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#i will be just violently ignoring all this bc it literally does not make canonical sense
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an incredibly personal rating of bmc ship names (ship names only, regardless of my feelings toward the ship itself)
boyf riends - 6/10. cute but so hard to tag. i think i saw backpack boyfriends being used back in the day that's a cute alternative
stagedorks - 9/10. a little basic but a classic it's cute
spicy bis - -5/10. this one is awful. makes zero sense, sounds atrocious, jeremy isn't even canonically bi. the other alternatives were even worse (i don't even wanna say it) but why use any of them when richjer exists
deere - 9/10. i fucking love it it's just their last names smashed together but it's fucking deere (dillinjer is a 4/10 because pronunciation-wise it's too similar to dillinger)
puppy love - 5/10. cute but straying a little into the tired 'jeremy is a furry' joke imo
expensive headphones - 3/10. idk it's just lazy and it's a common enough phrase for me to get violent whiplash when i encounter it in the wild
pins and patches - 5/10. super super cute but soooo niche like how is one supposed to figure this out???
upstage - 10/10. makes complete sense, simple and cute. love it.
playride - 10/10. basically same as above
dramatical theatre - 3/10. it took me so long to get this especially since none of chloe's other ship names involve the word 'drama' (to my knowledge at least??)
cinnabun - 0/10. none of y'all really gave a shit about jenna or christine and it shows
richjake - 10/10. look idc if it's 'boring' it's hilarious that these two out of all the characters got the most basic-ass shipname so ic of them (choosing to ignore arson bros which is a solid 0/10!)
arsonberry - -10/10. including all its other variants like fucking. hot dog. the only acceptable one is richbrooke. what's wrong with richbrooke anyway why are we not using that??
pupgrade - 2/10. just my personal opinion. like c'mon where's the effort
royal pains - 10/10. absolutely immaculate, captures their vibes perfectly. yes they are royal pains indeed.
pinkberry - 6/10. really cute and simple, fits the vibes but it's also the name of an already existing brand it's so hard to search for
iced tea - 7/10. there is a slight problem with searching but it's so clever and cute it makes up for it
gossip gals - 2/10. i always thought this would be more fitting for the smartphone hour girls' polyship??
boardwalk boys - 4/10. makes no sense but eh sounds cool lol
lesbihonest - -10/10. where do i even begin what does lesbihonest even have to do with the bmc girls. none of them are canonically lesbian. god i hate it so much this fandom really didn't care about the girls did they. if you named the boys' polyship boardwalk boys bc new jersey is famous for boardwalks or whatever then obviously the girls' polyship should be garden girls. bc y'know. nj the garden state?? it's literally right there oh my god i'm so salty about this one and i don't even ship it
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queen--kenobi · 20 days
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Can you explain more about this Tymon and Elayna dynamic? I'm curious how this all gets going. Like I've picked up on bits and pieces and Elayna's deep hatred of the Lannisters, SO I WOULD LIKE TO LEARN MORE
Ehehehehe yeeesssss time to reintroduce my terrible awful evil son
So. Tymon is Jason and Tyland's younger brother. He's a year older than Elayna. Tymon is... well. The best way I can describe Tymon is That Annoying Rich White Guy? Like in a modern AU he's the lacrosse player who got into an Ivy league because his family is a legacy family. He is actually smart and charming on the surface but underneath all that, he's absolutely awful. The type of guy who's never heard no in his life and has a meltdown because of it
Elayna gets warded to the Lannisters when she's about 8 or 9. Alon has his first major sickness so Elayna’s older brother sends her to the Lannisters. Since Tymon is about the same age as her, they do gravitate towards each other. When they hit 12/13, Tymon realizes he's attracted to Elayna. And being an entitled 13 year old decides yeah, he's going to marry Elayna
It gets complicated because they're still basically kids. Elayna doesn't necessarily know what she really wants or likes. Also she thinks she knows him, and this is the first guy who's shown interest in her in a not overtly creepy way. So she's receptive at first and she ignores some red flags that crop up
I haven't exactly figured out what the specific thing that makes her go "wait. Hold up" is yet? At least, not for canon. Based on what I'm thinking for other AUs, like him branding someone in the Western AU bc lbr that's some shit the Lannisters would do, it has to be Bad. I have some ideas floating around. But yeah. Tymon does something that is a very "oh fuck he's dangerous, and he will hurt me" thing. Elayna had been having doubts anyway, but this just freaks her out. She starts spending less time with him and in general trying to avoid him
Elayna also notices he doesn't care about her in a love way but a possession way? There's some discussion of her marrying a Tarbeck, and Tymon flips the fuck out over it. It's very much in an abusive partner type of way even though he and Elayna were never technically together
Elayna tries avoiding him but a) Tymon has made it clear he's the only one allowed to marry Elayna and will get violent over it and b) Elayna is literally living with his family so there's no one she can turn to. Since Elayna is saying no, Tymon bounces between love bombing Elayna and trying to make Elayna’s live a living hell
Mind you. She's 12? 13? When this starts. And she endures 3-4 years of psychological abuse. And unfortunately she does have to learn to be like the Lannisters to survive during this time period. The only person on her side seems to be her dad. Seban, her older brother, is even kinda like "what's the big deal? It'd be a great opportunity" blah blah blah
Eventually Alon gets Elayna under the guise of taking her back to Castamere, probably so as "not to tempt Tymon" or w/e. But as soon as they're on the road Alon tells Elayna he's set everything up so Elayna can live in KL as either Helaena or Jaenna's lady-in-waiting. Obviously once Tymon finds out he's on his way to KL but like. Tripling down on everything because how dare she run away
(Bonus fun fact: in the modern AU they go to high school together, they have this weird relationship of like... they're not actually dating but also they kind of are? They keep on saying no they're just friends but they make out at parties. But then the next day in class they'll be at each other's throats for who has the best grade and being super competitive in a nasty way. They end up deciding to go to prom together but... They end up sleeping together and being each other's firsts. Which then less than a week later Tymon tells Elayna no he's not taking her to prom, someone like him doesn't take girls like her to prom, and anyway he's had a girlfriend this whole time. And he does this several days before the SAT/ACT. Which Elayna realizes later he timed it in an attempt to make her so upset she'd completely bomb the test
Bonus bonus: unfortunately. Tymon is Hot.
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This is his FC, Brandon Sklenar. Imagine him but blond)
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missfingers · 1 year
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ok i don't know much about yakuza but i gotta know for the choose violence ask game: 3, 8, 11, 16, 22, 24? (you can also do these about another fandom instead if you want, i just chose yakuza bc those are ur little guys)
HI AUSTIIINNN. forgive me this will get long
3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr
ohh my god theres been so many. but okay i will specifically pull up an example from the server i run. no screenshots cause the conversation was way too long but essentially yakuza has a massive misogyny problem with its female characters (of which there are. barely any). the conversation was specifically about the hostess mechanic, which is this minigame that appears in almost every game where you go to a hostess club and have a date there (a hostess club if ur unaware is basically softcore sex work its paying a woman to talk to you at a club). ofc nothing wrong with hostessing but people were specifically talking about how it was Kind Of Creepy that all the protags are like.... 40+ and all the hostesses / other female love interests are a lot younger.
and then this guy came in saying something along the lines of... if you criticise the way hostesses are objectified in yakuza then actually you hate women and sex workers and youre saying its not a real career .....? NO ONE WAS SAYING THAT. it was really one of those situations where the person was acting like these fictional female characters have their own agency to do sex work and flirt with older men ignoring completely the Old Men Writing The Series. they are not real people making their own decisions these are women written by men. it was bizarre. this guy also eventually said that if you criticise panty shots in anime youre racist or something because "japanese culture is like that" okay.
already answered 8 here! <3
just realised i completely got switched up on numbers and i already answered 11 and thought it was 10, so my answer for 11 is here but i will also answer 10 for @kasugas since i fucking. didnt.
10. worst part of fanon
majima woobification. and the worst part is its in the games now too like they straight up woobified him in kiwami and i cant STAND IITTTT. hes literally a yakuza boss he violently beats up his men he canonically married an 18 year old and hit her when she aborted their fetus hes not a good guy and i love when canon shows that. but then fanon is just like solely fucking majima everywhere characterisation of ooo hes just a silly little faggot who loves kiryu and kiryu hates him <333 (even though kiryu. does not. and finds his antics hilarious in every other game. and treats him as his closest friend.) and also the uncle majima stuff....... i like thinking about his relationship with haruka as much as the next guy but when people just. slap them together with no consideration to the fact he KIDNAPPED HER. AT 10 YEARS OLD. like dude shes going to be traumatised you cant just Ignore that for the sake of giving her two dads?
16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)
oh i fucking know. i KNOW why they like it and the answer is theyre uncreative yaoi loving freaks but so much nishitani content is just him acting like some borderline rapey daddydom and its soooooo Eugh. they make majima into this uwu baby who doesnt want any of his advances until the relationship is literally liek something out of a fucking yaoi where he "really wants it deep down but hes going to act like he doesnt so its going to feel so uncomfortable and hes going to get borderline assaulted". the entire appeal of nishimaji to me is that nishitani is literally so down horrifically bad for majima and majima actually likes him back even if he thinks hes weird as shit. theyre both insane for each other.
22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores
ok im going to sound deranged here but his relationship with mirei. thats the 18 year old i mentioned. a lot of people choose to ignore he did that and like.... i get it its very uncomfortable to accept your favourite dude would prey on a kid like that but like. i feel like it does a disservice to his character to ignore that? it shows how he perpetuates the cycle of abuse and its so incredibly interesting to me but so many people just say "he wouldnt do that!!!!" when like.... yes he would. im sorry but he would.
24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse
fuckig hell idk theres so much horrible yakuza discourse. ig its relevant rn but like whenever anyone genuinely critiques how fandom acts (misogyny, racism, woobifying a genuinely morally reprehensible character, ableism, just anything) and then the people who do this shit get all up in arms about it and act like its pointless infighting when its... genuine shit that makes a community unsafe
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thequiver · 3 years
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I've never read batman but bc it's. Batman it's so unavoidable that inevitably I get some info and context from everyone else being a fan. So there's some things I know and meta I've read bc bman fans create it, but Bruce being abusive is not something I've seen discussed whatsoever. Like I'd love YOU to discuss it more bc I had no idea abt it but it's weird how despite the piles of meta I've read it rarely if ever comes up. Not even to bitch about it
Okay so a few things to preface this. 1. The comics never write the narrative in a way that shows that Bruce's actions are wrong or bad. 2. I am saying this as someone who has received 3 years of training in identifying abuse in adult interpersonal relationships, and as an educator who has received training in the identification of child abuse. I am also an abuse survivor myself but when analyzing Bruce I work very hard to focus only on the characteristics of abuse that I've been trained to identify. Again these are things that I use for my actual real life job, I do know what I'm talking about.
3. The writers who write Bruce as being abusive almost certainly are not thinking "ah yes this abuse"- that does NOT mean that the story and the interpersonal relationships they write aren't rife with it anyway.
4. This is about the COMICS, idgaf about Batman: the Animated Series, if anyone tries to use it to refute what I'm saying, I am going to laugh at you and I will not be sorry.
Okay, so, all that being said here we go.
I'm going to start with the way he treats his children as this is what most people who reference Bruce being abusive will be talking about. And the simple truth of the matter, is that he is. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that he recruits questionably young sidekicks, like having child sidekicks is really bad and is child endangerment but this is comic books so I'm ignoring that. Some examples of this behavior just off the top of my head include: physically assaulting Dick and banning him from the manor because he tried to offer emotional support after Jason's death, he consistently argues that Cass doesn't need a normal life because she's a soldier, FORCING DICK TO FAKE HIS DEATH AND JOIN SPYRAL BY BEATING HIM TO A PULP UNTIL HE AGREES, telling Robin!Jason that he's "invested a lot of time into [him]" instead of actually acknowledging the parent-child relationship, insulted Stephanie and kicked her out of the "family", told Damian that it was Damian's fault that Alfred died, insulting all of his children to their faces, he physically assaults all of them, he's willing to forgo everything to benefit the mission at the expense of his family, he took Jason back to where he died just to use him. And there's so much more, again that was just off the top of my head, that's just a handful of instances from 80 years of canon. For at least the past 20 years or so you've had characters actively criticizing Bruce's actions in regards to his children, and nothing ever comes of it because the narrative DC pushes just supports Bruce's authoritarian rule of fear over Gotham- that's literally his whole thing, fear and ruling with an iron fist. Furthermore, there are several Bruce stans on this webbed site that will say "Bruce is only abusive if you look at it from the kids' perspective and not his" and frankly that says a LOT. I'm not saying that Bruce doesn't love his kids- but loving your kids don't exclude you from the possibility of being abusive to them. It also doesn't mean that there aren't good moments too, but abuse is a pattern of behavior, it isn't isolated instances of controlling, manipulative, physically violent behavior, it's a pattern of those behaviors, and it can't be argued that in canon Bruce doesn't exhibit a pattern.
But something that isn't as talked about in regard to Bruce's abusive personality is his treatment of other adults, and especially those that he'd consider friends. Like make as many jokes about it as you want, but making contingency plans to kill your friends/coworkers by obsessively studying their weaknesses? Is a bad thing. When Dinah is in charge of the league he's incredibly dismissive of her and her leadership. He considers the others beneath him. I've mentioned this before, but he knocked out someone he considered a friend and would have cut them open if he knew he wouldn't kill them in the process and then forced that person to watch a video of him killing his best friend is not the kind of behavior one partakes in when they believe that others have a right to bodily autonomy (especially when at this point in the narrative there was absolutely nothing to suggest that Ollie was being followed by demons). He constantly belittles the others, and he feels threatened by the fact that Hal is "the man without fear" and that threatens him because as has been said in the comics, "What is Batman to a man without fear? Just a man." Bruce relies on fear, he wants the league to be afraid of him because people who are afraid are easier to control. Going back to how he prioritizes the mission over his own family, he expects other League Members to do the same.
There's so many examples of this that frankly it would take me WEEKS to list them all. But yeah, he's a piece of shit. I can pull some panels for this later, I'm currently on my planning period at work and that's about to end, so I have to go collect my class, but I hope this helps!
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hartigays · 3 years
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rafebarry prompt: not canon compliant but rafe and barry are trying to get away from ward but barry gets hurt so rafe begs sarah + pouges (not on good terms w each other) to help them escape bc he loves barry<33
just a little something i thought about! totally up to you on how this all goes down if you decide to write it, anything you write is amazing !!
this was a stupid fucking idea. stupid, stupid, stupid. rafe knew from the beginning, he should’ve never agreed to this.
there aren’t many things that he and barry don’t agree on, surprisingly. even if they start off disagreeing about something, they generally always end up on the same page. but this plan had been something they’d gone back and forth on, never settling on a definitive decision.
in the end, barry had simply manhandled rafe over to the place he’d formerly called home - before ward booted his ass out - and waltzed them through the front door like they owned the place.
all to steal from ward, to get more money for coke and groceries (re: booze and hot pockets) and whatever other fleeting indulgences they could think of.
rafe had disagreed with this plan throughout its development and execution, not wanting to cross the one and only person in the entire world who scares him: ward cameron. and he’d been right to, because now barry is gasping for air, holding his side while blood spills from between his fingers.
they’re racing through the woods, trying to get as far away from ward’s long-range hunting rifle as they can.
rafe doesn’t know if ward knew he was barry’s companion in this little venture. he’d insisted they wear bandanas over their faces, but rafe is pretty sure ward would know his son in a heartbeat regardless.
he doesn’t even want to think about it. about the fact that ward shot barry, or that he probably would’ve shot rafe too if rafe hadn’t had the presence of mind to shove both barry and himself out of the nearest window, plunging into the bushes below before ward could get off another shot.
another shot on the person he more than likely knew to be his son.
ward had continued taking shots as rafe dragged barry across the yard and into the treeline, disappearing from view.
now, they’re back at the main road, barry collapsing against a tree as he clenches his hand around the wound in his side.
“let me see,” rafe demands, kneeling down and peeling up barry’s shirt despite barry shaking his head.
