#or rather implied hypothetical death?

[izartela]

What if they couldn't get Leo out of the Prison Dimension?

It's been months since the invasion; months since they last saw Leonardo's devastated face behind the too-quickly closing orange portal.

Months since Donatello holed himself up in his lab to find a way to get his brother back.

Considering Mikey's current level of mystic ability and the strain opening that portal already put on him, another attempt at the orange turtle forcing his way through the dimensional barriers was out of the question unless they wanted to risk losing him too. While his remaining brothers were slowly losing hope and already going through various stages of the grieving process, Donatello was not about to give up that easily.

So he worked tirelessly (apart from sparse naps at his desk when his body refused to stay awake any longer), with empty coffee cups as the only indication of the passage of time. His family tried to get him to rest more but gave up around the three-month mark after he blew up at them and used every cheap trick in the book to hurt them. He wasn't proud of that, but it had to be done; he couldn't afford to be interrupted, not before he brings his twin back.

But one thing shouted at him off-handedly during that fight stuck in his head. "Are you sure there's a Leo left to rescue?"

It struck him then that his family had already given up on Leo and gave him all the more fuel to spit out every horrible thing he could think of at them.

I mean, yeah, they all saw Kraang Prime catch Leonardo right before the portal fizzed out; they all knew that he didn't have his swords anymore to help him fight, but come on! Have some faith in him! Leo always had some convoluted clever plan that would get him out of trouble (usually through more trouble, yes, but ultimately out of it regardless).

Donnie trusted his brother to push through and survive—for his family.

Still, those despondent words were now stuck in his mind, no matter how much he negated them. He had to make sure that Leo was okay. He had to try to connect with his communicator. Maybe they would even be able to talk if he made the connection strong enough! He had tried it briefly before, but he hadn't bothered to enhance the signal at the time, deciding to focus solely on rescue attempts.

The number of empty coffee cups only grew as he switched his focus to learning everything he could about interdimensional signal amplification. There wasn't much information on the subject (with humans being woefully ignorant about pocket dimensions—or any other dimensions for that matter—and yokai, in turn, being ignorant about technology), but he followed every crumb he could get his hands on, no matter how ridiculous. He lost count of the different attempts at connecting with Leo's communicator. Voice communication seemed to be out of the question, at least for now, but surely he could at least check up on his brother's status. To at least make sure that he was okay.

That there was still a Leo left to rescue.

However, no matter what he tried, he always got the same message from the system: 'pulse not found.' It was still the same message as before he even began his signal enhancement attempts. Nothing he did would yield a different result.

He did everything he could, used every option available to him. How could he not have gotten any signal by now?! Not even the faintest of heartbeats, made irregular by the signal disturbances and fluctuations across dimensions?!

Or perhaps...

Donatello didn't want to let the thought enter his head, but it still poked and prodded at his brain after every failed attempt.

What if he had already managed to connect, and the message was actually reflecting the truth?

What if Leonardo was already gone?...

#rottmnt #rottmnt fanart #rottmnt fanfiction #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt comic #rottmnt au #rottmnt leo #short comic #digital art #art #artists on tumblr #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise donnie #rise of the tmnt #rise leo #writing #angst #cw implied death #or rather implied hypothetical death? #I mean we basically have a Schroedinger's cat situation here #Leo's both dead and alive until they manage to open the box (prison dimension) #a Schroedinger's turtle if you will #I haven't written any fanfiction for like ten years so cut me some slack

[pancake-breakfast]

So after reading this thread by @mydetheturk and @shastafirecracker, I got to thinking about Vash as a gun in Trigun Stampede. (I would have responded in thread, but the thread is Trigun Book Club and I'm about to get into spoilers for Stampede here. Which reminds me....)

Spoilers for Trigun Stampede Ahead

The series is called Trigun because Vash has three guns: 1) the one he carries, 2) the one in his prosthetic left arm, and 3) his angel arm. The thread linked above gets into how, throughout Trigun (every iteration, TBH), Vash doesn't simply wield weapons, but because of his angel arm he very literally is a weapon, and that's an identity he resists as much as he can. He doesn't want to be used for violence. He just wants to help people, but his very nature makes pursuing that path a rather difficult one.

In particular, once he's aware of its presence, Vash wants to take every precaution he can to stop from releasing the power that channels through his angel arm, which is understandable since it can literally level cities. That destructive power the antithesis of what Vash wants to be, but it's also an irremovable part of himself... and it's something that Knives covets enough to severely violate Vash in attempt to gain control of it. The power itself might be Vash's, but it's Knives who activates it, forces it into being, and thus compels Vash to both channel it into his angel arm and to pull the trigger on that insanely powerful gun.

However, in Stampede, it's not just the weight of the angel arm that Knives forces on Vash. Knives is literally responsible for Vash having the other two guns, as well.

These can both be traced to episode 9. First, Knives thrusts the handgun into Vash's arms, calling it, "An evil weapon of the Sinners, taking lives easily from afar with the twitch of a finger...."

Nominally, he's doing this to protect Vash. Vash won't raise his hand to take down the humans that literally just overclocked their sisters to death, to protect them or to protect himself, so Knives provides him with a weapon he labels a coward's tool for evil (gun #1). In doing that, he very much implies his brother is both a coward and someone who needs to embrace doing evil in order to survive.

It's only a few minutes later that Knives makes way for the second gun.

Knives slices off Vash's arm to protect him from the power Vash (accidentally) summoned to try to protect Luida from Knives, thus making way for Vash's prosthetic arm (gun #2).

Thus, every shot fired by Vash from either the handgun or the prosthetic is the result of Knives' actions, even when Knives isn't actively sending people to harass Vash.

"But wait," you hypothetically say. "In TriStamp, Vash's prosthetic arm has a grappling gun, not a gun that fires bullets."

You're right.

Interesting that the one gun Vash has the option to choose for himself in Stampede isn't designed for killing. Instead, Vash uses it to try and save himself, and to save Meryl.

(Though all things considered, I wouldn't be surprised if whatever upgrade he has in Season 2 is more in line with what fans of previous Trigun series are used to in his prosthetic arm.)

There's one other thing I'll note before wrapping this up. Going back to Episode 9 of Stampede... Vash is actually very quick to try and use that handgun Knives gives him. But he doesn't use it to defend himself from humans (or anyone else, really) the way Knives wants him to. Instead, he grits his teeth, does his best to steady an unsteady hand, and uses it to try and protect one of the only two humans left standing around them, Luida, from Knives.

#he is constantly CONSTANTLY resisting becoming just a tool for violence #especially a tool for violence against humanity #even when he has every reason to just give up and watch them burn #vash the stampede #millions knives #trigun stampede #anime analysis #pancake analysis

[sexylinoleum]

SNOWGRAVE

Time for some snowgrave analysis. Kinda embarrassed it took my dumb ass almost a year to realize this but nevertheless today I will examine a few lines of Spamton Neo's dialogue.

So these lines seem to directly imply that Spamton believes the end result of whatever the weird route leads to will be Kris' freedom from us, rather than us breaking things because we can or us attempting to gain further control over their world.

The thing is Spamton doesn't just believe that the path of LOVE and murder will break Kris' chains, he seems absolutely certain of it.

