#✘; IN A WORLD WITHOUT GOLD，WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN HEROES ( headcanon )

[emcads]

vampire lore masterpost

nsfw content is last and beneath a heading.

physicality / anatomy

her respiratory system operates like a snake's: though she has a pair of human lungs she was born with, one falls into atrophy. also like a snake's, due to the opening in her windpipe she is able to breathe while feeding on prey, and this modified opening produces her hiss on forceful exhale. she requires far less breathing than a human would in normal circumstances (next to none when dormant), but the demands are increased in heightened physical activity like hunting, or sex. however, when she’s not fed well she has to breathe more, as the blood that’s in low supply needs to be kept oxygenated.

her fangs are also snakelike and fold up and down mostly as an active and conscious process when she's ready to attack or to feed. however, they can extend unconsciously out of hunger (like mouth watering), out of desire, or when she’s startled,  or even when she’s just playing (much like a cat clawing or biting you) there is a numbing agent in her venom that allows her to feed from victims without waking them, and makes being fed from a pleasurable act for the victim if they are awake (typically).

she is not white,  or any paler than her natural skintone;  she doesn’t have a tan  or get any darker ( because she can’t be out in the sun, naturally ) but the vampirism doesn’t affect natural levels of melanin.  she is also no thinner than her normal body type.  if she only consumed blood,  her metabolism is quick enough that she would significantly lose weight,  but she does not and very much enjoys consuming regular meals with blood,   so she remains curvy  ( and at what would be,  under human circumstances,  a healthy body weight.  )

her eyes are lightened to an amber similar to the shade of a cat’s ;  also like a cat’s,  there’s a reflective layer behind them that allow her to see better at night,  and will shine back green if there’s light thrown into them.  cameras haven’t exactly been invented yet,  but if they were,  she would show up,  but it’d look like one of those spooky pictures of your cat where only their green eyes are visible in the dark. her pupils expand similar to cat pupils when she's excited or hungry or horny.

her heartbeat is ordinarily almost undetectable, though it does beat, very slowly: when she's dormant in her coffin it's so faint that she would be confused with a corpse. but as demands increase on her body, it will return to a “live” pace/volume, in strenuous physical or emotional activity.

she has blood, will bleed if wounded,  and these wounds rapidly ( though not instantaneously ) heal.   however she does not menstruate and it isn’t possible for her to sustain a pregnancy  (  it’s incredibly unlikely for her to get pregnant and her body might try to support the pregnancy for a few days, but  it won’t sustain life from an un-life for very long   ).

she can produce most other bodily fluids, including cervical fluid & arousal fluid. tears are incredibly, incredibly unlikely unless she's in immense physical pain and near death. one that she cannot produce is sweat: she has a naturally low body temperature that is very rarely exceeded, and if so, she will need to submerge herself in cool water or go below ground.   

eating

she prefers to eat men and will drain them absolutely dry: these killings may be messy and generally unpleasant depending on how much the man in question fights back and how strong he is. she will drink from women but rarely kills them: she prefers romantic advances and voluntary feeding, and may be proceeded by an extended seduction / courtship (much like Carmilla)

her strongest weapon and access to blood is her fangs, but as she is a trained fencer she uses her rapier or her knife more often that not,  as she considers biting to kill ( rather than just to drink, as from a lover )  a very messy and animalistic business. she tends to resort to her fangs in moments of heightened emotions, namely anger or panic.   

the transubstantiation element of the eucharist means that it does, technically satisfy her hunger vis a vis the blood of christ but it's not that pleasant nor satisfying. the processed nature of the wafers is more or less equivalent to a saltine cracker.

different blood types have different flavor profiles, analogous to broad categories of mortal food like sweet/savory/sour, and they are further seasoned by whatever the victim themselves ate (as well as any other substances in the body). virgins are analogous to the scent Auntie Anne's pretzels in the mall and are thus irresistible.

she has very Cultivated Tastes for blood for various reasons. Don Rafael was already an established and pretentious vampire when she was born, and he raised her in the luxury of limitless blood. but when they went to sea, there were some lean times at sea when one man had to feed both of them, or they were forced to resort to eating rats. now she dines rather greedily and almost exclusively eats humans. if absolutely pressed she would eat things like deer, rabbits, foxes, mountain lions, but she has no desire to eat livestock and CERTAINLY not vermin ever again

history

she is technically half-vampire: she was born to a human mother, and a vampire father, and grandfather. by the onset of the golden age of piracy she is already about 150 years old. she appears physically in her early 30's, as this was the point at which her body achieved stasis: her growth was far quicker than a human's, and she achieved maturity in about 10 years.

around 1700 they're pushed out of New Spain for the same reasons Don Rafael was expelled from Europe, and they take to piracy, sailing only at night, and bleeding ships literally dry – leading to some fascinating new legends ( but they arent associated with very many other pirates like the brethren due to the butchery ). after a while of that, Don Rafael's murder at the hands of a religious fanatic, and some near misses with the sunlight, it gets too dangerous to stay at sea. this leads to her decision to take her wealth and reclaim the ancient castle in Spain the family held before the Inquisition, to make it her own.

since she was born rather than cursed, and diluted by human blood, she doesn't have any of the Wilder array of vampiric powers like flight, turning into a bat, pyrokinesis, hypnosis, etc. however, her senses are sharper, and she's stronger and faster than a human is. this also means that she consumes regular food in addition to blood, often side by side as she dines with a dinner guest and then eats them.

in the 14th and 15th centuries, the de Sevilla family business was originally making wine (including blood wine for themselves. when she reclaims the abandoned castle, she also claims the defunct attached vineyard. this gives her a way to store blood long-term that isn't freezing or refrigeration (disgusting) as well as providing a bit of income.

other:

when at sea, she and don rafael sailed primarily with other vampires or occult, but would keeps a few humans on the ship as livestock to be slaughtered along the way if they didn't happen into battle soon enough, or were not satisfied by the blood consumed then. this was done without their knowledge, and they would fake a reason for their death to the other human crewmates (if any still remained)

she has very refined table manners and generally hates making a mess, and has evolved methods of biting / bleeding her victims as efficiently and cleanly as possible: she will use a serviette to tidy up her lips if any blood escapes. but she is given to carelessness if her emotions are heightened, and will get blood everywhere, which she hates to no end, and will immediately want a bath. this habit does not stop her from wearing light-colored gowns, though several of them have already been stained.

she has little to no desire to get married and it's highly, highly unlikely unless her partner desperately wants to. she's much too pretentious to have a purely legal ceremony and the thought of entering a church and saying vows before god makes her ill. she might eventually decide on a long-term partner, but she prefers the romance of humans to other vampires, generally speaking, and their sport lifespan makes it typically unlikely.

within her living quarters, she tends to maintain the aesthetic of catholicism but modified to accommodate her undead, unholy state. for instance: crucifixes on the wall are turned upside down, and there tends to be more imagery of the serpent, or of the weeping virgin mary, than of christ. she's sensitive to silver, and won't eat from it/touch it, but general decorations don't bother her (except on the rare occasion she bumps into an over-large silver candelabra and curses like a sailor). this results in quite a bit of gold decor as the safest, and most elaborate, option.

as far as her relationship with God goes, she still deeply believes in Him but she's far more annoyed than faithful. He's real and very influential, unfortunately, much like Ronald Reagan.

nsfw:

drinking is very arousing & pleasurable for her and would be incorporated as a sexual act in some respect, even if only mildly, such as giving love bites, or kissing up the beads of blood from scratching their back. she will refrain if her partner expresses discomfort, but its unlikely her restraint will last for an extended period.

 she very much enjoys eating out vaginas, giving blowjobs, and swallowing/licking up cum;  it’s not quite the same as drinking blood,  but partially satisfies that hunger, like eating candy. 

she also very much enjoys being eaten out.  penetrative sex can be enjoyable for her especially when the power dynamics are contributing to the thrill, but it’s a surer bet just to get ur mouth down there:  the hunger / consumption aspect reliably drives her insane.  on that note :  she won’t enjoy sex if she’s hungry.   she needs to be fed with blood first,  or she’ll be irritable, for one,  and  won’t get any physical pleasure herself because of the weakened blood flow.

[lord-of-christmas-lights]

I swear I have normal Narnia headcanons. However, none of them are featured in this post.

So! If you've been following my series of posts about my Inhuman Narnia AU and the couple of oneshots I posted on ao3 under ASkyOfKai, you've probably noticed that in this little universe I've created, Narnia is sort of...sentient. And I've just realized that I've only actually gone into depth about this on Discord with my friends who are probably very tired of hearing about it. So I'm making y'all suffer through it instead. Welcome to Inhuman Narnia 101, please take your seats because this is going to take a while.

Warning for religious themes, theological discussion, and some dark fantasy/inhuman/body horror concepts that involve blood and physical changes.

BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING: Please keep in mind that an AU is meant to be an alternate universe that may not follow canon information. If anything in this post contradicts canon on the creation of Narnia (it undoubtedly will), pay it no mind, this is an AU. It doesn't have to follow canon.

First off, a little explanation of the Inhuman Narnia AU in general. Basically I came up with this AU after seeing some other people on tumblr post about the Pevensies being not quite human after their time in Narnia. Just eerie, cryptid, a bit of dark fantasy kinda stuff. And I was like, "I'm in love, sign me up, I have ideas." I did not sit down and develop this all at once. The worldbuilding I've done for it has come slowly over the past few weeks through posts, fanfics, and discord rambles. The idea of Narnia being a sentient earth deity of sorts is a recent one and there is already so much to it. (Also I call her Narnia because it's convenient, she has other names but I haven't bothered to like, actually make any up so Narnia is what she's called.)

The most important thing to note starting off is that Narnia is not supposed to be a replacement for Aslan, nor is she necessarily "the hero to his villain". Aslan and I have an interesting relationship, as he is literally God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit/etc and I no longer really identify as Christian. While there are times that Aslan definitely takes a more antagonistic route in my writings, I don't actually see him as a bad guy, nor as a good guy. As God, he literally removed from our concepts of good and evil (in my opinion). The same goes for Narnia being an earth deity. I am a Christian-raised pagan, and I definitely subscribe to the idea that gods and deities are not subject to humanity and our rules. Narnia is not a good goddess, she is not a bad goddess, she simply is a goddess. Plain and simple. The dichotomy that exists between Narnia and Aslan in my writing is generally that of opposing deities, but this isn't a hard and fast rule. There were and still are times when they're friends, working towards the same goals. There are times when Narnia's power is stronger than Aslan's and times when Aslan's power is stronger than hers. There is no simple 1:1 comparison between them.

So, getting into motivations and why Narnia as a deity even exists. Essentially, I asked the question, "How do the Pevensies become inhuman?" and voila earth deity Narnia was born. Now, the basic in-universe mythology I've worked out is that Narnia and Aslan are two deities from separate dimensions that came together to create a new world, the world of Narnia. Aslan is the one who oversees things, he's the one who comes up with the ideas, and he's a little less attached to the world as a whole because he's a Creator, not an earth deity. Narnia is, however, and she literally makes up the world, she sort of runs the entire thing on a physical level, and she is much more attached to it. So she's always kinda taken on this role of making the things in her world the way she wants them. For the most part, she and Aslan designed everything together and they're both happy with it blah blah blah. Well, Aslan then decides to bring a few humans from this other world he's created to Narnia. And she affects them a bit (I've got headcanons about Digory and Polly that I haven't posted anywhere yet but I might soon), but it isn't until Aslan brings the Pevensies over that she really gets to experiment. See, there are other deities in the world that kinda rule over the various lands on a surface level (patron gods for Telmar, the Archenlands, etc, they just have less power than Narnia and Aslan) so she has a little less power over the people in those places, but the country of Narnia is both her land and her so when the Pevensies become the Kings and Queens and live there for 15 years, she's very connected to them. And it's through this connection that she starts to affect them. Honestly, I'm not sure if Narnia even knows what she's doing when she starts stripping away their humanity. I think it's that she can feel they're not from her world and she doesn't like that. She wants them to be a part of her, she wants them to belong in her world just the same as everyone else. (Side note—I know Telmar and some other lands in canon are based on people finding portals and coming through and I'd like to say that she does affect them a bit, takes away a bit of their humanity, but it's not to the same extent as the Kings and Queens of her lands).

"So Kai," you might say, "You keep empathizing that she is literally the land and the land is her. What the hell do you mean by that?" Well, essentially, she is...the...land. Basically if you've read Percy Jackson Heroes of Olympus, there's this idea that Gaia and Tartarus are both physically their domains and able to take on a smaller, human shaped physical form because they're gods and not restricted by human ideas of only having one body. Narnia is the same. Her physical form is both the entire world and whatever smaller shape she might appear in to people. However, we have to acknowledge that their world is differently structurally from ours. There's magic, there's talking animals, and in my Inhuman AU, there is a literal Heart of Narnia at the center. Like a physical, beating, human-shaped heart. Except it's a lot bigger than a regular human heart. Also it's golden. And many many many miles underground. So anyways this is where she's centered. It's basically where her soul is. Probably under Cair Paravel because I just came up with that idea and I love it. And radiating out from it are veins of magic and blood, and these stretch all across the world. Now here is where we get into blood magic and some of those fun terrifying concepts I've come up with.

Narnia has her own blood, of course, but also whenever one of her Kings or Queens bleeds in battle, she kinda pulls it down through the earth into her own heart and veins. It doesn't really do anything to her or them in particular, it's just a fun side effect of them having a patron pagan god. Yes this includes Caspian after he becomes King. Also Peter's blood turns golden because he's the High King, and then later Caspian's does too because I just really like imagery of Ben Barnes bleeding gold. (Side note—when Peter returns to England, his blood goes back to red, but it does remain a brighter red than blood generally is).

Diverting for half a second here. Now, in both my regular Narnia writings and my Inhuman AU, Lucy is very very connected to magic. In my regular Narnia fanfic, she studies with the druids, who are sort of like BBC Merlin's druids. They're just like, chill dudes who run around in camps doing magic and making prophecies and shit. However, in the Inhuman AU, they are a lot darker. One of my favorite ideas with the Inhuman druids and Lucy is that they are so connected to Narnia's magic and her Heart that their hands become stained with blood. Is it their blood, is it Narnia's blood, is it someone else's blood? Idk, don't ask questions. But yea, their hands are permanently stained reddish-brown to almost black. In my regular Narnia stuff, I still like the idea of Lucy's hands being stained and go with just earth magic, dirt stuff for the reason why. But yea no, in the Inhuman AU her hands are stained with blood because of blood magic.

So getting a bit more into how Narnia affects the Pevensies now because I love talking about this lol. She doesn't consciously chose how to change them, though she does call them her creations. Generally the way her magic affects them is by connecting them to to the land in some way and bringing out certain traits they have. So for Peter it's his eyes flickering between regular blue and the amber of a lion's, feathers appearing on his back that grow into wings, having a strength greater than that of a giant's. His blood is golden and on clear nights, the Aurora Borealis in the sky is reflected across his skin. For Susan, her skin glints like glass in the sun and she can briefly glimpse the future. Her wounds are sewn shut with golden rays of light, her eyes are cracked but clear, and she seems to glow faintly in the night, a bit of the sun's radiance shining through her. Edmund has a bit of a star's power lodged in his throat, and can manipulate words, uses them to influence people and their actions. His skin is frostbitten in places, a side effect of ruling the Woods where the White Witch once held so much power, and in some spots his bones shine under the ice that spreads across his skin. Lucy has the stained skin from her stronger connection to magic, and when she speaks words from the Old Language (the one Aslan and Narnia used to shape the world itself), her voice echoes and rasps. Her teeth are too sharp, her smile too wide, and when she disappears underwater, she can stay for hours without surfacing. I want to get into Eustace and Caspian now too but this post is already extremely long and I've still got a bit to cover, so we're just sticking with the Pevensies for now. So yea, Narnia doesn't pick what she does to the Pevensies, she just connects herself to them and through that connection, they change. The magic that she is made of, that Narnia the world operates on, that's what changes them. However, as I stated already, she does call them her creations and feels extremely responsible for them.

Wrapping back around up to the beginning, this is the biggest source of conflict between her and Aslan as of the canon timeline. I like to believe that the lamppost incident was an accident, that Aslan didn't actually mean to send them back at the end of LWW and it was pure coincidence, wrong place wrong time stuff. That being said, it did happen and Narnia really didn't like it happening. The Pevensies did return to their (mostly) human selves in this AU in England, so when they came back in Prince Caspian, she felt disconnected from them again. She reacted to this by digging into them even harder on a spiritual level and essentially speedran them back to being inhuman throughout the timeline of PC, which generally takes place over a few months in my mind. I don't remember how long it was in the book, it's been quite a while since I read them, but it's only like a week in the movie and like eff that, overthrowing a kingdom takes a bit longer in my opinion. Now there are a few divergences here. 1. They all stay at the end of PC and yea that's it, they go back to being Kings and Queens and it's like a second Golden Age but with Caspian there as well. 2. Susan and Peter stay, Lucy and Edmund go back and it's a repeat of the human/inhumanity cycle for them + Eustace in VOTDT and then they stay. 3. Everything happens exactly as it does in canon and it's a constant cycle of humanity/inhumanity with the character's various trips and finally ends at The Last Battle. I like all versions and I tend to leave things a little open to the reader on what exactly happens, or I would if I could actually finish some of my drafts and post them. As you can imagine, Narnia likes 1 the best and 3 the least. She really wants her Kings and Queens to stay and rule her lands and like be awesome and stuff. However, Aslan prefers 3 the best and 1 the least. So again, neither of them is really good nor evil, they just have differing opinions on how the world should be run and what the Pevensie's fates should be. I do tend to side with Narnia, I really like exploring these concepts of inhumanity, but I also really like the concept of a cycle. That's very common in mythology.

So anyways, that's a bit of an overview on earth deity Narnia and her role in my Inhuman AU. If you made it this far, congratulations, and I give you explicit permission to use any of my ideas in your own writing/fanart/whatever, as long as you tag either my tumblr or my ao3 (lord-of-christmas-lights and ASkyOfKai) because I need more Narnia+Inhumanity content in my life. Thanks for reading all this and I'll probably be back very soon with elaboration on Eustace and Caspian's inhumanity!

- Kai

[remakethestars]

CABIN 7 — APOLLO

Headcanons.

❝There ought to be more drama, I think. A musical crescendo. Confetti.❞

— Jess Cooper, I Am Still Alive

Headcanon masterlist.

Oh, boy — this is my cabin, y'all; buckle up! 😁

Not all Apollo kids are good at everything their dad's good at, okay? I sure as heck can’t paint or play an instrument. 

TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of violence?

They run an underground tattoo parlor.

That's where Will & Butch got their respective sun & rainbow tats.

Apollo kids with lyrics tattooed into their skin.

Rick says there isn't much by way of décor inside, which is f*in' B.S. Apollo's the god of art; those walls have been graffitied Tangled style.

🎶 i'll paint the walls some more — i'm sure there's room somewhere! 🎶

The east wall is covered in a landscape of a sunrise, & the west has a sunset (because the sun rises in the east & sets in the — yeah, I'll see myself out).

