#(bc to take off one's costume is to take off one's identity ie for the actor to take off the character and be done w/ them)

[finelythreadedsky]

oooh the sequence of on-stage female disrobings in the oresteia, one in each play-- cassandra casting off her prophet's robe and priestly emblems in the agamemnon, clytemnestra baring her breast to orestes in the libation bearers, and the erinyes exchanging their monstrous regalia for the red robes of their new identity as the eumenides... it's not explicit in the text of the eumenides that they take anything off but they are discarding one identity in order to assume a new one that they put on as a garment, and even if they don't take off any part of their fury-costume it's still such a way to reverse and resolve the two disrobings in the earlier plays

[windebris]

roman: princy or princess?

ok i know the title sounds like crack, but hear me out:

Roman’s whole deal is being a prince. Hes got the costume, he plays up the gimmick, he even has a fricking sword. We know this, we’ve seen the ups and downs of this in the series, and we know the black and white, prince vs evil mentality is about to explode in everyone’s face (more so than it already has, that is) because who everyone expects/wants him to be doesnt line up with his real self, and he’s still not at the point of truly accepting himself for who he isnt (a cookie cutter, perfect prince) and is (a mess) (via @beauty-and-passion bc i love their analyses so fricking much), but we’ll come back to that

Roman’s primary inspiration (via c! thomas’ perception) is disney princes, so lets take a look at their usual jobs in the films.

Vanquish evil 

Advocate true love

simple enough, right? just like roman, at first it seems that way. Im sure at the beginning of sanders sides we all thought he would be a showy, pretty boy prince who wanted thomas to be ‘good’. Because princes always get rid of the evil in the end, right?

but we know how thats worked out for roman. Mean to virgil, backfired awfully. Condemned janus, everyone’s against roman now. Separate from remus, it came back to bite thomas. And it was fine, roman would have put up with anything so long as it only hurt him, but because thomas got hurt everything is worse. (of course, this is the case with janus too, but i’ll come back to that)

everyone knows by now that there’s going to be a reckoning next episode. We’ve seen thomas costumed as remus, so he’s gonna be in there. Roman had a breakdown last ep, backed into a corner and a confrontation, so if he isnt there when his twin is i am going to riot. Janus is definitely going to be there bc the last ep saw jan fINALLY being accepted (also a part of that confrontation), and i’m just dying to know where virgil has been as well so he might also show up. The whole gang’s gonna see what chaos goes down if patton even sneezes in their general direction

where was i going with this, i had a point

RIGHT

So vanquish evil has failed every which way for roman. Whats left? True love. Now, in most films this refers to a princess, but i think roman’s focus always has been and always will be thomas. He was heartbroken when the whole ‘thomas was lying about roman being his hero’ (or at least roman interpreted janus’ nod that way), his whole theme is because thomas needed a prince to save him from the ‘bad thoughts’ ie remus (which is irrelevant to my point so we dont have time to unpack all that rn- /ref)

But because he failed to vanquish evil the ‘right’ way (even though literally everything patton ever said led him to believe he was doing the right thing-), he’s failed to show thomas the ‘true love’, hence he is no longer thomas’ hero. No longer his prince.

whaBAM, entire basis of his identity no longer exists

So what’s left?

disney is still there, its a core part of roman and no amount of anguish will lessen that it was a core part of c! thomas’ creative development

on that note, roman still has to be his core functions. creativity, passion, ego, hopes, dreams, etc

Thinking on it though, none of those ever fit neatly into the prince persona in the first place. A prince is there to serve his ‘kingdom’ (ie the sides + thomas) and to complete the above values, not to be an artist or performer or any of the things thomas dreams of. And there is no room for passion or ego in the life of a prince because he is always looking out for his people (what should be the others’ job). Which begs the question: why was roman a prince in the first place?

