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figcookie01 · 7 months

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some queer and misc. analysis of trish una

im not sure if everyone saw my addition on this post here proposing the theory that bucciarati is a "parental" character in a non-traditional and queer sense, but i wanted to continue that discussion by talking about trish now.. since to me, she has what could be described as araki's first attempt at a true character arc for a female character, who simultaneously has elements that read like queer self-actualization that we watch unfold throughout the story.

for the purposes of this analysis, what is important to recognize about trish's introduction is how she is figuratively (team bucciaratis mission to protect her will get them closer to giorno/bucciaratis goals) and literally (his only known relative and identifiable factor at the start) linked to her father; she loses her mother (loving supportive family), is thrust into a horrifying world out to harm her for factors beyond her control, and is expected to blindly trust her father and by extension his men assigned to protect her. its no wonder she is so guarded, but my point here is how this establishes trish as starting off vulnerable and uncertain of the world she's inadvertently embroiled in beyond her safe upbringing with her mother.

nevertheless, trish is repeatedly described as having the willpower to figure these things out for her own sake, and a tenacity for these frightening events (la squadra's attacks) beyond that on the average person. both giorno and abbacchio mention it at different points (although abbacchios line is changed to narancias in the anime).

perhaps the most notable early example of her gumption is what she first says at the end of the grateful dead/beach boy fight. although bucciarati is not at liberty to answer her questions about both why she is being attacked, and also what the truth about these strange powers are.

however, id argue this is in line with what has been previously established for bucciarati's character to say; that it is up to trish herself to determine what these things mean, especially if they are related to her intrinsic identity.

this continues once they arrive in venice at the church, where we get to see trish's human vulnerability and fear. something i find particularly interesting is that, above all else, she is afraid of the uncertainty about what her father will be like and her personal fate.

this was one of the original things i wanted to talk about under a queer reading; for a queer person to come out to their family, there sometimes may be a concern about alienation of self. that is, coming out may, figuratively and literally, feel like you are revealing an entire side or life you live that they know nothing about. it may be about seeking approval from those who are, in many cases, a major part of life and your upbringing; she wants this week from hell to be over so she can return to some semblance of normalcy as herself, and her father is her only hope for this then.

something of particular note that bucciarati responds with is the probability that she will be given an entire new identity and forced to uproot even further, separated in even her most fundamental identity from the life she once led for the sake of her fathers comfort. even before the horrific reception her father gives her, trishs chances of being accepted as she is and loved are poor, a matter that might be incredibly common for people who try to express who they really are to unwelcoming families.

in trishs case, diavolo has literally never met her at all in any capacity, nor was he present in her upbringing; there is an extra factor of blind faith she must put into him. but he is the only biological "family" shes got; we will talk about nontraditional families and team bucciarati in a moment.

for this reason, bucciarati assures her (whether it is of his own doomed naivety or something else entirely) that a family will love you no matter what, because thats what they do. its a value that, up until that next moment, was something he himself had complete faith in.

as the rest of this arc shows though, that wasnt the case for trish, and never would be.

the events at san giorgio are the turning point for the entirety of vento aureo, with trish at the center of it all. and while this analysis is focused on trish, i wanted to include how it is also an earth-shattering moment for bucciarati, now faced with the culminating reality that the boss never gave a shit about family in the first place, and was only after his selfish desire to be unknowable. his attempted murder of his innocent civilian daughter invokes, to me, the needless cruelty some unaccepting families may have towards their children upon coming out or other realization that their child is both related to them, but not in a way they deem acceptable.

while it is laid out rather straightforwardly, this needless cruelty from biological family is relatable enough to change narancias mind and follow bucciarati after he betrays the gang; cementing once more that the only bonds of trust these characters have are with one another, since not even their biological families will care for them, let alone society.

at the restaurant in venice, narancia is still fearful about how trish will receive this absolute rejection, but her reception is surprisingly determined.

in the past, ive seen this scene used as the real point where trish as a female character finally comes into her own as a person, but as we previously established, she really had it in her all along, and it was only put to the test then (more on her innate courage in a moment).

trish, like the rest of team bucciarati, has no choice but to persist as she is, to exist as her own person even if all the odds are against her. not only this, but she tentatively decides to join in bucciaratis cause, a move that she explains as just to find her own origins or die trying. at this point, her motive might be concerned only with herself, but throughout the notorious BIG fight, that matter changes.

aboard the plane to sardinia, trish grapples with the willingness of team bucciarati to pursue diavolo, even after they no longer are required to protect her. i would say this is when she begins to feel comradery with the team and their cause to exist boldly in the face of someone all-powerful (diavolo) who wishes they were dead, rather than just being someone or something reduced to a secondary role (although how shes treated after this fight is another story...)

the moment trish realizes that she alone can save giorno (and therefore, the entirety of the team), she is struck with the final dilemma of whether or not she wants to get involved with all of these things on the front lines. she decides she does, without being fully conscious of it, because of the courage now awakened and manifested in-full as her stand, spice girl.

spice girl is unique as a stand for being one of the few that seems to have her own consciousness, although it really is a part of trishs consciousness that was always a part of her, now fully realized in literal, physical form.

the courage required for her stand to now fully manifest was in her all along, and under a queer lens this could be likened to a person now being able to live authentically as they are, the incongruity mostly solved now that she has grown as a person and has a (support) group/system of those who have had similar experiences.

notorious BIG concludes with trish delivering her own beatdown and saving all of the team, seeming to fully cement her as a force to be reckoned with within the jojo universe and her nuanced personhood that had been building this entire time.

all this in mind, this isnt to say that trish's character doesnt feel stunted by araki after this point, for no other reason than misogyny. her destruction rank-A level stand and fighting prowess is forgotten after they arrive in sardinia, and during the green day/oasis fight she is conveniently relegated to the caretaker position for narancia, even if giorno is the "healer" and her own stand stronger than his in combat. i would argue the biggest injustice towards trish as a fully fledged character was the enforcement of these stereotypically feminine roles on a character who, as weve just discussed, has learned to be confident, courageous, and unapologetically herself throughout the entirety of vento aureo.

when i first set out to write this post, i was concerned with talking about trish from an almost entirely queer angle. it evolved, then, into something much more full-bodied, with that being simply one lens you can apply to her character arc.

id love to discuss these things (and the stuff in my bucciarati analysis) at greater lengths, and also want to say that despite writing this over a period of time, i may have messed up my wording or made points that seem like reaches... none of this is meant to speak for the experiences of any real person, and are rather generalizations. i hope that regardless of these things, more people can see vento aureo for the narrative value i really think it has, especially to the queer fanbase who, including myself, may relate heavily to the subtextual experiences depicted.

special thanks to @fur-bee for going through this with me and giving me key insights and for my other friends to proofread and such :D

#trish una #vento aureo #jjba #writing #queer analysis #idk what to tag as... hmm lots of thoughts here #also sorry some panels have a black line at the top? my screenshot program does that sometimes

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acourtofthought · 7 months

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My eyes were bleeding after putting together the above post yesterday, staring at the screen so long, so I didn't add any thoughts to it all.

But that man......

Every single line with Lucien is categorized in one of a few ways.

He's either sarcastic, sassy or witty.

He speaks up in bravery when others can't / won't do it for themselves. There are multiple examples of this in ACOTAR where he tells the Attor to burn in Hell for Tamlin (it literally says "Lucien replied for Tamlin). He spits at the feet of the most powerful High Lord in the history of Prythian and tells him to watch his mouth when he threatens his mother. He stood up to Amarantha on multiple occasions and was punished every single time. He tried to stand up for Feyre even though Tamlin punished him for it.

However, he knows when to keep his mouth shut in order to show respect when it's necessary. Think about it. Tamlin, Rhys, Amarantha, knowing what they had done or could do to him, he still stood his ground and spoke his mind as much as possible.

Yet with Amren, Nesta, Az, and Graysen, he kept his mouth shut. Nesta probably deserved to be told off for the way she treated Lucien around Elain yet he never said anything to her. I'm guessing Lucien suspects something is going on with Az especially because Az can't seem to stop himself from acting moody whenever Lucien's name is mentioned (I doubt he's any better when they're face to face) yet Lucien hasn't called him out. He's never done anything to Graysen even knowing his identity versus Cassian who wants Tomas's name to hunt him down.

He's willing to let go of old prejudices. How quickly, after learning the NC wasn't his enemy, was he going out of his way to make himself useful to the IC? Asking if he might offer advice in the upcoming High Lords meeting, offering to do research, offering to look over the maps, offering to find Vassa.

He's loving to his friends. Even knowing Feyre was hiding something, he still went out of his way to comfort her when he thought she was having a nightmare. Knowing she just destroyed the court that was his home, he still ensured she was warm by giving her his jacket while he was left shivering. He speaks highly of his friend at Dawn Court. He speaks highly of Vassa. He speaks highly of Jurian, expressing gratitude for him. Tamlin abused him yet he's still going out of his way to be there for him, as Tamlin once did for him.

People love trying to spin it as if he's got a thing for Vassa but the truth is, he' just openly expresses affection for those that are important to him. He wasn't blushing over his feelings for Vassa but blushing because Feyre was making it out to be something it wasn't while in front of his mate.

He embodies the "brave, strong, protector / provider" type: he hunts, he fishes, he camps, he rides horses, he can be a warrior when it's necessary, he talks sports with the group. But he's also a distinguished gentlemen: he's well dressed, well spoken, polite, refined, appreciates quality, etc.

And he is intelligent. Feyre is constantly noting how he's always observing, calculating, watching, thinking. Rhys even shows approval for Lucien's plans and ideas. Rhys, the king of schemes, acknowledges Lucien to be clever like a fox. Finally getting his POV is going to be the most exciting thing ever.

He is the son of a powerful mother from Autumn and the son of a High Lord from a different court.

He is nothing but respectful to Elain. He's a bit awkward around her which I find to be adorable because he's so uncertain as to how to approach this female he's so drawn to, who almost makes him lose control every time he's near, and who he's sure doesn't want him because she was in love with another man. He's giving her distance to figure out what she wants while subtly making it known that he's not given up. He brings her beautiful gifts and tries so hard to hide his longing and disappointment though it's evident to anyone looking.

SJM broke the mold with this one.

#pro lucien vanserra #lucien spell cleaver #lucien supremacy #lucien vanserra #high king lucien #pro lucien #acotar characters #sarah j maas #lucienweek2023

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serpent-hell · 5 days

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Ramble splease?

I love listening reading rambles!

Please, ramble on about all you want!

The people that like reading rambles will be happy and the people that don't can just not read the rambles.

akvkskg sure! ill put most of this under a read more as it contains spoilers on jjk257 and my SI!Sukuna fic Heavy Is The Head :]

so, even though my fic was inspired by @overly-verbose and i planned it to be a crackfic of sorts, that did not end up happening, past me putting down that it'll just be a story for fun with barely any research is half a liar

because i ended up in a deep dive over theories on Sukuna's Origins, his CT and the Heian Era

SPOILERS ABT HISTH & JJK257

yknow how i said, "no way i predicted that?!" during the time the leaks happened, keep in mind i dont actually consume the manga, i havent read it, ive just seen clips and get spoiled by everyone else

im talking about Sukuna eating his twin in the womb basically and that's sort of the reason why he's so strong, he's quite literally 2 in 1 in both body and soul, one being eating his twin and the other being the isekai basically.