The north & south walls & the ceiling are white, though, because it really brightens/opens up the space (C7 has the 2ⁿᵈ most campers under C11 because Apollo's a slut; things can get a little crowded in the summer).

When there’re celebrations, the artistically inclined kids bust out the face paint. Especially for the younger campers.

The artistically inclined are the ones that paint the camp beads for the end of the summer. Despite the numbers, it doesn’t take them as long as one might think.

Rick said the ceiling had cedar beams, but we're not gonna do Cyparissius dirty like that. Cypress wood is good for building; the beams are cypress. You know what? F*ck you — the whole dang cabin's cypress!

There’s a massive, potted aloe vera plant by the steps that gets moved into the C4 greenhouse in the winter. It’s one of those old ones — because everyone knows the old aloe plants work better for burns & blisters than these sh¡tty new ones. (It’s constantly getting broken off to heal burns & stuff.) 

Rick said there are potted red & purple hyacinths in the window & yellow flowers from Delos. That's true.

I'd say the flowerbeds around the cabin are full of healing plants, but I feel like they'd be better off around the infirmary for obvious reasons.

I do feel like there's a laurel tree planted outside C7, though, because Apollo's a pining b¡tch.

And there's an actual infirmary building, okay? Rick's kinda inconsistent about that. Sometimes he says "infirmary," sometimes he says the Big House is running over with injured, & apparently there's a cot dead center for injured in C7? B.S.

Or maybe I've just read too much fanfic, and the authors don't get it right?

Either way, there's an infirmary building with surgery & delivery rooms. One floor. Locker room for C7 kids to store their scrubs & sh¡t.

They go for yellow scrubs, though, because orange C.H.B. scrubs make them look like escaped convicts.

Fun Band-Aids™

They give out little orange stickers with laurels around the edges that are like I voted! stickers, but they're injury-specific.

I got my leg(s) reattached! & Percy Jackson shot me in the butt! & I ticked off Clarisse! & I made out with an Aphrodite kid in the poison ivy! & I fell off the lava wall! & I got pranked by the Stolls!

After a war or just when there’re a lot of campers in the infirmary, there seems to be a constant flow of Apollo kids singing one hymn to their father in unison to heal someone.

Sometimes, an unconscious camper wakes in a cot & thinks they’ve died & gone to the wrong afterlife for a moment because their singing sounds like angels. 

The medically inclined wash their hands like surgeons. 

Kind of germophobic?

They also go around tying surgeons knots in everything.

In the summer, they’re walking Banana Boat sunscreen & after-sun aloe lotion dispensers.

The medically inclined also have the world’s sh¡ttiest handwriting.

They have to work hard to fix it if it bothers them. 

Can check your vitals & run a blood test just by touching you.

A lot of them casually touch their loved ones (at least, the ones that aren’t in C7) every morning to check their vitals & see how their health’s doing.

They do it subconsciously every time they touch someone & don’t notice it until they pick up something’s wrong.

They can do this for themselves as well. Though it may not be as accurate? And they take daily vitamins depending on what they need.

Organize their lives via pill box (never lose an earring).

Fight surgically. Every blade in their hands becomes a scalpel, & every time they’re going in for a kill against an armed anthropomorphic monster, they slice the tendons in its arm required to grip its weapon to disable it before going in for the kill.

Back to C7, it’s got a little porch with a porch swing. The kids sit on it sometimes & teach people how to play instruments.

They leave the porch light on at night when they’re waiting for one of their siblings to come home from a quest.

Jumping into the depressing sh¡t, they never found Michael’s body, so they only presumed him dead. They leave the porch light on every night now, hoping he’ll come home.

Apollo kids are afraid of the dark. They use the buddy system after the sun goes down. 

The cabin’s central light fixture is a papier-mâché sun that’s been charmed to glow when someone sings 🎶 clap on 🎶 & stop glowing when someone sings 🎶 clap off. 🎶

The curtains are a gold fabric. They’re only closed at night. Because, again, C7 kids are afraid of the dark.

The Wikipedia says Apollo kids are cursed to be afraid of snakes (I assume by the Python Apollo killed). I feel like they’d burn a lot of aster leaves then. I read somewhere it was said by the Greeks to ward off evil spirits & snakes.

They play Go Fish with their tarot cards. They’re really good at tarot games.

Hand-drawn tarot decks featuring figures form Greek myth.

There’s a target on the back wall they practice throwing cards at. They can throw them in combat for a distraction with terrifying accuracy. 

There’s a Magic 8 ball that’s passed around on the Winter Solstice (the longest night of the year), when — as a headcanon I’m sure I’ve read somewhere has indicated — they’re up all night.

Crystal balls are allowed. However, they must be covered with a cloth or placed in a box when not in use because they’re double-convex lenses, & we don’t want another incident like the fire of 1993.

Sometimes, they make little predictions throughout the day other campers may find disturbing. Such as whipping around and catching a stray arrow without warning (spidey sense?). Or cutting you off when you’re talking about someone moments before they walk into the room.

There’s a tea cart in the corner. Because tea is good for healing & they’ve accumulated an addiction.

The cart has a radio on it that’s always on at night because a lot of C7 kids can’t sleep without noise. (Inspired by @sugarandspiceandkindanice.)

Most of the time, it’s on a nearby country station that actually plays good country at night. But sometimes they switch channels — especially when there’s a new kid settling in & they could use the comfort.

There’s a portable record player there too. The shelves under the cart are full of C.D.s & records.

I’m sure I’ve read a headcanon somewhere that they sing every morning while getting ready for the day. That’s true.

The number of times it’s been “When Will My Life Begin” from Tangled is disturbing, though. 

🎶 seven a.m., the usual morning lineup! 🎶

Luke said in The Lightning Thief C11 is up at 07:00 & breakfast is at 08:00, I think, but we all know Apollo’s waking his kids up when the sun rises. 

A lot of the time, someone will just start out with whatever song they have stuck in their head & everyone else will pick it up.

Sometimes, this leads to members having the aforementioned song stuck in their head for the rest of the day.

Even the people who aren’t musically inclined will sing along, as they’re usually drowned out by the music kids that get really into it.

So sometimes those not-music kids will find themselves singing by themselves during the day years later & are surprised to find — they actually sound good?? Or at least not bad??? And it’s because singing is a learned skill & they picked it up.

I’m sure I’ve also read a headcanon somewhere that they sing “Look Down” from Les Mis when they have to do menial chores, but I'm adding “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” from Annie, “Whistle While You Work” from Snow White, “Happy Working Song” from Enchanted, & the Smurf song.

They break into song all the time.

Lee was glaring at Tantalus once & made the mistake of saying, “Sometimes, I wish —” and the entire cabin broke out with “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

🎶 — i'd never been born at all! carry on, carry on… 🎶

As mentioned in at least The Lightning Thief & The Lost Hero, they spend a lot of time playing basketball. You can bet your butt they do a rendition of “Getcha Head in the Game” from High School Musical every time there’s a new camper passing by.

They have a sister named Jubilee, and every time someone greets her — "Hey, Jube!" — the entire cabin breaks into “Hey, Jude” by The Beetles.

🎶 hey, Jube! don't make it bad. take a sad song & make it better… 🎶

Sometimes, if there are two campers that really need to get together, C10′ll commission C7 to sing “Kiss the Girl” from The Little Mermaid (or the same song with different pronouns, obviously). 

It’s usually a capella unless someone happens to have an instrument on them.

Rickrolling. 

The “Macarena.” 

Apollo takes clandestine recordings of their jam sessions & distributes them professionally. Whatever money’s made goes directly into their college funds or they periodically find it under their pillow tooth-fairy-style.

There’s a lot of denim because the artistic members like to paint on the backs of jackets & the pockets of jeans.

A lot of them have excellent aim with most projectiles, so they toss stuff to each other a lot. This results in them being oddly in sync, so they can catch something from another sibling without warning & without looking like Sam & Dean Winchester do in Supernatural. 

Their life looks like a Dude Perfect trick shot video. 

It also results in some funny looks when they hurl things halfway across camp to each other. Namely, the whistling Nerf football. 

C7 is two stories. The second story has paint on every wall. 

The east wall upstairs has arrows mounted that got Robin Hooded along with a little tag with the name of the C7 kid & the date it happened.

They also have arrows mounted from the first bullseye if there’s a member being taught. 

Lots of musical instruments & art supplies up there.

There’s an old T.V. up there. They have all of Bob Ross’s show on V.H.S.

C7′s south wall (ground floor) holds the door to the bathroom on one side & a door leading to the stairs. 

It also hosts framed photos of Charlotte, Lee, & Michael.

Instead of saying “shoot,” they say “loose.” For everything. Instead of saying “Shoot!” when they drop something, they say “Loose!” 

It's kinda one of those things — like your friend starts saying something & you just integrate it into your vocabulary subconsciously.

They like to play a game where you shoot an arrow straight up & try to catch it as it comes back down.

That sounds really stupid on their part, but it actually comes in handy when someone tries to shoot them in combat & they catch the arrow, dumbfounding whoever's attempted to skewer them.

The cresting on their arrows is in Morse code of their nickname (·—— ·· ·—·· ·—··). They can take one look at an arrow & tell what’s whose.

And the paint color of the cresting tells them what kind of arrow it is — bullet tip, broadhead, explosive, etc. 

Every bunk in C7 is made with hospital corners. No exceptions. The kids who aren’t medically inclined learn because all the beds being made the same way makes it look cleaner for inspection.

I can’t decide if Apollo kids have really good eyesight so they fit the Hawkeye bill or if they’ve all just read — Apollo’s the god of knowledge — & painted so much they’ve messed up their eyes.

The number of times one of them has used bowstring wax on an art project in a rush instead of glue is hilariously large.

I use String Snot, and it comes in a container that looks like a glue stick.

A lot of them wear bracers all the time.

When the time it takes to sling one’s quiver onto one’s back, grab one’s bow, knock an arrow, & draw is so long, one really doesn’t have time to also strap on their bracers before rushing out of the cabin to threaten a giant bronze dragon.

Not to mention if they use a recurve, they’ll also have to string their bow.

And a number of them do use recurves due to the abilities to both knock multiple arrows at once & to restring in the field.

Bows with risers coated in golden, reflective paint & limbs painted with artistic strokes.

Trick arrows are their jam. C9 is constantly being asked for new arrows.

Explosive arrows, sonic arrows, grappling hook arrows…

That’s another saying they’ve all taken to: “___ is my jam!”

There’s a bookshelf or reference material on Apollo for new C7 kids (as Rick’s indicated), but the rest of the case is full of medical journals & textbooks & books on art & poetry & divining the future.

A lot — if not all — of them have either gold flecks in their eyes or central heterochromia.

Freckles across their noses & shoulders & on the tips of their ears. Tans. Sun-bleached hair. 

Long, nimble fingers perfect for playing musical instruments.

Either they hate the winter because the sun's out for less time (so you’ll find them walking around with blanched skin & faded freckles & with both a hoody & a parka on), or they’re perfectly fine with winter & are used by everyone around them as walking space heaters. 

They spend a lot of time with Castor & Pollux. 

Rachel sits at T7. She’s practically an Apollo kid at this point. 

While her cave was being renovated, she stayed in C7.

Their dad’s the god of truth; none of these M.F.s can lie worth a sh¡t. 

But, by the gods, they can tell when you’re lying.

And they take it as a personal insult. That you (A) would dare do something as immoral as lying in the first place & that you (B) would dare to insult their intelligence in such a way because you thought they couldn’t tell.

C6 & C7 are both known for reacting outrageously when their intelligence is insulted (see: chapter 10 of The Battle of the Labyrinth). 

The more civil of the reactions of a C7 kid being lied to is cursing the liar to tell the truth, which I believe they can. 

They can curse you to speak in rhyming couplets; they should be able to curse you to tell the truth.

You mean to tell me none of these kids have created a functioning Lasso of Truth yet?

This one's really long. 😅

A lot of people fancast Sam Claflin as Apollo, but I'm going with Ross Lynch. 'Cause I do what I want. 😎

Visit my Apollo cabin Pinterest board or my headcanon masterlist.

DISCLAIMER ━━━ These headcanons are what I consider to be canon in my fanfictions. They may be others’s headcanons I’ve subconsciously filed away in my noggin. If one’s yours and you want it removed or credited, please send me your post and let me know.

[thermodynamiclawyer]

yeah, this is gonna be a trainwreck. here’s @bandagegirl ‘s and my GHS headcanon masterpost. our goal was to have at least 3 per character, if not more. we kinda had to group the last few characters together in the end, though. it’ll be split up in categories between the characters in the Game, then Anime-Only, and then overall Worldbuilding at the end as for easier reading.

Game Characters

Gregory

the Lost World/Gregory House is Gregory’s own manifestation through loneliness and envy. (see Worldbuilding)

he’s WAY older than a grandfather of James. he’s more of a great-great-great-great grandfather, but it’s easier to just call him grandpa.

he’s been long dead in reality for years. always constantly dreaming and manifesting his Lost World and eventually never woke up.

there is almost 0 records of him from reality. because of this, there is no clear time period he originated in, unlike the guests.

he’s a collector. he loves historically significant antique items to put on a shelf and learn all about.

as taken from the manga, his favorite historical subject is War.

he suffered from frequent night terrors as a teenager, making it difficult to sleep before the manifestation of the Lost World.

while he usually tries to set up a weekly chore schedule for the residents in the hotel, he usually ends up doing everything himself (both because the guests throw in the towel very quickly and that Gregory wants to do everything right).

his magic abilities include teleportation and immortality, but he’s still very prone to injury.

Gregory Mama

she’s actually a manifestation within the Lost World that Gregory used to cope/punish himself with.

has the tendency to adopt new guests as family members only to eat them/their souls later. this also applies to Gregory attempting to manifest new family members in the past, to which he stopped after Gregory Mama has shown to steal their souls each time.

obviously, she’s not Gregory’s real mother, rather a personification of the abuse Gregory suffered in reality.

as young children usually don’t use their parents real name often, she doesn’t have a real name.

James

he’s a child who escaped reality after discovering a forgotten family member (Gregory) in very old family photos; having little to no relation to the rest of the family.

plus, hearing rumors of a hotel that only appeared during moonless nights only encourage him to take on a challenge.

since he’s related to Gregory (even if it’s very distant), his monster transformation was a lot faster, becoming a full rat in little under a month.

he LOVES horror movies, especially slasher films. he might be a little too influenced by them.

he owns a large range of weapons, from toy water guns to actual chainsaws. that doesn’t mean he’ll use them responsibly, though.

he’s a very smart kid, even to the point where he can be manipulative to both the kids and the adults. he’ll even convince other kids to take the blame for him whenever he starts problems.

his parents from reality miss him very much.

Catherine

in reality, Catherine was a German nurse in the 1940’s during WW2.

as a human, she was actually afraid of the sight of blood and would get lightheaded whenever she had to treat a soldier’s wounds. however, as a determined nurse, she tried her hardest to become tolerant of blood. tolerance became fondness and fondness became obsession to the point where she was hurting her patients just to see blood again.

she is attracted to both men and women, however she experiences internalized biphobia. due to this, she’s desperate to find true love with a man while specifically trying to avoid romantic relationships with women.

she knows how to take care of children.

she molts her skin during periods of time, you know, since she’s a lizard.

she didn’t gain magic powers along with her transformation, but instead gained physical strength.

Cactus Gunman and Cactus Girl

both originated in the Mexican revolution, especially around 1910.

Gunman had been shot in the chest a few times in his life and surprisingly survived each of them.

Gunman’s personality completely changed once he arrived in Gregory House with his sister, becoming a paranoid coward from the brave “hero” he made himself out to be.

they both grow seasonal flowers in the springtime. Gunman grows one large red flower on his head, which he hides with his hat in the spring time. he prefers to only show to his potential lover. Cactus Girl grows smaller white flowers in her hair.

Gunman is in dire need of glasses.

Gunman is quite fond of gardening, and loves to talk about flora. sometimes, Lost Doll will accompany him in the courtyard while he weeds.

they would die for each other, so don’t cross them.

Cactus Girl can shoot better than Gunman, but prefers her lasso and other melee weapons. she’s sworn off using guns after the revolution.

Cactus Girl has the ability to spawn in zones in smaller closed areas, such as turning her hotel room into Cactus Land; sort of like a pocket dimension. it’ll disappear as soon as she leaves the room.

sometimes, they both don’t need to eat due to the occasional Photosynthesis, and can go a long time without water.

Hell’s Chef

he worked as a highly regarded chef in Russia at a fancy restaurant, with mixed European family origins.

him and Mirror Man were coworkers of some sort.

he came from a long line of wrestlers, but broke family tradition to cook as a passion and career.

he died after the restaurant went up in flames.

his throat is still scratchy and rough from the incident, so he isn’t much of a talker. not to mention the language barrier and that he’s still attempting to learn the language everyone else speaks in Gregory House.

while the appearance of his meals look absolutely irredeemable, Chef’s cooking is actually very tasty; so much that you almost can’t taste the poison. he prefers making meals that are hearty and savory, rather than “looking good”.

he prefers to do all the food shopping and butchering. nobody knows the best ingredient selections like he does.

like Catherine, all of this “magic ability” went to his incredible strength.

most, if not all of his body is made out of wax, with vein like wick all throughout the body, giving him general bodily structure.

Neko Zombie

(see Worldbuilding)

Clock Master and My Son

My Son was a stillborn in reality; the death of him and his mother gave Clock Master an alcohol addiction and depression.

1960 is the year My Son and CM's wife died, making it when time stopped for CM. he’s sort of “stuck” in 1960 in a way, which is why the year is plastered on both of their foreheads.

My Son was technically "born" in Gregory House.

when Clock Master came to Gregory House, an infant My Son was already waiting in his room. Because the child died before getting a name, CM referred to him as My Son.

while CM's time abilities are getting worse with age, they never were great to begin with due to the Lost World's unusual flow of time.

My Son's time abilities on the other hand have the potential to be the most powerful ability out of everyone's when he gets older, being able to play multiple timelines at the same time and even rewriting reality. this is due to being born in the Lost World, so his ability has adapted to Gregory House’s “time” system.

Judgement Boy + Gold

instead of a singular character, Judgement Boys are classified as a “species” considering there are multiple of them, with more being produced in the Judgement Factory daily. there is not a singular JB.

the Judgement Factory in Gregory House is a sub-factory of a much bigger Core Factory, where it branches off into different zones and other manifestations. There are countless Judgement Factories in existence, all with numerous JBs being produced and trained.

Judgement Boy Gold is an individual one-of-a-kind model, however, there are more in the “Metal” series similar to him in different factories with a variety of training jobs.

JBs came into existence after a lawyer in the early 2000’s won a court case that suppressed the rights and safety of these assembly line workers in a Toy Factory, which caused hundreds of workers to be injured or even killed. realizing the consequences of his actions, he spiraled downwards into insanity and ended up in Gregory House, rarely leaving his hotel room and eventually manifesting the Factory.

most models or designs of a Judgement Boy are based off of toys; one of the very few things reflected from the lawyer’s fatal court case.

the standard JB’s appearance is a bastardized caricature of the original lawyer, only with added cages and robotic features. the lawyer began transforming into a red monster with sharp teeth and claws, but never saw the results as he disappeared into the Core Factory one day, never to be seen again.

see @ask-factory and the #extended factory tag for a more extensive story.

