Ra’s was a good-natured doctor, but over the many exposures he has found himself becoming progressively worse. 

A quote from Denny O’Neil, Ra’s’s creator:

“...we gave Ra’s a benevolent motivation.  You can certainly quarrel with his methods ... But Ra's is a loony bird.  He’s been alive for 400 years and he’s become a maniacal sociopath.”

Dick Grayson concurs, and acknowledges its cause:

Even Ra’s himself is aware of it – this is why he didn’t want Jason bathed in the Lazarus Pit, because he is all too aware of the demons it stirs in a person.

So, what is the impact on Talia, who is quickly and repeatedly tortured and killed, and then resurrected using a method that is known to drive people insane?  I’m going with “not the best.”  It’s frankly astounding that she still resembles a human, psychologically.  

Assassin work at a young age: While there has been a long-standing debate about the effects of exposure to violence on all people and children in particular, in general the consensus is, yes, exposure does cause desensitization.  Obviously this doesn’t mean people are going to generally become serial killers because they played a violent video game, but it does have a numbing effect – just think about how people who watch enough horror films are harder to scare with horror films.  

Now imagine that, instead of watching people murder and commit violent acts on television or on film, a child is instead expected to perform said acts themselves.  How desensitizing would that be?  

Frankly, to see all we need to do is look at Damian, who grew up under similar circumstances and, as a result, initially exhibits what I can only call red flag behavior.

The thing is, Damian isn’t so dissimilar from his mother in this regard.  Like Talia, he becomes morally twisted, emotionally empty and ultimately tethered not to his own sense of morality or self but to other people’s perceptions and demands of him and who he should be.  Before he meets Bruce, he adheres to the League’s expectations, and when he meets Bruce, he instead aligns himself with Bruce’s code of behavior, even though he does not actually believe in it.  It takes a good deal of time and work for him to begin developing his own beliefs and boundaries.  The difference between Damian and Talia is that he had Bruce and Bruce, despite his flaws, loved Damian enough to try for his sake.

Arguably, this is a defining difference between Classic and Rebirth Talia, as well.  Classic Talia also viewed Bruce as her beacon and her path to salvation and hope.

But if, in Rebirth, Bruce never really loved her, and in fact she barely loved him, then there is no catalyst for her to begin seeking another path.  Rebirth Talia didn’t have anything but the League, and even Ra’s barely cared for her.  As a result, she was boxed into her role by fate, which she acknowledges in Teen Titans, as she wishes better for her son than she had herself.

Anyway, obviously, there are no studies on the effect of taking assassin work as a child, but my general guess here is that she has a twisted understanding of the value of life and the significance of death.  Which brings me to another massive issue that permeates the character and may even help explain her choice to put a hit on Damian at one point.

Death as Optional: Death is an inevitability, right? Like taxes. Nothing you do can prevent it, or reverse it, so all you can do is live with it, and make the most of what you have. It’s said that the existence of death is what lends meaning to life, and while I’m not sure I’m quite on board with that, the fact that death is permanent certainly does lend a certain gravitas to it.  It’s also the reason we fear death and what lies beyond it.

Unless you’re an al Ghul.

For an al Ghul, death is opt in.  Because Ra’s is essentially immortal (which is also a new thing, by the way) and because Talia herself has been repeatedly resurrected, as has her brother Dusan (assuming he’s still in continuity post-Rebirth), to Talia death has no weight to it.  No gravitas.  It is easily doled out, and just as easily forced into retreat.  

Given that, it becomes exceptionally easy to threaten death, even to those she loves, because there’s nothing to say she can’t change her mind and take it back.  

Now to be clear, my argument is not that she had the intention of taking it back – she didn’t really intend for Damian to die to begin with for one thing.  It’s just that, because of who she is and what she has experienced, Talia would always act with the knowledge that she can choose to endanger someone’s life and think about whether she’s comfortable with the result (their being dead) later.

