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stillness-in-green · 3 years

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I felt like the plf war was rushed

1.Plf advisors getting hype but no payoff

2.Only miruko, Momo, and Kirishma got time to shine

3.Machia got defeated to easily

4.The war felt more like a raid

I don't know if I feel like it was rushed, per se--it's by far the longest arc in the story so far by number of chapters, and would be even if you cut off the Tartarus jailbreak and the entirety of the hospital aftermath. What it absolutely does feel like to me is unbalanced.

You note that the "war" feels more like a raid, and you're right. As a caveat, it's worth keeping in mind that "Paranormal Liberation War" as a name for the arc in question is entirely an invention of the fanbase. To the best of my knowledge, the reasoning for the name was that big action shonen series like BNHA (Naruto, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, etc) always have a war arc, so what we were seeing in the lengthy, mass combat confrontation with the PLF had to be HeroAca's equivalent. It's not a term that's in the manga itself, however, not called as such by the characters, not referred to as such by Horikoshi or his editors, not even namedropped in chapter or volume titles. If it feels like a raid, that's probably because that's what it was intended to be.

And that's the problem, really. This arc shouldn't have been about a couple of raids; it should have been about a war.

(Below the cut: a bunch of fired-up complaining. Uses some harsh language, and talks about both injuries and deaths we did see and some we logically should have.)

From the outset, we were told that the resources Shigaraki had amassed were "on par with, or even stronger than" the resources of the hero-saturated society. Yet, we're expected to believe that a force that strong is so easily taken down by a single coordinated set of raids? Yes, the heroes had the benefit of surprise, but there's just so much that doesn't work for me.

First off, and to get this out of the way, it's ridiculous that the heroes even had the benefit of surprise. The MLA had an unknown number of hero double agents. They had people in the government; they had people in the infrastructure. This is an organization that had been living undercover completely unsuspected for multiple generations--how did the HPSC ever manage to carry out a massive, country-wide investigation on such a secretive group and coordinate multiple simultaneous, comprehensive raids without a single person finding out and alerting the higher-ups over a period of only three and a half months?

When exactly did Hawks have time to go and revive Best Jeanist--which he tells us he did personally--such that none of the bugs and micro-cameras he was covered with picked up on it, and both he and BJ could be back in the positions they needed to be in for the raid to begin?

How did Skeptic find out about the raid such that he only discovered it at the last possible second and not minutes, even hours, before it kicked off? How did hundreds of heroes (and even "hundreds" is being conservative, given the fact that they had seventeen thousand people to detain) close in on the villa without anyone from the PLF noticing, either Skeptic with his information network or mundane precautions like people on watch?

Even granting the heroes their surprise advantage--which I don't want to--if the advisors were all supposedly "stronger than the average hero," why didn't we see any of them winning? Okay, yes, Hose Face beat Midnight, but he had every possible advantage in that "fight"; I hardly count it as some big impressive defeat that shows us that the villains were holding their own.

Here's another thing: the MLA styled themselves as an army--they were demonstrably trained in troop tactics. When we saw them in Deika, even their nameless on-the-ground people were capable of coordinating with each other on the fly in response to the movements of the enemy, as we saw come up repeatedly:

Yeah, they were off-guard at first, but as soon as the advisors made the front line (which, you'll note, was immediately), that disadvantage really should have begun eroding. Certainly once Geten--Geten! The number one MLA member most willing to disregard collateral damage! And there he was being a proper leader!--got to the front and started yelling orders, we should have seen the PLF rallying, and I can't imagine any sensible justification for the tides not turning when a) Re-Destro showed up to occupy the highest-ranked hero on the field, b) a bunch of heroes peeled off to try to stop Machia only to get trampled for their efforts, and c) Trumpet got dug out.

You know who don't style themselves as an army, though? Heroes. Oh, they get some basic lessons in cooperation as students, but the extent of such lessons we see is stuff like "why it's important for heroes to have signature moves"--so that on group missions, their reputations will precede them and fellow heroes will already know their shtick. U.A. teaches the odd lesson plan that involves the kids fighting in groups, but there's a huge difference between you and 3 to 6 of your buddies fighting a similarly-sized group in a practice fight, or a handful of heroes teaming up to take down some criminal low-lives, and the mass combat scenario that was the raid. For heaven's sake, look at our closest other equivalent: the raid on the Hassaikai base. At every turn in that encounter, the heroes let themselves get split up and picked off, winnowing down their numbers. It's even explicit in the narrative that hero team-ups were, in the age of All Might, uncommon, and heroes are only just beginning to adjust to fighting in teams. The erstwhile MLA should have had the advantage there.

As to Machia's defeat, I think the big problem with it is not how it happened, per se, but the timescale involved. The plan itself was sound enough, and even with all the kids' efforts, it still took Machia reaching Shigaraki and not getting any new orders to follow to really do him in. Given what we can extrapolate about his movement speed, though, I just don't think the kids should have had time to set all those traps, especially given how much of that equipment would have had to be fabricated by Momo on the fly. I know she's gotten stronger and all, and good for her, but you're telling me that in the four months between Joint Training and the raid, she went from passing out because she created a bag of goodies and one (1) cannon to being totally fine and still able to coordinate her fellow students while cranking out 23 jars of sedative, dozens of feet of rope/cable, multiple fire-resistant coats, explosives they somehow had time to bury, and three cannons?

For fuck's sake, Jirou gave Machia's ETA as under ten seconds. Yeah, Mount Lady slowed him down, but "only a little"--how much time could she possibly have bought them, that the kids were able to to coordinate and enact everything that plan involved?

You guys, go read this post by @codenamesazanka. Machia is so fast. So unbelievably, incredibly fast. "Twice as fast as the fastest train in the world" fast. "Horikoshi clearly did not stop to think about the distances involved here" fast. Three miles in ten seconds fast. It would have been hard enough to square with the needs of the plot that the kids were sufficiently far from the villa to have the kind of time they needed to swing Momo's plan at all, but Horikoshi explicitly letting Machia get right on top of them before the kids even start just makes it completely impossible for me to credit. Machia clearly being slower aboveground than he is when burrowing does not make that much difference to my suspension of disbelief.

My other big complaint? More people should have died, for real. The PLF warriors would not have been holding back. They were ready and willing to kill anyone they came up against. The heroes did have to hold back, because heroes, as we're told over and over again, are not supposed to kill, no matter how dire the circumstances. That difference in ability to exercise force should have been yet another significant advantage for the PLF. I could write an entire list of characters that I think could have reasonably been killed during the raids. That wouldn't be to say that I think any individual, specific character on that list should have died, just that, based on the parameters as they were presented to audience, some number of them should have.

I mean, honestly. How did Horikoshi wanna show us Gang Orca's unmoving claw in the wake of Machia's passage and not have Gang Orca on the list of the dead? How did Fat Gun run right into a mass melee and still have enough fat left over afterward to survive getting trampled by a walking mountain? How did Thirteen survive not getting pulled out of the hospital basement when Shigaraki's Decay hit? How did Trumpet survive getting a staircase dropped on top of him? How did Gran Torino survive a fist through his tiny old man chest cavity?

I could go on and on, but it's not just about the deaths, either. I'm not saying that Kamui Woods necessarily should have died by swinging himself face-first into a blast of blue fire, but I am saying that he should have been out of commission for longer than three goddamn days. You bet your ass I'm saying that after telling us that Hawks' weak point is fire, making us watch him spend at a solid minute or more with his wings wholly enveloped in Dabi's 2000 degree flames, and having Dark Shadow exclaim that his back is completely burned away, Hawks should never have grown his wings back, much less so quickly that they were already visible under his shirt a single day later.

More deaths, more maiming--heck, even more retirements. I'm not saying I love that kind of thing in my fiction--I don't, actually. I think an overreliance on it is a sign of edgelordy nonsense. But the scenario that we had demanded to be treated with the kind of gravity that would have led to such an outcome. To set up a conflict like the raid and have the villains only barely be able to scrape a partial escape, to try to tell us that Shigaraki's victory in Deika granted him such a terrifyingly powerful force only to have them lose every battle they got into, to tell us this was a blow that shook Hero Society to its core, only to be so unwilling to kill or retire any heroes the audience cares about that Midnight is literally the only significant loss… It doesn't work. None of it works.

I don't have much to say on which characters did or didn't get a highlight. I think there were a few more people than you listed that got some good scenes--Tokoyami and Uraraka both got material I liked quite a bit; Dabi famously out-trended the U.S. presidential election on Twitter when he (literally) came clean, and Mr. Compress gave us some wonderfully interesting and characteristically opaque material to chew on. On the whole, though, adding more character moments would only have been dragging out the problem: the scale of the PLF's threat and the HPSC's chosen method of dealing with it are simply incompatible with the feeble "neither side truly won or lost" resolution we got.

And that's my rant on that--thanks for the ask!

#and yet #i still hate it less than the shitshow that went down with lady n and overhaul #inkbuckets #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #bnha #stillness has salt #stillness answers

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itsbenedict · 3 years

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Two-Faced Jewel: Session 2

Zero and @eternalfarnham are Looseleaf and Saelhen du Fishercrown, a mothfolk animist and a half-elf conwoman. A botched heist forces Saelhen to keep up her fake identity and embark on a quest to places unknown, with Looseleaf to keep a watchful compound eye on her. This time, they prepare to set out for the jungle city of Thunderbrush.

[Campaign log]

It's less than a week after the incident with the pit under Yoshimimoto Plaza. Looseleaf returns to school with Saelhen in tow, and Looseleaf's roommate Oyobi spends some time training them up in basic monster self-defense- the two of them are now level 2! Saelhen gains a Cunning Action, and Looseleaf embarks on the Path of the Mutable Spirit. (There's no combat this session, so more on that later.)

In spending some time with Looseleaf's roommate, Saelhen picks up on... certain nuances.

looseleaf: what you know about your roommate is that she is very friendly and outgoing. the reason she's barely home most of the time is that she's always out partying or fighting or otherwise living it up on campus, and she's pretty well-known and popular amongst the student body. she's technically Martial Arts but takes a few Natural Arts classes, including your archaeology class. she wants to be an adventurer and join the Deathseekers' Guild, and she's taking multiple periods of Severe Zoology to learn to fight monsters. she thinks you in particular are adorable and has probably invited you to various social gatherings. she seems kind of spacey and unreliable, though, and doesn't seem to take you seriously.

saelhen, what you know about looseleaf's roommate is that she a freak nobody else seems to pick up on this, since there's not a lot of other elves at Blacksky, but you can tell from the way she wears her clothes and how she interacts with strangers to the uninformed observer, her fashion sense is sort of rugged and sporty and normal to an elf, her usual outfits are the equivalent of going around dressed in torn booty shorts, a spiked choker, and an ahegao t-shirt she is very obviously making a statement, and that statement is "i can do whatever i want, and if you have a problem with that you can [insert grossly offensive euphemism here]" her super-smiley friendly attitude is clearly part of this- she is breaking every single rule in the elf book, going right for the friendship throat in every social interaction and ignoring every single nicety that's supposed to precede friendly contact she acts a little different around you- like, she expects you to be in on the joke she's playing on everyone around her. she'll say something seemingly innocuous that's a actually a horrendous boundary violation in Kanzentokai, and then look at you with an expectant smile, to see if you appreciated the hilarious prank she just pulled. being around her is like being in the studio audience for a cringe comedy sitcom

Why are we learning so much about Oyobi? Well, partially because I can't help but overthink every single bit character, but also for reasons that'll become clear shortly.

After a few days, Saelhen and Looseleaf are invited to the Provost's office, up at the top of Blacksky Tower. (Ominous sort of place, for a faculty building- hewn out of a single chunk of sparkling black stone, oldest building on campus.) They are not invited to sit- the office contains no chairs.

Provost Hamori Los has good news for them! The people she's had secretly monitoring Saelhen for the past few days- did she forget to mention that?- have determined, by triangulation, that the arrow on Saelhen's bracer is currently pointing in the direction of Thunderbrush, deep in the giant-spider-infested jungle. So that where they'll be going, on a fun field trip!

Looseleaf could not be happier about this. Or less happy. She's really got precisely the amount of unhappiness that she's obligated to feel about giant spiders, being a giant moth.

Luckily, they won't have to trek through the jungle- Hamori has arranged for transportation via the ferry at the town of Cauterdale, which should allow them to bypass a treacherous trek into the depths of the Remoline Rainforest. They'll each be provided 100gp as funding for this academic enterprise- and Headmaster Goodcrest of Thunderbrush Metropolitan University has agreed to provide lodging for them on arrival. Everything is handled for them- so there shouldn't be any problems!

There is one more thing, though- all the different schools want in on this trip, so one school doesn't get all the credit. They're required to bring along a representative from the School of Arcane Arts and the School of Martial Arts, on top of Looseleaf from Natural Arts. And on top of... the representative from the School of Restricted Arts.

This dude is named Vayen, and he's not much for conversation. Or explaining what he's even doing here. Or doing anything besides skulking a careful distance away from the party, staring and listening. What does the School of Restricted Arts even study, again?

Anyway, Looseleaf has someone in mind from Martial Arts, so she leads the party to the School of Arcane Arts to do some recruiting! After being chewed out by Two-Brains for trying to post notices outside the official student notice board, she puts up her ad:

It's not long before she gets a bite!

Orluthe Chokorov is a cleric-in-training, under Diamode, the Goddess of Family. He's been enrolled in Arcane Arts at the insistence of his family... but he seems to think he's a "fake", and is desperate to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it means he passes his classes without having to actually... be able to do whatever it is he's taking classes in. He says he can fight, though- in fact, he's eager to fight! He once beat Bud Chestplate, did you know?

There are perhaps less delinquent candidates they could go with, but there's something nice about a party member with secrets Saelhen could use as blackmail.

Saelhen du Fishercrown: "...rest assured that I shall be the soul of discretion. As will Looseleaf." "Though I fear that deception of this sort does not come easily to me..." Looseleaf: "Noeru, if he doesn't want to get into it, he doesn't have to- oh my god."

Having recruited Orluthe, the party heads back to Looseleaf's dorm to ask Oyobi about the Martial Arts students- maybe she has some idea as to who would make a good candidate for the trip!

(This isn't me foisting her on the players, though I did suggest it- after the party of two squishies got wiped in the first encounter, I offered them the chance to put together two NPCs who they'd get to control in combat. Their character sheets were more or less created by the players, and I matched their mechanical requirements to NPCs. We may end up having multiple characters per PC, later- this is sort of a trial run.)

With a cleric(?) and a ranger on the team, plus whatever Vayen is that he won't tell them, they're feeling ready to hit the road- right after a shopping trip.

Saelhen buys...

1x bag of 1000 ball bearings

1x traveler's clothes

1x hooded lantern

15x doses of insect repellent salve (much to Looseleaf's great offense)

2x uses of sealing wax

1x tinderbox

fuck it, 4x more bags of 1000 ball bearings

Zero: 'what are you going to do with five thousand ball bearings' 'when the time comes, i'll know'

Looseleaf buys...

1x pint of oil

1x bag of 1000 ball bearings also

5x healer's kits, to distribute to the party

1x pouch of various plant seeds

1x map

Notably absent is any food, since they have Oyobi in their party- she's a ranger with the Goodberry spell. (I've reflavored it to just mean she's good at foraging and always has rations on hand, because holy crap, Goodberry rules-as-written is totally worldbreaking- why would farms exist?)

During their shopping trip, Saelhen manages to get Oyobi alone, without the rest of the party. Oyobi's shtick has been fun, for her, as someone with very little regard for elven rules of politeness, but... it's still a little much. She asks Oyobi to tone it down.

Oyobi Yamatake: "I mean, I thought you had to no-sell it to keep up the fake noble act- I didn't think it was actually getting you!" "That's priceless, oh my god." "What's there to take a 'break' from, anyway? What's wrong with just living?" Saelhen du Fishercrown: "Primarily, the fact that I really need not to twitch in front of the Provost's silent murder goon." Saelhen jerks a thumb over her shoulder, then belatedly checks to make sure that Vayen is not in fact literally right behind her. Benedict I. (GM): Make a Perception roll? Saelhen du Fishercrown: aw, hell, he definitely is, isn't he

She rolls a 13, and no one in particular rolls a 17. So, everything is fine. They keep their voices down, anyway.

Oyobi Yamatake: "I mean, is it really a problem? Can you really not keep a straight face?" Saelhen du Fishercrown: "I mean, I can." Saelhen sweeps a hand over her face and is the picture of serenity. "Why should the lady Noeru de la Surplus concern herself with small lapses such as these?" "Surely someone shall find it in their hearts to forgive all trespasses." Oyobi Yamatake: She snorts. "Okay, I get your point." "But really, don't you think it's weirder for an elven noblewoman not to react?" "You don't think he thinks it's suspicious that you take it all in stride?" Saelhen du Fishercrown: "The character is admittedly kind of a freak. I'm making allowances. I mean, this is fun and all, but if no one sees through the bit at all and I'm stuck in it long-term, which it seems like I am, it's like..." "Just being back in Kanzentokai, except worse, because no one is making me." "And drow catch a lot of crap anyway. They don't need me to teach them that elves can be assholes." Oyobi Yamatake: She frowns. "You can't make me try to keep up with the rules, y'know. I'm not going to put up with that garbage ever again." "But I can tone it down with the..." "Y'know, the stuff I'm going out of my way to do, if that helps." Saelhen du Fishercrown: "The wink-and-nudge, yeah. That would help." Oyobi Yamatake: She sighs. She seems a little put out by all this, but pretty quickly puts her happy face back on.

Meanwhile, Looseleaf and Orluthe seem to have lost track of Vayen. It doesn't take them long to find out where he went (well, after Looseleaf rolls a nat 1 on investigation and accidentally pisses off an old lady she mistook for Vayen). Turns out... he's hiding behind a statue of Ccorde, spying on Saelhen and Oyobi.

Looseleaf doesn't buy his crappy excuses, but also... she isn't altogether opposed to the concept of spying on "Lady Noeru de la Surplus", who really ought to have someone keeping an eye on her. So, she just hands him a medical kit- a kit she happens to have used her animist class feature Soul Link on, so she knows where it is at all times. (She's done the same to the bracer.)

Now, with the shopping done, it's time to hit the road! They have a couple options: go on foot, or requisition some giraffes.

(In this world, they domesticated giraffes instead of horses. Why? Because it's a fantasy world and why not?)

The city's main giraffe rental is run by the Ecumene of Understanding, based out of the Temple of Andra. You can rent giraffes for free, as long as you're willing to serve as a courier for the Ecumene- their convoluted legal system requires them to send mail between cities frequently, and they've only got so many clerics on hand. So, anyone wanting to travel the roads can receive a delivery quest from the Ecumene, and rent mounts for free in exchange!

They meet with the Bishop of Understanding of Oyashio, Sarat Aerens.

Aerens has a simple request for them: in addition to visiting Thunderbrush's Temple of Andra with a mail delivery, they're to bring back a report from said temple on the whereabouts of the Siren's Arraignment, a ship that departed from Oyashio and never arrived at its next destination, Snowhold. There's suspicion that the Siren's Arraignment never departed from its supposed origin of Thunderbrush to begin with, either- so the Ecumene put some clerics on the job to investigate, and the party's job is just to relay their message.

With that, they're given giraffe passes, and directed down to the stables, where they find the stablehand, Updraft, having some difficulties.

Benedict I. (GM):There's no one at the pickup window, but there's a sparrow aarakocra just behind, trying to get a giraffe several times her height to get up and out of the damn water trough. Updraft: "...not a bath, ye stubborn git!" "Ye drink from that, lackbrains!" "Y'really want t'be tastin' yer arse?" Looseleaf: OH I CAN HELP WITH THIS FINALLY, A PLACE WHERE I CAN APPLY MY ADVANTAGE ON ANIMAL HANDLING

Looseleaf uses her Soul Read ability to tune in to the giraffe's feelings and recent history, and discovers that someone fed it a hot pepper and it's in, um, anal distress.

