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the-violet-galaxy · 1 month

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On the topic of Ruin

EDIT: Just for reference, with further updates a few of these opinions have changed, but a lot of the sentiment is the same. (I also hadn't watched everything from the show yet, so my knowledge of some of the lore was spotty).

So. We just learned a lot about Ruin, didn’t we? The big twist and who he was all along.

Let me say, I adore this show! The story has been incredible and I’ve been at the edge of my seat the whole time. It’s been fascinating going back and forth about Ruin, listening to the arguments about whether he was good or evil. And when he was revealed to have built Eclipse all along, it was a matter of whether he did so knowingly or not.

But. Now we know for certain that Ruin did it willingly, and he was 100% aware, and faking being nice the whole time; and even if I WANT to hold out hope for him, there keep being less and less ways for Ruin to somehow be good or redeemed at the end of this. It seems Ruin might be confirmed 100% to be evil through and through, no Jekyll and Hyde, second personality, or return of the virus, like a lot of us had hoped.

And… I don’t know if I like this twist.

… Sadly, I can't say I do.

And I’d like to give my thoughts why! I have a lot to say, both from the perspective of a Ruin fan and from a storytelling perspective. So there's lots of analysis and personal feelings mixed together down here!

(And of course, there is still more to be revealed, but this is how it stands now.)

My first point is that it loses the show of a very good character.

Ruin was a great character! He was so unique in his personality, traits, and mannerisms compared to the rest of the cast, and his interactions with others were tons of fun.

It also just made a ton of sense to have him around: he is basically Canon Eclipse from the Ruin DLC, so letting him be here is just a Big Brain move.

There was so much potential for where he could go, given his backstory. He was a person who had 50 years of his life stolen from him, his entire world and everything he ever knew was destroyed, HIS BODY was the tool used to do it; and here he was, waking up in a new world his evil self tried to destroy, after being saved thanks to the kindness of several strangers who had every right to kill him but risked so much just to give him a chance. And now, unmoored here, he’s just trying to rebuild anything resembling a life --

There were SO many things you could do with this, SO many interesting ways Ruin could have developed… the angst; the sheer guilt of having killed so many people and destroyed so much; the fear of what he would see, if his memories from his time with the virus ever got uncorrupted; the TERROR he feels that his virus self might not actually be fully gone, and the desperation to NOT turn back into his other self and hurt anyone ever again -- the feeling of being excluded by everyone in this new dimension, he stays out of their way because he feels somewhat responsible for his Virus self hurting them, being the Weird Person who tries to fit in but really has no place anywhere, just wants to have a new life and new family with these people… (His relationship with Solar in particular was so interesting to me.) Ruin could have made up with Sun, after a long time of Sun being uncomfortable with him.

He was just one of the most fun characters to have around, including his streak of doing weird things. (And this is just personal, but I’m autistic, so I read that into a lot of his mannerisms. I loved him.)

And he paralleled many characters too!! In a way, you could say he was similar to New Moon: Ruin was created when his Sun and Moon fused, meaning Ruin is technically an incarnation of them, but he’s NOT them -- the way New Moon is an incarnation of Moon, but he’s not Old Moon. Ruin and Moon could have had formed a connection through that, at some point.

(And in this new arc, if we go with the idea that Ruin is innocent and a second personality was the one doing everything, then Ruin would be a parallel to Eclipse himself!! Eclipse is fabricated and nothing about him is “real” – the same could be said for Ruin in this event, where his second personality is literally messing with his brain, making Ruin also a "fabricated" personality of some kind. There is a line Ruin says when Eclipse kidnapped him that I always found interesting, where Ruin offered to heal Eclipse’s mind like therapy, which Eclipse shot down… I always liked that idea, that Eclipse and Ruin could bond. If Eclipse learned RUIN wasn’t to blame and it was a second personality, then, well, it could have happened. Why would the writers throw that idea out if they knew they would never do anything with it?)

As it was, Ruin had an entire WORLD of potential. And his existence made sense on a meta level, with link to the DLC's Canon Eclipse.

But that’s all gone now. Ruin being 100% evil just loses all that.

I think they did too good a job of making Ruin an enjoyable character to have around, if they knew he was going to be evil the whole time and were going to kill him in the end. (At the same time, they also didn’t utilize him in certain ways, like how Ruin never got a therapy session with Earth and was excluded from some of the group events, which logically would have been good for covering his tracks.)

Could there have been both a Good-Ruin and Ruin-Remade-Eclipse-Twist at the same time?

I’ll talk more about it in the next point, but I genuinely think the writers could have had it both ways if they had wanted to. They could have let Ruin be a good and innocent person who can stay around as a member of the cast, while STILL having him be the rebuilder of Eclipse and the source of other evil things. How?

The Two-Personalities theory! It’s been a theory for a while that Ruin has more than one personality inside of him, the second personality usually theorized to be his Virus Self. When he slips up and says stuff like “OUR head’s spinning a little bit” when getting the memory scrub from Moon, for instance. Ruin would be innocent and unaware, while his Virus/Other Self takes over when he’s not mentally present and does the bad things.

(Or alternatively: Ruin as an innocent person WAS real for a while, but his virus came back at some point.)

If that is what happened, they could have their cake and eaten it too.

And I think that would have been a better utilization of the worldbuilding given to us. Elaborated further:

I feel they could have utilized the worldbuilding in better ways.

One of the most interesting parts of the Show is how it plays with the concept of identity for these robots. There are several characters that are new incarnations of previous characters, but are distinctly different people from their previous selves. Bloodmoon, Moon, Eclipse, etc.

Look closer at Moon. Even if they are incarnations of the same person, Old Moon and New Moon are completely separate individuals. New Moon lost his memories and remembers nothing of being Old Moon, which is WHY he is a new person. It would be completely unfair to blame New Moon for what Old Moon did – New Moon did not kill those children, New Moon did not abuse Sun, because he does not remember it. Because he does not remember it, he shouldn’t be punished for those things, because HE did not do them. What this means is that MEMORY is one of the key aspects in a robot’s identity, and their identity can change depending on those memories.

Now take that, and apply it to Ruin: how interesting would it have been if RUIN, the one we saw in the videos, was actually fully innocent and completely unaware of what his body was being used to do the entire time? Because his evil past self/second personality had been controlling him and literally editing over top of his memories while his body was building Eclipse and preparing the Arcade plan, so that Ruin had no idea anything was going on? For all these months, Ruin GENUINELY believes he is innocent, and doesn’t remember doing anything that brought Eclipse back; he’s in distress when suspicion falls on him because he “knows” he did nothing wrong, and he’s relieved when Moon scrubs his mind and finds nothing there; phew, now they can trust him. But then! Along with Moon, Solar, Sun, and everyone else, he would find out he WAS doing it all along. Ruin could be utterly HORRIFIED and aghast that his worst fear (turning back into his evil self) had come true. And imagine the angst for that too, “my memories have been messed with so much – I’m basically a fabrication of a personality, DO I EVEN COUNT AS TRULY EXISTING!?”

This could even lead to an interesting moral conundrum for Sun and Moon too. Moon is already on the warpath and has less patience for Ruin’s life (especially with how much harm Ruin seemingly did to them), so would Moon be eager to KILL Ruin (or if not kill him, then at least give Eclipse permission to do it)? Or would Moon be talked through it, sort of realize “Ruin doesn’t remember any of it and didn’t do it himself. It’s not his fault. The same way Old Moon’s actions are not mine. It would be unjust to kill him because RUIN wasn’t the one who did any of it.”

Many possibilities.

...But no, none of that ended up happened.

Instead Ruin is a “was always evil, all along” kind of guy. Which is… pretty disappointing considering the other possibilities. It genuinely feels like “the most obvious option.”

Also, Eclipse has literal command orders built into his head.

So in theory, maybe the innocent Ruin could have had something like this too. Imagine: His second personality, doing things whenever Ruin is mentally asleep, also embeds Ruin's AI with those command prompts that force Ruin to do unusual things. Ruin builds his own body and he doesn't really have a good reason? The commands subconsciously forcing him to. He goes down into the bunker? He has this weird, pathological obsession with doing things with arcade machines he can't quite stop? THE COMMAND LINES, BABY.

Then when it comes time for Moon to memory-scrub him, the second personality could just. Corrupt the lines, hide them with the rest of them.

(Then OO DRAMA later on when everyone realizes Ruin's condition. Just as Eclipse knows he'll die if he differs from his plans, Ruin realizes he's being forced to do things and will die if he doesn't. Hey that's another connection the two could share.)

Eclipse has been right about everything, but this twist sort of invalidates a few of the things Eclipse has said.

Eclipse honed in on Ruin and was correct the whole time. But let’s look at a few episodes, to hyper-analyze some of the things Eclipse said.

The episode where Eclipse kidnapped Ruin:

Ruin: I was far too busy elsewhere to have any, uh, meddling with your being—

Eclipse: You see that’s the funny thing. I don’t think you realize what you’ve DONE. Or what you ARE going to do.

This implies Eclipse ALSO believes Ruin doesn’t remember his actions. So if Eclipse has been right about everything so far, why would he be wrong about THAT?

In the same episode, after Eclipse tells Ruin: "I'm going to torture you" and leaves, Ruin is left all alone. Because Eclipse has left, Ruin has no reason to keep up the facade of being scared any longer, and YET, he still sits there hyperventilating for a few seconds before saying:

"Oh GOD...."

why would he do that, if he knew he could drop the act?

There’s also the episode where he confronts Ruin, he says:

“What did you do, huh? Changed a bit of your memory? Wiped your whole brain with a magnet? What did you do, huh?”

And I still just feel if Ruin genuinely changed his whole memory and brain, that his entire Ego/Personality should change.

There’s also just the amount of Eclipse’s “Are you terrified of me?” and scaring Ruin that whole episode.

If Ruin WASN’T in a different, innocent personality at that moment, Eclipse would know he’s not scared. If Ruin BUILT him, he wouldn’t be scared.

Ruin offered to “repair” Eclipse’s mind at one point, comparing it to therapy.

Which Eclipse shot down, of course. If Ruin was 100% faking and knew what he was doing the entire time, and he knew he was never going to do anything of the sort with Eclipse, why would he EVER offer this to Eclipse? Why would the writers throw it out if it was never going to go anywhere?

It loses a perfectly good redemption arc.

One thing about the Show is how its redemptions rarely stick, at least for long. Lunar is like, the only one who has gotten a redemption arc and stayed alive. Killcode died shortly after his redemption. Old Moon tried to change, really he did, but he died before he could ever make the changes he needed to. Eclipse is currently being worked on in a way, but that is still a LONG ways off. Etc, etc.

Then we had Ruin, who was another successful “redemption”, and it was pretty good to see!! …Which is now ruined (hah) because he was never good to begin with.

LEADING INTO ANOTHER IMPORTANT POINT:

It makes all that effort the other characters went through for nothing.

Sun and Moon tried so hard to help Ruin, they took a risk for him to cure him of his virus – but in the end, this was the Wrong thing to do.

The characters did the right thing!! And they are being punished for it!!

And elaborating on that further:

This is going to negatively affect all the characters going forward.

This entire arc, Moon has been dealing with negative thought patterns and paranoia, and a lot of that paranoia manifested when he was investigating Ruin. He acted pretty cruel to Ruin in many ways, especially during the interrogation. This is why I thought it was very good for Moon when he did the memory scrub, found nothing, and realized he was being kind of a jerk, so he apologized to Ruin and pulled back a bit. He didn’t STOP LOOKING INTO HIM, but it was a lesson for him, to not to let his aggression reign over him when dealing with people he was suspicious of.

(One of the most concerning parts of Moon’s paranoia was how he said he didn’t trust ANYONE. He says so directly to Eclipse: “trust is a FARCE.” Despite this, in some way or form, he DID let his guard down around Ruin and began to trust him just a mild amount.)

WELL NOW THAT’S ALL GONE! Moon will never trust anyone ever again. The last person he gave the benefit of the doubt to turned out to be a multiverse-destroyer. Moon now has every reason to double down on his aggression, his paranoia, his mistrust of other people; in the future I doubt he will ever be so kind or lenient with people. He would probably be more likely to “attack first” when seeing a potential threat. And Sun as well; Sun will have much less reason to want to be kind or to take a chance to help a villain, because one time he helped Ruin and it blew up in his face.

So… good job. :/

It just kind of feels like the most obvious twist that could have written with the pieces on hand.

It’s like… There are a million different moving parts for this mystery -- multi-personalities, the virus, ways to play with memories that change identities, command orders embedded into robot's skulls – and then they chose the most straightforward way to use them.

Over the course of the storyline there were SO many signs pointing to Ruin (one of the Thumbnails even had a Creepy Face hidden in the corner) that it felt there HAD to be some kind of twist involving personalities or memories or someone else controlling him. I don’t want to say bad writing, but….

It almost makes Ruin a little too powerful.

I feel it’s almost cheating in some ways. Ruin is able to edit/corrupt his own memories so Moon couldn’t access them…… but RUIN still know them? Why didn’t Ruin literally forget those things, himself? It feels a little TOO powerful, a little too unrealistic, for him to be able to fool all these scanners and all these people SO easily. ESPECIALLY because we know Moon and Solar (and Eclipse definitely) went snooping around Ruin’s stuff before and looked at his computers; how did they, two galactic supergeniuses, never find ANY hint that Ruin had tampered with the security camera broadcasts when they were doing it?

When Ruin is supposed to be acting, he sounds just a little too sincere.

This is more of a minor thing, but in some of the episodes, when something dramatic happened to Ruin, it doesn't feel like he's acting in-universe; he sounds very sincere.

Just some examples: when he's interrogated by Moon and sounds so sad about being threatened. When Eclipse menaces him several times he's so scared. And many just other instances just. (And again, since I'm autistic, I read some of his stranger mannerisms as just being through that lens. Even if he acted strange sometimes that doesn't automatically equal fakeness.)

And I dunno, maybe he should have had more instances where it didn't feel so sincere.

This makes Solar the only person from another dimension who is good.

Pretty much everyone else from the other dimensions is bad or evil in some way, (aside from like one Sun from the one-off dimension where Moon never existed.) And I love Solar, but for some reason, it just doesn’t feel RIGHT that he’s literally the only person who is totally cool with the Celestial family. Does anyone else feel that way?

Minor thing: When Moon apologized to Ruin, they said they would make Ruin a bedroom out of one of the alcoves.

Then they didn't.

Petty reason: Ruin was my comfort character, my personal one.

Lol, lmao even, my poor heart. It's broken.

And there are some various other thoughts, but this is also really long, so I'm going to stop here.

At the end of the day, I was really passionate about this character, and I’m disappointed to see it go the route that it did. There WERE ways to have Ruin still be good while also being a villain, just by giving him a second personality. And giving Ruin a second personality, to play around with the worldbuilding of robot memories and how Ruin isn’t responsible due to his memories being different, I personally think would have been more interesting.

Is there ANY hope for Ruin still being around after this? I’m not sure at this point. It’s looking less and less likely that there is a way out for Ruin. It’s looking less and less likely that there are two personalities, or even that Ruin was infected to begin with.

If he somehow makes it out I’ll be ecstatic, but until then, I have a feeling we might be saying goodbye to him soon.

I still love this Show very much! And the story isn't over yet. So we'll just have to see if it can pull something off with this. But as it stands, I just have to respectfully say I think a mistake has been made in the direction they are going with it.

#The Sun and Moon Show #TSAMS Ruin #TSAMS Moon #TSAMS Eclipse #The Sun and Moon Show Spoilers #Sun and Moon Show

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underthestarlitsky · 10 months

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something very interesting to me about miguel o’hara as a character is that like all of his actions, like the rest of the spiders, are based in good intentions. like there’s a lot of capital V villains out there who are working towards the Greater Good but as a smokescreen for their own Evil Desires For Power. but the thing about miguel is that he genuinely, one THOUSAND percent, believes he is trying to save every universe. the thing about trying to understand why a universe is collapsing based on empirical evidence is really fucking hard because you can’t keep collapsing universes to check out which factor triggered it this time. he wanted a family so he tried to have one, but it DESTROYED AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE. of course he believes that because he didn’t stick to his canon events he disintegrated his daughter out of existence (— even though this doesn’t fully make sense, because why would his own canon events have an impact on a different universe? — unless he simultaneously took over as spider-man on his alt-family’s earth and which fucked up the spider-timeline on that earth? but it isn’t mentioned…i’m getting off-topic—let’s rewind) what he is trying to do is make sure NOTHING goes wrong ANYWHERE — so like with pavitr’s universe when miles prevented the canon event with gayatri — when it started collapsing, he took that as evidence to mean the canon event shit fucked it up, and not spot. OF COURSE he’s chasing miles and yelling at him and scaring the shit out of him. miguel is genuinely terrified that the entire multiverse will actually collapse if miles (who, by the way, i AGREE WITH) saves his dad. he’s fucking crazy, but the feral behaviour comes not from some fucked up psyche or deep-seated villainous tendencies. dude is actually terrified that everything and everyone he knows will suffer and disintegrate into actual nothingness and he’s doing the only thing he can to prevent it. if he wrong? YES. but he’s genuinely trying his best like this a man who tried to be happy and was told that The Universe Does Not Agree. so if he as the holder of the spider-mantle has to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of the world he was to protect it’s not difficult to see why the canon-event theory makes more sense to him than anything else. if any of the other spiders try to be selfish, like he was, their universes will be gone. in a way i think he truly believes he’s doing all the other spiders a favor — maybe they have to watch someone they love die, but they don’t have watch ALL the someones they live die. and we know this man has nothing else to live for so if you came up to him and said hey actually there was nothing you could’ve done to prevent the total annihilation of the universe where you were happy other than by never being happy in the first place, ofc he’s gonna go crazy. if miles is right about having both cakes — and he is, gwen realised that canon events can be avoided safely — that means that miguel could never have done anything other than NOT go to the universe that collapsed. he had to stay in his lane and NOT universe jump. miguel’s story is lose-lose and if miles is right, then he just has to accept that

#i haven’t been this invested in a property since i first got into DC years ago. none of this makes any sense but i’m constantly rotating #miguel in my head like a choose your fighter screen #he’s so wrong about so many things and it’s all rooted in grief like. king your story alone was not a happy one and i’m sorry #but this is not how you save the world #atsv #across the spiderverse #across the spider verse spoilers #miguel o'hara #atsv miguel

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hislifesuckspoll · 3 months

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Xie Lian Propaganda

Bestie got canonically awful luck, has gone from being a Crown Prince to being a scrap collector / god of trash, and oh, also: the most powerful being in the world is stalking him and has been making his life hell for the past 800 years.