This is evident in both Ra’s and Talia, each of whom are willing to use death and resurrection as a tool to restructure people they don’t even want dead, as Ra’s attempts to do with Damian and Talia, and as Talia does with Honor Guest.

…as a sidenote can I just say that the Lazarus Pit’s effects are so weird.  In some stories it can’t resurrect at all, and in others it can resurrect after decades without a problem.  In some it just reduces age, and in some it also heals memories.  Here it’s being used to erase memories, which makes no sense since a Pit his how Jason Todd got his memories back. Also, this is the first I’ve ever heard of al Ghuls having especially strong resistance to the Pit’s corrosive effects on personality.  Considering it’s just a bunch of chemicals on a ley line, I’m not sure how that would work, but now I’m just imagining Ra’s with a book of Lazarus recipes like, Well, I’m needing one that restores memories today so Ima add an extra pinch of ginko.

ANYWAY.

V. “R” Stands for Redemption

There was a time, a few years back, when Damian had his own series, Robin: Son of Batman.  And therein, you see one of the few efforts to explain and redeem Talia’s character.  There, while she was still presented as colder and more aggressive than her Classic counterpart, she was still capable of compassion, protectiveness and love.

It was essentially explained as a result of her being cleansed of the toxin that was Ra’s al Ghul’s influence, via having darkness physically removed from her body.

Now, to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about that particular route – I feel like it would have been more honest to have her resurrection heal the Lazarus damage, for example, but it’s a start.  And, in the end, Damian left her with the chance to redeem herself and earn back his and Bruce’s trust.

Aaaand she has failed. Or more precisely, writers have failed to follow up on this thread, and have instead doubled down on her as the evil Dragon Mother.  I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what’s going on with DC’s fixation on evil Asian ninja moms but I’m just going to… pretend that isn’t a thing in order to suggest some paths that could salvage her character.

I’ve seen it said that she’s been too evil for too long to be redeemed, but honestly that’s pretty silly. First of all these are comic books, anyone can be redeemed.  The same writer who wreaked havoc on Talia also had Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, going full Nazi on humans, which was incredibly out of character, and Marvel basically fixed it by saying “guess who that wasn’t? Magneto.  It wasn’t Magneto.”  Technically DC could just Hal Jordan her, or let the rumored upcoming continuity shuffle bring her previous history back.  As for the “been this way too long” argument, I mean she was Original Flavor Talia for more than twice as long and that wasn’t too long for DC to flip her entire motivation and personality.  Catwoman was a villain for decades, and yet here she is, protecting people, making out with Batman on rooftops and leaving him at the alter for altruistic reasons. Same with Ivy, except for the parts about Batman, soooo… you know….

Anyway. I’m going to work with the assumption that we have to use what we have, and that we’re trying to get her to something like her pre-Morrison personality.

The first thing she would need is the experience of love. Someone to anchor her, who won’t judge her or abandon her even when she’s in a dark mood. Even when she’s showing her pain and her anger.  Someone who recognizes how broken she is, but decides to try to help her rather than rejecting her.  Someone who, in essence, will do for her what Bruce did for Classic Talia, and what he does for Damian in his flawed way.

Now, I’m a massive Bruce/Talia shipper, no lie.  However, I do not think Rebirth Bruce and Talia have the kind of connection that could provide her this essential first need. Someone like Superman or Wonder Woman would probably be a better choice, simply because they have greater warmth of character and a drive toward helping lost souls.  

After that, she would need some good old fashioned redemption time.  Maybe a miniseries where she goes Xena on the world: a redemption quest.  Maybe joining a team like the Outsiders or the Suicide Squad where she can earn her way back from the brink.  The Outsiders would be cool, especially, because it would allow Bruce and Damian to monitor her and judge her as she progresses.  