Orluthe volunteers to do some healing to the giraffe, with his Lay On Hands ability. Is... that a cleric thing? Do clerics do that? Probably. In this world, clerics perform magic by inviting their god directly into their mind to borrow their brainpower and work miracles directly, and it sure looks like he does that when he does his healing. He channels a god, for sure!

Benedict I. (GM): As he touches the giraffe, you see his body begin to glow, and his facial features are overlaid with another face. "...A giraffe?" "A waste, I suppose, but... perhaps it'll win us some favor." The voice he speaks in sounds more feminine, somehow.

Some religion checks reveal that this doesn't seem quite right for a cleric of Diamode, the goddess of Family. But hey, healing's healing, right?

With that, they're able to get their giraffes no problem- and next time, they'll be on the road to Thunderbrush!

#tfj log #twofaced jewel

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homespork-review · 4 years

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HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 2

BRIGHT: Nepeta wants to know what’s going on. Aradia finally stops dodging the question and tells Nepeta she’s dead, but doesn’t elaborate on how it happened. She asks Nepeta to keep it a secret, which Nepeta agrees to. Aradia’s also picked up some froglike traits from being merged with the sprite -- namely a tendency to ribbit.

In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that an active player can merge with a sprite. The role of a sprite seems to involve having detailed knowledge of how the Game works and what the player should do next, but only dispensing vague advice to the player. Prototyping a player would give them full access to that knowledge with no sprite vagueness to get in the way. The Game doesn’t seem too concerned about that, though.

CHEL: Now it’s time to get to know AG better. A doodle of her declaring her to be a HUGE BITCH fades into her standing in her room. Rather gothic, and also filthy-looking; it’s dark, with a red sky outside, and cobwebs and broken Magic 8 Balls lie around everywhere. There’s a FLARP poster and numerous pages of notes on the wall.

Your name is VRISKA SERKET.

You are a master of EXTREME ROLE PLAYING. You can't get enough of it, or really any game of high stakes and chance. You have persisted with the habit even in spite of your ACCIDENT. But then again, you don't have much choice.

Your lusus is VERY HUNGRY, ALL THE TIME. She can only be appeased by the FLESH OF YOUNG TROLLS. You cloud campaigns for teams of Flarpers, utilizing your abilities for ORCHESTRATING THE DEMISE OF THE IMPRESSSSSSSSIONA8LE. Your victories supply you with treasure, experience points, and SPIDER FOOD.

You are something of an APOCALYPSE BUFF, which is something you can be on Alternia. You are fascinated by end of the world scenarios, and enjoy constructing DOOMSDAY DEVICES for the hell of it. You are drawn to means of DARK PROGNOSTICATION and the advantages they offer, particularly in gaming scenarios. Your abilities in this department were hobbled with the loss of your VISION EIGHTFOLD, and you have since sought alternatives through various BLACK ORACLES. You consult with these ominous globes, but routinely destroy them in frustration over the PUZZLING GUARANTEED INACCURACY of their predictions. Breaking them has developed into a habit BORDERING ON FETISHISTIC, and with each you destroy, you add to an insurmountable stockpile of TERRIBLE LUCK. You have to stop. But addiction is a powerful thing.

FAILURE ARTIST: FINALLY we get a name for her and we don’t have to keep saying AG. I imagine the non-Homestucks are feeling like I did when I played Danganronpa 2 finally and saw the “fingers-in-his-ass” guy.

CHEL: She examines a drawing on the wall, of her FLARP character MARQUISE SPINNERET MINDFANG, who is just Vriska in a different coat and seaboots, with a hook instead of her robot hand. She is the scourge of land dwellers and sea dwellers alike, and worst nightmare to silly BOY-SKYLARKS everywhere. She has accumulated more treasure and gained more levels than any member of the PETTICOAT SEAGRIFT class ever. She gained all the levels. All of them.

En route to her computer, Vriska steps on a D4, and complains about how she’s had terrible luck since her mysterious accident. I’d just like it noted that this is a small but noticeable occurrence of Vriska’s tendency to blame others for her problems; if she cleaned her room some time, that wouldn’t happen. Still, she doesn’t worry about it too long, as she’s busy.

So many irons in the fire. Such a tangled web. It is a web full of flaming irons and mixed metaphors.

BRIGHT: Vriska equips her weapon of choice, a set of enchanted D8 dice called the FLUORITE OCTET.

...okay, I’m getting used to characters having semi-absurd weapons, but seriously, what? Let’s review everyone else’s chosen weapons: Hammer, knitting needles, sword, gun, sickles, lance, clawed gloves, walking cane. Sollux had some throwing stars but didn’t assign them to his specibus owing to his telekinesis being enough; we haven’t seen Aradia’s strifekind yet, but she also has telekinetic abilities, and hers are apparently enhanced by her being dead. So that’s a lot of genuine weapons, and some things which aren’t weapons but can readily be used that way in a pinch...and then Vriska has a set of enchanted dice.

It’s a good fit both for Homestuck’s absurdity and for Vriska’s obsession with luck. But it does stand out rather.

Anyway, rolling the dice will execute a wide range of highly unpredictable attacks. Very high rolls can be devastating to even the most powerful opponents. Apparently these work everywhere, not just in FLARP games. Also, while we see ghosts, psychic powers, and superpowered coding, I think this is the only reference to plain magic we have on Alternia.

Vriska steps away from the computer to avoid talking to GA, who she refers to as an unwelcome solicitor, but returns to it when someone else starts messaging her. Vriska calls him this guy; he has no icon -- and, oddly, no username -- and types in white, which means the reader (and Vriska) ends up highlighting the conversation a lot.

Hello.

AG: Oh my god, why are you talking to me????????

This is the last time we'll ever talk.

AG: Still sticking with the white text I see. So smooth and stylish!

AG: I forgot how much I loved highlighting it to read all the 8oring things you have to say.

AG: It's like a fun game for super extra handicapped retarded people. Like opening a present! Find out what o8noxious thing the mystery tool typed.

AG: What is it!

A parting courtesy, I suppose.

All the ways I've exploited you were meant to bring about the events that will take place this evening.

Knowing this will provide context for the events in your near future, and will affect how you behave in response.

These events will be just as important as those preceding it.

I've gone to great lengths, you see.

Well, this guy sounds ominous.

Also, using ‘handicapped’ and ‘retarded’ as insults is entirely in character for Vriska, who has no time for people who can’t operate on her level. Currently Vriska’s also being shown as an unlikeable character. We’ll see how that develops.

CHEL: Still, a lot of people really don’t like those words being used casually, and the fact that we need to show you how things develop should imply that they won’t develop in a way you’ll like. So…

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 39

White Text Guy, as the characters refer to him for a while to come yet, continues gloating about how successfully he’s exploited Vriska, who tells him she’ll log off and orders him not to use that nasty trick where you log me 8ack on out of petty douchey spite! WTG says he’ll be brief, though he’s not particularly brief in fact, tells her he no longer hold[s] her accountable for any wrongdoing, and says that if she accepts this, she may get her luck back. Vriska doesn’t believe him and continues to rant, and he points out that her unpleasant, simplistic temperament is what made her so easy to mess with.

If you turn a swarm of wasps on a crowd, the outcome is certain.

He leaves with these even more ominous words:

Though the magnitude of the ensuing destruction resulting directly from your actions will be neither possible or necessary for you to fathom, there nevertheless ought to be a silver lining.

The only question is whether you will live long enough to see it.

Vriska, enraged, lifts a Magic 8 Ball with the intention to smash it, but decides she can’t be bothered, and answers GA, hoping some camaraderie will cheer her up, even if it’s from a meddler. However, GA’s first question is “Is Your Lusus Dead Yet”. Not particularly cheering, is it?

Vriska, for the first time, expresses concern and sympathy for another person when GA says her own lusus is dead, though it may be undermined slightly by her own personal disappointment in never having got to meet said lusus. GA doesn’t seem very concerned, and says “Maybe You Still Can”. According to her, though, all their lusii are dying, as a “Preemptive Consequence” (if that’s a meaningful concept) of the upcoming Game. Karkat blames himself for activating the cursed code, but GA thinks it was inevitable. However, Karkat’s idea of a curse Is Inseparable From His Perception Of Events As Intrinsically Negative And As Tailored To His Personal Dissatisfaction, and so is Vriska’s poor luck. GA points out that if Vriska cleaned her floor she wouldn’t step on so many things. THANK YOU, GA, you made my point for me! Vriska is angry at GA “meddling” so, and demands to know why she does.

GA: Because Youre Dangerous

[...]

GA: Its Ok To Be Dangerous

GA: Lots Of People Are

GA: And Dangerous People Can Be Really Important

GA: Maybe Even The Most Important Sometimes

GA: But It Just Means Theres Got To Be Someone Around To Keep An Eye On Them

As Vriska gets angrier, it’s noted that she puts 8s in her typing in places where they don’t work as Bs or as “eight” sounds, and they become more numerous.

AG: Or you know, if you're so h8gh 8nd might8 an8 th8nk you're so gr8at, m8y88 you c8uld oh I d8n't kn8w........

AG: TRY AND ST8P ME FROM DO8NG B8D THINGS????????

GA: That Wouldnt Work

GA: If I Tried To Stop You You Would Regard Me As An Enemy

GA: Instead Of Merely As A Nuisance

BRIGHT: GA’s strategy appears to be trying to talk Vriska into being a better person, either by persuading her that it’s the right thing to do or by being so annoying that Vriska does the right thing to avoid being meddled with. She’s making an effort, I’ll give her that. And given that she doesn’t live anywhere near Vriska, there isn’t all that much she can do to rein her in.

CHEL: Vriska signs off, ranting about her “Lousy st8pid godd8mn supportive friend!” and heads down the enormous staircase to check on her lusus.

You wonder if any other kid on the planet has such a high maintenance lusus? You DOUBT it.

As a matter of fact, one does and Vriska knows that, but we’ll see them later. Not a continuity error, it’s just Vriska self-pitying.

From a window, we see a doomsday device hanging over a chasm by chains attached to the surrounding cliffs. Vriska built it for an especially powerful and influential member of the nautical aristocracy, with help from an as-yet-unnamed nearby friend. Vriska reaches the bottom of the stairwell, and we meet her lusus, which is…

… a spider about the size of a cathedral. For the sake of our arachnophobic readers, we’ll refrain from posting a picture. Suffice it to say she’s as terrifying as she sounds. Pan out to show the entire valley is filled with cobwebs, and Vriska’s hive is matched by a similar one on the other side of the valley.

Before we move on, I’d just like to chat a little about the astrological symbolisms used here. Vriska’s the Scorpio troll, and it puzzles a lot of people that she’s spider-themed instead of scorpion-themed. Both arachnids, but not the same thing. However, Scorpio does have multiple symbols, depending on the source of the interpretation of the constellation, including the spider and the phoenix. Observe! (I enjoy astrology. Sue me.) Also, a scorpion would be a lot harder to get the story symbolism out of; Vriska is at least attempting to be a master manipulator pulling on strings, i.e. webs. The astrological symbolism and alleged personality traits aren’t used for all of the trolls in general, either. The troll with the sign of Aquarius the Water-Bearer is seadwelling nobility and probably wouldn’t be happy to be represented astrologically by a servant, and Gamzee is basically the opposite of the ambitious and hardworking traits of the allegedly typical Capricorn. Basically the signs are mostly aesthetic and if Huss can work in some connected symbolism that’s a bonus. I don’t consider this a negative thing in particular, though it might annoy some astrology buffs.

Actually, I don’t know how intentional this was, but one fan actually analysed how the social expectations on Alternia are in fact the exact opposite of what would actually suit their astrological sign. It didn’t get finished but there’s some interesting information - read the posts in question here, beware spoilers!

BRIGHT: One amusing consequence of this can be turned into a game: Go to Tumblr, find an astrology post, and see how long it takes to figure out if it’s a Homestuck riff. Some of them even just say ‘Vriska’ for Scorpio.

It’s probably just because I mostly follow fandom-related blogs, but I’ve yet to see a Tumblr astrology post that wasn’t a more-or-less-subtle Homestuck joke.

CHEL: And the ones which aren’t make for great fanfic prompts!

BRIGHT: Vriska’s lusus is fine, as it happens. Vriska pretends to be happy about this, but she’s rather less convincing than Dave is about his own guardianship issues.

FAILURE ARTIST: And we turn from Vriska to look in her neighbor and it’s….that creepy guy! Hurray!

Your name is EQUIUS ZAHHAK.

You love being STRONG.

You are so strong, you would surely be the class of the elite legion of RUFFIANNIHILATORS. And while such a calling would be quite honorable, you would prefer to join the ranks of the ARCHERADICATORS, perhaps the most noble echelon the imperial forces have to offer. Unfortunately, you SUCK AT ARCHERY. You have not successfully fired a SINGLE ARROW. Every time you try, you BREAK THE BOW. You are simply too strong. You have broken so many bows, it has developed into a habit BORDERING ON FETISHISTIC. You have to stop. But addiction is a powerful thing.

You have a great appreciation for THE FINE ARTS. You use your aristocratic connections to acquire PRICELESS MASTERPIECES, painted in the oldest and most respected Alternian tradition of NUDE MUSCLEBEAST PORTRAITS. These striking depictions of the EXQUISITE FAUNA native to Alternia remind you of the PUREST PHYSICAL IDEAL that must be sought by anyone who professes a LOVE OF STRENGTH. When those of lesser bloodlines turn up their uncultured noses at such stunning material, it MAKES YOU FURIOUS.

Practically everything MAKES YOU FURIOUS. You have so much rage, it can only be expressed through STAGGERING QUANTITIES OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE. You build strong and sturdy robots, set them to kill mode, and BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THEM in caged brawls. Sometimes you LOSE TEETH. But they usually grow back.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius Zahhak’s first name is obviously a take on the Latin word for horses, but his last name is from a Persian demon who is also known as “he who has 10,000 horses”.

So yes, that furry porn on his walls is high art to trolls. Though the prequel Hiveswap Friendsim, which has artist characters, doesn’t have MUSCLEBEAST PORTRAITS. Maybe Equius is actually weird.

CHEL: Actually, the Friendsim does have musclebeast art; if you squint at the beginning of Nikhee’s route, you can see depictions of white muscular chests flanking the arena, which don’t look like troll chests. Hiveswap proper is rated PG, so we’ll be spared it there, too.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius is more even-tempered than his introduction suggests. He’s not completely violence-free (as we will see) but he’s not in a constant ‘roid-rage. Heck, from what we’ve seen before of him he just gets peeved and snotty.

Equius calls for his lusus Aurthour, who I guess could be called another self-insert. Aurthour is a centaur-type creature with cow udders and a mustache and looks like something out of Hussie’s early comics. Aurthour carries a glass of lusus milk on a platter, presumably from its own udders. Ummm.

You cannot hope to beat Aurthour in a butler-off. He is simply the best there is.

Sweet, I guess.

CHEL: I wonder how Aurthour contorts around to reach his udder. Centaurs aren’t really known for flexibility.

FAILURE ARTIST: We find out why Aurthour has a shiner. It’s not because of domestic abuse but because when Equius “gently” pats Aurthour, Aurthour bruises. Yet this creature is the only lusus STRONG enough to raise Equius.

Equius tries to drink the glass, but it shatters in his hand. Which begs the question of why Aurthour doesn’t use an alternative to glass. Well, I guess Equius going straight to the source would be too disturbing even for Hussie. A bigger problem is how Equius can do the fine detail work of building robots when he can’t hold a glass.

Equius goes into a rage, which just means he stands around in Hero Mode while the lusus milk quickly evaporates. Wait, quickly evaporates? What is it made of?

CHEL: I assumed the heat of his rage boiled it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius tries to equiup equip a bow but fails due to his strength. Like the glass smashing, this is a normal occurrence. You’d think he’d give up but apparently breaking bows is like popping bubble wrap to him. Expensive bubble wrap. So he has the useless 1/2bowkind, a bowkind for when he’s ever that lucky, and the fistkind which he actually utilizes. Yes, in Homestuck, you can register your fists as lethal weapons.

Equius talks with Nepeta and the narration summarizes like thus:

CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no CT: D --> Yes AC: :33 < no

Equius is still worried about his good friend Nepeta, so he decides to relieve his stress by talking with another friend. And here comes a line fans take as meaning trolls don’t have friendship.

It should be noted that in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy.

Though that line contradicts Equius considering Nepeta his friend only a few lines back. This worldbuilding sucks.

CHEL: Well, he doesn’t treat her the way a human should treat a friend at this point.

FAILURE ARTIST: So Equius trolls this frienemy who turns out to be Gamzee.

centaursTesticle [CT] began trolling terminallyCapricious [TC]

CT: D --> Have I ever told you what a reprehensible disgrace you are

TC: hAhA, fUcK yEaH, oNlY eVeRy MoThErFuCkIn DaY bRo!

Yeah, Equius, pretty much everyone tells Gamzee that every day.

Equius says he wants get some things off his chest, which giving what we later learn about troll relationships might be adulterous. Gamzee tells him not to let his feelings be bottled up lIkE a FuCkIn AlL sHaKeD uP bOtTlE oF fAyGo and this metaphor makes Gamzee thristy. Equius berates Gamzee for drinking soda, which seems harsh but we later find out soda is booze for trolls. He’s also angry at Gamzee for doing sopor slime. Now, fans think Karkat didn’t like Gamzee doing sopor slime but we never actually see it. It’s just Equius who cares. This leads to an exchange I find interesting.

CT: D --> You will stop

TC: WhOaAaA, i WiLl?

TC: hOw Do YoU kNoW tHaT?

CT: D --> No, you don't understand

CT: D --> It's not a predi%ion, it's an order

CT: D --> I command you to stop

Gamzee is so passive he finds it hard to imagine making decisions that will change his future. Sad. And when Gamzee does get what Equius means:

TC: Oh, AlRiGhT bRoThEr.

TC: yOu MoThErFuCkIn GoT iT.

CT: D --> What

CT: D --> Are you serious

TC: yEaH.

TC: I mEaN, yOu GoT tO sHoW sOmE fAiTh In YoUr FrIeNdS, cAuSe ThEy'Re AlL tHe OnEs WhO'rE bEiNg To LoOk OuT fOr YoU.

TC: sO fUcK iF yOu SaY i'M nOt DoInG tHe ShIt RiGhT, tHeN wHaT tHe MoThErFuCk Do I kNoW!

CT: D --> No

CT: D --> This is una%eptable

CT: D --> Ok, let's start over

CT: D --> I apologize

CT: D --> I was completely out of of line, and I'm sorry

CT: D --> I have no right to talk to you like that, or tell you what you can't do

TC: aWw, No WoRrIeS!

Gamzee was ready to kick sopor slime except Equius backed down. Wondering about the timeline where Equius didn’t back down.

Still, Equius begs Gamzee to behave like a superior. Gamzee asks what that means and Equius gives a very creepy answer.

CT: D --> 100k, it isn't that difficult

CT: D --> Try to be cognizant of your desires and needs

CT: D --> And attempt to regard those around you as simple vehicles meant to bring about your gratification

At least Equius is a hypocrite...most of the time.

Equius asks what Gamzee is doing and Gamzee relates his adventures in Sgrub. He bonked an imp on the head and scared another with a horn and eventually ended up sharing pie with them. Equius likes the tales of valor but is disappointed with the peaceful end.

Equius asks Gamzee to roleplay and Gamzee says yes; there’s an uncomfortable sequence where Equius tries to get Gamzee to virtually dom him. Gamzee is terrible at being assertive, but Equius is still whipped into a state of contrition. Basically, Equius is getting off on this.

CHEL: It should be noted that tricking a child into sexual behaviour is a form of abuse even when it’s done by a child of the same age. Not cool, Eq, and not funny, Hussie.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 11

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 40

SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 4

Though, while that is clearly the reading we’re meant to get from that, I have to say Equius never reads to me like he’s actually enjoying being ordered around. With Gamzee he’s just frustrated that he’s not behaving in a correct manner, and in later exchanges he seems knocked off-balance by the normal social order being upended. I know I’m just projecting, but it reads more like he has some issues with anxiety or OCD and is desperate for someone else to take control and tell him what they want him to do so he doesn’t have to worry. He sweats constantly during these exchanges, which is supposed to imply he’s aroused, but people sweat when they’re worried or afraid too.