Mummy Family

Mummy Papa, Mummy Dog, and Mummy Mama originated somewhere in the 1980’s.

the reason they’re in Gregory House is an overlap of death and the fact that Mummy Papa was unintentionally poisoning the 3, leading to ending up in the hotel as a “punishment”.

they’re Bloodhounds.

Mummy Papa loves to collect weapons and owns a saber collection, especially older historically significant ones.

Mummy Dog enjoys morbid facts and likes to tell the other children about death.

Mummy Papa has Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy, which is triggered when the sword shifts in his head. because of this, he keeps himself and the rest of his family sicker with unclear motives, perhaps to have the ability brag about their ailments. (more details here)

Mummy Mama suffers from more immune-system based illnesses and anemia while the other two deal with physical and phantom pain, which they all pass off as colds.

the plant in Mummy Mama’s head is a parasite, and needs to be fed directly to continue living if Mummy Mama gets too weak. (the plant prefers blood)

TV-Fish

one of the few characters classified as a species.

TV Fish have a wide variety of fish or other sea creatures they can be. the TV Fish in Gregory House are much smaller.

some TV Fish don’t even have to be TVs. some can be other electronic appliances just as long as they’re combined with a fish skeleton.

they can be found across other Zones and places besides the Lost World, some with localized and native species differing from what we already seen.

TV Fish are an invasive species in the Lost World.

they’re attracted to people with better memory. a person more intact and in touch with their memories could attract an entire school of TV Fish!

Roulette Boy

practically a God, Roulette Boy has reality bending powers.

however, since he follows his own rules strictly, he sets limits on himself as to only use them for his games, and won’t apply them to himself since he’s the Game Master.

nobody knows what the “rules” he follow are, but he restrains himself on what he can do while hosting a game. though, once you’re in his game, it’s almost a free-for-all and he can change you to be whatever pawn he sees fit until the game is over.

while RB prefers traditional board games, nothing’s stopping him from hosting RPGs or other turn-based video games (as seen in Lost Qualia.) he also loves gacha games and gambling.

when not hosting a game, he likes to roleplay.

Angel/Devil Dog

she is not a guest in Gregory House, neither a manifestation of the Lost World. she is a messenger from an entire separate outside world/reality, and she’s always been Angel Dog.

her, Death, and Gregory have been around equally the longest.

her and Gregory have a long history of rivalry. she’s always meddling in the Lost World and trying to let souls out a backdoor. whether she’s doing it to free them, or just to piss off Gregory, depends on her mood.

Angel Dog has a solid grasp on reality, however, her reality is different from the guests. it’s why her and Neko Zombie get along.

she doesn’t have a split personality disorder, as she chooses to become Devil Dog whenever she feels like it. her decision making is very emotion-based.

she’s a Dachshund!

Devil Dog likes soccer, and Angel Dog likes american football.

Lost Doll

ever since coming to the Lost World, she has either stopped aging altogether or she ages very slowly, as most object-based guests do.

she’s a wooden marionette with the ability to change her size.

in reality, she belonged to a very poor family who could only afford a few outdated wooden toys, which is why Katie was so special to her.

she’s good friends with James, even if she’s usually the one falling victim to his pranks. sometimes, when Katie takes over, it can be the other way around.

she has poor volume control and tends to shout when she’s excited or provoked.

she’s the youngest guest.

Death

Death, like Gregory Mama, is a manifestation of a part of Gregory's life.

he was created from Gregory’s favorite comfort movie, The Seventh Seal.

Death used to work in Gregory House as a doorman, welcoming the guests and wishing them goodbye, but fleed when Gregory Mama appeared and got rid of all other "manifestations".

his goal is to free Gregory's soul and end the Lost World, which is only possible if Gregory is the only person left.

Anime Characters

Dr.Fritz

Dr.Fritz is also German like Catherine, but came a little later in time.

back in reality, his body slowly stop responding, so he illegally tried to build himself a new body. that new body wasn’t fully ready yet when he decided to transplant his own brain when he was wheelchair bound and starting to lose arm control, so it was a very long process.

because of his condition, doctors either didn’t treat him correctly or flat out ignored his problems, so he has a strong mistrust to other doctors, which is why he wanted to operate on himself. the other doctors said there was nothing they could do, but he had other plans in mind.

he was there for the Berlin wall falling, and still has a piece of it as a keepsake.

he falls apart easily and has to re-sew body parts or snap his neck back into place. Catherine helps put him back together (in return, Fritz helps her shed.)

Catherine calls him Fritzchen on occasion.

he documents the species of the patients he treats out of curiosity and hopes to help them better. his treatments may be considered “unethical” but he knows for certain that if it’s to cure or treat the patient, he’ll go great lengths to break any rule in the medical field.

Mono Eye Wizard + Frog Fortune Teller

both are canonically married to each other, i just wanted to make sure everyone knew :]

Mono Eye Wizard wears a helmet, and he’s also an amphibian with one eye underneath his robe.

both are very interested and knowledgeable in the Magical and Paranormal side of the Lost World.

both held onto their souls for longer than most people, but lost them in the end.

Wizard is normally very powerful, he just SUCKS at summonings. (plus, he’s a little bit of an idiot)

on the other hand, Frog Fortune Teller isn’t very powerful, but she is very smart (and stubborn). she’s almost always right, especially if it’s a bad thing she predicted.

Wizard, and other characters such as Musha Dokuro and Egypetit all worship the same Dark Lord.

the little horned skeletons in Wizard’s cult are also classified as a species. sometimes, he allows in other interested members.

Wizard is fluent in latin.

Second Guest

the Second Guest, as shown at the end of the season two, has the silhouette of a rat. that’s her actual form; a shadow.

her “job” is to eavesdrop on other guests to go and report to Gregory Mama.

she’s very fast, quiet, hard to catch, and a big snitch.

the others call her “Hello Sister” as a title, while Gregory Mama calls her “My Lovely Daughter.”

her cigarette embers still glow on the wall, which is one of the only signals she’s in the room, especially in a poorly lit one.

usually only Gregory, James, and Mama can “hear” what she’s saying.

Chef strongly dislikes her and Lost Doll avoids her like the plague.

Prompters

a pair of indistinguishable twins, escaping reality after being rejected of their dream to become famous theater actors. both young adults.

they work multiple part time jobs, including helping out in the Judgement Factory in the hotel and Kabuki's theater, along with Poor Conductor’s performances.

they share drinks at the bar. their favorite drink is a raspberry/strawberry milkshake with two cherries. don’t forget to give them two straws!

they’re both learning how to cook with Hell’s Chef. so far, they can dice onions very well. :]

Public Phone

he’s in the Lost World as a punishment for being a greedy thief in reality.

he can create fake alibis, passports, various cards in addition to faking voices.

he’s drinking pals with Clock Master.

he takes any currency, just nothing fake. only HE can be the swindle here.

he’s a perverted little bitch.

Various Species

Haniwa Salarymen are classified as species, created from overworked businessmen in reality. The occurrence of them are very common, and season 1 happens to focus on one of them.

Black Ducks are a species, specializing in working kiosks, amusement parks, and other booths. Speed Mouse is never seen without a team of Black Ducks. Street Vendors sometimes accompany them.

Musha Dokuro are an invasive species to the Lost World.

Trap Mice are a (rare) artificial species built in the Lost World.

Dead Bodies are also classified as a species. they are the result of Death freeing an individual’s soul, leaving a husk/empty body behind.

species like these show up in reality to those who are close to their visit in the Lost World, appearing in the background or the corner of their eye, replacing real people.

individuals in all of those species are not visible/noticable until you interact and get close with them. they’re like NPCs.

Others

Wooden Lizard was Captain Wood’s favorite keychain that came to life.

Fat Chicken is an omnivore. He can and will eat anything.

(see here for Pig Gentleman and Mirror Man.)

Mirror Man can summon his own pocket dimension.

Kinko and Inko know more than they lead on, and Kinko is definitely much more powerful, but he can’t be bothered to do anything about it. he’s lazy.

Inko smokes cigars, but hates cigarettes.

Earth Man (from Lost Qualia) is non-verbal. he’s also very eco friendly!

Hell’s Taxi is a manifestation of a false sense of hope to escape the Lost World. it can also manifest in Reality to pick up new guests.

Egypetit’s head is made up of Gold, a strong conductor of magic in the Lost World.

Poor Conductor was powerful enough to manifest his own room into the Lost World, rather than checking into the Hotel himself.

Unbaba is semi non-verbal and cannot remove his mask. he’s definitely powerful enough to make guests lose their souls.

Bonsai Kabuki needs to water his head frequently or else he’ll be drained of energy, and be unable to open his third eye.

The Rainbow Dragon fossils, which Bonehead is after, are cursed, and uses his wife’s voice to compel him into seeking after them to claim yet another victim.

Toilet Baby may not be as powerful, but he can still summon dangerous attacks related to pocket dimensions.

Sleepy Sheep is used as a vessel in his sleep for those who are powerful enough to enter dreams.

Worldbuilding

Gregory House was a real place back in Reality, and it originally belonged to Neko Zombie and his loving family.

However, years and years of built up envy and hatred from Gregory, a person who didn’t receive the same love and luxuries as Neko Zombie, manifested the Lost World as a way for him to cope with the things he didn’t have in Reality, bringing the house down with him.

The remains of the house in Reality is now a mere rumor in the town, but its influence spreads across many zones to this day.

Neko Zombie is the final remaining member of the original owners of the house.

Him and Gregory are LONG forgotten for generations in Reality.

Zones are a loose term in the Lost World, which could mean alternate realities, different dimensions, etc. The Lost World is a zone with its own manifestations.

Another Zone could have its own origins and realities. Reality is not a zone, if that makes sense.

A Zone itself can manifest as a single individual or object being the Core that keeps the zone existing. (See The Core Judgement Factory that branches off Sub-Factories into different Zones.)

The Lost World is a very large Zone that reaches and branches off into other Zones, pulling in individuals.

Because of Zonal shenanigans, time moves a lot differently in the Lost World.

awful hospital does a better job handling zones better than this, actually. we took a little bit of inspiration from it. see here and here for a better grasp on what i’m trying to say.

[loopy777]

RE: WIPs game: Actress Mai. what is she acting in? besides her ongoing starring role as Repressed Perfect Child?

Ah, "Actress Mai." This is a headcanon I keep chipping away at in the hopes that I'll eventually have something I want to publish. I have a whole host of little ideas and scene concepts, but only one actual WIP.

It started with the idea that Zuko and Ursa are theater snobs. Sure, Ursa apparently attended Ember Island Player performances, which Zuko disdained, but my thought is that she took what she could get in terms of live theater with her family even if she agreed with his criticisms. However, I like to headcanon that Mai loves the Ember Island Players, hates classical theater, and generally is the type of person who thinks that Michael Bay movies are great and more people should just turn off their brains and allow themselves to be entertained.

Why?

Well, because character conflict is what makes stories interesting. Zuko gritting his teeth through Mai's praise of how the EIPs finally made "Love Amongst the Dragons" interesting? Gold! Ursa and Mai getting into heated drunken arguments about theater styles? Gold! Mai convincing Kiyi of the good points of the controversial 'Love Amongst the Dragons II: Love Harder' (which is canon to at least two of my Maiko fics) while Zuko and Ursa grit their teeth? Solid gold!

This fun little conflict turned into something more, though. If Ursa and Mai are dark mirrors of each other in terms of theater tastes, then it felt like Mai needed a little acting history to parallel Ursa's own. But Ursa could be a publicly known actress because she was a peasant; such a profession was okay for her. Mai is a noble, though, and an acting job would be seen as beneath her, especially as a woman, as Polite Fire Society knows (or thinks it knows) that 'actress' is really just a polite term for prostitute. This is a takeoff from some real-life history stuff that I first learned of through Sherlock Holmes stories. Apparently, Irene Adler being an 'opera singer' was a thing British readers would recognize as being of a sordid nature.

So I decided that Mai did some secret, illicit acting anonymously during her childhood and teenage years. She stumbled across an opportunity, gave it a try, and found it fulfilling despite the social stigma. She liked being able to project emotions of all kinds in public, while at the same time shielded by masks or makeup or costumes or whatever. She liked being other people, people who find love with their heroes or die tragically to teach everyone a point or villainously ruin everything around them as a force of vengeful nature. It was the only opportunity for expression that she had, as well as a quiet form of rebellion. So for years she snuck out of the capital, down to Harbor City, and acted in all kinds of plays for a troupe that accepted not paying her as a fair trade for keeping her anonymous.

Naturally, moving to Omashu put a crimp on that, and so it ended.

So the idea is that Ursa eventually learns this about Mai after years of their butting heads over theater opinions, sees the parallels and perpendiculars in their lives, and grudgingly comes to respect Mai's completely wrong opinions about theater as at least being informed. And Mai, who is good at acting and does know the classics and would be wasted in the Ember Island Players, helps Ursa out with some plays she writes (still anonymous, although Zuko and Ursa know) even though Mai privately thinks the dialogue is too stilted and the stories kind of cliched.

But I have had trouble beating all of this into a proper story. I want to do flashbacks to Mai on stage, I want to show her conflict with Ursa, I want to reveal how Ty Lee found out and used that to get Mai to accept running away to the circus, I want Zuko's reaction to finding that his wife can recite soliloquies from all the major classics, I want Kiyi becoming an Ember Island Players groupie, etc. It's just missing a plot to hang it all on.

So here's a snippet of one of my attempts to construct something:

Noren grimaced. "Honestly, I was impressed we got enough people to fill out all the parts, never mind understudies. This play-"

"-is important," Ursa finished for him.

He hesitated just a moment before nodding. "And it's important for the same reasons that it was tough to get actors. I'm sure once Zuko sees it and can give it his official approval-"

"But he can't see anything without a Rinzen." Ursa thought about her son out there in the audience, anonymous amidst the 'peasants' of Hira'a. Zuko didn't mind mixing with his people, despite being their Lord, but the only reason he was here, tonight, was because Ursa herself had written the play, and he was a good son who would always support his mother.

Zuko had even brought his friends, including the Avatar. Aang was a delightful young man, and always very nice to Ursa, but she couldn't help but feel trepidation at his presence. After all, Avatar Roku, Ursa's grandfather and Aang's previous life, was a major character in this play, and while the story was based on real events, it was Ursa's hand that had shaped his dialogue and actions. She was putting her thoughts and philosophies, her very heart, out on the stage for public assessment, and this was tricky material. Would it do right by history?

Plus the lead actress was sick, and going by her complaints and the smell of the privy, perhaps dying.

Ursa had to tell herself that her audience, her friends and family and neighbors, wouldn't enjoy this play becoming a disaster. None of them were that bad. This wasn't the Capital. And she wasn't a princess. Not anymore.

So why had she taken it on herself to write this play, to positively dramatize a story of an ancestor who a few years ago was considered a heretic and traitor, to will into being a performance right here in the Fire Nation of a play that featured a heroic Air Nomad character whose actress was currently trapped in the privy?

Because her nation had hurt the world, and she wouldn't leave it to her son alone to do all the work of helping to fix that. That's why.

"Maybe," she ventured, "I could play the part."

Noren frowned. "You? But you're playing the Lady of Glass, and the characters share several scenes."

But Ursa was already analyzing the copy of the script that existed in her mind. "Rinzen has a lot more lines than the glass spirit, and I'm the only one who knows them. And playing a spirit is a lot easier than playing an Air Nomad. A spirit is just a voice, a costume, and some special effects. An Air Nomad character is a performance, and we're fresh out of actresses."

Noren's head tilted from side to side. "We could ask Kiyi. She knows the play by heart. She's a bit young for the part, yes, but-"

"No," Ursa cut him off. "She'd say yes if we asked her, but she hates being on stage. I'm not going to do that to her. I'd rather call off the play and see if our Rinzen is feeling better tomorrow."

Noren blanched at the very thought and made a gesture of good luck. "Well, maybe we can find a new Lady of Glass. And adjust the Rinzen costume. So are you thinking we'll just go on stage and ask the crowd who wants to join the cast, or maybe-"

And then there was a shift behind Noren, the red curtain over the office's doorway being pulled aside to reveal a living shadow. It seemed to Ursa that a chill had entered the room.

Lady Mai, Intended to Fire Lord Zuko, had arrived.

Ursa stiffened as Mai stepped into the office and let the curtain fall back into place. Time and familiarity had not made it any easier to be in a room with her son's lover. She had no real doubts about Mai, no resentment over the early difficulties Zuko that had apparently been overcome, but it was hard to reconcile Azula's shy and dour childhood companion with what existed now. Mai walked around covered with knives, watching everything; she never spoke unless there was an explicit need, but her gaze was always focused and her eyes missed nothing.

And it was in Mai's kind of silent, watchful abyss that Judgement grew. Ursa did not have a good feeling about how Mai likely judged her. How could a child of the Fire Nation's capital, someone who had become strong alongside Azula, a world-class warrior whose last stand for the life of her lover was already the subject of at least one popular poem, have any empathy for Ursa's life or the mistakes she had made?

Mai looked at her with dull eyes. "Is everything okay? The crowd is getting restless, and Zuko was worried. I told him I'd check on things so that he wouldn't miss the beginning of the play."

Ursa hesitated against that flat, low voice, and Noren stepped in to answer, "Our lead actress is sick. Ursa and I were just discussing options. There- uh, there aren't a lot of them."

Mai might as well have been told that dinner was planned to include green sprouts, but they were all out and so the yellow ones would be substituted. "Which part?"

Ursa swallowed. "The Air Nomad girl, Rinzen."

Mai quirked an eyebrow. "The heroine." She was still and silent for a long moment, and then sighed. "Zuko's really been looking forward to this. I guess I can help out. All right, I'll be your Rinzen."

Ursa wasn't quite sure she had heard that right. "You- you want to take the part? But-" Her voice faltered, as all the possible objections swirled through her mind. Mai was, to put it simply, completely lacking in charisma and non-threatening presence. She spoke without emotion. She moved so efficiently that no one in the back of the audience would even notice her. And she was so disinterested in everything that she'd probably nod off in the middle of the performance.

Noren offered a troubled smile. "Thank you for the offer, but acting is harder than it looks. It's not just about going on stage and reciting lines. An actress needs-"

"It's Nomad part, right?" Mai shrugged. "So we want a high, bright voice. Circular gestures. A bounce in all the movements. Here, like this." She stretched out her arms, shook her head, and then-

-and then-

-and then Mai was no longer there. The woman in red and black looked like her, but there was a wide mischievous smile on her face, and her eyes were big and bright. She stepped towards Ursa- no, they weren't mere steps. She kicked her heels high with each one, and the way she shifted her weight flirted with almost being a dance. She held her arms up at her side as she moved, and then when she reached Ursa, swung them dramatically to bring her hands together into a sign of respect.

She bowed, and in a voice that positively rang and filled the room, said, "Are you not the Firebender Avatar, Roku? What a fortunate wind blows to lay my path upon your own!" She rose again, and trotted in a circle around Ursa. "I say, you are taller than I expected, and must be quite heavy. Are you sure you're keeping up with your Airbending, young Avatar?" She raised a hand and held it out to the side.