…and I mean, from a character perspective that’s all she really needs.  From a writing perspective, she needs a writer who will nail down things like where Damian came from without going back to the drug-and-rape well, which was a retcon to begin with and has been retconned out and then back in over and over again.   And most importantly, she needs a writer who has the interest in exploring her internal world to the point where they can actually draw these things out of her instead of just ignoring the fridge-horror implications of things like… the way she was raised.

If we could get these things to coincide, then Talia, too, can be saved!

Or we could just reboot the timeline again, whatever.

Anyway, that’s all folks, thanks for reading this far, I have no idea how you did.  If you’re interested in this kind of thing, feel free to drop me a line and ask me… whatever, because God knows I have plenty to say about Talia and about comics in general.  

In closing, something to remind us of the character we’ve lost.

Until next time!

#talia al ghul #meta #dc comics #dc rebirth #batman #damian wayne

[hellzyeahwebwieldingreviews]

Untold Tales of Spider-Man 06: The Doctor’s Dilemma – by Danny Fingeroth

An unexpected gem!

Dr. Bromwell grabs Peter by the arm and tells him he must talk to him about "his double life." But Bromwell hasn't stumbled on Pete's secret identity. He's talking about the dangers Pete gets into as a Daily Bugle photographer. He asks Peter, for May's sake, to give up the job. Although Peter has worried about the dangers himself, he stiffs Bromwell, saying "I'd appreciate it if you'd mind your own business, Doctor." Regretting every word, Peter goes into an unfair critique of Bromwell and a defense of his photography work. Taken aback, Bromwell gives Pete a new prescription for May and heads toward the door. Peter calls him back and apologizes. He tells him he has considered the dangers but still thinks the reward is worth the risk. Once Bromwell leaves, Peter changes to Spider-Man, eventually web-swinging to the pharmacy to fill May's prescription.

Back at his office, Bromwell can't stop thinking about Peter. Suddenly, he gets a brainstorm. He wants to give Peter a job in the sciences instead. First he goes to Metro Hospital and talks to Dr. Gordon, who saved May's life after Spider-Man brought in the needed ISO-36 (in Amazing Spider-Man #33, February 1966). Gordon reveals that, shortly after Spidey left, a beaten and bruised Peter appeared. Bromwell doesn't know what kind of deal Peter has with Spider-Man but he suspects the web-slinger is taking advantage of him.

Out web-slinging, Spidey comes upon "an eight-foot tall, four-foot wide gent in the green spandex suit" who is trashing an armored car. He is also "amazingly fast and as strong as the Hulk." When Spidey asks for a name, the giant comes up with "Impact," revealing that he volunteered for an experiment involving radioactive steroids (a combination just asking for trouble) for which he never got paid. Now paying himself in his own way, Impact slams Spidey against a wall and escapes.

The next day, Bromwell makes a house call and finds Peter all battered and bruised. He offers Pete a job in his own office helping with his research and lab work. Peter accepts. Aunt May overhears this conversation and is wracked with guilt for letting Peter risk his life taking pictures simply because they desperately needed the money.

So, Peter goes to work for Bromwell. There he researches steroids and finds out that Impact is Walter Cobb, a family man whose mind was warped by the experiment. As the days go by, Peter works at Bromwell's office, just missing catching up to Impact at his various crime scenes. Finally, Bromwell is called to the ER to help treat some victims of Impact's latest assault. As he leaves, Bromwell asks Peter to not go out for news photos. But Peter has to go out to stop Impact. Arriving at the scene,he finds Impact holding two hostages. The police bring out Impact's wife and kids to plead with him. It appears to work, with Impact releasing his hostages. Peter starts imagining a day when his work with Bromwell will lead to greater things than his web-swinging. Then a shot rings out and Impact goes on the rampage again. Spidey tries to calm him but he is too far gone. After pounding on the wall-crawler for a bit, Impact collapses. Bromwell is on the scene and pronounces the giant dead. As Spidey swings home, he reflects on it all. "Bromwell tells me that I should think about my aunt – like I don't do that enough. Impact shows me that there's a right way and a wrong way to try to help those you love. All these lessons! But...what am I supposed to learn from them? Where's the curriculum? Where's the syllabus?"