FAILURE ARTIST: On a lighter front, Equius says he doesn’t live near the ocean, which considering his neighbor regularly goes on a pirate ship is an odd thing to say.

CHEL: How near is “near”? He might just mean not within walking distance so he can’t casually wander out to the sea like Gamzee does.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius ends by wondering about the social order that puts someone like Gamzee above him but someone as graceful and poised as a certain mysterious she is of the lowest caste. Gamzee (and the readers) ask who she is and Equius brusquely says D -->I shouldn’t be talking about this D → You’re the enemy before signing off.

CHEL: If one’s been paying attention, one can guess.

Next, Equius and Vriska are in cahoots. Cahoooooooots. Vriska declares her intention to meddle, and they have a brief exchange about sarcasm. It’s horribly inconsistent whether trolls have sarcasm or not, as I’ve pointed out before. Already gave a point for it, though.

Anyway, Vriska asks if Aradia’s present is finished. It is.

CT: D --> But I don't understand why you're intent on gratifying that worthless peasant

AG: 8ecause I promised I would and it's none of your damn 8usiness! Man.

Their plan is to let Aradia usurp Sollux as leader with her cute little ploy (recall her sending him to sleep and letting him swallow mind honey earlier), then both snatch power from her and become joint leaders. Each asks the other if they’re planning something sneaky and each insists they’re not. Equius can sense that Vriska is trying to read his mind, and when she won’t stop, he takes control of her cybernetic arm, which he built, and makes her slap herself in the face.

FAILURE ARTIST: So given that Vriska tried to read Equius’ mind, despite the dangers (both physically and mentally), it is unbelievable she refrained from reading Karkat’s due to delicacy.

I think Hussie has said in his commentary that Vriska had a crush on Equius. The fandom prefers lesbian Vriska at this point and so has ignored that. YMMV on if there is evidence of a crush in the text but I find the idea amusing.

CHEL: Equius goes to fetch the present for Aradia which he was supposed to give to Vriska.

You naturally will doublecross your accomplice, just as you assume she has plans to doublecross you. You assume she is assuming the same of you. Business as usual for blue bloods.

How the hell does this society get anything done?

You will deliver it to Aradia yourself to gain her favor, and then doublecross her and take your rightful position as team leader. How ironic that someone of your blood purity must work to win the favor of the lowest sort of peasant. Humiliating. Strangely titillating, even. But in the end, class order will be restored.

He takes the tarp off the present, and it is…

Why, Aradia. It appears the red glass of your eye has caught the pink and green glint of the moons in their perigees. The sweet poetry almost makes a man forget how the grime that once filled your veins made his stomach turn. It is a good omen for illicit lovers. Could you imagine the scandal if anyone found out?? No one must ever know.

But worry not. Your heart will pump no more of that despicable red sludge. You have been given a new heart. You can be taught the ways of the class you were always meant for. No one is beyond redemption.

Be grateful, dear Aradia. For the first time in your meaningless life you have met a man with true compassion.

Jesus fucking Christ. See what I meant when I said his interactions with girls were worse than his posters? No points because it’s supposed to be creepy, and with the teachings of his society it’s not entirely his fault, but wow.

FAILURE ARTIST: Well, his interaction with a girl is creepy. His relationship with Nepeta is more problematic than fans remember but that’s two-sided and not infatuation. As for Vriska, he’s cold and business-like with her. He collaborates with GA but that’s off-screen and was probably also business-like. Meanwhile, he has lustful interactions with most every male character. We’ve seen how he acts with Gamzee and we’ll see more later. Equius’ interactions with guys are another example of Hussie using male attraction to other males as a punchline.

CHEL: But yes, he’s built her a robot body. Unfortunately for everyone involved, while making out with it, he feels judged by one of his battlebots, gets angry, and punches it. It goes flying out the window and robosplodes above the valley, and its remains hit Vriska’s doomsday device, setting it off. It breaks before it can actually destroy the planet, but the chains holding it up snap, sending it swinging into the cliffside, causing another explosion. The cliff collapses, taking part of Equius’ hive with it, sending Aurthour plummeting into the chasm and crushing Vriska’s spider lusus under tons of rubble.

Cutting back to before that, we see Terezi battling imps on her treehouse’s rooftop, when Vriska messages her, declaring that playing the game together means breaking their truce. Terezi says that’s not what the truce was about; it was about STOPP1NG TH3 3NDL3SS CYCL3 OF R3V3NG3 and Vriska not using her powers maliciously anymore. Terezi’s next couple of comments are just calling Vriska a liar so I’ll just take Vriska’s, to further illustrate her behaviour.

AG: Man, you like to give me such a hard time a8out all that. I can't catch a 8reak! AG: Can't you see I'm trying to put all that 8ehind me and make amends with every8ody? AG: No, of course you can't see that. What am I saying! [...] AG: I'll prove it to you. I'm giving Aradia a present that will make her feel all 8etter finally. AG: Then I'll 8e in the clear. Phew! Totally redeemed. You'll see. I mean smell.

Vriska appears under the impression that large flashy gestures are the important part of an apology, not actual sincerity. Terezi points out Aradia doesn’t care about anything anymore and probably won’t care about this.

AG: Man, why can't you cut me some slack for once???????? AG: It's not like I even did anything that 8ad to you. AG: I lost seven eyes 8ut you only lost two! I would say you came out ahead in the 8argain. GC: 1 KNOW GC: 4ND 4CTU4LLY GC: 1 N3V3R R34LLY GOT TH3 CH4NC3 TO TH4NK YOU >:D

Vriska’s disbelief aside, Terezi really is serious here. Not surprising to the reader, her blindness is basically a superpower.

AG: Remem8er Team Scourge? How convenient all that must 8e to have forgotten! You were so nasty. AG: Oh man, if you crossed Terezi Pyrope you were fucked!!!!!!!! GC: Y34H 1F YOU W3R3 4 B4D GUY GC: W3 W3R3 SUPPOS3D TO B3 L1K3 4 V1G1L4NT3 DUO D1SP3NS1NG JUST1C3 GC: 4ND YOU COULD T4K3 TH3 B4D GUYS HOM3 4ND F33D TH3M TO YOUR STUP1D SP1D3R GC: BUT 1NST34D YOU JUST F3D H3R 3V3RYBODY! GC: 4ND L13D 4ND L13D 4ND L13D

Okay, this little exchange needs some more dissection. Terezi is supposed to be the “good cop” of Team Scourge, the by-the-book one on the side of the law. But we saw what Alternian law is like, and later on we’ll see demonstrations that things such as having a birth defect or, according to Hiveswap, owning fiction which so much as mentions the possibility of rebellion, are punishable by death. Not only is this not making Terezi look any better, if she’s as obsessed with the law as we saw, who would she deem not a “bad guy”, and why would Vriska have such a shortage of “bad guys” that she’d need to take anyone else? Hussie appears to have forgotten that the Alternian concept of justice is different from the Earth one.

FAILURE ARTIST: And what we would consider a “bad guy” wouldn’t be the same on Alternia. There’s tons of trolls murdering other trolls on Hiveswap Friendsim without any hint that’s illegal. It’s probably completely lawful for a highblood to kill a lowblood just because the lowblood annoyed them.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 29

BRIGHT: Maybe. I’d say what this shows us, and is intended to show us, is that Terezi’s sense of justice isn’t just based on Alternian law, but on her own moral code. The law made it perfectly acceptable for Vriska to feed lowbloods to her lusus regardless of whether they’d done anything, but Terezi didn’t think it was right, and for her that superseded the law. She’s the ‘good cop’ not because she always follows the book, but because she’s willing to ignore it.

We also know she thought Vriska was on the same page as her. Note that Terezi makes two accusations here — the first is that Vriska killed people who don’t deserve it, and the second is that Vriska lied to Terezi about doing so.

CHEL: That may be what it’s intended to show us, but what we’ve already seen is that she worships the law; she draws and gleefully licks pictures of the head of the troll court, His Honorable Tyranny, and she shows no concern in her roleplay with hypothetically executing people for relatively trivial crimes. That makes this a bit… shaky, IMO.

BRIGHT: True. Terezi may have stopped killing since her FLARP days (or, at least, we get no indication that she’s still doing so), but it doesn’t seem to have shaken her belief in the Alternian legal system. Just her belief in Vriska, who even brings up a similar point.

AG: Well if you want to know what I think, you should start changing your tune. AG: Cause even though you got all these highfalutin morals and fancy reserv8tions, you know as well as me that a killer is a killer is a killer! AG: There 8n't no ch8nging your ways for good, and one d8y you're going to flail that silly l8ttle cane of yours and not find n8thin to 8ump into, and fall f8ce first into the shit ag8in. AG: And you're going to do something t8rri8le to some8ody and wish you could t8ke it 8ack 8ut you c8n't!!!!!!!! AG: And then you'll work hard to win 8ack their trust, and you'll try and try and tr8, and you'll see how hard it is! AG: You'll seeeeeeee!

Vriska’s making this all about her own feelings about Terezi abandoning her, but she’s not wrong.

Vriska hears the doomsday device exploding and the subsequent rockslide, and goes to find out what it is. Terezi tells her not to get crushed.

The next page jumps back in time again -- this time, quite far back. Terezi’s eyes are normal, and she’s talking to Aradia about Tavros’s recovery. Aradia says he’s probably paralysed for life. Terezi brings up the possibility of getting him robo-prosthetics, but after the Vriska debacle Aradia is firmly against having anything to do with bluebloods.

CHEL: Terezi warns Aradia that revenge attempts will end badly and she wants to handle it. Aradia says Vriska isn’t able to control her, but Terezi says Vriska will find a way to harm her anyway. They lament how they were both distracted by the same person.

AA: wh0 was he anyway GC: PR3TTY SUR3 1T WAS VR1SKAS FR13ND AA: what was he d0ing there AA: watching us GC: WHO KNOWS GC: H3S NOT R34LLY H3R FR13ND THOUGH GC: YOU SHOULD S33 HOW H3 T4LKS 4BOUT H3R B3H1ND H3R B4CK GC: SH3 H4S NO 1D34 HOW B4D H3S PL4Y1NG H3R GC: BUT TH3N 1 DONT TH1NK H3 KNOWS HOW B4D SH3S PL4Y1NG H1M 31TH3R

This sounds like they mean Equius, but we’ll see. Aradia feels she’s letting Vriska win by doing nothing, but Terezi has a plan. She confirms that her friendship with Vriska is over.

Cut to Aradia’s house, and here I need to go into a bit more detail. This is her house:

Aradia’s a maroonblood, the lowest of the low on the hemospectrum, peasantry and cannon fodder and supposedly extremely numerous. Yet her house looks to be about the size of the entire block of flats I live in, and she lives in it alone, with no other buildings at all in sight. In the next page, we see inside her house, which looks exactly the same as all the others; she has piles of roleplaying books and posters and a computer, and nothing looks to be in disrepair.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 30

BRIGHT: Her house also looks a lot like Tavros’s, what with the windmill feature on top and the brown hangings rather than maroon, which threw me off at first.

CHEL: We’ll talk about this more later. For now, let’s stick with the most noticeable thing; Aradia is alive! Her skirt is untattered and her eyes have colour and pupils. Her lusus is alive too, napping beside her. It’s not quite clear what it is exactly; it has a sheep-like head, but its body is long and slim with much bigger hind legs than forelegs. Could be supposed to be dragon-like? I’ve also seen it interpreted as kangaroo-like. I don’t think we ever get a better view of it.

Anyway, Aradia knows Terezi’s advice is sound, but she can’t bear not to do something to Make her pay. She puts her hands up to her temples, and the image fades back and forth with one of wrapped troll corpses in Spidermom’s web…

It's a shame it had to come to this. You don't like summoning the spirits of the dead to settle scores.

But if she had to face her victims again, maybe she'd finally learn to feel remorse.

OOOOOOOOOO

This begs the question, how the fuck can the highbloods oppress people who not only hugely outnumber them but can shoot lasers from their eyes, control animals, and summon the dead at will? Well, there’s actually some explanation for that. The player trolls all appear to have unusual levels of power, for whatever their given powers are; most maroonbloods can’t do this. In Hiveswap a main character is a more typical maroonblood, who can just about bend spoons with his telekinesis and not much else (though we haven’t seen him speak with dead yet, and it’s possible he’s better at that). Not all trolls even have their caste’s powers, as far as I can tell, as we do see a yellow in Hiveswap Friendsim who’s not a psionic and some ceruleans who don’t seem to have mind-control powers as well. Head or eye injuries, which aren’t exactly rare in Alternia, can cause the loss of said powers. Also, the highest blood castes have powers of their own and other things to hold over the lowbloods’ heads. It’ll be a while till we get to that, but I’ll say now it is convincing, we do not have an Oppressed Mages scenario.

Anyway, Aradia does her thing…

As Vriska cowers on her floor, White Text Guy messages her again. Vriska replies angrily, ghosts looming over her shoulders.

Aren't you going to kill her?

AG: Who????????

Your friend.

The one who summoned the spirits.

AG: Will that make them go away?

Does it matter?

She brought them here to torment you. This obviously warrants revenge.

Vriska asks why WTG doesn’t kill Aradia instead, since he helped kill Tavros; he replies “All I did was stand somewhere for a few minutes. I just gave you an opportunity to do something you wanted to do anyway.” So, seems it wasn’t Equius they meant earlier. Vriska protests she never intended to kill her gaming companions, and blames him.

Again, I didn't talk you into anything, nor am I doing so now.

You were, and are, going to do this regardless.

I only ever place myself into positions of tangential involvement with events that will bring about my employer's entry into this universe.

I oversee the events as they take place, and ever so slightly nudge them into motion when necessary.

BRIGHT: Looks like Aradia and Terezi haven’t told her Tavros survived, which is eminently sensible. This conversation also highlights another Vriska trait: That she’s a very active person, but will try to shift responsibility as soon as she doesn’t like the consequences. That could be a result of her upbringing -- Vriska had to actively go and kill people for Spidermom, but she wasn’t responsible for the overall situation. (Although -- how much did she do to ameliorate it? By the time SGRUB starts, Spidermom’s far too big to fit into Vriska’s home. Vriska might have been able to get away with not feeding her at that point; there’s not much Spidermom can do if she can’t get to her.)

CHEL: The later addition to the canon, Pesterquest, claims that the lusii can psychically nag their charges and she could bother Vriska that way, but that directly contradicts Act 5, in which the trolls want to prototype their lusii so that they’ll be able to communicate properly with them for the first time, and also couldn’t Vriska just move further away?

BRIGHT: Inertia is very much a thing, and people do often just settle into a rut of ‘this is the way things are’ even when something could be changed, so it’s not improbable that it wouldn’t occur to Vriska to move — come to that, I don’t believe it occurs to anyone else either — but the fact that it doesn’t occur to her does say something about her character.

CHEL: Also, why didn’t Vriska feed the spider on animals? The possibility is never so much as considered by her or anyone else, though it seems the most obvious thing to do. Sure, the spider might be picky, but as we said, it can’t leave the valley due to its size, or it’d be hunting for itself. If it’s left with the choice to eat cows or die, it’d presumably pick the former, especially since the lusii aren’t supposed to be sapient and thus wouldn’t have the capacity for spite. For assuming that Vriska did what she had to when such a screamingly obvious better option is never addressed, here we go with a new count, which will rise whenever Vriska’s horrible actions are excused.

ALL THE LUCK: 1

Back to the scene, Scratch claims omniscience, which Vriska mocks.

AG: Sure you know a lot, 8ut I know for a FACT there's stuff you don't know.

That's true.

But the gaps in my knowledge exist by design.

They are the pillars of shadow on which my comprehensive vision is built.

Necessary pockets of void meant to effectuate outcomes I've foreseen and which will require my influence.

Each dark pocket, in time, will be filled.

[...]

I don't lie.

Deception is only necessary for those like you to achieve their objectives.

I play with my cards face up.

Isn't it funny how during our various matches, I can tell you what my moves will be in advance, and still win?

Vriska, angered by this, does in fact plan to kill Aradia; Not much point in living with all these moaning spooks just to spite some guy you don't give a shit about. She can’t control Aradia because Aradia’s own powers get in the way, but there are other people she can use.

How about this guy? Unfortunately, you can only control him about half the time.

Then again, that should be all the time you need.

Cut back to Aradia’s place, and she receives a message from Vriska, telling her her boyfriend is outside.

BRIGHT: Vriska also lightheartedly tells Aradia she’s sorry, and that she’ll make it up to ‘him’ someday. Presumably ‘he’ is meant to be Tavros, except that Vriska seemed to think Tavros was dead in literally the last conversation she had. This is probably just a slip-up on Hussie’s part, but it’s possible to read this as Vriska referring to a different ‘he’ entirely, considering what’s about to happen.

CHEL: Aradia looks, and sees a figure hovering telekinetically over the fields....

Note what’s in his hand. You do not under any circumstances eat the mind honey… His eyes start flashing and Aradia looks afraid, but we suddenly cut to a view of Alternia, and then to a closeup of its green moon. The prompt instructs us to Be the white text guy, and we meet him in a very familiar-looking green mansion.

You try to be the white text guy, but fail to be the white text guy. No one can be the white text guy except for the white text guy.

The white text guy is known as Doc Scratch.

He is an officer of an indestructible demon known as Lord English. His job is to pave the way for the arrival of his master, who will be summoned upon the termination of the universe. He has worked at this task for many centuries, and will continue to do so until THE GREAT UNDOING.

Scratch is Alternia's FIRST GUARDIAN. Every planet destined for intelligent life has such an entity meant to protect it, and facilitate the planet's ultimate purpose. A first guardian is typically almost as old as the planet itself, and each has a unique, circuitous origin through the knots of paradox space. They can be born into a great diversity of forms, though they all share a common, especially potent genetic sequence.

Remember Rose’s MEOW book, and how DD used it to create Becquerel? Yep.

The code grants them near omnipotence, and when merged with a host of great intelligence, near omniscience as well.

BRIGHT: Only near-omniscence, however. Scratch is surprised to find Terezi contacting him, but he’s able to work out that she got Sollux to help pretty fast:

Occasionally I discover there are things I have not always known.

It gives me the opportunity to make deductions, which are practically always flawless.

It's gratifying.

He also suggests she call him ‘Mr. Vanilla Milkshake’, and then hints that Aradia might not be straightforwardly dead by stating that Sollux and Terezi believe she is dead, and will soon believe she is not, both of which are true statements about their beliefs rather than reality.

Props to Hussie on this: I’m pretty sure every Homestuck fan wants to punch Scratch in the face. He’s just so obnoxious.

Terezi, however, refuses to let Scratch keep derailing her for long. She wants Scratch to get involved in their feud again, and she has a good reason for him: She knows how Vriska’s been able to come so close to beating Scratch in their games lately. Before she can tell him, though, she needs to talk to Vriska again.

She starts by asking how Vriska feels about killing Aradia, after she promised not to. Vriska responds with dramatic insincerity about how she feels awful, and then says Terezi should be happy that Team Charge is out of the picture.

AG: Uuuuuuuugh, what do you want from me????????

GC: 1M NOT SUR3

GC: 1 GU3SS 1M LOOK1NG FOR SOM3 R34SON TO CH4NG3 MY M1ND

GC: 1 DONT KNOW WH4T YOU C4N S4Y TH4TLL DO 1T

GC: 1 SORT4 HOP3 TH3R3S SOM3TH1NG THOUGH

In the end, there isn’t. Terezi tells Vriska she’ll be dead in a couple of minutes, and to ‘CONSULT W1TH YOUR L1TTL3 4DV4NT4G3’ if she doesn’t believe it, then leaves the conversation.

Vriska’s little advantage turns out to be a MAGIC CUE BALL, which is similar to a magic 8 ball except that it’s predictions are specific and accurate, and it lacks a portal through which the user can read said predictions. Fortunately that’s not an obstacle for Vriska: Her VISION EIGHTFOLD allows her to see through the opaque casing.