Spamton, with his practically eldritch knowledge can, in my opinion, sometimes be taken as a reliable source of information, if you can peel past the layers of his cryptic vernacular. It may be the case that any players who, by the end of Deltarune's story, desperately want Kris to be free to live their own life, may have to venture down a dark path in order to achieve it.

There is a debate to be had as to whether Kris can even survive without the players intervention, I suspect this dialogue from Spamton may be serving as particularly heinous foreshadowing. If I may propose a hypothetical, Kris may require the players soul to live, the only way they can escape that is by growing sufficiently strong in the traditional UT/DR manner, Kris, more likely preferring death for themselves, would have to be forced down such a path presumably by ourselves.

And while I made all of that up, call it speculation, I may not be far off...

Cause for one reason or another, Spamton also seems to believe that in the event that Kris wins their own freedom, they will, for one reason or another, become suicidal.

Crying in a broken home being an obvious reference to Kris' divorced parents and and "WISHING YOU LET YOUR OLD PAL SPAMTON [Kill You]" being a polite and antagonist centric way of saying "Wishing you were dead one way or the other."

There are probably many other ways you could read any of this text but in my opinion, if Spamton is to be taken as an even remotely reliable source of information, this dialogue has severely foreboding implications on the future of Deltarune's morality, and on our own moral integrity as we continue to play it, with the paths before us seemingly being, one, use Kris as a meat puppet to "save" their world and possibly discard them at the end of our adventure or, two, fight for Kris' freedom, ruining their life and destroying their sanity in the process.

But hey, we've only got two chapters so I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

#deltarune #kris dreemurr #kris deltarune #spamton #spamton neo #deltarune theory #snowgrave #wouldn't be surprised if all of these thoughts have been thought before #as I mentioned #im a bit late to the party

[tmagpposting]

So, about TMAGP Ep 4

Some theories based on this newest episode. Major spoilers under the cut, so please go listen to it first.

I know there have been a lot of popular theories up to this point that Augustus would be Jonah Magnus, and episode 4 puts a lot more evidence out there that would seem to support this idea.

Here's what I thought was relevant to this theory after listening through the episode twice this morning:

Augustus is voiced by an older man who I don't think we've ever heard before, and we've never heard Jonah's actual voice either, since he's using Elias's voice throughout all of TMA as far as I'm aware. He sounded vaguely like Jurgen Leitner to me, although I think this is just on account of the fact that the VAs sound similar and not indicative of them being the same person or being meant to voice the same character (I didn't catch who voiced him in the credits and I couldn't find it online, if you all know please tell me and I'll update this)*

The incident report is a very old document, with a writing style and tone reminiscent of the old statements/letters to Jonah in the early days of the institute. It seems like it'd be right up Jonah's alley.

The episode revolves around a man succumbing to a dark power and eventually dedicating himself to it (the freaky bloodlust violin vs the Eye) and recruiting a younger man, in this case his relative, to serve this violent power (though probably after his death in this case, unlike with Jonah), which has some parallels to Jonah's recruitment of Jon and the rest of the staff in TMA.

We don't know much about the universe of TMAGP yet, but we know there is a Magnus institute that has aldready been linked to Eye-esque characteristics like paranoia, suspicion, (fatal) curiosity, and eyes as of Ep 1. It is possible that Augustus could be a version of Jonah from the TMAGP universe, rather than the same Jonah we dealt with in TMA.

.JMJ error could stand for some combination of Jon, Martin, and Jonah's initials, given that Chester and Norris also have Jon and Martin's voices.

In the TMA finale, Jon, Martin, and Jonah (though I assumed he was dead at that time) were close to where the fears were sucked out of the world and sent somewhere else, and Jon and Martin may also have ended up in the OIAR's computers in some form.

On the other hand, here's some evidence against Jonah being Augustus:

The other Jonah theory I've seen posits that Jonah took over RedCanary's body when they went down to investigate the ruins of the magnus institute, assuming that "canaries should stay above ground" and the gory photo of eyes was meant to represent RedCanary's eyes having been ripped out and presumably replaced with Jonah's. If you interpret things this way, it makes it less likely that Jonah is in the computers, unless you think both TMA Jonah and a hypothetical TMAGP Jonah are both around at the same time, though this theory is also a little shaky itself since it seems to be based on only a couple pieces of evidence so far. I first saw a post about this from @thermodynamic-comedian though that post says she saw other people discussing it, so please lmk if you know any major contributors to this theory and I will add them in here too.**

The fact that, to take over as the Eye's pupil, it was implied that Jon had to actually kill Jonah, and he was seemingly dead as of the TMA finale. Death was usually a very hard line in TMA except for a few avatars of the End and near-deaths where characters lost some of their agency (and/or humanity depending on your interpretation) to become an avatar instead (which Jonah already was), so him being back after seemingly already having been killed off isn't super plausible unless it's revealed that he didn't actually die in the first place.

It seems like there's enough evidence at this point that this theory definitely feels viable, though there is nothing definitive that I'm aware of, and there are some things that point to other explanations.

I personally (this is now entering pure opinion territory, tread lightly) don't love the idea of Augustus being Jonah, because I'd prefer it to be someone or something new to the series or something otherwise more surprising, rather than the same central antagonist as last time. There certainly are ways they could pull this off well, and bringing him back definitely doesn't tarnish the story on its own, especially since he was a pretty great villain with a lot of his character left more or less ambiguous or untouched by TMA, but it still feels a bit like relying on nostalgia for TMA to flesh out TMAGP's plot and conflict, at least to me. However, all the evidence pointing to it being Jonah could be some kind of red herring to specifically mislead past fans of TMA and set up for a later twist, or we could just be running our minds in circles and drawing conclusions that won't turn out to be relevant to TMAGP so early on. Only time will actually tell, and regardless, I'm really eager to see what happens.

* UPDATE: Augustus is voiced by Tim Fearon, thank you to @lokicat5 for finding that out! We haven't heard him before on this podcast, so he could be either Jonah Magnus's original voice, or a new character entirely.

** UPDATE: I found and reblogged what seems to be the original theory that Jonah killed and took over RedCanary, it's by @vertigala and @doomatix, check out their post it's pretty cool.

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol spoilers #the magnus archives #tma #the magnus archives spoilers #magpod #tma spoilers #tmagp speculation #tmagp theories #tmagp 04

[frociaggine]

do you have any fic recs for the OG lyctor's ascension or dios apate!

Dios Apate

i will climb the palm tree; i will take hold of its fruit. by elpisflower; rated E

It’s just that—well! The last person who moved inside her is dead, her eyes stolen inside of Mercymorn’s reflection every single day, but besides that—John is too skittish, too reverent, his hands on her waist with an awed shyness that doesn’t suit him.

Kill God, Then We'll Talk by xaalenka; rated E

Dios Apate major from Augustine's POV

Sacrament by @naryrising; rated E

Augustine feels sure she chose this position partly for practicality, but partly so he couldn't avoid looking at her. He makes eye contact deliberately, like an attack, and is mildly gratified when Mercy looks away first. She disguises it as a careless toss of her head, her rose gold hair tumbling back, but Augustine recognizes a flinch when he sees it.

sweet as cherry wine by @darlingofdots; rated E

You had let the Saint of Patience bring the wine, which had been a mistake.