“ain’t got time, country club,” barry wheezes, trying to push rafe back so he’ll stand up and keep moving.
rafe doesn’t budge, just swipes at the blood with his shirt sleeve to get a better look at the wound. the bullet just grazed him, but it’s enough to warrant stitches at the very least.
“you’re not going to make it to the emergency room like this,” rafe comments absentmindedly, pulling out his phone a firing off a text to topper letting him know he’s going to need to borrow his car.
barry manages to push rafe back an inch this time, shaking his head furiously. “ain’t no way i’m goin’ to no damn hospital. i ain’t got insurance and your daddy done cut you off months ago. how you gonna pay for my little siesta in the ER with them empty pockets?”
and okay, he has a point. rafe will admit that. not to mention, ward has people all over the OBX, and if he sends out word about looking for his son, they’ll surely be caught if they’re trapped in the emergency room.
there’s only one other place rafe can think to go. one place where ward won’t know to look, one place where barry can get some medical help without having to shell out a fortune.
rafe may have to grovel a bit (or a lot), but he’ll do it. damn it, he’ll fucking do it because barry is going to bleed out if he doesn’t and that would really fucking suck because rafe was just starting to sort of like him.
he must’ve said that last part out loud, because barry manages to glare at him and say, “quit that shit. we been dating for a year, dickhead.”
then barry sort of slumps to the side, and rafe has to all but carry him to topper’s place.
rafe has just gotten the keys topper keeps in the cupholder into the ignition when he looks at his phone, seeing a text from top.
can’t let u borrow the car tonight, have a thing in the morning. srry bud.
rafe glances over at barry, who’s blacked out in the passenger’s seat, fresh blood still seeping out of his shirt.
“sorry about this, top,” rafe says to himself, turning the key and hearing the engine roar to life. “i’ll get you back later.”
he peels out of the driveway, speeding down the familiar streets until they become more and more unfamiliar, figure eight bleeding into the cut.
he zooms past more and more unfamiliar houses, searching for the only one he knows, starting to feel hopeless, starting to really worry that barry might actually die in the passenger’s seat of his car.
or topper’s car, rather. it’d be super annoying to have to apologize for that on top of having to apologize for stealing it in the first place, to be honest.
then suddenly, rafe is idling outside a house that is both familiar and unfamiliar. the few times he’s been here before, he’d been fucked up beyond belief and fueled by violent anger. it seems almost foreign to him now, while he’s sober as a judge (only due to his current circumstances, mind you) and fueled by nothing but pure adrenaline.
rafe practically drags barry to the house. there are all sorts of lights on, both inside and out, and rafe can hear the sounds of music and laughter drifting out from an open window nearby.
he only hesitates for a moment before circling around the house and banging on the door.
john b answers the door with a smile, a small wad of cash in his hand, clearly expecting some sort of food delivery. his smile fades instantly when he realizes it’s not his pizza or what the fuck ever, and is in fact rafe cameron and a half-dead barry.
“no,” is all john b says before trying to shut the door. rafe kicks his leg out, foot jamming between the door and the frame, preventing john b from closing it.
“fuck off, rafe,” john b grunts as he tries to shut the door. rafe can hear concerned voices from inside the house. “you’re not dragging us into whatever shit this is! literally fuck. off.”
“sarah!” rafe shouts, ignoring john b’s protests. “sarah!”
footsteps, and then sarah is pushing john b out of the way gently, looking at rafe in confusion, then at barry in horror.
“rafe? oh my god, what happened?”
sarah ushers them into the house, and rafe is literally dragging barry at this point. still, no one helps him get barry onto the couch. he manages regardless, but he’s panting when it’s all said and done, sliding down onto the floor with a grunt.
“i need you to help him,” rafe says, and he’s looking at pope, who’s seated in the corner beside jj, a guitar that he’s no longer strumming still sitting in his lap.
but john b is the one to answer, shaking his head. “no. besides, we can’t even help him. we don’t know how to do shit like that.”
“he does,” rafe says, still looking at pope, who’s now looking at barry thoughtfully.
“what?” kie laughs, looking bewildered. “pope may be smart, yeah, but he doesn’t have a medical degree. this guy needs a doctor.”
“i know how,” pope sighs, and rafe suppresses a smug smile. “i volunteered at the hospital last summer, remember?”
“and you knew this how?” john b asks rafe, accusatory.
“he was on my rounds once,” pope says calmly, leveling rafe with an unreadable look. “alcohol poisoning and a drug overdose all in one night.”
rafe fights the urge to look away, choosing instead to shrug nonchalantly.
“just another night in the cut, right?” rafe asks, arching one brow. “look, we can dredge up my poor life choices later, if it’ll make you all feel better and get your fucking panties out of a wad. but right now he needs help, so are you going to give him that or are you going to let him bleed out on your ugly ass couch?”
“i say let him bleed out,” john b snaps, clearly irked by rafe’s demands and insults.
rafe wants to knock the guy’s teeth down his throat, but he just breathes steadily through his nose. just like barry has been teaching him. “we can’t go to a hospital. no insurance, and ward’s hunting us down as we speak. so do i want to fucking be here? no. but i have to, so name your fucking price and we’ll pay it.”
“besides,” rafe continues, turning his eyes to sarah, challenging her, “you’re not just going to let someone die, are you?”
sarah narrows her eyes, hands perched on her hips. “no, that’s more your style, isn’t it?” then, she looks at pope. “come on, help him. he isn’t dying on john b’s couch. that’s way too creepy for me to deal with right now.”
pope nods and disappears from the room as sarah and john b bicker quietly. kie and jj glare daggers at rafe, while also eyeing barry, lying on the couch looking far more dead than alive.
when pope reappears, he has a first aid kit in one hand and a sewing kit in the other. he shoos rafe out of the way. rafe just scoots a little further to the left to give pope room, but stays close to barry.
“rafe, we need to talk,” sarah says after a moment. “outside?”
rafe shakes his head. “not until i know he’s okay.”
the room falls silent, and rafe looks around, glaring. “what, it’s illegal to care about people now? fuck off.”
“so do you want us to like… give you a room, or something? maybe some champagne and rose petals? we could get some ambient beats going, really set the mood, you know- ”
kie throws a pillow at jj, effectively shutting him up. “gross, jj. don’t put that image into my head.”
“look, whatever,” sarah interrupts, rolling her eyes. “but once he’s patched up, we’re having a conversation.”
rafe puts his hands up in mock surrender. “your house, your rules.”
he’s only trying to irritate john b, and it works. rafe smiles to himself when john b starts grumbling about it being his house actually, storming off to his room, undoubtedly to pout. sarah follows, and kie and jj trail after them a moment later. jj is the only one to look back, throwing a concerned look in pope’s direction before inevitably disappearing into john b’s bedroom.
rafe looks back at barry, all smugness disappearing from his expression when he sees just how bad the wound really is now that pope has cleaned it up a bit.
he really doesn’t care if he has to talk to sarah later - all he knows is that if barry dies, he’s sure as hell not going to be outside listening to sarah bitch at him when it happens.
rafe takes one of barry’s hands, ignoring the way pope’s eyes flicker down to the movement before returning to his work, remaining silent.
“you love him,” pope says suddenly, still not looking at rafe. he’s began sewing up the wound, his hands surprisingly steady.
“what’s it to you?” rafe asks defensively, but he curls his fingers tighter around barry’s, a little possessively.
pope just shrugs, like he doesn’t really care one way or another. “just an observation.”
he ties off the thread and cleans up the remaining dried blood from the wound with a rubbing alcohol-soaked cotton ball before applying a bandage and tugging barry’s shirt back down. it’s a lost cause, the shirt, but rafe appreciates the gesture anyway.
“it’s good to know you care about someone other than yourself,” pope says, finally turning towards rafe and giving him a hard look. “maybe there’s hope for assholes like you after all.”
rafe opens his mouth to say something bitchy back, but pope just claps him on the shoulder, stands and cracks his back, then leaves the room.
it’s just rafe and a passed out barry now. at least this way he can openly worry about his boyfriend, gnawing on his lip as he thinks about what it’ll be like if barry doesn’t make it.
rafe has been living with barry for some time now, ever since ward kicked him out. it’d started with sarah - she’d ran away and no one had known where. rafe ended up finding out through topper, but never seemed to get around to telling ward. don’t ask him why - he really doesn’t fucking know.
after sarah’s disappearance, ward’s temper reached its peak and rafe was kicked out mere weeks after his sister had gone missing. he stayed with topper for a while at first, often making trips to the cut to harass the dirty pogues who’d whisked his sister away from their supposedly happy family and her happy relationship with one of rafe’s closest friends.
when topper’s mother got sick of rafe loitering around her house, the only place left to go was barry’s. it’d helped that they’d already been screwing around for a while, initially so rafe could get discounts on coke, then turning into a full blown something over time.
their relationship has a definition now. barry had manhandled rafe into bed one evening and declared them to be officially official. meaning a relationship, meaning a bunch of figuring shit out as he goes because rafe sure as shit has never done any of this before.
he’s also pretty sure other relationships don’t involve hard drugs and robberies and shootings, so he thinks he’s got a few more obstacles to overcome than most when traveling the rocky road of a first relationship.
“rafe?” sarah calls, suddenly re-entering the room. “think we can talk now?”
rafe looks at her for a long moment. she looks different - happier, maybe? rafe wonders if he looks the same. maybe not right at this moment, with barry’s limp, clammy hand resting between his own, waiting on bated breath for barry’s eyes to blink open.
the need to hear barry’s slow drawl of coUnTrY cLUuUb is almost too much to bear, so rafe cuts his line of thought off, nods at sarah in answer to her question, and follows her outside.
they don’t talk for a long while, just staring out across the yard in silence. it’s not uncomfortable, per se, but rafe still wishes she’d say what she wants to say so he can get back inside. back to barry.
“this is a one time deal, you know,” sarah finally tells him.
when he looks at her from the corner of his eye, she’s staring directly at him, her expression serious. “i know,” is all he can come up with.
“i expect a thank you, just so you know.”
“i’m not thanking you,” rafe says immediately.
sarah actually smiles, just a little bit, then parrots back, “i know.”
“what did you want to talk to me about?” rafe asks eventually, pulling a cigarette from the pack he keeps in his pocket and lighting up.
sarah doesn’t answer for a moment, then shrugs, looking down at her hands. “i hate you, for the way you’ve treated me. and my friends. but sometimes i miss you. i miss my brother. what happened to you?”
it’s almost like she’s just thinking aloud, but rafe knows it’s a genuine question. one he doesn’t have an answer to. because he doesn’t really know where he went wrong - just that he could never seem to get anything right. not as a kid, not as a teenager, and not now as an adult.
“i don’t know,” rafe answers honestly, for the first time in a long time. he doesn’t know what else to say, so he tells her, simply, “but thank you for helping anyway.”
yeah, yeah. he wasn’t going to thank her, blah blah blah. whatever, shit happens.
the back door swings open, and rafe and sarah turn to watch barry stumble out of the house, still clutching his side but finally looking like a living, breathing person instead of a corpse.
“ain’t i tell you them things gonna rot your lungs?” is the first thing he says, plucking the cigarette from rafe’s lips and taking a drag.
rafe rolls his eyes, but lets barry rope him into a hug, careful not to bump into his wound.
“ugh, gross,” sarah huffs, making fake gagging noises before going back inside. rafe doesn’t miss the small smile that’s playing on her lips, though, and he’s suddenly filled with warmth.
it’s disgusting, and he’s surprised that he’s missed it. and that maybe, deep down, he’s missed his sister, too.
she said this is a one time deal, but maybe there’s a possibility of reconciliation. it’s a thought to revisit at a later date, rafe decides, wanting to focus on this moment right here, where barry is blessedly alive and safe.
so rafe just leans down a bit and buries his face in barry’s neck, taking a deep breath, feeling barry inhale and exhale around his cigarette as they stand in each other’s arms, companionable silence falling around them.
“you done saved my life, country club,” barry says, the first to break the silence.
rafe smiles against barry’s neck at the nickname, pressing a kiss to barry’s pulse point before pulling back a bit to look at him.
“yeah, you’re the only one who knows how to empty the septic tank,” rafe replies, deadpan.
barry throws his head back and laughs, one hand coming up to cradle the back of rafe’s head, pulling him down gently so he can press a kiss to his forehead.
“damn good thing you saved my ass, then.”
“sure is.”
when barry kisses rafe, he tastes like tobacco and blood, sour and metallic on his tongue. rafe should think it’s gross, but he just kisses barry harder, trying to scrub all the thoughts he’d had about barry dying from his memory.
it helps to have barry here, real and solid in rafe’s arms, lips soft against his own.
“can we get outta this shithole and back to our shithole?” barry asks when they separate, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “‘m pretty sure them shits would object to us christening their couch.”
rafe, for a moment, is tempted to try just to see what kind of reaction he’d get. but instead of following the urge, he lets barry guide him back to topper’s stolen car.
“who’s ride is this?” barry asks when they’re both buckled in, backing away from the routledge property.
“topper’s,” rafe explains, smirking to himself. “i, uh. borrowed it for the time being.”
“for the time being?” barry questions, and when rafe looks at him, barry is looking right back, brows raised and amusement written all over his face.
“mhm,” rafe confirms, matter-of-factly.
barry just glances around the car, a slow smirk spreading across his lips. “sweet ride. think ol’ topper’d object to a little christening, too?”
rafe starts the car, letting his own smirk grow. “as a matter of fact, i think he would.”
barry blinks at him, then stares at his nails casually.
“so where we gonna park her?”
rafe just smiles, peeling away from the routledge house, cruising into the night.
“i know just the place.”
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vermillioncrown · 3 years
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Oops I meant to submit this as a Ask instead, so ANYWAY:
Two ideas, and pls forgive me if it goes into another plane of possibility:
1. How about ZYX + the Prince? Only because it hints that the guy ZYX made fun of in the royal library for reading romance novels is actually the Prince. Wouldn’t it be hilarious for ZYX to suddenly appear as Queen in front of Gucci gang and WWX/LMJ going “lol you guys are fucked”, and turning the MDZS world upside down with her queenly rule? Also the Prince might be soft hearted, and ZYX helps to balance this out with their *chaos*.
I started on this ship and I can’t stop going forward.
2. How about Z!Cangse Sanren? That would be *amazing*, and what is CSR actually survives through mad inventions and lots of math?
1. hey. you. your peepers are sure working 👀👀👀👀👀
there's stuff in store for the imperial entanglements :)
but if zyx becomes empress/imperial consort (bc at this level, it's not just a queen), they would be choosing to no longer involve themselves with the cultivation realm. part of cultivation is the fact that you're defying the heavens by trying to ascend, and that's not just philosophy, it's fact. the more powerful you get, the more breakthroughs you attempt, the more the heavens will test you (violently). by trying to cultivate and establish power in the mundane realm, it's as if you're trying to challenge the heavens with the earth. not allowed. that's calling for heavenly calamities to hit the earth for that transgression.
you might be wondering "verm, then how can there be any imperial entanglements at all???"
well, grandpa zhu has an in, somehow. you'll see when you see.
[crown prince is currently UNAVAILABLE as an option. pre-requisites have not been met.]
2. z!cssr is rogue!zyx that wandered out of containment two decades earlier
(i have a feeling that og!cssr wasn't merely wild, she prob was teasing lqr to the point of bullying him)
(like, no matter how much you find a guy annoying, it's mean and highly disrespectful, borderline violent, to forcefully modify their body)
things haven't gone to full shit yet, might as well do something about it
find a way to assassinate wrh (bc what does z!cssr know about power vacuums and history of a sect??) whatever falls out, will fall out
(what if z!cssr's increasingly outlandish assassination attempts become the fun thing that keeps wrh from going off the megalomania deep end?)
(jianghu's weirdest friendship, take 6)
z!cssr spends a lot of time otherwise roaming around, seeing sights, helping people (like rogue!zyx, but with less of the 'oh god there is a problem and i'm pretending it doesn't exist'). so of course she'll have encounters with the big sects ("what's 'jurisdiction'? haha i'm barely literate") (she's literate enough)
spends a lot of time avoiding big sect heirs (besides her biannual 'murder wrh' event), but makes friends with the people in their periphery. or women that will someday be married to the heirs/leaders.