A great ending, right? But, oops, there's more! On his way home, Peter realizes that he could be as dead as Impact and decides to give up the webs. But at dinner, Aunt May tells him to keep doing what he's doing if it's what he wants to do. The next day, Bromwell waves the Daily Bugle at Peter, indicating the front page photo Pete took, and tells him he let him down, abandoning his lab work for the very work he begged him to avoid. He tells Peter that he has done all he can and that he's letting him go from his job. Pete can tell that Bromwell is hoping he will ask for another chance but Peter doesn't. He has come to completely understand that he does not become Spidey for thrills but to help people and that Uncle Ben and Aunt May would approve if they knew. Or, as he puts it, "Love the power. Guess I'll just have to live with the responsibility."

Had you told me that a Spidey story (and a prose story at that) about Doc Bromwell witten by Danny Fingeroth was going to be cracking I’d have never believed you.

Fingeroth’s body of Spidey work is a mixed bag to put it kindly. This is the man who wrote arguably the single best page of Mary Jane ever in Web of Spider-Man #6, eloquently summing up her emotional conflict regarding her romantic feelings for Spidey. But this is also the man who editorially mandated the creation of Maximum Carnage.

And yet here he doesn’t make a single misstep.

Okay that isn’t exactly true. His opening narration makes Peter sounds like a goddam psychopath. “Love the power. Hate the responsibility.” Er….that’s not exactly true, Peter has moments of enjoyment of his power and frustrations over the burdens it places upon him. But he doesn’t truly revel in his power and typically treats his responsibilities as simply something that HAS to be done moreso than something he resents doing. But that’s nothing compared to “…to take what I need. And to make anybody who gets in my way real sorry they got there.”

WTF dude! I was half expecting that the twist here was going to be that this wasn’t Peter speaking but it was. Fingeroth nicely bookends these sentiments by the end of the story but that doesn’t change the fact those sentiments shouldn’t be there in the first place.

You can maybe just handwave this as Peter being in a really bad mood and not believing what he is thinking. But I dunno, I suspect the real intent here was to clumsily set up something to BE bookended by the end of the story and more poignantly to smack the readers in the face with the central theme of the story. This lack of subtly rears its head again towards the end of the story when Fingeroth seriously spells out for us that Impact is a dark reflection of Spider-Man and the exact ways how. Everything the dialogue says is correct and Impact is actually a very good reflection of Spidey. But couldn’t Fingeroth have been a tad more subtle about it?

But other than that this story unto itself is pretty much flawless. I say unto itself because through no fault of Fingeroth the story’s placement withint he anthology is kind of weird. It clearly takes place after ASM #33 as there are very direct references and fallout from the Master Planner Trilogy. However the nature of the story also makes it highly unlikely to take place after ASM #39 because in that issue Peter is shaken by Bromwell informing him of just how frail Aunt May is. He pretty much tells Peter that if May learns his secret she will keel over dead. So this happens between ASM #33 and #39 but the Looter story clearly happens after ASM #36. Whilst far from inconceivable that this story could happen afterwards, because the last story with the Goblin was obviously tipping the hat to ASM #39-40 this story would’ve been better placed just before the Looter story. As is it’s oddly the THIRD story in this book to take place in this extremely small and specific gap of time after ASM #36 but before ASM #39.

Enough of the nitpicks though. I said this story was a gem and I stand by that.

What pleasantly surprised me most about this story was that Fingeroth seemed to be able to handle the prose format better than every other writer thus far sans perhaps DeFalco.

He wisely knows to emphasis the inner conflicts within the characters’ heads and play up the soap opera rather than leaning in on the action setpieces.