This War of Attrition by @seven-syntheseas; Augustine/John/Mercy longfic, rated E (30k, complete)

attrition (n.): 1. sorrow for one’s sins stemming from a motive other than that of the love of God; 2. friction.

Or, put simply: Dios Apate. Major.

That delightful subgenre of Dios Apate fic that is "Mercymorn and Augustine talk about threesomes and maybe fuck about it while fantasizing about John"

come rip up the flesh from my fears by @darlingofdots; rated E, planning Dios Apate major

The Emperor Undying's First and Second Saint discuss a hypothetical. Hypothetically.

desire followed the glance by @augustmourn; rated E, post Dios Apate minor

“I’ve always thought you’d be particularly good at putting someone over your knee.”

The Offering by @saint-of-joy; rated E, planning Dios Apate major

“Yes, I know,” he said, wearily. “It’s the pretending. It’s demeaning to playact at finding you tolerable.”

“Precisely!!” said Mercy with an emphatic gesture. “I cannot abide Teacher thinking that we’ve settled into domestic bickering after millennia at each other’s throats.”

Mercy and Augustine have a late-night conversation. It devolves from there.

two slow dancers, last ones out by opinionhaver; rated E, post Dios Apate minor

Mercymorn made a noise that was almost a laugh. “Not even two hours ago you were quite the exhibitionist.”

Augustine smiled thinly without opening his eyes. “Does that make you my voyeur?”

Lyctoral ascension

Approaching the Roche Limit by @cadmean; rated E, CNTW, post Lyctoral ascension, Augustine/John dubcon

Every time Augustine closes his eyes, he sees his brother. Every time he opens them and is unfortunate enough to look in a mirror, too. John would really rather he didn't.

Ascension by @rnanqo; rated M, major character death (suicide cw)

Mercymorn is on the brink of cracking the ultimate necromantic theorem. She has no time for parties--unless it would delight her cavalier to go. And Mercymorn would do anything for Cristabel.

Commandments by @catharsis-in-a-bottle; rated T, CNTW (implied suicide)

1. Thou shalt kneel

The point at which Cristabel's love becomes whet as a weapon is the point at which there is no return, especially if she should turn the weapon inward upon herself.

rip my ribcage open (devour what was hers) by @darlingofdots; rated E, grief sex, Mercy/Pyrrha

Sometimes you just ate your cavalier, the love of your life, and you just need to feel something, anything.

Thus Entwined by @catharsis-in-a-bottle; rated T, CNTW

Augustine stares out past the lichen-eaten railing and down into the water. At last, he becomes conscious of his wallowing, to which there is only one proper response: Fuck this. I am finding Alfred, and I am changing something, anything - God knows stagnancy kills.

Or: the Lyctorhood of the Quinque brothers.

you made it (you played it) by Marenke; rated M, CNTW

Mercymorn was the first to crack the theory of God’s immortality alongside Cassiopeia. Augustine, later - when it doesn’t matter anymore -, will say it was him and Cassiopeia, but Mercymorn kept the carefully dated paperwork with her. After all, it was, in all but name, Cristabel’s death certificate.

Wildcard rec!

Not strictly speaking about Lyctoral ascension but Mercy and Augustine's Cake Simulator! by @reconditarmonia is a brilliant work of interactive fiction about love and grief (and baking as a distraction!) and you should absolutely check it out

#Anonymous #tlt fic #fic recs #dios apate #mercymorn #augustine #tlt #ask

[distort-opia]

I always wonder what woud happen if bruce finally got what he wanted and got joker all figured out. Would he get bored of him? I think thats something that joker himself is scared of

It's definitely something Joker fears, yes. In Batman: Death of the Family, he basically jumps off a cliff rather than hear Bruce utter his name or his history, so panicked that he doesn't even consider that Bruce could be bluffing. As to Bruce figuring Joker out... hah. Arguably, he already has.

Bruce has always been obsessed with understanding Joker, and especially during his first decade as Batman. At the basis of it lies both a need for control and the hope that Joker could be rehabilitated, because if Bruce understands Joker, then maybe he could predict him and prevent his crime sprees. Perhaps Bruce could help Joker, have the leverage of Joker's humanity to use in order to reach him.

Detective Comics #1027 -- Many Happy Returns

It's an essential component of their dynamic: Bruce desperately asking "why?" and Joker laughing in his face, symbolizing both Batman's need for constructing meaning and Bruce's need for connection and understanding. Something that Joker eternally resists.

Batman (2016) #67 -- All The Way Down

But the paradox is that, at the same time, Bruce doesn't entirely want to figure Joker out. This is partly covered by a bigger pattern of behavior for Bruce that I talked about before-- the fact that, despite verbally supporting the rehabilitation of his Rogues, Bruce tends to be mean-spirited, distrustful and paranoid when it actually happens. In many ways he thinks of the Rogues as his; they're all in the dark, they're all wrestling with various kinds of demons, and Bruce includes himself in it. This is most apparent in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth, in which Bruce's biggest fear is the fact Arkham would feel like home. So... if the Rogues truly rehabilitated, what then? Where would that leave him? Bruce has a crippling fear of abandonment as a consequence of losing his parents, and it extends to this.

It's true for Joker more than for anyone else, I suppose. Bruce refuses to let Joker die, even in bonkers circumstances in which his code would allow for it. He also has apparently known all along what he needs to do in order to... undo Joker. If Death of the Family established anything, it's that Bruce never needed to kill Joker in order to get him to stop. The end shows that Bruce knows Joker very well, and thus he knows that the thing Joker fears most is the ghost of his own past. All he needed to do was hint that he had uncovered Joker's history, and Joker basically committed suicide. Yet Bruce hasn't used this before, and he hasn't used it against Joker since.

But I absolutely need to mention the controversial and dubiously-canonical Batman: The Three Jokers (intended to be a spiritual successor to Batman: The Killing Joke) that explores the idea that Joker might've been separate people over time (but not really). This comic is disliked for very valid reasons, but it does something very interesting, at least in the realm of the hypothetical: it shows that Bruce has known who Joker was and where his family is all along. Coupled with the fact that this comic specifically connects The Comedian to New 52 and Endgame... it implies that at least in this story, Bruce wasn't bluffing when he said he knew Joker's real identity in Death of the Family.

But he doesn't use it. Not in Endgame, not in The Three Jokers. I talked about this story more extensively here, but the reasoning that he does it to protect Joker's hidden family is very weak, because Bruce could just omit the fact Jeannie and her child survived. If he's worried about the paper trail, it's ridiculous to assert that Batman doesn't have the resources to fake their death certificates or bury the clues. Hell, the press wouldn't need to find out, he could only tell the truth to Joker and watch him unravel as a result. But he doesn't! In his own words...

Batman: The Three Jokers #3

So... this comic basically goes to show that Bruce wouldn't get bored if he figured out the "mystery" of Joker. Rather that he'd just keep it a secret, and maintain the status quo (even though it's painfully selfish and destructive of him to do so). And even if you see The Three Jokers as out of main continuity, Death of the Family remains as a testament to the fact Bruce knows Joker. He knows what might get Joker to stop, but he's only ever threatened it and never resorted to it since, despite seeing proof of it working.