Noren recovered before Ursa did, realizing what was going on, and quickly found a rag and placed in the waiting hand.

Mai's eyes never left Ursa the whole time, and as soon as the rag was in her grip, she moved again, taking a stance that had clearly been modeled on Avatar Aang's own style, and held the rag out in front of her, dangling it from her fingers and bouncing it in the air.

Mai gave a laugh that was echoed through the little room. "Your beard flutters in my breeze! Come, young Avatar, let's have a spar!"

There was a beat, and Ursa was tempted to deliver Roku's next line in response, but then all at once the younger woman slumped, letting the grandness leak out of her limbs. When she straightened, Mai was back, standing like a blade made of shadow, her face blank and her eyes dull.

Ursa blinked. What had she just witnessed? So many questions swirled in her mind, and she decided to ask the most important of them: "You know all the lines?"

[deviant3lover]

‘What kind of wedding (or non-wedding) each member of the shitty teen squad would want with their SO?’

A birthday gift to @rayadraws​!

Putting this under Read More, because golly, you know me: it is long.

Garou

I think that, back when he was a child, he would’ve liked the thought of getting married. Back then, he wouldn’t have particularly deep thoughts about it, but he finds the thought of sharing your happiness and your life with someone who adores you a nice thought, and would look at other people’s weddings with wonder filling his eyes, a small smile on his face upon witnessing the jubilation of the newly wedded couple.

Nowadays, and much like before, Garou hadn’t thought much of it, if at all- until his S/O brought it up.

Unlike how he was a child however, he isn’t exactly into the idea of getting married. At least, not for the traditional ones.

Expensive restrictive clothing that he’d have to spend hundreds on? Inviting a bunch of relatives and organising them so that family drama doesn’t pop up before or during the marriage itself? Greeting and interacting with plenty of people he likely doesn’t have close relations to as they congratulate him and shake his hand, entertaining them and keeping them happy throughout the reception until they leave? The taxing and exhausting process of arranging and paying for everything: from the venue to the floral arrangements to the very napkins on each table?

Hard pass. On all of them. Even if he got a wedding planner, the diligent details down to every single thing he couldn’t care less about and needing his approval on them would annoy the hell out of him. And this is all for a ceremony that would take place for one day.

That doesn’t even get into the process of sorting through all the new legalities that comes with being a married couple. If he’s still a fugitive or wanted man, that’d make the process even harder due to his -ahem- status. Garou is a very athletic and energetic man, and odds are, while he definitely seeks some comfort in the familiarity of a domestic life and will welcome it, he’s not all that thrilled at the thought of giving up the more adventurous and exciting aspects of life.

He doesn’t believe in marriage. Especially since he’d know how much of a rip-off the marriage industry is. A genuine, heartfelt connection is a treasure all on its own that not everyone can find.

He was lucky to find you: and he doesn’t need a marriage certificate to prove that he loves you.

But if they insist and are open to still hold something similar to it…

For Garou, Destination Elopements are his bread and butter: where the two of them venture out into the world. New sights, new experiences, new food, new everything that the two likely wouldn’t usually have the time or money for.

All the money that would’ve been spent on the ceremony is instead directed towards an adventure that they’d share without worrying about having to impress or entertain anyone else. Sure, he does have to deal with all the paperwork, but if he seriously sees his partner in his future and has a stable life, he’s willing to suffer it for them.

Genos

Genos on the other hand, would not mind any of the preparations at all. In fact, you may have to stop him from going overboard with him stressing out everyone involved with helping the arrangements.

He’d request Kuseno to make him wedding arms. Some weapons are, of course, included in the engineering. Just enough to kill or throw off any threats that might come their way; be it a monster or nosy and intrusive paparazzi. But for the most part, they’re usually equipped with useful gadgets and gizmos that would cut down on potential stressors. Genos being Genos, some of them can be a little silly or embarrassing. (Installed cooler in his chest for champagne and chocolates? You can bet he has them and more. The rest would be stored into a backpack that he’d carry around if the two will be travelling for the honeymoon.)

Inspired by this fic, first, he’ll settle some legalities and potential problems that would surround him being a popular hero and a cyborg so that the wedding goes off without a hitch. That means making sure that the wedding is protected from monster attacks and making sure that his beloved fiancé(e) is safe from harassment and stalking from sleazy reporters looking to cash in on a big news story.

That means a good portion of his preparations is not only focusing on the arrangements for the wedding itself, it also means that he’d be settling and finalizing arrangements with the H.A as well so that his lover’s privacy and safety isn’t compromised. In the best case, he’d arrange security protocols so that these rights aren’t infringed or attacked, and if they’re willing, he’d arrange a room for them to move into at A-City’s building complex.

The wedding is for him, his beloved, and everyone important in their lives, and he’ll make sure it’s as close to what they envisioned as much as possible.

I’d imagine the proposal and the lead up to the actual wedding day is done in relative secrecy that’s held between a select few people who can keep quiet about the affair to avoid getting harassed too much, despite his pride and fervent passion about taking a big step in their lives. On the Big Day, by the time the news had been released (if at all) it’d be too late for the reporters or fans to arrive at the scene (if it’s held in an accessible place) to feast their eyes on anything juicy.

If there’s anything that needs publicity, such as the legalization for human-cyborg marriages, Genos would be succinct about it and doesn’t drag out the publicity anymore than what’s strictly needed.

However, if his S/O would want more attention than that, Genos would be more careful and meticulous on how it’d be executed. The popularity surrounding the event will attract a lot of attention, and that’s fertile grounds for breeding potential monster attacks and even assassination attempts. (Genos is no fool; he knows that some popular heroes have had attempts on their lives, or those on their loved ones, by commissioned assassins.) So, the security would be even tighter than before to make sure that unwanted audiences don’t get in, and threats are neutralised before they can cause too much trouble.

Genos would like a Traditional Wedding. Elegant, beautiful, and traditional. This is an important event in his life after losing everyone he had loved and lost before: a day won’t go by where he wouldn’t cherish his lover, and that won’t change when he becomes their husband.

Extra note: The ring bearer will be either Badd, Garou, or Saitama. As much as he loves them, he knows that they aren’t particularly attentive to small important details.

No matter which one it is, they manage to lose the rings at some point and will frantically look for them before they have to present the rings to Genos and his betrothed. The success of this and their fates depend on you, reader...

Badd

(It’s no secret that he has a hidden soft spot underneath all that roughness, so I always headcanoned him as a closeted romantic who’s only out to the people he loves and trusts.)

Before we start, Zenko is either the flower girl or the ring bearer. No matter what role she plays in the wedding, she will be in an important one.

Badd would be a mix between Garou’s and Genos’s extremes. Elated at the thought of becoming engaged to his lover and having the event be celebrated, surrounded by family and friends, but groaning at the planning and arrangements that come with it. This even extends to his preferences: he respects tradition and is definitely open to involving it in his weddings, but he also wants to leave a bit of room to be more creative and personalize the wedding for the two of them.

On that note, he likes Western better: Japanese weddings tend to be more private and formal, and while he values the idea of treating marriage as something to treat with reverence, Badd wants to live in the moment with the people that he loves so that this would be something that everyone can look back on with a smile on their faces.

“OI DJ! HIT IT!”

(I headcanon that he has a bunch of long-term childhood delinquent friends with Hearts of Gold that he loved hanging out with. He’d invite them, and they’d definitely get rowdy on the dance floor with the new groom and be playful with Badd’s newly made spouse, much to the endless entertainment of those watching.)

So out of the three, Badd is mostly open to all sorts of options, provided that they aren’t too restrictive, formal, and it leaves room to be rowdy and fun loving with everyone they’ve invited.

Wherever the reception will be, what Badd is set on is a place where there’s enough room to form a dance floor. Dancing and being silly with his friends and family, or having a slow dance with his spouse, Badd would want a dance floor. Ballroom style, on the flattened sands on a beach, on wooden plank flooring in the outdoors, Badd isn’t picky about where it is.

Another thing he’d love is that, though all three in the trio would hire photographers to capture the experiences and would likely keep them between themselves and their loved ones, Badd would love it the most and would want to hire a reputable one that wouldn’t mind capturing the more sillier moments at the wedding. He wants to tell these stories to those whom he holds dear to his heart.

He will cry at some point during the entire thing. Multiple times even. During the vows, he’ll struggle to keep his voice level even as some people in the audience are snickering and cooing over how emotional he’s getting. 

And he’ll make this face:

When he sees his beloved walk down the aisle.

So, for him, Badd would at least want an Outdoor Wedding, if not a wedding that at least incorporates some aspects of it.

Oh, and for his childhood delinquent friends that he invited?

[telesthisia]

“Dear my beloved hero, my dear friend, Link, Champion of Hylia... hello, are you well? I am uncertain whether or not this letter will reach you... perhaps courage will find me this time and I will not hide it away with the others but. 

I miss you. I hope that you are well... I hope that you are enjoying your adventures outside of Hyrule...”

ALRIGHT Y’ALL NOW IT’S MY TURN WITH DEPRESSED CRYPTID PRINCESSSSSSSSSSS!!! If you haven’t already might I suggest checking out Blue’s post about how her Zellie is a swole 172 cm aka 5′8″ GODDESS!!! It’s quite the read but as with all her headcanons, it’s a fun read so def check it out if you haven’t already. BUT LET’S DO THIS!! For this pose I went with a simple cute one with Zelda holding a letter that’s addressed to Link. She has two years worth of unsent letters all to him, while the penmanship is neat in all of them there’s a lot of crossed out sentences in each one before she folds it up and places it in a small box that she hides under the bed. The one she’s holding in her hands is the last one before giving up on ever contacting him and wishing him all the best on his journey. It hurts how the only time they could ever have that same connection is when darkness strikes her kingdom, believing that the happiest she ever was is that dream sequence she has with Link in the manga... for their connection was the strongest she’d ever felt. Lining up with the 90s comic bittersweet ending, she feels lonely now that Link is no longer by her side since their duties keep them apart, but she believes in the future and believes it’s best to move on. ;v; alright more things under cut because I tend to ramble!

Midway through drawing this, I realized that my notes on the draws wouldn’t be easy to read, so I’ll put all my messy thoughts on Zelda’s appearance after the events of Oracles and ALTTP! My post won’t be nice looking, I tend to get a bit distracted when excited, blame the ADD and super sorry for that!! Keep in mind that Zelda’s main verse canon is three years after the events of ALTTP and a year after Oracles!

This is more of an art thing if anything and part of the messy notes I can’t add, but Zelda has a petite-pear shaped body. The shoulders and back are smaller than the hips which are wider than her shoulders. It’s something I gotta keep in mind when doing full body draws aaaaa! But her rare blood disorder has affected her growth, which is why she’s tiny (5′0″ my dudes but she’s 5′0″ full of love for you) and so freaking pale too. The paleness of her skin is meant to show that she looks a bit on the sickly side. I try to give her kind looking eyes that are big and wide!! And dark blue in color!! She has a bit of a sleepy look to it to make them look more calm and gentle!! Sadly, she’s physically weak and doesn’t have the stamina or even the heart power (Without triggering a fainting spell) to go body building for that sweet eight pack. The complexion she has is blemish and scar free because when you rich you get only the best skin care..... aside from the freckles covering her face. Makeup does make it appear lighter but when Zelda’s not wearing her royal get up the only makeup she tends to wear is eyeshadow and the blue lipstick! So those freckles? They’re there for the world to see! They cover her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, her shoulders, and back!! Noble kids used to make fun of her for her freckles but Zelda found a way to refute their teasings by insisting that her freckles were from when children of the fae would give her small kisses for luck! Her ears a little longer than most Hylians, it comes with being from the royal family and yet another hint to her divine origins. 

She is almost never seen without the little tiara she wears when in commoner clothing, the one with the three stones hanging from it! In truth, it’s a gift given to her by the oracles and their colors correspond with the oracles rather than the goddesses, which is why she’s wearing it all the time as a means to remember them. She loves those girls :’) while the bracelet is the same one we see in ALTTP! That one is a bit of an important piece of jewelry. It was a present from her father on her sixth birthday, when exploring the stalls of a nearby town yet affected by the sudden onslaught of plagues and droughts, she’d been fascinated with it and her father bought it for her because how can you say no to baby Zel??? It’s a simple fool’s gold bracelet with no design to it and you can find it anywhere, really, but she loves and wears whenever she can when wearing commoner clothes. Sadly, the maids in charge of dressing her up in her stuffy royal dresses would never let her go around the castle wearing that due to how cheap it is. And finally, the earrings and pendant of courage... I’ve mentioned it before but she’s always wearing the pendant. It was given to her by Link before Link went away on his journey and since then it’s become an important symbolic thing where it gives her courage she lacks. Hence why she wishes to give it to the person she marries so that they too can feel the same courage. With the dress I’ve designed for her, it’s more noticeable, but sometimes she’ll wear it under her clothes if she feels it wouldn’t match her outfit! And the Triforce earrings? Her mother’s!! She’s never seen without them, that’s like seeing Bayonetta without her glasses with the earrings pft. 

So something that’s fun to point out is her shade of blonde! Originally, she had a more golden tone to her hair color, hence why the close up with her eyebrows the color is super darker than the blonde (I tend to color them black but that’s the actual color of them, only reason why I color them black is because I love the contrast with light hair and dark eyebrows ;w;) we see in this draw! So, why’s her hair lighter? Well, Zelda suffers from a little something called Marie Antoinette syndrome. What the hell is that??? You may ask yourself and it’s more or less where the hair turns white from extreme fear and shock, it’s used in the realm of fiction since irl something like that can’t really happen. Due to the various stresses, traumas, and extreme fear she’s endured by witnessing the death of her father, the priest and countless others as well as being kidnapped twice and being used for sacrifice one time and nearly a blood sacrifice to revive Ganon another... well, it affected her mentally giving her trauma and physically all that stress poorly affecting her already bad health. So, the lighter her hair, the more stress she’s been through and that’s probably why whenever you see me draw Zel you’ll see her with pale hair... (I kinda want to make it white because that’s peak Ambercore BUT PLATINUM BLONDE IS CLOSE ENOUGH WE GOTTA KEEP THE BLONDE!!!!!) As always, the hair floofs are very important to her design! It’s what makes her friend shaped!!! That said, I just think it’s a very cute design choice hence why I kept it here! Her hair is longer than in oracles and ALTTP, growing it out to her hips and just above the tailbone! It’s super long, there’s no meaning behind why she grew it out this much aside from failing to keep up with it due to how fast it grows. The public, naturally, believes differently and as common with the mindset of those times believe that she has long hair to show her status as a member of someone who comes from wealthy background. She’s a little hurt by this assumption, really, as it implies she does nothing but brushes it all day as well as showing off her status when it’s actually neither of those things. The floofs, shows that it’s a bit on the messy side as proof that she doesn’t do that at all... but instead spends her days exploring ruined places of decay and death! 

The dress she wears is one of her favorite ones, she has dark boots underneath that goes up to her shins because I think that’s peak character design. The dress is two layers!! The first being the blue overlay and the second a plain old white dress with the collar showing off her shoulders, the cut of the collar is almost reminiscent to nightgowns, the sleeves are short and poofy and in the back is a ribbon, no real reason for that aside from me thinking that’s cute. In truth, I based her outfit off of historical dresses worn in those times for commoners. Their clothes tend to be more simple and Zelda much prefers to wear the dresses of commoners than her silken royal gowns with the heavy gold regalia. Though the pink dress she wears in alttp (and SSBU) is for more important events such as when she was crowned as the next ruler for the throne, she also has a wide wardrobe of various dresses which I will be basing off of Tudor era and a little later in 17th century.... 

In short.... I tried to make her as friend shaped as possible. 

[goliath-de-senfina-sango]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Danny Phantom Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dash Baxter/Danny Fenton, Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton Characters: Dash Baxter, Wesley Weston, OC - Character, Danny Fenton, Tucker Foley, Sam Manson, Ghost Writer (Danny Phantom), Andrew Riter Additional Tags: Soulmates, Reluctant Soulmates, countless headcanons, Not Phantom Planet Compliant, my canon now, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Identity Reveal, will tag with progress, No Betas we die like fools Summary:

Casper High is a school that has several clubs, including the Occult Club, which Dash should've stayed very far away from no matter what Wes said. Now thanks to the conspiracy theorist, Phantom was pissed at him and the jock and hero were soulbound by a spell that Wes had fudged and Dash had mispronounced. How's he gonna make it up to his hero?

Or

The soulmates fic that only my best bro really wanted out of me, which my brain was forced to provide.

Ao3 / Fanfiction.net

In hindsight, Dash should've stayed away from the occult club altogether.  Sure, Wes had said they were gonna use some magick ritual they'd figured out to summon phantom, but people generally wanted to think they could do that and a club at school was the least likely to succeed.   But Weston had been confident and Dash wasn't gonna pass on an opportunity to meet his hero without an attack happening.

So he'd gone along with it, even demanded to be the one to do it when they started.  There was a chalk circle on the floor, candles, and one of em had a fuckin needle to prick themself with for it.  Whatever, Dash wasn't unused to a little pain - he busted his knuckles on nerd's faces sometimes. So he got a drop on the circle, and he said the chant, and the candles turned green instead of reddish-yellow.  But while the room went dark and cold and started looking like the night sky had come down to grab them, Dash may have fucked up a word in the book.  

There he appeared, in a flash of light so bright Dash had to squint.  Sky blue skin, a halo of white hair, freckles that glowed green and that ghost hunting hazmat suit of his.  While Phantom was looking around like he was dizzy, Dash felt something. He Saw it, even, a line of bright silver that came out of his chest and turned toxic green before ending at the DP on Phantom's chest.  Frowning, Dash looked over at the head of the club. "The fuck is this? A cord?"

"Oh no… oh no no no."  The head nerd, a brunette with glasses and a mint green shirt, grabbed the book in Dash's hand and read what he'd said.  Then his head whipped over to Wes and the basketballer backed up, his camera flashing the recording light. "You fucked up the summoning ritual!"

"Austin, I swear I was just-"

"This is a binding ritual, Wes, it binds the spirit to the target object - the circle, it looks like?"

"Pretty shitty binding," Phantom said, turning everyone's attention back to him.  The blue-faced ghost was floating all around the room, soft green inner light casting weird shadows everywhere.   "I'm nowhere near it. What is this thing between me and Dash though?"

"… Fuck."  Wes quickly played back his recording on his camera to listen to what Dash had chanted.  Dash could hear the moment he fumbled the words and Wes paled when he heard it. "That was the wrong subject word-"

"So you've bound Phantom's soul to Dash's soul now, is what I'm translating here.   Cause that, wait lemme.” Austin grabbed the camera and replayed the video a few times while Dash dealt with a sea of complicated emotions.  Confusion, shock, anger, resentment, anxiety. Those last three weren’t new per se but they felt… off. Not his. “Wes this is a permanent binding what the fuck?!”

“It wouldn’t’ve been permanent!  We coulda scuffed the circle and the thing he’s bound to would be gone!”