When Crown Prince Xie Lian was 17, he defeated a powerful ghost. The Heavenly Emperor himself came up to talk to him about it, and XL told him the ancient chinese equivalent of 'Live Laugh Love' and ascended to godhood. This angered the Heavenly Emperor, who decided to ruin his life in response. (a perfectly normal and very sane way to respond) His kingdom fell, he was banished from heaven, his parents died, his best friends left him, his worshippers abandoned him, he was stalked by the most powerful ghost in the world (actually the emperor in disguise). He nearly succeeded in ruining Xie Lian and turning him evil and hateful, but right at the end XL regained his senses and his faith in humanity and 'defeated him'. After that whole ordeal he ascended again, and then got banished less than 30 minutes later, this time with a seal on his luck, causing him to only have horrible luck for the next 800 years (the novel starts 800 years after those events with his 3rd ascension). I cannot understate how absolutely horrible 800 years of terrible luck are. Every single time he opens his mouth and reminiscences about something, it hurts to read, and he doesn't even see how horrible it is because he's so used to it. I swear he beats every single person in this tournament just by the sheer amount of years spent being fucked over by luck and the heavenly emperor himself. He's the true winner in my heart no matter what actually happens in the tournament. Imo nothing shows that luck better than the conversation he had with some other characters about the Venerable of Empty Words. That's a type of ghost who latches onto a person and whenever they're happy, it says a prophesy that something horrible will happen to ruin that happiness, scaring the person and making them try their best to stop it, turning the prophecy into a self-fulfilling one. And Xie Lian says he encountered one. And. that the best method to deal with it. is. to just not care about what it says, because that's what worked for him. Do you know why it worked? Because he's grown so used to having the world's worst luck that no matter what the Venerable said, it sounded like well-wishes to his ears. A ghost that brings misfortune couldn't manage a prophecy bad enough to be worse than Xie Lian's own bad luck. For example when he built a shack to rest in, the venerable said 'the shack will fall apart in two months!' and he replied to it with 'two months? If it's still standing in 7 days, then it'd be a real miracle.' (it got hit by lighting not even a week later). Then the ghost waited for another happy occasion, and. There just wasn't one. For half a year. And when one finally did come, Xie Lian found some nice scrap, it tried its best to curse him, once again with no effect because none of its prophecies counted with the scrap catching fire and being burnt to ashes literally the same day he got it. Xie Lian even started asking it about more curses before it could speak because they sounded like nice daydreams to him. Eventually the Venerable just gave up and fled tf away. Genuinely RIP Xie Lian the only thing that makes his whole situation slightly better is that it's fixable and at the end of the novel he gets his luck unsealed and defeats the emperor for good. Also gets a husband along the way, who has the best luck in the world and is fully willing to share it with him. Yes this novel is canonically queer. Sorry it got so long, vote Xie Lian <3

Not spoiler free: Xie Lian is a prince and a twice banished god whose entire country is destroyed as he's systematically tortured by The God because he didn't like Xie Lian's attitude (essentially). Xie Lian has shackles that literally make it impossible for him to die (even after a hundred successive stab wounds) and takes away his luck (if something bad could happen to him, it does) as well as binding his spiritual powers. All with Xie Lian convinced it was entirely his fault and that he's deserving of this punishment. The Heavenly Emperor literally was just like "fuck this guy in particular" and that lasted 800 years.

His luck is so bad he has to homoerotically hold hands with his love interest just to win a game of dice. He ascended to Heaven three times, being banished twice - the first time for trying to help his people, only to watch his kingdom fall & his family die. He gets a happy ending but at what cost

#hislifesucks propaganda #hislifesuckspoll #xie lian

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Captain Fray: The Trash Superman

Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s... an ugly, homeless bald man cackling evily while raining trash on the city with an army of sludge monsters, shortly before getting beaten up by a group of meddling kids. It’s just dumb old Captain Fray again getting foiled by Monica’s Gang, nevermind him. He does that every Tuesday.

Monica’s Gang are arguably the most iconic of all Brazilian comic book characters, having maintained popularity for 60 years and with unmatched worldwide recognition. They’ve had cartoons, a cinematic universe of films both cartoon and live-action, plays, a long-running manga spin-off that turned them into teenagers, crossovers everywhere ranging from The Big Two’s superheroes to Osamu Tezuka’s properties (as Monica’s creator Mauricio and Tezuka were acquaintances), at least one theme park, and much, much more. Even past Brazil’s borders, where they are a cultural institution on a scale matched only by Disney, these are some of the world’s most popular characters, starring in just about any kind of adventure imaginable and then some.

However, if you go into the world of Monica’s Gang, and look for a flying man with a chest logo, a cape and impossible superpowers, you’ll instead find their greatest arch-enemy: Captain Fray (actual name Capitão Feio, which translates to Captain Ugly), real name Feioso Araújo. Who will be happy to remind you time and time again of what a rotten, no-good scoundrel he is, even if he has to pick a fight with the Big Blue himself to prove it.

So let’s talk about perhaps the most iconic “caped superhero” of Brazilian comic books, even if he’s ultimately a long, long shot from being one.

Despite the long, worldwide spanning history of the superhero, the idea of the superhero as a cape-wearing uniformed superpowered do-gooder has remained a largely American concept, as different regions have their own unique icons. The titular 4 members of Monica’s Gang have on many occasions taken the role of superheroes, and they’ve built up a massive Rogues Gallery over decades, despite not looking like the usual idea of a superhero. Monica, Jimmy Five, Smudge and Maggy, for the most part, look and act like kids, with odd quirks.

To briefly describe the 4: Monica is the pudgy, bucktoothed ruler of the group as well as the neighborhood, being super strong and more than willing to hit people who mock her with her stuffed rabbit “Samson”. Jimmy Five has a speech impediment, and he constantly schemes to take Monica’s role as leader, best described at times as a junior Lex Luthor to Monica’s Superman. Maggy is Monica’s friend with an uncontrollable appetite, and the witty and perpetually dirty Smudge is Jimmy Five’s friend and accomplice in schemes. Smudge is defined by his complete and total refusal to take a bath or even come into contact with water under any circumstances, and some stories play up Smudge’s dirtyness to the point of superpower.

It’s Smudge in particular who’s gonna be relevant to this post, because the first time Captain Fray was introduced, he was introduced as Smudge’s good-natured and humorous uncle, a comic book addict surrounded by piles of dusty comics, particularly those of Smudge’s favorite superhero, Captain Pitoco, a sort of Superman/Buzz Lightyear analogue. Eventually, Smudge’s uncle is surrounded by dust, and out of it, he transforms “back” into a former alter-ego, Captain Fray, a megalomaniac supervillain horrified at just how clean the world is, and who decides to sully it as much as possible, flying around the city spreading dirt rays and even transforming the population into pollution-fanatics. Eventually he’s defeated and transformed back into normal, only thinking he had a weird dream.

Upon subsequent appearences, Fray would acquire things like sludge minions, underground lairs and ever increasing powers (like in the above sequence where he somehow destroys a rainbow and darkens the sky with a single gesture), although he would eventually gain a Kryptonite-esque weakness to water. Captain Fray would go on to become the most reocurring villain of Monica’s Gang for the next 40 years, as the former concept of him being Smudge’s uncle was dropped and he became instead the ruler of an underground race of sludge monsters created by him, who’d occasionally come on to the surface in order to engage in supervillain plots to take over the world and spread dirt and pollution everywhere, sometimes in stories with an environmental angle, and often when the story calls for superhero antics.

Fray’s got a very standard Grinch/Captain Hook cartoon villain personality, all cackles and snarls and shaking fists at the meddling kids who ruin his plans everytime, proud of being evil and rotten, but never too rotten to the point he betrays the kid-friendly nature of the stories he’s in, nor too rotten that he can’t do something nice for a change like allow his monsters to celebrate Christmas even if it ruins his bad guy image, or begrudingly do a nice thing for Smudge.

Although for the most part, the “mainline” comics have dropped the angle of Fray being Smudge’s uncle, the two having a particular dynamic has stayed consistent still. Sometimes, Smudge is portrayed as the only member of the Gang who’s got little to no problem with Fray, even welcoming the change of scenery he brings, although he will stick with his friends, as often he’s the only one who’s got no problem being hit by Fray’s dirt rays. While sometimes Fray singles out destroying Smudge so his claim as the dirtiest being in the universe can never be challenged, he is more often depicted as having a soft spot for Smudge, sometimes considering him a pupil or potential successor to inherit his powers, and plenty of times, Smudge has done just that, although inevitably it never sticks, partially because Fray gets jealous or misses his former life, and partially because Smudge gets bored of supervillainy and just wants to go play with his friends again.

The dynamic between Smudge and Fray has led to a lot of adventures between the two, and it’s something that’s been played up in the aforementioned manga spin-off, Monica Adventures. In it, the cast’s all been aged up to teenagers, and the adventures they get into respectively have taken much more of a shonen manga edge, much darker and weirder than anything the original kid comics could get away with, although not necessarily to it’s benefit, because I could not begin to describe just how much grimdark nonsense is in those, let’s just call it the Monica’s Gang equivalent of Jorge Joestar in terms of lunacy and leave it at that (although, to be clear, even the original “mainline” comics could get very, very weird themselves). Captain Fray has been a mainstay of said manga from the start, going through a series of redesigns, including one where he turns into a bootleg Sephiroth, and one where he tries rebranding himself into a suit-wearing gangster named “Black Dust”, which nobody really takes seriously.

It’s also granted Fray a backstory: As a kid, when he’d gone to the basement to read comics, his house was buried in a landslide. Afraid of death, he was met with a milipede claiming to serve “The Serpent” (the in-universe stand in for the devil, maybe, just bear with me here), claiming it would protec him so long as it returned the favor someday. He was afterwards transferred to an orphanage, teased by kids over his lack of hygiene and liking for superheroes and nicknamed “Captain Ugly” (again, his name, Fray is just the English translation), with rumors that his touch granted disease. After the orphanage closes, he’s adopted by a nurse and gains a step-brother in Smudge’s dad.

Years down the line, and Feioso’s managed to acquire a house and make a decent living. He spends a lot of time with his nephew Smudge, teaching him how to build toys out of garbage (a habit of Smudge in the strips) and fly kites and so on. Until one day, in an update of his original story, he’s cleaning his house packed with dusty comics, and a shelf falls atop of him. The millipede from his childhood appears to recollect the debt:

"Your mission is to pollude the Earth...rot it's soil...change it's atmosphere...darken the skies with smoke...so that the sun's rays may never again hit the surface of this planet!

"No! No, please! I-I don't want to hurt anyone!"

"You think you can refuse? You think you have a choice? Do you think you can escape your destiny? Evil does not tolerate weak servants. If you don't fill your end of the bargain, if you don't pay your debt...it will be transferred to the person you love most."

"Smudge? NO!! H-How do you know about my nephew?"

"We know of all that happens. Our eyes...are everywhere."

"Smudge has nothing to do with this. Leave him alone, please...I-I'll do anything you guys want!"

"So be it...Filthy powers will corrode your soul...This is the day of your rebirth! How would you like to be rebaptized?

"The nickname I was given at the orphanage...it's perfect! Captain Ugly strikes again!"

How “canon” the events of Monica Adventures are is a question best left unspoken, since it ultimately doesn’t change anything about the original strips. But regardless of what made Fray who he is, he would spend the following decades in many, many attempts to complete his mission and defeat Monica’s Gang, to be foiled and stopped time and time again by his nephew and his friends, little more than a dumb, cartoon villain there to be smacked again and again, too dumb to quit and too mean to stop. So he was, and so he will always be.

But something interesting’s happened recently with him. As part of the Graphic MSP initiative that’s allowed creators to reinvent the many, many characters of Monica’s Gang for stand-alone graphic novels, Captain Fray’s received one in the form of Capitão Feio: Identidade, which isn’t so much an origin story as it tells the story of a homeless man with no knowledge of his past or where he acquired the superpowers that force him to be on the constant run from society, and it tells the story of how said man eventually became the infamous supervillain, despite his many attempts to be a superhero.

The comic and it’s sequel, Tormenta, acted more of a proof of concept to test whether or not a serious reimagining of Captain Fray can work, and considering their reception and the newfound love that the Captain seems to have attained in recent years, I’d say they succedeed pretty damn well. He’s ostracized for his appearence, poverty, smell and bad manners, and there’s hardly anything he can do about it because his powers make him a toxic abomination by default. He spends portions of the book trying to create living beings with his powers, and once he succeeds in creating a Godzilla-esque monster to protect him from the authorities, he ends up having to put the monster down, before getting fed up with constant rejection and promptly announcing that, if he’s just gonna be known as an ugly monster by the people, even after he saves them, he’s gonna make it a point to be Captain Ugly Monster, the most rotten supervillain they’ve ever seen.

The comic constantly grants upon Frey iconography of several of the biggest icons of comic books, from Batman and Superman to AKIRA, playing up not just Frey’s association with comic books but also the fact that he's been mired in that aesthetic from day one. He wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be like Captain Pitoco, and regardless of continuity, all that he ends up as is becoming a gross caricature of a superhero. And still, Frey owns it. He owns his grossness, his rage, his bitterness at everything that he understands to be the opposite of himself, everything clean and good and decent, and he tries time and time again to tear it down, even if he ultimately can never get far enough to accomplish his goals, or lose all of his humanity in the process.

I’ve remarked once that, to many in some regions of South America, the “traditional” superhero does not hold much appeal, and most of the more popular protagonists and icons tend to be outlaws far away from caped antics. Which is why it’s particularly interesting that, not only is the most famous caped superman of Brazilian comic books a villain, but also that, perhaps unintentionally, Fray has undergone the kind of development that most reocurring cartoon villains never get, and one that seems almost poised to last. In a current zeitgest of villain protagonists, it’s successes and failures, I could very easily see Captain Fray becoming the star of a popular film or series, one that takes a look not just at his personality and role, but also at Brazilian culture’s relationship with superheroes and supervillains. Maybe Fray as an anti-hero, trying to make the best of the horrendous powers he’s burdened with, could work.

So long as it’s not revealed that he likes dirt because his mom got pushed off a cliff by cleaning products, I could see it working very well.

#character profiles #comic books #captain fray #capitão feio #turma da monica #mauricio de souza #brazilian superheroes #brazilian supervillains #superman #monica's gang

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ofdreamsanddoodles · 3 years

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i feel like some people don’t recognize how much isolation plays into the fate’s of gertrude’s assistants, especially her manipulation of gerry & leitner. like, the obvious ones is just if sarah or fiona had someone else to watch their back, they might not’ve have fallen victim to the avatars that killed/trapped them, but if michael felt like he could depend on literally anyone other than gertrude and emma, he probably wouldn’t of had the kind of single-minded loyalty that led him to stopping the spiral’s ritual. it’s only because he’d spent decades placing gertrude and emma’s interpretations of events above his own that she was able to convince him to move forward when the distortion’s ritual was actively breaking his mind. if he had anyone encourage him to trust his own thoughts, he would have tried pushing back, or arguing when gertrude asked him to destroy himself for her. but because the archives had convinced him so thoroughly that all he should do was whatever gertrude thought was right, that’s what he did.

anyways. with that out of the way. let’s talk about the 5D chess gertrude was playing with gerry and leitner and how she used gerry’s hatred of leitner & leitners fear of repercussions to stop them from asking questions

it’s not that much of a reach to assume that they both probably felt they owed gertrude. leitner for letting him hide out in her archives, and gerry for killing his mom. at the end of the day, even if they wanted to go against her, it’d feel like a slap in the face to the “hospitality” she was showing them. even if gertrude had known about gerry for years and had only killed mary now that she was lacking assistants, even if she reminded him of his mom, she was still someone who promised him freedom and gave him purpose when he didn’t have one. (note: this is not a good thing. but gerry had mainly been destroying leitner’s to stop his mom from getting them, which means he has less of a reason to continue now that she’s dead) also, we have no idea how long leitner’s been in those tunnels (please correct me if he mentions it at some point) which means he could have gone over a decade with no one but her to talk to. if gertrude’s behavior is a red flag, it’s unlikely either of them would have really noticed what for, because they just... aren’t around a lot of people. i’m sure they both knew that she was using them, because this is gertrude, but that didn’t mean they felt her behavior was bad enough to warrant leaving.

and if either of them knew the other was working with gertrude, that would change in an instant. if leitner thinks gerry hurt him because gerry was a random person with a vendetta against him, he’s more likely to stay in the tunnels because it’s a safe place literally no one knows about, meaning he’ll be there to help when gertrude tries to burn down the institute, and be a source of information for the next archivist if they fail. it means she can continue to press him for details about the different leitner’s he’s used in order for her (and gerry) to see if anyone’s found them and then use that to their advantage. and, because some random 30 y/o just started beating him up out of the blue, leitner’s not going to be thinking about gertrudes actions because he’ll be too busy worrying if that goth he met is going to come back and kill him. which means that if he finds out gerry was only in the archives because gertrude invited him, leitner’s not going to stay. gerry hates him, and he knows where he lives. that means both gertrude & the tunnels are unsafe, so he needs to find somewhere else to live

and gerry’s the same way! in his statement, he admits to jon he was too distracted thinking about revenge on leitner to really question gertrude, which meant she could convince gerry to strengthen his relationship to the eye without him realizing that all this is just insurance to ensure he’s strong enough to stop the unknowing for her. (or, you know, she could trap him in the skinbook once again providing a resource for the future archivist where elias wouldn’t be watching.) gerry says he noticed that gertrude had a “weird look in her eye” when she talked about the two of them going back to london together, but doesn’t say much about it other than “gertrude doesn’t tell jokes.” yes, she’s doing things that are suspicious, but he has cancer, and there’s other things on his mind. it’s easy for him to brush off any weirdness as something to deal with for later, but it’s unlikely he would have gone to america in the first place if he knew gertrude was working with jurgen fucking leitner.