At the end of the day, Bruce getting bored with Joker is unlikely. It would be a real possibility if their dynamic was based only on Bruce's curiosity and obsession regarding Joker, but it isn't. That's simply a component of it, one of the pillars. Bruce needs Joker in other ways-- bigger ways, that overshadow knowing Joker's name. Joker needs to remain an equal who can oppose Batman... and thus, he keeps coming back, whether he likes it or not. Bruce drags him with him; and I wish I was being metaphorical, but this is literally what Bruce did in Going Sane and the nebulous time between Batman (2011) #48 and Dark Days: The Casting.

The tragedy, though, is that Joker would never trust Batman to still be there outside of the murder and the mayhem he thinks Batman needs. The thought of Bruce caring about him outside of his Joker persona is an impossibility... because Joker utterly hates who he used to be, and sees no value in himself (or anything, for that matter). He can't comprehend Bruce valuing him as a human being, worth knowing or saving.

#man I got long again #hope this was a fun read Anon #asks #long post #batman #bruce wayne #joker #batman meta #batjokes #batjokes meta #my meta #suicide mention

[arand0mdutchgirl]

Rwrb text post / fic preview

Little "i'd die for you" preview: coming to ARandomDutchGirl on ao3 on oct first for firstprinceweek day 5!

I'd die for you

aRandomDutchGirl

Summary:

First prince week day 5: life or death DETECTIVES HUSBANDS AU The one where Alex and Henry go undercover together and Henry takes a bullet for Alex ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING I PROMISE

TW: for implied vomiting and fearing that you're going to die and mention of alcohol

Henry takes a sip of his beer and frowns at the man sitting next to him.

"So are you going to tell me what got you so pissed mate?" Henry asks, hoping he comes off as an interested friend instead of an interested undercover detective.

Chris sighs.

"Why am I so- I'll tell you why I'm f****** pissed. F***** snakes, I swear ****-"

It's as if Henry's whole world pauses for a second.

Of course, he knew going into this mission that he could get caught.

But the hypothetical is a lot less terrifying than the reality.

Henry presses his nails into his trembling hand forcing it to stop shaking, because he'll won't be able to deny the accusations and win back the trust of these bloody terrible people if he's shaking in fear.

He downs his beer which isn't a good choice because it makes him want to vomit from fear and adrenaline rather than drowning his anxiety.

He takes a deep breath.

At least Alex isn't with him right now.

Alex might be able to make it out of this mission alive. 

As long as he doesn't blow his cover when he finds out the people he's pretending to belong with murdered his husband.

Christ. Why did they ever agree to go on this mission?

They knew it was dangerous.

Much more so than the ones they've gone on in the past. (Not that they weren't terrifying in their own way).

But they figured they'd be fine as long as they faced the danger together.

Which was rather stupid, because Henry knows that if the situation were reversed and Alex was the one with the blown cover...

He knows there is no way in hell he'd be able to keep his cool and keep up his fake identity after finding out his husband had died.

But Alex is going to have to try because if he fails to keep his false identity his cover will be blown too.

And the only thing worse than knowing Henry is going to die right here surrounded by these bloody awful people he was so sure he was going to get to arrest, is knowing his death essentially caused his husband's death as well.

So he hopes with everything he's got that when  Alex finds out about Henry's death, he won't fall apart until after he's arrested these men.

Henry can only hope Alex won't let himself deal with his husband's death until he's at a safe place to do so.

A laugh catches Henry's attention and brings him back to reality. "Oliver? Are you good? You look like hell mate!"

First Henry thinks it's a trap but it doesn't take long to figure out the man has no clue Henry is one of those snakes he just cussed out.

Meaning someone else's cover got blown...

The realization comes crashing in on Henry and before he knows it he retches.

It's not his cover that got blown.

It's Alex's.

Cr: song die first by Nessa Barrett (so Henry coded i'm gonna cry😭)

Ss cr: most from @aplaceinme and i'm not sure about one of them but if it's your ss tell me and i'll cr you!

O(i did not spent 30 minutes searching pinterest for this just to find the ss i was looking for on tumblr within one second (yes i did ugh)

#alex x henry #prince henry of wales #alex and henry #rwrbedit #rwrb alex #henry fox mountchristen windsor #alex claremont diaz #red white and royal blue #rwrb trailer #red white and royal blue movie #firstprince week 2023 #rwrb film #rwrb fic #a03 fic #firstprince week #firstprince

[slavonicrhapsody]

my sister is playing elden ring for the first time and she's convinced godwyn was in on the night of the black knives. her reasoning is that it's strange that a demigod known for taking part in a war against dragons would put up so little of a fight and that he doesn't seem like he would approve of morgott and mohg being thrown down a well, that marika doing that might've been enough to make him lose faith in the golden order. I don't know if there's anything in game that particularly supports that interpretation but I do think it's a very interesting characterization, that godwyn would allow himself to be killed to bring about the end of something he once supported but now sees as fundamentally corrupt.

As far as I could find, there isn’t really any hard evidence for or against this theory, so my feelings on this theory are solely character-based… while I do think it would make Godwyn’s character interesting, I actually think it would make Ranni’s character less interesting. 

The crux of Ranni’s character for me is her being willing to go through with the unthinkable because she believes it necessary to achieve her goals; how the idea of being controlled by a higher power against her will is so intolerable to her that she would choose to condemn another person (her step-brother, someone who was by all accounts a rather decent person) to a horrific fate, a fate worse than death, in order to avoid it. Godwyn being a willing sacrifice instead of a victim takes some of the blame away from Ranni and makes her choice less morally difficult, which makes her choice less impactful to me. 

I do like the idea of Godwyn becoming more jaded about the Golden Order as time went on though… It’s implied that Godwyn was close with Miquella and Malenia, and both of them ended up ditching the Golden Order. And we don’t have any evidence of Godwyn interacting with the omen twins, but I love the hypothetical of Godwyn regretting not being able to save his twins brothers, so he later becomes protective of his twin brother and sister? 

But anyway in conclusion I don’t really like the theory that Godwyn sacrificed himself solely because of how it would affect Ranni’s character. Hoping we’ll get more Godwyn answers in the DLC though 

#elden ring #asks #ranni #godwyn #i love living in the space of sympathizing with ranni's goals but seeing her do something horrible to someone in order to achieve them #really makes you consider: are her goals truly worth achieving if this is how she pursues them? was it worth it? was the cost too high? #and for me this scenario necessitates her non-consensually murdering said guy

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

This one guy on Youtube said vulnerability sentimonsters have isn't much worse than humans being able to be killed so easily, what can you say to prove that's BS?

The way you phrased this makes it sound like this is more of a philosophy question than it is a question of wrong or right. I'd never claim that anyone who chooses to give up their free will instead of dying is somehow objectively wrong, it's just not a choice that I'd personally make. Or, at least, I don't think I would.

Is it better to die free than to be a slave? Does your answer change based on the kind of life you'll live as a slave? Does it change based on what you'll be forced to do?