(no way to miscommunicate any jfm & cssr & yzy drama, z!cssr doesn't go out her way to interact w jfm and would rather meet w yzy if she had to meet someone of authority, idk what jfm's deal is so let's say he only has passing interest in "bssr's disciple" like many others but it fizzles out, yzy becomes reluctant friends w z!cssr when it becomes apparent that z!cssr might be slightly ignorant, but they're not a naïve idiot)
idk i think wei changze must have had something to have drawn in cssr in canon, he seems like a person that z!cssr can genuinely catch feelings for (zyx is typically demisexual, but feelings are never off the table. with how society tends to conflate sex = feelings, it's easier to forego both).
pregnancy is bweh gross, but biggest fear is dying via childbirth + loss of autonomy as a pregnant lady from doctors + other people's perceptions. as z!cssr and a powerful rogue cultivator, she can literally do the thing she wants - fuck off without no contact until she wants to come back, after all business has been concluded. biggest influence is a morbid curiosity/some sort of obligation to bring wwx into the world.
"oh you got married - you GOT MARRIED AND DIDN'T EVEN INVITE YOUR FRIENDS?!"
"WHERE DID THIS KID EVEN COME FROM?!?"
"... me?"
^yzy near throttling her friend for her whimsical ways.
oh, and as a wandering rogue, likely z!cssr would have made friends w mme lan a long time ago. spidey senses tingle when she thinks about a friend she hasn't checked in on for a while, and "no... nah, that would be too convenient. but maybe... but nah. nah?"
wcz sighs, packing up the family's bags and corralling little wwx "i'll get us checked out of the inn and grab supplies." he's too used to z!cssr's whims.
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so since you're gonna do the avatar!mc au with the entities you think each brother would fear the most (SO excited for that btw, my friend can attest to the fact that i've basically been rambling about tma x om nonstop since the first post you made that put the two together), i'd love to hear your thoughts on which entity each brother would *be* an avatar of, if you're cool with sharing! personally i love the ideas of specifically vast!levi and dark!belphie but i'd love to hear your takes on the concept! <3
So because of how time works, despite receiving this ask on July 12, by the time you see this it’ll be August! So the entire Avatar!MC series should be out by now, which I hope you will/have enjoy/ed. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of Vast! Levi, which I’ve talked about before (as you know ;) ), but I will happily ramble about it again!
These aren’t gonna be short fics though bc I do Yearn to save that energy for The Longfic, which is still in the planning stages because a) I can’t pick a timeline, and b) trying to match up the timelines of Obey Me and TMA is hard, especially when I tend to have a violent disrespect for actually paying attention to the timing of plot events in both. I already fucked up a part of the plotting because I forgot the order we get pacts with the brothers lmao
Content warnings: Mentions/allusions to tma-typical Spookies, yet another installation of my Cursed Crossover idea, lengthy debates about what makes someone choose to become an avatar of fear, spoilers for Lesson 16+ of Obey Me and S5 of TMA
What Entity Do I Think The Brothers Would Serve? (Cursed TMA x Obey Me Crossover)
Lucifer
So I put him as falling victim to the Eye/Beholding bc of his whole thing about Secrets and Pride being about wanting control over your own image
And he does have a creepy tendency in canon to always know when his brothers are up to some Dumb Shit
BUT! You know what we see in Lucifer’s character that we see in a certain Entity?
A simultaneous manipulation of others and submission to being manipulated by a higher power
That’s right, I think Luci would be a Web avatar
But Winter, Lucifer wouldn’t wanna take marching orders from someone/thing else! He’s too proud for that— You’re right! He doesn’t want to. But he will.
He willingly submitted himself and his family to Diavolo for eternity to get what he wanted (saving Lilith)
And from how much we see him work, it’s safe to say that he’s a pretty damn essential part of running the Devildom
If he really wanted to, he could probably successfully pull a coup on Diavolo
But he doesn’t, because he’s trapped himself by his own honour code
Thus, the sexual tension bromance we all know and love/insist is Deeply Problematic and blacklist (depending on how much you like/hate dialuci lol)
10/10, would fill with spiders again
Mammon
I put Mammon as falling victim to the Buried for pretty obvious reasons
But admittedly picking a fear he’d serve is trickier
I had to get a bit abstract with it, but I think the Hunt might suit him
Not necessarily the primal *cough* and police brutality *cough* parts of the Hunt tho
More like how Basira was considered an avatar of the Hunt in the fearpocalypse because of her mission/promise to Daisy
See, Greed can stem from fear
Fear of losing what you have, of no longer being able to support yourself, of being preyed upon by others
So people become greedy as a defense mechanism, to protect what they have
If they’re on the offensive, they won’t be targeted
Also, if you’re constantly pursuing more more more, there’s no time to think about anything else
Like consequences, or guilt, or Feelings
If Mammon let his little tough guy act go too far for too long, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say he could start heading down the path to avatarhood
After all, people pay big money for hitmen and bounty hunters…
Leviathan
As I said last time, I can see why people would associate Levi with the Lonely first: he’s a shut in, he acts like he wants nothing to do with people/would rather be alone, and I get it
BUT! All of that actually stems from the fact that Levi has terrible self-esteem and thinks he deserves to be this gross shut in loser
While envy can make you want to bring others down to your level, so to speak, Levi tends to just shun “normies”, not actively conspire to sabotage them
He actually does crave understanding and to have people in his life, he just doesn’t know how to go about it
Boy’s got Mega Social Anxiety is what I’m saying (funny how both the Lonely and the Eye can be real bad for that, huh)
But the Vast? Nihilism? Takes all the pressure off
If everyone is a small, insignificant speck in the face of an uncaring, unfathomably large cosmos, who cares what you do? Who cares what people think of you?
Yeah, you’d be kinda weird too if you stared into the infinite abyss of the ocean and realized it was just the maw of a gargantuan sea monster too, Karen, lay off
Plus aesthetically, the great Awful Deep most people fear in the ocean is a comfort to Levi
And again, THE VAST IS MORE THAN JUST THE SKY
I WENT ON A BOAT ONCE
LIKE REAL FAR OUT, SO I COULDN’T SEE LAND FOR DAYS
IT WAS JUST ENDLESS B L U E
AND I WAS ON A CRUISE IN THE CARIBBEAN
I SAW A FRACTION OF THE OCEAN’S S U R F A C E AND IT WAS I M M E N S E
Did you know we’ve only explored like 5% or whatever of our oceans? Think about that! Every Single Thing we know about what’s in there is just the tip of the iceberg!!! GOD KNOWS WHAT’S DOWN THERE!!! PROBABLY FUCKED UP FISH IS WHAT
*ahem* anyway, fishee
Satan
Another tricky boi
I marked him down as fearing the Desolation, as a reflection of what he fears most in himself
I probably could have also gone with Slaughter, but I’d say that’s more baby/early-Satan
Desolation is also about destruction of potential, and Satan has very carefully built himself into a non-rage-monster person
So tearing that all away from him is :)))
But what would Satan give himself over to?
Ceaseless Watcher, I want that twink OBLITERATED—
Satan clings to knowledge and erudition to distance himself from the rage he was born as
“Watch and learn” is literally how he became a person
I find it deeply funny that it could also easily be how he becomes a monster once again
Also if you think the avatar of Wrath wouldn’t have a use for supernatural blackmail you’re just straight up incorrect
Couple that with Satan’s various connections and he’d be a Force to Reckon With
Asmodeus
I put him as a victim of the Corruption bc I found it extremely fitting considering the duality of his romanticized image vs the “dirty” fluid-filled nature of Lust.
Lust can be really nasty, but as licentious as Asmo’s supposed to be, he’s surprisingly coy
(now part of that comes from the fact that Obey Me isn’t strictly 18+/full-on porn, but still)
There’s a lot of Interesting Ideas to unpack there with attitudes towards sex vs sensuality and idealisation vs reality
Now as for an avatar… I debated this for a very long time, tossing around Eye, Stranger, Spiral, even Web for like one second
But I think I’ve got it
Slaughter!
Specifically the musical/random outbursts of violence side (not so much the war side)
Why? Well for one, Biblical Asmodeus is said to “"transport men into fits of madness and desire [...] with the result that they commit sin, and fall into murderous deeds (Testament of Solomon, verse 23).”
But also, Obey Me Asmo’s affair with that portrait chick from the earlier lessons started a whole ass war
Like it or not, the boy is very good at instilling manic violence in people
They don’t call it bloodlust for nothing
Beelzebub
I paired Beel with an End avatar MC bc the boy fears losing his loved ones like he lost Lilith
You could argue that Desolation would fit there too but I liked how it fit Satan better
Now as for a Vibe…
I’m tied between Flesh and Corruption tbh
Though corruption is mostly bc buge :)
So I’ll talk about the Flesh
So uh, mass consumerism, meat is meat, cannibalism… see where I’m going?
Ignoring the Hans because that was super racist, the two Flesh avatars I remember best are Jared Hopworth and The Guy Who Stuck His Arm in a Spooky Meat Grinder To Feed His Buds
I think of Jared in relation to Beel not because of the gym thing, but because his very chill/apathetic attitude towards his patron is similar to how I’d picture Beel’s approach to all this
Like “well, guess I’m here now”
I love Beel as much as everyone else, but he’s not exactly apologetic about his… habits
Not to the degree that he’d actually try and change them anyway
So if he got started on the path to Flesh avatarhood, he’d be pretty fucked
Belphegor
I put Web for him as a fear almost entirely because of the concept of Uno Reverse Card, ngl
It does technically tie into his whole thing about being trapped in the attic, since he’d denied all agency and freedom in there, but… Uno Reverse
Dark!Belphie is an interesting concept, and MAG86 “Tucked In” is iconic, but tbh I don’t really… Get the Dark
Don’t get me wrong, put me in a dark place and I will be scared, I don’t like not seeing things, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around why one would become an avatar of the Dark
It’s not a very “primary” fear imo? Like, I’m scared of the dark bc I can’t see what’s there, ie. a threat could be there and I wouldn’t know, but intellectually I know it’s just the absence of light. That’s not really spooky on its own.
I guess what I’m saying is I can attribute spookier things related to the Dark better to other Entities, so I’m not sure what its draw is specifically
According to the Entity Sexiness Survey I did a while back, there’s apparently some Catholic stuff going on with the Dark so maybe that’s why i don’t get it lmao
Anyway I’d put Belphie down for Spiral
“What lies behind a smile” indeed cowboy
Apparently it’s getting choked
Is it because MC’s entire relationship with him is originally founded on a lie?
Is it because the Spiral deals with distortions in your perception, gaslighting gatekeeping girlbossing, as well as foggy liminal mental spaces like between sleep and consciousness, death and life?
Is it because I think Belphie would absolutely delight in driving someone bananas by fucking with their dreams until it bleeds into their waking life?
Is it because being a person or consistent being at all is too much effort, consistent internal geography is hard, fuck it, just be an endless twisting series of hallways?
Yes :)
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projectdreamcatcher · 3 years
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Hot take the whole fanon Nuke boy thing for c! tubbo isn’t nearly as harmful as the whole of wilbur and his tnt/axe depictions because one of them actually has a basis in canon and the other does not and trying to equate them is very fucking weird, imo.
(when i mean “less harmful” though i mean that wilbur’s is inherently Worse considering is red eyed, axe wielding, bomb loving fanon version is just blatant villainization of his mental illness that isn’t even accurate to his character.)
This push back against harmful fanon and forcing people to like, critically think about the implications of fan works is good. However a lot of these tubbo defenses end up trying to argue that tubbo straight up isn’t violent... at all? Which i find to be inaccurate to say the least.
Tubbo has threatened people with nukes before (X) and his reaction to the nuke test results was “incredible” (X) -- since when has wilbur used an axe or has been physically violent?
You’re telling me this guy, with these actual canon lines isn’t a violent person? (under the cut as always)
“Let’s keep blowing stuff up, i like it” / “Are you sure we can’t blow up your hotel?” / “What else can we blow up? I wanna explode more stuff” (X) (X)
“Everything [will be gone]. But it won’t come to that!” / “Well, then he doesn’t have an SMP anymore, Ranboo.” (X)
“PHILZA MINECRAFT YOU ARE UNDER HOUSE ARREST!” (X)
“You won’t die as long as you’re compliant.” / “guard the exit, no one goes in or out.” / [literally just water boards a dude on his first day there] (X) (X)
A lot of these gripes concern w/ making a character 1 dimensional, which I 100% agree with. Because my biggest gripe with both fanon depictions, especially tubbo, is that it flattens them into an archetype neither of them.. actually fit.  but you don’t have to downplay a character’s existing violence bc it makes them “look bad”
Bc a dude being violent does Not mean it’s because of his mental illness. Tubbo happening to be both mentally ill and violent is like- correalation, not causation. To imply that’s the only reason people depict tubbo as trigger happy is... kinda weird not gonna lie!
to ignore tubbo’s privyness to violence because of the environment he grew up in is kinda flattening tubbo in his own way methinks and not fully acknowledging how the cycle of hurt existing o the server molding him who he is today.
Tubbo is a violent person but he will not use violence for violence’s sake, he always did it with a reason in mind (testing the cannons to help tommy and tnt cannons are just Cool) (gaining information by “”advanced interrrogation techniques””- aka coerion or straight up torture) (testing nukes to ensure the safety of snowchester) (using weapons of mass destruction as deterrents for possible threats)  , etc
TLDR:
 while it’s very needed to call out harmful stereotypes in fanon trying to put blatantly worse offenses on the same level as.. being sometimes in bad taste is not helpful
 wilbur is isolated and cagey and hurting, not an axe wielding homicidal maniac. This fanon take for wilbur came from literally nothing & will 100% be just from pre existing bias against mentally ill people being inherently violent. 
"funny nuke dude out of control” is shit take because it takes away any of tubbo’s agency or responsibility and dumbs him down to one character trait, not because it makes him “violent” - he’s already used violence time and time again without much issue.
your bzz bzz committed state violence i’m sorry to say and i am tired of ignoring it <3
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transguyedgeworth · 3 years
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HALLO i hope all has gone well with bugs and such ur probably dealing w that as i type this but i have more headcanons >:) so! i hope these are helping deal with evil evil bugs
-maya still has a bunch of mias clothes she gave some to lana and some to pearl but sometimes she’ll wear a sweater or something that was mias
-phoenix doesn’t really like hospitals
- reminds him too much of bttt and falling
- yes i think capcom should have realized that falling off a damn bridge should give a man a good bit of upset and trauma capcom i am outside your door
- miles bottles up his feelings A LOT because there wasn’t any place for feelings in the von karma house. he’s trying to get better though
- he mostly bottles up his anger because he sees mvk in himself whenever he gets angry because mvk would be angry a lot
- fran also does the same but with any happiness or personal pride she may feel
- they both try to work on it, maya and phoenix are good influences on them
- miles has visited mvk in jail once. he won’t again
- franziska will never visit him
-miles likes to knit
-maya is sooo superstitious not like ohh if i break a mirror i’m dead but like Bigfoot Is Real and I Saw Him At Gourd Lake
-edgeworth and phoenix go often to a little coffee shop and always get a pot of tea
-sometimes phoenix brings flowers
-LMAO edgeworth asks what they are sometimes and unless they’re the two types of flowers phoenix knows he has No Idea
- the bathroom at wright and co is haunted
- maya attracts ghosts like nobodies business
-fran is afraid of spiders and maya is Violent towards spiders
- fran will shriek from the other room and maya will run in flip flop in hand, take one look around the room, and chuck her shoe at the spider. she never misses.
-maya LOVES that bakery they investigated in that one case i cannot remember the name of the one with the like. french dude? and tigre?