(yes, that means SIkuna is stronger bc he's like, 2:2 to Canon!Sukuna's 2:1, BC OF THE TWINS SHARING ONE SOUL)

also the reason for SIkuna not instinctively knowing his CT is because, since the twin eating, he also got his twin's CT making a whole new one that he had to figure out by accepting their identity, to recognize the new CT that was destroyed and created anew.

ALSO THE THING ABOUT TWINS, even out of JJK, i did some research and in Japan history, twins weren't viewed favorably and often times, people would either kill one or sell them off, they're a bad omen

in JJK, they're also seen as bad, since they share one soul, they're sort of split apart, seen through Maki and Mai, one gets a CT, the other gets nothing and their CE gets constrained, it's not an even split

now for the pink haired twins.

the funniest coincidence i had, was basically like, SIkuna looking like Jin, he'a an OC so my exact thought process was

it'd be funny if they were like Yuuji, just blond (to reference Yuuji's og design) and then dyed his hair but i felt it was too on the nose and was like, you know what, maybe he sort of looks like Jin, minus the glasses and blond.

why Jin? you may ask, one, he was the only other pink haired guy, two, i didnt want the OC to actually be like, an alternate Sukuna since they are different from the Canon vers.

plus, he didn't have much relevance up until this point and i liked connecting puzzle pieces.

never thought he WOULD be.

as for my thoughts on jjk257, im probably going to adopt it into my own fic BUT, SIkuna himself doesn't know, it'd be really funny if he doesn't.

also bc i want Papa SIkuna to be REAL. that's the thing abt identical twins, they're the same DNA so technically, even though he'd be an Uncle, Genetically or ig, SOUL!Genetically?? SIkuna would be Yuuji's father in literal spirit, LMAO

and also, it'll give SIkuna an excuse to father so hard

#asksss #HISTH #SIkuna #Kain

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bigstupid69 · 7 months

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u seem rly cool and I am too nervous to not use anonymous on these things but please I wanna hear stuff about your Penny Lamb so badly after seeing random people saying it was inaccurate

Thank you anon I'll put them under the cut

Okay first off and I'm not bashing this hc whatsoever and I literally use these pronouns, but I do not think she would be entirely okay with it/it's pronouns being used on her after the whole Jane Doe incident, since y'know being called a freaky monster isn't really a compliment? Penny is weird I know that, but I also just don't think she really enjoyed being Jane Doe, like at all. In fact I think it was pretty traumatic for her, I've shown this in fics I've abandoned but she has a very complicated relationship with herself and her identity after the incident. It's obviously hallucinations from declining mental health and the fact Uranium probably doesn't have a licensed therapist. But still, almost turns into a sense of derealization or dissociation.

After the accident at least with my Jane Doe design the little cracks on the dolls head basically turn into scars, I've also just given her extra since I like drawing scars they're cool. I don't remember what eye it was I think it was right, but she's partially blind and uses a glass eye after the incident. She likes to take it out and freak people out.

I think I've only seen this in some fics but she is not like dumb, at all. She's silly and weird yeah, but she is very smart and actually knows how to do things. I mean she's literally taking care of Ezra and is practically a mother figure to him at this point because of their parents being arrested.

She skates and she sucks at it, one of the reasons why she is constantly looking like she got hit by a semi-truck.

She worked as a scare actor with Mischa at the fair before the incident.

I don't wanna make this about perfectdolls but this can just be in general, Penny would NOT use a normal ass petname for anyone. She would just use some random ass word, I made it a joke that she just calls Ocean different names of bodies of water that get progressively more stranger everytime.

Shes a contortionist, and purposely creeps people the fuck out because of it. Also one of the reasons why she was a scare actor for the fair as a part time job.

Also she hates the cameras since it reminds her too much of the Johnny Moon incident, mugshots, she literally maimed a guy

Anyways there's definitely more but here you go

#ride the cyclone #legoland penny lamb #penny lamb #headcanons #rtc headcanons

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seraphtrevs · 2 years

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Lalo Salamanca is gay

Disclaimer: I would be shocked if any of the writers/showrunners came out and said they conceived of Lalo as a gay character and intended for him to be seen by the viewers as gay. I would be even more shocked if they wrote him as gay, but then decided to conceal The Truth from the fans for some reason. This is not that kind of trutherism.

Instead, let’s put authorial intention aside and engage solely with the text of the show. In this actual essay I wrote because I’m obsessed with AMC’s hit teevee show Better Call Saul and Eduardo “Lalo” Salamanca in particular, I will prove that a gay Lalo makes way more sense than a straight Lalo.

1) Lalo’s attitude towards women. I’ve already gone into this here, but I want to expand on it a little further. The Latin American drug cartels are steeped in machismo culture, in which men have authority over women. To a typical macho guy, the way Kim speaks to Lalo in 5x09 would be unacceptable - not just insulting, but a threat to his identity as a man. Even if he thought she had a good point, he would not tolerate that kind of disrespect without pushback.

Lalo has all of the power in that situation. There’s no reason for him not to yell at her to shut up at the very least, even if he decides killing her and Jimmy would be too messy (although he’s heading to Mexico as a fugitive already, so what’s another couple of murders to him?) Instead, he quietly listens to her tirade, considers her arguments, decides she probably has a point, and leaves without another word.

This is a baffling reaction if Lalo is a typical heterosexual, macho narco. But what if Lalo is gay? His relationship with machismo culture would be a lot more complicated. He would engage with it to blend in, but he would see it as mask he wears rather than a core part of his identity. You can take a mask off. Kim was talking sense, even if she was being disrespectful about it. He doesn’t feel obligated to put her in her place to defend his masculinity.

2) Where are Lalo’s children? The Salamancas are a family dynasty. It’s hard to keep a family dynasty going if no one is having any kids. Tuco is an unstable drug addict who’s in and out of jail, so it’s understandable that he hasn’t fathered any children. The twins are reptilian weirdos who can’t separate from each other long enough to make it with a woman.

But what’s Lalo’s excuse? He’s handsome, charming, wealthy, and stable (relatively speaking). He’s in his late 40s/early 50s, so he’s had plenty of time to establish himself. He owns a nice home where he could safely tuck away a wife and kids. Or alternately, he could have a bunch of mistresses and father children with all of them.

Instead, he lives the life of a confirmed bachelor, with only his paid staff to keep him company. That’s very weird if Lalo’s straight, but makes perfect sense if he’s gay.

3) The Nacho factor. This one is a little fuzzier and admittedly ship-tainted, but bear with me. Lalo is horny for Nacho. Their first meeting in 4x08 can be seen as a seduction attempt from Lalo (especially if you buy into my Nacho Christ/Lalo Morningstar interpretation). Not a literal seduction like he was trying in that moment to fuck him, but he’s clearly being playful (in a menacing sort of way) and trying to see if he can get some sort of yes from Nacho, even if it’s just yes to food.

But Nacho stonewalls him. Imagine Nacho saying no to Hector about anything. He would be furious at the disrespect. Lalo isn’t. If anything, he seems intrigued. His whole bit about getting Nacho to eat his tacos is not him establishing his authority as Don Eduardo, the narco boss who must be obeyed. He’s trying to a) figure out what kind of guy this Varga fellow is, but also b) see if Nacho will play with him. It’s not ironclad evidence of his horniness since Lalo favors a softer touch with other people, too (Jimmy, for example). But I don’t think it’s a stretch to view this first interaction as flirtatious.

Lots of viewers wonder why Lalo trusted Nacho so completely by the end, especially since we know that Nacho had so much hatred and frustration brewing under the surface. Nacho put in a lot of work to earn Lalo’s trust, as I’ve already talked about, but Lalo’s attraction to Nacho also plays a role in blinding him to Nacho’s true intentions. Lalo’s a smart guy, but his dick is stupid, as dicks tend to be.

Let’s go further and take a closer look at 5x10. Thanks to Kim’s advice, Lalo has decided to trust Nacho and bring him into his home. Lalo is a touchy-feely guy in general (see him schmoozing at Don Eladio’s party)…but he sure is getting extra handsy with Nacho, isn’t he? And then, by the firepit, when they’re all alone and every doubt Lalo had about Nacho has been put to rest, Lalo tells Nacho he’s “halfway to being a Salamanca.” Kind of sounds like a little more than “you’re my most trusted lieutenant,” doesn’t it? How does he plan to get Nacho fullway into being a Salamanca? (I mean, they wouldn’t get married and their relationship would have to be on the DL, but in their hearts Nacho could be a fully fledged Salamanca as his partner.)

And then when Nacho suggests they break out something stronger, Lalo is extremely excited about having their own little party, just the two of them, all alone in the privacy of his home, where neither of them have to worry about prying eyes or cartel gossip. Makes you wonder where he was hoping the night would lead. (The answer is he was hoping to take the Blowjob Express to Pound Town.)

So there you have it. Lalo is a gay homosexual, and good for him. In fairness, let me briefly address potential Lalo-is-straight counterarguments:

1) All characters should be assumed straight unless the writers say otherwise – BOO, this is homophobic and we are doing a dead-author interpretation here so it’s not valid anyway, next argument

2) We haven’t seen Lalo fuck a man, ipso facto he is straight – well, we haven’t seen him fuck a woman, have we? In fact, he turned down the opportunity in 6x05. IPSO FACTO HE IS GAY.*

*ETA - it’s been pointed out to me that I worded this last point in a way that was not inclusive of trans identity, so I’ve reworded it. Thank you for the tip!

#point number 4 was going to be look at him #because...look at him #but i'll leave it to the graphically gifted to come up with lalo-is-gay visual evidence #lalo salamanca #better call saul #lacho #meta

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heretodefyfate · 3 months

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These thoughts are plagging my brain and need the rejuv-nation to suffer with me.

Have you noticed that Paragon!Melia is....off? Ever since waking up from the dream/alternate universe, she has been acting strange- she even wore pigtails at one point (post Terajuma) which I figured she'd avoid bc of Melanie- kinda detached, even? But still nice.

So, here is what I think. I think Paragon!Melia is M2 too, but she has been subdued in anger because of the positive memories in Melia's body, so she is playing her role to help us until our friend comes back properly.

I too think she act a bit off, especially right after she met the real protagonist in the "wilted" world

And ngl, when Melia requested to be added into Zeight, i...did not trust her. Like you've said, she feel off and if you play renegade route or watched it, it's understandable that you would assume that M2 is replacing our Melia. I thought me popping right outta the Zeight, that would trigger Melia to say st else but nope, nt happened.

Personally, i don't think M2 is possesing paragon_Melia body, cuz' in renegade, it shown that M2 don't have any memories of the host she in so i don't think her emotion would be skewed by Melia's posistive thoughts.

My theory is that, that is still our Melia, the current version_Melia of the world we are currently living in. And...the reason for her odd behaviors was that, she is coping.

Like, put yourself in her shoes...

She got the whole team Xen after her;

Discovered that she have some god-like power which was placed in her since birth, then discover that the same thing is giving her some sort of rare disease;

Is sorta having identity-crisis about herself (Maria-Marianette-Melia);

Going through multiple bad timelines and one of them feature the world is in literal state of static (PMD explorer of sky reference, lol), and the reasion was that she and the protagonist failed.

And then the whole revelation about karma

Like, that must fucked up your mental health a lot

And another thing is...there is no other options than keep moving on.