Phantom reached down and grabbed the ginger by his shirt, lifting him two feet off the ground.   His eyes were blue and gold and red, that dim green aura was now white and yellow and flaring up in arcs.  “So lemme get this straight, Wesley. In your insane attempts to prove me as the still-living son of ghost hunters, you decided you'd bind me to a chalk circle.  Which might bind me to the chalk itself, tearing me apart to keep myself connected to since you're a fucking hack."

"I-I-I hadn't uh thought of that, b-"

"And instead of that you let Dash, a jo- no THE Jock, read off the spell and so now you've bound me, irreversibly, to another person's soul.  Did I get that right?"

Wes nodded the slightest bit, his entire frame shaking and Dash couldn't blame him.   Dash was entirely up for pummeling Wes for fucking up his hairbrained scheme, but Phantom looked like he was about to rip Wes apart.  He had fangs and his hair was turning into a cloud of fire that sucked all the heat out of the room instead of pushing it out into everything.  Wes' shirt was frosting over and Austin and his band of merry freaks were shivering.

"When you get to the afterlife, Wes, I promise you a world of pain.  And if you do something so fucking stupid and dangerous that it risks my safety and the safety of everyone else around you again, I'm tossing you to the police by your Fucking underwear!"  Wes was dropped on his ass and Phantom growled, fading from sight. There was a Pop, all the pressure in the room shifting, and Dash rubbed his head with a groan.

"Wes you fucking idiot!  Now Phantom is pissed at me and it's your fault!"  Phantom may have decided not to give Wes what he had coming to him, Dash didn't have superpowers to worry about getting out of hand.

And so Dash had detention that day for wailing on a fellow school athlete.

“I swear I’m going to shatter his camera into a million tiny pieces and make him eat them,”  Danny growled and struggled with not breaking his locker when he slammed it shut. The lights overhead buzzed louder and shone brighter from the energy pouring out of him, and Danny took several deep breaths.  “Not only was what he wanted to do stupid and dangerous, now I’m fucking - what, Soulmates? With him?”

“Chill, Danny, I’m sure we can fix this.”  Tucker pulled his sash from around his shirt and with a flick, it became a scepter once more.  Holding out the golden rod over Danny, a look of concentration passed over the geek’s face while azure light bathed Danny’s body.  The green thread leading off toward Dash was highlighted, though the silver threads leading to Tucker, Sam and Jazz were also visible and even the blue ones trailing off to his Mom and Dad.  Tucker’s magick wrapped around his green thread and for a moment, Danny was sure that it’d be cut and all of this would be over and dealt with.

Tucker’s scepter was knocked out of his hand and clattered loudly on the tile floor of the school and the green thread shone brighter than before, seeming to have simply soaked up the magick.  Danny’s growl was deep in his chest this time, and one of the lights blew a fuse. “That’s fucking ridiculous! He just read off the spell without even knowing what it did, why would that be stronger than the Pharoah’s command?”

“The language might not be from this world, Danny.  We’ll have to ask Andrew if he knows how to undo it.”  Sam patted Danny on his shoulder and he leaned onto her, embracing the calm of her aura.  The bell rang and Danny pulled his hood over his head, pulling it shut over his face with the drawstrings.  “C’ mon, let’s get you home and we can head over to see him right now.”

Danny grumbled as he was pulled along by Sam and Tucker outside to the parking lot, where all three of them pulled out their hoverboards.  Danny mounted his star and nebulae covered creation and slipped on his helmet. The one he’d made for Tucker was gold and chrome-colored, a techno styled F on the bottom of it, while Sam’s was black with creeping vines appearing to weave all around it.  It had been fun building these boards with Tucker and personalizing them since they made flying to school easier on them all. Magnetic boots locked in place, Danny slipped on the remote control glove and took off, followed closely by his friends into the even sky to the envious stares of their schoolmates.

The only ghosts that got in their way home were Skulker and the Box Ghost, and while Boxy was easy to take down with a few well-placed shots, Danny had to split off a Phantom copy while still in human form to take down Skulker, which sucked because he didn’t have the energy to make one as strong as he normally was in ghost form.  With a kick to Skulker’s head that removed his helmet, and a swift click of the button on the Thermos, Skulker was dealt with and they headed to Fenton works.

Descending the stairs of the Fenton home to the basement lab and finding it empty was a blessing, mostly available due to Sam and her meddling in the business affairs of Fenton Works.  Getting to the Ghost Writer’s library from there was a cakewalk, and soon they were knocking on his doors.

“Andy, I have a problem and I need your help fixing it!”  Getting no reply for a moment, Danny took a deep superfluous breath and whined loudly against the door.  “Aaandyyyyy!” The door opened inward fast enough that Danny hit the floor, and grumbled something rude about Vidya playing cruel pranks on him.

“Don’t pretend that Vidya doesn’t love you about as much as she does me, Danny, you’ll never get away with a lie that flimsy.”  The baritone laughter of the Ghost Writer, otherwise known to a few as Andrew Riter, met Danny’s ears and a shark-toothed smile greeted Sam and Tucker.  The librarian in grey and purple invited them deeper in to sit on couches and cushions scattered about the shelves of the library and cups of coffee and tea set themselves down on the table before them.  “Alright, what trouble have you gotten yourselves into this time?”

“This time it wasn’t one of us, actually.”  Sam nudged Danny with her boot and he slumped against Tucker, taking a long sip of his tea.  “An idiot, Wes, tried to bind him to a circle during an event that the Occult Club was performing to summon Danny, but they let Dash Baxter read it and when Danny appeared, apparently Dash stuttered the wrong words and now he and Danny are bound by the soul.  As far as we know.”

Andrew adjusted his glasses, eyes narrowed at Danny as a trio of books flew to him and Danny repeated the spell for Andrew to decipher.  “Give me a couple of days to look this one up. Artificially created Soul Bonds like that typically break with the right spell and if both parties agree to sever the link.”  Tucker groaned while Danny buried his face in his hands.

“I have to convince Dash to unlink himself with me?  Wonderful. Fuck me, I guess.”

Tucker patted the ghost boy on his shoulder and Danny whined.

Ao3 / Fanfiction.net

[ohayohimawari]

Kakashi Asks-Answer

Q: (From @nyxako-writing) “So this is more of a silly question, but since the Narutoverse has everything we have (except for guns) do you think Kakashi would ever be a gamer? And if he played any of the Legend of Zelda games, which would be his favorite? XD”

A: Okay so, here’s the thing.

Nyx has the pleasure (?) of knowing me through Discord, and when I’m not geeking over Kakashi, I’m geeking over the Legend of Zelda games. I owe you a life debt for presenting me with this scenario, Nyx! I’m sitting here happy as a clam with my Beta, my Naruto Official Character Data Book and my LoZ encyclopedias.

While I was taking my own sweet time drafting this answer, the incredibly talented @roonie-doodle made my dreams come true by creating this piece of fanart featuring BOTW Sheikah!Kakashi:

Grab a snack and a tasty beverage and buckle up for ALL the geeking Hima below the cut.

In Boruto, we see the next gen ninjas behaving rather UNninjalike with their handheld gaming devices. Whether that’s allowed under the Shinobi Rules or not, it proves that video games exist in Narutoverse.

As a single dad, Sakumo would totally employ screens to occupy Kakashi so he can catch a nap between missions. It’s my opinion that the members of the Hatake household would not like combat games. Think about it: after a day of working in customer service, would you want to unwind with a game that requires your character to level up at a call center? Coupled with their predisposition to PTSD and I think that’s a great big nope. However, father and son could only play Pong, Asteroids, and Pitfall so many times before Sakumo would see the benefit of spending his ryo on the more sophisticated NES, when it becomes available.

According to me, everyone should love the LoZ series and that includes the knuckleheads of Konoha. Even without my totally biased viewpoint, I think Kakashi would enjoy some, but not all of these fantasy adventure games. After he inserts that first Zelda cartridge into the console, he’d be astonished by the colors and the music. His little masked mouth would water at the ability to go up and down, left and right.

And when he enters that fantastic cave where the wisest npc is waiting with a sword and the warning, “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this,” Kid!Kakashi would be hooked.

It’s not just the gameplay that has him running back to Zelda after killer kindergarten lets out for the day, though. I think that the first time Kakashi realizes he could’ve taken the shorter route of up, right, up, right, right, right, right, right, up, left, up, to the second dungeon (instead of his initial path of up, right, up, up, up, up, right, right, right, right, right, down, down, left, up), he’d grab his ninja crayons and draw a map of the whole darn overworld. Sakumo would totally put that shit up on the fridge too.

Then, then, after Kakashi has smashed through every breakable wall, moved every block, and beaten the OG Ganon, there’s a second effing quest waiting for him (and what a beast it is). Sakumo would be able to put the first map in his son’s baby book then because it’s basically useless for the second playthrough, and Kakashi’s meticulous approach to beating the game would begin anew.

Time to grab a tissue because this is where things get angsty. As we all know, my poor octorok-squishing bean has a very short childhood. While I’m sure that he would’ve loved the hell out of the first Zelda game, he is much too busy being a child soldier in the Third Shinobi War to play The Adventure of Link. While Nintendo offers new consoles and LoZ games to go with them, Dungeon Boss-Kishi plunges Kakashi into darkness with neither a red candle nor a blue one to help him find his way out. Between dodging Danzo and loathing himself, I can’t help but think that it’s impossible for this ANBU assassin to find time to play A Link to the Past or Link’s Awakening. Sob.

However, the Sun’s Song is unlocked and the clouds part for the early days of Team Seven. I can totally imagine Kakashi spying on his cute little genin (while he makes them wait for him) and overhears them discussing one of the best games in the LoZ series, Ocarina of Time. After all the lunches Yams has bought for him, Kakashi decides he can afford to splurge on an N64, and he attempts to recapture some of that Zelda magic from his youth.

This game does not disappoint Kakashi, either.

Like everyone, he’d consider muting the TV way before Link had a chance to verily demonstrate his courage because of Navi’s constant interruptions. However, I think after dealing with another talkative bright ball of a boy as his student, Kakashi is willing to put up with Navi out of respect for the late Great Deku Tree’s wishes.

Honestly, I think Kakashi could relate to this version of the Hero of Time. The poor kid doesn’t quite fit in with the others around him, he’s orphaned, has the expectation of saving the world thrust upon his little kid shoulders, then before he knows it, he’s all grown up and the world around him is even more dangerous than it was when he started.

Even though a map is provided in this game, I think Kakashi might still keep notes of every odd thing he encounters as he thoroughly explores 3D Hyrule (boulders, different colored trees and wide spaces that LoZ geeks know are suspicious). He’d be the kind of gamer that focuses on completing the game-not just beating it-making OoT the right game at the right time for him. He’d plant every bean (and drop bugs on the sprouts), get every weapon upgrade, collect every piece of heart and every gold skulltula. He’d be intrigued by the owner of the Happy Mask Shop (as well as Impa, the Skull Kid, that shady Poe Collector fellow, and Kaepora Gaebora), and he’d make sure that Link models each mask for the Deku Scrubs in their hidden grotto. The Water Temple would’ve driven him just as crazy as it drove the rest of us LoZ freaks when he finds that he’s one key short or didn’t move that one block before adjusting the water levels, but it’s all forgiven when he fights Dark Link.

Kakashi would use fishing as an excuse for being late to meet with Team Seven and it wouldn’t be a lie. Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura would catch on to the truth when their sensei starts absentmindedly humming the OoT soundtrack (the Gerudo Valley theme is his favorite) because everyone that’s played the game is guilty of it.

By the time Kakashi realizes that it’s impossible to beat the Running Man (even with the Pegasus Boots) in that damn race to Kokiri Forest no matter how many times and how many different ways he plays OoT, Majora’s Mask has dropped.

The alternate world of Termina serves as the perfect distraction from Sasuke’s obsession with revenge, and the beginning of the end of Team Seven. Kakashi would be quick to appreciate this game from the beginning; chasing after that weird Skull Kid from OoT, which leads Link to encounter the Happy Mask Shop owner who, right off the bat, starts to prove what a creepy creep he really is.

It should be obvious without my listing all of the reasons as to why Kakashi would love this game. The world is gorgeous, the story is mysterious, the dungeons and bosses are challenging, the Garos, the MASKS fer chrissakes, and the side quests (OMG, the side quests) are an LoZ completionist player’s dream.

If you still need proof that Majora’s Mask is among his favorite games, I offer Kakashi’s boldest move as the Roku-blow-up-the-moon-daime. Fight me.

I’ve kept to the LoZ games that have been released for home consoles because I think Kakashi would avoid the handheld devices. He doesn’t need to have his gaming habit blow his cover while out on missions. He has his trusty, tattered copies of Icha-Icha books and those are plenty to keep him occupied and entertained during downtime around the campfire.

At any rate, at this stage in the Naruto series, the main hero is off training with Jiraiya and the Leaf is short on shinobi to run missions, so Kakashi wouldn’t have much time to indulge his love of LoZ games anyway. He’s definitely invested in the series by now and curious about new installments to it. He would be aware of the release of The Wind Waker, but I think his initial impression of that game would be that it appears cartoonish, and may not be enough to spark his interest in the game at the time.

However, I’m certain that the next LoZ home console release would have those tantalizing fingers of his twitching to play again. I think there’s a lot about Twilight Princess that would catch his attention. The overall dark tone of the game would remind him of Majora’s Mask, new characters and enemies… The familiar LoZ story branches off into new territory and I bet that would have him keen to explore it.

But then he starts to play it.

Twilight Princess starts off so damn slow and Kakashi is so damn busy at this point in the series that I think he saves and quits and isn’t in a rush to return to the game. He’s got a Kazekage to rescue and a Kyūbi to protect; he doesn’t have time to herd oxen and chase cradle-stealing monkeys.

After the power of friendship saves the day and Gai carries Kakashi home, the copy-nin is bedridden and picks up the game again out of boredom. His interest in it is rekindled when he meets with the Twilight Emissaries and is turned into a wolf. Midna entertains him, definitely.

Honestly, I think Kakashi would have a love/hate relationship with Twilight Princess. My headcanon is that he would enjoy another opportunity to explore the world of LoZ, but this game doesn’t present the kind of satisfying overworld journey as other games did. He would be impressed by a few of the characters, but scratch his head at most of the others. He’d have a greater appreciation of the enemies, dungeons, the Ancient Hero, the Cave of Ordeals and especially, the overall story. However, I’m convinced that Kakashi is a completionist and anyone that challenges themselves to complete Twilight Princess knows the unbearable pain of Rollgoal. Ugh.

After Kakashi finishes this game he doesn’t sell it, but he doesn’t replay it often and never through to completion again. He’s satisfied that the Kingdom of Hyrule is safe as long as Malo exists within it.

At this point in Naruto’s flawed timeline, things are coming to a boil. Kakashi faces off in his own boss fight against Pain and Konoha suffers the same fate as Kakariko. My favorite ninja dork falls in battle (and I rage-quit the series for a while), but Kishi releases a bottled fairy and Kakashi is revived to fight in another shinobi war, become the Rokudaime, and play more LoZ games.

Or so he hoped.

Being Hokage comes with more paperwork than any elite shinobi could complete in a lifetime. The position also comes with a pay raise (as I imagine), so I see Kakashi parting with some of his savings to give the gift of a Wii and Skyward Sword to his best buddy, Gai.

I think that this is an LoZ game that Kakashi would be content to occasionally watch his eternal rival play, rather than play himself. Lord Sixth would love the story, would love the presentation that this game is the beginning of LoZ lore. He would also love that he is watching rather than playing when Gai deals with the frustration of syncing and re-syncing the controllers when he flies his loftwing, or swings the Master Sword. The only time I think Kakashi would grab the controllers for this game would be to take a crack at Koloktos. I also think that would be the only break he’d get to sneak in some LoZ fun while he’s Hokage.

Of course, this means Maito would become a fan of the LoZ games and he would approach them with the same gusto he applies to everything in his life. Gai would play through the back catalog, training for when Kakashi retires and becomes available to speed-run playthrough challenges.

Gai would be the friend that convinces Kakashi that he must play The Wind Waker and distracts his rival from the eternal sailing by explaining why A Link to the Past might be the most important game of the LoZ series. Now that Kakashi has reached a point in his life that offers him time for leisure, he plays through it as well as other games in the series that he had missed out on. Besides adding A Link to the Past to his list of favorites, it would otherwise remain unaltered at this point: Zelda, OoT, and Majora’s Mask.

By the time Kakashi knows the significance of the yellow band in the various caps worn by the Hero of Time, Breath of the Wild is released and his list of favorite LoZ games grows again.

There is just so much about this game that would appeal to Kakashi. The sheer size of the overworld (I’ve read it’s 360 square kilometers) and the fact that he can explore the whole thing would be this ninja dork’s dream come true. He can progress through the game however he wants to. He’d buy that Sheikah set right away, and find Majora’s Mask as soon as that DLC dropped and roam the world to his heart’s content.

Kakashi wouldn’t be bothered by the odd trophies this game offers for completing it, because as a completionist player, he understands that completing it is its own reward. His alter-ego Sukea would love taking photos both for the compendium and for the sake of fun. Kakashi loves to infiltrate, gather information, solve puzzles, and form plans and BOTW offers all of that in spades.

He’d restart the game so many times just to try out different strategies. The first time Kakashi leaps off of Mount Lanayru, sputters out of stamina and lands on a buck that charges straight for the blue lynel in Naydra’s Snowfield (this totally happened to me btw), he’d realize he should’ve been trading those spirit orbs for stamina vessels instead of only heart containers; resulting in his first restart. The second restart would come after Gai shows off his spiffy expand-a-band-banded inventory and this time, Kakashi would plow through the Great Plateau so he could recover that pair of priceless maracas. Countless other restarts occur as Kakashi experiments with which and how many towers he should attempt to overtake before he finally makes his way to Impa.

With every restart, he learns something new about BOTW and enjoys it more. He commits locations to memory (at least 148 for the towers, shrines and captured memories). He rushes to gather the essential 441 Korok seeds in each new playthrough (he might shed a tear when he finally becomes a member of the 900 club-I know I did). He figures out how to cheat on Eventide Island. He learns that even though he could launch Link across Hyrule with Magnesis and Stasis doesn’t mean he should. He looks forward to every Blood Moon, if only to cook as many hearty durians, mighty bananas, and endura carrots as he can between 11:30 and midnight in-game time. He realizes that his greatest enemy in all of Hyrule is the weather. When the Champion’s Ballad is available for download, his excitement for playing the game begins all over again.

I’ve stated several times that I’m convinced that Kakashi would be a completionist player and out of all the games, the latest LoZ is a pleasure to complete (despite what some YouTube gamers may say). In addition, BOTW came out during a period in Kakashi’s life when he could afford to spend significant time playing it.

And this finally brings me to the answer to your question. Breath of the Wild would be Kakashi’s favorite LoZ game, hands down. He would love this game so much and would enjoy playing it so often, that I think he had a Nintendo Switch stashed in the fanny pack he rocked during the Steam Ninja Scrolls arc.