CHEL: Vision Eightfold is the vision from the one of Vriska’s eyes which has seven pupils, which she covered with an eyepatch with seven rubies on it when she was FLARPing. Also remember that Jade had a Magic Cue Ball but couldn’t read it? Yeah, it’s another one.

BRIGHT: One other thing: According to rumour, it used to belong to the man on the moon.

As Vriska asks the cueball whether she should be worried about Terezi’s threat (answer: YES), Terezi lets Scratch know where his missing property has gone. Vriska asks the cueball how it’s going to happen…

I WILL EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE.

Boom.

This section is one of my favourite Terezi moments. It really shows off Terezi’s ability to outthink and manoeuvre people. She’s never spoken to Scratch before, but she still plays him against Vriska easily.

CHEL: This is why Vriska has a plain eyepatch and a robot arm in her future appearances, but she’s otherwise fine. Bluebloods are tough, apparently.

BRIGHT: Back in the future, Spidermom has survived the rubble falling on her, but just barely. Vriska puts her out of her misery with her magic dice, which summon up a massive guillotine and decapitate the lusus, drenching Vriska in spider blood.

GORE GALORE: 11

The decapitation sets off another landslide, sending Equius’s house straight down on Vriska’s head, but before it can land, a portal opens underneath it and transports it into the Medium.

Vriska promptly jumps on Trollian to freak out about this, because her plan depended on her getting Aradia’s surprise present from Equius to pass along and then Aradia and Vriska entering the Medium together, and never mind that a house was about to fall on her -- in fact, when Aradia points out that Vriska was about to die, Vriska accuses her of planning this. Aradia placidly agrees.

CHEL: This is part of my evidence for thinking Vriska might not be neurotypical. Not the priorities most people would have. Also, meanwhile, note that the lusii have the same blood colour as their charges, while the non-lusus animals Nepeta killed were black and had red blood. I’m not sure whether that’s a species trait, or a side effect of the weird bond between them (doesn’t make a lot of biological sense, but then this is basically fantasy with a sci-fi coat of paint).

Vriska is enraged by things not going the way she planned; her grand gesture of apology, the robot body, will now be handed over by Equius and not her, ruining her chance to be friends again with Aradia. Again, she doesn’t seem to understand how apologies work.

AA: were we ever really friends

AG: Yeah!!!!!!!!

AG: I don't know. I felt like we were even if you didn't think so.

AG: I guess I'm not very good at acting like a friend. Or saying stuff like, hey friend! You're my friend! It doesn't really occur to me.

For some strange reason related to her prototyping with the frog statue, Aradia types out “ribbit” into the chatbox, and informs Vriska she’s not on the Blue team as she expected, enraging Vriska further. Vriska accuses her of taking revenge, which Aradia denies, saying Vriska was always going to be on the Red team, and that she doesn’t care about her death.

AG: You're so infuri8ing! Why c8n't you just h8 me? It would 8e a lot easier th8t way.

AG: Or at least feel 8othered or annoyed or S8METHING! God!!!!!!!!

AG: May8e I sh8uld just rip my he8rt out of my chest and pound it to a 8loody pulp here on my desk with my sup8r strong ro8ot arm.

AG: Pound pound pound pound pound pound pound pound!

AG: Look at that, more nasty 8lue 8lood all over me. Why not! Might as well op8n the floodg8s and p8nt my whole hive with this oh so envia8le cerulean SWILL.

AG: 8ecause clearly it's up to me to feel em8tions for the 8oth of us, you misera8le soulless witch!

AA: 0_0

AG: I h88888888 you!

AG: H8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 haaaaaaaate!

AG: I only regret killing you cause it m8de you so 8ORING!!!!!!!!

AA: s0rry

Aradia assures her that the teams are meaningless, but being on the Red team will put Vriska in the position they need her in. Vriska’s confused and angry, and leaves the chat.

In Equius’ LAND OF CAVES AND SILENCE, he trolls Aradia again, telling her he will be the sole leader, which she doesn’t care about. He’s surprised she isn’t objecting, and says he needs a towel.

CT: D --> Never mind

CT: D --> I'm trying to stay professional about this

AA: ab0ut what

AA: what are y0u talking ab0ut

CT: D --> Forget it

CT: D --> It's just pleasant to consort with one of lesser breeding who clearly understands her place

He’s been established to suffer from hyperhydrosis, but he’s clearly also supposed to be getting off on this, which, since he’s thirteen, is icky to read.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 12

It only gets worse.

CT: D --> I 100k forward to seeing how well you serve me, server player

AA: uh

AA: thats n0t quite the meaning 0f the w0rd server

CT: D --> What do you mean

AA: as y0ur server i manipulate y0ur envir0nment t0 help y0u advance

CT: D --> I don't understand

CT: D --> Are you

CT: D --> Are you saying

CT: D --> That

CT: D --> You are in a position of control over me

AA: i supp0se s0

CT: D --> Oh

AA: what

CT: D --> Oh my God

He babbles about how he needs fresh air or another towel, getting so agitated he actually drops an F-bomb, which he immediately covers up with “Fiddlesticks”. He says he wants to break something, and Aradia offers to break something for him, as she’s developed an interest in breaking things recently. Next page, she flings an “abluti0n trap” through his wall.

FAILURE ARTIST: The running gag of girls fucking up boy’s homes with bathroom appliances continues!

CHEL: He’s very happy, except about her commoner slang.

CT: D --> In fact, this is an order from your leader

CT: D --> Call things by their proper names

AA: what

AA: y0u want me t0 call it a bath tub

AA: that s0unds ridicul0us

As FA noted, this bit of worldbuilding ends up retconned out with all trolls calling things by strange rewordings later on.

Whatever it’s called, Equius asks her to throw it through the wall again. She asks if that’s an order, and he can’t decide.

CT: D --> You could cause quite a bother for me, with the power you wield

CT: D --> I can do nothing to stop you, peasant girl

CT: D --> It's so magnificently depraved

CALL CPA PLEASE: 13

Aradia ribbits again and he takes it for roleplaying, but commands her to continue to do as she pleases. He tells her he’s bringing the robot body, and muses on whether she should actually be co-leader again; in fact, he decides, she should be the actual leader, in secret, through him. She points out that’s what they’re doing anyway.

CT: D --> You take to authority well for one of your b100d

AA: i d0nt have bl00d

CT: D --> Not yet

CT: D --> But soon your heart will beat anew, and through it, fresh b100d and fresh passion

AA: 0_0

CALL CPA PLEASE: 14

Equius proceeds to STRONGJUMP right up to his first Gate, punching off an ogre’s head as he goes, and to STRONGFALL out into LOQAM, where Aradia waits. Equius hands over the robot and Aradia enters it; she seems happy, but Equius cautiously asks if she feels anything else.

EQUIUS: D --> Can you detect anything within you might describe as

EQUIUS: D --> Smoldering passion

[...]

ARADIABOT: 0h g0d

ARADIABOT: 0H MY G0D WHAT DID Y0U D0!

ARADIABOT: did y0u pr0gram this r0b0t t0 have feelings f0r y0u?

ARADIABOT: R0MANTIC FEELINGS???

EQUIUS: D --> Hrrrk

ARADIABOT: ANSWER ME BLUE BL00D SCUM

EQUIUS: D --> I

EQUIUS: D --> Yes

EQUIUS: D --> Uh

EQUIUS: D --> It's a chip in your heart

EQUIUS: D --> Is that not ok

Understandably, it is emphatically not.

GORE GALORE: 12

Now, this is undeniably a really, really, really creepy thing to do. I’m not sure how much blame can be applied to Equius here, though; he’s been raised in a society which would presumably tell him she would have to accept his advances no matter what, considering their caste difference. In a horrifying way, the chip might have been, in his mind, the nicer option. Still, as I said, creepy.

CALL CPA PLEASE: 15

BRIGHT: I think it’s telling that he asks if it’s not okay after Aradia freaks out, as though he honestly hadn’t considered that Aradia might have a problem with it. Specifically, up until that point, Equius seems to be interacting with Aradia more like she’s a prop than a person — it doesn’t seem to occur to him that she might not want what he wants, unless their wants conflict in a way that he finds titillating. Then she freaks out and he’s surprised. And that in turn speaks volumes about how lowbloods are viewed by highbloods in wider society.

Contrast Vriska, who absolutely realises that people down spectrum can have their own agendas and emotional reactions; she just does her own thing anyway. Vriska is actively malicious; Equius is, at least in this case, accidentally malicious. Note that he doesn’t make any effort to prevent her from removing the chip once he realises she’s distressed. (Not that he really gets a chance.)

Equius in particular also seems to have a problem about slotting people into roles in general -- he does it with Gamzee, too, although since Gamzee is higher-blooded than him, he has to at least face the fact that Gamzee doesn’t fit into his role. He comes across as very sheltered.

FAILURE ARTIST: Equius considers it such a good thing to be a highblood that he thinks he’s doing her the greatest favor by turning her into one.

CHEL: This also brings up the question of where he got all that blue blood. I hope it’s synthetic. If not, he’s already said he doesn’t kill animals, so I’m not sure whether it’s creepier if he killed another troll for it or if he slowly drained it off from his own.

Aradia’s not contemplating that, too busy crushing the artificial heart and slapping the shit out of Equius for multiple pages, before, er…

Yes, she’s apparently making out with him as a reward for violating her mind, even after the chip was removed.

BRIGHT: The first time I read Homestuck, I thought that was meant to imply that not all of the programming was gone.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie did confirm the programming was gone. He compared it to a failed roofying.

CHEL: This is a bit of a shock, but it makes somewhat more sense when we see more of troll culture, not long in the future. Still, right now it’s probably upsetting for a number of readers because that part of troll culture hasn’t been established, so…

CALL CPA PLEASE: 16

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 41

#Homespork #homestuck #review #reread #Let's read #homestuck meta #vriskourse

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superbatbigbang · 5 years

Text

The Superbat Big Bang 2019 Masterlist

We’ve officially come to the end of the 2019 edition of the bang. What a fantastic turnout we had: 27 teams posted, and all of our teams that went into art claims made it across the finish line. Our participants put in an amazing effort this year–I hope you’ll join us in giving everyone a hardy round of congratulations.

Click through and/or scroll down to see all of the work posted during the 2019 bang.

Week One

June 29th Detachment bonehandledknife, Sdiosb, SDeeyS (NSFW profile) Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 29k, Explicit (DCU) Bruce is politely poked in the cheek by a flying dick one night. Hijinks, and more worldbuilding than you can shake a dick at, ensue. fic on Ao3 | art by sdiosb | art by SDeeyS (NSFW) | masterpost — June 30th Again I Go Unnoticed Sam4265, TKodami Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor/Bruce Wayne, 42k, Explicit (Smallville) Bruce Wayne moved to Smallville when he was eight years old, beginning a friendship with Clark Kent that would come to define the world. But for now they’re just teenagers in love with all the wrong people, running in circles until they finally find their way to each other. fic on Ao3 | art on Ao3 | masterpost — July 2nd The Incandescent Rose truc, lesbidar Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Terry McGinnis/Dana Tan, 9k, Teen and Up (Batman Beyond) Terry McGinnis (the new Batman) impulsively asks marriage proposal advice from his mentor and grumpy father figure Bruce Wayne. When the older man describes a proposal in which he had been yelled at and abandoned, Terry can’t help investigate the matter by seeing some of Bruce’s most knowledgeable friends and family members. This search prompts someone else into action. fic on Ao3 | art on Ao3 | masterpost — July 4th Flowers in the Dustbin G.G. Kinko (Cheese_kun), magpiebee, SDeeyS Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 9.6k, Explicit (No Specific Continuity) Bruce, now in his early sixties and married for nearly twenty years, was caught off guard by a sudden thought that he suddenly hated the sight of Clark. In an attempt to salvage a marriage that was threatening to fall apart due to Bruce’s sudden indifference, he booked a vacation to remake the bond…from one landmark to the next. fic on Ao3 | art by magpiebee | art by SDeeyS | masterpost — July 5th Mercy for a dreamer Dino_Cattivo, Jayjayverse Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 25k, Not Rated (No Specific Continuity) Clark is happily married to Bruce. But his husband starts acting strange and Clark gets suspicious. At first Clark suspect Bruce of cheating but there is something bigger at work here affecting everyone around him. And Clark is set on finding out what it is. And with every piece of the puzzle he finds the situation just gets more confusing. Clark just wish he could wake up from all of this and go back to the times before everything fell apart. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost —

Week Two

July 7th The Game of Love Kaizokuhime, lovelastart Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 12k, Explicit (Alternate Universe) In WayneTech VR Augmented Gaming, a guild of superheroes has arisen who volunteer to help police that reality. One of these superheroes, Superman, has had a crush on his fellow member, Batman, for many years, but thus far has had little success on asking him out, even as fellow guildmembers. How will their relationship progress? And how intimate can they truly become without knowing the other’s identity offline? fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — July 12th Recontre Icedlemon, Ms. 3, Santheum Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 13k, Teen and Up (DCU, Alternate Universe) Life has a way of bringing people together, even if they’re from different planets. fic on Ao3 | art by Ms. 3 | art by Santheum masterpost — July 13th The Opposite of Love Butterflyslinky, mirybdraws Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne, 10k, Explicit (Alternate Universe) Twenty years ago, Batman and Superman formed a bond to stop an alien threat. Now that Bruce wants to get married for real, he and Clark will have to travel to an alien planet to break that bond. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost —

Week Three

July 14th Clark Kent, of Krypton TerresDeBrume, stuvyx Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 98k, Mature (DCU, Alternate Universe) Batman crashes on Krypton a few days before the Turn of the Year celebrations and Kal-El’s life takes a sharp turn to the left, on a path that will ultimately lead him to becoming Clark Kent. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — July 15th Through a Glass Darkly susiecarter, lesbidar, Santheum Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 111k, Explicit (DCEU) Post-BvS AU: Batman killed Superman—and then Metropolis was wrecked by Doomsday, not long before Steppenwolf arrived and conquered the world with innumerable swarms of parademons. Bruce’s nightmare has come true, in every way but one: what’s left of humanity is fighting to survive in a hostile wasteland as Steppenwolf manipulates the power of a pair of mother boxes to gradually reshape the planet to serve his needs. But rumors of a threat that could be greater still are finally forcing Bruce to consider taking truly drastic steps. Like bringing Superman back from the dead. fic on Ao3 | art by lesbidar | art by santheum | masterpost — July 16th Bodyguard missigma, Ischa Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne/Female OC, 12k, Explicit (pre-New52 Comics) Today, it is not Batman who is under attack, but Bruce Wayne. Mired in a court battle, he fights to keep his company out of bankruptcy and himself out of jail. But that fight is quickly forgotten as he barely survives an assassination attempt. Clark rushes to his side in Gotham City. With the help of Dick Grayson, he comes to the terrifying conclusion that not only is someone trying to ruin Bruce Wayne, but that person must know his true identity. To protect Bruce, Clark appoints himself as his bodyguard. Despite Bruce’s protests, he accompanies him as Bruce attempts to rebuild his tattered reputation with a new business deal. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — July 18th Alternative Beginnings Ischa and Icalynn, with-your-poncho-on Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 25k, Explicit (Alternate Universe) In which Clark’s parents sell the farm and join the circus to keep Clark safe and Dick and Clark grow up as brothers. When Clark is sixteen he falls in love with the very handsome Thomas Kane–but as suddenly as Kane joins the circus he disappears, leaving Clark without a word and brokenhearted. Five years later they meet again in Gotham on the day Dick’s parents die. Clark, feeling guilty about letting the Graysons die and determined to not fail Dick, leaves the circus to get Dick back–and get some answers from Bruce Wayne. But of course Bruce Wayne isn’t the only one with secrets. Meanwhile Dick is out for revenge. He wants the man who killed his parents: Tony Zucco. Dick’s and the Batman’s paths are about to cross. fic on Ao3 | art on Ao3 | masterpost — July 19th I Would Go In Chains (Just To Set You Free) BatsAreFluffy, adumbtree-draws Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 23k, Teen and Up (No Specific Continuity) After an offworld mission goes horribly awry, Clark begins to wonder if the past is really behind him and Bruce. And what better way to deal with the issues than with planetary peace talks, forced transformations, and a psychic bond that doesn’t allow for lying? fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — July 19th I’ve Seen Your Flag On The Marble Arch minT (justiceleague), mirybdraws, Dino_Cattivo Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Diana Prince/Lois Lane, Past Clark Kent/Diana Prince, 18k, Mature (Animated Movie Verse) He draws Clark to sitting position and pulls him close, hands on either side of his head. He feels the rise and fall of Clark’s chest against his body, and he doesn’t let go because he needs to feel it, to be sure. There’s a crackle over their comms, and Barry’s voice cuts through the noise around them, jarring. “Holy shit, are Batman and Superman hugging?” A reimagining of the events of - and preceding - the Death of Superman, if Clark had fallen for Bruce instead of Lois. fic on Ao3 | art by mirybdraws | art by Dino_Cattivo | masterpost —

July 20th Faal Dovahkiinro Wund dippkip, liodain Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 19k, Teen and Up (Alternate Universe) Ever since that fateful day in Helgen, it seemed Clark’s life in Skyrim was doomed to be anything but simple. Dubbed “Dragonborn” but offered little guidance, Clark must muddle his way across the unpleasantly cold countryside with only his reticent friend Bruce for company. Together they will hunt down a serial killer, save a young boy’s life, and kill a few dragons along the way - all in a day’s work for the Dovahkiin. fic on Ao3 | art on Ao3 | masterpost —

Week Four

July 22nd A Knight’s Heart LilisBooks, carry-on-my-wayward-artblog, boomdeyadah Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne; Lex Luthor/Clark Kent (one sided), 15k, Mature (Alternate Universe) King Bruce is fighting a war he has no desire to be in whatsoever, especially since the war cost him more than he could’ve ever thought, just before it all began. Clark is just a knight fighting for what he has lead to believe is right, unsure of the reasons behind the war King Luthor has against all kingdoms. Is when these two men met that their beliefs are shaken to their core and the connection they share is more than it first leads the eye. This is a tale of knights and Kings, of war within kingdoms and a search for truth and justice with a tad of love along the way. fic on Ao3 | art by carry-on-my-wayward-artblog | art by boomdeyadah | masterpost — July 23rd A Beautiful Lie Killer_Rabbit_of_Caerbannog, JolBalrok Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, minor Clark Kent/Diana, minor Clark Kent/Lois Lane 16k, Explicit (DCEU with nods to Injustice) ‘Pet Sematary’ Barry had said, and Clark wonders if he’d somehow been right about that and he’d come back to life… wrong. False memories tangle with whispers in his head, a future Darkseid promises him, and through it all Clark tries to remember that in this world, his world, he doesn’t know what Bruce Wayne’s kisses taste like. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — July 24th Supplicant Holdt & spacewolfcub, Ms. 3 Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Pamela Isley/Bruce WayneBruce Wayne/Other(s)Clark Kent/Other(s), 51k, Explicit (DCEU Alternate Universe) The training and scars of Nanda Parbat run deep— Bruce has always fought the demons that make him want to stalk the night and rend pain unto the deserving. After a decade of trying to stay afloat, using BDSM as both punishment and moral compass, he turns to The Agency. Through them, he finds Mistress Ivy, whose Services help him keep ahead of the encroaching darkness… until he finds his lifeline gone without warning when Ivy’s extreme methods and poison play are revealed and she is exiled. The Agency has a reputation to uphold, secretive as they are. For years, they’ve offered him a chance at salvation—for a price. It is no different now and Bruce grasps desperately at their offer. Can the Service Provider known as Mr. S, the so-called “SuperDom,” help him rein in the Bat? fic on Ao3 | art on Ao3 | masterpost — July 25th The Words We Never Said Mechformers, susscx Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 13k, Explicit (DCEU) Bruce is done pining. It is time to move on, time to heal and live out the rest of his life away from the man of steel. But what is two lovesick puppies to do, when they both need each other, as they need air to live? Misunderstandings are bound to happen, feelings trampled and cast aside as the two greatest men alive try to figure out the ancient wonders of confessions. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — July 26th The Shape of my Heart Brenda, Selofain, carry-on-my-wayward-artblog (CrocInCros) Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 27k, Explicit (DCEU) Bruce is impossible, stubborn, willfully self-destructive, and so self-sacrificing it's a wonder he hasn't suffocated under the weight of it. And Clark is stupidly, dizzyingly, crazy about him. Or, post-Justice League, five things Clark learns about Bruce that make him go all heart-eyes, and the time he finally does something about it. fic on Ao3 | art by Selofain | art by carry-on-my-wayward-artblog | masterpost — July 30th The Greatest Way lesbidar, haljords (barrybinary), androbeaurepaire Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 17k, Teen an Up It’s Diana that ascertains their problem. She has an uncanny way of discovering truths that are best kept buried. After a year together, Bruce and Clark are having troubles. To save their relationship, they agree to answer a series of questions designed to foster emotional intimacy. It goes about as well as you’d expect. fic on Ao3 | art by haljords | art by androbeaurepaire | masterpost —