So like, Melia has all these responsibilities on her and yet, in the end, she still gonna died to a disease anyway, unless the interceptor manage to change it (which i think Melia is very hopeful about). So that's why her action can come off as off and...secrety, at least to me

Adamant on getting into zeight, her fucking up the time zone in there seem to be another way for her to slow down her death time

Making End-of-Nights, hinted that she know Renegade MC and had communicated with them, without fully explaining this to anyone else on the team, so she is doing things alone...again.

Breaking up with Venam, which is...idk, this action seem weird, sure, we are too busy saving the world, relationship come seconds but like, idk, like, you doesn't have to stop acting lovey dovey while on the jobs, you know? Idk, this decision from her is lowkey strange, i know you're gonna die so why lock yourself out of any happiness.

As for pigtails, i don't think it meant anything tbh

#pkmn rejuv #So...um yrah that's my essays😅#Sorry for not answering this sooner. I was not in the right mood to communicate #Anyhow. Overall. I agree with you. Melia act really strange.

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thebibliomancer · 3 months

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Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #51: I SING OF ARMS AND HEROES...

November, 1989

Guess who's BACK... and guess who aren't too sure they're HAPPY about it...

Well, Hank and Jan don't look too happy about it. Neither does US Agent. Lookit him frown, the gwumpy pumpkin. Wonder Man looks like he has dull surprise going on. I cannot fathom Robot Human Torch's expression. The man would do great at poker. Wanda looks like she's offended. That's a "how dare?!" expression if I've seen one. And Vision looks like he's staring directly at the sun and isn't sure why people keep screaming at him to stop.

So my guess is that Hank, Jan, John, and Wanda aren't happy about it and the others may or may not be happy about it.

They might have been more pleased to see Iron Man if he hadn't just flown through a perfectly good wall for no reason.

Last times in Avengers West Coast: Iron Man left the West Coast Avengers because of the Armor Wars arc in his own book. Wow, that was a while ago.

At the end of Armor Wars, Iron Man faked his own death by letting the government blow up an armor full of blood. When more Iron Manning was needed, Tony Stark just built a new suit and claimed he'd hired a new bodyguard/superhero.

And now, all these issues later, he's back to rejoin the Avengers because he's become more dependent on his armor due to stuff happening in his solo. He figures more time stuck in the armor, might as well be putting it to good use.

Also happening, Wanda has had the worst fucking period of her life (so far). Her husband got disassembled by the government, her teammates don't seem to care, her children keep blinking in and out of existence whenever she's not paying attention, evil bacteria shoved her full of goo until she became a mutant supremacist, the robot Human Torch came back to life to take the hottest robot on the team role from Vision. Just a lot going on!

I sure did talk about Wanda a lot in this issue featuring Iron Man.

Anyway.

Iron Man.

What a shiny guy he is.

Yeah. The Avengers (West Coast) aren't thrilled to see Iron Man.

Because: who even is this Iron Man?

US Agent John Walker is not privy to all the details of Iron Man's identity. But he does know that the original Iron Man was supposedly killed and a new guy took over.

Original Iron Man may have been a founder of the Avengers but New Iron Man is just Some Guy. Some Guy who can fuck off if he thinks he gets to swan in and get automatically put on the team.

Iron Man understands that he doesn't get any special consideration and says he's willing to go through whatever initiation process the Avengers consider necessary.

US Agent is a big company man so even though he's maybe the leader of the Avengers possibly? (he's done literally zero leading and nearly zero interacting with the team), he storms off to go call his handlers in Washington so they can tell him what to do.

With him gone, that just leaves Hank, Wasp, and Wonder Man who all know that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Or was. They know that at certain points, Tony Stark has been Iron Man.

(Way to just spill the beans in front of an Iron Man that you don't know whether he's Tony or not, guys)

So they ask Iron Man straight up if he's Tony.

For some reason that would probably make sense if I was reading Iron Man, Iron Man apologizes and says he can't say.

I do want to read olde Iron Man. One of these days, I want to dig into that backlog. He's one of the prominent Marvel characters I haven't read significant material from pre-2000.

Anyway.

On the other side of the compound, Scarlet Wanda and Vision.

Wanda is in a mood. Because she's been in a mood Byrne's whole run because shit keeps happening to her. Possibly goo related shit.

Vision: "It surprises me that you did not wish to stay for the meeting with Iron man, my wife. I am curious as to your reason..." Scarlet Witch: "Please, Vision... I know you're programmed to use words like 'surprised' and 'curious,' but I wish you wouldn't. It only emphasizes how much more robotic you've become." Vision: "My apologies, Wanda. It was my impression you wished me to sound as human as possible." Scarlet Witch: "Human? Why would I wish that, husband? Why would any mutant worthy of the name wish to associate herself with humans?" Vision: "And yet... you are a mutant, and for years, you have gladly associated with the Avengers -- most of whom are human." Scarlet Witch: "A passing weakness, Vision."

Okay. Seriously. Did nobody think to de-gooify her after that Absolom University adventure? Give her a medical check or anything?

I'm getting a little perturbed with how little a shit this era of the West Coast Avengers seem to give about each other.

Nobody noticed Tigra was going nuts. Nobody bothered to do anything as Wanda has clearly been emotionally spiraling. Wasp decides to help Wonder Man undermine Wanda's marriage.

You all suck.

Wanda is behaving like a jerk now but at least we know external factors contributed. The rest of you just suck.

Anyway, Wanda and Vision reach their quarters and find Agatha Harkness waiting for them there.

Hi, Agatha.

Are you the Agatha that does horrible shit to Wanda to teach her something or the Agatha that's helpful without being traumatizing?

I feel like Wanda is a couple pieces of straw from just breaking so maybe considering the latter approach today.

Also, maybe consider calling ahead.

The last time Wanda and Vision saw Agatha, in the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch series, Agatha was burned at the stake.

She tells them that being burned at the stake sucked but that's not what she's here to talk about.

She's here to talk about Wanda's kids.

Wanda's weirdo kids. To talk about them and to understand what precisely they are.

Scarlet Witch: "They are only children. Normal in every way!" Agatha Harkness: "Normal, Wanda? With a mother who is a mutant and a father who is a synthezoid?"

Rude.

Agatha tells Wanda that her kids are far from normal and if she hadn't been busy resurrecting herself, she would have been here sooner.

Agatha Harkness: "But you already know yourself, that when you are not thinking about them... they disappear!"

Vision asks if that's true but Wanda denies it. BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY AS A GOOD MOM SHE IS ALWAYS THINKING OF HER KIDS AT ALL TIMES 100%.

Agatha pulls the nuh uh on this. There have been recent times where she was too distracted in battle or knocked unconscious where obviously she wasn't thinking about her kids. And wee baby Thomas and William just cease to exist during those times.

Remember those times? All those times they disappeared, freaking out the governesses? Who tried to report it to Wanda and got fired for it?

Wanda refuses to listen to this. Literally putting her hands over her ears and shouting she won't hear it.

Eesh.

Agatha tells Vision that Wanda will need his strength and love more than ever and oof is she behind the times. The government took away his capacity to love! Bad timing!

Elsewhere, up in the sky, a bird, a comet, a (robot) human torch!

Jim Hammond took off when the Avengers grouped up to meet with Iron Man. He took the time to fly over the countryside for about a half hour, just get an idea of how much things have changed.

And he's amazed! To him, it looks like 400 years have passed instead of just 40.

He lands back at the Avengers West Coast Compound and lands right into some drama without even trying.

Ann Raymond saw him being all human torchy and mistakes him for Toro. And when she realizes he's Jim Hammond instead, she, of course, gets upset because for an instant she let her hopes get up and now she's been reconfronted with the fact that her husband died in an entirely stupid and unnecessary way.

And now Jim knows Toro's dead too and is also emotionally staggered by the news.

Also: demons.

Flaming fireballs! Demons!!

Robot Human Torch gets immediately slapped into the pool. A sad casualty of being the first one the demons run into.

But Ann screaming alerted the other Avengers and they assemble and start walloping demons.

Hank Pym suggests that if a bunch of demons suddenly show up to the Avengers West Coast Compound, why there's only possible explanation.

Iron Man: "You mean it's MASTER PANDEMONIUM?? But the last we saw of him, he was being swept away by the river of oblivion... deep in the realm of Mephisto!"

Hank Pym makes a mental note of Iron Man knowing about the Avengers' last encounter with Master Pandemonium. Because Tony Stark Iron Man was on the team at the time. So is this Tony or did Tony just brief New Iron Man on all his Avengers' cases?

I don't know why Tony isn't telling the Avengers he's him so I don't know how tense it should be that Hank is piecing things together.

Anyway!

US Agent comes out to yell at the commotion and he's not really alarmed by a sudden invasion of demons. It does make him punchy so he starts punching.

Robot Human Torch pulls himself out of the pool. He's soaking wet but all he has to do is FLAME ON! to boil the water away.

Then he can "show these demonic delinquents how we used to deal with their kind back in the 50's!"

Did... you deal with a lot of demons in the 50's specifically?

Wasp takes note that the demons don't seem to be after anything and aren't really trying that hard to kill the Avengers. So why are they here?

Whoops, they're a distraction.

While the Avengers are outside fighting the demons, Master Pandemonium busts into Wanda and Vision's quarters right when Wanda is about to have a nervous breakdown over everything that's happened to her over the past few weeks.

Agatha Harkness tries to ward off the demons with her witchcraft but Master Pandemonium tries belches hellfire in her face.

Gross.

Vision tries to do the intangible fisting thing he does which either works great or doesn't work at all.

Whoops, this is one of the times it doesn't work at all.

Master Pandmemonium just blasts out demons from his arms to overwhelm Vision.

Leaving only Wanda to face him, as she boasts that nothing can withstand her hex power.

Although she seems to fend him off and force him to retreat, she doesn't notice until he's gone that one of his demons snuck behind her and yoinked the children.

He drags the poor, probably innocent tots down to probably Hell.

What does he want from them?

Well, first, he wants a captive audience to recap his entire backstory.

Villains gonna villain.

He was an actor man who drunk drove himself into a bad car crash that cost him his arm. As a big Hollywood type in the 80s, he was big into the occult?? Apparently? So he called upon dark powers, promising his soul for his arm back.

Mephisto was bored and decided this would be funny so he replaced the guy's arm with demons. And then he replaced all his limbs with demons.

Mephisto's sense of humor is beyond me.

He didn't want the guy's soul so he ripped it out, broke it into five pieces, and scattered them around.

Master Pandemonium has been searching for them since, trying to become whole.

He found one with the Cat Demon People of Tigra's origin. But whatever Englehart was planning for this dude, he didn't get around to. Guy got one soul piece back and then dropped out of the plot.

So Byrne is bringing back that plot thread.

Master Pandeominum declares to these two stupid children who don't understand any of this that kidnapping them will allow him to replace his missing 4/5ths of a soul much more efficiently than all his aimless searching up until now.

Now, I know where this is going already. It is renowned, infamously.

But try to make your best guesses before I get to the end of the issue. See how close you get.

Anyway.

In the pressing urgency of some innocent children being kidnapped... the Avengers all sit down to discuss classic sitcoms.

That's a fair response, to be honest.

But here's how the conversation unfolds.

Instead of leaping into action, the Avengers sit around and quiz Agatha on how she's alive again. Even though she keeps telling them it was fucking magic and it's not going to make sense to their science brains.