The obvious answer goes back to disney being c!thomas’ first forays into storytelling. the princes were perfect examples of ‘goodness’, which as we know is key to what thomas pre-the newer episodes wanted to be, and existing already in familiar stories with killer songs to match, it was an ideal match for a ‘good’ creativity

But deeper than that, i think roman is a prince because thomas needed a placeholder to be his protector. He wasnt yet aware of janus (the metaphorical protector, saving thomas from what he wasnt yet ready for), lying to himself about the dark other sides altogether, and virgil was too busy playing the ‘bad guy’ at the beginning to show his true colors (looking out for thomas is virgil’s purpose, as we now know), but back then? Roman was the one barricading virgil the most, ‘protecting’ thomas from his influence

Therefore! The reason roman was the prince was to ‘save’ thomas from the others, and unconsciously, the ‘dark creativity’. Without the ‘prince,’ thomas would have accepted the darkness all to easily (from roman’s perspective, which once again goes into the subconscious protecting from remus’ stuff)

But, returning to the point (i keep getting off track lol), now the prince is gone. He’s failed in his pursuits, there is nothing else to protect from (ignoring orange), he isnt thomas’ hero

I think, bear with me, he’s going to become more of a princess now.

✨metaphorically✨

Princes, in the typical disney movie, are black and white. Theyre either good (eric, phillip, etc) or bad (see hans). Fight evil, get the girl love interest, live happily ever after, or… dont.

Living happily ever after by fighting evil has gotten roman absolutely nowhere; in fact, it got him ostracized and rethinking his entire self concept, so thats not an option now.

princesses, on the other hand, have gone through a fricking renaissance. Where they used to be as black and white as princes minus the possibly-evil bit and delicate as flowers, now they can be hard-working, law-breaking, dream-chasing, yet still people-saving girlbosses, which is essentially roman on a can label.

im mixing my metaphors, but what roman really, truly needs right now is that metamorphosis. He’s crumbling under the pressure his prince persona puts on him (ha, alliteration). Thomas’ moral dilemma is making his two creativities split at the seams even more than they already have, because if morality is such a spectrum, then why is his creativity so seemingly (forgive the overuse of this phrase) black and white?

If roman could shed the princeliness and take in more princess qualities (ie a certain disregard for the rules, doing whats right [for thomas, that is, which is being himself {a theme in many princess-centric films} despite expectations] by ignoring pre-set rules and expectations), he’d be so much healthier in the long run

Thats not to say he should be a princess aesthetically. Dude said himself- he is a manly man who is manly, but the free spirit so many disney princesses seem to envelop could better not only roman, but thomas

this way, roman doesnt *have* to be perfect to be ‘good’ (something thomas still values, but in a different way now as we see in SvS redux). He can be his truest self (ego, passion, dreams and all) without contradicting who thomas sees roman as. He can go back to being his hero, if he wishes -- just in a new way

Because all the things that dont fit into being a prince fit perfectly into princesses (and he still gets to keep the innate disney-ness for the aesthetic)

[silvertheredhairedstranger]

this last one was more abt luffy, so here’s more on ace n sabo

sabo

trained by dragon in hand-to-hand, fighting (steel-toed boots), bo staff, conventional weaponry 

trained w ace b4 ace developed powers; runs into current ace on the field infrequently, doesn’t discover his identity until well after his own kidnapping

sabo asks ace for help when he gets out, but since he still cant speak, shows up to the meeting point out of costume; uses text-to-speech, but doesnt convey emotions, hence showing his face, when ace questions why he would bother if reading lips wasnt an issue; also bc he was trusting ace with helping him, and he wanted this to be a sign of such

confronts dragon later when dragon tries to get him to find a new mentor, accusing him of kicking him out like ace; dragon denies this, stating ace chose to go, but sabo counters, saying dragon drove him to it

when sabo wakes up after ace leaves, he’s in his room and his face is bandaged; dragon had called a doctor at the late hour instead of visiting a hospital, and when sabo asks, dragon tells him ace was gone; instead of being angry that ace had burnt him, sabo is distraught, knowing that since luffy had disappeared, and now that ace had left, he was the only one left

sabo’s meta powers enable him to manipulate sound; his powers can affect himself -default is “mute”, while its uncontrolled, he basically blocks all outgoing sound waves pertaining to his body

basically a glorified stealth power, no real offensive capabilities, but sabo is more interested in figuring out how to control it, and relies on his usual style of fighting rather than develop techniques with his powers

can only affect things that he can see; he could, in theory, make a room soundproof, but once he leaves the room, the effect dissipates; same with people, he could make someone else silent, but once he can’t see them they go back to normal; has to be direct line of sight, so no manipulating sound through a screen (ie security feed)