Amnesty

July 31st No More Heroes (In a World so Cold) ComposerofDiscord, SDeeyS Hernan Guerra/Kirk Langstrom, Pre Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 27k, Teen and Up (DCAU/Justice League: Gods & Monsters) Clark and Bruce are visited by an Amanda Waller from another world. She asks for their help with her Superman, Hernan Guerra, who has gone rogue. Clark accepts, and Bruce goes with him When they arrive, Clark wishes to see who Hernan is and what he has done, while Bruce investigates the day Hernan went berserk. With what Bruce has gathered from his investigation and what Clark has seen of Hernan, they must decide who they can trust in the GnM universe: Waller or Hernan, or is there something much larger at play? fic & art on Ao3 | masterpost — August 1st A Golden Bell Hung in My Heart cattyk8 Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 9k, Explicit (DCAU and DCEU Mashup) After finding themselves transported to Faerie, Superman and Batman must navigate an enchanted forest in order to get themselves back to their own plane of existence. Which would be easy enough—they’re not the World’s Finest for no reason, after all—if not for the fact that they’ve been cornered by a unicorn attracted by Superman’s virginity. Of course, who better to pop the Man of Steel’s cherry than Gotham’s Dark Knight? fic & banner on Ao3 masterpost — August 3rd that dwell in dust flirtygaybrit, g.g. kinko, TKodami Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 53k, Mature (DCEU) Things are different after Clark Kent returns to the world: tainted things are made beautiful once more, a long-dormant seed begins to grow, and eventually, nature reclaims its own. Or: Clark plants a garden, Victor keeps a terrible secret, and Bruce faces the consequences of bringing someone back from the dead. fic on Ao3 | art by TKodami | art by G.G. Kinko | masterpost — August 4th Extra Art for The Game (of Love) lovelastart Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, art only art of game characters | flying dance — August 4th Catch a Falling Star architeuthis, G.G. Kinko, mashimero Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, 22k, Explicit (DCEU) Bruce is in the middle of a stakeout when Clark returns from an offworld mission, full of ideas. fic on Ao3 | art by G.G Kinko | art by mashimero | masterpost — August 4th On The Cusp vesper_house, milki3way Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, Diana Prince/Lois Lane, 47k, Explicit (DCEU Alternate Universe) Clark’s life isn’t what he imagined it would be. Instead of having a flourishing journalism career, he makes coffe at the Typewriter - coffee shop owned by Lois, his old crush who’s currently dating Diana. He’s lonely, he’s broke, and the only thing that makes him happy is his charity work. However, it takes just one day to turn everything round. Internet fame, investigations, billionaires with secret identities and homeless cats follow through. fic on Ao3 | art on tumblr | masterpost — August 5th Rewrite the Stars crypt_mirror, albilibertea Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, ~20k, Explicit (DCEU Alternate Universe) Clark Kent the Superman, Bruce Wayne the Dark Knight, their soul marks fated them to be together. But fate and destiny seem to have other plans. Even as they play their part, they pay the price. Could they ever rewrite the stars? fic on Ao3 | art on Ao3 | masterpost —

Inktober & Art Prompt Challenge

alienswearglasses (ComposerofDiscord) | When All I Wanted Was You: Day 12, Restraint ariesnohope | Week Six: Snow Day carry-on-my-wayward-artblog | morning kiss, kryptonian styled batsuit, Couch Cuddle, Kidnapped!, Day Four: Rescue, Day Eight: Rainbows, Disco! dino_cattivo | Day One: Capes, Day Four: Rescue, Day Five: Space, Day Eight: Rainbows, Day Nine: Sun, Day Ten: Watchtower, Day 11: Feat of Strength, Day 13: New Costume, Day 15: Interrupted, Day 16: Bat Gadgets, Day 17: Kryptonite, Day 18: Blindfolds, Day 20: Last Son of Krypton, Day 22: Tentacles, Day 23: Flying Together, Day 25: On a Farm, Day 26: Tender Embrace, Day 29: Inopportune Robin, Day 30: Low Effort Joke, Day 31: Soft Vore kaizokunohime | Day One: Capes, Day Two: Masks, Day Four: Rescue lovelastart | stabbed, Day Two: Masks ms. three | superbat practice, Day One: Capes, Day Two: Masks, Day Three: Costume Switch, Day 12: Restraint sdeeys | Good Morning Kiss+Manly beard, Day Six: Teamwork, Suit Porn + Swing Dance, Day Three: Costume Swap, Day 12: Restraint, Day 31: Soft Vore steals-thyme | Week One: beards (manly), Week Two: Kidnapped! sunaddicted | Day One: Capes, Day Three: Costume Switch, Day Five: Space, Day Six: Teamwork, Day Seven: Alleyway, Day Nine: Sun, Day 12: Restraints, Day 13: New Costumes, Day 14: Notebook Doodle, Day 15: Interrupted, Day 16: Bat Gadgets, Day 17: Kryptonite, Day 18: Blindfolds, Day 19: Bad Disguises, Day 20: Last Son of Krypton, Day 21: The Dark Knight, Day 22: Tentacles, Day 23: Flying Together, Day 24: A Stately Manor, Day 25: On a Farm, Day 26: Tender Embrace, Day 27: :peach emoji:, Day 28: NSFW Bars in unlikely places, Day 29: Inopportune Robin, Day 30: Low Effort Joke, Day 31: Light Vore

And that is it for the 2019 Superbat Big Bang! Please be sure to drop our authors and artists kudos, likes, and reblogs and let them know how much you enjoyed their hard work!

#superbat #superbat big bang #sbb2019 #clark x bruce #hernan x kirk #masterlist #sbb 2019

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popculturespiritwow · 5 years

Text

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #27: OB-SESSION

After many months, I’m back! Sorry for the long silence. Life=Crazy=Sorry.

I’m planning over the next couple weeks to post summaries of the rest of Imperial Phase I & II and then hopefully I’ll catch up soon after that. It’s hard to believe there’s only a few more issues left. (Nooooooooooo.)

I’ve actually held off reading the most recent couples issues until I’ve gotten back onto this, so if as we go you’re wondering how it is I don’t already know this or that, that is how. I think the last issue I read had all kinds of crazy reveals about Baal. Speaking of which...

BAALER (I Hate Myself for this Title But There You Are)

The big reveal of issue 27 is that Baal has some kind of magic super secret voodoo he can use to stop the Great Darkness. It builds on last issue, where we learned he’d not only been previously briefed on the GD by Ananke but seen his father murdered by it. It’s also the beginning of another shoe dropping, except we don’t really know what gets squished beneath it for another eight issues and two specials and like a year of reading time so it doesn’t seem like a shoe so much as a hmm, that’s mysterious, I’m sure it’s fine, shall we rave then?

I love the visual structure of this page, the way it uses repetition to express the passage of time and also distance to simultaneously demonstrate our own distance as readers from whatever horrible nightmare things are going on and to minimize those events. (It’s so small; whatever it is, it couldn’t be that bad, could it?)

(Baal, what have you done...)

I also like how Baal’s “reassurance” to Mini repeats his mother’s words from last issue--“It is what it is,” but then adds on in a way that sounds like the sort of ‘steel yourself for nightmares’ mantra learned from everyone’s favorite grandmonster. Even as it gives Baal an adult-sounding stoicism, it also makes him sound like a little boy.

And speaking of Baal’s complicated relationships with children: Had we been told before now that Mini ascended just a month after him? It strikes me as a brilliant move on Ananke’s part. Right from the start she’s set up her replacement self as a little sister for Baal to protect.

Two issues in a row we’ve got Mini as the seeming target of the Great Darkness bug fiesta. Is that because it knows who she really is/will be? Is the GD somehow in league with Ananke, and the attacks on Mini are just another way of keeping everyone thinking of her as Everybody’s Favorite Divine Lil Sis? Or does this, too, have something to do with Baal? Could it be that it’s actually Baal and not Laura that is well and truly cursed?

TOPOGRAPHICAL FLUIDITY

The heart of issue 27 is the five double-page spreads in which the standard left to right, up to down of Western comic storytelling slowly breaks down. On the first splash we’ve got a Laura/Sakhmet story riding the top, then the lower three quarters of each page telling their own stories (though really it’s the continuation of Baal’s story from page one to two). The second spread flips the structural arrangement, but now the left and the runner are continuing a story while on the right page we’re with Laura and Baph and Laura’s sister and ow oh God that hurts to read.

The pages continue to shift and change from there, with one section always following Laura, at least one following Dio/Cass at the rave, and the other one or two checking in on what other characters are up to.

The thing I love about the approach is how it speaks to the disintegration within the group that Laura ordained with her choice of “Anarchy” last issue. We’re not in complete collapse by any means, we can definitely follow the narratives, but the idea that these characters are starting to go in different directions is literally demonstrated in the structure of the page.

And also in the way the pages alter the visual language of Dio’s earlier rave (from issue 8). We’ve got the same 16 block grid structure, but it’s twice as dense; now every block contains an actual story panel, as compared to half for most of 8, with the other half used for the ongoing rave 1-2-3-4 countdowns.

Whereas issue 8′s dance pages had a sort of expansiveness, a sense of the rave as the overriding context that the story panels are just a part of, in 27 we’ve lost all that. In fact the rave is only one small part of what’s going on, even as its grid and color frames remain. (It’s interesting to see the rave visual style used as well for what precedes and follows it; it’s like the energy of the rave is starting to bleed out beyond the confines in which it makes sense.)

It’s also worth noting the rave in issue 8 ends with different members of the Pantheon one after another finishing Dionysius’ sentence, as though all one person. Another great contrast with the never-united narratives of issue 27.

But you know, even seeing how issue 27 offers an intensifying deterioration of the rave joy feel of issue 8, I still easily get lost in the visual dance of its two page spreads. I think it’s those bright frames; they just read to me as “fun”. (Apparently I’d be all good living in a prison camp as long it was decorated with Christmas lights.)

One moment does really snap me out of it, though:

No matter how bad things have gotten, Drunk Child Star Mini feels very unexpected. Plus who is she talking to? The camera team? Herself? Ananke Within?

(Actually, going back to issue 8 I realize we get a similar moment where out of the blue the story cuts to Minerva, talking directly to the camera with that same combination of ‘Don’t mind me.” and “Life sucks.”

So she’s almost certainly talking to their documentary squad.)

Mini drinking is not the worst thing we see in these pages by any means.

Ow. Ow. Oh God, Oh God it hurts.

But somehow that Mini moment (that mini Mini?) (#sorrynotsorry) is the moment I find most off key.

ONE MORE ONE MORE TIME

Hmm. That comparison between the two Mini moments has got me thinking...

You know, give me a second...

*time passes*

So hey, I’m back. I just went back through the rave in issue 8. Here are some of its major beats:

Dio tries to help Laura let go.

Laura becomes a part of everything going on.

Laura talks about her family and sketches them in light.

Cassandra cannot connect.

Sakhmet and Laura look each over and then start dancing together.

Woden watches.

Mini is left out.

The Morrigan warns Laura about getting too into Baphomet.

Everyone unites around Dio’s thought of making people’s lives better, because the end is coming soon.

Each of those beats is returned to issue 27.

Dio tries to help Cassandra let go.

Laura tries to disconnect from everything that’s happened.

Laura thinks about when she got Baphomet to create an illusion of her family.

Cassandra finally connects, saying “You’re full of stars”, which is what Laura said to her at the rave in issue 8. But then she rejects the connection.

Laura, now with Sakhmet, wonders what’s the worst thing she could do to her.

Woden watches. (Jamie uses the very same image.)

Mini is still left out, and now drinking.

Laura gets too into Baphomet, and now Baphomet is locked away with the Morrigan.

Cassandra rejects the connection.

There’s a little more in each rave than that (Woden plotting, Woden calling for a hook up, Baal and Inanna), but you gotta love the way the parallels show those stories having progressed (and not for the better).

(Also, I know Dio is on life support at this point, but man it feels like there should be one more cast rave, doesn’t it? Jonesing for my rule of threes.)

LOCK STEP

In the final pages we shift to two pages of a sort of call and response; on the left side we get David telling us what’s “really going on”, aka in year two the gods lose it, and on the right we cut back to each god in their own version of doing that, and ending on the punch line of Cassandra.

She’s the one god who seems to have her head well and truly on straight, the adult in the room, but here she is just staring silently at what has been her white whale the whole issue, Ananke’s Murderous Mystery Machine.

Gillen’s notes on this moment are familiar, chilling and wonderful:

Comrade Rossignol, my old partner in crime, game developer and co-writer on The Ludocrats, and I have a line we tend to quote to one another. It’s a paraphrase of a quote from Ballard: ‘My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.’

We quote it as: ‘Stay true to your obsessions and your obsessions will be true to you.’

It’s basically been our respective careers’ magnetic north, but there’s certainly times when I wonder how good it’s proved for us as human beings.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

You could easily go from Cassandra staring silently up to the spooky final full page spread of her white whale itself. But instead Gillen gives us an extra six panel page first. It seems puzzling; we don’t really need to have David ask “Are you okay?” We already know that Cass isn’t, and that she doesn’t know it.

But for me what makes that page so important is that it gives the other Norns the chance to ask David about their own fate. Imperial Phase I has taken Skuld and Verdandi from silent back-up singers to real emotional partners with Cass, indeed the dominants to her submissive. By presenting us with the question of their fate we’re reminded of the fullness of their humanity; their lives are just as valuable as that of Cass.

Their question also plays very much to Gillen’s comment about the destructive impacts of artistic obsession. These gods don’t just hurt themselves; they put their families, their fans, their friends at risk. What will Skuld and Verdandi do when those dangers come for them, one wonders...?

#wicdiv #kieron gillen #jamie mckelvie #Hoping for a Skuld and Verdandi sitcom spinoff #matt wilson is the god of colors

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milkytcake · 6 years

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Shigaraki x reader Chpt. 2 (Fluff)

Reader-chan is a innocent civilian who "unfortunately" falls in love with our Tomura Shigaraki.

Sensei isn't the only person Tomura treasured. He never mentioned you to the League but Kurogiri knew. He met you accidentally at the store one day. It was nothing significant or something that caused a scene, he was waiting for his turn at the butcher. Kurogiri just happen to watch you hummed to yourself typing on your phone. He had to take two, no, maybe four glances to make sure he knew what he was looking at. It was you and Shigaraki in a photo together. You were giving Shigaraki a peck on the cheek. Kurogiri never see Shigaraki intimate or friendly with someone else especially a girl.

'Shi-SHIGARAKI TOMURA?!' Kurogiri was screaming in his head making him slightly dizzy. It was quite a shock, who would of thought Shigaraki would have the time and patience for romance. Trying to calm himself he thought to strike up a conversation.

Kurogiri found out your name and you weren't anything as he imagined you would be. Well, he didn't know what type of significant other Shigaraki would have to be honest. Y/n L/n, seemed to be a easy person to read. You weren't a pro hero just a civilian. You almost seemed normal except... your boyfriend was Shigaraki Tomura, the leader of the League of Villains. He wanted to pry into your reasoning why you chose to be with him but he decided that it was rude of him. If Shigaraki never mentioned you, then he had a good reason, right?

(Later, at the bar/hideout)

Shigaraki was reading the newspaper at the counter. Dabi sat on the couch with Toga asking him some questions for a quiz she was taking on her phone. "Dabi, are you a introvert or a extrovert?" Toga asked. Dabi sighed, "What do you think?" Throwing his head back on the couch, clearly not interested. "Extrovert! What traits would you most likely want in your partner?" "I don't know, a nice face and ass." "You're a whore Dabi. I agree!" Twice pipped in jumping on the couch with Dabi. "What? There's nothing wrong with a guy that has his preferences. I would like to show off my girl to other guys who can't even fuck her. Or even get a chick." Dabi jestured to Shigaraki who had his back to the group. Shigaraki ignored the comment. Kurogiri cocked his nonexistent eyebrow at him. Normally Kurogiri would ignore shenanigans but was curious since he knew a secret about their leader. He has yet brought up his meeting with Y/n to Shigaraki.

"Shut up Dabi! One day, Shigaraki will find a bloody maiden to sweep him off his feet!" Toga cooed. "Yeah chicks can't see how handsome he is with that hand! He's too hideous to love." Shigaraki decayed the newspaper in hand, "Shut up you idiots. Aren't you two suppose to be on a job right now?" Toga perked up, "Oh yeah! Leggo Twice, let's go hunt some cuties~!" Twice followed the young girl out the bar door.

Dabi turned to Shigaraki, "Welp, I got a date tonight. 'Cya mop head." He got up walk out the door, "Oh yeah? Who's the lucky guy?" Shigaraki sneered behind the hand. Dabi stuck the bird at Shigaraki who in turn flipped off him. There was a quiet moment after the bar door closed shut. "Does anyone know?", Kurogiri started. Shigaraki gulped down his drink, "Huh?". Kurogiri smirk to himself as he cleaned the now empty glass. "I met her yesterday. I never thought you would have a someone... let alone a girl like her." The blackmist looked up at him seeing one of Shigaraki's red eyes peeking through his hair and 'Father'. He was scratching his neck, obviously irritated. "... 'the hell you mean a girl like her? Stay away from Y/n Kurogiri." Kurogiri chuckled at the nervous male in front of him. Of course Shigaraki would be possessive. Now it made sense to why he kept her a secret. He wanted her all to himself. "I apologize Tomura Shigaraki. I'm actually pleased, there's nothing wrong in having a significant other. Do you keep her away from the danger you can bring? I can understand that but I doubt that's why." Shigaraki ceased his nervous habit, "I tried but she wouldn't leave me alone." Kurogiri replied by tilting his misty head a bit. "At first, I wanted nothing to do with her because she would be a distraction. But somehow we just kept bumping into each other and I was even more distracted! It was so irritating! I thought about killing her. The next time we met, it was the sixth time that month." He replayed the scene in his mind.

(Flashback)

You held an umbrella over your h/c hair while waving to Shigaraki, obviously happy that you bumped into him yet again. He was soaked in his hoodie and you happen to see him across the rainy street. Shigaraki irks and thought how easily he could kill you right now. No one was around the area. His fingers twitched in his pocket ready to strike out and set all 5 of his fingers on your pretty neck. But as he watch you jogged to his gaunt hooded figure, he felt that weird stomach flip he would get when he saw you. Your face was gleaming and not a bit scared. It was clear that you wanted him by that innocent smile on your face. He chuckled lowly as he made his decision. 'This is has to be fate... She's doomed with me.' Shigaraki grinned widely and he felt elevated as he started to walk towards you as well.

(Flashback Ends)

"Does y/n know about your affiliations?" Kurogiri inquired in a serious tone. "Of course she does! Why wouldn't she? I don't beat around the bush that's annoying. I'm an honest guy after all!" Shigaraki waved him off. "When are you going to introduce her to the league then?" Blackmist was pushing Shigaraki but he couldn't stop his prodding, he was too curious now. "One day, now leave me alone Kurogiri." "....Don't you think it's inevitable. She's bound to be caught up. We could use her-"

"No, don't you dare ever think of that again! I can't use her." Shigaraki was pissed off now. "You mean you can't lose her, Tomura Shigaraki?" Kurogiri was pleased maybe a bit too much. This was too good, Kurogiri felt like he needed something interesting in his life instead of the mundane. The blue haired man was seething but he decided he still needed the warp gate for his future plans. Getting up and slamming the door, Shigaraki left for his apartment, wishing he can just go to your apartment. You had this refreshing air about you.