Wonder Man chimes in that HE's seen Bewitched so he can vouch for Agatha's point.

So Wanda starts yelling at him for talking about television when her children are kidnapped.

Wasp tells Wanda to settle down. Clearly they're treating this with all due urgency! Since, y'know, maybe her kids are fake as shit. Maybe they've just stopped existing again like all the governesses said.

And that's when Wanda does her a slap.

Granted, her mutant supremacy is not called for but, yeah, the Avengers are all a bunch of jerks now who can't muster a bit of urgency when a demon man kidnaps some children.

Wasp isn't even hurt because of her small size. But she is concerned that Wanda said that thing the way she did about humans.

Anyone else concerned? Nobody else reacting? Okay.

Wanda begs Agatha to help her follow Master Pandemonium.

I'm surprised we didn't start with that but I've already made clear how I feel about how the team is reacting to this.

Master Pandemonium tried to hide his path but Agatha took precautions when he first arrived so she can trace him. But Wanda can't do it alone! So... will the Avengers step up to action when a witch very lightly implies that they should?

Yes. They finally get their asses in gear and jump through the swirling magic portal.

Even US Agent agrees that where Wanda goes, the Avengers go too. Which is a big team player moment from the guy who doesn't seem to realize he's leading a superhero team.

Watching from the time Limbo that isn't the demonic Limbo or the game Limbo, Immortus freaks the fuck out.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go for his vague yet menacing plan!

And he can't do anything to alter the flow of events because, I dunno, he can't touch demonic realms. So if anything happens to Wanda, he won't be able to protect her!

Dun dun dun??

I wonder what his vague yet menacing evil plan needs Wanda for?

Back at the Avengers, Hank Pym asks Jim Hammond Human Torch to stay behind to watch the Compound.

So despite making a big deal about him joining the team last issue, with WANDA BRINGING HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD, he gets to sit on his ass for the rest of this story.

What a weird writing decision.

Byrne is all over the place with all the subplots he's juggling for this book and a lot of them just get backburnered hard.

Iron Man gets to go. And he hasn't even officially (re)joined the Avengers at this point. They don't even know if they can trust him because he won't admit to being Tony Stark to his closest friends, for some reason.

The Avengers and Iron Man arrive in a seemingly peaceful fairy tale glade but Agatha's floating head warns them not to trust it.

And the very scenery attacks them a few panels later so. Yeah. Floating Head Agatha called it.

In the distance, past all the killer foliage, Wasp spots a building made of twisted agony.

The Avengers fight their way through the angry vegetation and Scarlet Witch blows open the twisted agony fortress front door with her probability manipulation.

But they find that Master Pandemonium is ready for them. Waiting for them.

And he's done the dumbest thing possible.

He's attached Billy and Tommy to his arms so now he has literal baby hands.

It's horrifying.

It's also the dumbest thing possible.

He's so proud of himself for thinking of this.

Was this where you would have guessed him kidnapping some babies was going to go?

Also, jamming babies onto his arms seems to have filled in two points on the star shaped hole in his tum tum.

I used to like what a silly concept Master Pandemonium's entire deal was. But he's ruined it by going even dumber.

For shame, everything that went into making, publishing, and printing this comic book. For shame. You took a perfectly goofy villain and you ruined him.

Follow @essential-avengers and maybe like or reblog. I appreciate being appreciated.

#avengers #essential avengers #west coast avengers #Master Pandemonium #US Agent #Wonder Man #the Wasp #hank pym #dr pym #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #robot Human Torch #Iron Man #Agatha Harkness #Immortus #for some damn reason #this ends on a really dumb note

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huntedspy · 6 months

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hello and welcome to my "why I love autistic Spy headcanon and why it makes sense to me" post. A lot of this is going off of fanon representations but I try to go off of canon as much as possible :)

I know people don't think of him as autistic because he's a spy! He has to be good at social situations and reading body language and etc etc. But I don't think this should disprove him as being autistic because these are the same reasons heavily masking autistic people are dismissed as well. There's many testimonies of autistic people who say that they knew there was something different about them in terms of the way they could communicate with others, so they would practice and learn how to communicate with scripts or by copying other people. I think this can be applied to Spy and it makes a lot of sense especially because of his career.

I think it's much more interesting to think of him as someone that's intensively studied how to communicate with others because of being autistic, and perhaps from the pressure of others in his childhood and teen years (parents, teachers, peers). He knows exactly how to say the right thing and when because of endless practicing, not because it comes naturally to him. Perhaps social behavior, communication, and psychology became special interests to him because of this.

Because of heavily masking however, I feel like he also has identity issues with some dissociation mixed in there. Where does his masked self begin and where does it end? I feel like he truly never feels like himself, always playing a role for other people. Always switching the scripts in his mind depending on who he's talking to. He has given himself over to being a spy and becoming so good at what he does that he never has a moment to be himself. He never has a moment to figure out who he even is, and man is it exhausting.

I would imagine that he never talks to people about himself either. Perhaps this was something else he learned from when he was younger, to not bother others about his interests or thoughts. Or maybe he feels vulnerable from it. Maybe even both. Sure he could talk about wine with others, but he would never share the fact he's really into a novel series a little too much.

However, I feel like working with the mercs is something that helps him start to unmask. Working with 8 others who are all crazy in some way (and also neurodivergent in my opinion)? That's gotta chip away at his mask. He quickly realizes that a lot of the skills he's learned along the way to fit in aren't quite working with his coworkers. He starts stimming again (for example, flipping his butterfly knife repeatedly). He's less exhausted in social situations because now he doesn't have to carefully choose what to say all the time. He can remove himself from social situations easily now without having to explain or say farewells (imagine how much of a gift his watch is now that he can simply Disappear and get away from people!). Those domination lines in game where he mocks people? He can finally let loose and be mean and silly because he no longer has to worry about if someone likes him or not!

Spy is always depicted as a private person who likes to keep to himself. He has his own private and dedicated smoking room?? Hello???? I could say so much more but it's so hard to put all my thoughts into words.

I also wanna highlight some specific examples from the comics that I thought were noteworthy :)

Spy infodumping! I know this can be interpreted as him being frustrated and "of course he knows the specific details of his suit, he's rich and rich people are just like that!" but. In my heart I know it's More Than That.

Also these panels stuck out to me because of Spy's bluntness here. This isn't him trying to be cruel or anything, he literally just doesn't realize him being matter-of-fact is gonna upset Ms. Pauling. I also think it's interesting how he handles her crying as it shows that he's not good at being vulnerable or emotional with others, and keep in mind that he's friends with Ms. Pauling too. This is supported by the fact that in order to express his pride to a dying Scout, he has to disguise himself as Tom Jones. Even in an important moment Spy has to use a disguise as a buffer between his feelings and his true self. Or maybe he's unable to identify his true feelings unless he's in the headspace of another person.

ok that's it for now, I feel like I lost a lot of my thoughts about this in the process and I know for sure that I haven't shared all my thoughts because I feel like this is too headcanon-y as it is or didn't know where to fit things, but yeah Spy is autistic too :)

#tf2 #spy tf2 #a lot of these things have been stuck in my mind #when i got home from class today i immediately went to start researching the tf2 wiki and the tf2 comics for extra ammo #i dont develop the fanon parts out of nowhere #i try to use what information i have from the source material and let it grow #like a petri dish if you will....

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sepia-stained-sunset · 5 months

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You get to be in charge of one (1) DC character. You can make whatever changes to their characterization, backstory, powers/abilities, what have you, as you please. No one else can alter your decisions, and must stick to what you've given. You may not alter any other characters beyond how they interact with the one you've picked, and they will retain their current characterization in all other media.

Who do you pick, what do you change, and why?

Oooh okay so this is a super fun ask and I wanted to answer it to the best of my abilities, which is why I've been reading/re-reading as many comics as I can. So my knee-jerk response was Talia, but then I realised there's another character I have a soft spot for; Helena Bertinelli.

So her backstory in her initial appearances is very different from the most popularly accepted version, the one we see in 'Cry for Blood'. Since that's also my favourite version of her story, that's what I'd stick with, especially because it completely changes the tone of the story.

Helena has to put in a lot of work to unlearn what she's been taught about her family and their line of work, staying up all night at times reading up on the mafia and their influence. However, in practically every other iteration, she pretty much despises the mafia instantly, becoming Huntress only to avenge her family's death and then constantly wondering whether or not she should hang up the cape for good. The conflict would have been interesting if it had been developed properly, but for the most part, it only cheats her out of more of her autonomy.

That's also the reason why I think her multiple 'unmaskings', like the one in Huntress (1989), where a cop unmasks her when she's unconscious, should also be erased, especially because her consistently being stripped of her autonomy doesn't get addressed satisfactorily.

Personally, my take on Helena would focus mostly on Cry For Blood's characterization of both her and Sal (I'd completely erase Huntress: Year One if I could.). Her dynamic with him is very interesting to explore, because while she loves him and sees him as a big brother figure, he's never actually a good guy, or against the mafia in any way. He's the one who trains her, who feeds her need for revenge, and she never says a bad word against him, but at the same time, they're on opposite sides.

I can only imagine the conflicted feelings they'd both experience if DC chose to have a plotline where Sal seeks out revenge for the various mafia families Huntress has put down, including his own, and starts trying to figure out her identity. The themes of omerta, loyalty, an eye for an eye, etc., are extremely prominent in her comics, and this would up the stakes quite a bit, since it's literally the last member of her family she still has. It would also leave the choice of revealing her identity entirely up to her.

Helena's aloofness is also something interesting, because she often longs to work with Batman and hates herself for it in Huntress (1989), works well with and cares about Tim in Cry Of The Huntress, but likes to keep to herself for the most part. However, she's shown as super self-isolating at random points and I'd erase that, too, because trying not to get attached and completely cutting yourself off from people and your own feelings to the point of leaving a man in a pit for four days are two very different things.

As for her weaponry, her crossbow is iconic, but I would like to see her fight hand-to-hand more often, because the few glimpses we do get are awesome and I crave more. I would like DC to acknowledge her intellect more often though, and to bring back her original brashness, where she'd punch you in the face if you pissed her off.

Oh, and I'd also like to erase certain portions of her No Man's Land characterizations, where she's pretty unsympathetic towards kids because that was absolute bullshit. She literally went searching through a city infected by a plague with no cure for one of her students!! Why would she ever consider hurting or abandoning kids who are clearly struggling?!

Oh and also, less of a change and more of a question to DC, but I'd like to know what the fuck happened to the Waterfront Warrior and James Cooper (a kid she's hinted at having adopted or something??)

Thankyou so much for this ask!! It reminded me of how much fun reading comics can be and got me back into DC after so long. All the love in the world for that<3333

#long post #helena bertinelli #thanks for the ask!

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suzukiblu · 3 months

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I just wanted to say, yesterday I sat down and binge-read all your Timkon fics, as well as most of the WIPS, and I BADLY want to write some now. I've never really written Tim, tho, since I'm more used to writing Jason. Do you have any tips, or bits of Tim and Kon characterization you consider especially important? (The WIP I've made on my head, if it helps, is (Daemon AU) comics!Tim ends up on Young Justice!Cartoon universe, and he's very, very weirded out by how different Kon is to Conner, and very pissed off that this Conner gets a Daemon while his Kon doesn't have one.)

tbh it kinda depends on where you're trying to go with the fic idea, I'd say? Also why Conner DOES have a daemon and Kon doesn't, probably. Also-also, does Conner even actually have a daemon or is Tim just confused about Wolf or something.