but if leitner and gerry did realize they were both working for gertrude and actually like, talked about it, they’d learn gertrude wanted to use them for completely different reasons. gerry was told that gertrude had a plan for the dark. as far as we know, leitner was that plan. elias assumes that gertrude had a back-up in case the ritual did work, but even if she didn’t, it gives gerry one very important question: why the hell should he be spending so much time saving the world from a ritual that might not even work? sure, he might still have gone with gertrude if he knew she was suspicious about the rituals being doomed to fail, but i’m guessing that after a point of dealing with his increasingly poor health, he’s going to say “fuck it, this doesn’t matter, i’m going to go to a doctor.” the tragedy of tma is that there’s a hundred ways i could think of to save gerry, and every character mentioned, but none of that could happen in canon because they all require other people

in his statement, eric accuses gertrude of keeping him in the dark to make sure he doesn’t stop being useful, and that’s a fate he mostly avoids thanks to his proximity to mary. even though he dies, eric gets out of the archives because he has someone to validate his experience of how fucking weird everything is, which is probably one of the things that convinces him to quit. i could write so much about why eric choses to stay with mary, but the reality is, he doesn’t have another option. no one who comes to the archives has anyone they can count on, which is why they’re constantly forced to make the choice between the lesser of two evils--like his choice between gertrude or mary. eric wants to choose gerry, and it a better world, he would have, but spending so long immersed in archive-typical entity drama, his only option is to choose the one he thinks can offer him (and gerry!) the best protection.

from what we’ve seen of the interactions between them, gertrude’s brushed aside leitner’s concerns with using one of his books despite the fact it was giving him like, actually harming him, yells at gerry for forgetting something (which, you know, is a symptom of both brain cancer and abuse) immediately following that up with the abuser tactic of “i’m doing this because i care,” then mocks him for asking about passageways in the institute when she knows the tunnels exist. and despite all that, they still stay with her because she’s the closest thing they have to safety. no matter how intentional it was, gertrude spent her time as archivist constantly surrounding herself with people who had no choice but to depend on her, something that almost always led to their doom

#the magnus archives #tma #tma meta #jurgen leitner #gerry keay #gerard keay #gerry delano #i have been thinking about this. for so long #which you can tell bc ive been working on this post on & off for like. two hours #jesus #time to eat dinner i guess #adventures of angel

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hungarianbee · 3 years

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Way of the Witcher: bits of lore

Disclaimer: Post contains spoilers to the Witcher games These things may be canon-typical, but the following trigger warnings apply if you want to check out the cards: gore, monster dismemberment, needles, body horror, insects and spiders

“In a world plagued by horrors and monstrosities humanity desperately needed a new type of weapon to turn back the tide. Created by ingenious Alzur, witchers — professional monster slayers of exceptional strength, speed, and agility were tasked to end the threat once and for all. Organized into different schools they honed their craft and passed their knowledge onto novices in training. Some of them were destined to become the legendary heroes and protectors of humanity. Others — the very thing they were supposed to fight…”

Since the gwent expansion was anounced I followed it with rapt attention; every bit of lore is a gem in my eyes. I decided to write down my thoughts of the cards and lore pieces revealed in a post. Share that knowledge around, amirite?

The post references Gwent cards which were leaked (2020 november-december). The theme is mutation and everything that comes with it; namely sweet-sweet lore of the lesser known witcher schools: the Bears, Cats, Vipers and Griffins.

Tucker in, under the cut there is 4.5k analysis of each card that came out.

We’re starting with a theme, then work our way throught the 4 schools (each contain the following: a leader, a mentor, an adept, a general witcher, a specific job, an item, a school relevant monster, 2 known witchers and a location), then go through a Witcher 1 throwback, Salamandra, and round it with a few new monsters and neutral cards.

While I describe most of the cards concisely and all the known witchers and locations are on my blog, you might want to look the cards in their (small) glory: [DO IT HERE]

Sounds good? Here we go!

Edit: [this source is better]

The theme is mutation - be it monsters created by transmutation, witchers or salamadra

If that is true, there are monster cards that seemingly stand out: the Succubus and the Phooca

If we are to believe that they do connect to the mutation theme, then

(1) we can conclude that Phoocas (a rare, and more dangerous form of Nekkers; they can pull your head off by sheer force, watch out) are a natural mutation of the original species,

(2) but we’re still left with the Succubi (an inherently demonic creature). They might have chosen it because of its appearance: succubi have horns and goat-like legs. (Note: in the graphic novel “House of Glass” the succubus character has wings, but lacks hooves. In that sense, she could be mutated.)

Breaking it down into factions/schools (some of the cards can be paired up; these cards are interpreted together):

School of the Viper: starting with the vipers, because they are my favourite

Viper Witcher Mentor & Viper Witcher Adept: the flavour text says that the Viper mentors are exceptionally cold and ruthless, and that’s underlined by the story the art tells: the mentor busies himself with sharpening a blade, and in the background we can see the adept attempting to kill his best friend goat, as was ordered. The mentor watches this from the corner of his eye. Young Vipers are to kill their pets (which they nurtured for years) before becoming a fully-fledged witcher. The latter could mean that the boy depicted on the card hasn’t even gone through the Trial of Grasses.

Viper Witcher: On the card we see an unknown Viper crouching over a royalty he killed. I feel like this type of card is meant to represent what we think a general Witcher of said school would be like. Apparently Vipers just like to slay the nobility *shrug*. The flavour text informs us, that Vipers call their two swords “fangs”, and that their style consists of fast and furious attack aimed to overwhelm the enemy.

Viper Witcher Alchemist: Every school has a specialty; Vipers are proficient in potion or poison making. The right side of the alchemist’s face seems to have healed burn marks; a blown up concoction might have caused it.

Ivar Evil-Eye: So far there’s little to know about Ivar. He was either the Master of the Viper Keep, or the founder himself (gwent suggests the latter). He’s described as heavily scarred (facial scars suggests burns and slash marks too), and each of them has a terrible story to tell.

Warritt the All-Seeing: Warritt is a (newly introduced) Viper with heavy disfiguration to the upper part of his face: his eyes are sealed shut (possibly by burn marks, though his hair remains intact). The art shows Warritt drawing a modified version of the Supirre sign in the air to help with his loss of sight. As the wiki says: “Supirre is a Sign used for eavesdropping. Drawn on a solid surface, it allows the people near this surface to listen nearby conversations which would be normally inaudible due to the distance or background noise.” It was only used in Sapkowsky’s second volume of the Hussite trilogy (not yet translated to English), which is entirely separate from the Witcher novels.

Kolgrim: Fate laughed at this Viper. As a kid he was swapped by a weeper, saved by a witcher, than rejected by his own mother who believed that the fake child was the real one. Later, as a grown witcher Ivar instructed him to find a lost weapon diagram. On his journey he was accused - ironically - in White Orchard of kidnapping a child. Invoking a Temerian law, Kolgrim was told to cleanse their crypt (as seen on the card) then he can go. The truth is revealed in Witcher 3 - Kolgrim was beheaded by the villagers before he could even step into the crypt. To add insult to injury: the child was eaten by a drowner. The gwent card therefore shows the optimistic outcome: that Kolgrim reached the crypt and passed in battle. And what’s up with a crypt full of wraiths anyway? White Orchard is shady, guys. (Lil’ trivia: Kolgrim’s eyes are yellow-green.)

Vypper: Basically an overgrown snake that likes damp marshes (they even fight the local kikimores for territory). They only relate to the mutation theme by their nature - they resemble the “school’s animal”.

Gorthur Gvaed: The Bloodgate Keep is located in the chasms of the Tir Tochair mountains. It’s built so high were you to look down from the bridge leading into the keep, you would only see fog (one could wonder how the vipers trained in these conditions). The bridge is made so that you’d have to cross the lookout tower - it might have served as a check in spot. The post itself is circled by the stone coils of a snake; the top is open and has a huge lit bonfire in the middle for warmth-keeping and possibly signaling. Unluckily, it didn’t stop the Usurper’s army from destroying the keep.

Coated Weapons: They leaned heavily into the alchemy and assassin side of the school. Vipers coat their blades with an acidic liquid, so they can kill a man with a nick of it.

School of the Cat:

Cat Witcher Mentor & Cat Witcher Adept: On the adept card we can see a young Cat walking the tightrope blindfolded (they start with close to the ground and slowly increase the distance with time); the mentor is looking up at him. Like the Vipers, Cat mentors are nonchalant about risking the kids as seen from the flavour text: “If you fall, it’s over. Your nine lives are up, kid.” Furthermore, the background of the Cat Witcher Adept card shows the not yet destroyed Stygga Citadel. The Cat Witcher Mentor is in the same scene and we can see lots of potatoes and cabbages; cats definitely eat their veggies.

Cat Witcher: The card shows a Cat in the heat of battle mid-jump; his hood is up, blood is flying everywhere. The flavour text emphasizes that cats are known for their mad bloodlust, not stopping killing even after the enemy capitulated.

Cat Witcher Saboteur: A Cat perches next to the window, a smoking bomb in hand, eavesdropping on nobles. A rope is hung from somewhere out of the pic, possibly for a quick exit. Vesemir comments that these are many-a deeds the cats did that taint the reputation of witchers.

Gezras of Leyda: Gezras is a not yet known redheaded Cat witcher. Following the pattern he seems to be the founder of the Cat School. His flavour text shows that even back then (when the mutagens made Cats emotionless) they were inclined to dislike humans: “Take a contract from Aen Seidhe over a dh’oine any day, as you’re far less likely to receive a knife between the ribs in place of coin.”

Brehen: Now this cat embodies the Cat madness. He’s known as the Cat of Iello because he massacred everyone there. He was consequently shunned by all the schools, and he was even convinced that Vesemir put a kill order on his head. He met Geralt later in the 1240s on his way to claim the bounty for the princess. Thinking that Geralt was there to rob him of his chance of the bounty, Brehen took a priestess as hostage (this is what we see on the gwent card). Geralt managed to convince him to put away the blade, and they parted without crossing blades. When meeting with the striga he scoffed into her face that “she won’t be his first royal”. But his luck ran out. The Temerians buried him and fabricated the story of a cowardly witcher stealing their coin. I’m halfway convinced we see Brehen in the netflix series.

Gaetan: This boy broke into the fandom like a bulldozer. After the folks in Honorton cheated him of his pay and tried to kill him, Gaetan flew into rage and killed everyone there except Millie, a girl who reminded him of his sister. That’s the scene we see on the card. And then Geralt robs/kills him.

Saber-Tooth Tiger (Stealth): Another huge animal/monster related to the school. It’s story is this: “The prized possession of royal menagerie, until a commando of Scoia’tael assaulted the exhibition, released the beast, and set it upon its cruel masters. Since that day, it has acquired a selective taste for human flesh.” Another cat turning against humans.

Stygga Castle: An outside view of what we already saw on the Cat Witcher Adept card. It’s located on a cliff, and the sun shines into it just right (so that the Cats can bask in the light). The walls form a circle where they shelter the inner grounds, and a bigger tower emerges in the middle. The Castle could be reached by the thin bridge connecting it to the mainland, or by the cliffs (if one is brave enough).

Making a Bomb: Cats seem to have a specialty in bombs. Guess where Lambert got his interest from *winkwink*

School of the Griffin: lots of pairs in this one

Griffin Witcher Mentor & Griffin Witcher Adept: Compared to the other schools, this pairing is tame - the adept is climbing a tree to retrieve a crossbow bolt. We can see the mentor in the background. On the mentor card the adept waves down with the retrieved crossbow bolt in hand. It shows a kind of comradeship that’s not present in the other 3 schools. The flavour text emphasizes the importance of knowledge. Students are afforded to choose their final Trial: recite the entire Liber Tenebrum (Book of Shadows; one of Keldar’s favourite books) or steal a griffin’s egg. Noone’s chosen the former.

Griffin Witcher: The witcher is shown shooting down a griffin. According to the flavour text they prefer hunting with silver-tipped arrowheads instead of swords.

Archgriffin & Griffin Witcher Ranger: On the Griffin Ranger card we see the witcher crouching over track marks. On the archgriffin card he found the albino (or very old) monster, who’s already killed someone (probably a lumberjack, judging by the axe). According to the flavour text, Griffin Witchers are trained to be professional trackers; nothing can stop them to reach their prey. Even though archgriffins are considered the embodiment of courage, loyalty and fighting spirit, the gwent card corrects the notion that the Griffin Witcher were named after the monster. In truth, they got the name in honour of their founder’s mentor, a knight named Gryphon.

Erland of Larvik: Continuing the trend, Erland is the founder of the Griffin School (one of the two that are confirmed 100%). He’s from the first generation of witcher, mutated by Alzur himself. After the Order began fracturing he had a confrontation with Arnaghan (who’ll be the founder of the bear school). Arnaghad almost killed one of his brothers, slashed Erland across the face then parted ways with the Order and left Morgraig Castle with his own group. Seeing that the the remaining witchers couldn’t go on like that, he grabbed his 13 best friend and left to Kaer Seren, where (after purging it from spectres) he founded the Griffin School which focused on magic, preparedness and flexibility. His teaching emphasized knightly values (mimicking his long-dead mentor, a knight named Gryphon) in hopes that it would make future witchers’ life easier. It didn’t.

Coen & Keldar: The cards are mainly connected by background. Coen is finished killing what appears to be an albino arachas (but it’s definitely an insectoid), while Keldar’s taking notes. We can rightly assume that he’s updating their bestiary, since he’s one of the teachers/mentors who focus on gathering and sharing knowledge. Coen’s flexibility shows in the flavour text: “There is no such thing as a fair fight. Every advantage and every opportunity that arises is used in combat.” Not very knightly, is it?

Kaer Seren: The “Star Keep” Erland and his friends fled to. It was used by the Order’s mages to mutate witchers (that’s why it was haunted by spectres). It’s located at the edge of the Dragon mountains by the sea between Poviss and Kovir. It’s said to possess the great library, which later mages tried to get for themselves. They messed up: by bringing down an avalanche on the Keep, that knowledge was destroyed. The keep was badly damaged and many witchers died.

Target Practice: The Griffin School’s specialty is their precise aim - they “can split an apple in two from a hundred paces”.

School of the Bear:

Bear Witcher Mentor & Bear Witcher Adept: The adept card shows that young witcher are taught to catch fish by hand (just like their school relevant animal). On the mentor card the elder witcher leads a group of younglings in the mountains; possibly out to teach tracking. The cards are connected by flavour text. The young Bear witcher-would-be’s need to complete the Trial of the Mountain, which consists of them climbing Mount Gorgon (also known as the Devil Mountain; it is the highest peak of the Amell range) to retrieve a runestone. The Trial often ends with the kids frozen to death. The Bear Mentor card’s flavour confirms it: “If you’re unsure of the way, just keep a lookout for markers - the frozen corpses of would-be witchers.” This sounds ominous - don’t they collect their fallen?

Bear Witcher: Bears are solitary hunters as seen in the flavour text: “life alone can be tough”. The witcher in the pic just dismembered what looks like a ghoul (with a tail?).

Bear Witcher Quartermaster: This one I like. The Quartermaster is an amputee (missing one of his arms, which was taken by a bear; must have won that fight one-handed), yet they still found a job for him where he can be useful. His flavour text suggest he likes Mahakam mead.

Arnaghad: The founder of the Bear School, he never felt kinship with his fellow witchers. After attacking a witcher named Rhys over a contract, wounding him deeply from shoulder to waist, he returned to Morgraig, attacked Erland then left with his possé to found the Bear School - Haern Caduch - in the Amell Mountains. Later he almost died in a betrayal, which resulted in another schism and the foundation of the Viper School.

Gerd: Gerd’s a legendary witcher who fled to Skellige after allying with a Usurper instead of his daughter, who later issued a warrant for his arrest. He has a busy time in Skellige: first slaying a dragon, befriending the Jarl Torgeir, killing a bunch of sirens, losing so many weapon diagrams you wouldn’t believe, losing half his pay and silver sword on gwent, escaping Nilfgaard and managing to slay a striga, killing some of his pursuers, only to be caught up in the siege of Torgeir’s castle, where he died in the ruins. On the card he’s showing Bear-typical strength: he’s tearing apart a siren with his bear hands.

Junod of Belhaven: Junod had a dubious background, but was thought to be the child of a brave dwarf and a giantess. He’s a huge man, with a big bushy beard and bald head. His sobriquet is false; he took it after Ivo, because he liked the ring of it. He was known as a strict haggler and a bit of a gambler. In 1243 he took a contract in hopes of cash (he wanted to forge the Grandmaster Ursine Armour). The subterranean monster was said to live in the caverns. Junod drew bear signs and wrote a warning on the wall (this is the scene we see on the card). He was however ill-prepared; the beast turned out to be a shaelmaar (a type of relic Gaetan slew once) that killed him in that very cavern.

Dire Bear: Once again related to the school in question, the Dire Bear is stuck with so much weaponry that it looks like a walking armory. Lots of witchers must have tried to slay it, yet it still kicks - just like Bear Witchers, it’s resilient till the very end.

Haern Caduch: Built into the side of the Amell Mountains, it’s the coldest environment of all the schools. As with the other schools, the Bears were forced out of it due to folk riots. It was left in disrepair to be buried under snow and ice (as seen on the card). It’s name could be translated as “Piercing Whiskers”.

Armor Up: As Bear’s are more likely to stand in the way of attack than dodge, they need to wear a heavy armour at all times.

Salamandra:

Roland Bleinheim & Gellert Bleinheim: Witcher 1 characters. They are thought to be brothers, leading the Salamandra organization. As drug lords one heads the fisstech operation in Vizima’s sewers (Roland), the other in the swamps (Gellert). The flavour text pretty much matches: both of them wondering what the other one is doing.

Salamandra Mage: The art itself was already leaked in China around 2 years back, and there were a few theories. One of them was that the man depicted is Zerrikanian, and I think that’s correct. Both the facial tattoo, darker skin, thinly braided hair and fire magic points in that direction. Azar Javed (a known Salamandra fire mage) happens to be a Zerrikanian escapee too.

Salamandra Lackey: A girl with the Salamandra-stapled mask runs from a city guard. The flavour text says the following: “Lackeys are expected to perform their first five jobs for no pay, demonstrating their passion for the gig.” The organization monitors from the beginning that only those remain who are extremely loyal to their cause.