(The next day)

"It seems like a waste of time." Dabi was leaning against the wall. They were about to head over to one of the most popular areas in the city. "We need to keep ourselves in the spotlight. Everyone needs to fear that we are in their everyday lives. When we head out, we will leave our signature mark. Dabi leave fires to spread about the area. Toga, this time I will allow you to stab someone. Mr Compress, I don't need to remind you your role in this, as well as you Magne." Shigaraki was cocksure in this promising mission. It was a simple in and out job but with a significant mark in society. "Kurogiri will wait for you in your designated area for the warps back here. Twice you are our backup plan, if a hero is in pursuit, clone us and lure them away." Toga was already transformed into a different person, excited to finally be able to draw blood. "Got it boss! Let's go I can't wait~!" "This is going to be awesome! A total shitshow!" Twice fist bump and posing. Kurogiri opened different portals for each individual. "Showtime folks!" Compress rallies his teammates and they all walked in the portals.

Each member of the team stepped into the open. They were at a city park that had traveling amusement rides. Tents, stalls of merchandise as well. It was the perfect environment. Families, children were here, thinking to be safe. There was indeed some heroes patrolling the area, they had to be hidden in the crowds. Dabi was waiting by a stall pretending to be on his phone. He had a different coat with a long sleeves to hide the patchwork on his arms and chest. He wore a sanitary mask that covered the bottom half of his face.

Shigaraki wore his black hoodie, hands in his pocket. He was scanning the area as he pretended to look at merchandise. His job was to warn any of his members of pro heroes heading towards where they were located. Mt. Lady was in his line of sight, she was heading to where Dabi was at. He started to trail her.

Dabi silently put his hand on a near stall ready to light up the area. He felt his phone buzz from a text. It was from Shigaraki letting him know he was trailing Mt. Lady and they were heading to where he was at. Dabi tsk'd and put his hand in his pocket as cries were heard from children telling their parents there was someone bleeding from the rides. 'I'm guessing Toga found her victim already' He thought as he walked swiftly to blend in with the crowd.

Shigaraki and Dabi met up walking towards the outside of the park. They tried to look normal, a couple of guys hanging out but was quite difficult. They were not meant to be friends. "Damn, Twice wasn't kidding. You're face is gross." Dabi commented. Their leader wasn't able to wear the hand on his face. Only his hoodie and hair covered his face partially. "Fuck off staple face. Don't piss me off. We need to -" Shigaraki barked back but Dabi interrupted him by motioning his head towards someone, "She keeps looking our way." Dabi stated. Shigaraki glanced, a young adult female had a small smile on her face walking towards them. Dabi step forward to great the girl but she made a b-line Shigaraki. "Tomura-kun! I didn't expect to see you here!" You stood in front of him shyly, hands behind your back, you were happy to see him. "What are you doing here Y/n?? You can't be here..." Shigaraki was still, he wasn't thinking you'd be here.

Dabi was dumbfounded. The hot chick went for handyman? He felt like he was in a prank show right now. "You know her Shigaraki??" Dabi started. But you ignored the black haired stranger staring up at Shigaraki. "Shut it Dabi" scratching his neck. You preceded to talk, "I did sent you a text this morning saying I got the day off today and maybe we could spend time together... or have a date night finally." Shigaraki shifted his weight feeling a bit aggravated. He didn't like that Dabi was seeing and hearing his Y/n.

"Tomura-kun are you "working" right now?" You quoted lowering your voice, clearly knowing why he was here.

"Clear the area! There's villains on the loose! Don't panic and stay near a hero in the meantime 'till we captured them and clear the fires." Pro hero Jeanist yelled at the crowd that starting running to where the heroes are. "I saw the guy who started the flames!" A random civilian yelled and then gave Jeanist a description of Dabi. Shigaraki gears turned in his head remembering the plan. 'Right now Mange and Kurogiri will be waiting at the retreat location. I need to get there quickly.' But you acted before him, hooking your arm and steering him to the street in a calm manner to not draw attention. Dabi as well started walking in the other direction, scattering.

You manage to find a alleyway and released Shigaraki's arm a bit flustered by the proximity. He pouted, almost vocalizing a small whine as you let go of his arm, not wanting the feeling to leave. Yells and footsteps were being heard coming towards them.

Acting quickly and you pulled him against you, your back against the wall, hands on his upper back as his fisted hands on the wall by your head. His hood did a good job of masking both your faces, leaving outsiders to their imagination. You stared up into wide his bright red eyes peaking through his messy light blue hair. He watched you with childlike wonder, he felt your soft breathe fan against his face and he involuntarily licked his chapped ones. Shigaraki could almost taste you but didn't dare close the gap, he wanted to savor the moment. It was a bit inappropriate at the time but he couldn't help but imagine you kissing him greedily while squirming underneath him.

Your face was pink and warm. It was so intoxicating to be this close to Tomura. Everything about him made you feel alive. Your eyes looked at every detail on his face to burn the imagine in your mind. Intense red eyes with a scar down his right one, the area around his eyes were weary, worn down. His nose was shaped nicely, his wide scarred mouth was slightly opened and you thought he was holding his breathing. Shigaraki's breathe was shaky as he felt your hand on his face, trailing down. You could get used to this feeling of rush, romanticizing the whole situation you were in; pro heroes searching for you as if you created a felony.

"You two!" You two jumped when hearing Jeanist cough. You pulled away with a blushing face, looking to the hero. "It's dangerous here. You should head home." Jeanist warned and ran into another direction. Shigaraki stool still for a second watching you before pulling out his phone. After a minute of hearing him text, a warp appeared.

(At the bar)

Toga was back in her normal attire covered in a bit of blood, twirling like a child. Everyone was back in the hideout and the tv was on, watching the news. Kurogiri notices the new person in the room, and you waves when you recognize him. But you followed Shigaraki closely, staying behind him in attempt to hide from the strangers in the room. While the news reported that their mission was a success for scaring the public, everyone was more interested in you. "Ooooh Tomura kun, who's this cutie here? I'm Himiko Toga! What's your name?" Toga was practically jumping up and down in your face. "I'm Y/n..." "Hi Y/n! Let's talk about boys!" Tomura lazily sat down on his favorite bar stool crossing his legs,"Hey, fuck off brat."

"Yeah who is this Shigaraki? A hostage? A friend? Wait, you don't have friends loser!" Twice put his hand on his chin in a dramatic expression. "Y/n is a guest and everyone will treat her well. She's valuable to Tomura Shigaraki. " Kurogiri announced to the league. You smiled a bit to everyone, taking in their faces as Kurogiri introduced you. "So wait, does she know who were are...?" Twice continued. "She apart of us Twice." Shigaraki turned in a his seat a bit towards everyone, his hoodie still on. "Please sit lady Y/n." Kurogiri gestured to a sit next to your boyfriend. You blushed from the weird title, a bit confused. "You don't need to say that Kurogiri." "I felt that it's a appropriate with your relation to Tomura Shigaraki." You were still flustered as you sat on the stool. "Hey, hey! I don't want everyone to know about that!" Tomura pointed at the mist man. "Huh? What do you mean Tomura kun..." You pouted sadden, thinking about your insecurity. "Hey now Y/n that's not what I'm saying!" Shigaraki carefully worded turning to you.

"Then what did you mean Tomura kun?" Toga was eavesdropping in the conversation. She hopped to sit on the bar counter next to you. "He meant that he's fucking the new chick Toga and Mop head doesn't want everyone to know." Dabi suddenly said from his place on the couch. Silence took over the bar. Everyone ceased their individual conversations to look at the couple. Shigaraki was shaking in anger and you were a tomato. "WHAT?! SHIGARAKI'S NOT A VIRGIN?!" Twice was yelling now. Toga got super excited, kicking her feet like a child giggling. "So Tomura kun has a super cute girlfriend now!" "WAIT. DOES THIS MEAN THAT SHE'S THE MOM?! That won't stop me from asking her out." Twice asked Toga doing his antics. "Daddy Tomura kun and mommy Y/n chan!" Toga exclaimed.

Shigaraki chosed to ignore the idiotic madness behind him, "That is why I didn't want to tell them. Kurogiri give me a drink, the usual." "Yes Tomura Shigaraki. Y/n would you like a drink?" Kurogiri asked while preparing Shigaraki's drink. You could only nod in embarrassment. "Could you give me a vodka soda?" When Kurogiri placed it in front of you, you downed it. It burned down your throat but you didn't care. "Give her another Kurogiri!" Toga exclaimed. You shook your head, "I'm a light weight I shouldn't go too far" You already started to feel the warmth from the alcohol. "It's okay~ Tomura kun doesn't mind you a bit tipsy right?" Toga clasped her hands together, almost pleading. Shigaraki took the hood of his head as you thought a bit and replied, "Well, why not?" Toga cheered, "We're suppose to be celebrating! I finally stabbed someone today! I thought I was going to go crazy from not doing that in 2 weeks." Dabi sighed loudly from the dramatic irony.

Another drink was placed in front of you and it tasted worse than the first one. But you forced it down your throat and Toga clapped. Shigaraki watched as you grimaced to yourself with a slightly blush across your face from the alcohol. He knew you didn't drink a lot for a reason but he found it amusing that you were such a light weight.

"Oh Y/n what's your quirk? Tomura kun what's Y/n's quirk?" Toga asked. Shigaraki never asked about your quirk. He found out by looking into your records he attained. So he just shrugged to feint ignorance, waiting for you to reply with interest. "I can make stuff with my energy; creation. Here let me show you." You got up off the stool also tripping from the swaying. Lifting your arms, a ball of pink energy emerged and slowly morphed into a shape of a knife. Holding it in your hand you threw it to the wall of the hideout, landing next to Twice's head in a thump sound who jumped in fear. Toga cheered and Compress clapped. The lizard named, Spinner, complimented you saying how you would be a great asset to the team. "Oh I can do more!" You started feeling giddy from excitement from the people around you, particularly Tomura. "Tomura, I can also make guns! Oh and shields!" You molded a pistol, and twirled it around your finger before aiming at Twice again. For some reason it was fun to scare the male. "OH CMON MOM! NOT COOL. I'll be your good boy, baby." Twice winked. Shigaraki grabbed the self-made weapon from your hand, "Can you create bullets as well?" His interest was piqued. Maybe he could use you for future planning. "I can but it's harder because of how small they are..." He looked back at you after he decayed the gun away. "Y/n that's a cool quirk! I wanna show you my quirk! But to do so I need your blood~!" Toga jumped. "No." Shigaraki instantly replied for you after getting up from the stool walking to the door, "Let's go Y/n. I'm getting bored here." "Aww, wait Y/n gimme your number and I'll give you mine!" Toga shoved her cell to you and you clumsily put your number in as she did the same on your phone. You caught up to him as he was putting his hood over his head.

You got home with Shigaraki trailing after you. Closing your entry door, you locked it and put your shoes away. Shigaraki made himself at home, as always, taking off his hoodie, throwing it on the arm of the couch before falling heavily on it. You made your way to the kitchen to get a full glass of water and walked to your bedroom. It was a bit messy with clothes thrown about and you quickly put your bras and nightwear in the dresser so a certain someone doesn't see them. The tv was clicked on in the other room. 'He must be checking the news' you thought to yourself as you changed into shorts and a t-shirt. Wearing jeans all day can get uncomfortable. Cracked, wheezy laughter was heard from the other room. You shook your head at him to yourself. Letting your hair down and brushing it, you walked back to the living room. "Look Y/n! They're still talking about it!" Shigaraki looked grinned widely as he got up to approach you, engulfing you in his arms, and his hands fisted.

Dating Shigaraki for a few months made you realize a few things about him. He was a mad driven man with a dangerous goal. That didn't stop you from being infatuated with the blue haired male. It made you want him more. He was so sure of himself and you loved that about him because you were indecisive. Sometimes he would have these bursts of emotions and it made him self mutilated his neck at times. It seems the only way to stop him was to reassure him. Taking in his scent and returning the embrace, he spoke in a hushed tone. "Say Y/n. You won't leave me right? You'll stay by my side." To other people it sounded whiny to ask that but it made you putty in his arms. He was such a infamous dangerous villain and he was basically telling you he needed you with him and you didn't have a choice. You pulled away a bit to look at his bare face. "I'll be with you no matter what Tomura. I want to help you achieve your goals." His face instantly brightened, smiling ear to ear, "Good! That's good Y/n." He released you from his gripped and he sat back down on the couch. As you made your way to the kitchen, you asked if he was hungry. After a reply no, you grabbed your leftover noodles and ate it next to him quietly as he flipped through the channels.

Shigaraki kept quiet as his thoughts ran through what happened today. But he was caught up in that alleyway. You two never shared a kiss. A surge of overwhelming thoughts consumed him and he found himself scratching his neck. It was actually out of character for Tomura to be quiet. He was actually a talkative guy, especially with someone he didn't mean being around. So you knew something was bothering him. Finishing up your food, you walked to the kitchen to put the dishes away. "Is something wrong Tomura?" After a minute of no reply, you decided he needed a second to himself. Maybe he was thinking of a plan for the League. As you were brushing your teeth in the bathroom, you heard him finally say something but you couldn't understand since you were away from him. Walking back into the living room he repeated himself, "I want to kiss you. Why haven't we kissed yet?" You froze in place from the sudden question. It wasn't that you didn't want to kiss him, it was the complete opposite. You were dying to taste him but was too shy to initiate it.

You struggled to squeak out an answer and he glared at you. Shigaraki felt a bit betrayed and angry. "You don't want to. Of course." "N-no no! That's not it at all! Tomura I-" "Shut up." He started to get up but you grabbed his shirt to prevent him from storming out. You hugged him from behind. "I just never kissed someone before..." You shyly confessed, buried your face on his boney back.

Shigaraki almost didn't believe a single word you said. How could someone so beautiful to him never be touched? Though... he can relate you to since he himself never shared a kiss before. He was honestly waiting for you to initiate the kiss. Knowing this sensitive information, he felt his chest flutter in excitement. "So that means everything about you... I will only be the one to ever touch you? This is Hah-" The blue hair male erupted into a small series of giggles turning towards you. You blushed heavily at his words, knowing exactly what he's implying. He was also talking about how you technically said you were a virgin. You wanted to call him a Tomura hentai or a pervert but you were happy as well.

A squeak was heard when he roughly pulled you towards him after he was done rambling on and on about how you were all his. His hands carefully gripped your hips and lower back. He started to lean in to you, intent on getting what he wanted. "T-t-tomura kun wait! I'm I'm-" You whimpered out, attempting to push him away with your hands on his chest. But he wasn't having it. "I'm done waiting Y/n." Shigaraki used four fingers to pull your head back to him. With his bruising force, your lips harshly pressed against his. He hummed in response to finally feeling your soft lips. Hands snaked around his neck, you waited so long for something so simple and intimate from him. With no experience from either side, it was a shy kiss. It ended quickly with Shigaraki pulling away first. Both of your faces had lust written all over them. Half hidden e/c stared into relaxed ruby eyes. Shigaraki couldn't help feel more confident and want more and more just by looking at your face. Taking a softer approached, he slowly leaned in till your noses were touching. The kiss this time was more heated. Your eyes fluttered closed. He pressed your body against his as close as you could be and your hands made their way to his fluffy blue hair. His lips danced on yours and you tried to keep up with him, he seemed to be getting greedy. You felt his tongue scrap against your bottom lip then a soft nibble to it. As you gasped into his mouth, he took advantage and slid his tongue in. Savoring every inch of your mouth, and your knees started to become weak. You couldn't help feel a smothering heat stab through your feminine lower region. You moaned into his mouth, slowly losing yourself to this volatile man. Shigaraki felt drunk as he finally released your sweet mouth. You were a mess under his gaze. Lidded eyes were glazed over, lips were swollen in a deep red color. Feeling proud of himself, he nuzzled his face to your neck.

After listening to your quickened soft breath, he realized the time. "You can stay the night if you want to..." You bashfully said looking away. He thought for a minute. He never crashed at your place before but he shook his head. Pouting a bit, you nodded, "When will I see you next time?" "I'll surprise you." He turned with his hands in his pockets ready to leave. He stopped when he felt your hand on his arm. Shigaraki looked at you, waiting for you to say something. You only leaned up to press a chaste kiss. "Goodnight.. Tomura. Be safe." His face was mixed in surprise and embarrassment. He still wasn't used to your constant 'be safe' goodbyes. It's not that he didn't enjoy it, it's just foreign to him. He could only nod in response.

You touched your lips not wanting the ghost feeling of his lips disappear. The blush on your face was still adamant. Walking back to your room ready for the night, you noticed he left his hoodie on the couch. You felt as it was a blessing in disguise from his forgetfulness. Quickly slipping it on, you took in his scent instantly feeling safe. It was like he was constantly holding you throughout the night as you slept in Shigaraki's hoodie. With a small smile, you feel asleep. Everything almost felt right in the world.

#tomura shigaraki #bnha shigaraki #shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader

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im-fairly-whitty · 6 years

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I want to ask your opinion on something that I've been wondering: We knows that Coco continued to love music in secret all her life and even sung to baby Miguel, so, why didn't Coco just lifted the music ban after Imelda died? Was she respecting her mother's memory? or did she believe to some extend that music was bad but just couldn't help loving it? And while we are on the subject, what are your headcanons about Coco's relationship with Imelda growing up?

Why didn’t Coco bring back music when she was the matriarch?

This is a great question, it all comes down to family dynamics!

Let’s take a look at the different stages of the Rivera family over the last few generations shall we?

1. The Young Couple^^

Imelda and Hector are married and live together. Their relationship is star-crossed and overall stress levels are relatively low, decisions are made together as a team, probably often bending to Imelda’s strong opinions. Keep in mind that Hector is 17 and Imelda is 18, meaning that their emotions run comparatively high and hot, both their disagreements and decisions are likely dealt with quick.

Current family authority figure: Largely irrelevant, they’re a couple of kids who do everything together and don’t yet have any serious responsibilities other than keeping each other happy.

2. The Young Family^^

Coco is born and now the couple becomes a family. Stress increases considerably as the new parents now have to care and provide for a child, leading both Hector and Imelda to take their roles much more seriously. For Imelda, this means putting Coco’s needs before her own (as referenced in the movie) but for Hector, this means taking his music more seriously so that his career can effectively provide for his wife and daughter.

Current family authority figure: Hector has nothing but the utmost respect for his diosa, meaning that he does not lord his male status over her, but the fact remains that he is indeed a man in the early 1900′s and he ultimately has the final word on family decisions. Unfortunately, one of those decisions is to go on the road with Ernesto. Imelda is unhappy with the decision and doubtless she voices her opinions loud and clear, but she does recognize/respect Hector as the main provider of the family and of course trusts that he will come back home to her.

3. The single mother^^

When Hector never returns, Imelda becomes a young single mother with a daughter to provide for. She learns a new profession, opens a shoe shop, and becomes fiercely protective of her child. Being a single parent is difficult and shouldering the burden of filling both parenting roles hardens her, making her headstrong personality into something sharper.

Current family authority figure: Imelda by default has complete control and responsibility in this family of two. As the parent of a young child, everything she says goes, including her absolute ban on music as a kind of emotional revenge against her missing husband. As the shoe shop grows Oscar and Felipe come to live and work with her, but her status as their older sister gives her authority over them as well, meaning they fall under the music ban as well.

4. The lone matriarch^^

Several years go by with Imelda being in complete and undisputed control of the family. When Julio begins courting Coco he undergoes a rigorous approval process to gain Imelda’s blessing. Imelda is NOT going to let her daughter end up abandoned like she did, meaning that in order to join the family Julio also must completely give up all music. He completely defers to her will, submitting to any and all of her rules in order to be with Coco. The Rivera household gains another member (and shoemaker) for the first time in over ten years.