Generally speaking, though, the thesis of Tim is that he is a ride-or-die guy who really fucking COMMITS when he makes a decision. Sure, he'll stalk Batman. Sure, he'll introduce himself to Nightwing and tell him he knows his secret identity. Sure, he'll put on the suit Jason died in to go save Batman and Nightwing from their own stupid selves. Sure, he'll be Batman's emotional support sidekick and lead Young Justice and the Teen Titans and try to clone his dead best friend and run around the planet solo to save Bruce from the timestream. Why not! SOMEBODY'S gotta do it!!

"Somebody's gotta do it" is a lot of Tim's motivation, from what I can tell, haha. He also comparmentalizes really well, is a very talented and skilled detective as his defining Robin skill, uses a bo staff as his signature weapon after convincing Lady Shiva to train him and was the dude who was smart enough to add pants to the Robin suit, and one of his more iconic lines is I think Cassie going, "you lied to Starfire?" and him answering, "I lie to Batman". Which he does. Frequently. Frequently and a LOT-ly. To be fair, Bruce is also a fucking liar, so he deserves it. Tim, however, actually has friends he will ADMIT are his friends without having to be waterboarded into it during an active apocalypse-level crisis.

The boy has no chill. He DISGUISES his lack of chill, but it is fucking nonexistent and the ONLY reason he looks "reasonable" is because his besties are the teen idol superclone with limited life experience and Stephanie "welp my dad's gone supervillain so I'm gonna go kick him in the dick with my intermediate gymnastics" Brown. And then there's Cassie "I'm just gonna ask Zeus for superpowers, natch" Sandsmark.

Also Bart. Also Bart is a thing. Bart is SO MUCH a thing.

So yeah, Tim is a full-stop no-holds-barred insane person, he's just also a better liar than any of his friends. Like so, so much better. AT LEAST THEY HAVE SUPERPOWERS, TIM. AT LEAST THEY'VE GOT THAT. He figured out Bruce's secret identity at NINE 'cuz he went to the circus as a toddler and Dick Grayson's flips were just that sick, and then just didn't tell anybody for FOUR FUCKING YEARS. Four fucking YEARS!! ACTUAL FUCKING YEARS. He just didn't think it was relevant, I guess?!!? So instead he just stalked them with his camera and took cool pics. So many pics. So, so many pics. And he skateboards.

Also he and Kon fucking could NOT stand each other at first because Kon was used to being a solo act and didn't want to answer to anyone else and Tim lacked the ability to convince him to listen to him and they just had VERY different personalities and priorities, and also for a little while in there Match was fucking shit up by pretending to BE Kon, and frankly it's a fucking miracle Tim and Kon didn't kill each other before they ever got to be Titans together, the way they totally failed to get along for the first YJ run.

Seriously, I think they actually had a literal fucking fistfight on Apokolips once, I think that ACTUALLY happened. In the middle of a literal WAR that happened. Tim. Tim, you KNOW better, buddy.

#anonymous #meta ecetera #long post

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collinnmckinley · 6 months

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Modern Warfare III Review:

Okay so, I finished my first play through last night 5 days ago and ngl… lmao i had to open a gameplay so i could recount what actually my thoughts were at those times because I was confused half the time if not more from the story.

So here’s my unfiltered, filled with spoilers, and honest review.

Before anything let me just say this; I was wrong, my theory was wrong (although a banger if you ask me. Hire me Activision), and nothing I said in that post mattered. I’ll swallow my words… But I am slightly annoyed by it.

Here're the points I had problems with:

The story: it was…. Idk how to put it other than it being super fucking fast and filled with plot holes. Like half the time I was confused as to what was going on or I would forget what needed to be done. I think I blacked out 40% of the playthrough, because I would go into an OCM (Open Combat Missions) and Graves/Laswell would be like “bruh you need to do this we don't got time for stroll on the park get to it” and I’m just running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what are the obj. I think they could’ve made it a bit slow paced, like MWII or MW even. Those had perfect story pace, even after the fact MWII didn’t have good writing. I just thought, MWIII would be impactful in a way the previous MWs weren’t, the ending WAS, but it took them 5 hours to of dragging and stretching one fucking thing, literally one thing. Because if you see the campaign in a way, even the bad guy, Makarov, wasn’t THAT impressive. I legit didn’t give a single fuck about Makarov or what his motives were, I just followed with 141’s intuitions.

Speaking of Makarov’s plans, he just appeared out of nowhere, and he has some beef with Farah and Urzakstan for some reason. Why? They didn’t specify other than he wants to “bring Russia to its old glory”. And of course they had to put fucking Farah into middle of this fiasco because why wouldn’t they. I hate the fact that she’s STILL to this day the center of the fucking MW storyline. She didn’t have much of a role to play in MWII campaign but the Raids took the center part. And that annoyed me tbh. Alas, we can’t have everything we ask for. (I would’ve stanned Farah in the long run but her holding hands with Graves in season 5 REALLY annoyed me but that's for another day).

Operation 627: Misleading. That's what I have to describe this mission, when i read the mission name, I was expecting it to be Price centered mission. I really wanted it to be a Price centered mission because the number 627 is Price’s identity. So to just take the number away and give it to Makarov really irked me if I’m being honest. And the whole marketing for it was misleading too (I’m looking at you barry). Gameplay wise it was okay I guess, typical CoD campaign mission.

Open Combat Missions: now here things gets fucked up. I was not expecting to be thrown right into OCMs right away. And by the end of my 400th try I was just running around and shooting without any care. I tried to do it stealthy, and with the enemies standing around the objectives that you CANNOT avoid it's almost impossible to even go undetected. It’s like a mixture of campaign and DMZ, which BTW is a really bad combination. And also, whenever I try to restart from the checkpoint it starts from the TOP! You have to do it all over again. I just wish they added the checkpoint thing it would’ve made so much easier. I know they want to make it feel like DMZ but it just SUCKS. And I wish it would've been at least a choice that you could make before the mission starts. Basically either you go OCM or just a regular mission, but in this case you’re forced to go to OCM.

(Also Farah’s Arabic sucks ass. At least they casted a good VO for Dena who knew how to speak Arabic properly.)

Reactor: again, another OCM. But this time, it was Price I played as. Now here everything felt off for me. Normally we would be playing as Soap or Gaz in ANY scenario because that would be the logical thing to do. But when the camera angle shifted to Price’s perspective, everything changed. And following this mission, every mission we got to play as Price just gave me a fear of sorts. Same as before, hard not to go undetected but more manageable than “Precious Cargo”. By the end of the mission Price almost gets incapacitated by the toxic gas, and that's what we see in the trailer. And from it we knew someone’s gonna die but it was not Price for sure, because he lives and kicks ass left and right.

Price being an errand boy: there’s a cutscene before mission ‘Payload, where Price and Farah get together to infiltrate an underground bunker to stop some rockets. In that cutscene it felt like the roles have been switched between the two. When Price was this leading figure in Farah’s life that had an enormous impact that changed the course of her life, now she’s acting like he owes her? It’s the other way around if you ask me, and she owes him fucking big. I don’t know man, I just hated the way she treated him the way she did. They keep giving her a piece of the story bigger than she could chew, and Price is left with crumbs (even with the amount of cutscenes and gameplay we have with him), he almost felt like he was being LED by everyone around him instead of him LEADING the team (and Farah). He felt like what Soap felt like in MWII, even Soap had a major ass role in MWII. That cutscene, as much as he looked good in it, felt really undermining Price for me. And the audacity Farah had when she said “do you trust me” to Price. Girl, after what you pulled with Graves, I would never trust you with anything. And Price giving his utmost loyalty to her just didn’t feel like he would do something like that. And I mean that in the most respectful way. When Price told her about Shadow company calling a hit on 141 and Shepherd being a bad man, I legit thought she would actually be shocked and side with Price, but what did she say? “My weapons are my business” fuck you Farah, and fuck your weapons. In conclusion, yeah Price felt more like an errand boy than the Captain of 141 task force. The mission that follows that cutscene was almost standard campaign mission. I say almost because it still felt like OCM.

Yuri Volkov: I’ll be honest, I was not expecting Yuri to make an appearance, I was expecting ‘Roach’ to be there more than anything. And we finally got to see Yuri’s face. I liked how they took Yuri’s story and twisted it around so he never 'betrayed' 141 by keeping the fact that he worked with Makarov from them. I guess Laswell is indeed useful sometimes. The fact that they made him be useful to 141 without having him take one in the face from Price was indeed surprising. (I was screaming in discord chat about it to Mari when he appeared.) Though we don't know what his fate is, but I'm 100% sure he's still alive and I have a feeling he'll be joining 141 in the next installment if not in the upcoming seasons of MWIII. I just hope he got away safe. That man sounded like a rascal lol, he definitely has some stuff up his sleeves.

Oh and special mention about Nikolai, am I happy to see Nik again. That man deserves every bit of love. No MW or 141 would be complete without Nik.

Stealth: For some reason this game was made to be played as ‘go big or go fucking die’ because in “Deep Cover”, you play as Laswell trying to sneak into the Arklov base, to meet up with Yuri, and i got caught like at least 10 times before I had to restart all over again, and again and again. The fucking stealth in this game is horrendous. Whoever made it IMPOSSIBLE to stealth, I hope you choke on water you drink and recover so you know how I felt all those tries I had to restart. It’s the same case even in regular missions, you either get caught even in fucking desguise, or they start shooting you for no fucking reason. I walk far, I'm too far from the obj, I walk close they shoot me. Fuck me man, I just had to fucking power walking through the first half of this whats suppose to be a 10 minutes walking simulator, took me 3 minutes of multiple tries because of that. Not gonna lie, I was kind of expecting Laswell to meet her demise in that mission because of the unavoidable missiles (maybe I was little bit of hoping it too who knows), but she survived, yaay.

Alex & Farah: then comes in the Master and the Lapdog duo. At this point I’ll never get tired of complaining about Farah and her personality. They tried so hard to make her into a girlboss, and they would have succeeded if they just left her story as is after MWII. But no, they had to drag her and her lapdog into this story and make something out of it.

I am just annoyed by everything she says. She keeps secrets from Price, the man who basically saved her life to become the commander she is today, her motives are unclear, she says she does this to protect her country and that she doesn’t get out of it to protect but stays INSIDE it protecting it (her words not mine), extends hands with a war criminal when she said that she doesn’t work with people who kills civilians for no reason, she compares herself, 141 and PRICE to the Shadows/Shepherd by saying “we’re all dangerous”, and the icing on the cake, her Arabic is horrendous. I know because I speak Arabic fluently. You might say “but Jay thats her accent you can’t judge her like that”, I know how Arabic accents sounds like, and this bitch’s is fucking incoherent half the time if not all the time.

And Alex… oh boy, this man is a fucking idiot lmfao. He had good intentions in MW2019, and I liked him there, but they should’ve just killed him off. But no, they had to bring him back. What are they gonna do now with Soap huh? They're gonna bring him back too? Also didn’t Keller say “he’s tired of getting told who his friends are” and didn’t want to follow the CIA blindly anymore? What’s he doing now with Farah, hm? I’ve never seen a boy so delusional like him before.

So many plot holes in these two characters only, I hate how they’re written.