There are several extreme hypothetical scenarios where I would argue that your YouTube friend is in the wrong about it being no worse than death. For example, the fact that Adrien could be forced to kill his wife and children with a smile on his face is horrifying. I think the vast majority of people would rather die than kill their loved ones, but if Adrien is never put in that situation and only has to deal with the potential of it happening, is that meaningfully worse than the pervasive fear of our own demise? Is it worse than the fear of driving a car with your kids in it, knowing that an accident could happen at any time?

This is why I don't say that the sentiplot is bad in and of itself. In the hands of a good writing team, it could be used to ask some really interesting questions.

I've said before that the senitplot is worthy of Madoka Magica and I really meant that. No spoilers, but for those who haven't seen that anime, Madoka Magica is dark fantasy/psychological thriller that basically takes the magical girl genre and treats middle schoolers saving the world as the serious, mess up concept it would be if done in reality. But, notably, it is still a magical girl show with strong themes of love and friendship. (I just realized that Madoka freaking Magica does Power of Love better than Miraculous...) It's not my favorite show, but it is a very good one that can lead to a lot of good discussion.

The senti plot belongs in a show like that. Multiple season of sentimonsters being your cannon fodder species only to have a twist that your main character is part of that species? That's the setup for a dark fantasy/psychological thriller if I ever saw one! You could have some really interesting discussion of the concept of cannon fodder species because it's certainly not a criticism-proof concept. But, no. Adrien, Felix, and Kagami are Special and Totally Different from other sentimonsters and how dare you imply anything negative about the heroes killing sentimonsters!?!?

#ml writing salt #ml writing critical #senti salt

[see-arcane]

i really love your idea of Ghoul for Jonathan it's so good

Thank you! Honestly there are a ton of good monster/cryptid Jonathan ideas out there alongside the 'maybe he's a diet vampire?' theories. The ghoul thing (as I've rambled about before) is born of the whole 'suddenly taking on corpsey coloring' + 'the religious stuff doesn't hurt him and he seems to be All About killing the Count' = 'being generally more eerie and unsettling' = 'freaky creature that hunts the (un)dead and has no known issue with Christian paraphernalia' = that boy seems a bit ghoulish!

And while Dracula absolutely stole a drink the last night in the castle, I've never been 100% on that being a basis for Jonathan being any kind of pseudo vampire born of the Count's nibbling. It'd mean he was tethered to Dracula too, and for a longer period than Mina. But Dracula is shitting bricks enough to run from Jonathan rather than fight him with the kukri in hand. So he clearly suspects something is up with this young man that's worth worrying about. Even when Jonathan had scuttled down the side of the house and was giving chase entirely solo ahead of the others, Dracula never turned to fight him.

Sounds like the kind of thing a walking corpse would do if he knew a ghoul was chasing him with his giant cutlery out.

...But, in hindsight, I can also see a different kind of Semi-Vampire!Jonathan in action here. One that's even more worrisome than Dracula's implied brand of vampire, the Romanian strigoi. Say, the same kind of pallid, washed-out vampires we see in, "The Family of the Vourdalak," by Alexei Tolstoy.

A story which involves vampires who are immune to traditional vampire destruction methods like being staked through the heart, et cetera, and focus obsessively on 'collecting' their loved ones and mercilessly slaughtering anyone else.

As an aside, the eponymous vourdalak vampire (note, more appropriately spelled 'wurdulac', being based on the Russian vampire, but we'll use vourdalak for the gothic lit spelling), Gorcha, is introduced carrying the severed head of a man he was hunting in the mountains.

As another aside, it's implied at the climax that this breed of vampire is bound to their homes/physical location they were turned, meaning the whole village of these washed out, corpse-eyed undead are only a threat to those who enter their territory. Or those who threaten to take away their loved ones.

As another other aside, in, "Dracula's Guest," Stoker's unused prologue to the novel, we see Jonathan come across an undead village in Munich. One that pours out a hoard of vampires from their graves in a wild tide. He blacks out during this; then he wakes to Dracula the Wolf laying on top of him just outside the village's boundary. The story mentions the Wolf licking his throat and the soldiers who find Jonathan notice a mark on his neck.

Now, this could be Dracula taking a first sip long before Mr. Harker gets to the castle; a token for his troubles in keeping the solicitor safe. And maybe that's all it was.

Or else those vampires were not strigoi at all, but something a touch more territorial. Sturdier. Obsessive. Corpse-colored. Driven by love and loathing at their greatest extremes.

The vourdalaks of the short story are shown to need full death for their turning. Jonathan, if he was purely hypothetically bitten by such a vampire before his rescue, would not be at risk of full conversion until the day he died. Certainly not enough to make him an anchored undead bloodsucker. ...But perhaps enough to start suffering some noticeable changes once certain Dracula-shaped stimuli began setting things off.

Which presents the lovely idea of Dracula not just running from a group of vampire hunters, but a group including one very pissed off even worse vampire-in-the-making whose whole deal is 1) Being nigh indestructible and riddled with super strength, 2) Wholly unstoppable when it comes to killing anyone who isn't a loved one; especially someone who just did a great big no-no by biting his wife, and 3) Isn't undead enough to be hampered by the territory rule.

Whether Jonathan's a Semi-Ghoul or a Guaranteed-to-Fuck-You-Up brand of Semi-Vampire, Dracula screwed up regardless, because either way he's now got Gothic Horror Jason Voorhees coming after his head.

#Dracula: You know what maybe it was a bad idea to become this guy's villain origin story after all #jonathan harker #monster jonathan harker #ghoul #vourdalak #wurdulac #vampire jonathan theory #dracula #dracula daily

[brightside-brigade]

rambling about chapter 3! Under cut because spoilers and also long.

So, overall thoughts? I enjoyed this experience very much, although I feel some things could have been utilized or used better. Am I saying this because I wanted to see Catnap and the other Critters more? Kinda. I understand that this chapter was more back story oriented and not character oriented, and that kind of shows. But overall I won't complain toooooo much.

As far as everything else, it's good. We're getting into that now.

Let me talk about Catnap himself, or my nightmare baby as I've taken to calling him. Despite being under used for as much as he was hyped, I'm still very happy with his overall appearance. He's not actually a threat up until the end, but can be seen semi frequently throughout the chapter, constantly lurking and observing. Constantly stretching and contorting to find you wherever you may be. His legs are so stilted and stiff. Like fur stretched poorly over bones. As he's meant to be. His bones are visible, and it reminds me a bit of my own decrepit old cat.

As for his second form, I wish we saw a bit more of it. I can see a mix of inspirations in his design, obviously the Cheshire cat, but also the Caterpillar from Alice in wonderland, as guessed by his insect like appearance and the gas expelled, similar to how said caterpillar smoked and produced. I also see some xenomorph in there, looking at the tail and back, as well as his overall hunting patterns.

And for his "death", there's a good bit to be said, though I'm not sure how to word it. We didn't kill him at the end of his boss fight, rather just burned off all his fur. Although weakened he was still clearly alive. However he willing gave himself to the prototype, which given his character points make sense. Maybe the prototype gave him a less painful death than what we would have delivered, or perhaps he's not dead at all, not entirely anyway. He will hypothetically live on in the form of the prototype, but he could also be brought back in later chapters to some capacity Similar to huggy.