Current family authority figure: Imelda’s status remains unchallenged despite the arrival of a new family member, which sets a precedence of controlling authority that remains in force throughout the rest of her life.

5. Mamá Imelda^^

Time passes and Imelda remains in complete control. The music ban remains in force and an entire generation of children are raised under it, truly believing that music is evil. Coco is old enough to remember life with music and hides her secret love of dancing. It is not until she injures herself while dancing and scares her two young daughters that Coco comes clean about it to her mother and gives up her dancing habit altogether. (A scene from the novelization.)

Coco respects her mother’s wishes and is now sandwiched between her mother and the rising generation that all reject music, so she keeps her continuing respect for music to herself. She has been raised to put her family before music, and she does just that, no matter how much it hurts her.

Current family authority figure: Imelda all the way.

6. Coco y Julio^^

When Imelda passes away in the 1970′s the Rivera family is a bustling business with at least two generations living in the home. Coco becomes the new matriarch, but instead of directing the family by herself, she has her loving husband by her side. There is a strongly established family culture by now that all the family members down to the children uphold (including her daughter Elena). Coco could technically have brought music back at this point, but remember that she’s spent her entire life hiding it. To do so would be to re-write the emotional core of the Rivera family that has been built on everything that “He-Who-Must-Be-Forgotten” wasn’t. Ie: Family always comes first, never leave your family, no music.

Besides, Coco isn’t the headstrong single mother that Imelda was, Coco values her relationship with Julio and presides with him as an equal partner. This makes her less likely to try dramatically upheaving the family just because she as an individual would prefer to have music, she cares for the group before herself.

Current family authority figure: Coco, but operating under the very strong legacy of Imelda and the expectations of the rest of her family, who have all been raised to rigidly respect the rules Imelda set. Since Coco has also been raised to put her family first she respects her mother’s wishes and simply continues to steer the family the direction Imelda did.

7. Elena takes control^^

Coco grew up in a very emotionally turbulent time, meaning that her wishes were always bent to obey her mother out of necessity, but Elena had the luxury of growing up in a stable home with both parents. This means that Elena’s firey streak has never had to be repressed, allowing her to fully take after her Abuelita Imelda.

Elena has grown up fully believing in the music ban and enforces it religiously within the family, believing that by doing so she is protecting them all from the kind of evils of the mystery man who abandoned her abuelita all those years, the man who has haunted whispered adult conversations in her home as long as she can remember. When her Mama Coco begins to decline Elena rises as Imelda’s spitting image, doing whatever she deems necessary to protect her hard-working and beloved family.

Current family authority figure: Elena all the way. While her mother was more docile when it came to sharing authority, Elena rises magnificently to the role of matriarch.

The Future:

The Rivera family has always been one full of love, but the roots of this particular family tree were badly scarred, triggering it to develop strong defenses against anything that could hurt it that way again. While Coco as an individual kept music and her Papá’s memory alive in her heart, she existed as only one part of a larger group that she had been trained to always put first.

The Rivera paradox is that change couldn’t come from Coco alone, it had to be initiated by Miguel, a member of the rising generation, who could reach out and support Coco with his own music. The beautiful part is that “Remember me” is a song that spans all the generations of the Rivera family, from Hector (Father) to Coco (daughter) through Miguel (great-great-grandson).

“Remember Me” heals the hurt the Rivera family has endured for generations from both ends, reviving memories of the past while being played by Miguel, who represents a bright musical future for the Riveras.

#meta #coco #matriarch #anaylasis #family dynamics #long post #Thanks for the ask!#In related news I am critically incapable of doing anything by halves #no music #wit writes

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worstjourney · 6 years

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Dr. George Clarke Simpson

Simpson was from a mercantile family in Manchester – Wikipedia says they ran a department store, but somewhere I picked up the fact that they sold umbrellas, which is a narratively satisfying start for someone who would go on to become an eminent meteorologist.

Simpson nearly joined the Discovery Expedition, but was passed over for another applicant who, in the end, couldn't join. He went to Lapland instead, and lectured on meteorology at Manchester University for a year before joining the Indian Meteorological Office in Simla. It was while there that Scott complained to him of the difficulties they were having with the weather data from the Discovery trip: “It is full of inaccuracies and insupportable theories … It's a pity some of your Indian efficiency cannot be imported into the London office.” He was soon to have exactly that, as Simpson applied for a post as soon as the Terra Nova Expedition was announced and was signed on immediately.

As a professional scientist with an established career, and naturally of a more serious demeanour, Simpson was out of place amongst the more boyish members of the scientific staff, and may not have been thrilled about being nicknamed “Sunny Jim” after a cereal mascot who he resembled. Nevertheless he applied himself to his post, working closely with Wright in matters of atmospheric ionization, radiation, and the like.

The science of meteorology depends upon an extended period of continuous data collection, so Simpson hardly left the immediate vicinity of the Cape Evans hut once his lab was set up with its wide array of instruments and remote-recording devices. The only exception was in September of 1911, when he joined Scott, Birdie, and Taff Evans “to stretch our legs” (per Scott) over in the Western Mountains.

It was expected that Simpson would stay on for the duration of the Expedition, but when the Terra Nova came to relieve them in 1912, she brought news of a cholera outbreak at the Met Office in Simla from which Simpson was on leave, which was now short-staffed and needed him back. As he was already working closely with Wright, and the latter was most familiar with the sensitive scientific equipment, Simpson gave him a crash-course in how to keep the meteorological record going for the second year. Soon after this, a message came through from Hut Point: Dr. Atkinson, who had been preparing to meet the returning Polar Party with the dog teams, was now needed to save Teddy Evans' life, and could Simpson please send Wright if possible, or else Cherry-Garrard, to take the dogs south in his place? Simpson sent them both to Hut Point but stressed how much Wright was needed at base for the scientific work, so Cherry was assigned the southern journey.

Simpson was still in India when the world learned of the tragic end of the expedition. “News of the sad disaster came to India in such dribbles that it was nearly a fortnight before I could really understand what happened. I could not have imagined that the sad news would have affected me so much.” (Letter to Joseph Kinsey, 1913) He threw himself into figuring out how their experience of the weather could have been so different from what he had forecast, but before he could start serious work on processing the data, the First World War broke out, taking him first to Mesopotamia and then to work with the Board of Munitions. Like the other scientists he was left to juggle the expedition scientific reports with other work after the war. When he was finally able to crunch the data into a model of Antarctic weather, it suggested that 1912 was indeed a highly unusual year, which defied the precedent he and Scott had referred to for planning the Pole Journey. Simpson's Meteorological Report was published with the rest in the early 1920s, and he gave a lecture on it shortly after, but then left the Antarctic behind. He became the longest-serving director of the Met Office and collected quite a list of honours, retiring as Sir George C. Simpson, KCB CBE FRS.

The establishment of automatic weather stations along the route of the Polar Journey has meant a continuous record has been made since the mid-1980s, and astonishingly it has corroborated the models made by Simpson in the 1910s without the aid of computers or satellites and with equipment we now regard as fairly primitive. It also proves how unusual the weather encountered by the Polar Party was, with only one year up to 2001 returning data like theirs. “He figured out that they would have made it back in about nine out of ten years. Turns out, he was a little conservative, it was more like fifteen out of sixteen.” (Dr. Solomon)

If you, too, wanted to be a meteorologist when you were thirteen, or if you're just interested in science and the people who carry it out, I highly recommend looking up Dr Susan Solomon's book The Coldest March, which not only presents the meteorological information in a clear and engaging way (with graphs and all!) but the realities of survival in the Antarctic environment. It's hard to come away from it without a new perspective on the Polar Party's journey.

… But because I drafted this character profile in a rush before a big trip, I have drawn mainly from the Channel 4/WNET documentary based on her book, called The Coldest March in the UK and, rather more sensationally, Secrets of the Dead: Tragedy at the Pole in the U.S., where it is available on DVD.

#george simpson #sir george clarke simpson #sunny jim #characters #character design #terra nova expedition #scott expedition #meteorology #susan solomon #the coldest march #antarctica

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perfectly-balanced · 6 years

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👀 What do you dislike most about each member of your cult?

I assume you are referring to my Black Order? This is a very difficult question to answer and one that has required careful consideration. That being said, I have come to a conclusion, but keep in mind that if any of these issues bothered me enough to overshadow their benefits and good qualities, they would not be my servants. For the most part, these are simply minor nitpicks.

I will begin with Pravus Nox. You may not know of Pravus, as he was more well known among his adversaries by the title of ‘The Other’. Unfortunately he is no longer alive to serve under me, but that will not prevent me from discussing his flaws here just the same. One of the main problems I faced with Pravus was that he was incredibly exhausting to be around. Even though he was a servant, he was incredibly loud and would try to get my full attention any time he was around me. There was certainly nothing subtle about him, and he would rarely leave me alone in peace. Another gripe I had with him is that he was not only hostile to enemies, but also to allies. And not only temporary allies, like Loki or Ronan. His rude and bossy demeanor did not make him very popular among the rest of the Order either, so I’ve heard, and he is rarely included in their ranks quite possibly by his own desire. He did not like them, and they did not like him, the Maw in particular. Pravus, for all his uses, was not a team player, but he was still technically a member of the Black Order.

In the case of Cull Obsidian, it is important to understand that he places a high value on loyalty, which by itself is certainly a good thing. But because he is the more responsible brother to Corvus, who I will get into in a moment, he has had to become very responsible. This has led to him being overly protective of the rest of the Order, to the point where he takes far too much nonsense from them without standing up for himself properly. Don’t get me wrong, he is very stubborn, which in itself is a bit of an issue for me, but despite his size and strength he is actually one of the least aggressive members of my Order. I would like to see him learn to assert himself more in their presence, and perhaps also to be less trusting and more self-reliant. I’ve also noticed that he can be incredibly literal in his comprehension of what I say, I appreciate when people get directly to the point, but he sometimes has trouble deciphering anything I say that isn’t a direct order. He is very practical, even more so than I, and metaphors are often lost on him.

It took longer for Proxima Midnight’s faults to become apparent to me, and that in part is due to the nature of some of those flaws. She is very secretive, so it takes a more substantial period of time to get to know her than I am used to, and I’ve learned that most of who she truly is isn’t expressed on the outside. I don’t know if she is even capable of letting her guard down or being entirely emotionally invested in anything, I’ve only ever seen her react to emotional obstacles in one of two ways. The first is the most common, and it is driven by her extremely spiteful temper. It is a cold burning that only her enemies will ever see, and when she is in this state no mercy can be expected. However, when she is faced with a similar situation that involves myself or an ally, she will react with avoidance and detachment, which makes it incredibly hard to solve anything. Because of this, she can often come off as arrogant and it has been known to rub people the wrong way. This combined with her controlling nature has certainly caused some problems within the Order.

I have to say, I have had a hard time pinpointing any of Ebony Maw’s imperfections right away because they normally seem nonexistent and I had to think more critically in order to find an answer. But in doing so, it occurred to me that the fact that it is so difficult to speak ill of him could be a symptom of a flaw all on its own. The Maw is such a perfectionist that often times his expectations for himself and those around him far surpass my own. He is just so incredibly cerebral and analytical that not even his own self is spared from that shrewd judgment. Of course, I appreciate his high standards in my service, but there does come a point where it actually becomes counterproductive to fuss over details that really aren’t important, and it can get a little taxing trying to reassure his insecurities about himself and his work that are otherwise perfect. He really should be more confident in himself, he has never failed to deliver or please before so there is really no precedent for such paranoia. Another small issue relates to the fact that while I trust in Ebony to be completely honest with me at all times, he is also not someone I would go to if I needed an entirely objective and unbiased opinion about myself. He is seemingly incapable of critiquing anything I do or could do and will likely just agree with anything I say, not out of dishonesty but simply because he is so eager to please and can’t see me objectively, whereas I could ask Proxima for an outside opinion and expect her to be blunt and get straight to the point, offering me a new perspective and insight while still respecting my authority as Ebony does. Some might also consider Ebony’s clinginess to be a flaw of sorts, and I suppose it could be to some, but it really doesn’t bother me because his presence does not suffocate me in the way that Pravus’ did, I rather enjoy and am endeared to it. Even though he would likely never admit it, I can tell that he is saddened when my attention is drawn elsewhere, but I do not mind giving him as much of it as I am reasonably able to. It may also be worth mentioning that out of all my disciples, Ebony is definitely the most vicious to my enemies and even just in general. If I did not control it and harness that power to be directed at the right targets, he could very well know no limits in his cruelty.

Corvus Glaive, on the other hand…..I have plenty to say about him. Every issue I’ve ever had and likely will ever have with Corvus can be summed up by the fact that he is such a wild card. It’s hard to know what to expect from him from one day to the next, and I often can’t predict which Corvus I will face at any given time, the extremely cunning, strategic and effective war genius whose prowess cannot be denied, or the annoying troublemaker who can at times almost border on insolence and whose puzzling sense of humor sows conflict in even the most stable and peaceful scenarios. Is is the subject of almost all complaints I receive from other members, and even after all this time he is still quite resistant to changing his ways. That is not to say he is disloyal in the slightest, if that were the case he would not be in my Order, let alone the general in command of my armies and one of my most trusted right hand men. But unfortunately, his personality is just set up in such a way where he can be a real pest even when he is not meaning to be and has the best intentions. I suspect his personal issues including his penchant for guzzling large amounts of alcohol play a significant role in this as well, so i am willing to look past his transgressions in order to focus on what he can offer me to make it worth my while putting up with his shenanigans.

There is also Onyx Inferna, who is merely a member in training to take on Pravus’ former role as my personal assistant. I will not go into too much detail regarding her as I have not known her for very long just yet so to judge her qualities in depth would be rather premature as I have not had a good window of context to study her behavioral patterns and shortcomings. However, I do know that so far she is quite volatile and unrestrained, and also appears to have a severe abandonment complex. Nothing that can’t be solved with my guidance, though.

This may sound like a lot to complain about after having just mentioned that it was hard for me to critique anything, but let me just reiterate that these issues are really not present the majority of the time in most cases, and that a lot of these flaws have positive aspects to them that outweigh the negatives. All in all, I am quite proud of my Black Order and I care about them dearly, imperfections included.

#anon #sorry this took so long

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ayellowbirds · 6 years

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Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 14: "Go Away Ghost Ship"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 14)

AKA "An Improbably High Number of Chef Disguises For an Episode About Pirates"

The episode begins with a foggy night at sea; a sailor aboard a large vessel catches sight of something strange through the mists. A tattered-looking ship from the age of sail? Flying the Jolly Roger?

Sure, that’s a rational conclusion. The view does indeed switch to the deck of the “ghost” ship, revealing a cock-eyed ginger buccaneer laughing madly... and then the view fades to a malt shop as the music goes from menacing to mellow.

I’ll note that his is at least the third time we’ve seen that hot rod parked next to the Mystery Machine at a malt shop. Who does it belong to? What’s their story? We may never know.

Inside the shop is an almost 1:1 reproduction of the newspaper-reading scene from episode 3, down to the pink drink with extra straws. The news this time? One “C.L. Magnus”, a shipping magnate, claims that the recent rash of disappearances of oceangoing vessels are caused by the revenge-seeking ghost of Redbeard. Shaggy hopes his “super duper sandwich” isn’t a target, a reasonable fear since it’s about as big as an oil tanker.

With Scooby’s assistance, Shaggy ties a string around his sandwich, compressing it from a height that reached from his waist to his shoulder, to a fruitcake-dense sandwich of more normative volume.

He doesn’t notice that Scooby is still holding one end of the string, however, and when he closes his eyes in anticipation, Scooby gives it a yank and opens wide, downing the entire thing in one go. “Ree-lishus!” Scooby chortles to himself, while Shaggy is left confused and hungry. Man’s best friend.

The rest of the gang do not pay attention. They are used to the boy and his dog with their bottomless appetites. They do not look directly at it, and late at night, it will keep them from sleep.

Velma and Daphne seem oddly sympathetic to the plight of Mr. Magnus the Magnate, with Velma calling him “poor” and mentioning that he’s going out of business, while Daphne calls him a “nice man”. Fred suggests they help solve the mystery, and leads the gang to Magnus’s luxury penthouse apartment.

The gang act as if they somehow know of Magnus, and that it’s perfectly reasonable that they could show up unannounced and offer their assistance free of charge. Magnus’s butler is not having any of that.

“Not to be disturbed”, he intones in a voice rendered by John Stephenson as a riff on a Boris Karloff performance. If Magnus is not to be disturbed, mister, you’re setting a bad precedent.

The gang decide to sneak in, convinced Magnus will accept their help if they can just talk to him, and they dress up as “room service”.

There’s a few obvious problems with this, aside from an attempt at unlawful intrusion into someone’s home. For starters, the butler has just seen them, and yet Velma and Shaggy do not adopt more of a disguise than throwing on aprons and hats. Second, it’s an apartment building, not a hotel. Apartments tend not to have room service.

Third, as the butler notes when they push past him, it’s 11:00 PM. No wonder Magnus wanted to be left alone! When the gang wind up tumbling into a pile of teenagers and a Great Dane and are forced to explain themselves, the scene transitions to Magnus relating how his ancestors were responsible for ending the original threat of Redbeard, and that the pirate is now seeking revenge. As he relates this, Scooby notices his butler watching from behind a curtain....

The butler is so obviously telegraphed as the culprit, that it’s obviously not him, but there’s ultimately no resolution to this bit—a comic book adaptation made him out to be a spy from an insurance company, leading me to wonder if that had been part of this episode left out of the final production.

The gang take a motorboat out in the middle of the night, having drawn conclusions about the scheduling of Redbeard’s attacks that apparently completely elude the Coast Guard and other authorities. They spot a “mysterious’ fog bank, moving ahead of the real targeted freighter and playing a decoy foghorn to try to lure out the pirate ship. Shaggy observes the fog is thick enough to cut it with a knife, and Scooby...

I can excuse the fog-cutting as a cartoon gag but Scooby where the jinkies did you get that knife? Has Scooby just had a knife on him this whole time?

The gang has little in the way of foresight when it comes to villains actually planning violence, and the ghost ship appears on a collision course prepared to ram their tiny boat. When Shaggy tries to put the outboard motor into “double full-speed reverse”, it tears a chunk of the boat off as it zooms away on its own, and their little boat is struck, cutting it in half!

That one-word response from Fred is his single best line in the series so far.

Split up in the most literal and forceful manner possible, Shaggy and Scooby squeeze in through a porthole while Fred, Daphne, and Velma climb the side of the boat, all seemingly unnoticed by the pirates. Each team seeks both the others... as well as some clues. Scooby and Shaggy run into Redbeard himself, who gives chase and menaces them with a flying sword.

It’s the specifics that make Shaggy such an icon of cowardice. The audience can’t be left to assume that this is a friendly ghost sword, wielding by some cavalier Casper. Stuck between a ghost and a sharp place, the boys are forced to plead for their lives as Redbeard and his “ghost” crew bear down on them.

Meanwhile, the other three members of the gang wander around the unrealistically massive interior of the ghost ship, wondering about its emptiness. They catch sight of Redbeard walking around and laughing, but quickly lose sight of him while sneaking about, leaving the viewer unclear on the timing of this scene. Is it while Shaggy and Scooby are being chased? Before, or after?

It doesn’t matter to the writers, because it’s clue time!

Before it can be explained to the viewer that dry ice (AKA frozen CO2) is notable for rapidly sublimating into a misty-looking vapor even at temperatures well below the freezing point of water, and that it does so especially dramatically when exposed to liquid water, the trio are locked in the room by Redbeard.

A scene transition back to Shaggy and Scooby shows that Redbeard is also standing over them, who observes that he’d spare their lives if they were “good for anything”. Shaggy says they’re good cooks, which seems to confuse Scooby as much as it does the viewer, but the threat of losing their heads motivates him to go along with it.

Oh, and Shaggy finds another use for his chef getup from when they tried to break into C.L. Magnus’s apartment, which i guess he’s just been... carrying around? Deciding that they need to make a stew that a ghost will enjoy, Scooby and Shaggy mix in chains (for rattling), ash from the fireplace, cobwebs, and on Scooby’s suggestion, an enormous bar of soap.