ace

dragon confronts him abt inheriting his power and roger, and reveals garp knew roger when he was police commissioner and roger was playing vigilante in a world unused to heroes with superpowers; tells ace he knew roger thru garp, and knew he spent his life helping people, and yet roger still pulled the stunt at the end of his career that turned public opinion against him, and made someone like ace, his own son, afraid to be associated with him

ace gets scared of this and runs off, but sabo tries to stop him, talk him out of it, and in the confrontation ace accidentally burns sabo when high emotion triggers his flames

dragon comes to sabos aid and tells ace to leave if he was going to do it, when the child tries to get close to check on sabo

this is all lost on the current ace, as his memories are a clean slate, but restored through sabo, who after learning ace’s identity, sits down and tells him everything about the former ace, about growing up with dragon, about his disregard of roger, about developing fire powers, and even about the scar lining the left side of sabo’s face, telling ace he didn’t blame him in the slightest

ace takes all of this in great stride as he gently reminds sabo that he wasn’t the ace sabo grew up with, and wasn’t trying to fill the other’s shoes, either; it takes sabo time, but he eventually accepts this, and they adopt a new dynamic, similar to what they had had before they knew each other’s civilian identities

ace’s meta powers are a combination of what rouge’s were, and what his own would have developed into had his dna not been altered to slant towards one parent; he absorbs lunar energy and gets a range of power ups in return

‘what about during the day?’ sabo asks/ ‘the moon is always there’ ace answers ‘except for when it isnt’; the drawback to ace’s power is the moon’s visibility, so during a new moon he’s virtually useless, and the less the moon is showing, the less power he gets

power ranges from flight, telekinesis, enhanced strength/speed/senses, regeneration (faster-than-usual healing rate in low-moon-visibility setting, telekinesis is limited by weight in same scenario)

[hahanoiwont]

superhero au!

Superhero au.

Virgil is a supervillain a la that post about grad school villains. He started out doing it for extra credit but he also needed the cash for student loans...that shit aint cheap yo

so he’s a small-scale “”””supervillain””” mostly making a nuisance of himself by stopping traffic, doing minor vandalism in costume, and sometimes kidnapping notables for like an hour before realizing he can’t keep a plant alive and should not be in charge of a person (’you’ve captured me!! what are you going to do???’ ‘eh i mean you’ll probably get rescued soon, my powers aren’t really meant for long-term kidnapping and I don’t wanna have to take care of you. you think i want another mouth to feed? nah. hey wanna see a meme?’).

(if Sleep exists in this au he’s a common kidnapping victim. son of the mayor or smth. Virgil has learned to hold up a starbucks before kidnapping him tho. not worth it if he can’t bribe him with sweet sweet caffeine. they p much chill for a couple hours until the hostage negotiators come)

basically, Virgil’s not a big enough deal to get shut down permanently. regular cops usually take care of him well enough without superhero involvement. he gets his extra credit for villainry and sometimes some cash from a shadowy organization via crow or some shit. he’s not sure how they know where he lives or what exactly they’re paying him for but hey, more ramen money. whatever gets food on the table.

On the other hand, Patton is a hard-working police officer who really should be in any other job. He’s just too nice for it. But he gets a lot of the suicide calls or emotional trauma stuff because he’s just so damn good at making people feel safe, and no one else wants to do those calls, so he stays on the force. He used to be an EMT, too, which is really helpful. He rooms with Virgil and Logan and Virgil’s weird cousin.

He pretends to be unaware of Virgil’s extracurriculars because he can see that Virgil needs the money and is too proud to ask for help. He does help him patch himself up when necessary and sometimes thinks about going back to his own ‘night job.’

(he used to be a superhero but quit that and EMTing after he realized how much it was draining him physically and emotionally and how deeply unhealthy the whole thing was. credit to Logan for that) He thinks he’d feel better knowing Virgil’s already spoken for as an archnemesis by a hero who won’t seriously try to hurt him. He seriously worries that Virgil will catch the attention of an edgy ‘shoot first and angst about it but make no attempts to fix the mess you’ve made later’ heroes, and he’ll end up in the hospital or worse.

but also, Patton needs that work/life balance and he just can’t maintain it while hero-ing. and Virgil knows what he’s doing, right? he’s a cautious guy. So Patton just tries to be on call when he notices Virgil’s got the first aid kit out or when he talks about ‘evening plans’ (fuck’s sake dude we all know you don’t go out for fun).