And yet there are two significant action set pieces in this story. Indeed the crux of the whole story REVOLVES around the physical danger Peter puts himself in by going into action. Fingeroth handled these deftly. The action wasn’t over explained and painted a clear picture in your head but didn’t linger too much. Sure you might feel things would be more interesting if you could actually see things but you aren’t drifting off as the writer belabors the combination of punches and kicks Spidey lands. It’s all very streamlined and designed to support the emotional arc of the story as opposed to the action being the point unto itself or simply the means to REACH a conclusion.

In this regard Fingeroth actually edges out DeFalco. Reading/listening through DeFalco’s story the action scenes can just be boiled down to Spidey fights some thugs, drags out the fight for pictures and then one them accidentally dies the specifics don’t matter even though we do get them.

Here Fingeroth forgoes the specifics to simply give you the broad beats to the fight (Impact throws a car, Spidey webs people to safety, etc) whilst ensuring he returns to Spidey’s inner thoughts and peppering in dialogue that is moving the plot and exploring the themes, even if it is simply lightly.

In a way this is a rare example of an action set piece that works BETTER in prose than it would visually. Sure Mark Bagley or Ron Frenz could embellish the fight scene to make it look cool, but the visions of a possible future Peter imagines are more potent and organic when we simply read his train of thought like this. Were it a comic such dialogue would come off as excessive or (if communicated through art) needlessly existential. Additionally as a villain goes Impact is fairly generic, but having him not have any visual presence mitigates that because his importance is more about what he is doing and why than having a dynamic appearance.

To go back to Bromwell, he’s developed more here than he’s been in over 55 years of Spider-History. Were he written like this in his appearances he might’ve become a more beloved character. What’s great is how organic his personality feels. We learn new stuff about him but it feels like a totally logical extrapolation of what little we saw of him in the 1960s. He is a quintessential doctor and Fingeroth lends him a surprising amount of nuance. He isn’t endlessly caring, he has his limits but even so the fact that he wanted Peter to ask him for a second chance at the end was a brilliant touch. It’s a small moment but it helps make Bromwell feel more multidimensional.

And because of this characterization the story earns the pathos of Peter letting him down. You feel sad for Bromwell and for Peter that things didn’t work out for both of them.

Aunt May is also done very well here. She is in typical Aunt May mode but Fingeroth chooses to make that the central conflict of the story rather than a background element. Refreshingly though the issue isn’t that May is on her deathbed, but rather the impact (if you pardon the pun) upon her if anything happens to Peter.  The story is almost a spiritual cousin to JMS’ opus ‘the Conversation’ in that it comes to a reasonable and positive resolution.

What in particular what holds this all together is the brilliant (yet rarely used) idea of treating Peter’s cover story as Spidey’s photographer as a metaphor for him being Spider-Man. It’s something that’s pretty clever when you think about it because the cover story means his loved ones go into relationships with him knowing he takes risks and potentially endangers them, just as if they knew he was Spidey.

Through treating the cover story as a metaphor Fingeroth is able to have Peter get a lot of feelings about being Spidey off of his chest. This chiefly comes in the form of his bookeneded confrontations with Bromwell, his angry (and highly unjustified) outburst at the start and his quiet resigned acceptance at the end.

Perhaps the best bi of narration in relation to Peter’s character was when Fingeroth spelled out that Peter might enjoy being Spidey but even if he didn’t he’d do it anyway because he was hooked on helping people. It eloquently emphasis the innate heroism and core of the character. And it does so in a nuanced way too as too often writers have Peter outright hate being Spider-Man or else cynically lean on the idea he’s a thrill junkie of some kind. Fingeroth gets that peter DOES like his work but that isn’t the reason he does it.

Nuance is actually the key word here. There is a lovely sequence where the story acknowledges that Peter might subconsciously be avoiding Impact out of a loss of confidence. It plays very realistically. How often in life has one bad moment shaken us up and made us hesitant to do things we previously did without even thinking about it.

Really I don’t know what else to say about this story that isn’t self-evident by just experiencing it for yourself.