Fallen Rayla: A little background for those who are unfamiliar with her: Rayla of Lyria was a veteran of the Nilgaardian Wars. She harbours anti-nonhuman sentiments after she was captured by Scoia’taels and severely maimed. The Rayla we see on the card is a mutant - in Witcher 1 she was supposedly shot down by Scoia’tael, and Salamandra found her close to death, subjected her to mutation. She was killed by Geralt.

Salamander: The card shows a bright blue spotted salamander. It has two tails and heads (possibly grown together?). The Salamander is a symbol of the organization. Metaphorically speaking it could mean, that Salamandra thought of itself as something untouchable: “best to avoid petting them, as the salamander, when threatened, secretes a deadly toxin”.

Failed Experiment: The card - ironically - thrives when it’s poisoned. The “experiment” only resembles a human in shape. It’s clutching the table ends, as if trying to escape still. It’s fair to assume that they later dissected it: “even failed experiments can serve a purpose”.

Salamandra Abomination: A step further from the failed experiment - we see the results of pushing science’s boundaries. Only the skull is left intact, everything else of the body is covered with insectoid-like growths.

Stolen Mutagens: Gruesome organ harvesting. The witcher heart (?) glows, which is either an artistic decision (probable) or the mages sent magic into the body, and the mutagens light up (like angiographia). Three types of mutagens can be harvested: red (strength), blue (magic) or green (resilience). I headcanon that the amount they inject of the three types can vary - that’s how you get strength inclined witchers like the wolves (red), or big ass mothers like the bears (green).

Salamandra Hideout: There are multiple hideouts in Witcher 1 (outskirt of Visima, crypt in sewers and one in the trade quarters). The one depicted here is the fisstech lab in the sewers. It shows a dimly lit, cobwebbed room. There’s an elevation where a body lays on the table. The elevation’s floor is gridded, so the blood and other fluids can freely flow down into the sewer water, where many bodies are already discarded recklessly.

Neutral:

Alzur & Viy & Koshchey: Alzur was a charismatic mage and spell inventor, who created many horrible monsters, like the koshchey (with the spell: Alzur’s Double Cross) and the Viy (a huge centipede-like insectoid). He was also the one who did the lion’s share of work with the witcher’s mutation.

Cosimo Malaspina: Cosimo was the teacher of Alzur. He was known for his knowledge in hybridization and genetic modification. Him and Alzur were the true creators of the witchers sect. On the gwent card, three man are shown prodding at a mutated body. Cosimo (the old dude) is in the middle, Alzur might be the one on the left and that leaves Idarran on the right. His flavour text paints him as cold and clinical, someone without empathy: “Children keep asking him for gifts. He doesn’t know why, but it really helps with finding subjects for his experiments.”

Idarran of Ulivo & Idr & Wererat: Idarran was one of the contributers of the witcher experiments. He’s an expert in hybridization and genetic modification, whose teacher was Alzur. He was a pale kid who lived in the canals of Vizima and experimented on rats at the age of 5. He found beauty in gruesome creations, like the Wererat (a human-sized rat on roids) and the Idr (a big centipede-like insectoid). He’s disdained by Geralt for his many monsters.

Triangle within a Triangle: It’s a magic spell used to introduce a series of mutations and to greatly increase the mass of a given body. That way they can create huge monstrosities, like the koshchey. Adepts often confuse it with a pentagram which can lead to infernal disasters.

Selective mutation: The card shows a close up of a young man’s eyes - one mutated (catlike) one human. His skin shows his high toxicity level, ashen with prominent veins. He’s held down as alchemists prepare to inject a yellow concoction into the human eye. It’s possible that after the success of witchers the mages tried to recreate the changes in smaller scale, then unmake it in turn, unsuccessfully.

Witcher Student: This is not really a card, but I included it anyway. The card’s ability is - ironically - doomed, and to add insult to injury, its flavour text is the following well-known fact: “Four out of ten boys survive… at most.” It’s also a point for black humour that the gwent commentators added: the Trial of Grasses card boosts this unit significantly.

Berengar: He’s a Wolf School Witcher who blamed his school for denying him a normal life and consequently abandoned them. In Witcher 1 Geralt can decide to kill or spare him. In a letter he admits that he was a coward because he betrayed Kaer Morhen and worked with Salamadra in hope that they can undo his mutation. His card references a questline in Witcher 1, where he tried to reason with the vodyanoi (~lovecraftian fish people) to spare the village’s prize-winning cow, named Strawberry. This is non-canon; in the game Geralt takes over the quest to do this instead.

Leo: Another Witcher 1 character. He was an orphan taken in by Vesemir. He was a kind-hearted but hot-headed man, who had all the training but not the mutations and the experience - he never killed a man. The flavour text of his gwent card kind of mocks his death: “He would have caught the arrow if he only had some heads-up.” He’s burned on a pyre and his cenotaph can be found south of Kaer Morhen.

Geralt: Quen: The last classical sign that wasn’t yet a card. In the art, Geralt is wearing the Manticore armour

Snowdrop: She’s a not yet seen character; impish looking female bard with light blond hair (flowers braided on the side) who plays a medieval version of the fiddle to a rooster. There’s a horseshoe hanging from the hem of his pants. She’s also seen in the gwent: journey #3 launch trailer. She’s narrating that she was saved by Alzur. Alzur told her about his plans of creating witchers to fight the beasts of the Continent, and she admired him so much she spread his story (”let me tell you about the greatest sorceress to ever lived”). Their story will unveil in the next week, I’ll probably update accordingly. It’s also interesting that Alzur says in the gwent intro (regarding witchers): “Bards will toil to do justice to their feats.” As if his own successes and experiences will be mirrored in his creations. Projecting much?

Monsters:

Viy & Idr: both of them are centipede-like insectoids conjured by infamous mages (see: Alzur and Idarran)

Wererat: same can be said about this one. Idarran experimented on Vizima’s sewer rats since the age of 5. This human sized abomination was the end result.

Succubus: We already discussed how the “Succubus” doesn’t fit the theme. Other interesting thing is the surrounding of her - in the background we can see a skull full of some kinda of dark liquid; she’s also holding a goblet. I’m not saying she’s drinking blood, but if she does, it would shed some questions as succubi don’t need to drink blood at all.

Phooca: As nekkers’ rare big brother, phoocas are ogroids that have the strength to rip a man’s head off with their bear hands. According to the wiki, in Celtic folklore they are regarded as shapeshifting fairies.

Koshchey: A witcher 1 boss, koshcheys are spider-like abominations summoned by mages. The woman standing her ground in the picture is Visenna (Geralt’s druid mom). In the story she’s the one to kill the first koshchey ever created.

Spontaneous Evolution: Under the Red Moon the wolf mutated into an amalgamation of eyes and teeth. Malaspina possibly added something to the mix that proved unstable. The card’s name is kind of ironic - this change is not spontaneous (it was induced) but could be related to evolution (it would imply that this form is somehow advantageous to the current environment and helps adaptation). (Note: in my opinion spontaneous generation would be a better term: it’s the thought that living creatures could arise from nonliving matter.)

Hybrid: the card shows a two-headed wolf or dog. Pretty straight-forward.

Chimera: A creature created my Cosimo Malaspina. He combines the genes of a fiend and griffin, then added a trace of insectoid and wyvern. It kind of looks like a furred wyvern with antlers. Interestingly the frightener (an insectoid; a rare result of magical experiment) is also called a chimera.

Dol Dhu Lokke: a new monster lair location. The depending on how you translate “lokke” the Elder can be read as “black valley place” or “alluring black valley”. It’s so dangerous - housing many-a horrors - that even a witcher thinks twice before going near it.

Interesting tidbits

Coen has hair, which is weird because so far he was described in all sources as bald.

There used to be a card that was also called Viper Witcher, which is now referred to as “Kingslayer”

The Bear Witcher’s face was drawn after one of CDPR’s employee.

The Koshchey’s card title has a typo: “Koschchey”.

Easter eggs (mainly in flavour text)

The Spontaneous Evolution card references The Powerpuff Girls intro: “Professor Malaspina accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction - compound X.”

The Bear Witcher card might reference a song of Baloo from the Jungle Book (The Bare Necessities): “Life alone on the road can be tough - be sure to bring all the bare necessities.”

#my shit #the witcher #gwent #witcher meta #witcher lore #i worked really hard on this #i hope it shows lol #if y'all have any thoughts i'd be happy to hear about them #cross my heart i don't bite

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emerywrites · 4 years

Text

Child of Moonlight and Alchemy

Fandom: Tangled the Series

Summary: The Moonstone was holding Quirin hostage even after leaving the Dark Kingdom and the Brotherhood behind. It destroyed his life in every sense of the word and refused to let him go. He never expected it to give him something in return.

Rating: PG

Content Warning: canon character death, child neglect

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Haunted Quirin felt haunted. As more black rocks cropped up, their spikes taking homes and lives, it left him and the brotherhood at a loss as to how to stop it. Then there was their king, falling prey to the opal’s madness. Quirin was haunted by the shadow of sanity their king had lost, haunted by ghosts of those who were impaled in their sleep, those who were sealed in by the rock surrounding them, those that were done in by the grief of losing everything they’d known to these rocks that could not be reasoned with.

Adira took it upon herself to start looking into more mythic ways to combat them while Hector seemed to be falling into a madness all his own. Quirin preferred the more practical solution of moving their people toward the outskirts of their kingdom, away from the rocks. But what Quirin had not foreseen was being haunted by the ghost of his sister. She had tried to take the opal herself in an attempt at her own solution. It was an effort to save her husband and her son from its fate. He had tried to warn Edmund of the Queen’s plan but they were too late. Sometimes Quirin heard her voice in his dreams, calling to him. “Brother,” she said in a faraway voice as he tossed and turned one night. “Brother, go to the opal. Brother, it needs you.” Quirin awoke in a cold sweat. “Lorelei.” Quirin didn’t bother with his armor. The voice instilled in him a sense of urgency. It drove him to do nothing more than pull on a pair of trousers and grab his sword. He stumbled from his room and made his way to the Moonstone’s chamber. The guards at the doors were easily disarmed and knocked unconscious. “Brother,” he heard call from inside the chamber. Quirin burst through the doors. The opal had shed its protective shell of black rock and floated upwards. Then Lorelei was there. She stood behind the opal, looking down on it with adoration. “Isn’t it beautiful, brother?” “Yes.” He didn’t know why he’d agreed. It wasn’t beautiful to him. To him it was dangerous and horrid. He wished that the moon had never produced that opal. It brought nothing but destruction and decay. But then Lorelei looked at him with tears in her eyes. They spilled over and ran down her cheeks. On instinct, Quirin rushed forward. He crossed the bridge but stopped at the middle because Lorelei was suddenly there to meet him. He wiped away her tears with the side of his finger. They collected there and solidified into a smaller version of the moon opal. “What is this?” There was something sinister about its gleam. “You must keep it,” she told him. “There will come such a time that you will need it. Until then, hold it close to your heart.” Quirin blinked and she was gone. With trembling hands, he put the smaller opal in his pocket. The next day, Edmund ordered that the kingdom evacuate.

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Nature When Quirin came to Corona, he had decided he was done with the Brotherhood. He wanted no more part in something that had consumed his whole life and left with nothing but heartache. He wanted a new start. Helaine swept into his life like a whirlwind. It was effortless for her. All it took was a smile and he melted. She was a brilliant alchemist who helped her village in any way she could. Everyone came to her for help. Watching her work was like watching someone create art. She delved into her own world when she pulled on her goggles. She deftly measured, poured, examined, adjusted temperatures, all in fluid movements that were second nature to her. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. One day it was a salve for the Widow Cooper’s joint pain. Another day it was adjusting the components of the soil to make it more fertile. And the next day it was building a system to warn them if a pack of wolves was coming too close to the village. Helaine’s work was never done and she liked it that way. Then Queen Arianna became ill and the king sent out a search for the Sundrop to save her. Quirin pulled on his old Brotherhood armor and went to warn him not to use it. The black rocks would seek out the magic of the Sundrop and endanger Corona. But the stubborn king wouldn’t listen. Quirin went home and told Helaine everything about his past. Up until that point he had been as vague as he could be to keep the burden of what he knew from her. It finally boiled over and he told her whatever he knew of the Moonstone and Sundrop. Then he showed her the shard of Moonstone that the vision of his sister had given him. He had put it on a chain and wore it around his neck to keep it close to him at all times. Keep it close to your heart. “I fear what will come now that King Frederic is toying with forces he doesn’t understand,” he said as he undid the clasp and handed her the necklace to examine. Helaine held up the chain and took in the smaller Moonstone that was encased in its own miniature shell the same as the one in the Dark Kingdom. “This is fascinating,” she said, voice full of awe. “If I could just study the-” Quirin snatched it back, feeling that he had just made a terrible mistake. Of course, his wife, ever the curious scientist, would be enthralled by something so otherworldly. The hurt that flashed through her eyes, made him want to soften his reaction. “I’m sorry, Helaine. But its dangerous. It killed my sister and drove her husband to madness. It destroyed my home.” “If it’s caused so much harm, then why do you keep it?” She took his hand and held it securely in her own. The comfort Quirin got from the simple gesture was immeasurable. “I know that the vision I saw wasn’t really my sister, but whether it was good, evil, or something else, it gave this to me. She said that this would be important and I believe her. This stone is my responsibility now.” Quirin regretted ever telling Helaine about his piece of the stone. It was too late by the time he found out she too had visions from the Moonstone. It showed her how to use magic and alchemy to get something they’d both so desired. Helaine replaced his piece of the opal with a fake one she’d created and got to work. Using a sample of her hair, his hair, the Moonstone and a few other ingredients that took her a month and a couple of trips out of town to collect, she was able to do it. Quirin came home one day to find her holding a sleeping baby who looked so much like her but with a streak of blue hair standing out against the dark brown of the rest of it. “What have you done?” Quirin demanded. “We have the child we always wanted,” she insisted with a smile. He ripped off the fake Moonstone and held it up. “You lied to me.” He threw it to the ground and stepped on it. “How could you do this? How could you make that thing?” “This thing is our child!” she argued. “The opal showed me that I could use it to make something so wonderful. It was a gift.” “No! Helaine, don’t you see that it tricked you? Now we have an attachment to it. If there was ever a need to destroy it-” “Don’t, Quirin.” Her voice trembled with desperation that sent him internally reeling. “This is what it wanted.” Something broke between them that day. But as the baby grew, that broken piece was patched over. It was left weak but they managed to work around it. The child slowly worked his way into Quirin’s heart. He regretted the child’s origin but couldn’t help the fondness he began to feel. They lied to the village and told them that they found the child left nearby, on the outskirts of the forest. There were rumors and questions that slowly died out over the years. The boy fell just as deeply in love with science and alchemy as Helaine. Though Quirin was happy to see that he did have an appreciation for farming too. But as much joy as the boy brought them, Quirin felt like he was holding his breath, waiting for the payment that would come for such a crime against nature. He refused to even let his guard down enough to call the child his son. The Moonstone wasn’t a kind and benevolent creature. It wasn’t going to give them something so beautiful as a child without a sacrifice.

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Nurture Then Helaine fell ill. It was something no doctor could explain. She slowly deteriorated before their eyes, over the course of three months. Quirin and the boy sat by her side, comforting her as best as they could. After she was gone, Quirin couldn’t bear to look at the child. That was the cost. Helaine made them a child by using something as volatile as the Moonstone and it killed her. Watching her die only reminded Quirin that the moonstone had tricked Helaine into it to gain a form as sympathetic as a child. He wouldn’t fall for it. A week past that he ignored it. But the continuous, “Daddy, what’s wrong?” and “Daddy, did I do something bad?” and “Daddy, please talk to me!”, were close to breaking him. He couldn’t kill it, that much was clear to him. But if the Moonstone wanted him to keep it close, then maybe he needed to get it as far away from him as possible. He packed up a cart and the boy, then drove to the capital. Quirin walked him all over town, trying to figure out what to do. Everyone was kind enough, someone would care for him, wouldn’t they? Or maybe he needed to go further. The boy may be able to tell them how to get him back home. As Quirin pondered this, he didn’t even notice the boy wander off. Once he looked around for him, the boy was nowhere in sight. He should have felt relief but all that washed over him was dread and fear. Quirin got the attention of a man selling flowers from a cart. “Sir, my son wandered off. Have you seen him? He’s only five-years-old. He has brown hair with a blue streak in it.” He ran around asking everyone he saw if they’d seen his son. It wasn’t until he was asking the fifth person that he realized he’d been calling the boy his son. When someone was finally able to show him into a shop where an old lady had been keeping an eye on the boy, he was overwhelmed with relief. The boy was licking a lollipop seemingly unaffected by the ordeal. Tears stung Quirin’s eyes as he kneeled down to hug him. “I am so sorry, Varian.” Quirin pulled away when he realized Varian wasn’t hugging him back. Varian looked up at him with a confused expression that slowly shifted into a distraught one. “Why were you mad at me?” “I wasn’t mad.” Was that a lie? He didn’t know how to explain something like this to a child. “There is no excuse for how I treated you. I made a mistake.” Too many mistakes. “I hope that you can forgive me.” Varian nodded fervently and hugged him, dropping his lollipop in the process.

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Truth The black rocks encroached on Corona, leaving Quirin at a loss. Varian had been his child for a little over fourteen years and there was no way he was going to risk losing his son. The Moonstone perfectly entwined itself into his life and there was no going back. He had accepted the fact that he would do anything to protect Varian. So, he pretended that the rocks were not a problem. He avoided them and downplayed them until he couldn’t any longer. Then he went to lengths to move their whole village just to protect his son. But Varian didn’t understand. How could he? He didn’t know the horrible truth about what he was. He didn’t know that he was the same as the thing causing all of the destruction they were seeing. He could never know. Maybe it was in Varian’s nature to be drawn to the rocks. Maybe he couldn’t help but go against Quirin’s orders to stay away from them. Either way he experimented on them in defiance of Quirin’s words. As Varian ran to go get help Quirin knew he couldn’t let his son go on not knowing. With there being no solution in sight, Varian needed to know what he truly was. He silently begged Varian to return so he could tell him before being entombed in the amber growing up from the rock. When the table was pushed near him along with the paper and quill, he got to work. He quickly wrote down the explanation of only the necessary information. It was blunt and lacked any comfort or emotion. Quirin didn’t have the time to include reassurances and gentle words. Could he really leave Varian with nothing but the cold, harsh truth? At the very bottom, Quirin quickly jotted in. I’m proud of you, son. I always have been.