For his part, Logan wanted to be a biochemical engineer, but right now he’s taking some time off school. His powers are probably some sort of sensory (?) and he doesn’t fully understand them himself, mostly bc he likes to pretend they don’t exist. but he was getting splitting headaches at school and he just couldn’t go on. He does online courses when he can but he feels really ashamed that he couldn’t do grad school/college, which he was supposed to be good at. He was planning on staying with Patton and Virgil until the end of the lease and he doesn’t know what he’ll do after that.

But then one day Virgil came home freaking the fuck out about something and asked to talk to him, and guess what, he’s got this crazy ‘supervillain for extra credit’ idea. Someone’s got to make sure this fool doesn’t get himself killed. And Patton’s got into police work, and Logan doesn’t want him to go through compassion exhaustion again, and really none of his dumb housemates can take care of themselves (he loves them tho). So he does mad science in the broom closet to try to give Virgil something of an edge over any hero whose attention he might catch and helps him hide his villain-ing from Patton and tries to figure out what he’s gonna do with his life on the side.

He comes up with this crazy graph that shows the optimal balance of super heroes to villains in a healthy society (not enough villains=not enough active heroes when something really bad goes down, as it does every few years, somehow; not enough heroes=obviously bad). He keeps an eye on superpowered activity in the city.

Sometimes he thinks about getting active himself, both to preserve order and balance (if you’re the villain [ie Virgil] you can control the collateral damage to your plots, but if you’re the hero and your roommate is the villain you can both work together to provide for both of your needs [extra credit, enough good hero/villain balance, and safety of roommate] without actually harming anyone...but for either he would need to be able to use his powers effectively and he’s still kind of in denial), and to keep Virgil from getting his fool ass killed, and to keep an eye on Patton while Patton insists on running right into every single superpowered crime scene. In the meantime, he frets over numbers and helps Virgil write coded emails to his grad board about his ‘’’extensive’’’ villainry.

It’s basically like a resume except you have to convince the people involved that you’re super evil.

Logan is good at resumes.

All three of them are plugging right along and Virgil’s actually getting his student loans paid on time with enough money for food and rent besides (one day he even takes them out to eat and they Do Not Talk about how he got the money to do that), and they all think maybe he can do the villain thing for a few more years and then get out of the game forever, when Virgil’s weird cousin gets caught doing some shady-ass stuff.

Turns out he’s in way over his head with some sketchy folks, owes a lot of people money, and used Virgil’s name for half of it. Virgil is in sudden desperate need of more money than he can get through legal means and, of course, Refuses to tell anyone about/ask for help with his predicament. It is strongly recommended to him by his academic adviser that he step up his supervillain game or show up at the bottom of a river south of Manhattan.

Virgil freaks the fuck out and proceeds to dig himself into an even deeper hole, suddenly going for much larger schemes, robbing banks, being less obsessively careful about collateral damage with each plot because he just doesn’t have time to and he’s too desperate.

Cue Roman.

Roman was literally just going to the bank, innocent of all wrongdoing and Not Picking a Fight because he swears this new move is gonna work out, he’s not gonna get arrested to aggravated assault or unauthorized use of an unregistered superhuman ability (it was self-defense! and defense of others! he was rescuing people!).

He happens to be at the bank when Virgil is robbing it. And, well, Virgil isn’t gonna hurt anyone, but Roman doesn’t know that. He ties his shirt over his face to hide his identity and superheros it up, saves the day; Virgil runs away pretty significantly battered but not permanently injured or caught. And now there’s a new superhero in town and Virgil suddenly has an archnemesis. Just what he was avoiding. Great.

Meanwhile, Roman is shocked to learn that he’s being applauded for saving people for once (as opposed to like. arrested) and graciously accepts his new title. Hey, being a superhero could work! He said he was gonna try something new in this town and he will! He’s gonna save the day!