-pearls and maya make a scrap book for wright and co
-phoenix still draws (he was an art student and i am projecting onto him) sometimes but always drags edgeworth to art museums and talks about the art
-building on game night with the wrights they also have video game nights. phoenix is so bad and maya is still competitive but fran and edgeworth when paired against each other are Scary
-fran also sometimes lets her little brother win and gets dramatic about losing but it makes her happy to see edgeworth excited
- edgeworth has a journal bc someone once suggested it and he writes in it so often
- he also carries a certain picture of him larry and phoenix when they were kids and his signal samurai keychain in his inner pocket and fiddles with the keychain
-maya loves decorating the office for holidays
-the only thing phoenix can make well is soup and hot chocolate and he makes them at least twice a month when it’s cold
-edgeworth won’t admit it but he’d rather eat phoenixs almost burnt soup and melted bar hot chocolate than the stuff from the fanciest restaurants
- when edgeworth and phoenix propose they both propose at the same time and it’s so awkward but so so funny they both say yes of course but phoenix will tell that story to anyone who listens
ok that’s all for now! idk if i have any more (that’s a lie i have so many thoughts about them but idk how many of them are coherent) anyway i wish you best of luck with all the hubbub!!!
everything is going well thank you for the concern!! housing sent someone out to fix up the hole in my wall that they were coming through and the pest control guy just left and is now treating the outside of the building. these are absolutely helping me deal with the stress so thank you for sending them in! 
starting strong with the clothing thing, i love love LOVE your interpretation of the fey clan so much. it is canon in my brain now. capcom wishes they could think of this shit. also giving some to lana? precious, sentimental, amazing. lanamia nation rise up. thank you for my life. the detail about maya believing in cryptids and the bathroom being haunted? accurate and hilarious. and yes big agree that she still likes tres bien (i’m pretty sure that’s the name), she worked there briefly so of course she’d have a soft spot for it. i literally adore the idea of maya being hella Into Stuff, like cryptids and holiday decorations and winning at game night, and the scrapbook idea slayed me on sight. i am in tears.
LITERALLY WHY DOES CAPCOM IGNORE THAT PHOENIX HAS BEEN THROUGH SOME SHIT??? like what the hell. man almost died and then like two days later he’s like “lol i’m Completely Fine :)”. unrealistic. capcom let him be Affected by experiences please. 
kinda building off of that, AGAIN WITH THE WRIGHTWORTH STUFF MAKING ME TENDER??? i love them goin on little dates and being domestic... art museums and coffee shops and phoenix being Dumb about flower breeds and miles loving his cooking.... i am Soft i am Yearning. AND THE PROPOSAL THING!!!!! I HAD THIS SAME FUCKING IDEA GET OUT OF MY BRAIN!!!!! IT’S JUST SUCH A THEM THING TO DO...
and oooh edgeworth. good for you king, journaling and knitting and stimming and learning healthy ways to cope with your emotions. also the anger thing i totally get. like not to Overshare or anything but i used to have a lot of issues expressing my anger because when i did it reminded me too much of my dad so i feel that. 
the vk sibling stuff also spot-on tbh. good that they didn’t visit manfred except for miles’ one time. fuck that guy. let him rot. they are Learning and Growing together.... fran letting miles win at a game also perfect. she cares about her little brother even if she has trouble showing it sometimes. also love that her one weakness is spiders. that seems very fitting to me and i LOVE the image of maya just. chuckin a shoe across the room to defend her Wife from the eight-legged terror.
also you are free to send me incoherent thoughts if you want that’s the form most of my thoughts take anyway fjnfjsf i’d still love to hear them if you’re willing to share!
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m0e-ru · 3 years
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eight months in somebody actually asked me abt visualive instead of me immediately annoying ppl about it without former notice. I might actually write properly for once 😳😳😳
OK OK!!!!! In this essay I will.... I will.... Visualive Adachi.... Visu/BURSTS INTO TEARS/
OKAY OKAY for real I just care Visualive so much (as someone who can’t fully understand Japanese AHAHA)
First I’ll add some foundation about what Visualive really is, then I talk abt Adachi in the latter parts of it because this is technically the first time I’m properly talking about this hehe 🐿
T....table of contents???
Visualive
Visualive the Evolution
Masami Itou
Visualive Adachi
Visualive the Evolution Adachi
Terms and Legend
VL - Visualive
VLE - Visualive the Evolution
stage - shortened for “stageplay”
面白い - omoshiroi (it’s just that specific)
Yuuya - VL Hero name
Hayato - VLE Hero name
Baba - Hero
Masami - Adachi
Taniguchi - Dojima
Saotome - Daisuke
Mamiya - Izanami
I add honorifics but sometimes I forget the hyphen intentionally or unintentionally I’m sorry if it makes it hard to read lol
all links have automatic timestamps for easy viewing. i mean. i hope the timestamps work
VISUALIVE “Persona 4.” A stage adaptation of SMT: Persona 4 by Atlus. It adapts the first part of the story, from the hero’s arrival to after recovering Mitsuo Kubo from the TV world. It also ends on a cliff hanger, showing a teaser of Shadow Naoto being projected on the screen.
It takes up a speedy recapitulation of the hero’s spring life, before slowing down and showing in depth his school life in summer. A day before Morooka-sensei’s death, there is a little skit with Kou, Daisuke and Adachi. The hero walks into the conversation before the two other boys leaving, and Morooka-sensei walking in on the student and detective. The next day follow’s the teacher’s death and the Investigation Team (IT) begin investigating their new lead.
From the words “visual” and “alive,” the niche of this stage was meant to be the fusion of live acting and visual digital projections. All seen from the stageplay with the colorful cast of actors and CG animations being projected on the screen. This offers an opportunity for characters to summon their personas, perform cool visual effects, change the backdrop, or even confront their own Shadows.
Performed in Sunshine Theater from the 15th to the 20th of March 2012. The screenplay was written and directed by Shintaro Asanuma from the theatrical group “bpm.” The video production produced by Shutaro Oku, a film director and visual planner. He later takes over as director for VISUALIVE THE EVOLUTION, the sequel stage. The stage music was produced by Shunsuke Wada, with a special show exclusive vocal track sung by Shihoko Hirata.
On this note, I haven’t seen any sort of original soundtrack released for any of the stages and I’m SO SAD. The last song in Mitsuo’s boss fight was such a BANGER and literally EVERYTHING ELSE Marvelous, Wadasan please take my MONEY
Regarding the cast, there were some special accommodations for Teddie, Rise, and Nanako, all of which did not have live actors at the time. During the casting, actors for the three characters could not be found or simply left the directors unsatisfied they couldn’t cast anybody. An exception for Rise, who was able to have a live actor in the sequel stage. It has been stated that there weren’t any “pretty boy” actors that fit the “Teddie Criteria.” While there weren’t any child actors that were believed to portray Nanako well.
Teddie was only ever seen in his bear costume while Rise was busy talking through a call, all voiced by their video game cast. Nanako has never appeared on stage, only being scarcely mentioned in the script. Again, this is different in the sequel stage where her role was extremely important and was shown as a screen projection.
VISUALIVE “Persona 4” THE EVOLUTION. A sequel stage. Beginning abruptly in the middle of Shadow Naoto’s boss fight, the story continues from there until the “true end” of the game’s original story. *Certain characters are introduced while others have been reintroduced. And on a personal note, when it’s all comedic in the beginning, it’s all for what’s coming right after.
I don’t know if I’m salty or just find it really funny AHAHA I might go talk abt it some other day with more context ehehe
Performed in The Galaxy Theater from the 3rd to the 9th of October 2012, only a few months after the PSVITA Persona 4 Golden release, which is July 2012. The screenplay was now written by Jun Kumagi while directed by Shutaro Oku. And music production finally taken over by Shoji Meguro himself.
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HAHAHA this is starting to look like a wiki page. moving on. I might start rambling rn
(warning LONG !!!! aaa,,)
My thoughts on the stage adaptations. For the first Visualive (VL) I believe it’s pretty close to canon! I enjoy the characterization and how much love and care was present when handling the entire production.
Actors were busy playing the game itself, wherein a PS2 was present in the practice room. Along with magazines and game guides explaining the game’s story and the characters itself. Actors performing together and even improv acting together to get a grasp of their characters. All of them knowing well of Persona 4 as a well loved game, delicately handling their characters and hopefully performing them right while making the audience happy.
The staff taking care of each other while the director and video producer, Asanuma-san and Oku-san, working together well to make their vision into a reality.
The same thing happened with VL the Evolution (VLE) and literally every other good stage. Except... I feel the script kinda got out of hand with too much liberty where it feels a bit more disconnected from canon. But! It makes up for it in its content, whether comedic or (INCREDIBLY) dramatic! It’s great as its own story at that point. So in this case, I like to take the first VL and get to connect it canon, while I don’t know what the hell happened in VLE to the point I’ll just enjoy it as its own content.
These opinions deserve its own essay, post whatever bc I have SO much to say abt this. ANYWAY. VL ADACHI
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Tohru Adachi is portrayed by Masami Itou (伊藤マサミ), a screenplay writer, director and an stage actor himself. He does have a single character voice role along with a fellow troupe member in the same franchise, but mostly works as the former three. He is part of Asanuma-san’s entertainment group “bpm.” On a similar note, Masashi Taniguchi, Dojima’s actor, was also part of their group from 2011 to 2016, which may explain their good synergy as the boss and the bumbling fool dynamic. I mean, somebody’s gotta get hit in the head every few skits.
With Masami-san being an important part of the cast, he doesn’t appear as often as Taniguchi-san in backstage content like the VL bonus disk or the official blog. Mentioned in his own personal blog, he had been busy with his roles as assistant director (I am assuming also for VL).
Also fun to note, because his role is mainly comic relief, he has been using his liberty to change up the material almost everyday making each performance exciting. This also leaves some other actors jealous of his freedom in his role, such as Saotome-san, Daisuke’s actor.
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VL Adachi really has a... how do I say this? an adorable speech pattern (THE SAME SPEECH PATTERN THAT DROVE ME MAD TRYING TO DECIPHER I THOUGHT YOU WERE A CITY BOY OSSU OSSU MY ASS /shakes you violently/). Overall, he really fits the loose lipped bumbling fool, and his accent really makes him seem more casual and invested. What I’m saying is... VL Adachi either actually has genuine empathy or he actually has more energy to fake it (compared to some other edgelord. i mean you saw my p4ga analysis. I’m sick of him lol ahaha).
One of my favorite ways to explain this (OTHER THAN CHAIR CAR ADVENTURE MY BELOVED WE’LL GET TO THAT LATER) is the rice field scene with him and Dojima. It’s overanalyzation time 🎉
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While investigating, Adachi whines about being tired while Dojima smacks him in the head. In this case, it’s established that Adachi doesn’t want to be there, yes? It’s the country, it’s hot and it smells like green.
"Ah... Dojima-san..! Why don't we take a break? (...) There really is nothing out here... Is the criminal still even here at all? (...) I wonder if I've passed being a rookie yet. Haha, but this city doesn't even have convenient transportation. I can't go to leisure lands (recreation, amusement parks, arcades, ect.) and head home at all."
Adachi then tries to tell Dojima a story. “when I got to this city after being newly assigned, I met an interesting guy (...) Yeah, I remember that the cherry blossoms haven't bloomed yet. So, I was driving my car and got near the station and--” Dojima gets a phone call.
Adachi politely puts his hands down waiting for his boss to finish so he can finish the story. Again and again, Adachi attempts to talk to Dojima about a story he’s so persistent trying to tell someone about. It was so 面白い that he would find someone to talk to about it. Even being polite and patient enough to wait for a chance to speak. He even gets fed up with it and blows up in front of his boss, clearly irritated he’s not given a chance to talk.
Sure, it could be Adachi feeling fed up like a normal person where someone agreed he to listen to him, before being constantly ignored. Or Adachi trying to be a more annoying whiny brat, depending on where you look at it.
If the story wasn’t too “interesting” to Adachi, he would’ve just brushed it off and stopped talking to Dojima entirely, or start up new small talk, or even complain some more. But no, he had a story he wanted to voice out so bad that he got irritated that the one person in the vicinity couldn’t listen to him.
Only after Dojima told him to continue their investigation elsewhere did Adachi finally stop and focus on something else. Maybe that story was for another day, or maybe it was never meant to be told.
What if it was just original (game) Adachi? He’d find a way to squirrel out of the investigation as usual, or push Dojima to “investigate” elsewhere. “Hey boss, don’t you think it’s hot? Why don’t we go elsewhere? We’ve seen this place too many times to count and I doubt anything new’ll turn up. How about we take a break at Junes, y’know? Where it’s cool? C’mon boss,” something like that.
og Adachi is just really annoying and silly to me. Some grown man thinking he can freeload because he never gets anything out of putting in more energy and effort? I don’t care how tall he is, I will smack him in the head.
Yeah VL Adachi whines, too, but at least it doesn’t look like he’s going to escape and waste his time somewhere else. He just sucks it up stops trying to leave the situation.
Or maybe I’m getting this all wrong and VL is exactly the same and my rage just gets dampened because of Masamisan’s execution of character hmm...
SO. What was his story about anyway? The one he really wanted to share to Dojima?
I mean... it’s obvious enough
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First day in town? Spring? Actually mentioned driving a car when literally out of every single persona 4 media at the time was there not a SINGLE mention of Adachi having a car OTHER THAN the same stageplay it’s being mentioned in?
A story, from somewhere around uhh four? five months ago? was something that he remembered so dearly and was willing to share despite it obviously embarrassing him even if he puts the blame on a certain somebody in the same story?
Or maybe it’s because he really had nothing to talk about ever since he realized all his stories from the city weren’t actually that funny or interesting in the first place.
BUT then that would mean out of all the things he could talk about—more whining, complaining, complimenting, small talk—he insisted about talking about this story in particular.
Okay, look. I’m just. Just. As someone who talks too much, of course I have things I actually want people to hear out of all the bullshit that comes out of my mouth. And if the thing I actually want people to listen to doesn’t even get heard, I’d go mad.
Sure, Adachi’d be fine when his complaints or intentionally unfunny jokes get brushed off. But a story of a guy that he thought was so funny, interesting, 面白い gets ignored, he really blew up, even just for a split second, maybe.
And ALL the things that happened in that story—on his first day in Inaba! His car got dented, he had to deal with a weirdo dumbass employee that knew zero personal space, yelled in his ear, who didn’t know how to do their job, got his station reputation messed up on the first day, got his ass grabbed, got (unintentionally?) mocked for his lame stories, and got his car dented for the SECOND time. Probably MORE
And he STILL wanted to talk about it /punches through concrete wall/
yes I’m overthinking about this of course i am
This little tidbit of VL Adachi kinda makes me go insane sometimes—his entire characterization in VL in particular. It was really refreshing to see and how they included both of his characters in it, his facade and how irritated he is of a lot of things underneath. And how flexible his character is immediately working with other characters when there’s sudden improv to balance the situation. Like him and Dojima, Morooka, the attendant, or even Yuuya (hero) himself.
I’ll take Taniguchi-san’s messing around in the VL bonus backstage disc in place of Masami-san being so busy he couldn’t appear in it as often as other characters.
For stagetime that lasted for fifteen minutes or less, my appreciation for VL Adachi, even if he was just comic relief, really rocketed. I say VL, bc Adachi the edgelord he’s supposed to be in literally every other media is something I analyze separately.
I haven’t even gotten to VLE oh my GODDDDD
Like I said, I don’t really regard VLE close to canon but as something to be appreciated for what it is by itself. But the way Adachi was characterized there, in or out of character, still struck me.
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Yes, there was his strange fan-agreed-canon which is,,, now canon obsession with cabbages (not that that’s a bad thing lmao). There was also him being a lot more jumpy and intimate in a clowny way, patting people on the shoulder or even downright hugging them just to mess around. Even FORGETTING who the same goddam loser who grabbed his ass almost a year ago is. But like, can’t blame him they literally changed their actor (and screenplay writer) AHAHAHA
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ha... no more comedy, only dorky sword fights now
(speaking of sword fights I think it’s a fun thought how Mamiya-san [Izanami, also one of the youngest in the cast] admitted it was his first time doing sword fight choreography and even thanked Masami-san and other staff members for guiding him)
One thing unintentionally in character was Adachi accidentally nabbing the sushi overdosed in wasabi. Masami-san didn’t actually account for a joke sushi and didn’t immediately eat it—until Taniguchi-san (who also made Dojima go off his shits compared to VL) jokingly yelled at him and even riled up the audience for him to eat it. He even went off stage to get water just for him to eat the goddam sushi.
And Masami-san did! (kinda choked, but he’s fine).
Continuing from the same scene, while being overly giddy about sushi dinner (and I mean overly--he was singing about it while hopping to the Dojima residence), he tried to remind the two, Dojima and Hayato (hero), that Nanako was sleeping. Probably where she was sick if the scene was translated from the game.