#cw death #cw child neglect #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tts #rta #varian #Quirin #tts fanfic #rta fanfic #fanfiction #moon!Varian #moon varian #emerywrites fanfic

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altairattorney · 3 years

Note

In response to your little rant about Homura's depiction in Rebellion, here's this.

"The end of Rebellion is... controversial, but let's unpack what happened here. What occurred?

Well, firstly, Homura was traumatized and tortured; the Homura at the end of Rebellion is not the Homura of PMAS; she's gone through trauma and loss that PMAS!Homura can't even conceive of. She literally turned into a fucking witch because Kyubey gaslit her into thinking she made up Madoka Kaname, according to Wraith Arc.

Then, during this process, she learns two important facts that fucks her worldview: 1) Madoka didn't want to leave her loved ones and give up her normal life if she had any other alternative, and 2) Kyubey is trying to destroy the Law of Cycles (that is, Madoka Kaname), and has figured out a means of stopping her from interacting with Magical Girls under controlled lab conditions, meaning they could eventually succeed in their objective.

That means if Homura let herself go into the Law of Cycles, she would be unable to protect Madoka, and the Incubators would eventually destroy her. Madoka will have been erased and forgotten with nothing to show for it. Homura could only cope with everything with the promise of being reunited with her and the solace that Madoka's sacrifice was worth it, and Kyubey took that away from her.

And, more importantly: Homura's wish had yet to come true. Homura's wish wasn't to be with Madoka, or to save the world. It was to protect Madoka. To be the one to protect her.

To put it in other terms, Homura was self-loathing to the point of suicide-ideation because she was worthless, good for nothing, a burden on everyone. That she should just die. Madoka saw worth in her, and tried to change that, but Madoka died.

Only one person in her entire life ever told Homura she was happy to have met her and this wonderful, kind, happy, heroic, courageous, beautiful, miracle of a person who walked into her life to tell her those words died.

DIED. FOR. HER.

Died to protect her. Died so that a worthless piece of SHIT like herself could live. Someone who had EVERYTHING in the world died with a smile to protect someone who didn't even want to. Not without her.

Not instead of her.

She was good for nothing before and now her mere existence caused the best person she'd ever known to die. She ruined Madoka's entire life by having been a part of it.

She has to fix it. She has the chance to.

She wishes, wishes, WISHES to go back, to unfuck this, to undo this, to be cool like Madoka said she could have been. To protect her. To be her shield. To be WORTH something because she protected something valuble. To pay her back for all her kindness like she'd never been able to do and finally, finally in her life, have done something that justifies everything else.

She didn't wish for Madoka to live. She didn't wish for her to be saved. She wished to be the one to save her so she could support her and reinvent herself as someone who isn't a garbage shit person.

And every single time, she fails.

No matter what she does. No matter how she compromises herself. No matter what disgusting sins she does (and she never crosses so many lines that she says she WOULD cross). Madoka keeps dying.

And most of those times. She dies for Homura. She dies, again, for Homura. She dies again and again and again and again in order to help Homura.

Until the very last time, she wishes to save Homura (and everyone else), so much that she never existed at all.

Dammit. Dammit. DAMMIT. DAMMIT. This is worse this is WORSE THIS IS WORRRRSE!

But she still tries to cope. Madoka's in heaven. She's saving everyone. Madoka had a smile. The world is BETTER, and she'll see her again.

Until the above happened. And Kyubey is going to destroy Madoka Kaname. She won't have ever been born and she won't even be saving Magical Girls. She'll truly be nothing.

Because she came to save Homura, fucking AGAIN.

And all this time she still never saved her. Never ONCE saved her. Not a single time has she ever, ever, EVER fucking saved her. Not ever, has she ever saved her, not even when Madoka made her final fucking wish.

Homura made a wish that never came true. So she never stopped being Good for Nothing. She has never made up for Madoka's kindness. She has never, emotionally, left that moment where she sobbed over Madoka's dead corpse in the water and the rain. And she's done that so many fucking times.

So that's her mindset. So when she saw the chance. She took it. If you can interact with Madoka, you can effect Madoka. So.

God dammit. Fucking for once. Fucking finally. This time, her last chance she'll EVER HAVE... she will save her.

Save Madoka Kaname. Not a vague concept. Not a hero. Not a law or a god. Not a cosmic idea. Madoka. KANAME. The person who smiled at her and said she was cool. The person who helped her buy a cellphone. The kind, wonderful person who loved and named a stray cat and pressed her face to hers and laughed and congratulated her for her accomplishments. The person who said that meeting Homura was her happiest memory.

Why can't this person, of all people, be happy? All Madoka Kaname wanted was to live her fucking life. With her family. With her friends and classmates. Living her day to day life which wasn't anything special but it was so special to her.

She WILL save her. Goddammit, she failed so many times because she always kept holding herself back but if this is her last chance then GODDAMMIT fuck it all, damn herself too.

She never cared, really, about being with Madoka. She was willing to die for her. She explicitly had plans to leave the town to Kyouko after Walpurgisnacht and LEAVE (probably to kill herself so her Witch didn't come for Madoka). She was going to die for her in Rebellion so that she'd be safe from the Incubators.

If she could save her, if she can finally succeed and protect that human smile living her human life, it's fine if Homura Akemi isn't a part of it. If Madoka can smile, she doesn't have to smile at her anymore. That's PERFECTLY FINE.

So she did it. She stole a piece of the Law of Cycles. Not a big piece. Not the Law, or the Power, or the Salvation. The Law of Cycles still functions in some sense, because there's still no Witches, there's still Wraiths, there's still Angels.

She stole "Madoka Kaname", the human being that the Goddess used to be. She stole her, yes. She took over the universe, yes. But what did she do?

She made it so Madoka Kaname existed, again. Reunited with everyone she cared about. She gave Kyouko, Mami, Sayaka, and everyone else the happiest lives she could give them without undoing their pasts (disrespecting their agency and core selves), even if it was only to keep Madoka happy in her silver garden.

She tortures Kyubey but no one's crying tears over that fucker. She seems to be letting the world run its course as naturally as possible, save for suppressing people's memories of what's really going on.

Sayaka, alive. Nagisa, alive. Living with Kyouko and Mami respectively. Madoka, alive.

Hell, the only change she made that we know of to Madoka's memories is three years in America.

Because, canonically, English is Madoka's worst subject.

And now, she's great at it.

No matter what it takes. Madoka Kaname will be happy. She deserves it. And Homura will make that happen, even if she, herself, never is.

But yeah go off about how Homura is a yandere stalker who likes to kill people."

Hey there! I thank you for your post and your insight, and I wanted to clarify that I don't disagree at all with this view of Rebellion and how it ended. I think it is all correct, actually. The problem I have with it is 1. Rebellion existing at all, and 2. the way they portrayed her choice as an act of evil conceived by a demon.

To begin with, there are a few details that I don't think really make sense considering how pmmm worked. Homura shouldn't even be a witch, first of all. Secondly, even though she cannot know for sure, I don't think Homura would have willingly told Kyubey about the world of before if there were any danger. Heck, I don't even understand how Kyubey could possibly have stolen Madoka, now that she is not an entity but a literal concept, a rule of the universe. Imo that is beyond absurd. Third, I am doubtful Homura would have gone against Madoka's wish, even though I totally understand why she did in the context of Rebellion.

The problem I have with Homura is that people thought about her as a yandere emotionless stalker who has an unhealthy obsession with Madoka even before Rebellion existed. That was a popular sentiment, and the big, big problem I have with this film is that while what she did isn't inherently bad or wrong - as you explained - the movie paints her as a LITERAL DEMON in the moment she makes that choice, and ALSO at the exact same time she declares her love canonically. That is so fucked up in so so so many ways. As not literal it may be, they gave her that creepy smile, and show that Madoka is confused in her new bubble and feels like she is someone else but can't remember why. And Homura brushes it off. As wonderful as it is that she is there, Madoka is uncomfortable, Sayaka is obviously enraged and Homura plays the part of the Evil Character.

This is just all so unfair and so wrong. It doesn't only negate the way this anime ended - and of course Homura deserved to go with peace and quiet like everyone else. No magical girl has to ever suffer like that again, including Madoka, right? (There were so many ways to reunite her with Madoka, but no.) It also visibly paints Homura as being on the dark side, and validates the horrific lens people saw her character through even before the film. It canonizes her as a lesbian in the same moment she is doing something clearly framed as wrong, and, on a surface level, reinforces her obsession. This is just a textbook predatory lesbian trope. I am sorry if you don't see it the same way, but it is just horrific to me.

I will never agree with Rebellion existing. I cannot stand the ending of this anime being undone and Homura being punched in the face and further tortured both in universe and as a character, after all the crap she went through. It is just disrespectful.

And as I said, she deserved better.

#Pmmm #Pmmm rebellion #Pmmm spoilers #Long post

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lyricfrost13 · 3 years

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BNHA/Naruto reincarnation au

Ok ok so the trope is that one character is reincarnated into another world, either as another character or as a new insert in the world right? I had a kind of cracky idea for this one.

It’s a bit long but basically a ton of characters from My Hero die during the War arc and are reincarnated as Naruto characters, which changes canon timeline but not a ton at first because they all think they’re the only one. Like, literally Minato is All Might, Aizawa is Kakashi - Team 7 is Izuku (Naruto - trust me I know it’s weird, but nearly-adult Izuku in a child’s body is here to cause problems on purpose), Bakugou (Sakura - the temper and eventually the ability to smash boulders? Yes. I know Naruto and Sakura could be flipped but I have Reasons), and Todoroki (Sasuke - evil older brother, fire stuff, kinda stoic) - there’s more under the cut because I don’t have the energy to write an actual entire fic but I need to put it down. Maybe at some point I’ll write the rest.

Yagi thought it was a dream for a while. Thought it was a nightmare, some days - but being Namikaze Minato was oddly satisfying in that he earned every bit of his power along the way. He was proud of it, the strength and speed and intellect. The only person he ever told about his old world was Kushina - and she believed him. His heart ached when his team fought and died and fought more - he tried to reach Kakashi in his grief, but the boy wasn’t happy.

Aizawa doesn’t tell a soul that he’s someone else, that he’s a fraud, not a genius. He doesn’t dare make a friend in Obito or Rin, still aching because all he can think is Mic and Oboro and his fucking class all gone. Minato’s sunny smiles in the midst of being a deadly destroyer of armies makes him think of All Might and Izuku, the heroes, the best of them. It hurts when it’s all taken away, and he uses his knowledge of how not to strain eye-related powers to cover his Sharingan when not in use and dives into ANBU to avoid thinking too hard about everything.

Touya aches. He’s a genius of his clan, blew his first fireball so hot that it charred his throat for a week and glowed blue-white instead of red. This world doesn’t leave him burned beyond repair, and killing isn’t what makes a villain - but he still becomes one, for his little brother’s sake, because while Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shouto are gone, he still has Sasuke. (Another suicide mission fueled by revenge - only this time it’s him that has to die in the end, not his father.) Itachi’s new flames are black, not blue.

Hawks is tired of lies. So tired of being loyal to a system that’s full of false promises. He might be a shark instead of a bird now, but he still flies the coop and joins up with a group that comfortably reminds him of the League.

Izuku grieves everyone - of course he does - in the quiet of his little apartment. He’s reminded again and again of the fact that he’s different for whatever reason. This time, instead of crying, he shouts - he laughs - he pranks the shit out of everyone to just be noticed for something that’s actually under his control. If he can’t be the #1 hero, then dammit he’ll be Hokage - the strongest leader he can manage to be.

Katsuki doesn’t know what the fuck to do. One, he’s become a girl - gender didn’t really matter all that much to him compared to strength and intelligence before, but it was still weird. What frustrated her more was his lack of quirk - explosions had defined Bakugou for so long that frankly, she was still going to research Iwa’s explosion corps and do something about that to add to her repertoire. Somewhere along the line Ino attached to her like the limpet Kirishima and Mina always had - getting up in her personal space without caring one way or another, understanding when she refused to speak, encouraging her temper every once in a while. The one annoying thing is that Ino interpreted her need to get stronger than the current projected Rookie of the Year as a crush. Which - no. Sasuke was objectively good looking for a kid, but he was also intellectually a hell of a lot younger than Katsuki-Sakura, and he always uncomfortably reminded her of Todoroki.

Shouto thrives at first - glad not to be the only one with expectations, even if he winces at the idea of an older brother shouldering so much responsibility. He lives for having an older brother to look up to, to get close to. He’s a little miffed that his clan’s specialty is fire-based, but hey, at least his father doesn’t expect him to be his successor - until he does. Until Itachi starts going on more and more missions, poking his forehead and saying “Another time, little brother,” more and more often. And then the massacre happens, and Sasuke wonders why he ever trusted that things would be so stable and ok. He’s going to get strong, drag Itachi kicking and screaming back to Konoha, and rip his eyes out so he never does that again.

...

Kakashi is late again. Sasuke was more irritable than usual - after Wave, their sensei had promised to help him learn the Ice Release that Haku had done, and he’d really wanted to have that in his arsenal to have something more familiar. Sakura and Naruto had begun sparring in their boredom, and in the middle of it, Naruto slipped and hit one of Sakura’s sore spots from the mission. She snarled.

“Fucking deku, what the hell!” she said.

Naruto yelped and fell forward, following through too far on a punch, eyes wide. Sasuke stared, blinking.

“Interesting,” said Kakashi’s voice behind them. Sasuke was staring at Sakura in shock, and Naruto looked like he was staring at a ghost. Sakura’s cheeks were turning pink.

“What are you looking at me like that for?!” she demanded.

“Problem children,” Kakashi said. All three faces whipped to face him, mouths gaping, eyes wide.

“ . . . Aizawa-sensei?” asked Shouto quietly.

“What?” demanded Bakugou. “All of us? Who the fuck are-Icy-hot? Deku?”

“Kacchan!” Izuku’s expression on Naruto’s features was - well. Kakashi cursed inwardly - had things gone well, fuck, he’d be the kid’s older brother figure. This wouldn’t have gone this far. But the elation of not being alone was too much, even with that sting of he was right in front of me and I did nothing.

“If we’re all back here,” Sasuke said quietly, “Who else might be?”

“Well, this changes things for us, but not for anyone else,” Kakashi explained. “As far as the world knows, we’re the same as we’ve always been. However, you studying Iwa explosion tactics and you wanting to learn ice release jutsus makes a lot more sense now.”

. . .

Gaara had always had it in him to destroy. From dust to sand to death - it was all the same. The Ichibi raging against a jagged seal had only exacerbated an already damaged mind, one that couldn’t handle the empty space where All for One used to be. Instead stood rage.

Yashamaru had helped, for a while. Gaara had almost even considered telling his greatest secret to his siblings - that he was once a terrible monster of a human, Shigaraki - but his uncle’s death shattered that thought quite thoroughly. That was all it took to turn him once again into a monster, until a kid with another tailed beast inside him raged against his pain hard enough to scrape at his most protected secret: He didn’t want to be a monster or a villain.

Naruto had that blinding smile as he fought he’d only seen a few times before - on Midoriya Izuku.

. . .

When Itachi next faced Sasuke, he had expected pain and rage.

Instead, his little brother created a prison of ice mirrors, Sharingan flashing as he finished the sequence of signs. His teammates screamed from outside the dome, and Itachi grimaced as he readied a stance - when had Sasuke learned anything about ice? Why would he -

“You’re going to give me answers, aniki,” he said. “One of which is this: Touya, what the hell?”

Itachi stared. And stared.

“You-Shouto?”

“Apologies for not having the hair dye remover and livestream set up, but yes,” he replied.

. . .

Shikamaru was . . . well. He wasn’t an idiot. Talking about reincarnation and heroes and another life was a way to get a trip to T&I and never leave. It didn’t mean he didn’t use his skills - Aizawa would be proud of how lazy his son had gotten in his next life, he bet.

So when he saw Team Seven act a lot differently at the beginning of the chunin exams than he recalled, he was on high alert to find out what was going on. Naruto had learned some level of volume control, Sakura had tempered whatever her issue with Sasuke was, and Sasuke had - not softened, but definitely cooled off. Seemed more attentive to his teammates.

And Kakashi had certainly become more present, if the way they were presenting themselves with high-quality gear was any indication.

Chunin Exams, Sports Festival - didn’t matter, he was still going to prove himself. No matter the fact he didn’t have his quirk anymore, he still kept asking questions.

“Hey, Sakura. Naruto. Sasuke. You ready for this?”

“We’re going to pass,” Sakura said. “No other option.” He raised a brow.

“You sure about that?”

“Sakura-chan said it, so she means it,” said Naruto. Sasuke nodded.

“What about you and your team?”

“Well, it’d be a drag to take the exam again. Guess I’ve got to get the promotion now,” he sad, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Gotta scope out the competition - I’m not here to make friends.”

All three stiffened, and Naruto’s eyes lit up.

“Shinsou!”

Shikamaru spluttered.

“Wh-what?!”

“You’re not the only one,” said Sakura immediately. “Shoulda figured, eyebags. Would have thought Aizawa would be a Nara too, but it still fits.” Shikamaru was, of course, reeling.

“Aizawa’s here?! Wait, who are you three, then, if you know?”

“I’m Deku,” said Naruto, and yeah, that tracked.

“Who the fuck else?” asked Sakura, and yep, her temper and Bakugou’s were just about the same amount of hair-trigger. Which left -

“And you’re Todoroki,” he said. Sasuke nodded.

“Kakashi’s Aizawa. He’s gonna be really glad that you’re here, Shinsou. Talk to him when you get the chance.”

. . .

“You might be a monster, but so am I,” Naruto insisted as Gaara’s wild gaze turned on him.

“No, no, I was born a monster,” Gaara insisted. “I destroyed everything I touched, it all was decay, I ended a world -”

Oh. Oh.

“And All for One’s gone now,” he said.

The Ichibi’s form flickered, and the sand surrounding the boy flailed whiplike and dangerous.

. . .

Naruto entered the seal and frowned. It - his body, his spirit felt different. Somewhere between Naruto and Izuku. The mindscape shimmered, and a blond figure stepped forward - the First Hokage. But another step forward, and he shifted into someone else equally, no, more familiar. Naruto choked.