The two of them happily counter each other day after day: Virgil’s getting enough publicity as a villain that his grad board is happy even without him doing any genuine harm, he’s staying one step ahead of the shady figures that come looking for him by name, Patton has made contact once or twice with the new hero and used his office reputation to become Roman’s primary police contact, Logan thinks Virgil is bonkers for all the new levels of villainy he’s doing but he has to admit this is the most alive he’s ever seen him; Roman is enjoying the fame and adoration of being a hero and he’s been cast in a musical and life is looking up for everyone.

But Roman also works in a coffee shop to pay the bills (three jobs. so tired.) and there’s this stressed-looking student who keeps coming in with bruises and sprains and one time he broke his arm in what Roman is absolutely certain wasn’t an accident, and he talks on the phone with people sometimes that really seem to distress him, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy, right? A little guarded, sure, but he’s polite and he tips well and what kind of hero would Roman be if he didn’t at least try to make friends with this troubled but charming young man?

So Roman introduces himself to Virgil in their civilian identities and the two of them are friendly! free coffee here, book recommendation there, on slow days Roman will sit with Virgil and they’ll just chill for a while. Each of them quietly considers the other his friend, but Roman is Concerned about how Virgil is so fucking jumpy, keeps getting these calls that he claims are from his academic adviser but honestly what kind of adviser would be so terrible to talk to, he has all these bruises that show up continuously and his excuses are all plausible, realistic, and backed by evidence provided by Virgil himself, but something just doesn’t seem right.

So when Virgil mentions that his cousin suddenly moved out in the middle of the lease and he needs to find a new roommate and can he post a flyer in the coffee shop? Roman jumps at the opportunity. He’s been renting one room by the month in a shitty part of town and this is a hell of an upgrade, and also, maybe that nagging in the back of his head when Virgil shows up battered will go away. (maybe if he’s there no one will hurt Virgil. what monster would bring deliberate harm onto such a genuinely nice, snarky guy, wonders the superhero who brawls him on the regular)

He’ll have to keep his superhero-ing on the DL from his new roommates (though he’s thinking about telling Virgil, because Virgil seems like he can keep a secret and Roman really wants to have someone to talk to about this), but unlike Virgil, Roman knows how to use strategic stage makeup to hide bruises and minor imperfections. Also, his villain must be kind of weak, because he never seems to do too much damage? Sometimes Roman thinks he doesn’t really want to be a villain, he’s just kind of sad and lonely, like Megamind. Thoughts for another time.

So now, in one apartment, we have:

Patton, former EMT; former superhero of respectable fame; currently a cop assigned to Roman’s superhero persona and also any calls involving emotional competence; knows Virgil is a supervillain but pretends not to; responds immediately to all calls involving superpowers in case it’s his deeply misguided roommate and he needs help;

Logan, one accident away from becoming a super-something if only he could figure out what; provider of Virgil’s biochemical defenses for when superpowers alone are not enough; helping to cover both logistics and material needs for supervillainy (also created Virgil’s outfit because you can’t do crime in a hoodie you heathen, no one will take you seriously, Virgil had to talk him down from including a necktie); searching for his place in life; not entirely certain why Virgil is stepping up his illegal activities but not happy about it; currently househusband to all of his roommates;

Virgil, extremely stressed grad student; villain for fun and profit and mostly because he needs the money to not get murdered; a bit of an adrenaline junkie; really staring to get into this villain thing but he sometimes wishes he didn’t have to be the bad guy; definitely feeling hunted by shadowy entities and organizations and trying desperately not to bring anyone down with him;

and Roman, the hero. who is beginning to think he and his villain might have been friends, in another life.

It is both a sitcom and a shitshow of epic proportions while everyone tries to hide each other’s secrets without letting ppl know what they know, Roman comes clean to Virgil and Virgil freaks the fuck out about it, Patton frets about everyone and everything until he’s stressing himself sick, Logan makes chemical explosions in the broom closet and the whole block is evacuated every other Tuesday and they all have to pretend not to know about it, Roman wants to get a dog and also for Virgil to get out of whatever abusive relationship he’s Clearly In, Virgil wants a nap, Patton wants a nap, they all want a nap.

What I’m saying is: Superhero au.

@stella-scriptor another one for you, buddy