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And... the dramatic parts of VLE
Adachi was the one who reported to the IT that Dojima was chasing Namatame in the rain. While Naoto was discussing Namatame’s journal entries, Adachi, as giddy as he is, took it from Naoto’s hands and reveled in the discovery of evidence so childishly(?). He even ran to Dojima when he began regaining consciousness and immediately called the nurses to help him wheel Dojima to the ER.
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Then, The Hospital Scene™️, right after Nanako flatlines.
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Adachi, who recently walked into the scene, immediately worries about Dojima and IT who were ALL crying. He looks down, devastated—before yelling how Dojima’s heading to Namatame’s room.
He yells in terror and the same grief at his injured boss, all while running past and even jumping over children, who fell to the ground sobbing, to get to him. He continues yelling in a pained fashion while immediately reprimanding Dojima to stop. He gets carried by the collar before being tossed to the ground at Hayato’s feet, all while being pat by the same boy.
Dojima makes his speech about how unfair it is for the ‘killer’ to be alive when his daughter isn’t. When he finally falls to his knees, Adachi rises from the ground, humbly saying he’ll do his best to take care of Dojima (or something like that I’m in tears I literally can’t do VLE’s hospital scene i h8 this). He finally starts crying along with everyone else, being pushed away again but still tries again, trying to usher his boss away from the door.
With the help of the guard in front of the door, they all disappear off stage
please... I know this scene doesn’t need that much translation because of how important this scene is in the entire story. and I know my narratives aren’t enough so just,,,, just watch it please it’s so much more than this. everyone’s acting was just spectacular
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(1:08:47)
So, after the IT (YOSUKE. JUST YOSUKE. good job Mae-chan) stop themselves from k wording Namatame, it was ADACHI who reported Nanako’s miracle recovery. He ran to the same corridor where they all cried in, even panting and falling to the ground in relief trying to report the good news. Then he pats Hayato on the shoulder and says he’s going to Dojima.
With this... /slaps roof of half of VLE/ ALL of this....adachi.... adachisan.... he Cares™️..... holy shit.....
now. comparing to the game. do you even remember what og Adachi did? did he.. even do anything?????
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NO!!! he just stood there!!!! being a bumbling fool but.... inappropriately!!! man. he didn’t act concerned enough.
adachi: /walks into a bunch of kids crying outside a hospital room/ “lmao why tf are y’all crying? did uhhh what’s her face uhhh nanako. did she d word or something? rip, I guess lol” LIKE????? CAN YOU IMPLY FASTER
and then he’s like “wgat hmm Where’s Dojima-san Heading Because That’s Not The Way To His Room 🤔” and only when he’s asked he actually mentions he’s heading to Namatame’s room and still needs to get choked by a first year for the room number like..... zero consideration
and his boss??? where his daughter he loves so much just??? di*s???? and he’s so devastated he’s doing what he can that very moment while he’s so numbed of thinking of the consequences???? And adachi goes “uhh boss that’s illegal” LIKE. BITCH. /punches through a concrete wall but harder/
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And??? His confrontation scene??? Like, I know they mashed it up w his tv confession scene to save stagetime for other scenes BUT IT WAS SO MMBMBMBMMGN /gestures in a good way/
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UM?? guy behind everything??? in a vulnerable area where he could easily get physically assaulted bc hes not in the tv world w his persona?? Trash talks women like he absolute misogynist he is??? getting yelled at by a bunch of kids and YELLING BACK IN THE SAME AGITATED MANNER even TAUNTING THEM then and there to GET HIS ASS?????
og Adachi was such a pussy he got caught and just scurried off into the TV world where he ended up having powers like...ok....scared of getting beat down by a bunch of highschoolers unless you have powers...ok....
he only taunted them to get him when he was in the tv world too.....he rlly couldn’t say shit in the real world huh... lol
(yeah yeah this shows how VLE Adachi knew abt his TV world powers which would make you think if he ever went into the tv world and came back out alive. Or he’s really just a badass who doesnt give a shit abt anyone’s opinions and CAN beat anyone’s ass. i have a separate thing abt this but bc i like to laught at vle rather than overthink its own lore i might. not. idk lol)
and ??? VLE Adachi can??? He can swordfight??? he doesn’t even NEED a gun—he even reflects bullets w his blade (but apparently he can still get slapped by a flying fan more often than any other attack). His fight choreo was just...so poggers. He’s like short villains done good—like??? he’s short compared to everyone else!!! but he makes up for it for stuffing all the energy inside him while is bursts out making him him the over energetic gremlin he is!!! go VL adachi!!!!
(am I low key making fun of Madono-san in the TUUSH stageplay I’ve seen four minutes of? maybe)
OK!!! Yes I was gushing abt Masami-san again back to Adachi.
It’s portrayed that while not being afraid to admit his crimes, he also goes out of his way to be a bastard and have the gall to get a bunch of kids to fight him, one on eight. He can use a katana, probably a narrative dark reflection of the hero, Hayato which I thought was nice—and he can fight!!! It also shows his persona, yes, but...it doesn’t make it clear if he’s overwhelmed by his Shadow like in the game, where his eyes were yellow and he was emitting a dark aura.
But it gets interesting how he sees he’s getting overwhelmed and starting to lose his edge towards a bunch of kids. He falls to the ground even banging the floor like a whiny brat while literally the IT tries to tell him to turn himself in. Again, like a brat he tells everyone to shut up—before getting incapacitated. While some of the IT rejoice, he bolts up unaccepting of his defeat—before getting hit in the stomach.
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And his words from when he drops his katana, “Why..?” He grabs the foldable chair against his stomach, and with a remorseful look in his eyes, he says “I’m sorry..!”
THEN HE BACKFLIPS—then Hayato slashes him.
In a tone of disbelief, he goes “no way...” and collapses to the ground, being possessed by Ame-no-Sagiri.
Blah blah blah then Teddie rockets himself into the eyeball spy cam and then they both explode aaaaa
Teddie survives but I really don’t know where Adachi went. Not even a mention by Dojima if he turned himself in or was ever found—or I need to review VLE for the 48274827482nd time hehe
WHOO then the whole cast appears for the dance number at the end of show YAHOO
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softer-ua · 3 years
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I've been thinking about this for a while, about how MHA does a good job of showing that, while all humans are flawed, all flaws are not created equal.
Look at characters like Bakugou and Deku, both very obviously flawed, but well, let's be honest, arrogance and anger issues are, to most people, a far more unsavoury flaw than recklessness or being too selfless. Angry violent personality is far more detestable than insecure self sacrificing personality. Because to a certain degree, selflessness is more pro than flaw. One gets more sympathy than the other.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this I just thought it was interesting. It's also interesting how a more violate personality allows people (within the series and the irl fandom) to justify stuff that's plain wrong, like not allowing someone to consent or not taking non-consent seriously. The sports festival fiasco is the clearest example of this, where going against a very clear 'no' (over something as dumb as a medal) to forcefully put someone in a humiliating position, is justified because *insert mental gymnastics*. Another less extreme example would be BkDk's childhoods, where canon indicates that (this is applies to earlier in their childhoods, grade and middle school, bc those first few months of UA Bakugou was off his rocker even when Deku was doing nothing to him) Bakugou would push Deku away several times, clearly indicating he did not want Deku around, but Deku would still come back, ignoring his refusal. Bakugou's behaviour towards Deku is inexcusable, but many fail to see Deku's own (albeit much slighter) contribution to the problem because "he was only being nice and friendly" or "he just wanted to help" even when explicitly told 'no'.
It's just very interesting. How consent is worth less depending on who's giving it.
Oh yeah there is a consistent constant disregard for Bakugo’s boundaries or insecurities, because he’s supposed to be to tough to have them, that he’s so tough only anger and not being the undisputed best are his only problems
The Bakusquad, especially Kiri, constantly hang off him and gather in his space despite knowing him well enough to know that his discomfort isn’t just a front.
Which to me stands out as worse than Deku, who sometime between being a literal child who doesn’t understand boundaries to sometime after the gentle criminal arch, has mades no effort to approach Bakugo even though Bakugo in his crude way approaches Deku all the time. But Deku fully and enthusiastically engages with Bakugo when he is approached.
I just think it’s really important to make the effort to learn how to communicate with your friends at their comfort level
Also people are quick to comfort and praise Deku because he’s cute and brushy about compliments and approachably sad when he view himself as failing
Bakugo however isn’t as easy to swallow and instead is often made fun of or looked down on for his poor reactions to losing, but he has just a hard a time taking compliments as Deku does often just brushing them off with “No you’re just bad at it”, I mean honestly can you think of a time that Bakugo genuinely accepted a complement? The only praise he seems to allow is his own
Mitsuki and everyone has the wrong idea, Bakugo didn’t need to have a smaller ego(no one ever need to think less of themselves). He needed to be more self accepting, to be given grace to lose, to not see failure as a dead end or a character flaw. If the adults in his life had spent even a little time it’s okay to not be the best at everything and that you can always try again and no one thinks less of you for it he could have been spared so much heartache 😞💔
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asterekmess · 4 years
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1-11 Scott/Posey Stans always try to deflect criticism of the way Scott McCall is written in Teen Wolf by claiming that ANY attempt by a fan, a viewer, or a critic of holding Scott to a level of behavior that one would expect of a character who is a main and the self-proclaimed hero of the show is “racism”. Except that their accusations don’t make any sense whatsoever, because Scott’s canonical shitty actions and behavior don’t stem from his race (or canonical lack of thereof.)
Okay hun, this is a doozy, so I’m putting it under a Read More.
2-11 Scott McCall is mean. He’s mean to Stiles, he’s mean to Allison, he’s mean to Derek, he’s mean to Peter, he’s mean to Cora, he’s mean to Lydia, he’s mean to Jackson, he’s mean to Erica, he’s mean to Isaac, he’s mean to Malia, he’s mean to Malia, he’s mean to Kira, he’s mean to Liam, he’s mean to Chris, and he’s even mean to Theo (“You are barely even human!”) Scott McCall is deliberately rude to the Hales, Boyd, Ethan, Danny, Hayden, Jiang, Tierney, and Melissa.
3-11 Scott McCall deliberately USES, INSULTS, HUMILIATES and DEHUMANIZES people in ways that demonstrate that he is fully aware of what he’s doing. Scott McCall deliberately disregards other people’s needs in order to fulfill his own. Tyler Posey being half Mexican doesn’t change the fact that his fictional character Scott McCall is a whiny coward and an abusive piece of trash,
4-11 and that his so called ‘defense squad’ enjoys the power fantasy that Scott can be cruel, can lie, can assault, can lash out, can violate other people’s boundaries, bodily autonomy and consent, can commit premeditated murder, can break the law without impunity, can dehumanize, can gaslight and victim blame his friends to his heart’s content and no one should ever hold it against him
5-11 In both the production and in some Scott supremacist fanfics, there’s often the premise that people are evil and in the wrong if they call Scott out on his bullshit or hold his toxic behavior against him. Take Season 1. As much as the Scott McCall defense squad brigade love framing Stiles and Derek getting shit done and prioritizing people’s life over Scott’s jealous fits and temper tantrums as the height of depravity
6-11 Scott/Posey Stans consciously and steadfastly ignore all the cruel things that Scott says and does throughout the seasons, such as “How much Adderall have you had today?” OR “What are you trying to do?! I just made first line! I got a date with a girl who I can't believe wants to go out with me and everything in my life is perfect! Why are you trying to ruin it?!” OR “The hunters had a reason to slaughter your entire family and pack”
7-11 (As an aside, it’s amazing to me how Fanon rewrites Scott as this brilliant thinker and strategist and mastermind who is so much smarter and better than everyone else in every way even though Canon Scott spends the entirety of Teen Wolf doing absolutely nothing except get his ass handed to him by everyone, whining about wanting to be popular/get his dick wet/play lacrosse, screaming at his friends and girlfriends, being utterly useless when left to his own devices,
8-11 and planning to bite Stiles against his will because he doesn’t know what to do. But I digress.) Or take Season 5. In the rain argument in Lies of Omission (5x09), Scott McCall’s hypocritical, dehumanizing speech to Stiles is one of the meanest, cruelest, most disgusting manipulations I have ever seen a television character deliver to another television character they supposedly cared about. It’s victim blaming and gaslighting at its vilest.
9-11 And, of course, the Scott McCall defense squad focuses exclusively on the idea that Stiles didn’t behave “the right way” in that scene (AKA taking Scott’s bullshit without clapping back like Scott wanted and demanded), and cannot entertain for one moment the idea that Scott provoked that response by dehumanizing Stiles and by accusing Stiles of being a violent, dangerous, inhuman monster and serial killer based on Theo’s words alone.
10-11 After all, it’s part of their power fantasy. Scott being “abandoned” and “mistreated” by his “ungrateful” friends serves another type of fantasy: the poor oppressed martyr. It doesn’t matter why Scott is abandoned or who is leaving Scott, it’s all about Scott McCall’s right to own people and demand his friends’ love, friendship, loyalty, sympathy, forgiveness, obedience and devotion without having to account for his own abusive behavior.
11-11 And that’s Scott Stans’ point: Only Scott McCall Is Important and Damn Derek/Stiles/Liam/Other Teen Wolf character for having a life and motivations that don’t revolve around Scott! To them (and to Canon Scott), the pack exists not to serve all its members, but to serve and validate Scott McWhinyCall. Because, after all, that’s what antis want for themselves – validation in the face of shortcomings and bad behavior.
Wow, that was a lot of anger. Do you feel any better after venting that? I really hope so, it honestly looks p cathartic. Okay, I apologize in advance if I don’t come across as quite so passionate, I’m kinda bleh today and I already used up all my righteous fury in an earlier post, so I’ll do my best.
I honestly understand the worry about people disliking Scott as having racist motivations. As I said in another post, there aren’t a lot of Latino (wait, I read somewhere to use latine? Should I use that instead? I’ll use that, someone correct me if I’m wrong. The thing also said latinx was not great bc of pronunciation issues? I’m not educated enough on this. Halp, please.) Latine protagonist characters in popular television, especially for teen dramas like Teen Wolf. Intentional or not, written into the show or not, Scott is half-latine. His mother is a latine woman. We don’t see them speak spanish or take part in any specific cultural traditions, but that doesn’t make him white. Yes, his character was written for a white guy, but Tyler Posey is the one who got the part and we can’t strip him of his heritage just because the show originally meant for Scott to be white. My husband is almost always mistaken for white, even though he’s also half-latine, but that doesn’t make him any less latine. There’s little enough representation as it is, and if we start being picky about whether characters were ‘intended’ or ‘written’ as POC, everything will just fall to shit. Plus, as a white person, I have literally no rights to decide that Scott’s white. I’m cool with that. Would prefer to just stay in my lane, if I’m honest. With Scott established as being a POC, it’s totally reasonable for other POC and fans of Scott to be worried that those of us who don’t like him have that opinion because of either passive or active racism. There are a lot of occasions where Protags of Color were either liked less, or actively disliked for just being ‘not white.’ It also doesn’t help that Scott is one of very few “good” Characters of Color in TW (whether we agree or not, he is presented as a ‘good guy’). We have Boyd, who dies in 3A and doesn’t get much character developement in the meantime, and Kira, who sticks around for a while, then has to leave because of ‘losing control’ which is apparently a very common stereotype for POC, especially within Fantasy or Supernatural settings. Other than them, the other POC are either bad guys or just morally dubious. I’m not sure where Deaton falls on the scale either. I understand it being frustrating to some people for us to take one of the few “good’ characters and see him/describe him as a villain. It’s important for white people, and honestly, anyone not latine (because even POC can be racist against people who aren’t their race) to be self-aware and analyze the various reasons why we dislike Scott and make sure that we aren’t accidentally being passively racist. Just because we’re sure we aren’t, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t double check. And if we find we are, then it’s up to us to correct that mindset and educate ourselves. There is no shame in learning that you have not great habits or mindsets and working to fix them. That’s how growth works. It’s equally important that when we’re writing fic, we watch how we portray him and the other POC in the show. I’m not saying we can’t write Scott bashing fic. Fuck knows that I’ve written plenty of Bad Friend Scott McCall fic, and I don’t intend to stop. But we still need to be self-critical and make sure that we’re not writing Scott (or the others, please assume from here on out I’m saying Scott and the others) into racist stereotypes. We shouldn’t reduce him to just a “Yes” man, or make him constantly submissive, or constantly vicious and angry and mean for no reason. It’s one thing to write him as doing something bad or cruel and making it realistic for the story. It’s quite another to have him just randomly pop in to say “fuck you” and hit someone (I’m not referencing something specific here, I’m just saying dumb stuff). Honestly, I don’t know enough about this and I’m not really entitled to go into too much more detail. Instead, I’d recommend that even if you don’t think you’re hating Scott for racist reasons, still read This Post about racism in fandom/fanfic. When I read it, it was both reassuring and intimidating. I have anxiety, so I’m usually worried about doing things for ‘the wrong reason’ even when that’s not actually my reason for doing the thing. Reading this gave me a clearer view of my own thoughts, and it honestly made me feel a little more comfortable with my own mentality because it gave me a structure to think about and consider when I’m worried that I’m doing something racist. It’s worth the read. I’d also like to reiterate the suggestion on that post, to check out the blog Writing with Color, which is a great resource for writing Characters of Color. It doesn’t have as many resources for fanfiction writing and the grey area involved in writing characters that your reader already knows, but their ask box is closed at the moment, so maybe when it opens again someone’ll send in an ask about it (If I actually remember to, I’ll do it myself, but that’s unlikely, so if one of you feels so inspired, please do so and help a fic writer out!)