XOXO

[emcads]

MUSE SURVEY , BATTLE EDITION ;

BOLD what consistently applies, italicize situational / not always. repost, please do not reblog!

fight honorably  / fight dirty / prefer close - quarters / prefer range /  chat during /  go silent  /  low pain tolerance / high pain tolerance / attack in bursts / attack steadily  /  go for the kill  / aim to disarm / fight defensively / strike first / provoked easily / provoke their opponent / tease /  get visibly frustrated /  shout while attacking  / use strategy  /  focus on their battle /  experience conflicting thoughts during battle  / rush in recklessly  / try to read their opponent before fighting  / fight wildly  /  fight calmly and/or apathetically / fight with anger  /  fight with excitement /  fight because they have to  /  fight because they want to  / fight without regard to wounds /  run away when wounded  / hide wounds  / take a blow to protect another / prefer a blade  /  prefer a gun  / prefer to use their ability / prefer a bow / prefer a shield  /  prefer a pole arm  /  prefer a personalized weapon  /  prefer magic or spells  /  prefer brawling  / their greatest weakness is physical /  their greatest weakness is mental  / their greatest weakness is emotional  /  transform for battle  /  fight as they appear  / rely on strength / rely on speed  / use everything they have / hide their full potential /  exhaust quickly  / high stamina  /  doubt their strength  / proceed with caution  / behave arrogantly  / brag after landing a hit /  belittle their abilities  /  use psychological tactics  / use brute strength  /  avoid civilians   /  strike down civilians  /  damage surroundings  / avoid damaging surroundings  /  signature fighting style / making it up as they go / mastered skillset /  learning their skillset  / fancy footwork /  sloppy footwork  /  messy fighter  /  elegant fighter /  accept defeat  / refuse defeat /  beg for mercy  /  compliment their opponent  / insult their opponent / use unnecessary movements  ( flips,  twirls )  / move efficiently /  barely move  / prefer to dodge / prefer to block  / defend their blindside  / has no blindside  / use all available advantages  ( ex :  use a gun but also throw punches,  kick out while blades clash,  etc. ) /  strictly use one main method  /  play around  / hold back / fight ruthlessly  / show mercy  /  wait for opponent to be ready  / strike when opponent isn’t ready / fear death  /  fear pain  /  fear killing  / has ptsd /  avoid fighting  / has lost a fight /  has won a fight / has killed / refuses to kill  / want to die standing  /  would succumb slowly

Tagged by: @pagetreader <333 !!

Tagging: @norringtxn / @godblooded / @quitethepirategal / @cagesung / @marisetcaelum / @criticalfai1ure/ and whoever would like to!

[templarhalo]

A place to lay your head: Why Daemon Blackfyre’s temporary capital was Stone Hedge, not a castle in the Reach.

 In my humble opinion, The Blackfyre Rebellions  is one of, if not,  the most interesting conflicts in the amazing world of Westeros that George R.R. Martin created in 1996.   It is a conflict rooted in a number of themes.  It is a conflict that could be used to  define the phrase “Sins of the Father”   It is a conflict rooted in love, loyalty, legitimacy, and  legacy. It is a conflict where oaths were sworn and oaths were broken, and while it was not as destructive as the Dance of Dragons, it was no less a bitter or bloody conflict with heroes and villains on both sides.

Before I get into the  and potatoes of this essay, I want to thank Mr. Steven Atwell, whose Part II of his Essay, the Blacks and the Reds,  inspired this post.

I would also like to thank the amazing @aegor-bamfsteel, who encouraged me to write this.  As well as @godihatethisfreakingcat and @xenowlsome who have both done wonderful posts on Daemon  and Aegor.  The GOT fandom would not be the same without these three people.

Brothers in Bond and Blood: The emotional reasons Daemon Blackfyre would make Stone Hedge his temporary capital.

Two years after the birth of Daemon Blackfyre in 170 AC. (After Conquest)   Lady Barba Bracken would give birth to a boy by the name of Aegor.   Unlike his older  brother Daemon, who was born in King’s Landing and grew up in the Red Keep,  Aegor and his mother were sent back to Stone Hedge, at the insistence of Queen Naerys Targayen and Lord Commander Aemon the Dragonknight.

This little boy, later known in life as Bittersteel,  grew up in the Riverlands.   He was the bastard son of the King, but unlike his other half-brothers and sisters, Aegor received nothing, but the acknowledgment of his existence.     His half brother Brynden, would become Master of Whispers and the King’s Hand,   His half brother Daemon would receive the sword Blackfyre, a beautiful wife who would give him many children, and lands near the Blackwater.

We don't know when Aegor met Daemon Blackfyre, or when his mother Barba died, but we do know Daemon and Aegor became fast friends and close companions.  It could be said despite Daemon being a bastard,  he and Aegor had a relationship, similar to  Robb Stark and Jon Snow.

Eitherway, it was this deep, unconditional love between the two, that would see Daemon agree to wed his eldest daughter Calla, to his brother and for  Aegor to  fight to the day he died, to put someone of Daemon’s blood on the Iron Throne.

This love between brothers also brings me to the main topic of this essay.

Stone Hedge, for emotional and strategic reasons was most likely the temporary capital and seat of Daemon’s bureaucracy before his death.

While much of Daemon’s support came from the Reach, the Riverlands also provided a great deal of support for The King who bore the Sword’s cause. 

House Bracken was probably the first  among the Rivelords who pledged fealty to  Daemon, for they would have deeply personal reasons to.  Aegon IV had executed Barba’s father and younger sister Bethany, and his son.   Daeron II had no love for the Brackens, for Barba and her sister Bethany were both his father's mistresses and we have no indication in canon he arranged for financial or other compensation  for the murder of the Brackens kin.

 If Queen Naerys had died giving birth to the first Daenerys, Barba’s father, who was Aegon IV’s Hand would have wished for her to be wed to  Aegon.  Should this have happened, Aegon IV would have more legitimate children, who in addition to Daemon’s legitimate claim to the throne, (more on that in a  later post) could have been used to displace  the hated Daeron II as heir to the Iron Throne.  

This was something Daeron II, already fighting tooth and claw to  defend his legitimacy,  keep his beloved mother  from suffering any further at the hands of his sire and his cronies, and already having a hated rival in the form of Daemon  had no wish to see happen

But there was also  a possible, more positive reason for House  Bracken’s support, and Daemon’s likely choice as Stone Hedge for his temporary capital and command post for mustering the host to  take King’s Landing. 

Another reason besides his deep selfless love for Aegor Bracken, that hasn’t been retconned yet by Fire and Blood part 2.   *Depiction of Jaehaerys I Cough Cough*

 Aegor’s mother Barba had come to King’s Landing to be a lady in waiting to one of the three Targaryen princesses in the Maidenvault, not to be the mistress of Aegon IV.  It’s not out of the question  she might have become friends with Daemon’s mother, Daena the Defiant,. Daemon could have viewed and treated her as an Aunt.  Not to mention there’s no way,  Daemon did not visit Stone Hedge at least once with Aegor.  

 Hell, Daemon and his wife Rohanne might have stayed in Stone Hedge for a while as their own castle was being constructed.   Some of their children might have even been conceived there.

 If  Barba was still alive not just to  see  Daemon and her little Aegor be knighted and grow up but was still living at Stone Hedge. She may have convinced the Lord Bracken at the time,  the one Daemon later trusted to go and hire Myrish crossbowmen, to offer the seat of their house for Daemon’s use. 

 Here the King Who Bore the Sword’s beloved Rohanne and many children could be kept safe and comfortable by his brother’s kin.   Such security could not be assured in the Reach or Westerlands, where many houses in both regions loyalty flitted back and forth as the First Blackfyre Rebellion raged on . 

From a pure opportunistic and cynical  standpoint, the Bracken’s had a lot to gain by declaring for Daemon.  Even if my headcanon of Barba being a beloved Aunt is wistful thinking, the Bracken’s could reclaim their lost favor in the Court if Daemon took the throne.  Aegor, who most likely took the name Bracken upon his legitimization, was betrothed to  Daemon’s daughter Calla and Daemon would have no shortage of rewards and favors for his brother in blood and eventually by marriage. 

 Regardless of the specific rewards Daemon would bestow upon Aegor,(Harrenhal, Small council position etc.) House Bracken had their foot  in the door through him.  If they proved their loyalty, they would be well rewarded and one up their hated rivals, House Blackwood.

The political and practical considerations in Daemon’s choice of Stone Hedge

Symbols and propaganda play a key role in conflicts, and the Blackfyre Rebellion was certainly no exception.  

Daemon’s possible usage of Stone Hedge as his headquarters was symbolic and political,   For starters unlike Riverrun,  Stone Hedge had been  a king’s seat when the Brackens ruled over the Riverlands. In addition using Stone Hedge sent a clear message to House Blackwood and those who supported them   Not seizing Riverrun denied Daeron II political ammunition against the first and greatest of the Black Dragons.   Daeron could easily spin Daemon commandeering Riverrun for his temporary capital as a him stripping a Great House of their seat, like the  Lannisters empowered the Freys to do toHouse Tully in AFFC.    

In addition Stone Hedge was not far from the Golden Tooth  and was close to  the Red Fork of the Trident.    By making Stone Hedge his capital, Daemon could oversee to war effort to take the Iron Throne.  His Westerland allies and friends Reach could float his coinage, troops and supplies all the way to Saltpans, and controlling one fork of the Trident allowed Dameon some measure of control over the terrain, leeway in choosing to meet his foes in battle, and reduced the consolidation of his foes numbers, which as Mr. Atwell points out in his essay, Daemon made a priority

And while Daemon did seek refuge in the Reach, Stone Hedge was a far sensible location to  coordinate the  war effort, both militarily and bureaucratically,  and  muster support in the Riverlands,  Vale and the North,  compared to say Brightwater Keep or Pink Maiden.  

 Here Daemon could turn the Riverlands landlocked central location in Westeros to his advantage. His supporters in the Reach and Westerlands could easily make their way to Stone Hedge and other Lords and Knights in the Vale and Crownlands could travel to Saltpans. float up the Red Fork and  pledge fealty to their rightful king. 

In conclusion , Stone Hedge was prime, invaluable real  estate,  a strategic location able to support the bureaucracy and court a King like Daemon  needed  and rally point for  the hosts needed to take the Iron Throne.  (and supply some of the best horses gold could buy.)  His family’s security could be assured by  his brother’s kin, and Daemon could turn his energies to kingship and decisive military victories like the one he hoped to win at Redgrass Field. 

[opalsiren]

W.I.T.C.H. Reboot! W.I.T.C.H. Reboot! W.I.T.C.H. Reboot!

hi love! so, with the plethora of reboots kicking around mainstream media these days, its no surprise that the question of a w.i.t.c.h reboot has been broached by its fans. i have so, so, so many thoughts and this, but ill divide them into three categories for the purpose of brevity: firstly, general thoughts on what i would like to see if a w.i.t.c.h reboot is on the cards; secondly, what i would like to see in a live-action w.i.t.c.h reboot; and finally, what a decent animated reboot of w.i.t.c.h might entail. this is not an exhaustive list so please feel free to add onto this if youve any more thoughts! without further ado because jesus, we might be here a while….

general thoughts:

a w.i.t.c.h live action reboot should largely use the comics are source material. while the cartoons are beloved by many including myself, i reckon the good parts of each should be combined to be thematically consistent, fix plot holes etc. but the comics should be the bible here

the target demographic of younger women and girls would need to be established early on by the producers (personally i would love to see a slightly more mature, w.i.t.c.h college AU where the target demographic could be teens/young adult women and girls, but more on that later). this isnt to say that young men and boys would be absolutely excluded as an audience, but misogyny is alive and well in 2019, and our voices as women need to be uplifted. this is exemplified by the fact that caleb was given far, far, far too much screentime in the cartoon so that the show could reach a young, male audience, and his characters was mangled by chauvinistic tendencies. thank u, next.

i have my own preferences wrt to ships, but i think we can all agree that introducing male characters as mere plot devices for drama/conflict only to put them ‘on a bus’ when theyre no longer useful is just plain bad writing. this is a critique levelled both at the cartoon and comics, but largely the comics (see: Eric)(rip in peace).

i also believe that sticking to the conventions of a particular genre, or hybrid genre, would be preferable if a w.i.t.c.h reboot were to take place. some shows get it right, but I’ve seen a ton of shows go off the rails when they try to be a fantasy/comedy/crime/drama/horror/sci-fi/occult/soap-opera extravaganza all in one. i reckon a YA fantasy drama with comedic moments, something with a similar vibe to Shadowhunters or The Shannara Chronicles, could work really well. if we’re talking animated reboot, something with a similar tonal atmosphere to The Dragon Prince or Into the Spiderverse, would also be great

this shouldnt even need to be said but please, for the love of god, no musical episodes (heres looking at you, Riverdale).

i think i speak on everyones behalf when i say that, irrespective of the age demographic of the show, LGBT rep in w.i.t.c.h would be amazing. irma/cornelia have always been a practically canon fan favourite, but cassidy and nerissa’s relationship is definitely more than strictly platonic, so that could be developed upon too. trans/nonbinary!will is also a popular headcanon that could work. once there are lgbt heroes, and not just lgbt villains, i think we’ll all be happy.

similarly, seeing some neurodivergency in the characters could also be great: elyon dealing with pts after the fallout with phobos; irma struggling with adhd in school or college; hay lin and taranee also exhibit some traits of anxiety in canon. autistic!will would also work, and someone else in the squad is bound to be affected by depression given its pervasive nature these days.

much and all as i adore the guardian outfits, i think there would need to be a few changes made. the midriff-and-leg-baring get-ups, though very cute, become very jarring when you realise the characters are meant to range in age from 12 to 14. i dont have any specific thoughts on how improvements could be made, but lengthening hemlines could be a start. if anyone has any more thoughts, i’d love to hear them!

of course, there needs to be women in the writers room, lgbt people in the writers room, poc in the writers room, people with neurodivergencies in the writers room, etc. we all know what happens when writers rooms lack diversity, and it sure as hell aint pretty.

body diversity was something that was tentatively approached in the comics (irma is curvier than the others, at least in her mundane form), but eschewed almost entirely in the cartoon, with all the girls maintaining similar heights and waifish proportions. it would be worthwhile, not to mention realistic, for the girls to go through some body-image hang ups. maybe will is insecure about her ‘underdeveloped’ body, or maybe taranee longs to have the same curvaceous figures as other dancers her age. i think if they were to go for a message of body positivity, irma, loud and brash with no fucks to give, should love every inch of her fat body and encourage the girls to adopt her 'devil-may-care’ attitude. the patriarchy be damned.

one flaw with the comics AND the cartoons are that they dont really explore the worldbuilding a lot. we do spend some time on meridian in the comics and the cartoon, but largely from the perspective of either elyon, or caleb and the rebels. i wonder what a day on meridian would look like for the average meridianite peasant? what do meridianites do for fun? what language(s) do they speak? what are their religious/spiritual belief(s)? what are the styles of dress dictated by? meridian is based on medieval societies, and a caste system is suggested, but i would have loved to see the social hierarchies expanded on a little more. does the matriarchal nature of meridian rule value women and their labour? what about LGBT people on meridian? people with disabilities and neurodivergencies? is there any discrimination against the different species on meridian? in fact, i dont know if it was ever explicitly outlined to us the different species of peoples on meridian, in the cartoon or the comics. honestly id be happy to see a filler, AtLA Tales of Ba Sing Se-esque episode on meridian to cover all of these bases

one thing i loved from the comics that didnt translate as well in the cartoon were the girls’ passions and interests. will is obsessed with frogs, she rides her bike to her job at pet store, she swims, stresses over math homework. irma loves music and talking to her pet turtle, leafy; i could totally see her doing a stint at the college radio station or working part time at a record store. cornelia loves ice skating and has received tons of awards and accolades for her achievements on the ice. taranee is an avid photographer and dancer, but i could totally see her spending her spare time at rallies and protests too. hay lin is a proficient artist, making her own clothes and poring over paintings between shifts at the silver dragon. all of these things and more are what make these characters so well-rounded, relatable, likeable. their hobbies need to be weaved into the fabric of the show (not just brought up once for a silly plot device in cornelia’s case, or never brought up at all in taranee’s, as seen in the cartoon) in order for it to work

live action reboot thoughts:

this should go out without saying, but a live action w.i.t.c.h reboot should cast actors of colour to play characters of colour. hay lin, and by extension her family, need to be played by Chinese actors, while taranee needs to be played by a black actor, preferably one of east asian descent, etc. if they add a little more diversity to the cast i would be totally pleased. latina!irma is a popular headcanon that i ascribe to, and will has always been kinda ambiguously brown, so adding less ambiguous representation for poc to the cast would really be excellent

of course, age-appropriate casting is a must. more specifically, there should not be any 25-30 year olds playing characters in their mid-late teens, unless ofc they could actually pass for the age they are trying to play. shows like The OA and The End of the Fucking World really get this right (most other teen/YA dramas, not so much. less of the chiseled abs and rock hard pecs on teens, please)

this one might be tricky to get right, particularly with budget constraints, but i think a really good CGI/visual effects team is necessary for a w.i.t.c.h reboot to work. unless an adequate amount of the budget is spent on making sure the magic looks realistic, almost plausible, it will make everything else look cheap by comparison

also, this is more of a personal preference, but i’d love to see someone with a really beautiful visual aesthetic and scope of cinematography. i’m talking Sense8-esque levels of cinematographic beauty

i’m really rambling now but, similarly, it’d be so cool to see someone who could use lighting/colour theory in very particular ways. in Marvel’s Netflix Originals, each character has their own theme colour; in Jessica Jones, for example, all of the scenes are very blue and almost leeched of warmth, while in Luke Cage there seems to be a warm yellow filter over everything. how cool would it be if all Taranee-centric scenes had a slight gold hue? or if all of cornelia’s scenes were lit with green? maybe all of the colours could combine in the a subtle yet effective way when all of the guardians are together to show their unity and combined strength.

thoughts on an animated reboot:

i know very little about animation so these thoughts will be brief, but an art and animation style something like that of Into the Spiderverse would be really gorgeous. it is fluid, dynamic, beautiful to look at and, most importantly, reflects the comic format in a moving image perfectly. alternatively, the animation studio behind The Legend of Korra could also be wonderful. the visual effects used for magic would look absolutely incredible

one thing i have to praise the Jetix cartoon for is their choice of voice actors, which were, in many cases, spot on. while cornelia’s VA was annoying and shrill, the actors playing characters of colour were themselves people of colour. if an animated reboot was on the cards, i think it could be a great opportunity to once again include some diversity to the cast, namely hiring actors of colour to play characters of colour

please let no one who worked on voltron near a w.i.t.c.h animated reboot with a ten foot pole. no i will not elaborate

tl;dr at the risk of sounding like an entitled millennial, a w.i.t.c.h reboot should be less about creating something entirely new for a brand new audience, and more about building on what the longtime fans of w.i.t.c.h already love and bringing it forward for the older generation. all on all, we grew up with w.i.t.c.h, so it’s time for us to have our reboot. thanks for coming to my TED talk!

[nightslain]

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT MEME repost. do not reblog.

FULL NAME: Leon Belmont

GENDER & SEXUALITY: Cis Male & Demisexual/Panromantic

ETHNICITY & SPECIES: French, Human

BIRTHPLACE & BIRTHDATE: Carnac, Brittany; July 22nd 1072

GUILTY PLEASURES: Poetry. He’s a romantic at heart, even with the kind of life and upbringing he’s had and that much is reflected in this particular thing he reads for leisure.