The rest of the Smiling Critters though, we do not know much about, apart from what we can gather from the audio in their cutouts. Which, while short, tell us a lot. The ones that stand out the most to me are Hoppy Hopscotch and Kickin' Chicken (who sounds like Ed). Also shout out to Picky Piggy. Cannibalism for the win! (Or maybe not, because its not the same species... hm.)

Hoppy sticks out to me due to how hopeless she sounds. It sounds like she's trying to calm someone (perhaps a child, unfortunately), into jumping "to the moon,". But if I had to guess, it wasn't actually to the moon and was instead a way out of the terrible situation, or maybe she really did think they could escape to the moon. However the last audio clip does have her screams, presumably as she falls to her death.

Kickin Chicken, though, is another story. The most obvious thing is that he's never actually been outside, mirroring the orphans, but it also mirrors his last moments before getting picked off just as he steps outside, possibly outside the playcare. This may have been during the hour of joy, but it also could have been at any time, something done to anyone who somehow escaped the playcare.

What really interests me is the cutouts that don't end in screams. This makes me wonder if Bobby Bearhug and CraftyCorn turned more violent then the others. This does include Picky Piggy, but that one is more obvious based on her audio.

Otherwise, we have Miss Delight. A robotic teacher, who as it seems, knows a lot about human organs. As all things should be. (/lh). It's also heavily implied she ate her sisters, and was highly violent and would have harmed the children if given the chance. If I had to guess, this was prevented by lights being on during the school as the light freezes her in place. She was also honestly under used, her encounter feeling a little too condensed. It's just one time, go go go, and then done. Once again I won't complain mush as this is a more lore oriented chapter.

Unfortunately this is why I have little to say on Poppy, Kissy, and Dog Day. As interesting as they were, Poppy was really just there as a lore vector, Kissy as an emotional grab, and Dog Day to... make us greatly uncomfortable? This isn't to say I don't like them, in fact, I love them! I just find myself wanting more, although maybe not of Dog Day because that was a nightmare on its own. Eugh.

What's really on me though is the overall lore. They really didn't pull any punches. Starting with the PT like section in home sweet home, in which the radios tell us about Elliott, and the child's body they found in his house that was missing bones and organs. You know it's probably on me for thinking he was chill, but. Uh. Damn man. Not cool. (Also shout out to that whole section for the hallucinations bit. Re-Village style, makes me very happy to see.). Of course, he was already dead and I suspect just as well he could have been set up by whoever took over the company.

The most viscerally upsetting thing is arguably the cribs in home sweet home. The broken and bloody toys inside them do not bode well. You look and just know something awful happened. And it did. This and one of the tapes in which a couple comes to pick up a child to adopt, only to find out he's been taken for testing. This paints an overall bleak and disgusting picture of the company, which is what we all suspected, but somehow even worse and more blatant. I'd say the whole hour of joy was warranted, in a way, minus the innocents that got caught up in it.

Aaaannnd there you have it! A very disorganized ramble about chapter 3. I overall had a great time! I can't wait to see how much worse/better it gets in the future.

#poppy playtime #poppy playtime chapter 3 #smiling critters #poppy playtime smiling critters

[screwzara]

Ok What If....

Amato and his wife just weren't there after bbb was born like they went missing/died or some shit and mechabot got left behind or something?

I imagine the robots in Kota Hilir would be worried about bbb constantly(like c'mon it's clear the robots care a lot about this kid) and mechabot would probably get really protective. Idk if mechabot would stay in Kota Hilir with the other robots or go with bbb(probably the latter becuz, trauma and another thing that i don't have the word for rn, the bot basically lost it's master again in both cases i mentioned. The least it can do is protect its master's/..friend's offspring spawn child)

Oh, and bbb meeting Ochobot for the first time will go so differently if mechabot actually stayed with bbb at Rintis island not only because this would be a chance encounter through and through but mechabot would probably not let Ochobot stay with bbb unless Ochobot did something that proved there was no danger for bbb(it be protective) plus the fact that a power sphere *cough* the destruction power sphere mechabot *cough* is present would be enough to make a big statement about this family in particular(not that helpful in mechabot's hypothetical mission to protect bbb at all costs so)

Also technically speaking, if we go down the missing route the mechanizer never came back to mechabot since technically(I'm guessing here) Amato didn't die like mechabot's previous master so it is kinda safe ig from being forced to harm others(unless they have a different device that allows that)

Going down the death path, however would imply that bbb and his friends would have to deal with the looming threat of someone trying to take mechabot and becoming it's new master which Tok Aba already knows will lead to a lot of problems if that person/alien happens to be bad(which is rather likely) and the risk of Ochobot getting stolen is there too

How would this change affect bbb?

I feel like I'm trying to make things more hectic and complicated for boboiboy, his family(Tok Aba only in the context of this post) and his friends :')

Tell me what u think would happen cuz this thought just struck me-

Edit: Next part to the post *screams internally cuz there is already a reblog for this post and i didn't add this link before*

#what if #boboiboy #boboiboy galaxy #mechamato #mechabot #amato mention #amato's wife aka bbb's mom mention #robots of kota hilir #thoughts go brrrr

[fantasyinvader]

If you think about it, each Houses’ relationship with the three poisons/flames makes Edelgard a foil to their leader.

Eagles/Attachment: Byleth may hear Edelgard’s backstory and even begin to understand her reasoning, but at the end of the day they don’t allow that attachment to blind them. They can see the points that contradict her narrative or the reality of her actions.

Edelgard, on the other hand, is unwilling to question the stories her father told her even when evidence to the contrary is spelt out right in front of her. For instance, she insists the experiments were because the nobility wanted to make a strong Emperor while Thales, the one who conducted the experiments, tells her they wanted to make her a weapon against the Goddess and Rhea. She’s willing to cut everyone else out of her life, including those she once had romantic feelings for, except him.

Lions/Delusion. Dimitri’s arc is him letting go of his belief that he needs to avenge the dead, living for them, which also ends up torturing him as he’s fully aware that he’s hurting others and believes himself worthy of death himself. He’s suicidal before he’s taught to let it go and learn to live for himself, which results in him wanting to make things better for people now rather than later.

Edelgard, comparatively, says that her actions will be justified by the people who will benefit from them in the future. That it doesn’t matter if she’s causing people to suffer now, as those hypothetical people will be better off for it. She’s doing this all for people WHO DON’T EXIST. She’s willing to kill as many people and push her ideology onto them because IMAGINARY PEOPLE will benefit from them. She has dehumanized her own casualties by claiming that the people who aren’t even alive yet will outnumber them. She’s even willing to turn herself into a monster for this yet still believes she’s fighting for humanity. That’s delusional, especially when her reforms are said to oppress the people and kill anyone who dissents.

Deer/Hatred and Aversion. Claude has been viewed as an outsider his entire life, blaming it on the Church of Seiros building a fort between Fodlan and Almyra. Seeming to pick up on this, Solon tries to feed him information against Rhea. While his feelings towards the Church result in him manipulating them into liberating the Great Bridge so he can march on the Empire in SS, resulting in his defeat and leaving the Alliance to rot rather than hand anything over to it, in the Deer route he works with the Church due to his teacher. This also leads to him questioning his assumptions about them and even viewing them as a positive influence. He leaves Fodlan in the care of Byleth, Rhea’s successor, and takes back lessons from the Alliance to transform Almyra into a country that invades for shits and giggles into a trading one to help cultural exchange occur in support of his ideals.