“All Might?!” he gasped. “You’re the Fourth? But - how - how is this?” he was helpless for words. Minato stiffened, staring at how the spirit before him shifted back and forth between a young man with whisker marks and blue eyes and a mop of green fluffy hair.

“Izuku? You’re Naruto?” he asked quietly. His son nodded vigorously.

“It seems I’ve bestowed quite the power and burden on you twice over,” he mused. “Come here. It’s not every day a father gets to see his son for the first time in over a decade,” he said, arms open. Naruto blinked.

“My - my father?”

“Yes,” he said with a sad smile. “I only ever told your mother about my past life. She even believed me!”

Izuku-Naruto stumbled forward and sobbed into Minato-Yagi’s shoulder, clutching him tightly.

“It’s not just us,” he said, “Aizawa and Todoroki and Kacchan and Shinsou and - there’s more out there, I’m sure of it. Not everyone, but more. And I’m going to save them all this time.”

Minato smiled.

#bnha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #fic ideas #naruto #reincarnation au #imagine #crossover #fic idea #au #my fic #my writing

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reynesofcastamere · 4 years

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Jagged Crowns(1/2)[β]

(A/N: I had a bit of an internal debate as to whether I should keep writing while...Well, some parts of our world are in a rapid spiral towards a fascist dystopian nightmare due to centuries of institutionalized racism, ignorance, and hair-trigger violence, among other things. I understand that I will never fully comprehend what POC have suffered, because the system has been rigged in my favour since before I was born. There is much and more that can and has been said on the subject, but to summarize: It is not my intention to further harmful ideas/depictions or to hurt people via this self-indulgent outlet. If I have done so(and not given appropriate warnings), please do not hesitate to inform me so that I may correct this. That said, warnings for: gore, violence, death, intrusive thoughts, mental breakdown/hallucinations, and suicidal ideation. The prompt for this was ‘Ahsoka helping Maul through his own struggles, since he’s pretty much on the verge of insanity at all times.’ Unbeta’d.)

In the end, there is no need for a chosen one. No bright, wide-eyed youth to take up a burning sword and the incalculable burden of ridding the galaxy of an oppressive evil. The reality turns out to be less of a legend and more of a horror story.

The Royal Palace is littered with the dead and dying, but there is only one that matters. Sidious is still immensely powerful, but his body has grown old and slow, and there are only so many guards he can sacrifice to protect himself. Overcoming his Force lightning, preventing bones and organs from being crushed, protecting their minds from invasion and violation: That is much harder. But finally, finally Maul strikes off the Emperor’s head as Ahsoka’s twin ‘sabres pierce his shriveled, black heart. She steps back. He keeps going, slicing and hacking until the throne is in pieces, the floor is a cross-hatch of burning lines, and what was once an Emperor is nothing more than a pile of charred meat and cloth.

“Is this...Am I free? No, this was too easy. Master always has a contingency plan.” He does not even realize he is voicing these thoughts, too occupied with searching the Force for something, any trace of Sidious’s presence. Foolish child. You thought you could defeat ME? I know your every pitiful thought, every scheme you concocted while you wriggled, a blind maggot encased in filth. “Be silent.” Maul snarls, fingertips coiled around his anterior horns, palms pressed into his eyelids. “Focus. Focus. Search for him, he cannot hide from us.” There is another voice, outside his head, but he cannot hear it. He has to know. Yet despite the venomous hiss that tries to steal away his concentration, there is...nothing. The Dark Side is empty of even the barest wisp of his Master. “Gone. Gone at last. Finally I have achieved Bane’s will...” He laughs, long and erratically pitched. Not a comforting sound, or even a sane one. Wait. There is something. He uncovers his eyes and re-opens them. Someone before him, unlit ‘sabres in hand. Another rival apprentice. Another test. “Have I not done enough to prove myself?” Maul whispers, disbelieving and enraged all at once. No. You must destroy all who would stand in your way if you wish to claim my power. Prove that you are worthy and strike them down! “Yes, my Master.” He had dropped his sabrestaff before -careless, stupid, he could have been killed-, but it leaps eagerly into his hand and activates as he begins his assault. He cannot seem to get a clear picture of his opponent, their form shadowed and not entirely solid around the edges. He sees their weapons clearly enough, though, especially when they clash with his own. His rival is on the defensive, parrying his strikes but not counterattacking. He cannot hear their words past the blood rushing in his ears, infuriated by this insult. Is he so weak that they do not even think him worth the effort of assaulting?! Maul drives them back, seeking to disarm, to maim, to kill, but he cannot connect. He resorts to yanking their legs out from under them with the Force, lips curled in a feral snarl as he raises his sabrestaff for the final blow...Then the Light bursts into his mind with the force of a battering ram, and he can feel-These thoughts, this presence, he knows it-Mine, this warmth is mine, cast from the star forever out of my reach. Ahsoka Tano looks up at him, eyes wide from exertion and fear. “Maul. Please, stop.” His legs give out from under him, weapon deactivated and slipping from his suddenly-nerveless fingers. He does not know how long it takes for her to come to him. Seconds, or perhaps years, her hands circling his face as their lips meet. He pulls her close, fervent and desperate in his passion. Yes. This is fitting. One last time, before the end. “You must kill me.” A whisper when they part for air, watching her blink in confusion. “What are you talking about?” “I have never fought for your hope of a restored Republic. You know this. You have prepared for it. Sidious is dead and I will inevitably take control of his Empire. Unless you stop me.” “I don’t have to murder you to accomplish that.” “Ah, so you are content to truss me up like a rabid animal and let your superiors toss me in a cage or cut off my head. How noble.” “No.” “Why? Because you believe that they will not take the opportunity to rid themselves of a long-standing nuisance? Or that they will simply leave me in peace because our goals aligned temporarily?” He summons her shoto to his right hand, snarling in frustration as he presses it to her left. “You are neither sentimental or naive, Ahsoka Tano. Do not hesitate.” For a moment, it seems as if she will go through with it. As if white light and the deep blue of her eyes will be the last things he sees. It is not the nature of the Sith, to surrender to death’s embrace so readily. But Maul has...never been a true Sith, and he is so very tired. The voices in his head are blessedly silent, yet it is only a temporary reprieve. Without purpose, without vengeance or ambition, he will lose himself again. “Stop running, Maul.” Her voice is firm, and oh, she burns bright enough to blind him, but he cannot tear his eyes away. Ahsoka takes her weapon from him, sets it down, and entwines their fingers instead. “You’re right. I know who you are and what you can do. I also know you’re capable of more than that.” He cannot breathe. What has she done, to make him feel this way? That there might be hope of being...something other than this? “Did you really think I didn’t notice all these years? The small acts of compassion and honour...Palpatine didn’t rip those away from you.” She is so warm, so willing to offer up these things he has blatantly denied himself and others. “A foolish dream.” Maul rebuts, but there is no real strength behind it. His left arm holds her more tightly, both for emotional and practical purposes. He is not certain how much longer he can remain even partially upright. “It doesn’t have to be. Join me.” Ahsoka offers. “There’s still Vader, Thrawn, and a whole mess of other Imperials to defeat or force surrender from. But after...We can try to build something of our own.” Her right thumb lightly brushes over his cheek. “Won’t be easy, but it’s a chance for both of us to try something different.” “You will regret this decision. Soon.” He points out dryly. There is only so much optimism he is willing to endure, even in this state. She only laughs. “And you haven’t driven me insane. Yet. I don’t expect either one of us to be perfect at this from the start. Just to try.” Her hand curves down and around, lightly dragging her nails up his nape and eliciting a low rumble from him. “Aren’t you going to give me your answer?” Her smile cements the fact that she is utterly devious beneath her relatively-harmless exterior and he will get her back for this later. “You. Are an unrepentant tease. And I will greatly enjoy administering your punishment.” He growls, both impressed and frustrated by her manipulation. “But I am willing to see whether this insane notion of yours will work.” His agreement brings a smile from her, but not before she rolls her eyes and gives a small, exasperated exhale. “‘Yes’ would have worked fine, you know.” “And since when have I ever passed up the opportunity to frustrate you, my Lady?” “Ass. Mmmmph...”

“Care to rephrase that?”

“No. You are the worst. But I might be persuaded to change my opinion.”

“Let us see if I am up to the challenge, then.”

This is merely the beginning of a very long, hard road. Yet neither one of them will walk it alone, and that makes all the difference.

(A/N:Things I didn’t include in the top note because it was getting a bit wordy: This is set around 5-ish BBY, so Thrawn isn’t a Grand Admiral yet, only an Admiral(or possibly Commander, depending on when his promotion happened). Obviously certain canon events didn’t happen (ie Malachor), and Maul and Ahsoka have been in a sort-of relationship for about a decade at this point. Also, sorry, they didn’t have sex in the throne room. Just makeouts and soul-searching. This is absolutely a starting point. Neither character is ‘cured’ of their various issues/traumas by the end of this installment even if they are being semi-cute and flirty. This is...not what I would consider a realistic way to handle someone being triggered/having a delusional episode, but I digress. *notices that fics that have started with gore or violent imagery have mostly ended in fluff* -_-....Hm...Well, that’s a pattern. Or possibly a problem. Cheers, everyone!)

#maulsoka #so much offscreen murder in this #except for Palpatine #because he is a BastardTM #I've decided to remove the 5-number limit and keep my askbox open for prompts/requests #for the moment #all of you are awesome btw

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sesskagarchive · 5 years

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Alternate Universe Serial

These fan fictions are serial works that are not traditionally set in the Feudal Era Canon and are not compliant with/do not feature elements of the Inuyasha Canon.

They may be set in the modern era or in a historical time other than the Sengoku Jidai.

They may retain youkai and miko or make all the characters human. They may feature multiple different tropes like college, celebrities, etc

‼ Please note that these themed lists may always be expanded based on the suggestions and recs we get, so the lists might change at any given time, even after they’ve been reblogged ‼

A Dangerous Shot by sesshomarusama33

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: **COMPLETE** Canon. Kagome is kidnapped by a witch under Naraku's order. What will happen when she is accidentally cursed and the only two people who can save her can't get a long? Told in 100 word snippets. Rated for later chapters. EDIT: Chapters 7 and up will no longer be 100 words! ^^

A Woman! by Sugar0o

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: Loosely based of off 'Mulan.' Kags decides to take her fathers place in the war for the West, but gets caught unexpectedly. AU, S/K, evey1s a demon mostly **COMPLETE**

Birth by cutebaby

Posted on: FFnet Rating: T Summary: Sesshomaru stands to loose everything unless he can secure a heir by his upcoming birthday. His advisors and himself are now in a race against the clock to find the perfect child, but how does his secretary, Kagome, fit in? This is an upload from backup because the story was lost. Thanks to all my readers for letting me know.

Business Associates by KJ

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: Kagome and Sesshomaru have been dating for 7 years, but Kagome is tired of their passionless arrangement. She wants a man who will love and support her and her dreams. She ends their relationship and heart break ensues. Will he just let her go? Can they settle their differences? This is AU, rated MA. There will be lemon. There is a possibility some of the characters will be OOC. Status: WIP

Capital Offense by Oroyukae

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: It was wrong; it was illegal...it was reciprocated. Like his father before him, he could not deny what he felt for the human female. For that, he would pay dearly. He found himself faced with the question he had asked his father numerous times...was it worth it? {Complete}

Clutter by forthright

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: T Summary: AU. Mrs. Higurashi decides to help her daughter put her life together; enter Sesshoumaru, professional organizer extraordinaire. A romantic comedy told in 100 word snippets. COMPLETE

Cop Troubles by LibraCourt

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: Troubles, troubles, and more troubles. Sesshoumaru has to deal with it all from working with a human partner to being given a poison that sends him into a heat. How will he handle it all? What other troubles will he face?

Crystal Hearts by SmilingFool

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: Warning Inside... What happens when Evil longs to be loved? Fate steps in giving Naraku a chance to prove his heart is not all Black and Evil. Naraku finds himself drawn to a little girl that is being abused and finds a way to stop it. Naraku being the 'Evil Creator' and business hanyou he is begins working on a project that could extend human life called Crystal Hearts. His project is soon discovered and his research stolen by an unknown force that is also out to kill his new stepdaughter Kagome in fear that she will stop the war that is to come. What will happen when Evil turns against Evil? Read and find out. Enjoy. Pairings are Sesshoumaru/Kagome. Status: WIP

Dancing with Scissors by piratequeen0405

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: Kagome's niece, Rin, is left orphaned by a tragic car wreck, leaving Kagome to raise her alone. Or so she thought...help comes from an unexpected source, Sesshoumaru. The only problem is that they can't stand each other. Will they be able to act like adults for the sake of their niece...and maybe find love in the process?

Dear Stranger by Chie

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga, FFnet Rating: M Summary: Via exchanging e-mails, a romance is beginning to bud between two strangers. But Kagome knows that falling in love is not an option – that would be bad for business. Status: WIP

Dramatic! by Chie

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga, FFnet Rating: T Summary: Filming a TV drama can be surprisingly difficult, when one has to deal with a quirky scriptwriter and an unruly cast. There were days when director Takahashi pondered how the hell she ever ended up in such a mess…

Everyday Love by Priestess Skye

Posted on: FFnet Rating: T Summary: Based on the picture series by Youkai Yume. Love is expressed in a myriad of ways. Sesshoumaru and Kagome grow and develop in their relationship with each other. Series of interconnected one shots. Sess/Kag

Hallowed Desire by Demonlordlover2

Posted on: FFnet, Spark Rating: MA Summary: Sesshoumaru wanted more than a mate. He wanted her, Kagome

Happily Ever After by Miss Teak

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: T Summary: Struggling to maintain her old family shrine, Higurashi Kagome could not be more thankful for the miracle that came in the form of a letter telling her that the Higurashi family owned forty percent of a traditional Japanese inn in Tsumago, Nagano prefecture. However, in exchange for the profits made by Shiraito inn, Kagome would have to marry the devastatingly handsome yet arrogant owner and serve as the inn's okami. Happily ever after? No way! Status: Abandoned

Letters, Love, War by Aura

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: T Summary: A reply to r0o's letter challenge. Kagome and Sesshomaru stay in contact through nothing more than letters during the second world war, eventually realizing they mean more to each other than either knew. Nominated for Best Romance and Best Alternate Reality 4th Quarter 2010!

Maid for You by luna-magic-2005

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: M Summary: Inuyasha plays a prank on his older brother Sesshoumaru - by purchasing him a mail order bride! Except something seems a little off about this one… Drabble series. COMPLETE!

Maid with Care by Aimee Blue

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: T Summary: A drabble series revolving around Kagome's unusual job in Sesshoumaru's cosplay cafe. Status: Abandoned

Make Up Your Mind!! by Koishii_Beloved

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: Sesshoumaru and Kagome, both, have agreed to a divorce. Kagome is all ready for it, but what happens when Sesshoumaru decides to back out?

Mother of My Heir by gildedglass

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: The night before Sesshomaru broke up with Kagome, he took all he could from her. Now, years later, he is trying to create a heir to no avail; his children do not bear the mark. There can only be one reason; his heir already lives... with a woman who wants nothing to do with him. Status: Abandoned / Hiatus

My Bitter Sweet Life! by Moonlight Silk

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: When time fades and past memories disappear, Kagome tries to see the bright side of life by looking to the future. But can the heart feel what the mind cannot remember when old love reappears? Will the truth set her free, or will it destroy what peace she had found in the darkness? Only time will tell.

My Second Self by LikeABlueThread

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga Rating: M Summary: Orphaned Kagome is raised by monks in Feudal Japan, and determines to find a way to build an independent life for herself. Jane Eyre done SessKag style. Complete!

Omikuji by ironlotus

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: Every year, Kagome picks an Omikuji fortune on New Year's Eve with the same wish: May this year be the year that brings happiness like no other! But she doesn't get what she's expecting, especially once her fortune starts coming true. Her supervisor and friend passes on. People around her are acting more and more oddly. The world as she knows it gets flipped on its head. This year's fortune couldn't be worse. [[Epilogue Posted! Finally Complete!!]]

Paper Cranes by midori Haru

Posted on: FFnet Rating: M Summary: Meeting, attraction, courting, commitment. For most of the world relationships form in the normal fashion from start to culmination. Naturally normal isn't enough for Sesshoumaru. And he wonders why he runs into problems trying to build a relationship from the wrong end

Pompeii by aijoinu

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: When a God finds his other half he will literally move the earth to make her his

Sea Swept by AshMish111

Posted on: AO3, FFnet Rating: T Summary: A Mermaid’s Dream; A Prince’s Hope. He was not the one she left it all behind for, but he would he the one she wanted to stay for. Little Mermaid AU, with a twist! SessKag

Stay-cation by Shastuhh

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: Its has been a long six months Kagome has gone through multiple life changes, she has lost a loved one, lost her first love, graduated college, bought a house and now all she is looking to do is take a stay-cation to rest, relax and recharge. She runs into Sesshomaru in the store as she is doing some last minute shopping and finds out he is doing his own type of vacation and she invites him to stay with her. He has longed to get to know her better and make her his one and only and he is not about to pass up this opportunity.

Step Into Love by StormieLikeWeather

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga, FFnet, Tumblr Rating: MA Summary: Kagome meets her new step brother for the first time, only she doesn’t know it’s him. With hearts in their eyes, realization bursts the bubble. While Sesshomaru could care less, Kagome is stuck between wanting to be with him and wanting to meet familial expectations. - Updates are sporadic. Status: WIP

Tables Turned by Chie

Posted on: AO3, Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: A false accusation caused him to lose everything he had. Finally free again, he disguises himself and sets out to gain back all that once was his. But things don't always go as planned and he ends up working as an assistant in the company he once founded. And his boss is a woman. [Complete!]