Now. I cannot speak for every single fan of TW who is anti-Scott in some way. Obviously not. But, I can speak for myself and for the experiences I’ve had within the fandom. My issues with Scott are many and complex and a lot of it is intrinsically connected to issues with the writing of the show in general and with the creators and the calls they made. In all the conversations that I’ve had with other fans, I’ve never seen anyone list Scott’s race as a problem. I’ve never seen anyone talk about how they wished he were more submissive or more obedient. Maybe that he would listen to actual adults once in a while, but not that he be unreasonably obedient of white characters. I’m not all-knowing on the subject of racist stereotypes, but nearly every complaint I’ve seen was based on details from the show and specific moments and dialogue, not just a general disgust with his existence. Furthermore, for all the anger I see directed at those of us that prefer Stiles, Derek, or even Peter, I’ve also never talked to anyone who liked those characters who wasn’t willing to admit that there were plenty of points in canon where they fucked up or did something wrong. Again, I don’t know everyone in fandom, so maybe there are people who won’t admit those things, but they aren’t in the majority.
I personally hate the way I see Scott treat people in the show. I hate the really vicious things he says and does and the chronic lack of self-awareness or growth. Even worse, the way the show excuses his behavior, be it intentional or not, has soured a lot of other parts of the show. The clearly impulsive moments that could easily be excused by him being a really stressed out teenager make me a lot more frustrated than they would, had I not known that he would never get better. That he would never stop saying things like that. I can’t even make myself enjoy the genuinely sweet moments with him and Allison or him and his mom, etc. I might hate that he left Stiles’ messages unanswered and skipped an entire day of school during a crisis to hang out with Allison, but I would’ve liked to enjoy their banter, the soft moments between them that are actually really nice. I can’t though, because so many other things about his character have ruined that for me.
It isn’t okay to attack people for disliking a character and throw around such charged words like “racist” and “abuse-apologist” or anything else. First off, this is fiction, and we all need to keep that in mind. These are not real people we’re talking about. Secondly, calling someone racist because they disagree with you (unless they are actively saying/doing something actually racist) isn’t okay and it isn’t an adult way to deal with things. Someone not liking a character doesn’t automatically make them racist. Someone happening to prefer a white character over a Character of Color doesn’t automatically make them racist. Sure, they might have passively racist motivations that even they don’t realize. But it is not up to strangers to come yell and call names without proof. There are plenty of reasons that have nothing to do with race (Not saying “i don’t see race.” I’m saying “Not About Race”) that I like Stiles over Scott, ranging from the fact that he’s physically more my type, to sharing a neurological condition with him, to just preferring Dylan O’Brien as an actor because he makes me fucking cry every time he cries on screen. What’s important is that we self analyze and check ourselves and our opinions to make sure that we aren’t falling into the racist habit of disliking Characters of Color for no real reason. But that isn’t something that other people can do for us, and it’s not their place to tell us what we think. Calling a stranger racist for saying they hate Scott’s behavior in the show doesn’t do anything for racial equality. It just makes people stop listening to the word ‘racist.’
There are times I seriously get frustrated with TW to the point of considering not watching anymore. Of closing my blog and stopping reading fanfic entirely because every single time I read a fic where Scott’s a ‘good guy’ or a ‘good alpha’ or where Derek is glad to be a beta again because he likes following Alpha Scott, I get squicked so badly I have to click out and just sit there for a second to settle. I can’t disentangle the things he does/says in the show from the fic.And I’ve written Good Friend Scott McCall fics. I have multiple wips where he’s either a decent person or he grows from being a dick to being a decent person. With my own work, I know that there’s an awareness to his behavior in the show and an active intent to rewrite/fix his behavior so that he is a nice person. With other people’s works, I don’t have a guarantee (unless it’s mentioned in tags or author’s notes, and I don’t expect people to have to explain themselves that way), and it personally makes me uncomfortable to read something when I don’t know if the writer actually sees Scott that way. It’s a personal preference, and one that I stick to pretty strictly.
Scott brings me no joy, and with him as the main character, I’ve come perilously close to cutting myself off from the most welcoming, loving fandom I’ve ever been a part of (except the Merlin fandom, but I don’t blame anyone who can’t compete with them. They’re fucking magical.). But I’m still here. I still love, if not the reality of the show, then all the potential I see in it when I watch. I love watching Derek and Stiles interact with each other and with the other side characters. I love seeing the glimpses of Boyd that we get, the tiny scenes of Erica, the snarky moments with Isaac. I even like Kira, though I haven’t seen a whole lot of the show where she’s in it/genuinely can’t remember it (I can’t even remember how far I’ve seen total, but I don’t think it was past S4, and I haven’t seen past S2 in months and months) and she spends most of her scenes with Scott, which just....kind of ruins the scenes for me.
That’s the glory of fandom though, of media in general. I don’t have to like Scott. I can love Derek and Stiles instead and I can choose not to read fics where Scott is a major player or an Alpha at all. I can read fics where Kira’s part of the pack without Scott ever getting involved, and see her interact with everyone else. Or fics where Boyd never dies and watch him bake or read or play lacrosse with the pack. I can curate my own experience, whether that means blocking tags or users or filtering fics, or just straight up skipping certain scenes/episodes of the show itself. I cope with my frustrations by coming on this blog and ranting about it. Yeah, this is a public space, but it’s also a space people choose to view. If they don’t like my opinions, they can block me or unfollow me or all of the above. They don’t have to read it, just like I don’t have to read any of their pro-scott stuff. I also read fic that does explore how Scott’s behavior is problematic and cruel sometimes. Fic that either erases him or turns him into the villain, I find fun and interesting and the relationship between him and Stiles cracking into pieces is something I find extremely cathartic, so I read it pretty much every chance I get (though, i’m so picky about fics I read, you’ve no idea). I also write fic. I write the most mushy, self-indulgent sterek fic and Stiles-centric fic and and Scott bashing fic that I can possibly write. It’s a joy and a therapy all its own. Fuck, I’m rewriting the entirety of canon for fuck’s sake and I’ve made so many changes that at this point I honestly have issues remembering what happens in the show, bc I rewrote the damn thing.
At the same time, Scott fans are gonna write their power fantasies. They’re gonna write anti-Stiles stuff and anti-Derek stuff, and whatever else tickles their fancy. They’re gonna make their own rant posts and gifsets. And to be quite honest, I don’t give a single flying fuck. I already have those tags filtered out on Ao3. I don’t follow any pro-scott tumblrs. That shit doesn’t show up for me most of the time, unless it’s not tagged properly, and even then I just click out, take a second, and move on.
No one is required to like or dislike specific characters, and it’s unfair of anyone to tell us otherwise. Fandom is built on choice. The choice to disagree with canon, or to re-envision it altogether, or to love it entirely. No one can take that away from you. So long as you aren’t hurting anybody, just keep doing you, friend. I’m here for you to vent to when it gets to be too much.
<3
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azdoine · 3 years
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@canmom
say... what is the canon for this homunculus... >///<' 
i ask bc transfem fic is an all too rare thing no matter the context and the figure of the homunculus is a very good one in most cases I've met it!
I mean, you can go and read it if you want, but IDK if “homunculus” was even the right word, or if you’d get anything out of reading my fanfic, or out of reading the fanfic that my fanfic was based upon, because this was an utter fanwank singularity of petty drama.
To make a very long story slightly shorter, I was spoofing a long-running play-by-post CYOA, a fanfic where readers could collectively decide upon the OC protagonist’s actions through first-past-the-post voting. Somewhat uniquely, the CYOA author explicitly invited his readers to use all of their collective knowledge and skills in making decisions, including not only their IRL expertise but their knowledge of the original canon that the fanfic was based upon; in this way, before the OC protagonist developed a personality and grew into her own character, the author even once went so far as to describe the protagonist as a kind of collective self-insert, a “blank slate avatar” of the forum on which this CYOA was played.
So the protagonist naturally became hypercompetent in many ways, if not in others, and she was able to intuit things she should have had no way of knowing. This was then justified in-setting with a strong implication that the protagonist was specifically purpose-built with revealed knowledge by and from a higher power, or even that the protagonist’s soul was a gestalt assembled out of countless other souls from a defunct alternate timeline.
Anyways, I liked this CYOA a fair amount for its own merits as a fix-it fanfic, but I was also interested in what seemed to me to be this amusing interplay between diegetic and extradiegetic story elements, right. (Because yes, I was the kind of person who e.g. thought it was SO DEEP AND CLEVER when Hussie had the carapacian exiles send commands to the SBURB/SGRUB players in Homestuck.)
Furthermore, there was a brief eruption of forum drama surrounding this CYOA some years back, when someone tore into it for having a female OC protagonist in a sapphic relationship with another girl, despite running on a voter base/reader base primarily consisting of heterosexual men; I ignored the vitriolic “men fetishize lesbians and that’s why it’s ok for me to use transmisogynistic slurs whenever i see bad yuri media” style discourse and put all my thoughts on the matter in my back pocket for another day. Likewise, much more recently, someone proposed that a peripheral character in this CYOA might have been a trans woman, at which point the CYOA author had to step in and say that the theory was wrong, and that all of the characters in his story were cis more generally, because he didn’t think he’d done enough research to be able to write a trans character sensitively.
At that point I was vaguely and pettily fed up with the way people were and weren’t reading gender into this story. So I wrote one or two thousand words of meta-fanfic about the OC protagonist of the CYOA being a trans woman herself, with the intention of somewhat gently ribbing on the idea that anyone could unironically treat her as a direct extension of her male voter base without also having to see that as a cutting commentary on the gender identity of her voters, and the intention of gently ribbing on the way the author had excluded trans experiences from a story with a literal blank slate reader-insert character.
The rest is history, lol. I rather expected a response from the other readers and voters something along the lines of “hey, how dare you imply that I’m a tranny just because I’m still deeply emotionally invested in this five-years-on-and-going-strong million-word-fanfic about my sexy anime girl self-insert and her waifu?”, or at least along the lines of “this is too meta for me, go write your trans girl metafiction on the SCP wiki like everyone else does”.
Apparently I was somehow still far too subtle, though, because instead I got responses like “why did you write our collective self-insert as a trans man? just because we’re men doesn’t mean she would be too” and “yea, I dunno fam, our collective self-insert reads as AFAB agender to me”. IIRC, someone even made fanart about the latter, at which point I decided to violently suppress my memories of the entire sequence of events.
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ziracona · 4 years
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And I hate to do this- So on that thread, not that he's as bad, why do you think Michael is redeemable? (and also Frank) Especially by his main victim? :? I hope that isn't as bad or as judgmental as I think it sounds... - Sleepy (its like 5am here :3 living up to my name i see)
So, these I gave a short and a long answer for under cut, but forgot I’m on mobile and can’t do that. I can tag it “long post” but uhhh, sorry about this. Anyway, thats why Frank comes in two chunks. I wrote it expecting to be able to use a read more. :’-] also ya fine. And I hope you’re in bed 🤣 now. Okay so. Here’s my reasons:
For Michael, to start, Halloween is complicated af. You have to know what timeline people are talking about, because there are like 8+ and Michael has been written as a wildly different character by wildly different content creators, and I would not feel the same ways towards them all. They’re not the same character. When I talk about Michael, unless I’m going on about a specific other film, I mean either H20 canon, or DbD canon, which are in line with each other when it comes to characterization. (This also includes Halloween’s 1 & 2 in the H20 line, and Halloween 1 at least in DbD). In those timelines, Michael has like at best 2% agency and choice in his own life and what he becomes. That’s why I am sympathetic. I still root for Laurie to nail his ass to the wall of course, and everything he has done to hurt someone isn’t okay just because his life is unfair & awful & out of his control, but I still find him a very tragic character. He was canonically suffering violent psychosis his parents refused him treatment for, isolated with a monster as his doctor & only human contact for 15 years from age 6 on, overdosed on medications that when OD’d worsen psychosis symptoms and can cause permanent brain damage, and stuck like that until escaping briefly when he turned 21.
In Halloween canon, Michael tells his parents he hears voices telling him to do bad things like hurt people, but they tell him he is imagining stuff, and ignore his attempts to get help. The voices say they will be quiet, which is what he desperately wants, if he kills his sister Judith. So he does, at age six. Scientifically speaking, that’s literally too young to really have a complete grasp on death and mortality itself, let alone complex ethics. He immediately goes to his parents after doing the deed, so they can do whatever they need to do. Instead of getting him help, he is sentenced to 15 years in a 1960s American sanitorium (hell), until he turns 21 and can be tried for murder as an adult (fucking ridiculous and unfair?? Tried as an adult is for like, upper teens who commit heinous murders. How tf you justify trying a six year old literally too young to really understand murder as an adult for murdering someone??). They give him to Dr. Sam Loomis, a fucking horrible person, who says he spends 8 years trying to help Michael (a fkn lie), but canonically by only a few months of meeting the kid is thoroughly convinced he is evil, the devil or a demon in human form, faking his psychosis and side effect symptoms (trauma induced mutism from killing his sister, onset of catatonia/motion loss symptoms, etc, all of which are common with his disorder & trauma), desperate to kill again, and an evil mastermind doing the devil’s work, and says so. Spends four hours every day accusing Michael as a six year old child on, of planning to do horrible things and faking his illness and being a demon and not a human, and Loomis, from age 6 to 21, is this kid’s only human contact. And the staff knew it and how wrong and disturbed Loomis was, but did nothing. So from age 6 to 21—barring one or two visits from his mom & Laurie before his dad beat 4 year old Laurie for saying Michael’s, who he hated after Judith’s death, name—until she trauma blocked out having had a brother or sister at all, and then both parents died in a car crash—his only human contact in complete isolation was an adult man who told him for four hours a day he was an evil lying demon faking his symptoms and plotting murder and not a human and promised he would kill Michael and stop him, from childhood on, and that was it. He was never given an understanding of what was medically wrong with him, or that anything was at all. He was threatened and abused and kept overdosed on drugs for 15 years since early childhood, and his only understanding of the world taught in that absolute isolation, was that he was a demon who wanted to get out and kill again. And the violent psychosis, telling him if he killed both sisters, they would go away and leave him in peace with no more constant noise. With no normal understanding of the world or people or life like he was owed ever given to him, no understanding at all of what you were going through or were aside from the promise drilled into your head you were a monster who wanted to kill every day for 15 years while drugged up? Like, I’m a firm believe people are responsible for their own actions, but in a case as extreme as that, honestly, how else was that ever going to even be able to end? You forget, as a child. Who you used to be. That’s beyond grooming even, it’s being grown in a lab for the sole purpose of someday walking out, taking a large kitchen knife, and killing Laurie Strode. And it’s tragic. It’s unfair. Halloween is a tragedy, not a horror film. It didn’t have to be that way. He wanted help. He asked for help. Loomis is directly and pretty much solely responsible for the lives lost in 1978. You know he won’t even call Michael “him”? The only human he contact he had since age six on called him “it.” And no one stopped any of that. And even then. Even then, even with all that. With the drugs, and the lab grown killer, and all of it? Michael is pretty much the single least sadistic slasher killer there /is/.