PHOBIAS: The loss of his loved ones and the powerlessness to prevent it happening; he can be almighty in battle, but he cannot stop death. Watching it eat away at Mathias for an entire year during his sickness as well as his inability to save Sara only worsened that fear in him. After the events of Lament of Innocence, the fear of his children (and later ancestors) growing to resent him for the burden he has placed upon their shoulders is a very prevalent one even if such a legacy is one he knows the world needs. A part of him sometimes fears as well that Sara’s sacrifice will have wound up being in vain.

WHAT THEY WOULD BE INFAMOUS FOR: Obviously, Leon is a very prominent figure of his time, hailed as the greatest warrior of his country and earning the title the Lion of France; his reputation only becomes more notorious after his sudden dismissal of the church and his legendary rivalry with Dracula, as well as being the Belmont to begin the family tradition of vampire hunting, which upon entering Wallachia reaches a height of acclaim all its own.

Though rumours about Leon’s strange gifts, namely the amateur use of alchemy and magic, certainly cause a stir all their own upon making landfall in Romania. Quite sure that France has some varying opinions of him now after his abandonment of the church and the knighthood--a hearty loss for the people, if nothing else.

WHAT HAVE THEY/WOULD THEY HAVE GOTTEN ARRESTED FOR: Leon has always been law abiding and honourable, though we already know the price the Belmonts pay for him beginning the family’s tradition of using magic.

CHARACTER YOU SHIP THEM WITH: Nobody is surprised by my first answer being Mathias lmao. I was admittedly magnetised to the potential between these two almost immediately, which has only deepened with the opportunity to plot and RP with my lovely Mathias @notte-la-lagna. These two are a rich, tangled web of a story to say the least with some of the most soul-crushing elements of tragedy I’ve ever played out in a ship before. They are a joy as much as they are the death of me.

And of course, his love for Sara is undeniable as well as being equally as heartbreaking, even if the games didn’t give us a whole lot of story to work with there and I have not explored their relationship much outside my own headcanons. There is a very sad poetry to her becoming Leon’s guardian angel in the form of the Vampire Killer, and Leon’s selflessness in the pursuit of her rescue is nothing short of touching.

CHARACTER MOST LIKELY TO MURDER THEM: I’m pretty sure there’s only really Joachim or Walter that would have taken immense pleasure in killing him, even if they failed in that endeavour. Given that Mathias went into hiding after his betrayal of Leon, I can’t say with much confidence even from a canon perspective that he would have been in a hurry to kill his old friend.

FAVOURITE BOOK GENRE: Poetry, Historical Documents, Mythology and General Fiction

LEAST FAVOURITE BOOK CLICHÉ: Heroes that have everything fall into their lap, or artificially slanted in their favour from the start, despite the author’s attempt to make it seem they are challenged by the plot.

TALENTS OR POWERS: As a soldier, he is obviously possessed of some pretty impressive swordsmanship and knowledge of most actual weapons and their uses; his physical prowess by itself in general is unmatched among his peers. And though he is quite novice to the practice, he has grasped the ability to use magic since his gauntlet was enchanted by Rinaldo and has begun practising the applications of alchemy which also grant him additional advantages in battle. 

WHY SOMEONE MIGHT LOVE THEM: He is a genuine, kind, compassionate man. There are no lengths he won’t go to for the people in his life, evidenced in how quickly he was willing to throw away his wealth, fame and his life as he knew it to save his fiance--plus how quickly he musters sympathy and attachment for Rinaldo throughout the course of the game. Leon is a man with a heart of gold to say the least, and I feel like his Netflix cameo (brief as it was) has aided in giving his position as the Patriarch of the Belmont clan a certain sense of gravity and real weight that it otherwise lacked in the game. He has a certain noble and, as I’ve heard some people say, an almost angelic quality, despite being merely a flawed and hard done-by human. If not a tenacious and acclaimed one. The drama of his backstory with Mathias also makes for a fantastically interesting concept for the origins of his family and their war against Dracula. He’s really just quite an attractive concept in some ways!

I do think those of us that care about Leon in this fandom sympathise deeply with just how much he’s suffered, too. But there’s also some inspiration to be taken in the fact that Leon does not let his losses make his heart cold. For all that he has lost and all the hurt that he has felt, he didn’t let it consume him in the way Mathias did, choosing to uphold his humanity and his belief in the inherent goodness of it. In my circle, at least, we love him as a symbol of light, hope, and rising above our sufferings. 

WHY SOMEONE MIGHT HATE THEM: Because the game is a fucking joke and makes Leon look like a complete and utter moron for its entirety, save a few sparse glimpses of promise. Leon seems to be a contentious character in the fandom for multiple reasons, though I’m willing to bet the game’s God-awful presentation of his person is what put the nail in the coffin for a lot of people at least at first. Drab voice acting, awkward dialogue, laughably foolish characters, this game really is a piece of work. And that’s sad, since it has such amazing potential if only given a bit more polish. But alas, the game is not greater than the sum of its parts. I really don’t think the game did any of its characters justice in any regard, nor its story. Leon was not the kind of character I had built him up to be in my head upon being introduced to him and reading about him, to say the least.

But I suppose even in a perfect world where Leon had an updated personality and well fleshed out story in the Netflix show (pls), then people I believe would take issue with his naivety? I do think there is always going to be a certain element of it to his character after all--his innocent nature being the entire namesake of his game--and that leads him to some very misguided doings, beliefs and consequences. He is not stupid, but he is guileless in many ways.

HOW THEY CHANGE: His change is perhaps not as dramatic as some, but is quite gargantuan no less. He changes from an esteemed, naive puppet of the church to a scorned but resolute saviour of mankind; a protector of a different stamp, for sure, but a protector nonetheless. One that is wiser but not less kind. He sheds much of his old naivety after Mathias’ betrayal, and he shapes himself into the kind of father he knows his children need in order to perpetuate his teachings and see that it lasts well after he is dead and gone. Though there is always a certain tenderness Leon holds to his heart, he is quite a different man come the time to raise his own children--living up much more to a sort of sagely, wiseman figure than the guileless youth he was at the beginning of his journey where he was the one in need of guidance. 

WHY YOU LOVE THEM: Because he represents so much in the grand scheme of things in Castlevania’s story, for one thing. And because his character is, when divorced from the laughable absurdity of the game, so very charming. He is a fount of potential that was never lived up to as well as it could have been, which is always an irresistible challenge for me as one that loves to explore and fill in the blanks with characters that aren’t well loved by their own source material! At face value, Leon is a very interesting figure in the story, and of course, you can’t have him without Mathias--those two together with their heartbreaking backstory makes for a positively tantalising concoction that has me weak.

Tagged by: @putrefactie lmao ilu ⭐💖 Tagging: @lus-a-chalmain @dominatie @cruciavit-pias @empyream @blanchette

[xtswifts]

in all my years on tumblr, this is still one of my favorite gifs of tay in existence, so i shall use it now on my mega ooc appreciation post.

i am still on hiatus — it has been a ROUGH 36 hours my dudes — but i did want to drop in and post some ic/ooc appreciation things while this week is still here because i am all in the business of sharing the love. it’s one of the many reasons i absolutely adore this group. this group has always been about love, for me, and would probably be the singular word i’d use to describe my experience here.

i joined this lovely bunch back in july, i do believe? i had actually just finished up writing and self-publishing my third book which wound up being a behemoth (seriously it was a lot) and while i was absolutely and completely braindead when it came to writing, i still wanted to write. i’m a writer. that’s who i am and that’s who i’ll always be. i wanted something a lot more low-stakes, kind of go-with-the-flow, no real pressure and more collaborative than the isolating fun of novel-writing, so i turned back to roleplay. hollywood rps have always been my absolute favorites in the rpc for whatever reason; i have such fond memories in hollywood groups and it’s a fun and creative way for me to just project the love i have for my faves. after a few experiences in groups during late 2017 and early 2018 i was pretty sure that i was done with roleplay. it just wasn’t the same for me, no matter where i went. priorities had shifted and it was no longer about writing because you loved to write. but, me being ever the optimist, i decided to dive back into the tags and see what was still around or had recently popped up. i found this group and i saw that they had just had a taylor swift removed from the group, and hi hello nice to meet you i am taylor swift trash no. 1!!!, i felt like it was all Meant To Be or something like that (plus, she was taken in every other group and that’s who i really wanted to put a hand at writing). so i put in an app for her, got accepted, and i have been plaguing your dashes ever since :~))

in the four-ish months that i have been here, so much has happened in my life. i started my (outrageously stressful) junior year of college, i lost my grandma, i went to go see queen swift in atlanta and meet my baby princess camila, i have had major friend complications and doubts about my career track and i have had just really boring, empty days where everything was going seemingly okay. this group has been there for me through every high, low, and in between. this group has been my escape to run to when i’m stressed or up late at night and can’t sleep or just really looking to be social or want to write something. this group has been so welcoming, warm, and fun; i have had the opportunity to explore my character any which way that i please and form awesome plots with people, and even more awesome friendships ooc. some of you send really, really kind things my way which, fyi, i’m super grateful for and have probably cried over because this was the first time i not only felt welcomed in a group as taylor, but felt welcomed in a group as me. i am so grateful that i get to call this place my internet home and there is absolutely nowhere else i would rather be spending my free time writing. i stand by what i say: this is the best group in the tags, hands down. you could not ask for a more inclusive, diverse, welcoming, creative playground to spend your time on. to all the lovely admins over on main @hollywoodfamerp​ thank you for doing the heavy lifting and giving us a safe and warm place that we can call home. the work you do never goes unnoticed. you are appreciated and you are so, so loved. ♡  

some ~personal~ shoutouts:

@nhxran​ — peyton, you are without a doubt one of my best friends both in this group and just in general. we had an immediate chemistry as writing partners from that very first starter reply and nothing about that has changed. you are the writing partner i always hoped i would find in a group due to how generous you are in every reply, the way you are willing to headcanon and brainstorm (even at the craziest of hours) and i still remain in awe of you as a roleplayer with the way you juggle such diverse characters, all of which have their prominent voices that never seem to overlap. you are the roleplayer i wish i could be. even though we might sometimes be ships in the night ic, ooc i know that you are always there and you always have my back, and i truly hope you know that the same goes for you. i love you, you intelligent, creative, witty, beautiful, heart-of-gold woman you. i would not have stayed in this group if i had not met you. you are one of my favorite people, period. thank you for being one of my dearest friends.

@cara-x-delevingne​ — mickey, the first person to ever pop into my ims and say hello (and you were FAST about it too, lol), you have been one of my favorite people to write with! the way you breathe a life into your characters is almost unparalleled to any writer, much less any writer in a hwood group. you have such a talent and not only that, you are funny and kind and inclusive and i am so glad that there are people like you (and you) still out there in this world. we need more people like you. thank you for one of the most epic friendships i’ve ever written in a group and always challenging me to step up to the plate and bring my a-game with taylor. you inspire me and i love you. never change.

@armiehmmer​ — graaaaace, the law to my swift! you were actually one of the reasons i joined this rp; before i joined i stalked a few blogs and as i have told you (and you have probably seen via my wildin’ ass on twitter) i love jen, so much. i saw how dedicated you were to your jen and how included she was, which i thought was amazing because like my girl t, some people just aren’t about. i figured if you could put in the effort and grind hard enough with her and get positive results, i could do the same for taylor. and here we both are, killin’ it. you are such a lovely person who has always been nothing but kind, i am still endlessly jealous you were in pasadena for rep tour but we’ll let it slide for now, lol. i love you, thank you for being the epitome of grace in this roleplay. you’re a pure light and the dash is dimmer without you on it.

@jstntimberfake​ — nicki, or should i say, GOD, i don’t know where to begin with you. you are the reason i almost took home a jt standup from 2nd and charles. i love everything that you do on both of your characters. you become them, they stand so far away from the person that you actually are and i think that is the testament of a true, talented writer: they are able to convince you that they’re someone else. and you do, every time. i’m just really, really happy that i get to say that i’m in the same rp group as you because it makes me feel like a Cool Kid on the playground who has light up sneakers. you are so cool and it sometimes lowkey intimidates me, how amazing and talented you are. thank you for always putting a smile on my face. love ya love ya  

@itsscarjo​ — aria, my magnificent love. you are so well spoken and kind and as my clumsy twin, i have no choice but to love you dearly. it’s so nice to just have somebody to talk to sometimes and every time we’ve talked, it’s like being all bundled up in a warm fuzzy blanket. you are so easy to talk to and i cannot wait for the things you and i do on all of our people now that our lives have calmed the heck down and we can come on and write. thank you for being such a spectacular, inviting person. i had several other people sing your praises to me when you joined the group and i can wholeheartedly agree with them. you are one of a kind. big love

@aubreycplaza​ — marissa, i mcfreakin’ adore you. i’ll be honest, i have not had the best experiences with aubreys in the past but that all goes out the window with you. i’m obsessed with you and all of your people, and to know you and get to write with you is an absolute pleasure. thank you for being so much fun to write with, thank you for giving me so much quality stuff to stalk while i’m on the dash and feeling like trash, thank you for being so understanding of me constantly feeling like trash, i adore you. can’t wait for tay and aubrey to finally go on their fuckin girls trip and become little jetsetters together (forevaaaa)

@jamesrodriqez​ — hello stranger idk you but i think you’re pretty cool! and i think that you have been one of the most entertaining, fun people to write with in these last couple of weeks when i feel like i’m barely able to write two sentences that haven’t been written onto a powerpoint that i’m copying off of. you just give me so much excitement about writing and plotting and that excitement is something that can be difficult to find again after you’ve gotten comfortable in a group. thank you for keeping things refreshing and new for me and taylor. i’m excited to get back to all of our fun shenanigans (and to love on your new people bc yes amen) #jandrea forever

@jarpadking​ — nikki! first of all, i’m in awe at how fast you can come up with replies on TWO characters that are so well-crafted and authentic to that person’s voice. i struggle just writing a single coherent reply on taylor half the time, lmao. you are one of the hearts in this group, the way you make it an effort to branch out and talk to every single person and create connections with both the mun and the character. you’re one of the unsung heroes and if we could all be a little more you like you, we’d be the best roleplayers around. love you so much, my dear, and of course, thank you for being so warm and inclusive. people like you are rare

@itskeeoone​ — i have spent all day binging pll because that is how i choose to veg out and every time i see keegan on screen now, i think of you, em. you just write him so wonderfully and truthfully and i don’t ever want to let you go (please don’t ever leave this group or i’ll cry). taylor and keegan have given me all the life, they are very similar people and i’m happy that my 15 year old self’s dreams are coming true by their worlds colliding here in the group. i’m so excited to write even more with you now that the holidays are coming and i’ll actually, y’know, BE AROUND, but yes. love you.

@goddamnjade​ — lucy, you know anybody that is as big into the dance scene as i am HAS to get a spot on this appreciation post ;) but also, you have just been one of the loveliest people ever? i think you’re one of the hearts in this group, the reason that it is why it is and the reason that it’s so warm and welcoming. you are so inclusive and fun to write with and i really hope that i get to talk with you more ooc because i adore youuuu!

@yosebstan​ — rileyyyy, gotta admit, sometimes you intimidate me but it is only because you are an absolute fuckin’ legend in this group, and not just because of your admin status. your characters have something that a lot of people try hard to encompass but can’t ever capture, and that’s longevity. your characters never feel stale, they always feel new and fresh and like real people, not just tropes or over-concentrated personality traits and i get so excited every time i see one of your people on the dash. i’m lucky to be in a group with you, so so lucky. i sometimes hope your natural inclination for rp will rub off on me and make me a better writer. love you, and i really hope we get to do some fun stuff in the future!!

@jpgsasha​ — cami, you and i clicked so fast when we started replying to each other’s stuff back when you still had camila and i cannot WAIT to write with you as my honey sasha (seriously, a fuckin’ plus switch). we had some of the LONGEST replies on the dash at one point but when you’re inspired, you’re inspired! thank you for inspiring me and being one of the most down to earth people in this group. you deserve all the fuckin’ love. please love me so i can give it to you.

@avycias​​ — katieeee!! it legit surprised me to find out how close we are to one another #hurricane watch friends, lol. you are so sweet and your alycia is absolutely legendary, i was biting at the bit to write with you from the minute i joined this group. i hope we get to do all of the things with taylor and alycia because writing with you makes me so happy. you are wildly talented and the way alycia comes to life every time you type something is magical. you write her with a conviction and you make her your own and i think that’s why i adore her so much. thank you for being you. love you much babes

@milesdominic​ — marie! miles and taylor had one of the cutest friendships ever and it needs to make a comeback asap, because 1) that, and 2) writing with you comes so naturally (*plays naturally by selena gomez and the scene*). i barely have to think about what i want to reply to you with because there’s a chemistry there that is hard to replicate; thank you for keeping me on my toes and my brain alert and being such a fun person to write with. you give me the chance to explore sides of taylor’s voice that other people look over and that i love, and that’s all anybody could ask in a writing partner, someone who allows them to run wild!

@blccmtroye​  — fiona, i fuckin’ love your troye. he is too much fun to interact with, and i am thankful that you gave this group a shot (and that you gave me a shot). i couldn’t imagine this place without the wit and the charm that you supply with every single post you make.

@flynnpls​ — marie, i’m just in love with all of your people and you. you’re one of the people i feel like i admire from afar because i stay in awe of the way you write and how effortless it seems to come to you. you balance all of these different personalities with finesse and i really do feel like i’m talking to or reading the words of the actual celebrity in every single reply. i am crossing my fingers that i get the opportunity to write some really incredible things with you here in the future because i have such mad respect for you.

+ to everyone else that i either forgot to mention, have not really formed connections with outside of replies or haven’t had the chance to talk to you/your babies due to my super fun hiatus: i stalk so many of you on the dash and keep up with your plots and where you take your characters and it really and truly is such a privilege to be in the same group as you. they say that birds of a feather flock together and if that’s the case, i am simply a reflection of all the things y’all are. kind, funny, clever, creative, welcoming, intelligent, and a part of something, and i could not ask for more. i love all of you, whether we’ve talked or not (believe me i probably stalk you and just love you from afar) and any time you ever need a friend, call me beep meeeeee. i’m always game to do things with taylor and explore her more through whatever plots or connections we could create, and i promise that if i don’t respond to an im, it’s because i’m off on hiatus or it got eaten. i want to do ALL the things with ALL of you. come hit me up! let me love you! k thanks!!!

obligatory thank you note to my queen taylor alison for existing. love u bitch.

xx, caroline

[np-c]

Fanon as canon

(sry for bad writing, that’s gonna be some gramatic wrong shit but i NEED to say this -aahhh this is hard, sorry)

That’s not a message to antis (fuck them) but massage to pro-shippers. In our fandom we have some weird shit that we all agreed is canon? Its all because bakudeku started as enemies..? rivals? definetly not friends? Because Bakugo told Deku to go to kill himself.

That was a first episode; we didn’t know a shit except we need to protect Izuku at all costs bc he’s so adorable and just need protection. But then there is started some weird west shit where people completly ignoring what’s going on on the screen cuz no one noticed Izuku’s reaction on these words.