Makarov lives: we… never got to learn the reason. Yes I went back and watched the gameplay today just to make sure I was not wrong, they never say why Price stopped Soap from killing Mak in that heli. “John he’s in custody he’s not going anywhere. Stand down.” FOR WHAT?! If they knew Makarov had this much power in the world, they should’ve just executed him. But noooooo they had to keep him alive for plot progress. If he died then and there in that heli, Soap would’ve been alive at the end. Was it because Shepherd said “bring him out ALIVE”? Or was it because Price wanted a win so bad that he threw his moral ambiguity out of the fucking heli he was riding? Man, I miss the MW2019 Price. But we’ll get to Price’s personality section later.

Yeah, we never got to learn the reason why Makarov didn’t die, why he is still alive. They just made it so that he’s the only villain that had the balls to do what he did. Bitch please, he looks like a whiny rich child that thinks he can do anything he wants to do. Literally that's how I saw Mak in the reboot. His character legit sounded like a spoiled child, not the evil man we knew and hated from the og MW series. And I can’t believe that I’m saying this but I kind of miss that Mak.

Like, who would look at this face and say “oh he looks intimidating shiver me timbers”

Yullian is too adorable for this role, and he did a good job to bring a villain to life, it just wasn’t enough to be "The" Makarov.

Soap & Ghost: now that brings us to this broski duo. Watching that heli scene made me realize two things, 1. Either Ghost and Soap were friendly before MWII and Ghost was never a lone wolf to begin with. Or 2.141 was tight as knit before it was even formed. Because if you actually go back to the mission itself these two sounded as close to each other as they were aftermath of MWII Alone mission. Like it doesn't make sense, bare with me a little bit as I go through the timeline of the campaign.

Ghost was introduced in season 2 of MW2019, he was in the 141 just immediately after Price had formed it, and rumors say Soap was too, but we never saw him until the very last season of whatever game that was released before MWII (I think Vanguard), as a character bundle in the store itself. Mind you the bundle was leaked long before Cold War was out (it came out right after MW2019). And in MWII we get introduced to Ghost as this lone wolf/rogue esque soldier that only takes orders for solo missions. So when he was told that Soap would be assisting him in that first mission we played, he sounded annoyed to say the least.

Now, up until the “Alone” mission and aftermath of that, it's as if they were only on acquaintance bases, then they became close after the hardship they went through in that mission. And it makes you sympathize and understand why they became close all of a sudden. They were betrayed by the people they trusted, they were in this together. But I digress.

Now in ‘Flashpoint”, the mission that was supposed to take place 4 years prior to MWIII where they catch Makarov, Soap was WITH Price, and Ghost was in overwatch with Shepherd in that heli. When they spoke with each other they sounded very close to each other, mind you this was before MWII took place. I kept thinking long and hard about it. Did they tell us what took place in between? Why do they sound like bffs in that mission when Ghost was not fond of Soap in the beginning of MWII? Did I miss something?

It’s one of the two, either they are not telling us the whole story of 141 and how Soap and Ghost know each other, or this is a massive ass yet another fucking plot hole.

Ghost: I have to talk about him, because as a character that had been glorified and milked to the brim, his presence in MWIII was so fucking underwhelming. Even as playable, I nearly forgot it was him we played as in that mission. And his dialogues felt kind of… dry… normally he would actually have a smart reply or he’ll talk very bluntly but it just felt dry from him this time around. Like… who asks “what’s the rest of your plan?” to the big baddie plain and simple expecting them to reveal everything? Man they made him sound dumber than MWII. Literally reduced to this emoji 🧍🏻‍♂️. He had almost no impact on the story if you ask me, he was just… there… I expected more from him.

no words....

“No Russian”: well, that was a lame ass “No Russian” mission if you ask me. Now bear with me if I keep comparing this game with the og one because it can't be helped. This is a reboot, this should be BETTER than the og, it had to be but instead we got this. If you compare the og ‘No Russian’ mission, as brutal and raw it was, it left quite the impact on the series. It told us how savage Makarov can be, it showed us the brutality of the world, and that the world has some BAD people with no remorse. In MWIII, the ‘No Russian’ we got was extremely underwhelming, it didn’t make us feel bad for our actions, it did not hold any sort of impact except feeling sorry for the woman because she was forced to do what she did. It wasn’t us following Makarov’s plan and orders, it was plain and dumb if you ask me. Now, I understand in the political climates we live in today, it would be controversial to remake that mission with the player being one of the gunmen that… mows down a whole airport filled with innocent people and civis, but that is what made the og game/mission so good. It didn’t hold back on brutality and the reality of villains, the truth of characters who want to play gods, their motivations, how the player is tied down to the villain no matter what they want to do because it’s inevitable. And It had an impact on the player, the game and the story. We needed the necessary evil so the game could progress. But instead we got a woman trying to save an airplane filled with innocents, disarm the bomb that was strapped on her chest, and clear her name at the same damn time, which was like 3 minutes. Could’ve done better if you ask me.

Shepherd: how the fuck did this cunt get captured in the first place? Wasn’t he supposed to be in Shadows and Grave’s protection? The man weaseled out of 141 and CIA’s grasps but somehow was weak enough to be captured by the Koni group? What is even the plot anymore? And they didn’t say how or why he got captured. Maybe it was that one Shadows soldier that Mak and his right hand man Nolan interrogated? How does Makarov get his intel? We don’t fucking know. He’s just a prophet at this point :)

I can’t express how much I dislike this man, I don’t hate him I just really really really dislike him. There’s a difference.

His character was, again, weak af in the reboot. God… why do they keep making me compare the reboot with the og games, I hate doing that for real. BUT, og Shepherd being as fucked up as he was, still had a strong personality. And if you just put these two side by side, no one would believe they’re the same character. I’m glad he got offed by Price at the end, no one likes loose ends after all. And he was a massive one, and a liability, and someone that no one can trust anymore after what he pulled on 141 and Laswell. Especially after he threw Graves in the fire when he was in trial when Laswell and 141's condition for helping him out was to confess everything. But of course, as the fucking weasel he is he didn’t do that.

Graves: oh man… Can this guy be any more pathetic? I love Graves, as he is, as a whole, pathetic or not, Warren’s acting made me love this character. But again 😭, reduced to nothing but a pathetic man who looks for glory. Stabbing his handler in the back to save his own ass, although he got stabbed in the back first.

They legit took everything good and cool about any character we like (Price, Graves, Ghost, etc) and gave it to Farah, a character that should not have an impact as much as her.

Price: that point brings us to John Price himself. I cannot describe how angry I feel towards sledgehammer’s writers now. I’m so pissed at them for writing Price like this.

real img of me reacting to the way they wrote price:

In MW2019, his actions were so RAW, he was brutal, blunt, calculated and honest about his work and what he does. And he took pride in what he did and how he did. He didn’t give a fuck about what the upper management (Laswell, Shepherd) thought about his work. He was THE Captain that everyone respected, even CIA agents and the U.S General were at his feet asking for help from him.

Laswell: “What can you brief?”, Price: “We just did”- LIKE WHO ELSE CAN SAY THAT SO CASUALLY AND SOUND SO FUCKING BADASS LIKE THAT. NO ONE, thats fucking who. Now even Price doesn't sound like that AT ALL.

They reduced my man into a puppet that ‘trembles’ in front of Farah whilst she calls him “Old Man”. That scene annoys me every time I think about it. Why would they do this to him? Where did that man that said “they were leverage” to Gaz when he questioned Price’s morality about the hostages, disappear. MW2019 Price would never be this mild, or he would never be gentle or compromising when it comes to civilian lives. That heli scene? It should’ve been HIM instead of Soap, grabbing Mak and pointing a gun at him. MW2019 Price wouldn’t even hesitate to cut out Mak’s tongue for talking too much. Killed Shepherd where he stood in Frozen Tundra. It's as if Price was not there anymore, it was Gaz telling him, reminding him what HE would do, it wasn't just once when Gaz advised him to what to do. Price is losing his mind for some reason.

In MWIII, he looked like he was too scared to be cancelled if he said or did something out of the line. That’s you’re fucking job Captain! To step out of the fucking line when no one would!!

Price is a morally grey character, a necessary evil, and that is what made him so good as a character. MWIII took all that away. I want to cry at how badly they wrote him. I wanted them to bring back “Angry Price” from MW2019, and add even more rage in him because of Makarov, but instead they pumped “Fear” into him. Price was scared shitless in MWIII for some reason, and it made it look like it was because of Makarov. He didn’t take risks anymore… he was not the same Price that we got to know from the beginning of the reboot. It's as if they keep having to change his character in every game he’s in, they can't keep it consistent for some reason. And it cost them dearly.

All in all it felt like Makarov and Price were having a personality mid-off the whole campaign.

Gameplay: 87% of it was ass. And short. And annoying af. I actually prefer the fucking driving mission from MWII than this bullshit.

The necessary death: I get it. I understand what they were going for, someone had to be the sacrificial lamb, the motivation for 141 to keep going, for Price to get angry and drag everyone to hell as we went there himself. But did it have to be Soap? They just introduced him like a year ago… and they took him out just as fast. In that scene Makarove appeared out of fucking nowhere to fight with Price and Soap, like… where did he appear from? Why is he here if he just armed the bombs? Did he REALLY want to take a body count with him that badly?

We were playing as Price, and again, I had a bad feeling, I couldn’t tell what it was but it was there. Then Mak was pointing a gun at Price, I honestly thought he would die then and there, and I was so scared that it would actually happen but Soap, my man Soapy boy, saved us. When Mak shot him I thought he was incapacitated but stood up and saved up, for like 5 seconds it reminded of the og MW gameplay, just for a short time.

And then, instead of shooting us (Price), he deliberately shot Soap, in the fucking head. And ran like a fucking pussy… I keep remembering his run, it was so stupid. Mari mentioned this to me the other day, in the OG we see Soap struggling to live, to breath out the last words to Price so he can know the truth, he was bleeding everywhere, there were seconds to at least say goodbyes, here his soul left his body before it even hit the floor. And after everything went quiet I thought Price would fall to his knees and grieve. But he just stood there like 🧍🏻‍♂️.

I guess I felt just what Price felt because, I didn’t feel anything at first, because it felt surreal, seeing him take a shot in the head like that. Instantly wiping the light from his eyes like that, it shocked me that I didn’t even react at first. Took me to the last scene where they were spreading Soap’s ashes. And when Price said “Who Dares Wins. sleep easy soldier”, I lost it.

Again, I get it, a major character death motivation was necessary, but did it have to be Soap?

What I liked about the game:

Frozen Tundra: I liked this mission for one reason only. Okay maybe two… Reason one being that it's a classic cod campaign mission, reason two being that it was in Siberia, Russia. And Icy and snowy environment… thank fuck that they did this in the classic style mission. Also sneaking, and actual stealth that worked, because we were wearing white suites IN the snow. *chefs kiss*.

Wish we had a bit more options and choices, where we would be able to ride vehicles, like snowmobile, or idk maybe snowboard? Some creativity would’ve been nice. Because dammit it’s a snow map. A lot could have been done tbh.

The Cinematics: if call of duty is good at one thing, it’s making good ass cinematic cutscenes for their games. It was filled with eye candy; Price, Soap, Gaz, Nikolai, Graves, Ghost, every single person looked amazing in the cinematics. And yes I was swooning over Price every shot he was in (although his personality was meh).