Everyone he kills in Halloween? He kills fast. It’s actually kind of boring if you’re expecting a scary slasher, because there’s no chase until Laurie. He just appears, runs you through, and you die. Very fast. And if there is any emotion expressed towards the act of killing or aftermath, it’s not pleasure or hate or happiness, it’s curiosity, because literally everything is something he wasn’t allowed to experience growing up and just has no practical experience with yet. And on top of all that, he also just doesn’t kill people he doesn’t have to. He kills one man for clothes, kills Annie to re-do Judith’s murder since it didn’t work the first time and he needs both sisters for the voices to stop, and he kills Bob and Lynda becuase they stumble onto where he is & are a threat to success. (This + Judith 15 years prior is all the deaths in Halloween period, btw). Michael routinely only kills his target, and anyone who is a threat to success. Literally doesn’t even jump out to kill Bob or attack until Bob opens the door to the closet he was hiding in, and he has been seen. Walks past a security guard and lets him go in H20 becuase he doesn’t see him, steals keys from a mom with her 4 year old kid and doesn’t even hurt them because they don’t see him really either, steals a knife from an old lady making a sandwich who is one foot away but looking the other direction, so he lets her go. Even with all the possible stakes against him, really, Michael is like, the least cruel and most sympathetic and merciful version of that lab grown killer possible, which can only be a testament to the person he was initially/still somehow has managed to keep faint traces of alive inside.
As for Laurie finding him redeemable, answer is threefold I guess, and I’ll start with the most important. 1: in Halloween canon, Laurie cares for Michael and is incredibly sad about what he turned into and wishes he could be different (once she remembers who he is). That’s established canon, not a choice of mine. In Halloween 2, she tries to talk him down before shooting him, and he hesitates when she says his name and lowers his weapon for a moment. In H20, she talks about him a lot & even asks her boyfriend (a psychologist) if he thinks something so traumatic can happen to someone that they can never recover, bc even though she hasn’t seen him in 20 years, he’s still on her heart. She hesitates to kill him once she has him helpless in the finale, and when he reaches out for her hand, she almost cries and starts to reach back because it’s what she has truly wanted for so long. 2: Michael & Laurie are siblings, and that’s a very important relationship to me. Obviously, there’s lines where you cross, it’s fkn over, but it is special, and I’m weak for it. They were both cheated of the good family life they could have had, and I like characters I care for getting recovery and rehabilitation, and I would like them to be able to recover and have whatever fragments of the lives they wanted which are still possible. And then 3: Laurie is his victim, but they’re also both victims of Loomis, and the system, and her parents, and if she does /wish/ for him to be okay and things to be like they were, which was canon before me, so she does, then I think them finding happiness and her relief and new hope in regained family and him redemption and rehabilitation through the quite literally only person he has /ever/ known who treated him well or like even a human at all & is still living, that’s so good. It’s sweet, and it makes sense. I like broken people putting the pieces together and finding ways to be okay. None of the shit that happened to either of them was okay, and Michael sure did fucking do it, but it’s about as “it’s complicated” as literally possible, and Laurie wants him to be her brother again, and Michael deserves a chance to experience personhood enough to want anything like that again too, and I think it’s sweet. To be able to find happiness and peace and a new life in that rubble. It shouldn’t be possible, because Halloween is a tragedy that never gets a happy ending, no matter how many timelines they create or versions they tell, but I wish it could have one. It needs one. At least one, among all the fated tragedies for those two cruelly cursed siblings. They both had their lives stolen. Michael by Loomis, and Laurie by Michael. And I want them to find those stolen lives again. And if they can do it together, that’s a very odd and unusual set of circumstances for that kind of thing, but it’s a very complete way to tell the story. He tried to kill her, but if she asked him to stop and he stopped, if he himself chose to change on his own, when it really, really mattered—decided that it was what he wanted more than all the things he was before, and she decided that was enough, and they could both have a future as family? I like that. It’s a happy ending stolen back.
Long Frank Answer, in case you /have/ read ILM & thus short answer did not answer your question: So. Again, for me, I always talk about Frank as in the version of him I myself write, and I wrote ILM before the archives retcon, and also just ignore them because they’re usually dumb and blatantly contradict well established and longstanding canon. Even then, I usually don’t like Frank though—didn’t like him when I started writing ILM. But Frank has very little established canon character. All there is for sure is he was a foster kid that went through some bad stuff, he met Julie and changed his mind about desperately trying to be homed somewhere other than with Clive bc he liked Julie a lot, he met Susie and Joey, they became a gang chilling in Ormond’s abandoned lodge, then tried to rob a store Joey was fired from, were surprised by a cleaner who grabbed Julie, and Frank impulse stabbed him, freaked, and ordered the others to finish it with him and be in it together. Then before they’d even really finished burying the body, they got snagged. That leaves a whole lot of personality and thoughts and motivations and future choices and person wildly undetermined. Writing, sometimes characters just do their own thing completely out of my control, and I have to adapt. Frank chose not to kill Meg at the end of Tenacity, Adrenaline, & Grit, which surprised me, because he’d been nothing but a dipshit asshole bastard till one minute ago, but I knew it was because he recognized what she’d tried to do at great pain to herself because she wouldn’t bow down and die, and he connected/empathized or sympathized on some level. He also couldn’t go through with killing Quentin immediately after being helped by him in Distortion/Iron Maiden. Neither was like, planned. It’s just who the character was. I was frustrated. I did not want to like or feel sympathy for Frank at all. Then in The Lost, Jeff just fkn hijacked the whole plot and added 20 pages not in the outline because he wanted to be kind to Frank & it’s not like I can stop characters when they do whatever they do. And while writing it, I got to know that the version of Frank Morrison in the world I was writing—which is always the version I refer to/think of him as & write now myself—was not somebody past saving. He’s a piece of shit and he’s done fucked up and inexcusable stuff, and he pays for it. In many ways, Frank gets away with a lot over the course of ILM, but it’s always because characters choose on their own to forgive him, not because they or he doesn’t think it was fucked. And Frank suffers—a lot—for his choices, and has to live through appropriate and large amounts of regret and remorse about stuff he did before the end. He gets the chance to make better choices several times, and mostly he doesn’t. He continues to fuck up. But right near the end, he makes a couple good decisions when it’s down to the wire, sees where his bad choices got him and what he has to live with, and then he does live with it. He almost dies, and then ends up falling on Jeff’s mercy, which he knows he doesn’t deserve and doesn’t expect to get, for a last chance to make it, and because Jeff is an ungodly kind and forgiving soul, he makes it.
Frank isn’t a good person, and he does a lot of stuff that isn’t remotely okay or justified or excused, but he /is/ a kid—the upper end of it, but he’s not a full grown adult. He has every reason to believe nothing of himself or others, a fucked up childhood and life which isn’t his fault, and the Entity got all four Legion kids before they’d even had time to process the one and only violent crime they did (which was unplanned), and it is historically running a PHD in psychological warfare vs everyone. Absolutely none of that excuses or justifies him, but it is an explanation for some of it that is not as bad as say, doing that shit for fun or cruelty or hate or what have you, which makes him a bad person, but one with a lot more humanity left than say, Kenneth. Who is at -100 or something. If he’s still got a lot of humanity left, that means he could be redeemed, and he eventually chooses that path for himself and hits the appropriate “I did something horrible. Fuck. It was really bad. I should not have done it.” “I am really sorry I did this. I feel awful. I’m sorry.” “I cant change it, but I can try to do better and make whatever reparations I can.” “I want to be better, and I am going to try.” necessary stages of actually trying to improve. So, I like him. He did a lot of really awful shit that wasn’t okay, but he was never without sympathetic elements. He does love his friends and his girlfriend, he is a good boyfriend to Julie and selfless towards her and his crew (overall anyway—has even risked death for them very willingly, even the one who was fighting with/kinda hated him), will keep his word in deals and has some semblance of both sympathy and honor, feels guilt, is a kid, did not choose this life but was rather catapulted into it and too weak to climb out once he landed in the mud. All of that together makes him someone I feel sympathy towards and find quite redeemable, so long as he will decide he wants that, which, in ILM, he does. If you just meant Frank in general then idk how to answer because there’s not much established Frank period it’s kinda a shell like all original dead by daylight characters, and I have no thoughts on it by itself because it’s not a whole person, and so I really only think of Frank as ILM verse Frank now.
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blukwolf · 4 years
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AFO!Izuku
Alright so I was watching a... comic? (Yes, watching, as in watching it in yt) idk about Izuku having AFO and accidentally stealing Bakugou's quirk which led to the Midoriya's leaving Japan and going overseas with Hisashi, who happened to be All For One, so this idea came to me as a different take on Vigilante borderline Villain Deku.
(sorry for every mistake you may see here, english is not my native language)
AU in which AFO is Izuku's dad and Izuku inherited AFO, thus leading to him taking quirks from his peers when he was a child because he didn't know how to 'turn it off', which then led to him not having a lot of friends because the rest of the kids were afraid he might try to steal their quirks indefinitely. He went overseas with his family to try and 'forget' about what happened and maybe get a better hand at controlling Liability, his quirk.
Once he's back in Japan, after AFO v AM fight (the first one) news broke out about The Greatest Villain™ having a heir somewhere around the world (which the people would be confused about, but not the villains, THEY KNOW about the Lord of the Underground, they've heard the rumours, so) so word spreads about Izuku without no one knowing is about him exactly, but Bakugou Remembers, he never forgot about 'the Deku who steals quirks' which would be really difficult to evade, given the fact that Katsuki is the powerhouse he is in canon and pretty much everyone hates him, fears him or fawns over.
With this in mind, Izuku knows there's no way for him to become a Hero, not if he wants to be recognized as All For One's son, so his best route to achieve his dream is by doing it out of the law, being a Vigilante.
By this point either way his view of the Hero Society is more wide open, HE KNOWS the difficults of having a quirk that doesn't fit society's standards, HE KNOWS how hard it is to be viewed as the "bad one" for something you didn't have control over, HE KNOWS people would judge you based on literal bullshit if they can, so he doesn't risk it, he can't risk it for his mom, for the safety and the love Inko needs after "losing" his husband.
(they both are very aware of who Hisashi was and Inko is heartbroken, so Izuku doesn't want to make it harder for her by going out on full display on UA by wanting something that doesn't belongs to him)
This leads to him wanting desperately a change, to go out an Do Something for those like him, for those who are ignored by the ones who only wish more recognition, for those who, like him, were casted aside as "liabilities" for the Society.
He wants to be an All Might of sorts, but a little more... Discreet. Without the big announcement, the smile, the 'bunny ears'. He takes more after Eraserhead.
So, he becomes 'Reprise', a vigilante (criminal for those Good Ones™) who goes 'berserk' at night, beating up all types of Real Criminals, going from drug dealers to genuine Villains, freeing neighborhood after neighborhood and doing what some pros are supposed to do.
He takes the quirks of those who he despises, those who he thinks are the worst of the worst. With them, he doesn't hold back, he ambushes them, takes them off guard and takes their quirks as soon as he can.
It's a little bit like Stain, without the murder and the intensity, but he does share a bit of his ideals, mostly when it cames down to the 'True Heroes' and all that jazz.
News start to spread about the new 'villain' going around beating others just for fun, which leads to other villains wanting to prove themselves by conquering the 'Mad V', thus leading to those same villains ending up without a quirk and a wake up call.
(He's not directly involved with UA and the stuff happening to Class 1A, just briefly jumping in to stop Stain and saving Iida's life (IIDA'S LIFE, unfortunately that doesn't change the fact that Iida's entire life/career changed after that, the Hero Killer achieving his goal of damaging him forever))
With word on the street about a new vigilante doing 'God's Work' and defeating Villain after villain, the rumours make their way into UA halls and the police force, alerting Tsukauchi and Nedzu, which eventually leads to Bakugou knowing about it and having his suspicions.
(Neither Bakugou nor Izuku have encountered each other since the day Izuku left for America, so that)
Now about his appearance, he doesn't have the typical Gucci Eyebags for having insomnia, no. He does have the Gucci Eyebags for going around beating villains so late at night.
He IS a bit different regarding his looks, he DOES has his messy hair, but with an undercut (bc only God knows how much I love Undercut!Izuku), and tends to wear normal clothes. In short, he's not far from Canon Izuku but he's definitely different.
He's not the sad depressed snarky Izuku we love to see in fanfics, no. He's more compossed, polite, kind, but he is a loner, tends to stay in the corner of the room to try and get a hang of his surroundings. He's that kind of anime guy who is serious, has a few friends/classmates that he's friendly with, and mostly evades spotlight. He's not depressed, he's angry at the world for being unfair and angry at himself for allowing the world to hurt him.
That changes when he is Reprise. He becomes this violent vigilante who wants to make a change, who goes out at night to pick fights and steal quirks and do what the Pros don't. He's snarky, sarcastic, rude, he talks back and throws insults around the street as if nothing. He's not afraid of getting injured, he welcomes the pain as a reminder, a reminder that he's doing something and that Something is making other people feel safe and protected.
The Night is Still Young tends to be his catchphrase.
He actually goes with a therapist.
He continues writing his notebooks about quirks and pros, and even villains. He has a whole pack of them with all the quirks he has taken, how they function and how to improve them.
He goes to a well-known high school for Geniuses and Prodigies with interests in sports, maths, sciencies and the like, even those who want to make a living in the support drpartment goes there.
He thinks his fort is his Mind.
((I don't think I have to point it out, but his meeting with All Might & the Sludge Villain doesn't happen in this au.))
(Shigaraki is well aware of his existence, he doesn't know it's Izuku until Reprise tries to ambush him. Shigaraki's thrilled with the rumours about a heir of AFO running around ruining business, so he would obviously want to meet him at some point and maybe try and recruit him, convince him to join his Father's side.)
His first real, face-to-face encounter with Katsuki and the rest of Class 1A (some of them at least) happens during Kamino.
Todoroki, Yaoyorozu, Kirishima, Uraraka and Tsuyu are the ones who rescue him SOMEHOW, i'm not going into details because I can't think of them right now, but THEY saved Bakugou.
It's when the news about a creature created by the LOV broke out that he found out about his dad's survival. So he tries to gain information by breaking in the police's archives (thanks to a friend of his who happened to be a hacker) which led to him finding out about the upcoming raid at the LOV base, but he's Izuku, he KNOWS his dad, he KNOWS the type of man Hisashi is.
So, while the League of Villains location is there, he doesn't goes there. He makes an investigation of his own, finding clues, proof, following people. Using common sense, he finds the Warehouse where his dad is supposed to be.
Only, he doesn't makes it that far. He's scouting the area of Kamino, walking around aimlessly, praying that the raid goes well so the Pros can leave it there and continue pursuing fame so he can go to that same Warehouse and confront his dad and maybe throw a few punches and cry a few tears when all Hell breaks loose.
There's a thunderous tremor around him and the screens lights up and there's All Might, in all his glory (he's not a hardcore fan anymore btw) standing in front of a terrifying villain, and suddenly Izuku is very, very scared.
And so, he watches. His heart is in his throat, ready to be thrown up as his Dad fights against the man he used to look up to. He watches as All Might buries All For One into the ground like an unused toy, and he's a mess, he's crying alongside the other people, but he cries for his dad, for the man that he loved so much, and there's this feeling of bitterness in the pit of his stomach that he wants to ignore so desperately.
So he turns around and starts walking again. He remembers his dad, working with him and helping him to control his quirk, giving him the best hugs of the world, cheering him up when he was feeling like a waste of space. He remembers the loving husband and father that Hisashi used to be and he's feeling really miserable when he stops abruptly and looks up to find Bakugou just a couple of meters ahead of him.
The rest of the rescue squad is there, too. They're looking from Bakugou to Izuku really puzzled because the firecracker they know is eerily silent and this boy is just there, face blank with just a little bit of puffiness in his eyes.