Shaggy, you’re a track athlete. This is how you get a fungal infection.

Alternatively, he means he hardly ever uses it as an ingredient, which is almost worse, because it implies that sometimes Norville “Shaggy” Roberts does use bar soap as an ingredient.

Redbeard has some doubts about their creation, and insists that they eat it. After some hasty mouthfuls, Shaggy hiccups out some bubbles, and Redbeard simply sits and watches as Shaggy suggests to Scooby that they “bubble our way out of here!”, turning to face the ghost pirate and spewing a screen of soap bubbles at him.

As the chase scenes continue amidst things like Shaggy utilizing his vocal talents and shadow puppetry to convince Redbeard’s goons that their captain is pointing them in a different direction, and falling overboard in a basin—forcing Shaggy and Scooby to hand-paddle after the ghost ship’s wake—the pirate vessel pulls into a skull-shaped cave in the middle of a rocky cove.

You know, i feel like Hanna-Barbera cartoons ill-prepared me for the utter lack of skeletal rock formations in real life. If i ever want to live on a mountain shaped like the yawning maw of an angry skull, i’m probably going to have to make it myself.

Fred identifies this as “a secret cove on Skull Island”, but i feel like, you know, someone ought to have noticed the enormous sea cave formed by the skull-shaped part of a place known as Skull Island. Unless Skull Island has lots of skulls. Maybe it does!

There’s a brief and confusing gag where Scooby notices their paddling after the ghost ship has attracted a shark, which—oh, wait. It’s just a dorsal fin, which Scooby realizes when he lifts it out of the water to inspect it. Just a dorsal fin, skimming the ocean surface and following them around.

What.

The gang reunite in the caves, and Fred realize that the folded paper hat Shaggy has been wearing since casting Redbeard’s shadow was made from a ship’s manifest, indicating the contents and value of C.L. Magnus’s cargo freighter... that is, the one that sails tomorrow, rather than the one that they were attempting to raid that night. As the gang gather more clues that the ghost pirate is no ghost at all, they find a treasure chest with a talking pirate skull inside that pops out and demands “the password, you swabs!” via a miniaturized microphone and speaker hidden in its jaw.

The gang try several piratical passwords, but it’s Shaggy’s suggestion that works:

This is the weirdest callback to a previous episode. Beyond the secret passage that opens in the wall, the gang find countless crates and barrels of stolen cargo, and the ghost pirate crew, flying sword included. The resulting chase leads to the gang hiding among the cargo, where Scooby and Shaggy discover...

An entire shipment of Scooby Snacks, further solidifying that this is just a known product, something on the market that has Scooby’s own name on it. Emboldened by biscuits, the antics kick into high gear, with things like a battle of sword vs. liverwurst sausage, toilet plungers fired from longbows, and Shaggy tickling Redbeard with an electric eggbeater that has a pistol grip for no good reason, before fleeing on an “automatic pogo stick” that is clearly a jackhammer, as Shaggy and Scooby only realize after it already starts up, taking them on a ride that winds up going up onto the ceiling and directly over Redbeard. As the resulting chaos sends Scooby, Shaggy, and the villains crashing into a pile of tires, the chase ends, and the villain is revealed as...

Shaggy is shocked that it wasn’t the butler, and the Coast Guard rep who has joined the gang on the deck of the ghost pirate ship (which, one must assume, they commandeered and piloted back out to open waters on their own) clearly wants to see Magnus’s two companions unmasked, as well, asking about their identities.

Daphne doesn’t care who they are. Well, as long as their names aren’t Merle and Taako.

The plan is explained, including the dancing sword being “operated by wires”, and the bit about the dry ice, which Velma says “everybody knows”, though the Coast Guard guy has clearly never heard of it. Scooby demonstrates, stirring up an impenetrably thick fog, which he cuts through once again with his mysterious knife.

Only this time, he cuts a giant doughnut shape in the fog, grabs it with his paws, and takes a bite out of the fog-nut, proceeding to chew and swallow.

The visual of Scooby treating a cloud of carbon dioxide vapor like it was solid matter and joyfully eating it has haunted me for decades. Dear Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, you tormented my childhood with this bit. This joke stole my innocence.

Zoinks darn you, Scooby-Doo!

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

#scooby doo #KRAOSD

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wazafam · 3 years

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Content Warning: This article contains discussions/depictions of violence.

With the most recent entry in the long-running survival horror franchise Resident Evil, Village hitting the market recently, opinions about the new game are starting to roll in and it seems that fans of the series are pleased. All the positive buzz about the game is no doubt enticing new players to try out the franchise, but many may be wondering how suitable Village is as an entry point.

RELATED: Resident Evil: What Order Should New Players Play The Series (Including Village)

Fortunately, there isn't much in Village that will be totally obscure to a new player, especially since most Resident Evil stories are generally self-contained. Additionally, the protagonist of Village has only starred in one prior game, so there isn't too much that a newbie would need to catch up on when coming into RE for the first time.

However, there are a couple of things a newcomer will want to keep in mind to enhance the gameplay experience, though, so maybe read this as a primer for the newest, dreadful adventure from Resident Evil.

10 Who Is Ethan Winters?

Ethan is the protagonist of Resident Evil VII, who's making his return in Village to rescue his daughter. Ethan was designed as an everyman sort of guy, intended to make the player feel vulnerable by playing as a more relatable character. That makes sense because, by Resident Evil 6, most of the series' characters were pretty used to roundhousing zombies in the face and running away from huge explosions.

Ethan handily survived the events of VII, though, rescuing his estranged wife in the process. Between the events of VII and Village, he and his wife had a daughter, although it seems she's been kidnapped, so now he has to bust into yet another spooky mansion to rescue yet another lost family member.

9 What's The Deal With These Werewolves?

Although the Resident Evil series has always been most famous for its zombies, there are actually dozens of different types of monsters that the player has had to deal with over the course of the franchise's many different games. Just in the first game, for example, there were zombies, but also giant spiders, giant snakes, lizard people, and angry crows.

RELATED: Resident Evil 8: Village: The 10 Best Lady Dimitrescu Cosplays

With all that in mind, it really isn't too huge of a jump to the Lycans that appear to be infesting the village in question during the events of the new game. There's always a new hazardous biological agent to mutate people into new things, so it's all to be expected at this point.

8 How Do I Stay Alive?

Conserve resources, and run whenever necessary. Resident Evil is typically the sort of game where attempting to kill, or even fight every enemy the player comes across is a swift path to a game over. This is because the game deliberately limits the resources available to the player, forcing them to think strategically about when and where to use them (even in the more action-oriented titles).

Furthermore, the player is often disempowered relative to their enemies in a Resident Evil game. Exemplified through enemies like Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, these are foes that drastically outmatch the player in terms of combat capabilities, meaning that sometimes running and hiding is the best course of action.

7 What Happened In The Last Game?

Long story short, Ethan got a message from his dead wife, then got stuck in a house full of people trying to kill him, battled an enormous mold creature, and then got rescued by Chris Redfield. As it turned out, a mysterious crime syndicate had been attempting to traffic bioweapons to South America when their ship ran aground near the house that would become Resident Evil VII's setting, causing an outbreak.

RELATED: 10 Hilarious Resident Evil Village Memes That Make Us Laugh

Although the outbreak was eventually contained, it wasn't an easy ordeal for Ethan. Suffice it to say, that the guy has had prior experience with this sort of thing before he ever got to Village.

6 What Is The Umbrella Corporation?

Instantly recognizable via its distinctive logo that seems to appear all over the place in-universe; the Umbrella Corporation was a pharmaceutical corporation, responsible for most of the bad things that happened in the earlier Resident Evil games. Although they were technically destroyed between the events of Resident Evil 3 and 4, characters once associated with the company continue to cause trouble.

It's unclear if Umbrella will be directly involved in the events of Village, but their logo is visible in some of the trailers. Could the titular village be an old Umbrella test site? Whatever the answer, the shadowy biohazardous nonsense is going on, and they have often been behind it.

5 Who Is Mia Winters?

Mia is the wife of protagonist Ethan Winters', but she's got something of a complicated backstory. In Resident Evil VII, Ethan received a video message from Mia after presuming her to be dead for years, prompting him to go on a trip to try and find her (which makes up the primary conflict of the game).

Unfortunately, Ethan uncovered a dark and dangerous secret while searching. While Mia was still alive, she had been altered by a mold-like bioweapon, and beyond that, it was revealed that Mia had been involved in the trafficking of said bioweapon before things went awry.

4 Who Is Chris Redfield?

Chris Redfield was one of two protagonists of the original Resident Evil from back in 1996, and he's made a number of appearances in other games since then. Chris is a no-nonsense sort of guy, and he's dedicated his life to combatting the sort of bioterrorist-related outbreaks that are so common in the RE universe.

Chris also made an appearance in Resident Evil VII at the end of the game, definitively linking that entry to the rest of the franchise by canon. Chris was part of the joint B.S.A.A./Blue Umbrella strike team that secured the site of the outbreak in the preceding game, rescuing Ethan Winters in the process.

3 How Come Chris Shot Mia?

This one is only to be revealed for those who have played the game already, but there are a couple of things that make this act stand out to franchise veterans. In all of his years in the Resident Evil franchise, Chris has never exhibited the slightest bit of a villainous streak, making his attack on Mia surprising for longtime fans.

RELATED: Resident Evil Village: Why Chris Redfield Really Shoots Mia Winters

It's especially confusing considering the personal relationship between Chris and Ethan; Chris personally rescued him and Mia from the Baker mansion at the end of Resident Evil VII, putting himself at great personal risk in the process. Something has clearly changed with him because this isn't how he typically acts.

2 How Does This All Connect To The Older Games?

Newcomers to the franchise might be familiar with more established fandom speak about punching boulders into volcanoes, roundhouse kicking six zombies in the face at once, or undead sharks. That seems to clash a little bit with the (comparatively) more grounded approach to spooky stuff in Village. There might be werewolves, but being bitten in half by a giant crocodile seems unlikely.

Although all of the numbered entries in the franchise are technically connected by canon, Capcom has deliberately attempted to shrink the scope of the story from VII on. This is because things got a little bit crazy towards the later entries like 4, 5, and 6, where the protagonist would be machine-gunning monsters without a care in the world. To return the series to its horror roots, the developers likely thought it necessary to hit a bit of a reset button.

1 Why Is Lady Dimitrescu So Tall?

Lady Dimitrescu, the enormous vampire lady who took the internet by storm, is, without a doubt, singlehandedly responsible for a good portion of the buzz surrounding Village. Thanks to her outrageous proportions, menacing demeanor, and zealous fans, it's safe to say that she's the one driving many new fans to the Resident Evil franchise.

But why so tall? Only the developers over at Capcom have the true answers to this question, but fans can safely say that they probably made the right choice in scaling Dimitrescu up to approximately nine feet, since that's apparently a big part of her appeal.

NEXT: Step On Me, Mommy: 10 Resident Evil 8 Lady Dimitrescu Memes That Are Too Much

10 Things To Know Before Starting Resident Evil: Village from https://ift.tt/3od4HYb

#Blogger

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dweemeister · 3 years

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To Each His Own (1946)

When Olivia de Havilland passed away at 104 years of age last July, she was one of the last-surviving major stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Golden Age mostly corresponds to the Hollywood Studio System in place at the time. In that system, studios contracted actors, directors, screenwriters, composers, costume designers, cinematographers, and more – sometimes loaning their personnel out to other studios. Before making To Each His Own, de Havilland sued her previous employer, Warner Bros., for unlawfully suspending her after she rejected a role as well as adding six months to her contract because of the suspension. De Havilland won her court case and the De Havilland Law remains in Californian law books today. But a furious Jack Warner retaliated, conspiring with other Hollywood executives to blacklist De Havilland by calling the actress “difficult” to work with.

For three years de Havilland went without work in Hollywood. During that time, she busied herself with productions of Lux Radio Theatre, volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, and entertained American troops in the Pacific theater as part of a USO tour. Nevertheless, as one of the best-regarded actresses in Hollywood even before Warner’s blacklisting attempts, she was too good an actress for producers not to be interested in her services. In 1945, after signing a two-film deal with Paramount, de Havilland began work on a star vehicle for her, the melodrama To Each His Own. De Havilland enjoyed the screenplay by Charles Barckett (1939’s Ninotchka, 1950’s Sunset Boulevard) and Jacques Théry (primarily a novelist; 1942’s Joan of Paris), but believed it could be improved with revisions and a director she had confidence in. Her first choice for director was Mitchell Leisen, who guided de Havilland to an Academy Award nomination in the romantic drama Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Leisen reluctantly agreed to take up the project but, as de Havilland started developing her character as the production progressed, he knew he had a worthwhile production on his hands. He was right, and so were de Havilland’s instincts – To Each His Own may not distinguish itself technically, but the acting and revised screenplay elevate this melodrama.

Somewhere in London, a middle-aged American woman named Josephine “Jody” Norris (de Havilland) is walking the city’s blacked-out streets (as mandated by the government) on New Year’s Eve. It is World War II, and Jody volunteers herself some nights to be a fire warden. On this holiday evening, only she and Lord Desham (Roland Culver) are in the office. After some persuasion from Desham, the two head out for tea. While at tea, Jody learns a Gregory Piersen is arriving in London on a late train. Immediately, she leaves teatime with Lord Desham and dashes to the train station. There, in flashback, we learn that Jody was the daughter of her pharmacist father (Griff Barnett) in a small town named Piersen Falls. During World War I, a dashing U.S. Army Air Service fighter pilot Bart Cosgrove (John Lund in one of two roles) visits for a bond rally. Unexpectedly, and without anyone suspecting a thing, they fall in love. After hearing Bart has perished overseas, and a pregnant Jody decides to have and raise their child. She attempts to choreograph her own pregnancy, delivery, and first days of motherhood by making it appear as if she has “adopted” her own baby – all to avoid local scandal. An unfortunate twist of fate means that she will have to surrender her son, Gregory (nicknamed “Griggsy”), and watch him grow without the knowledge of his true parents.

Also starring in To Each His Own are Mary Anderson as Corinne Piersen, Phillip Terry as Alex Piersen, Bill Goodwin as Mac Tilton, Virginia Welles as Liz Lorimer, and a sassy Victoria Horne as Nurse Daisy Gingras.

Released in the spring of 1946, one can imagine how audiences might have viscerally reacted to the film’s setting. Through the Second World War, American audiences flocked to a greater proportion of patriotic movies intended to rally morale, propaganda, and war movies that became less sanitized as the war itself dragged on. Films concerning civilian self-sacrifice during this period typically downplayed said self-sacrifice for nationalism. To Each His Own embeds themes of wartime sacrifice into its subtext, even if the film does not directly link Jody’s decades-long personal sacrifice to the Allied effort in World War II. That Brackett and Théry allow Jody to be an imperfect, morally challenged protagonist is a development not often seen in melodramas where a mother gives up their child (a subcategory within the subgenre; see 1931’s The Sin of Madelon Claudet and 1939’s The Old Maid). In the film’s final act, we see Jody skirting the boundaries of what would be the right thing to do. While taking care of a young Gregory (his adopted parents, sympathetic to her plight, allow her babysitting privileges), she wants to do what is best for her son, but sometimes this might rub up against the parental rights of Gregory’s adopted parents.

In Jody, the viewer intuits her desire for love and the unbearable separation – in extraordinary circumstances – of mother and son. For the parents among the audience members who saw To Each His Own during its theatrical run, similar emotions must have coursed over them for most of the film. Permanent and temporary separations from loved ones can wreak havoc on a person’s psychology. Brackett and Théry’s screenplay is sensitive to this trauma and resolve it in a way as touching as the Motion Picture Production Code (the self-censoring guidelines enforced upon major American studio movies from 1934-1968) would allow. The Production Code Administration (PCA), which enforced the Code, frowned upon the fact that Gregory was an illegitimate child born out of wedlock and requested wholesale changes to the film’s resolution of its-child separation.

While negotiating with the PCA, Brackett succeeded in arguing that the film’s ending was the only sensible conclusion for To Each His Own. Despite winning the argument, Brackett made concessions in order to keep his ending, including having several characters treat Jody’s affair as sinful in scenes leading up to and just after Gregory’s birth. Not that the compromises compromise the film too much. Given cultural norms in the early twentieth century, the amount of screentime concerning Jody’s potential shame if her secret was revealed feels appropriate. The intentions from the PCA might have been to moralize, but To Each His Own does not overcompensate for its lead character’s supposed immorality. And if the film’s preserved ending may not satisfy persnickety viewers too focused on narrative probability, it is at the very least a poignant and deserved conclusion.

Over the course of the story’s three decades, Olivia de Havilland must transform from a naïve young adult reveling in her attractiveness to men to a hardened, middle-aged spinster who has all but put her past behind her. While de Havilland utilized different perfumes to evoke Jody’s mentality for progressing time periods, makeup supervisor Wally Westmore (1953’s The War of the Worlds, 1958’s Vertigo) and costume designer Edith Head (1950’s All About Eve, 1973’s The Sting) and their teams subtly guide the viewer to realize Jody’s character growth even before she utters a word. Harsher lighting over the passing time periods also assists in making de Havilland look older. In time, Jody – once a somewhat sheltered, but flirtatious assistant in her father’s drugstore – loses her playfulness and vivaciousness, but retains an insecurity over social tact. That insecurity is evident when she encounters an adult Gregory, who appears to have no recollection of who he once called “Aunt Jody”. The viewer sees the simultaneous hope, fearfulness, and suppressed agony on her face when adult Gregory is not looking her direction. Everything de Havilland has done up to this point in her performance – her witticisms and pointed requests, wordless joy and sorrow – suffuses the final half-hour with Jody’s regrets and desire to be the mother she never could be. All of Jody’s frailties and inner strength pour through in the end and we, the viewers, feel every hint of embarrassment, fortitude, desire, and self-doubt. This is a masterclass leading performance from Olivia de Havilland, who would deliver an even better performance on the horizon.

Only prominent in the bookends of the film, Roland Culver (1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1945’s Dead of Night) provides a charismatic turn as Lord Desham. Culver may not express too much emotionally – those British men and their stiff upper lips are sentimentalists inside, right? – but he has a curious authoritative charm that permeates each scene. Here is a fellow who has garnered a lot of wisdom and a droll wit over his years, but he would rather listen than soliloquize. To Each His Own’s conclusion is not nearly as impactful without Culver as Desham. Unfortunately, one can’t sing the same praises for John Lund in his dual role. In both roles, Lund just seems too stiff and his dialogue delivery sounds too forced at times. This can be somewhat attributed to Lund’s discomfiture in playing a dual role and the brown hair rinse over his naturally blonde hair.

Olivia de Havilland’s return to the silver screen was well-received by audiences and across the film industry. She would not make another film with Warner Bros. until after Jack Warner’s retirement in 1973 (but the less said about 1978’s The Swarm, the better). A career resurgence would follow To Each His Own – this time, she was making movies on her own terms. The precedent established by the Californian state court in De Havilland v. Warner Bros. Pictures continues to protect actors and actresses from contractual exploitation from movie studios and grants them greater creative freedom (and, as of 2009, the precedent now applies to the music recording industry).

The appeal of To Each His Own extended overseas, most notably in a Bollywood remake entitled Aradhana (1969), starring Sharmila Tagore, Rajesh Khanna, and Sujit Kumar. By this point in the review, I’m guessing you, the reader, are a bit fatigued with all the Olivia de Havilland worship. Yet, her importance to the success of To Each His Own is too critical to the film itself and her importance to Hollywood’s history cannot be understated. As good as the costume design, lighting, and supporting performances might be and as emotional as the script is, none of it works without its central star.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#To Each His Own #Mitchell Leisen #Olivia de Havilland #John Lund #Mary Anderson #Roland Culver #Phillip Terry #Bill Goodwin #Griff Barnett #Victoria Horne #Charles Brackett #Jacques Thery #Victor Young #Edith Head #Wally Westmore #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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