Yuri, Nikolai and Gaz: the only characters that I actually liked in MWIII. It seems like the less presence you have in the story the better your character can be. (not you Ghost and Graves). These characters were actually tolerable if anything compared to the rest of the cast.

The After Credit Scene: oh that was satisfying. Killing Shepherd before he became danger to anyone else ever again, and Shepherd was like “I ain't begging for my life” and Price was like “I know” and just shoots him. Price was not taking risks anymore.

Now this scene, here we saw the RAW Price. Now after losing one of the closest 141 members to him, Price was in for blood, he was on his way to hell, and he was going to take every. single. poor and pathetic bastard that inflicted harm to his task force. You can see the pain and the guilt in Price’s eyes in that scene, he blames himself for Soap’s death for sure. I loved that emotional part of him, I just wish he was like that the whole campaign. RAW and unfiltered. This was my favorite scene in the game, period.

Conclusion: they had good intentions… but making what was supposed to be DLCs into a fully fledged campaign was not the way to go. I wish more creativity was thrown into the story, the points were good, yes my theory was good, (shut up im biased) but it had some solid points, but the plot holes and the poorly executed story was the demise of this game.

Like Mari and I had a better fucking story written out WITH this storyline WITHOUT anyone dying, and to prepare for MWIIII. They could’ve used the “Price going MIA” from the og games and implemented it in this game, instead of killing Soap like that. Maybe kill him off later on after recovering Price back like they did in the og MW. so many potentials, yet very poor and bad execution to the story. Man Sledgehammer writers were not fucking cooking at all. I hate them all.

I would give the game: 6/10.

also I'm still expecting apologies from the people who theorized Soap was a traitor. yall better be so fucking sorry about it. even the people who entertained the idea of it even if you didn't come up with it. shame on you all.

#jay talks #cod #cod mwiii #mwiii spoilers #mwiii #cod spoilers #holyshit it took me almost 5 days to write this shit #my neck hurts my shoulder is in pain #but i finally finished it #i would've sat 10 more days to write it out #here it is #i dont care if you disagree with me #this is my review and my opinion #and im a mess because of this game

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lil-oreo-crumbles · 2 months

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Aw, man, any thoughts about Rasticore?

YES HE’S MY GUYY

Ah yes, another example of a the whole running themes with Septarians being this “certain way.” Though, interestingly, unlike Seth and Toffee, he’s not as villainized as they are. Instead he’s literally just turned into the butt of a joke… which still isn’t great.

But I already kind of went into the show stereotyping Septarians as X and X in my Seth post, this is solely about Rasticore my boy and my thoughts on this dude!!

TL;DR: I love him a lot he is way too underrated.

Here’s some headcanons with thoughts mixed in there. (Though admittedly this is basically just Septarsis-Dragonfly AU Lore… but as long as it doesn’t impact the progression of the story it’s fine💀)

Rasticore is Seth’s (only and biological) son. He’s a result of a little fling that was mainly orchestrated to hatch a potential heir. Seth is a (very deeply closeted who’ll scoff if you even mention the notion despite his history of “flings” and “relationships” with men) 100% gay man, and even Rasticore is surprised by his own very existence.

Rasticore is older than Toffee by two decades (it’s not that long for Septarians they’re relatively close in age).

Seth and Rasticore have good standing and a good relationship, but they’re not particularly close

Rasticore IS however, extremely close with his Aunt, Princess Zarina, and handmade her robotic arm when Eclipsa permanently severed it with her darkest spell

The only reason he doesn’t outrank Toffee is because he not only doesn’t have the leadership skills, but also cares a lot less about the war effort than Toffee does. Seth is not the type to give Rasticore a higher rank for the pure sake of being his son, he has to earn it like everyone else. He just particularly didn’t put the work in. The war didn’t spark his interest until the Comet situation

While he didn’t like Toffee for a while as a child/preteen, they became incredibly close in their teenager days and formed a trio with Toffee’s then girlfriend, Ericka. They distanced again after the trio split and didn’t become “close” again until around Comet’s reign. This is all despite the fact that they literally live with each other in the castle.

While Toffee was studying as a historian and planning his destroy magic plot, Toffee’s (now ex) nerdy engineer boyfriend, Favian, designed and crafted Rasticore’s famous dimensional chainsaw (using stolen dimensional scissors). He also made several tracking devices that Rasticore ends up using.

It was around this time that he met Heinous (aka Meteora). Yes, they absolutely 100% dated on and off for a while, keeping it on the down low as a casual thing.

When Toffee volunteered to go to Comet’s banquet, Seth insisted that Toffee take Rasticore with him. This is really where the two men bonded again after all those years.

After Comet’s death and Moon’s spell, he retreated back to Septarsis. It was there that he finally admitted to his father that he was tired of being a “prince” and wanted to instead forge his own path.

He left Septarsis shortly after Toffee, renouncing his title and changing his last name from Kardona to “Chaosus-Disastervaine”

He has both of his eyes and both of his arms, he just uses the gem and robotic arm to better conceal his identity. He doesn’t actually think anyone would recognize him as the “Prince of Septarsis,” but he has to make sure. He also alters his voice sometimes for this exact reason.

He was pretty shocked about Meteora’s true heritage (go figure), but what disturbed him the most was the fact that she not only was Eclipsa’s daughter (he was WELL AWARE of Toffee’s friendship and falling out with her) but also the fact she kind of bore a resemblance to the baby who ambushed their meeting and blasted Toffee in the fact that one time. THAT’S why he skedaddled so quick and broke up with her (only to be blasted into an arm again)

A small part of Rasticore being with the other assassins trying to take out Eclipsa was deeply personal. He knows firsthand that Eclipsa not only took off his Aunt’s arm and killed many other Septarians, but deeply deeply hurt one of his longest and closest friends. Out of everyone there he had the most reason to actually want her dead.

He’s still working at there to this day, but with the arrival of the Echo Creek humans they’re not very popular and business is very slow. Part of him wants to go find a new job, but he’s made friends there who he doesn’t want to leave behind.

Yeah honestly most of these is just his backstory from my AU 💀 whoopsies. It’s hard to separate the two sometimes I just kind of lump canon in with my AU. But yeah that’s the gist of it! I think Rasticore is real cool and he’s one of my absolute favorites.

But then again I stan every single Septarian in this show so I am a heavily biased party

(My favorite Rasticore scene by far)

#svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #rasticore of septarsis #rasticore chaosus disastervaine #ask #Septarsis Dragonfly AU #I love Rasticore sm #He’s nowhere near Toffee but he’s so cool #I wish the show did more with him #(that wasn’t stereotyping of course)#would’ve loved to see more of him and Meteora #YES I SHIP THEM SUE ME

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msfcatlover · 1 year

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NTT bugs me a LOT so PLEASE tell me about Dick and Jason bonding bc we were robbed

OKAY, SO! This got super long. I’d apologize, but I have so many feelings, and “sorry” is not one of them.

. First of all: after they defeat Trigon, I have no idea why we get scenes of most of the team having these soothing recovery-bonding moments with their families but for some reason Dick doesn’t get that??? When his “worst fear” as shown by Trigon was very specifically that Jason’s Robin training under just Bruce wouldn’t be enough, the scene Dick sees being Bruce dead & Jason brokenly sobbing that he tried his best, with the “worst self” counterpart to Dick telling Dick this was his fault for not being there for them. Dick’s worst fear is literally shown to be losing his family due to not reaching out to them and we don’t even get to see him, I don’t know, driving up to the manor or knocking on the door? You’re telling me that after a vision like that Dick Grayson wouldn’t want to visually confirm Bruce & Jason are okay? We don’t even get to see him call??? Golly gosh, did we just run out of page space & stiff the leader of our ensemble of his emotional payoff???????

This is the perfect moment for Dick to take a more active role as Jason’s big brother (we could’ve had Titans missions with Robin!Jay & Nightwing, goddammit, Jason could’ve complained about being cold to Dick’s face! That joke is x10 funnier if Dick’s standing there, now in pants, defending his original Robin design.) Dick now has experience training younger heroes, he has more patience & a longer fuse than he had as Robin, he is ready to be a mentor figure for his little brother.

In my head, there is a whole arc where Dick goes flying home on his motorcycle, too emotional to even think of going for the phone (between the vision he had & Raven seemingly dying, you really can’t blame him,) because he just needs to know, he needs to personally confirm that they are okay. He’s jumping off the bike before it fully stops moving, letting it skid down the gravel driveway (the paint job will be ruined, he will bemoan this choice later, but in the moment safety doesn’t matter so why would a few scratches?) Dick hammers on the door until Alfred opens it, and yanks Alfred into a hug before he can get two words out; Dick lets go almost as quickly, because Alfred isn’t who he came to see.

(Dick goes to the manor, not the Batcave, because the Batcave isn’t home.)

I can’t decide if Dick sees Bruce or Jason first; it really come down to whether I want to imagine Dick picking Jason up like a piece of luggage and dragging Jason into Dick’s hug for Bruce, because once Dick sees Jason, he is not going to be letting go. Bruce realizes something must be wrong even before Dick tells him about Raven (though he’d certainly never deny Dick a hug, when Dick all but jumps into Bruce’s arms like he’s 9 again.) Jason is so fucking lost right now; at this point all his interactions with Dick have been short & curt, and included Dick outright denying Jason had any right to be Robin (hey, if DC can mix continuities then so can I! And the pre-Crisis moment when Jason asked for Dick’s blessing now that Dick was Nightwing, and Dick snapped at him about Robin still being Dick’s identity even when he wasn’t using it is so good for its angst potential, I’m taking it.) Poor Jason was under the impression Dick sorta-kinda hated him, that he was a nuisance at best, and now Dick is running down the hall with a shout of Jason’s name just to pull Jason into a hug so tight it’s actually hard to breathe, so like??? What is going on???

Dick tells them about losing Raven (maybe he mentions having to “fight our fears,” but he definitely doesn’t tell either of them about the fear-vision,) says something about being worried and this putting things in perspective. Then Dick takes a deep breath and steps back, looks Jason in the eye, and tells Jason that Dick will be helping with his Robin training from now on. (“Don’t look so excited. You’re going to hate me by the time we’re done.”)

AND THEN! Then we get Dick training Jason, and patrolling with Jason, and bowing out of certain social events because he promised this portion of his time to Jason already and he’s not going to break that promise. We get some mission running long, and Dick rushing home after dark to find Jason still waiting, because he didn’t want to believe Dick would just ditch him like that (Jason may or may not have gotten into a fight with Bruce about whether Jason needed to lower his expectations since Dick was still figuring this whole “adult” thing out, and also that Dick’s never been good with appointments because ADHD-induced timeblind!Dick, my beloved.) We get Dick helping Jason perfect certain moves, and Jason spinning around with a big grin like, “Did you see? Did you see me do it?” while Dick smiles proudly at him and tells Jay how awesome it was. We get mid-patrol snack-breaks, which they’re fully allowed, but still sneak in because it’s just more fun that way. We get late-night conversations over ice cream, and getting to fight as a team, and just, AH!!! We were robbed! They should’ve been bonding, it would’ve been so cute & wholesome, and just compounded the tragedy of Jason’s death.