So Bakugou, a witness to all the madness from that night in Kamino, with pent up frustration and anger, goes completely blank with emotions and calls him Deku, demands for answers to questions such as 'the hell are u doin here?' 'are you with them?' 'are you playing hero again, uh, fucking Deku?'
And Deku's just there, overwhelmed by grief, because he lost his dad in what he suspects is national television, and he knows his mom is probably at home, probably saw everything. He knows Inko is just as heartbroken as he is, and that hurts like hell because it's his Mom, his everything, the one person that holds importance in his heart that he has left.
And seeing Bakugou at that exact moment, it's too much, he's emotionally incapable to deal with him of all people at that very moment. So he just. Can't.
He looks at Bakugou, he looks at him, and says "you haven't changed anything, Kacchan" and Izuku completely ignores him, keeps walking as if nothing happened, as if it isn't a blonde pomeranian screaming after him to 'stop looking down at him, you fucking freak'.
(when he makes it home he tells his mom he was in Kamino when everything happened, and Inko starts crying real hard, and Izuku too, and everything is a mess)
After his Dad's defeat, he starts attacking Pros, mercilessly and ruthlessly, but only those who deserves it, those who he thinks have failed at doing their jobs of protecting people.
Tsukauchi is desperate to capture him, wanting to bring an end to the 'Heir of the Underground' as people, mainly villains, are calling him after AFO is brought down and the similarities between AFO and Reprise are pointed out. He knows that if he leaves him on the loose for too long, there's no turning back, Tsukauchi knows what's on the line for him and is afraid FOR Izuku, knows he can become a target later on, or he can take over his Dad's Empire and be worst.
He doesn't know is Izuku, and even if Bakugou is having a crisis over Reprise and everything going on around him (because of course is Deku, it's always been Deku) he can't go and tell them, he doesn't has proof, only memories from when he was a kid and a very obvious dislike of Midoriya Izuku.
So Bakugou buries Izuku and Reprise to the back of his mind and concentrates in his own shit, the internships and the provisional license and that jazz.
(I always saw a lot of hc about how everything changed for class 1A without Deku there. So I'm taking this too and a few others things. Can't remember where I saw them tbh but all credits to their rightful owners)
Not all of them, Class 1A that is, got their license, just a few lucky ones, but a great deal of them failed. They aren't that motivated nor are That strong. USJ changed them, showed them a truth they weren't expecting this early, and losing Iida just reminded them that.
Overhaul Arc it's the same, except that, in the middle of the battle against him, when Mirio was fighting Chisaki and protecting Eri, Reprise showed up and took Overhaul's quirk right after he shoot Mirio.
(Mirio, who had Permeability. Mirio, who had One For All. He loses both of his quirks.)
At this point, and with overhaul newly added to his collection with a few others, Izuku is mostly invincible. The chaotic vigilante he used to be becomes fierce, a force to be reckoned with, so when Tsukauchi hears about Reprise getting overhaul, he warns ALL of the Pros to be careful at encountering him.
The Hero Comission WARNS EVERY AGENCY that, in case of coming face to face with Reprise, they have to flee inmediately or suffer the consequences, which are losing their quirks and having to step down from being pros.
It becomes a really bad situation, with fear striking every Pro present, much more so after losing the Symbol of Peace, which leads to a vulnerability in those afraid of losing everything and leaving unprotected a few places, or outright giving up the title of Pro.
Everything comes down to the fateful meeting of Shigaraki and Izuku.
Shigaraki knows there's malice in Reprise, he knows he felt that pain too when All For One was captured, that's why he's going against Pros now, and he plans to use every ounce of that pain to bring him by his side.
Liability (Reprise) of Lorde was a huge inspiration tbh
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gayregis · 4 years
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Oh yeah that reminds me of another question I've been meaning to ask (sorry to jump on you like this haha) but which vampire canon change in B&W annoys you the most? For me it's the whole 'even touching silver will harm a vampire' (when it's explained that Syanna figured out Dettlaff was a vampire because he wouldn't directly touch a silver candlestick). I just choose to ignore that detail bc I don't think it makes much sense haha
omg this is such a good ask im so excited to answer
first of all, i really agree with you, even when i hadn’t read the books fully i had read that one passage in lady of the lake where regis gestures with a silver fork at the banquet, and blood and wine tries to make it so like regis and dettlaff are the same “kind” of vampire, so this obviously doesn’t make any sense, and since it’s just such a small detail i tried to ignore it, like, maybe dettlaff just wanted to keep the silver candlestick fingerprint-free, ever consider that, syanna? you’re gonna pawn something, you don’t want like a billion fingerprints mucking it all up... and then syanna thought this made him a vampire, when in reality he was a vampire but the candlestick had fuckall to do with it
but yeah i think i’m gonna do like a top 5 style: TOP 5 THINGS CDPR GOT WRONG ABOUT THE VAMPIRES. im not gonna do a countdown because im a very direct person and think its best to get the worst out of the way.
1. their society and relationship with humans.
the thing that upsets me the most that cdpr changed is how vampires exist on the continent. stuff like tesham mutna and the unseen elder breaks canon lore so hard it makes me physically upset. 
this is a bad thing because not only is the trope of “vampires control everything from the shadows as a secret society so they can feed on human blood” incredibly boring and overdone (it’s a trope, so it’s something that the witcher should stand to invert since that’s pretty much the purpose of the witcher), but it also has origins in antisemitism (the myth of the illuminati or “reptilians/secret societies controlling the world”, blood libel), so it’s super gross! i don’t want the vampires to be that trope, that’s completely unfair.
they already were something other than that trope, they already HAD their own society (or lack thereof) as part of the canon lore. maybe it is personal preference, but i think that their “anti-society” is super interesting. how does something like that function with no rules or figures of authority or customs? it’s incredibly different to the ways humans function in this universe, who are mostly bound around their nation, city/town/village, and home unit, and abide by strict custom and systems of authority. it’s really something to be explored from a lore perspective, there wasn’t a whole lot explained in canon (for good reason: see #2) so it has perfect potential to be elaborated upon in the adaptational spinoff that is the witcher games.
it makes them super boring and trope-y to have them all kowtow to One Figure Of Authority in the area. plus CDPR states that the reason toussaint is so perfect is that this secret society controls toussaint as an area to perfect blood, when toussaint literally existed as a fairy-tale duchy to be an OBSTACLE to geralt and his hansa in the saga. it was the “leave-your-quest” test. think of the island of the lotus eaters from the odyssey. it’s a perfect place, there’s no reason as to why it is perfect, it just is, and it keeps the company hostage there for months so they will get distracted and eventually forget what they came there for. 
in canon as well, vampires do not seem to care much about humans. regis certainly does, but he is regis :). there was little conversation about how vampires view humans, rather about how humans view vampires and project their innermost fears and desires to them. further breaking some vampire tropes. in blood & wine. instead of that trope-flipping, we get... “vampires tortured humans out of curiosity and selfishness.” what? why would they do this? there is not much to gain, and it would take a lot of cooperation and effort to get to this point, which leads me to ask, HOW could they do this? as regis says in bof, there were only about 1,200 vampires when they arrived on the continent, so they were completely and utterly outnumbered as they were likely scattered around. they wouldn’t be able to build a castle and re-engineer toussaint to fit their needs. i understand that he is massively biased, but i feel like regis calls these first vampires “hapless survivors” for a reason, and also since regis is regis, i do not feel like he would feel this way about them if they committed massive crimes against humanity.
tl;dr for this point: not only is it fucked up for no reason but to be gross/shocking to the audience, but it also removes their purpose as a metaphor, which is #2.
2. the removal of their purpose as a metaphor in the story.
originally, the vampires are not meant to be the focus of the witcher series or even a smaller part of the series at all. they are simply a metaphor for aspects of human society so that regis can have a backstory. the vampires are nothing more than a fictional means of exploring the effects of alcoholism, and a thought experiment as to what an authority-less, family-less, custom-less society would be like. the question “what do youth do when they have no support and no guidance?” already is one of the witcher’s major questions as a saga, the vampires and regis’s backstory serves to be another one of the stories within it that fits this theme. except we add more conditions to the thought experiment this time, like “what if these youth never aged and were powerful enough to survive on their own?” there would be no reason for them to ever change or grow out of their behavior. it’s quite interesting, because it’s meant to reflect upon human nature, the vampires are metaphorically humans. there is no reason for regis to even be a vampire, except that he needs to be able to survive death and learn from his mistakes. a human would have died had he hit rock bottom like regis did, but since regis wasn’t human and could rise from the grave, he had the chance at a new life. humans don’t get second chances. this is the point of the entire story being about vampires.
now, i understand that the purpose of the witcher games is to entertain, unlike the point of the witcher book series, which are like any other books and serve an author’s message. so, it stands to reason that the vampires do not have to prove a strong point here, but they should retain their essential traits and serve as the metaphor which was already really interesting and deserves more explanation and thought. i think using a fictional lens to take a look at real-world issues can be helpful sometimes, when done respectfully and when still using creativity. even if it’s just to entertain, that doesn’t mean it should be brainless and throw all of the commentary out of the window.
the vampires as a subject for the game to focus on should really be a vessel for thought and critique. it should mean SOMETHING for them to be there, because they were originally a message and a metaphor.
but in blood & wine, they are incredibly shallow, only there to exist for the attention-getter of gore.
does it MEAN anything that dettlaff regenerated regis from his own flesh and blood? or does that just happen because we needed a convienient way to bring regis back and tie him to the antagonist? does it MEAN anything that dettlaff cuts off his own hand? or is that just because it’s cool and kinda gross. does it MEAN anything that the vampires attack beauclair? or is that just because there needed to be some violence and conflict.
there is no deeper meaning! it’s all just flashiness to shock the audience! it’s incredibly shallow and because it is shallow, it becomes boring and forgettable.
blood & wine focuses on details about the vampires that are gross, gorey or bloody, uncomfortable because of how nasty they are. and these elements have NO PURPOSE to the story other than to gross you out, like regis being regenerated, dettlaff skewering regis like a kebab, dettlaff cutting off his hand and that hand being handled by the bruxa, geralt, and regis, regis going crazy in a cage, syanna also getting skewered, etc. ... it’s this focus on the physical action that is happening on screen with little thought as to any deeper meaning that makes me tired and nauseous. why treat the vampires as savage animals?
as a mention in this topic, i am going to comment on how they deliberately changed the lore to “make childrens’ blood taste better than adults’ blood,” because that is mega-gross. why change it to focus on child endangerment? that’s nasty! why make orianna feed on children when it was LITERALLY canon that the “best” blood was that of strong adults? if you want to make orianna morally grey, she could have owned any other kind of place to get blood from. see #2 for more discussion of this.
3. their focus on the conjunction of the spheres.
the vampires never had this obsession with “returning home.” i... have no idea where this comes from. remember how i just said that i appreciate a metaphor for real-life when it is done respectfully? CDPR gave us this awkward metaphor for the vampires “wanting to go home” because they have to “assimilate” in this new world, apparently every vampire ever misses their homeland. ... it’s the story of immigrants who didn’t have a choice to be born in The New Land, but they were anyways, and now they want to go home. and it’s the story of minority groups, who are overshadowed by the society they live in, but cannot be themselves in, because it would mean violence. 
this is an incredibly awkward metaphor just because it’s not done well, but also CDPR literally just focused on how extremely violent the vampires are, and how they also control everything so they can use the humans they were thrown in with to their own fancies. this is... i didn’t know that the metaphors for fantasy racism in the witcher could get any worse than sapkowski’s were.
also, there’s some weird lore-breaking moments when regis says he misses the vampire homeworld or whatever, and i just am left staring at my laptop like. you’re only like, 4 centuries old, regis. the conjunction of the spheres occured more than 3 times your age in the past. plus the fact that regis in baptism of fire calls himself a “descendant,” it’s obvious that someone at cdpr just didn’t do their research when writing those lines.
4. their power level and exactly how powerful they are. 
let’s take a moment to think about a grain of truth. the second story in the witcher books, it was written before sapkowski had a lot of the vampire lore down-pat. geralt says things like “it’s silver, this blade is silver” and “an ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun,” which are incongruent with what we learn in baptism of fire about vampires. but nevertheless, there’s a lot which is still accurate to the vampires, such as that VEREENA ABSOLUTELY KICKS GERALT’S ASS. geralt very nearly DIED in that fight, he was ABOUT to die, but nivellen saved him at the last split-second. geralt finds out that vereena is a bruxa, and he is alarmed, he shouts and then falls on his ass. he scrambles, he’s unprepared to deal with a foe THIS powerful. he manages to land his sword on her during the fight, but it barely harms her. she dodges incredibly, and swipes of his sword that should have hit do not. she screams terribly, and geralt is in incredible, writhing pain. he uses his signs to help him, this is no normal fight with a normal foe. flash forward to in baptism of fire, when geralt meets another vampire, one that is considerably more powerful and unique than vereena was. dandelion asks geralt, if ... potentially... maybe... and geralt responds that he sincerely doubts that he could beat regis in a fight, and he really does not want to have to try.
geralt was BESTED by vampires in the books. he was as close as a witcher can get to being INTIMIDATED by their power. but what happens in blood & wine? there’s like 8 bruxae and alpors ganging up on you and you can easily vanquish all of them with your silver sword and by knocking back maybe a glass of black blood and white raffard’s decoction. it’s fine, it’s easy to kill vampires. geralt doesn’t hesitate to fight dettlaff. he doesn’t worry, he doesn’t tell anyone that he sincerely doubts that he could beat him in a fight, that he doesn’t want to have to try. instead, it’s regis talking geralt out of the fight, trying to advocate for peace. 
CDPR massively nerfed the vampires just to make them easier targets for the player. i think this is unfair to how the vampires were powerful threats to be reckoned with in the books, foes that even geralt, a witcher, did not want to face. not even out of geralt’s pacifism and apprehension to slay innocent and/or sentient beings, but out of not wanting to fucking hit that die button
i also understand that regis was supposedly less powerful now because he was just tired from being regenerated, but vampires like bruxae should have been able to turn into giant bats. there’s nothing stopping them besides cdpr not wanting to code it in, just like how they didn’t want to code in bruxae or alpors wearing clothes (because vampires do wear clothes in canon).
5. their classification: adding new vampire species, distinguishing between “higher vampires” and “TRUE higher vampires”
just plain annoying to me. there’s only seven types of vampires, as regis says in baptism of fire: 
“In the case of higher vampires, never, I agree,” Emiel Regis said softly. “From what I know alpors, katakans, moolas, bruxas, and nosferats don’t mutilate their victims. On the other hand, fleders and ekimmas are pretty brutal with their victim’s remains.”
“Bravo,” Geralt said, looking at him in genuine admiration. “You didn’t leave out a single class of vampire, Nor did you mention any of the imaginary ones, which only exist in fairy-tales.”
so there are seven classes... five of which are higher vampires which can probably be classified by having sentient thought and not harming their victims, two of which are lesser vampires, which are quite violent with their victims and more animalistic for this reason.
also i am confused as to why CDPR made fleders the least likely to sustain flight, when their name i’m pretty certain is taken from fledermaus, the german word for bat, which just means flying mouse (feel free to correct me if i’m wrong, idk german), so “fleder” should just mean “flutter,” or “to fly.” 
SO. it’s total bullshit to be like “there’s some higher vampires and then TRUE/REAL higher vampires, which cannot be killed...” and it confuses everyone as to who is ACTUALLY a higher vampire and who is not, when the system we had before wasn’t broken at all!
BONUS. general changes to vampire powers
it annoys me how they turn into puffs of mist/smoke instead of vanishing, simply vanishing. no deeper reason why, it just bothers me because you’re not supposed to be able to see them at all, that’s the point of turning invisible/incorporeal.
there was no mention or demonstration of how regis can hypnotize people, even though that was probably his most frequently used vampire power in the books asides from turning invisible/incorporeal. it showed that even though he was very powerful, he opted to use his passive powers and nonviolent routes of dealing with people.
i think it also makes the vampires way overpowered to be able to regenerate each other with each other’s blood ... and it takes away from the finality of stygga... also them just flying and turning into bats whenever they want, as if regis didn’t say that he can only turn into a bat during a full moon. they made them overpowered and still made it super easy for geralt to kill them. alright
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