Tiny issues aside it’s really quite excellent and highly recommended.

#Spider-Man #Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #Danny Fingeroth #Tom DeFalco #Peter Parker #Aunt May #May Parker

[avgoar]

Interview Series Ep.6

Welcome back to our interview series! Hello and I hope everyone is staying safe inside and outside of your homes. In our continuation of the Eternal Essence interview series, today we have a special mention. Another recently revealed character has agreed to meet with us today. With the new information we get today, I wonder if you all can guess which one it is. You probably already know who our last guest was. Nonetheless, here we go! We have our ten questions ready so let’s get into it. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of what you do.

Arx: I am Arx Canbrir. I am Weithalan born and raised. I serve in the queen's army as a Wanderer to aid our allies when the need arises. At times I am tasked as a mentor to the younglings in the towns about the island.

Same as Calix. How did you come to know Calix?

Arx: I was his mentor. I trained him into his essence and was the first one to find him when he came to the island with barely any life in him.

So, I have to ask since you’ve known him for so long, how would you describe him?

Arx: I would say he is strong, thorough and tactical when focused but he lets his emotions get the best of him. Outside of battle he is just like any twenty-five year old. He has a woman he looks to court, he enjoys not doing anything as long as he can and he avoids me unless he needs advice. He makes me feel as old as I look.

That’s not fair! Well, what do you like to do when you don’t have to mentor or be a soldier? 

Arx: (sighs thoughtfully) I like to read by the ocean. Depending on my mood I enjoy the quiet of the forest around the camp, the courtyard or my room in the camp. Occasionally I go into town and sit in the fish shops. It’s very calming for me.

That sounds really peaceful. I have heard that Weithala is like a sanctuary for Shiera in the west. They have very different needs to varying degrees. Have you witnessed any hardships with so many of them coming to the island kingdom?

Arx: The difficulties they face are similar to our own. Finding what they can eat, trying to figure out how to take care of themselves and their families, learning what it means to live with people and Shiera different from them- they still have the same needs. Some Shiera come in thinking that they can muscle their way into our lives. We make sure to remind them that we are all equal here and there is no need to assert dominance. 

Ohh. Do you have to get involved sometimes? 

Arx: On occasion. Sometimes I have to advocate for the Shiera because a human got ahead of themselves and started the altercation.

Humans are just as troublesome.

Arx: Moreso, in my humble opinion.

Since you also travel a lot as a soldier, may I ask, is there somewhere you have been to that has really stuck with you?

Arx: (strokes beard thoughtfully) The places that follow me into my dreams often are the ones that have seen the changes of time. I have served in the queen’s army for a long time now and I have been to many places over the years. The changes are striking in some areas but the ones that haunt me have remnants of the past among the buildings built up for the future. 

I’ve seen places that I remember from when I was little and it’s either gone or been replaced and that feels bad for some reason. I didn’t go there a lot but it feels like I lost something. 

Arx: No matter how small the significance, that place becomes a part of you. It felt like a loss because it was. 

Weithala is so accepting and speaking with you I can see how level headed and thoughtful you are- it’s refreshing! I’m sure that some people take you all as a not very threatening opponent. Have you had someone look down on you in battle or otherwise just because you’re from Weithala?

Arx: (chuckles lightly) Oh, yes. To begin with, Weithala has isolated itself from the world so most people don’t consider Weithala as much and even our allies do not speak freely of our relations; however, I have heard rumors among the other kingdoms of Weithala’s whereabouts. We are seen as a peaceful kingdom with no spine to speak of. When moving on behalf of our allies, once the opposing forces learn of our origins, they become very prideful. It’s almost amusing. The battles do not end in their favor.

They are completely caught off guard because they assumed peaceful meant that you were weak. You all don’t fight or at least you couldn’t handle a real battle.

Arx: Everyone wants peace but our Queen Ambrosia understands that peace cannot come from well wishes and stubborn refusal to engage when necessary. 