We could’ve had Nightwing!Dick & Robin!Jay on the Titans at the same time. We could’ve seen all Dick’s friends’ reactions to his new little brother, rather than just another kid in the Robin suit while Dick was out of town. Maybe Donna wouldn’t have fucking projected so hard, she called Jason by Dick’s name the one time they worked together. Maybe Jason could’ve been a valued member of the team in his own right, like he deserved.

The other major event that makes me desperately fantasize about them getting to bond is… Listen. Fuck the mid-Crisis Starfire wedding arc. I do not have words for how much I hate the Starfire wedding arc and how everyone treats Dick like trash during it. It pissed me off so much, I had to put the whole damn series down and cleanse my palette with something else for a few months. Do not get me started, because I have already gone on 2 separate hour-long rants, and nobody wants to see me frothing at the mouth over this one stupid fucking arc that I hate so much, it killed my love for RobStar, a ship I have been sailing since before I knew what shipping was.

ANYWAY.

Dick fucking deserved better, so Imma give it to him. Fine, let all that happen, up to & including Bruce saying, “Oh, I almost forgot! Happy birthday!” while driving away, ignoring how obviously distraught Dick was. Something-something-crime fighting, Bruce is allowed to fuck up, failure to appropriately express his emotions (often at the worst possible times) is one of his most consistent character traits. Whatever.

Here’s what I want: Jason beats Donna to Dick’s apartment. How? No fucking clue, he called in a favor or something. So instead of Dick opening the door to Donna’s accusations when he’s already belligerently drunk, he opens it to an awkward baby brother while he’s still tipsy. Jason wants to apologize for Bruce being an asshole—not in the “I’ll take responsibility” way, or the “I’m carrying a message” way, but in the “It was shitty of him to treat you like that, and I’m sorry you had to deal with it” way—and wanted to bring Dick his birthday presents before they’re even later than they already were. Because they’re brothers, and Jason knows how even the smallest gesture of recognition can matter. So here Jason is, with an obviously hand-wrapped parcel and a homemade cake that’s more than a little lopsided (and probably a few days old, because the mission wasn’t supposed to keep Dick away that long, and I think Jason would’ve wanted it fresh from the oven when Dick got home,) but it’s decorated after the Nightwing suit with a big red R on the top, and it’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for Dick in weeks. The nicest thing anyone’s done since Dick left Earth. The only sign his birthday wasn’t entirely forgotten by everyone in his life, and the only person who seems like they were looking forward to seeing him again after the mess that was Tamaran. So, y’know, maybe he freezes in the doorway and tears up a little; blame it on the alcohol.

The banter is tense at first. Jason’s obviously a little disturbed to find Dick drowning his sorrows, and Dick quickly hides the bottle while apologizing for it (“You weren’t s’posed to see me like this. I never wanted any of you to see me like this.”) Neither of them wants to acknowledge just how upset Dick is right now. There’s probably jokes about Jason using Dick as a guinea pig for his culinary experiments, and how maybe they shouldn’t light the candles in case Dick’s whiskey breath starts a fire. They talk about light, shallow things, like which rogues escaped while Dick was away (never mind the Crisis,) and whether Jason finally managed to master that one flip he was working on. After, Jason catches Dick staring wistfully at a picture of Kori on the wall and blurts out, “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”

They go see a movie at a late-night theatre, and mock how unrealistic the fight choreography was.

(Maybe they run into Donna at some point, but the fight doesn’t escalate because they’re in public & Dick’s basically sobered up by that point. Maybe Donna bangs on Dick’s door until it comes off its hinges, and finds an apartment empty except for the remains of two servings of chocolate cake and a ball of wrapping paper that missed the trashcan when someone tried to throw it. In any case, Dick & Donna don’t drag all their worst grievances with eachother out as weapons in a moment of shared pain, and Dick doesn’t go after Brother Blood’s cult alone.)

(Maybe Jason defends Dick’s honor, and says everything to Donna that I wanted to say while she was telling Dick it was all his fault Kori didn’t come back with him.)

(Maybe they go back to Dick’s apartment, and he’s finally tired enough to ignore all the lingering signs of Kori and just go to sleep. Maybe Dick insists on making sure Jason makes it back to Gotham safely, and then stays because it’s almost dawn by that point anyway. Either way, they fall asleep in a pile and Jason probably misses school the next day; he reserves the right to be a grouch about it.)

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fandomsupremacist · 4 months

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irl experiences with the weirdest people known to man; true story. TW for SH, mentioning of zoophilia, threats, and non con, proshipping.

tumblr I'm done with sensitive little creeps who assume everything is about them and who don't just shut the fuck up. There's some dude in my school year who is trans masc, whatever nothing wrong with that. But he always assumes people are oppressing him, and it just makes my blood boil. I'm trans as well, genuinely i am gender fluid and am mostly masculine within that aspect of my identity but I'm not open about it, not every trans person has to disclose their personal identity HOWEVER..

this dude doesn't shut up. Like EVER about it. I talked to him about being trans and my experiences with it to try and relate to him a little. But he turned out to be a massive fucking creep in the end. Short story short, he loves Lego Monkey Kid and indulges in looking at nsfw of the monkeys who are considered brothers in the series (by dna and canonically), which is.. honestly weird as fuck. And he reads transformers smut, makes it as well, sent it on to me with the tag 'Forced Prostitution' on ao3. I just.. don't have any words to say to that .

The thing is, this dude always thinks everything is about him. They used to just go into school, talk to me about traumatic experiences, which I absolutely did not ask for, and expected me to be casual about it.

One day this motherfucker had the audacity to show off his self harm scars, just so casually as well in my old Higher Level math class. He showed them off like they were bracelets on his fucking wrist. He pressurised me into sitting beside him as well, which didn't help the current situation considering my reputation at the time which was poor due to me showing classic indicators of being adhd and zoning out in class.

That's kind of why a lot of people viewed me as weird, and socialising around him didn't help. I'm quiet most of the time in class, I keep to myself and fidget a lot. Sometimes I make conversation by talking to the teachers, or im really loud when talking to my friends, not deliberately anyway, others I literally just take out a book and read after finishing the work. People find that weird, and they find it weirder when i put on my headphones in class as well. But it hardly affects them, so there isn't really any issue realistically.

When it comes to him though, when I hung around this dude more the more I started to realize, okay something is weird. He self diagnoses too much, threatens people who get irritated at him, doesn't research but just cherrypicks symptoms in which he thinks he relates to diagnose himself with the next mental illness.

He genuinely thinks he has a lot. A lot. Schizophrenia, PTSD, two eating disorders, insomnia (diagnosed with adhd and autism) dyscalculia or however you say it, NPD and probably more.

The reason why I think it's necessary to tell you this is because he didn't do research, well much research at all. He straight up just says he has these things and doesn't pass any heat on it. One time he said he had dyspraxia and said it was relevant to numbers and I said no, it isn't. It's a coordination disorder, he responded with, no, it's mathematics. I struggle with seeing mathematical figures coherently. I said dyspraxia is a coordination disorder. I would know, I have it. He just ignored me.

It would be fine if this didn't happen again. But it did, I can assure you.

He thinks it's possible to have two sets of ADHD at once. For example, ADHD and ADD. Which I corrected him again, considering I have researched extensively into these things to get a diagnosis for them, is not fucking possible. Next time he goes in with a crutch, and says he's ambulatory.

Ambulatory.

I cannot make this shit up.

It just shows how little research he does into these things. He brings up his disorders as if people asked him to in conversation and doesn't shut up about them. He's open about being trans as well, which is NOT an issue at all but he makes it seems like its one. Like he wants people to pick on him and fend himself off.

He even used my preferred pronouns at some point in public which was something I clarified in which he shouldn't have done, continued on as well at times.

My friend had some pretty weird experiences with him as well. Friends, in all honesty.

One friend had an experience with him in business where he asked which side would be sharper to cut himself with, the left or the right which was most definetely true considering everyone had experiences about him being open about self harming.

Another experience that another friend had with him was how gross he was. He ate his skin in public and picked at it in class a lot and barely showered, which made it difficult for anyone to hang out with him. And he didn't smell great either .

Another experience I had with him, was a similar pattern of him just liking animals. Fictional animals, but still it was fucking weird.

First it was lego monkey kid fics, he linked them to me, all smut, because I was attempting to know about his interests and he discussed lego monkey kid to me and how it's so interesting, things like that. We had times where we would just go outside and talk about it because why not? He was making an attempt at being my friend at the time so I decided why not do the same.

He knew a lot about it. Really, just a shit ton of information about it. Which was surprising how much, but then he gradually started to go in tangents about how he viewed monkey King as hot or something, and I wasn't even listening at that point. I remember just ignoring him and rolling my eyes in disgust.

Gradually I talked about how I viewed it. I called it out. Said it was weird, and he thought probably that I was joking or something. Which i wasn't.

Then he sent me a wattpad pic on TMNT (teenage mutan ninja turtles) which had a trans reader x Mike or some shit like that. And it was all smut. He reminded me that it was.

It was so weird. I remember saying to him that it was weird, and he responded angrily

,'Look at all the other fics I've sent you and tell me that again', I could have easily just done that because they were all animals. And he was acting like me getting weirded out by the fact that they were animals and was weird on its own.

It got annoying. I started blocking him on all platforms, tiktok and then pinterest and he would bring it up in real life as if it deserved clarification.

There was also a time when he mocked one of someone whom I knew and their learning disability. He made fun of them and called them stupid when they had difficulty processing something and emphasised on it as well as though he hadn't just received clarification on it.

He threatened people as well. He'd bring up stories when we had P.E class on how he treated kids with learning disabilities and how he threatened kids in school with a knife. I just chuckled nervously because honestly how the fuck was I supposed to respond?

I blocked him again. His parents check his socials but clearly haven't checked his ao3. If they had, I would genuinely feel bad for them. They're meant to be pretty strict according to him but if I had a kid like that, honest to fucking God I would be too. He ended up threatening my brother at some point as well.

I remember just going into the school cafeteria and him just fighting with my brother over Lennie from Of Mice And Men and my brother was on about killing Lennie with a cocaine bear which I honestly found pretty funny. Lennie obviously demonstrated key features of being autistic which of course the creep ended up getting pissed about.

Honestly I viewed lennie from of mice and men to be fine, whatever. I'm autistic myself (not self diagnosed) so I didn't really care much about my brothers comment regarding him. We were studying of mice and men in our English class before which is how the conversation evolved. In case you don't know, the weird dude and my brother are both in my English class.

He ended up threatening to hit my brother with a crutch as he accused him of being ableist. Some shit like that. In all honesty, my brother was not ableist. He just says shit like that when it comes to characters who do things wrong by accident. In which case, lennie evidently did.

The dude at this point was not having it. He said he went to jail like 3 times and that he was going to hit my brother if he didn't shut up, and added that he was the only disabled person in our English class which nearly made me combust.

He is not the only disabled person in the English class.

Anyway I blocked him again. Currently it's the Christmas holidays so much isn't going on, but if he ever does talk to me next time irl, I will genuinely tell him to fuck off.

And I reported him to the principal for threatening my brother like that because he is not allowed to do that. Especially when it comes to my family members.

I will probably update this in the future as he will be asking me why I blocked him lmaoooo

Thank u if u read this I genuinely had to get this shit off my chest bc the amount of stress I get from this dude is insane.

#true story #weird kid #tw zoophile mention #anti zoophile #self diagnosis #tumblr fyp #creep #anti proship #anti proshitter #anti non con

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