In contrast, Edelgard blames the Church for societies ills because of her father’s stories. Her father is heavily implied to have been a puppet of TWSITD, the people who tortured her and whose actions and influence on the Empire she canonically turns a blind eye to in order to attack the Church. Even when she does kick them out in Hopes, she continues to go after the Church.

Per JPN Dimitri, Edelgard’s path is the animal one. The antithesis of the path of Enlightenment. With Byleth, Dimitri and Claude all having one of the three poisons/flames as a flaw that could ruin them, Edelgard has all three. Her route is the antithesis of the rest of the game, it’s the villain route.

[sebastianshaw]

I decided to do the questions *I* want from THIS FANTASTIC X-MEN ASK MEME by @katatonicimpression​ instead of reblogging it, because I know which ones I want to answer/have an answer for and which ones I don’t, so here’s a bunch of X-opinions! 2. The best thing about the Krakoa era is....? Absolutely having characters together that would just otherwise never interact, or never interact in a non-battle context. It’s such fantastic fuel for dynamics and development that could probably not happen in any other setting. This is added to with the “bringing people back” aspect, which I also really like, for the same reason---it makes for stories and interactions that just couldn’t be done in anything else before.  6. What's the funniest retcon? Shinobi’s paternity. I hate it, yeah, but it’s also so hilarious because Duggan wanted SO BAD to remove all Shaw’s connections that he for real fucking wrote Shaw, whom he otherwise really wants to demonize, as choosing to take on a child as his that he knew very well might not be at all. Like. No. No, that’s so wrong it’s actually FUNNY. It’s stupid and I dislike it for a lot of reasons, but it’s also just HILARIOUS. It could be he was trying to give Shaw some kind of complexity, and while I do think he did make an attempt with that in other issues, here I think it’s more that Duggan seems to think it’s “boys vs girls” with his cast and Shaw, being our sexist villain, would always help another man out (which, ok, it is Harry, but) I also cannot prove this or base it on anything, but I really truly believe that he wanted to put in that Shaw’s actually impotent or infertile, and just wasn’t allowed to. It seems like his brand of “feminist” dudebro writing that shoots down evil sexist men using....sexism, like when Kate calls him a bitch, which is cool when she does it but bad when he does it, because it’s not using the term “bitch” is sexist, it’s just who uses it! Just like how his Emma is a “feminist” who uses a ton of gendered insults in the second issue to refer to some hypothetical woman she thinks Shaw is sleeping with.  But yeah, the one time he writes Shaw being anything other than a strawman, it’s still THE MOST WILDLY OOC THING POSSIBLE and I just have to laugh at that point. Runners up: - Sinister was originally intended to be the projection or creation of a mutant child, albeit an immortal one, who couldn’t grow up “So he built himself an agent in a sense, which was Mister Sinister, that was, in effect, the rationale behind Sinister's rather—for want of a better word—childish or kid-like appearance. The costume... the look... the face... it's what would scare a child.” (quote from C.laremont) And then they don’t use that, so it’s “he looks like this because he’s literally just that flamboyant and ridiculously over the top” I mean yeah that’s not technically the reason for the white skin and all, but it’s funny.  - The first backstory we get from Emma is in G.eneration X where she tells the kids her parents placed her in an institution when she started “hearing voices” from her budding telepathy. She implies she was sexually assaulted by the guards until her psychic powers increased enough to make one carry her out...and she burned the place down behind her. We learn later through her backstory series that this isn’t what happened at all, even if it was likely intended as the truth at the time. You can mush them together I guess, and I think a lot of people do, but if she was indeed lying, then that means that. . .she stole her brother Christian’s horribly traumatic story (being put in an asylum by their parents), then decided to add in some rape implications for drama, all for a story she is telling TO TEENAGERS ON CHRISTMAS EVE . And if it was the truth? It means she also BURNED ALL THE OTHER INNOCENT INMATES TO DEATH WITH ZERO THOUGHTS OR REGRET.  So either option is so horrible it’s actually hilarious to me.  8. 🔪 to your throat, Rob Liefeld or Greg Land? I hate Land, but I will say he drew one of the best Shaws (it’s the one in my sidebar!) and his art isn’t as immediately ugly as Liefield’s is. . . but I give t to Liefeld because firstly, HE DOESN’T TRACE PORN, and secondly, his brand of bad is also just funnier. Like come on the pouches and guns and tiny feet are funny, Land’s porn traces are just gross. I also just feel his art is more sincere, I guess. Like it took TIME to put 80 billion lines on everyone’s face and a million pouches and all that weaponry. I don’t think it looks good but I can at least respect the effort. 15. Which x-parent is the worst parent? Harness. I’m not talking about Harness. You can look her up. But since no one else will bring up Harness, I’m bringing up Harness. 16. Who has the kinkiest powers? (No explanation required) Benedict Kine. Of course he was in Shinobi’s Inner Circle, even if they didn’t get along. it actually perpetually shocks me he wasn’t designed by Claremont but I guess he’d be written very differently if he was 17 Favourite villain team? OG Hellions. They were the first dead D-list baddies I ever got fixated on, way back when I was about 13 years old. They’re really not villainous at all, making what happened to them so much more tragic, and they had some very interesting personalities and dynamics with each other and the heroes. If I had to pick some REAL villains, it would of course be the Hellfire Club, followed by the Upstarts, I like pretty much all the Upstarts to varying degrees. Yes, even Fitzroy--I hated him as a child because he killed the Hellions, but now I actually like him quite well and am more just frustrated his backstory with his future’s Emma (his motive for the massacre) was never expanded. I think he’s an example of how I learned to view characters not as real people who need to be hated and punished for the things they did bad, and more as tools who did their job in the story badly, or well, or COULD have done better in the right hands (like him and a lot of my favs) Of course there’s still a lot of “seeing them as a person” to me too, it’s why I also can’t stand certain villains because they’ve just crossed a particular line for me, but I think generally I take a position between then two, hence my fondness for absolutely ROTTEN people in particuliar!

#I'm feeling better so thought I'd do this while I watched a movie #out of shirt

[antonius-scriptor]

I'm just wondering how events would have played out if "Petersen" would have arrived at Hogwarts a year earlier than he did, and how this would have affected the chamber of secrets, the basilisk, Ginny and the diary...

Hmm, now there’s an interesting hypothetical…

If Petersen is the one to intercept Harry and Ron (instead of Snape, or perhaps along with Snape) as they’re entering the castle after flying the car there, that could change a bunch. If nothing else, Petersen would probably be sceptical of Snape’s claims that they’d done it for attention-seeking reasons.

Petersen would doubtless be very unimpressed with Lockhart, and would probably take notice of Harry’s discomfort with the special attention Lockhart paid him even outside of class time, and would probably speak to Lockhart about it (or get Dumbledore to.) Perhaps Harry would have the detention following the first Quidditch practice with Petersen instead of Lockhart, which would probably serve to have Harry realise that Petersen isn’t an enemy and is definitely not like Filch (and for Petersen to likewise learn about Harry.)