Speaking of royalty, we have yet to hear about this queen. Could you tell us a little about her?

Arx: Queen Ambrosia is like a mother to everyone. She worries herself over us despite how busy she remains with her duties. She has always had a good head on her shoulders and I have always tried to help her when I can. I watched her grow up so I feel the need to support Her Majesty in any way that I can.

I can’t wait to meet her, honestly. There’s something else I have been curious about. There are stories coming out from everywhere about essence in different parts of the world and how they viewed it and how it is perceived. How is essence received in Weithala?

Arx: Essence is a vital part of Weithalan life. We have technology that is powered by our essence. In Weithala, our lifestyle breeds simplicity and contentment. It is a wonderful place to reflect and manifest one’s essence. We have all of the tools and trainers, or mentors, to properly train those who want to use their essence. There are those who do not want to use it. We force no one into that lifestyle. It is usually the younglings who seek us out for training.

This was a much more relaxing experience than the last interview. Thank you for that.

Arx: It was my pleasure.

Now, I will ask if you can give those reading a few words of wisdom, encouragement or whatever you may want to share. 

Arx: Do not let your age hold you back. If you have set a goal for your life do not let anyone else tell you otherwise. There are people that will tell you because you are a youngling you can’t do certain things or they feel the need to tell you how you should act or what you should be doing. They may think that your ideas are unconventional therefore worthless. There are all kinds of adults in this world and they were once younglings. Do what you must to become the adult you want to be. Someone who will support your endeavors will eventually find you along the way. Don’t give up.

Nice. There are a lot of people still aspiring to be and do despite our current situation so that was a very timely message for everyone. I’m sure someone will appreciate your encouraging words. With that we will end our interview session. Ten questions will bring Arx back or five questions will bring him back with another character. Next time will be our last interview in the Eternal Essence series and some exciting news will be shared then as well. I hope you all look forward to it! See you all next week.

#writers on tumblr #writers #writer #worldbuilding #amwriting #my characters #creative #original character #fun

[imagines-mha]

Lev x reader where he goes to meet his S/O who he’s engaged to’s family for the first time, (who are against this) and pretends to only speak Japanese so he can know what they really think of him and their engagement, and when his s/o starts defending him and they tell them to 1/2

Shut up, he starts speaking English, and then you choose how it ends! I really love your writing! 2/2

Aaaa tysm!! 💕💫 thank u for requesting this was super fun to write!!

The Plan- Lev x reader

_____________________

He knew it wouldn’t go well; you had warned him of that at least. You never had the most supportive parents in the world; they seemed to have your life all mapped out for you by the time you were 2.

This would have put a lot of people off dating you due to fear of rejection, and sometimes it was like you were a princess in a castle waiting to be sold off to your “true love”- who wasn’t really a true love at all, moreso a fixed relationship to ensure marriage, children and a stable income. No happiness required.

However, one day the time came and the actual love of your life got down on one knee and proposed. Your prince charming. And you cared less about their plans than they did about your happiness.

To Lev Haiba however? He was happy, you were happy. That’s all that mattered, right? Who cares if your parents didn’t approve of it? It wasn’t their relationship, was it?

“Babe...you know they don’t support us...“ you huffed a little, letting him take your bag for you and put it into the car

“Yup!” He grinned, clambering into his sear and eagerly awaiting you to join him

He seemed oddly chirpy and you prayed he wasn’t looking for another outcome to this. There was no way they’d change their minds and suddenly love him...he just had to understand that...

But as far as he was concerned: as long as you were true to yourself and your heart, you were doing it right. He didn’t need a cheap opinion

And that’s why, on the dark and dismal Friday evening, driving to the dreaded home of your parents- Lev devised his own plan.