Well, you see, I came in fandom after wonderful villain!deku au’s and now i think its the dumbest thing fandom ever made so i was low-key shipping bakudeku. And one of the reasons why i started to watch this show was ‘cuz I wanted to see how really abusive this ship is. I wanted a proof. For my favorite kind fo AU and for my probably OTP.

...

But then I finally saw that scene, goddamn I laughed so fucking hard OMG. Pls rewatch it, PLEASE REWATCH IT WITH YOUR OPENED EYES.

Was it just me or Izuku’s first reaction was a desire to say “well fuck you too”???

Was he upset? Obviously, his notebook was thrown into window. But what else? He was angry. He wasn’t scared before Katsuki glared at him. He wasn’t crying (his usual reaction at everything). After that, he just said that Katchan was stupid to say that.

That was the moment when villain!deku died to me. But so did a big part of bakudeku fandom cuz they are so good people who can’t do anything wrong so when they do, they need to apologise и этот момент во всех фанфиках написан как по методичке And so need Bakugo BECAUSE HE BULLIED MIDORIYA FOR TEN YEARS or something like that apparently (funny thing but i figured that russian just doesn’t have an equal translation; well we have a lot of childish nouns and a lot of verbs so we can translate ‘he was bullied’ but we can’t translate ‘that guy is bully’ without it sounded stupid and childish THE FUNNIER THING: the closiest that i heard used is ‘provoker’ :D i just found that very hillarious dontmindme)

Well, the question is: was Midoriya really get bullied? I saw enough animes to think it was not the case. Or it was nothing really serious and just words. And look me in the eyes and tell me that this guy gave fuck about what people told him. Especially in middle school. He was one with his dreams against the world, even against his own mother (and i need to write another post why i hate Inko Midoriya and probably why I’ll never be accepted in your world of saints). He was quirkless and people laughed at his dreams. His mother didn’t believe in him. But Katsuki? He just wanted get rid of him.

Big bad Katsuki, right? Because you never ever in your lives met people who you thought was weird, who made you feel weird. That could be your friends sometimes or your friend’s friend or just that one classmate - you have never been in such a situation, right? I’m not saying his actions are fine - nah, he was an asshole kid, but i can understand why. Actually, if you read manga, it was said literally: Katsuki doesn’t see a problem in a bit of violence. He was raised that way, he’s angry kid, with not so family-friendly quirk (probably). But he knows when to step back, he follows rules, he’s a good student and he wouldn’t let his ‘friends’ smoke nearby bc he doesn’t want to get into trouble. His dreams (plans) are too big, he works so hard for them to happen. He might be an asshole but he’s responsible asshole за то и любим

So, some stupid kid who thinks he’s better then Katsuki (btw go rewatch their first fight but without this ‘we need to protect Deku’ bullshit in your mind and listen to their dialog - it’s a gold of comedy misunderstandings honestly) that kid thinks that he’s, being a loser (he WAS loser, smart ofc but still yeah it’s not good call him that but ffs), quirkless, can achive something for what Katsuki worked so hard. Most of you would’ve hate this kid too, don’t lie to yourselves.

But would he risk his dreams to hurt him?

Yeah, there’re moments from times when they were what? four? that frame where ‘he became bad after he got his quirk’? i honestly think it was a plothole but just imho :D Asshole violent little brat but i really would’ve love to know the whole story bc wtf. It’s probably my problem after being here too long so i automatically looking for bad things and it’s not like kids never fight. I don’t believe it was something drastically and IT IS the most drastic thing that i found in their history.

And after all... intresting point: Deku still thinks that Katsuki is amazing (even when he’s an asshole) and don’t you fucking dare call him a masochist ‘cuz he’s not. He would fight him.

He wanted to fight him when Katchan said that stupid thing (that you all so love to overthink). He fought him when they were little. He fought him in villain vs heroes lesson without that much of a second thought. Yeah, he’s nervous around him at first bc Katsuki is loud and literally explosive and yeah, from that all you can think he’s scared of him, but is he? Izuku is nervous kid in general. He always was just a nobody for his classmates and it’s not like he was naturally talanted at anything (quite opposite) and his only parental figure is Inko (she’s wonderful woman, okay? but not the greatest mother and also nervous wreck). It was his first days in UA, Class 1-A was just introduced, we didn’t know anybody, and it’s some new test already - ofc he would be nervious.

So, anyway, if Katsuki didn’t abuse him physically, he obviously did that emotionally bc... we need a scape goat and we already hate Bakugo and he told Izuku to kill himself so that’s enough. Or bc he’s the only guy from Izuku’s chilhood who’s name we know, so we can blame him - he’s important to story, right? probably bc every story need an almost-villain so we can hate him altogether. Or maybe bc it was not Bakugo, but a whole atmosphere: his classmates, teachers, his ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’ mother. First of all, probably genes.

Second of all, ask yourself a question: can one stupid Izuku’s words Bakugo Katsuki break Midoriya Izuku? To the point where we call that’s a trauma, where Katsuki’s usual harsh vocabulary becomes a crime, where we write suicidal fanfics and they don’t sound stupid?

Except they does because Izuku isn’t suicidal, not even fucking close. He doesn’t have a trauma. He is just a nervous kid and - actually - he isn’t fucking weak (strong in spirit or smth like that). Funny thing: when i first watch their exam right before summer camp arc, when they started talking that great speak about impassable wall, I actually thought that can be said about Izuku :D He’s not easy to break and he easily ignores people’s opinions when he needs.  He’s self-destractive, not suicidal. Different things, guys. I’m pretty sure even if he did thought about that ‘way out’, he never made this an option. Yeah, you actually can seriosly consider this as your ‘way out’ and then think that nope, not for you.

So, after all this FUCKING TEXT WALL OMYGOD, let’s get back to the point that I didn’t even stated in first place.

Why Katsuki need to apologise? 

I’m sure at some point Katsuki hated Deku (bc Deku looked down at him whatever it was or wasn’t thruth - for Katsuki it was) and at some point Deku couldn’t leave him alone. He called him names (name ‘Deku’ was made before Deku happened to be quirkless, some people forget about that), but so did everyone and don’t make Katsuki the most evil one - unlike most, he had reasons and he’s an angry kid and Izuku was a bad guy in Katsuki’s story who wanted to destroy him while hiding behind his innocence smile - what a fucking story with a plot-twist it could’ve been, if it was Katsuki’s POV- 

Katsuki didn’t ruin Izuku’s life, not even close. You can say, he ruined his childhood, but I would risk to say that was mutual (Greetings, Inferiority Complex!). Really, can I start to say that Izuku need to apologise to Katsuki bc he didn’t even try to understant his friend?

So, Bakugo is a bully bc we never saw an angry teenager and bc Izuku is innocent and it’s just them two in the world and Izuku is the only one who was hurt no, really, no jokes here, I think Katsuki is a lot more emotionally damaged then Izuku ever was and because we have a really dumb headcanons that we forgot were just our thought ебаное слово, вечно забываю как пишется and interpretations.

So we agreed that Katsuki beat Izuku bc he was quirkless and helpless (seems like EXACTLY THE REASON WHY HE WOULD DO THIS R I G H T) and called him names (definitely not bc he felt threatened by someone who’s supposed to be just a nobody). 

...

Okay, that sounds bad so I rephrase it:

Why Katsuki should apologise to someone who he saw as a threat when he for so much reasons shouldn’t?

Not so simple anymore, hah?

Can sound dumb but ambivalent feelings is a thing. And that’s the only reason I can find to explain why Katsuki was the only one of the whole class who didn’t laughed when they’ve been told Deku’s trying get into UA. Because shitty nerd had a chance? Because shitty nerd thought that he stand the same ground as Bakugo and it wasn’t funny anymore? Because stop looking down at me?

Bakugo Katsuki is the best fucking character I’ve ever met. He’s so real. So complex.

And when you picture him as a bully or just a bad guy or abusive, you’re killing him as a character. I don’t like saying that 16y.o. are just kids, but he is AND he’s trying his best. He doesn’t understand all things and he has never met a proper rivals before and he’s definitely not a social person (and nope, you can’t change a character so deal with it and learn to see through this). And let him learn.

He may or may not look back one day and see what a little piece of shit he was, but I don’t think he would say something. He’s a man of action after all.

And I definitely think that would be unnecessary and would look forced bc Izuku doesn’t need this. Izuku isn’t a victim, and when you picture him as one, you’re killing him as a character.

(it should’ve been ended right after ‘OMG TEXT WALL’ but here we fucking are; does someone read this?

i really hope this shit is readable; if not, it’s not about my shitty english that much, but my writing, ehh)

You have headcanons - good. You figured them in a way to fill a gap in the story - great. But for the love of characters, don’t fucking pretend them to be a canon.

But really, is it just me or does first chapter look weird? It’s fctually just funny how so many people seems stuck in FIRST CHAPTER when we are close to second hundred. I’m not saying ‘heeeey character development’. I’m asking: is first chapter a really good reason to make assumptions?

[once-upon-a-ouat]

OUAT Rewatch 1x12 “Skin Deep”

Help! I don’t know where to start from with this episode. It was so amazing and I nearly started crying twice (I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go through this review without weeping openly).

Rumple was such a rich character in this episode too (just like in 1x08). We saw even more sides of him. Now that we know why he became the Dark One, it was really heartbreaking to learn that he lost his son (although the writers did mislead us a bit with that ‘lost’). I loved how he promised to tell Belle the story when she returned because he didn’t really want to tell her but it was okay because he didn’t expect her to return. And if she did, he would know he could trust her. His joy when he saw she was coming back was so genuine and heartwarming. I loved the softness and even shyness of their kiss because it contrasted nicely with the power it held. And I’m not talking about the magical aspect of it. They were both treading unknown territory, they were both scared of how badly it could backfire in their faces, but still went through with it. Rumple’s reaction to the kiss working was actually very complex and stemming from many different factors. He was probably sacred because without his power he would be the pathetic coward again. He was probably scared that one day Belle might realize that without his power he’s just a coward and leave him (just like Milah did). He was probably scared that he wouldn’t find his son if he didn’t have his power even though it was the reason why he lost him in the first place. That made him think that no one was able to love him even though the simple fact that the kiss worked was proof that it was True Love. He trapped himself in a vicious circle that led to him losing the few people that he loved and that loved him back. Even despite the ugly turn that the situation took, he still cared very much about Belle though. He treasured the chipped cup more than any gold. The symbolism of that cup though. It survived his wrath when nothing else did just like their love survived all the obstacles that he threw at it. Also, his timid hope during his conversation with Regina that Belle might need a home was so heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Despite everything he said and did, he wanted her back. And I really want to talk about the “I’ll get used to it” part. It was his home but he decided to go out of his way and adapt to the change because he knew Belle liked it that way. He could’ve just waved his hand and the curtains would’ve returned in their places but he stayed out of his comfort zone to make her happy. He wanted to get used to having a little ray of sunshine among all that darkness. I always believed that love was in the little things. Wow, sorry for the long paragraph but the next one’s just as bad.

Belle’s character got established very quickly in this episode. I’m really amazed with the character building that they did. You could tell what kind of person she was before you’re even halfway through the episode. I love her as a character because I can really relate to her. A bookworm who desires to go on an adventure, explore the world and be a hero (I mean, how can I not relate to that?). But she didn’t only wish to be the one to save the day. She also took a step in that direction. What she did was a big sacrifice for her because it meant she would never get to do what she wanted the most. And yet, she didn’t despair. She tried to make the best of her current situation. And even though she was initially afraid of Rumple, her kind heart and genuine curiosity allowed her to look past the surface and see into his soul. I really liked her philosophy about love but there’s something that has always irritated me in her and that’s her desire to change Rumple. She only returned to him because she thought she could save him (I really didn’t dig the whole thing with the Dark One power being a curse that True Love’s kiss could break mostly because they never did anything in that direction ever again (except for a brief mention in season 5 because someone went “Hey, we did that thing with the True Love’s kiss in 1x12 and we could use it again for exactly one episode”) and I feel like they used it only as a plot device and then completely forgot about it). I knew she wanted him to be his best self but I feel like that was because she couldn’t accept the darkness. She only wanted to love the good parts of him but is that really love? Because let’s face it, none of us are only people. There is a tiny little beast in every one of us and it depends on us not to let it take over. And yes, with Rumple it had taken over, but Belle didn’t just want him to control it. She wanted it gone. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Belle and their relationship but sometimes I really don’t agree with her actions and decisions.

They changed Gaston’s actor in the fifth season, didn’t they? This is a genuine question because I never really paid much attention to him. And once again I couldn’t find it in myself to care about him.

Gold was a little cruel towards Moe in that first scene but I couldn’t find it in myself to root against him. Since when does he have a henchman? And why did we never see him again? Dammit, OUAT! Sometimes I hate the inconsistency of this show (oh, who am I kidding, I hate it all the time). Gold with a gun is everything I never knew I needed in my life. Or Gold with a duct tape and rope. His chat with David though. I just love those genuine moments he gets to have with the other characters. He’s the man everyone’s afraid of and suddenly he surprises you by saying something so personal and even intimate. It gives the people around him peeks of what’s underneath and I really love these moments of his. Damn, was he determined to get the cup back though. It’s the same persistence that never leaves him when he’s fighting for Belle’s love later on. They really managed to establish the ground for his character and the course he’ll take in the future with only two episodes that revolve around him. Stunning work really.

Regina was an evil genius in this episode. I loved the fact that she won against Rumple this time. It doesn’t happen often and it was very satisfying to see. Honestly, every time she manages to get the upper hand in her power struggle against Rumple just makes me respect her more because it proves she’s smart and can turn the tables even when the cards aren’t in her favor. With that said, going to Rumple’s castle to deliver the news of Belle’s untimely ‘death’ was so horrible on her part. I loved how well Lana showed the twisted satisfaction that her character got out of Rumple’s misery. You sympathize with him but also know that had the roles been reversed, he would’ve reveled just as much in her misery as she did in his (if not even more). And their scene at the Sheriff Station was just awesome. I love how Gold knew very well that he’d have no choice but to do what she wanted but still tried to outsmart her and avoided answering her question till the very end. But Regina was having none of it. Is it only me or did the rivalry between the two lost its edge after it was revealed that she used to be his apprentice? I really wish they had shown how the whole thing started. The way she manipulated Belle was amazingly terrifying. The scene with Belle locked in the asylum gave me the creeps though. I’m also not fond of the way she used Henry to get Emma out of the way so that she could have that chat with Gold.

Emma was insanely entertaining in this episode. Especially when she just took out the handcuffs and arrested Gold. That was so awesome and he was like “Really, Miss Swan?”. Her smugness during the scene with the sandwich though. Emma was essentially the comedic relief of this episode (and, boy, did it need some) but a more serious side of her was also shown during her conversation with Mary Margaret. I loved how sad she got when Mary Margaret told her Henry was fine. You know she didn’t want him to be miserable but the thought that he was just going for his daily life without missing her upset her. It was so sweet but also heartbreaking. And the brief interaction between her and Henry in the Sheriff Station was absolutely adorable.

Mary Margaret and David were a disaster in this episode just like in every previous one really. I just wish that David would man up and do the right thing.

It was cool to see Ashley again. Sean’s proposal was very cute but if I were him, I probably would’ve made it somewhere a little more private (but the place was strategic for the plot because Mary Margaret had to witness the whole thing in order to start questioning her relationship with David even more). I also loved the fact that he rushed to her side as soon as he got some free time on his hands and wanted to spend every second of it with her. All Ashley actually wanted was to be with him and he found a way to give her that. I think that short scene of them worked really well and showed us that they’re finding their way to one another even despite the Curse. They don’t have the standard of life that they did in the Enchanted Forest but they’re together and that’s what matters. They manage to make it work.

It was cool of Ruby to suggest girls’ night (headcanon that Granny took care of Alexandra while they were out partying) but I didn’t really like her attitude while they were at the bar. “You’re not married and he’s not here”? So it’s okay to flirt with other guys because they’re not married yet? And she just abandoned them at the first chance to get laid. What happened to ‘girl’s night’?

Okay, but that little moment between Regina and Nurse Ratched though. I wanna know what’s the story there. Regina seemed to care about her, what with the rose and everything. She’s rarely shown to care much about her employees so Nurse Ratched must be special. Also, the reference to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is one of my favorite references the show has ever made.

Talking about references, “Game of Thorns”. The funny thing is that the Curse was cast in 1983 and “A Game of Thrones” was published in 1996. So, in-verse it didn’t originate as a reference.

Favorite scene: Gold beating the shit out of Moe. It was such a raw scene ( I had to watch it again in order to write this and I cried). The dialogue in this scene though. Gold was beating Moe, but it wasn’t Moe he was actually angry with. He was mad at himself and that’s why he only heard the ‘my fault’ part of that sentence. The horror of that scene didn’t come from Moe’s physical pain (for me at least) but from Gold’s emotional anguish. In comparison with it, Moe’s pain was but a skin deep scratch although he got more than just a little chipped. Gold probably would’ve beaten him to death if Emma hadn’t shown up. He was so lost in the past he didn’t even give a damn that Moe didn’t remember and probably thought he was completely nuts. It was the one and only time we’ve seen him lose control like that and it was terrifying but also showed how strong his feelings for Belle were (and his hunger for power still won out. Fuck!). Robert Carlyle’s acting just made the scene that much more awesome.

Least favorite scene: David giving the Valentine’s Day card to Mary Margaret. I mean, really? He messed up the cards? They were in differently colored envelopes! What is wrong with you, David? You really couldn’t remember which one was for Mary Margaret? Honestly, I’m so pissed with him already. I dread the thought of the next episode. We saw how they ‘figured it out’.

Favorite line: “You’re a coward, Rumplestiltskin.” - Belle to Rumple

Honestly, that whole scene was amazing. I loved how hurt Belle was when Rumple told her he didn’t want her (and he literally turned his back on her) but she still turned back and faced him, giving him a piece of her mind. She saw right through him and his actions and knew what was hiding behind the exterior. I loved her fierce attitude during the scene but also the fact that she almost broke down near the end. Rumple’s facial expressions throughout the entire scene ruined my life. Also, “My power means more to me than you”. That line is so much more heartbreaking once you’ve seen how the entire thing plays out because back then it was an obvious lie but as the story progresses, there are times when it becomes true and that makes it much more painful.

Least favorite line: “I wasn’t going to [come back], but something changed my mind.” - Belle to Rumple

This line just proves what I said above. Belle has fallen in love with the person Rumple could be, not with the person he is. She straight up stated it herself that she would’ve left him, if she hadn’t learned he could be ’saved’. This isn’t really my definition of True Love.

I can’t describe how much I love this episode. It didn’t move the main story forward very much but I really couldn’t find it in myself to care. It did a lot in terms of character development and I wouldn’t call it a filler, but even if it were, I still wouldn’t give a damn because it didn’t feel like a filler. I was sucked into the story and that’s all that matters. Once again I was left utterly speechless by Robert Carlyle’s acting and Emilie de Ravin was also so fucking awesome. They carried a well-written story to even greater heights with their acting. Holy shit, that soundtrack though! In the end “Skin Deep” is one of the best episodes this season has to offer (and maybe even the show in general).