That’s My Girl! by Kanna37

Posted on: AO3, FFnet Rating: K+ Summary: Little Sesshoumaru and Little Kagome have a series of tiny adventures on the playground… a collection of interrelated chibi one-shots. Status: Hiatus

The Divorce by The StoryTeller of Old

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: Kagome’s having trouble keeping her marriage together. Sesshomaru Taisho, business tycoon, billionare, doesn’t spend enough time home. So, Kagome feels lonely. A new worker from her job, incites something in her. Will sparks fly? How will Sesshomaru react when his mate throws down divorce papers? Status: Hiatus

The Gladiator by Liv

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: Born into royalty as a young child, Sesshomaru’s territory comes under attack, his entire family and people slaughtered, leaving him the sole survivor of the Western lands. Sold into slavery, Sesshomaru grows up to become a gladiator, strong and unfeeling…until he laid eyes on her. The daughter of one of the city’s leaders, Kagome is beautiful, kind and full of light, but when she catches the eye of a ruthless politician Naraku, the one responsible for the murder of Sesshomaru’s family, can she be saved by the handsome gladiator whose golden eyes pierce through her soul and whom her heart yearns for? Inspired by the movie Pompeii. Rated MA for graphic violence and other adult-themes. Status: Hiatus/Abandoned

The Sculptor and the Statue by EagleFeathersInMyHair

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: T Summary: The story of Pygmalion and Galathea with Sesshoumaru as the artist and Kagome as his most revered work, told in two chapters. *Part 2 of Sess/Kag in Mythology Series*

The Sword Smith's Secret by MissKatt

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: MA Summary: Sesshoumaru despises the blade his father has left him. When he goes to Totosai to demand a sword to be forged, he meets an unexpected assistant that will have a role in forging his sword. Now, he is forced to win her favor in order for his sword to be fabricated for the impending war. What happens when she turns out to be more valuable than what he thought? Status: Hiatus

The Third Parties by Miss Teak

Posted on: Dokuga, FFnet Rating: M Summary: "If I keep reminding myself of how wrong my feelings for her are, I might finally do something right." She was the third party in his half-brother's three-year relationship. He was merely a good friend. Watching her get hurt over and over again, Taisho Sesshoumaru wanted to tell Higurashi Kagome to let go. Yet he could not, not when he knows he could never let go of her just like how she could never let go of Inuyasha.

Twisted Hearts by Eternal fire1

Posted on: FFnet Rating: M Summary: “Marry me.” Kagome's eyes widened. “I…I don’t love you.” She said weakly. If Sesshoumaru could have laughed, he would have. “Stupid miko.” He said. “This is not about love. This is merely business.

Yakuza-Miko by NicoRavenPen

Posted on: Dokuga Rating: MA Summary: Modern Day AU. After her 18th birthday, Kagome manages to get caught up with some boys at school that everyone else considers Yakuza because of their 'tattoos' and mannerisms. Turns out, they're a clan of youkai and she just happens to be the answer to all of their problems...Rated MA for coarse language and potential violence. Status: WIP

#sesskag #SKFA Themed Rec List #Alternate Universe

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cosmiciaria · 5 years

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In defense of Final Fantasy XIII-2 (long post - mild spoilers ahead!)

Disclaimer: Sorry for the pics bad quality. I don't own a ps3, my friend lent me one, and I don't really know how to take screenshots, so I did my best to make my photos look visible. Just don't mind them much.

SO, I'll start by saying that this game IS BAD and it's part of a badly executed and hated trilogy. To be honest, I don't appreciate Final Fantasy XIII much: the first time I played it I was blinded by (light – sorry pun) the visuals and the crystals and everything was shining and whatever. But then I replayed it, and started seeing all the things people were complaining about. As I skipped some scenes to make my second playthrough smoother and faster, I noticed one thing: I was bored. I wasn't enjoying the gameplay, I didn't understand the story in its entirety even if it was my second time playing it. It was one of the first videogames I played in English (hello from Argentina) so I thought that maybe my limitations with the language were dampening my experience, but I asked a friend about the plot and she told me she didn't understand it either.

At any rate, I only played FFXIII because I wanted to play FFXIII-2. I didn't know why, or what, but something in the sequel (cof cof Noel cof) gave me the urge to try and see it for myself. Like I mentioned before, I don't own a ps3, so I had to wait until in 2015 they released the PC ports. I was so happy with this, that I decided to complete the game 100% and see everything it had to offer.

And it has so much to offer! Yes, I won't deny it, the plot is all over the place, and this is where the trilogy goes to hell with its story. But, let's just say we are all aboard the suspension of disbelief train – if we do it, we'll find there's a great story behind all the time gates.

What I enjoyed the most about this sequel was the characters. In XIII I spent HOURS complaining about how annoying everyone was (except for Fang, she's perfect). I couldn't relate to or stand anyone: Lightning became obnoxious with her monotone, Hope was a crybaby with a pretentious revenge plot that didn't work out well, Sahz is just kinda there not contributing anything to the plot, Vanille just has that oh-please-kill-me squeaky voice and Snow is… I hate Snow. I just hate him. The little fondness I have for him stems from my love for Troy Baker's performances, but oh my Etro, Snow is just like a shonen hero in the body of a 21-year-old man. It's just not right, it defies the laws of anime and videogames. Please eradicate him. I hate Square Enix for creating a character like him and forcing me to play as him and use him as a Sentinel because he's just that good in that role, damn him!

But in FFXIII-2? Suddenly, I found myself rooting for Noel and Serah. We get to learn about Noel's backstory, his sad present, his depressing lifestyle. The inexorability of his tale, the imminence of his decaying world. And he becomes such an endearing partner! He's always there to catch Serah if she falls, he's always asking her if she's feeling well. He's proficient, he's efficient, and he's not complaining about stupid stuff. He even doesn't want to talk about his past because he doesn't want to bother Serah – PLEASE Hope just learn something from this man!

And what about Serah? She's not the best character, I give it to you, but she goes from damsel in distress to a badass time traveler in a blink of an eye, and I can certainly get behind that! She's selfless, she faces everything head on, even though she's scared. Her journey began with the search of her sister, but slowly she found herself surrounded by things she couldn't quite comprehend, only to learn that she was more entangled with the fate of the world than she'd anticipated.

And if you do some optional stuff, you can learn things about Mog as well – not only his features are useful (and funny), but he's also the comic relief, adding extra spice to some of the conversations. His exaggerated expressions and his cute voice make up for a good companion.

And I cannot NOT mention Caius (Liam O'Brien I stan). Say whatever about him, but I love his characterization. He's well made. Yes, he wants the same as countless others villains from the FF franchise, but this time I can understand his motives. I feel pity for him. I want to help him. He's cursed beyond redemption. And he's got the best theme song ever.

I can understand these characters. The game spends enough time on everyone so we can learn to care for them, they show us how their relationship nurtures, their dynamics. And I care! This is something XIII-2 made right and XIII did not: I don't care about Lightning, or Hope, or Snow, but I do care that Noel and Serah succeed in their task. I don't care about Barthandelus or the Pulse Fal'Cie, but I do care about Caius getting what he wants. XIII had so many characters but spent too little time in developing (properly, at least) their strengths and weaknesses, but most of all, their relationships. The only real relationship that feels genuine is the one between Fang and Vanille, but that's because they know each other from before the events of the game; whereas the rest of the team feels like… badly placed pieces of puzzle trying to fit.

I know you're gonna say, hey, other FF put together characters that had nothing to do and it worked (yeah, I can mention FFXII and to a certain extent, because Penelo and Vaan were just there for the lulz I guess). In XIII it just didn't work for me: I couldn't root for any of them, and when the game was finished, I was kinda relieved.

That doesn't happen in XIII-2. Maybe they got it, maybe it was out of luck, I don't know, but characters here are better fleshed out, and we can learn to care and root for them, so we want to see it through to the end by their side.

That's just one thing that XIII-2 did better.

Gameplay was enhanced: now it's faster, more strategic, it doesn't bullshit you like when the leader died in XIII. I'm not going to delve deeper into the Pokémon thing, but yes, you can catch them all, and it adds a lot to the stakes because there's one more thing to gain besides the battle: the monster you're fighting. The game added so many features, it blows me away: the time travelling, opening new paths, closing some; the fragments, which give you experience points and insights in some of the lore; the fragment skills, additional things you can earn or do if certain requirements are met; the f*cking casino that has chocobo races, something that was lacking in the previous game; you can add ADORNMENTS to the monsters you tame to get the ultimate fashion experience. I don't know, there's so much to do, too many timelines to visit. There are too many sidequests, but all of them are linked to the main plot, so you feel like you're still learning things from the main story. Yes, I know, they reuse the same map over and over (Yaschas Massif and Oerba, I'm looking at you), but they compensate with some brand new maps, like Academia 4XX AF which must be my favorite location, so full of life and futuristic style, and the Archylte Steppe, with its weather changing feature.

Sometimes the lack of gameplay slaps you in the face but in the good sense, for instance in Academia 400 AF, where you have a forced battle every two seconds. The sense of urgency and danger is well conveyed through the use of random encounters with enemies. Or when you visit the Void Beyond with Serah, that you're alone, and you have a ghastly Mog following you around, with some of his features blocked. They used everything they had at their disposal, and they used it well. Gone are the days with the endless hallway that we complained so much about in XIII (as if FFX wasn't linear as hell too, but we don't complain about that one – don't dare because it's my favorite FF I warn you): now you can choose how to play, when to play, face that monster or go for an alternative ending. They listened to our whining and gave us this sequel, yes, that nobody asked for, but yet, they did.

There's a huge world-building surrounding all the time travelling thing: in the future, time travel becomes something of an everyday topic, so when you walk around in Academia 4XX you can hear kids playing "let's go and destroy those evil paradox monsters". They built a world around the idea that you can time travel, and that's how Hope gets to live and see every era, monitoring his work that will take centuries to be fulfilled. This is how we should take the time travel in this game, not as doomsday-serious as in Terminator or Back to the Future, but with a more light-hearted approach. I think that's what they tried to do, and it works well that way.

However light-hearted this game tries to be, it has some sad and depressing bits, mostly around Noel and his way of life. Whenever his theme song kicks-in, you can understand all his character without a word. And that takes me to another thing this game excels at: soundtrack. Now, I won't say it's better than XIII, because the first game has some awesome music as well, but I'll be damned if I don't give enough credit to this game's songs. Yeul's Theme, Noel's Theme, Wishes – you learn everything of these characters by just listening to these beautiful vocals. And I also love that the music took risks, like the Crazy Chocobo theme – I swear that thing is both the best and worst thing out of this game.

Confession time: I can't stop shipping Serah and Noel. I'm just so angry that Snow exists because it forbids this ship in the canon. I have one major complain about it, though: I can't help but notice that both Caius and Noel are infatuated by a fifteen-year-old. I can't discern how much of it is "loyalty beyond boundaries" or "I love her, I truly love her, like I'm in love with her" kind of love, but still, it bugs me a bit. Caius and Yeul's relationship feels more natural, given that he's her guardian, and he acts upon this role the whole game, until the end, where Noel clearly states that Yeul always came back because she wanted to stay by Caius's side. So it leaves me wondering. And Lightning Returns pretty much confirmed to us that Noel was in love with Yeul, which of COURSE I don't LIKE at ALL but I'll roll with it. I'm just glad that we got XIII-2 ending where Jason Marsden's voice breaks when he yells Serah's name. They gave me enough content for a thousand fics. Let's pretend that Noel's attitude in LR doesn't happen, ok?

You can hate this game. I can't blame you for it. Nobody wanted it, it doesn't connect well to its predecessor unless you read two novellas, and it forcefully leads us to Lightning Returns where, I can safely say, the plot goes to hell, almost literally. But this game exists, and it doesn't deserve half the hate it receives. If you play it it's because you enjoyed XIII (I highly doubt that you'll make yourself go through this suffering if you didn't like the first one – if you do, I just don't know why you hate yourself so much), and if you did, there's no way you're not going to see all the good things they added in this one. Enjoy it for what it is, and not for what it's not, or for what it could've been.

I sometimes wonder what could've happened if this game didn't have "Final Fantasy" on its cover. Because the time travel is intelligent and fun to play, the world-building around the Farseers and this bleak future is interesting and well made – the problem with this game is that it's a Final Fantasy and that it's a sequel to an already quite finished story. It feels like they forced a sequel, and maybe they did. But I, for once, am glad they did.

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dxxtruction · 4 years

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eps2.2_init1.asec

Mr.Robot: Season 2 Episode 4

break-down / character analysis / head canons

(Spoilers obviously, but contains stuff up through end of season 4)

A: first scene

I love this scene a lot so I wrote a lot.

(The Memorial Day situation)

Elliot had been pen-testing, doing white-hat hacking for some wall-street gig. (Timeline= ?-May 2014)

He was on some type of project where he needed to hack until it was un-hackable. (Seemed dedicated to his job there)

Elliot is court ordered into anger management with a shrink (Krista) after being fired for destroying the servers. Hs he claims he was locked in there and fell asleep then woke up in a destroyed room. (I still suspect this retelling to be halfway unreliable even though it’s how it’s told at least twice in the show.)

This happened Memorial Day weekend. - night or around 5pm presumably - people wanted to go clubbing etc. and Elliot did not. They couldn’t leave because Elliot was working. (He didn’t care about them enough to let them go, or was just dedicated to his job you choose.)

2. (Job offering)

Elliot is offered to work at all-safe by Angela around this time (Halloween 2014) but it’s been months since he had been working so what was he doing?

A bunch of Grey-hat hacks to get shady people arrested? Seems he may have just finished one when Darlene arrived.

He sees some potential in accepting, because it a Trojan horse (both what you think it is and slang for a backdoor into a server network).

He’s been thinking about it, though we don’t know how long he’s been sitting on this offer. “the right access the right malware.” His plan is to take down Evil Corp (It’s the first time he’s voiced this, and Darlene doesn’t take him entirely serious at first.)

3. (Darlene and Elliot)

Darlene comes on halloween, she seems bothered by something that may have happened that night (if my timeline is right it could be she had a fight with Cisco because they should’ve still been together then) whatever it is Darlene feels she needs Elliots company that night.

This is the first mention of init-1 the code between her and Elliot. He tries to excuse himself when Darlene first answers, with an excuse he’s going out. Darlene picks up that this is half-assed, showing us that despite her being gone she knows her brother well. (It’s little things like these that give hints as to the hosts habits and how much they overlap with MM’s)

“Great Darlene, haven’t seen you in a long time either. I’d love to hang out.” Judging by the fact Elliot is just now telling Darlene he’s been fired we can assume the extent of there communication is pretty much zilch. Darlene has been away from the city for some time, but I’m not sure its ever mentioned how long.

Per tradition, they’re smoking weed while watching the careful massacre of the bourgeoise (1984). (Darlene is a talkative/hungry type of high and Elliot just chills... and maybe has deep philosophical conversations) This movie carries a lot of importance because it becomes symbolic of F-Society. It starts out with the masked man killing the bourgeoisie kids at a new years eve party, but I do wonder if thats the entire plot or not.

Darlene says several things about it:

(A) The movie was made to disprove meritocracy. (showing the separation of class through the absurd ways in which the characters act.)

(B) it was the source of their psychological dysfunction. (Probably because it’s x-rated, I think this line should only be taken as a joke)

In the dream sequence later in the episode Tyrell and Joanna are wearing similar outfits to the brother and sister in the movie (hinting how Elliot probably sees them)

We get clarification on Darlene having Panic attacks, this is something that has come up before. Elliot shows genuine concern for her mental well-being.

“Since when did pretending everything is okay become the all mighty norm?” *proceeds to act like that at the beginning of season 2*

Unlike Elliot, Darlene has a digital social life. Has instagram, and orders off postmates probably lives a normal life of a 23 year old who happens to be really smart and good at stuff. I definitely think all that go thrown in the trash the second f-society became more than just a what-if. By the beginning of season 1 she’s just as off the grid as Elliot is. (But like I just wanna see Darlene live her life again dammit.)

Sidenote: I wonder who this one is. Part of me wants to say this is Elliot the host, but I have my suspicions MM took over after Memorial Day, (or at the least started to front more often…). Though it does leave me asking why there are sudden amnesia barriers in the time leading up to 5/9. Fragment Krista says MM found it important to start messing with Elliots memories and his past and inadvertently this meant forgetting his sister? Was it a subconscious choice? I can’t confirm, but I still do wonder how much of Elliot we really see in flashbacks and how much of it is MM.

4. (“Do you talk to mom?”)

Dialogue: “No. You?” (“Fuck no, she still shits on dad every time I talk to her… I wish I remembered him better.”)

I don’t have a note really, but this moment is fairly awkward given what we know about Ed—d. Not sure how I read Elliot’s face here, but I think he’s probably on the same page as her because-

Elliot has kept the Mr.Robot jacket.

I believe this indicates the host and MM I think are (were) both protected from knowing about what their father did otherwise that shit would be trash. I wonder Does host Elliot also have the view of his father as his only friend? Anyway I definitely see this as a trigger for Robot, like, thats his clothes for one and ed—d is sort of the trauma he holds.

A switch definitely occurs once the mask is on. There’s an awkwardness where Darlene loses her laughter: does she know exactly what his disorder is? I think at the very least she suspects and picks up on these things. She knows that Elliot is forgetful and experiences moments of derealization because she’s dealt with those moments with him. They are siblings after all, and I think this scene is pretty much in here to hone that in.

Mr.Robot starts a whole speech about a plan to take down E-Corp. Elliot (in reference to everyone because I think this is a shared understanding) knows the hard part of this hack will be he fallout (“that’s the key, the follow through.”)

More indicators he’s been really thinking about this for a while (At the very least since Memorial Day so 6 months; at most since his dad got leukemia). He (Mr.Robot) works out that E-corp will try to come back from the hack and there needs to be a way to stop the from happening.

Destroy public confidence = destroy E-Corp (And this is what Darlene’s been shown doing this season so far)

He then takes off the mask and he’s gone quiet (dissociated?) Probably a switch back. (He looks at it in a way that makes me feel like he doesn’t remember putting it on.)

End scene.

B: Darlene’s visit

“The only way to patch a vulnerability is by exposing it first. The flip side is exposing the vulnerability leaves you open for an exploit.” (I believe this line tells us this episodes logic)

(Plan discussion.)

The plan involves losing confidence in e-corp and Elliot has lost confidence in the plan. (though we are aware phase 2 isn’t necessarily just about losing public confidence, Elliot is later shown to not want this either). He sees it as too dangerous to continue on with, and he feels guilty about it given how Gideon was killed, he doesn’t want more people to die.

However, I feel as if he probably already saw into all the vulnerabilities (because he’s like that). Already figuring they could be exposed (hence danger). He sees the best option would be to quit while they can, but Darlene is refusing.