Operation GET Y/N’s PARENTS TO OPENLY OFFEND ME BY PRETENDING I DON’T SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE (G.P.T.O.O.M.B.P.I.D.S.T.L. For short 😎)

At the beginning you’re like “babe what the actual fuck” but he’s like TRUST ME IT’LL WORK!!! And you can’t say no to the positive yet mischievous glint in his eyes as he speeds up the car

You guys arrive and he becomes a completely different person: speaking only in his native language while being extremely civil to your parents. His acting skills are incredible- so much better than you could ever anticipate and you play along, hoping to match his level of expertise

At the beginning when he’s “completely and utterly clueless”, your parents share the same disgusted look and don’t hesitate in hiding it around you. They do manage to avert their gaze when Lev looks though, and try their best to remain “civil”- or as anyone else would see it- fake

Dinner is different. Your parents use it as a way to bring up the relationship: a topic they had narrowly avoided before. Now though, it seemed as though their pipes had burst- because it was all they could talk about

“So he’s your...”

“Fiancé-“ you finished your father’s sentence, because he was looking hopeful, as though you were about to tell him that, actually, Lev was a small orphan you found on the side of the road and chose to adopt

“And he doesn’t even speak english!” Your mother huffed, hiding her face in her palms, “i can’t believe the stupidity. You know how hard me and your father worked to get you where you are, you know what we had in store for you, you know-“

“I know what makes me happy, and it’s Lev” you sternly glared, rising from your seat to assume some kind of dominance over them

By now, Lev looked crestfallen. How could someone so beautiful and lovely like you live with rude and selfish people like this? Who wanted you to live their life rather than your own? Who openly judged people so quickly and wanted nothing but their own fortune?

He despised them

“LEV?!” The older woman screeched, standing up from her chair and looking you dead in the eye, “I RAISED YOU, I DID EVERYTHING FOR YOU, I KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU AND ALL YOU’RE TELLING ME IS YOU WANT HIM?!” She shrieked furthur, the hair sticking to her face with the sweat she accumulated over the course of the argument

Your father says nothing, just glares up at you and you can read the disappointment on his face. It stings, but you keep your guard high

“LEV TAUGHT ME MORE THAN YOU EVER CO-“

“SHUT UP!” Your mother suddenly squawked, hand suddenly flying out towards your face at an alarming speed

That’s when Lev’s plan stopped.

His reflexes were quick. He was the next ace of nekoma after all, he had to do some intense training. It gave him some skills along the way

His hand caught your mothers, and like the end of time- the noise in the room dropped. His long fingers clenched the smaller woman’s hand, and if he wanted, he could easily break it.

Lucky for her, you had chosen the sweetest boy in the world. He couldn’t hurt a fly

“I won’t let you lay your hands on her” he spoke sternly. You could read the fear in his eyes, but he kept the strong front

Your mother looked completely and utterly aghast, and the silence in the air could have cut like a blade

“I’m going to make her the happiest girl she’s ever been, whether you like it or not. I came here to see what kind of people my beautiful, amazing y/n came from and all i saw were embarrassments and goddamn excuses for two parents” his voice was raised, and his hand was still gripping your mothers, “you should be grateful to have such a gorgeous, talented, independent daughter like y/n. She’s not your doll, so stop treating her like one-“ he shot, intimidation off the charts

Confusion and humiliation polluted the air, and your mothers hand was quickly dropped.

“He can...he can speak English..” your father muttered, looking equally as embarrassed as your mother at this stage

They were both just frozen in time. Her hand was lingering still in the air as she came to the conclusion that your fiancé: the boy she had spent her entire night dismissing and bad-mouthing, could actually understand it all

“Told you i could pull it off-“ he smirked to you, holding a hand out of a high five, which you gratefully gave him

Your parents tried to stammer apologies but it was all in vain, because you and Lev no longer cared about anything other than the McDonald’s you were getting on the way home

And with that, you both stormed out hand in hand, more in love than ever- and leaving your parents stunned in disbelief behind you

I mean hey, at least they took it well, right?

#lev haiba #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu!! #haikyuu headcanons #hq #nekoma #haikyuu lev