If Petersen’s offices are anywhere near the pipes, and Harry hears the same “disembodied voice” that he heard during detention with Lockhart, Petersen would definitely take the matter much more seriously than Lockhart did (likely realizing that Harry isn’t making it up to try and get out of detention) and report the matter to Dumbledore (as well as the Inquisition.) I’m not sure whether the staff would do anything immediately; perhaps they’d initially guess there’s some undiscovered ghost or some other unknown feature of the castle.

Since there’s no Filch, there’s no Mrs Norris, and so she couldn’t have been the first victim of the petrifications. Who or what would be is another question; since Mrs Norris was not merely lying around but “strung up,” that implies she was deliberately targeted; some other animal receiving the same treatment seems likely enough. Since Petersen and Dumbledore already know about the ‘disembodied voice,’ Harry would likely tell them about hearing it again, and they’d likely realise it was probably connected to the message and petrification.

After that point, there are a variety of different ways events could play out. If nothing else changes beyond the staff and faculty knowing what Harry does, they’d likely piece things together after Harry’s use of Parseltongue at the Duelling Club and the death of Hagrid’s roosters, at which point they’d probably try and set some trap (which’d likely succeed in catching Ginny, so long as ‘Riddle’ remains ignorant of their knowledge.) Or, perhaps Petersen would learn from Dumbledore what happened the last time the Chamber was opened, interview Myrtle, and then discover the Chamber’s entrance even before that. Or, maybe Percy Weasley would take advantage of Petersen’s office hours (or Petersen would wind up inviting him for some reason or another, since he’s a prefect, after all), and Percy would mention how hard of a time Ginny seemed to be having adjusting, and Petersen would talk to her (without Percy present) and somehow learn or suspect what was happening to her.

(Meanwhile, if the Inquisition doesn’t have a countermeasure effective against petrification, you can be sure they would pour a bunch of resources into developing one rather quickly during all this, and they’d likely get it to Petersen as soon as possible, which could make things even more interesting.)

After the basilisk was dead, Ginny was safe, and the diary in Dumbledore’s hands (possibly intact), it’s hard to say what would happen next. The diary seems to be more ‘aware’ than most of the other horcruxes; it’s possible Dumbledore would manage to (forcibly) glean information from it that he would’ve taken years to acquire otherwise. Meanwhile, depending on Petersen’s role in the proceedings, he could wind up on Pettigrew’s radar as a potential threat, potentially altering how third year played out.

Ultimately, though, I think that Filch’s retirement and Petersen’s application and hiring were motivated by the year’s events, making the hypothetical rather improbable (and the fic itself, meanwhile, would be very different if it had started in second year, instead of third.)

#harry potter and the catholic inquisition #hp:ci

[richmond-rex]

tbh, while it's certainly possible that Edward IV wanted Richard III to be the Lord Protector of the realm, I personally think that the claim should be questioned far more than it is.

The first reason is that it's Richard who claimed it. The same person who arrested Anthony Woodville and Richard Gray and claimed they had a conspiracy against him, that the Woodvilles stole the treasury, that they were plotting against the king, that Elizabeth Woodville was a witch, brought up claims that Edward IV was a bastard, and that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville's marriage was invalid. All of which are highly dubious or outright nonsense, and part of the immense propaganda Richard waged upon his opposition during his time in power.

Considering the fact that the edited will hasn't survived (and the 1475 one conveniently has) and the fact that we don't even know what the extra codicil was ... I think that Richard claiming his brother named him Lord Protector should, analytically speaking, be seen as rather questionable given his long list of other dubious claims at that time? And that it would be highly convenient for Richard if it was true, just like the sudden discovery of his brother's supposedly invalid marriage. I think it's quite strange that so many people, generally Ricardians, view it as an undoubted fact (and it's written that way on Wikipedia as well RIP)

I think it's also strange because obviously Edward's 1475 will can't be compared to an edited will years lated made before his immediate death, the fact remains that Edward didn't even name Richard (or George) in that will. While things must have obviously changed and he favored Richard greatly towards the end of his life, he showed Richard favor before 1475 as well. It's possible that he decided he wanted Richard to be Protector due to his loyal and admirable performance in Scotland and so a strong hand govern the realm until his son was ready...and it's also very likely that, understandably expected Richard to show the same loyalty that he had shown him to his son, help him govern, and work together with the Woodvilles, without any formal position of the kind. Especially considering the sheer amount if power and influence Richard had already been given. And of course, I think it's quite strange for Edward IV to want his toddler son to rule and be governed by a council in 1475, but somehow wanted his 12-year old son to have a Lord Protector who wouldn't really last for more than 4-5 years max anyway.

Nor did the Croyland Chronicle state or even imply that Edward's will was dismissed or disregarded by the council or the Woodvilles - it seemed to imply the opposite, in fact, and praised Elizabeth Woodville during the council. (I also feel like, if a lord Protector HAD been named, it's an extremely important bit of information that should have been mentioned somewhere? The only mention of it seemed to have come from Richard's claims)

(And even in the hypothetical situation that Edward IV DID want Richard as Protector... I really don't think he would have wanted him to target, exclude and antagonist his wife and his in laws the way he did? To say nothing of Richard's actions afterwards. Or the fact that, like you mentioned, Edward's wishes didn't really apply once he was dead unless it was for sentiment or image politics. And the council seemed pretty clear on the fact that they wanted Edward V to be crowned)

Hi! Yeah, it really makes one wonder, though I suppose the Croyland continuator did say they invested him temporarily as Lord Protector (or acquiesced to his request) and I think most of them would have seen Edward's last will. Now, their acquiescence doesn't necessarily mean Edward IV really did name his brother protector, maybe it could be something more dubious that Richard interpreted in that way but not everyone agreed with his interpretation? For some reason, they agreed to make him lord protector even if for a short time, and I don't think he threatened the whole council for that or else the continuator would likely have remarked on that fact.

Like I said in my previous ask, I don't think it's out of character for 1482-1483 Edward IV to have done that considering he had just given his brother a palatinate in Cumberland, that is, a territory where Richard could rule over without being subjected to anyone's meddling, a true quasi-regal position, plus any lands he could conquer in Scotland—it's huge: those lands wouldn't go to the Crown but rather to Richard's pockets. I consider that to be a big mark of favouritism, whatever the reason. So that’s why I don’t particularly doubt that claim, but as many historians have pointed out, we can’t consider it to have been 100% true as we have no factual evidence that Edward really did name him.

EDIT: There’s also that letter Edward IV wrote to Pope Sixtus IV in August 1482, where he said: ‘Thank God, the giver of all good gifts, for the support received from our most loving brother, whose success is so proven that he alone would suffice to chastise the whole kingdom of Scotland’. In my view, it feels like Edward really held his brother in very high steem by that time, and if he thought his brother could tackle Scotland alone it might not be completely unexpected if he thought Richard could safeguard his son’s succession as lord protector too.

#which is really tragic if you think about it #this man really seemed to trust his brother #ask #anon #sorry i can't elaborate more for now #edward iv