“What did you guys think was going to happen exactly?” - Darlene referring to Elliot as plural. (We love to see it)

Elliot says it wasn’t him who said everything. (Clarification that a switch did happen in scene 1.)

2. (“This is what she does”)

What does darlene do?

Likely: When she wants something but doesn’t give full honesty about it and doesn’t tell Elliot everything. In other words Darlene keeps secrets, and hides the important bothersome details. She sort of beats around the bush. (She does something like this in scene 1 she needs Elliots company but won’t talk about or say why then avoids confrontation of her mental health)

She’s doing it here not so much for her own comfort but the safety of her brother, because she knows he has vulnerabilities, and can be triggered and emotionally unstable. She doesn’t want to upset him because she needs him to help her and he can’t do that in an unstable state.

C: Chess

1. (Meeting with Ray to play chess)

Chess isn’t really the focus here; Ray picks up on a lot of conflict happening internally, and as an exploit to get Elliot to trust him gives the chess board over.

We see how guilt is burdening Elliot, and he is considering owning up to everything he did. Even mentions how it could stop Darlene from doing “crazy shit”. He doesn’t want to lose her either; or lose any more people for that matter. Losing people was not a part of saving the world he signed up for. There’s also guilt in general because of 5/9 because things are turning out bad.

I’m fairly convinced Mr.Robot is incapable of feeling guilt, or is just hiding it behind the 10 layers of clothes. (Though I guess he’s never met Gideon so why should he care?). Anyway he is consistently focused on seeing everything through no matter the costs.

I just find Mr.Robot coming in and saying he’d swan dive off a building for saying anything pretty funny (don’t ask)

He exaggerates a lot of the time but honestly sometimes he is dead serious about putting the body in pain or in life and death scenarios and so he can be fairly destructive so it’s hard to tell if he is joking, but hey MM (and to my hc host) does hard drugs, so...

2. (A game to end all games between us)

“Winner takes all.” (“Of what?”) “Us.”

(Mr.Robot really do be like “I’mma kill you or myself” Bitch I do not think..)

Robot says Elliot “will be absent from knowing. Losing time forever. A deep black void.” Basically he’s gonna throw him in a pit. And honestly it sounds confident, like he probably feels he can take full control since he’s been around the longest along with the core. (But we know he wouldn’t do it even if he could, the guy has a soft spot. Anyway this is like the IDK what number of times Robot be doing a loop around to get a point across to Elliot. He do be playing the long game and I think secretly he loves a good scheme.) (This is what Mr.Robot does.)

Elliot gets visited by Krista in prison and has told her about the game. (Judging by the fact they meet in her ‘office’ and not in the “Kitchen table” setting we can assume they’re allowed to meet in a private location.) (Edit: disregard this bit I forgot about the reveal that he’d just imagining it on like two separate layers to feel safe enough to speak)

“Krista’s wrong annihilation is always the answer” (He’s just as bad honestly, Krista teach this boy constructive ways). He sees annihilation as self improvement, getting rid of parts of yourself that are ugly or unwanted. We create our identity around desire, and that means destroying parts that are undesirable so all thats left is practically a mask of who we are. (I think the tie into Whiterose through this spill about annihilation is a bit cheap but like I understand the choice) Anyhow Elliot’s pretty much agreeing to a western showdown and has no idea it’s all a rouse so Robot can have his point.

4. The chess match

Ed—d apparently taught Elliot his first ways to code through teaching him computer chess. He talks like he really understands all the logic of chess which makes me think he was letting Ray win before.

Mr.Robot definitely feels a bit uncomfortable with being associated with him just a hint in his voice.

Ultimately they find out neither of them can either win or lose but Mr.Robot knew all along that would happen.

“Fighting for the future we want, it isn’t about playing chess is about what we do out there with them.” (peaking out of his ten layers to show he cares about the outside world, while also expressing how they need to get out of prison.)

“I want to be here Elliot, with you.” (God my heart.)

D: Darlene and Cisco’s hook up

Darlene is very paranoid while walking around, she isn’t sure if F-society really are being offed. However in front of F-society she tries to comfort their suspicions.

Cisco comes to Darlene to warn her about getting killed by DA… but he’s the one who ultimately gets offed. (Poetic cinema)

We learn Darlene’s the type to get upset and defiantly end up having sex in the bathroom of a shady dive bar with her on and off again boyfriend (also Cisco why didn’t you pull out before talking about Dark Army again, like dude lol.)

This is definitely the point they start getting back together.

There a message in gold written on the wall that reads “There's an unequal amount of good and bad in most things. The trick is to figure out the ratio and act accordingly. Stay frosty all. Peace.” - its from this tweet: x

Operation Berenstain is first mentioned. I’m in agreement the name references the popular conspiracy about alternate timelines.

E: Leon lays it down

Leon asks Elliot if he wants to even be here, tells him he “has to dream in order to find out the future he’s fighting for.” (My initial though is I’m not sure if this means here as in prison or here as in alive, sorta feels like the latter)

“If you like it” (The future you envision) “then it’s beautiful, if it’s not then you might as well fade the fuck out right now.” (Hard) (definitely means the latter)

I appreciate Leon so much. “Existence could be beautiful or it could be ugly. But thats on you.” He’s really good for Elliot, really no bs, no loop arounds, he just tells it straight. And you know what? He listens to him because he actually goes to bed dreaming about it.

“What is the future? Leon says one needs to understand that before they’re ready to fight for their existence.”

This dream sequence is so impactful, Leon’s influence. I’m not gonna go in on the shots, however we do get to see a really honest view on how Elliot truly sees the people that have been a part of his life in a variety of subtle ways. We see a lot of what he desires or seeks is happiness for everyone around him.

“Will I reconnect for those I care for. Will I reunite with old friends long gone. See the ones I love find true happiness. Maybe this future includes people I never dreamed of getting close to. Even make amends with those I have unfairly wronged. A future that’s not so lonely. A future filled with friends and family. The world I’ve always wanted. And I’d like very much to fight for it.”

I bold texted that last bit because it really hits, and I think its what becomes the foundations for what Elliot ends up saying to Whiterose at the end. Not to pull a Darlene but this show is clearly trying to say how hard it is to find connection in a world of capitalist alienation.

When Leon sort of digs into Elliot and asks if he really does want to die. Elliot’s dream confirms, no, we find out Elliot actually wants to live in order to improve the future, and he wants connections to be there. It’s what he’s always wanted. (Yet he still does the end all match right after this sequence because he’s convinced he’ll win and get that future on his own. Both these boys are very stubborn.)

F: Do you remember the first command you ever taught me?

Init 1.

What Elliot taught Darlene when her computer kept crashing. She says this in scene one, and its what makes Elliot stop making excuses. The same thing happens here, Elliot has no choice but to help. Thats what the code between them means: Drop everything and help me.

What is it? Init 1 is a run level in linux which indicates a single-user/emergency mode. Streamlining the route to only the root, while disconnecting from the network or multitasker. Used for administrative tasks.

Elliot has to stop the FBI from owning f-society and the only way to do that is by using Ray’s computer. (fuck Ray btw). Just to make sure, he asks Darlene is he is really needed by her or if she wants Robot. I think he needed the reassurance that Darlene still cares (and of course she does).

The second part of the title is .Asec - android files preventing corruption from other programs. So the whole title translates to roughly; Help prevent corruption. And a nod to the way of doing it through hacking into the FBI android phone network. (These titles are genius and have so many layers)

G. Side stuff

1. The FBI have found Fun Society LLC through Dom. I love Dom but idk how I feel about her in these early episodes. She is a fairly good detective though. I think Romero’s character being linked to stealing power from the grid is a nod to the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Ellison touches on social and intellectual issues faced by the African Americans in the early twentieth century. Also I noticed Dom’s supervisor is there and he’s already seen trying to sway the direction away from uncovering he truth.

2. On that note so is Angela. I think we’re intentionally supposed to be annoyed with her because she’s staying at E-Corp even though she knows she’s being manipulated.

“All of my dreams are coming true right now.” - as the bastard guys are being arrested. Not to say this slapped but it did.

We find out Whiterose and Price are in bed together on this thing and this has something to do with Angela and the plant negotiations in the lawsuit. On the phone Whiterose is fussy about moving her operation to the Congo quickly. (lets not try to reason how this plan of hers all works or what the hell it even is). Things are awkward knowing that Price is Angela’s dad, I can’t tell if he’s actually getting close because he wants to know his daughter or if its purely out of getting her around he and Whiterose’s fingers. (both? both.)

In any case I think Esmail sets up the Angela as a counter vulnerability within the main plot, as she’s being open to exploitation by remaining at E-Corp. (refer to the logic set-up)

3. I don’t care for Joanna’s appearance in this episode but she’s running out of money to pay of this guy who has information that could frame Tyrell for murder and is still seeing this guy she definitely hates or likes him but doesn’t love him. Complicated. She needs the severance package to pay this guy off. Tyrell is another vulnerability but he’s undercover.

H. Head canons I thought of while watching

If Elliot hadn’t opened the door when he did Darlene would’ve picked the locks.

Darlene’s go to is always some type of asian food.

The weed is Elliots but the Bowl is Darlenes.

We see coats on the wall hooks in Elliots room, but I think the likes the cold because its grounding so he usually leaves without one on.

When Robot is high (on weed) he just talks like nonstop.

Not a head canon really but I notice Elliot never uses the backrests in chairs. However Robot becomes the chair he is the chair.

Darlene stopped going to dance classes after the hack, I think Angela has also stopped going.

Leons favorite subjects are philosophy and history

#mr robot #eps2.2_init1.asec #as promised I made it look nice to post #I also added a bunch of stuff because I felt like it #This is not comprehensive by any means lol #if this doesn't appear in the tags ...

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sometimesrosy · 5 years

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Hmm If they are making Raven the new Kane I really hope she changes as well, it’s too hard to tell from the sneak peek but what made Kane such a good moral centre is he was well aware of his own failings and mistakes and he never put people to a higher standard than himself, while Raven a mere few episodes ago said she’s never done anything she regrets so for Raven to become that moral centre first she needs to face her own failings and mistakes head on before she can judge others.

I just can’t understand raven right now? She full on berates Abby for saving Kane, but when she finds out Murphy tried to do the same thing but instead of saving someone else he wanted to save HIMSELF and was ready to KILL CLARKE. She just gives him a gentle lecture/sympathy. I am stunned. I don’t think she’s earned or deserves to be the “moral center” Kane did his time. He redeemed himself. Raven hasn’t. Her self righteousness&hypocrisy is nauseating and I just don’t know what’s going on w her

Upset raven asker here; to be fair, I know we haven’t seen the episode yet. I guess I’m just preparing myself for being upset? Idk. Sometimes the show does disappoint and annoy me. I do still love it and support it, and I think it’s okay to be critical of stuff even things you care for. I will reserve further judgements until seeing the episode but, Ravens entire story since they went to space has been incredibly frustrating for me. Idk.

There’s a problem with your concept of morality on the show that I think may be making it hard for you to understand Raven and her role here. First of all, Kane is not some all knowing perfect paragon of morality. He’s got a major problem. He’s SO focused on peace and working with the enemy to get peace, that he basically lays down and rolls over for the enemy to screw his people over. He CAPITULATES. Pike wasn’t wrong about Lxa marking him like cattle. Lxa had skycrew penned into their settlement and wouldn’t let them hunt, trade, communicate or use the resources they’d won from the battle she betrayed them over.

There IS NO PERFECT GOOD GUY. Abby is wrong, too. Kane was not the last good man. She was so focused on getting him back, that she didn’t notice her daughter being the good guy, like Kane, wanting to do anything to make a peaceful place for her people, and having them steal her very body.

There have been many moral centers on this show…beginning with Abby herself. Even though she floated her husband to get there and sent 100 kids down to a poison earth on the off chance that her daughter would survive rather than be floated.

I think you’ve also forgotten that to GET to that moral center, Kane actually had to be the one to cause the culling. It was KANE’S culling. Not Bellamy’s. And yet, before he realized that the earth was survivable and he’d killed 300 people for no reason, he was entirely ruthless with survival as his only morality. The culling then precipitated DIana Sydney’s rebellion and the death and destruction of half the remaining Ark, along with his own mother. His world fell apart, because of him, before he was able to think morally and work on his redemption.

Raven’s journey is different. First of all. She never caused all that destruction because of her hubris. She doesn’t need a redemption. She’s been working with her team all along. She does not need to be redeemed. She was just a bitch. You can be a bitch without destroying people or being evil. Raven only needs forgiveness. And we’ve got a canonical differentiation between redemption and forgiveness.

We’ve also seen her lose her world multiple times already, the people she loved, her body, her brain, the earth. We’ve seen her grieve and lash out and be wrong. We’ve seen her confront the idea of right and wrong and challenge people on their actions. She doesn’t always do it well. She’s pragmatic, and that pragmatism doesn’t always make morality comfortable. She has made choices that were selfish and hurt people, and that are on the same spectrum as what she accuses Clarke and Abby of. But she always managed to keep herself separate from the morality of that because she was doing it to save someone she loved.

Seeing it taken to the extreme with Abby, and having Kane, as that loved one, sayng no… well we haven’t seen her connect the dots to herself yet, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t or won’t.

I don’t really understand how you’re still deciding that Raven doesn’t “deserve” to be moral. What does one do to DESERVE to have a sense of morality? They have to work at it? Raven has actually been working at it since season 4 and Murphy stole the drugs to try to save the girl she denied drugs to. Not good enough? Because she’s not pure? Because she hasn’t been critical of herself yet?

I would think that fandom, of ALL cultures, would be sympathetic to the characters who can’t quite see their own hypocrisy, considering how hypocritical fandom can be itself. It is HARD to look at your own actions and ask yourself if you are doing the right thing, if you are contributing to the bad in the world.

Raven is starting to do this.

THAT is how you become moral. You ask questions. Is this right? Have I done wrong? What can I do to make this right? How have I contributed to this? How should I act in the future? How can I make the world better? But you know, it doesn’t happen all at once. It is a JOURNEY, both in a good story and irl.

You say you don’t understand Raven. That is clear. There’s something about this storyline that you don’t understand. You can continue to be upset about it, or you can work to understand it. If it doesn’t make sense, you should actually go back and check with your interpretations to see if they are WRONG… because your understanding of Raven no longer matches the story.

If it doesn’t match the story, then that means that was not where the story was going and you got off track somewhere. Raven’s behavior is not out of nowhere. She was like that with Echo last season when Echo wanted to kill Shaw and she finally relented and said yes… even if they didn’t have to kill him after all. And she had no problem with the morality of Clarke curbstomping McCreary. She had no part in Bellamy and Madi sparing all of the eligius prisoners who were the ones who tortured her and everyone. But she didn’t blame Bellamy for that.

Raven’s forgiveness is not impossible. She forgives. Her morality bends. Yes she can be harsh in her expectations. She lit into Abby, but then she came back and reasoned through it and not only bent on the morality, but helped her.

I think you need to go back and think about Raven’s moral journey and how it led us here. Yes, she’s mad at Clarke. We’re working around her anger at Clarke, it seems, coming at it from other directions. It was VERY clear in the first half of season 6, until she separated and went with Abby. Raven was also still recovering from Clarke’s betrayal and her own torture before being hit AGAIN with Shaw’s death, which, because of her anger at Clarke, she blamed on Clarke, even though it wasn’t her fault at all. Her feelings towards Clarke aren’t exactly rational. Feelings are like that sometimes.

To be honest, I think your disappointment and upset is self indulgent. So is sending it to me. I know it’s your feelings, and you feelings are valid, they’re yours. But I didn’t ask for it. In fact I’ve asked people to NOT send me their negativity, which this is. I took it as time to break the thoughts and narrative and character arcs down and focus on your difficulty understanding, rather than your upset.

But you could just as easily have recognized that your upset is based on concepts of Raven that may not actually be who Raven is in the story, and your confusion with the story could be because you missed something in the narrative, NOT that there’s some failing in the story or character.

It’s possible that you just don’t like the story. That it’s not your thing. And that’s fair enough. It’s a dark, complex, violent story. Not for everyone.

But you know it’s for me. I keep saying it’s for me. That I like it. I keep working to understand it so I can make sense of the story when it doesn’t follow my spec and head canons. And what I do is go back, reevaluate my theories and check to see where the show DIDN’T do what I thought they’d do, see what they DID do, and then see how that effects my original theories. Then I adjust my theories to make sense of the show. HOW DOES IT FIT? Raven’s character journey fits. She’s not your cinnamon roll anymore. I suggest that she never was, and it was your own stanning that turned her into one. Raven has literally always been a bitch, and it’s one of the things I love about her, even if the bitchiness took over and went too far. And yet still. Bitchiness does not require a redemption. And Raven’s morality has been developing for years. So when you say she hasn’t earned her morality, I think your analysis is off. When you say Kane redeemed herself but Raven didn’t, I have to wonder if you understand what a redemption is. When you say it’s okay to be critical of stuff, I agree, but I do not equate being critical with criticizing. To me, being critical is to help you understand, not just complain about what you don’t like.

When I analyze this show I am ALWAYS asking HOW DOES IT FIT? Even when I don’t like where it has gone.

And EVERY time I’ve done that, put aside my headcanons and theories and taken it back to the canon and what is on screen… what is on screen ends up making sense. Because the story is solid and the characters are each on their OWN journey that feeds into the main story. Sure there are things I don’t like and there are moments that don’t work as well for me, and ways the story slips and slides a bit. This is true of all stories. But in general, I’ve trusted The 100 to tell a good story, even if it’s not the story I would tell, and The 100 has actually never let me down. Even if I have to let go of what I would have liked to see. It stands up on its own, with its own story. And sometimes i have to do the work to see what that story is.

sorry to scold. it’s actually a lot of work to do analysis. my brain might naturally think like this, which makes it easier for me, (at least i get something out of my atypical learning disabled brain) but it takes a lot of energy and time to break things down and understand things. you didn’t want to do the work. you wanted me to do it. even though i’m trying to get out of the negativity and not debate. i’ve gotten to the point where i don’t answer asks i just disagree with because i don’t want to debate the inevitable “no it’s nots.” But you seem reasonable and mostly logical and calm and cool about your upset, so I went in.

#the 100 #raven reyes #moral center #redemption #forgiveness #what do you do when your interpretation no longer fits the story? you go back and fix your interpretation because you went off track #figure out where you went off track

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