#(exile is… more nebulous)

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I find it really interesting that in the “anger” playlist intro she says that the common thing about all the songs was that she wrote them while she was feeling anger. This particularly intrigues me about the folklore and evermore songs, because they’re the more clearly fictionally-cloaked songs (other than maybe mad woman). Because it makes me wonder what, ahem, personal situations from her past she was drawing from to write those that made her feel that anger (again other than mad woman, which is pretty obvious). Like, yes they are characters and inspired by other stories but they’re clearly… infused.

[goodlucktai]

a bigger heart grew back

rise of the tmnt post-movie characters: leo & splinter, raph & splinter word count: 5k title borrowed from no hell by cloud cult

read on ao3

x

Splinter thought he had lived through all of life’s worsts already.

Losing his mother, estranging himself from what was left of his family, moving to the States as an orphan of his own making, falling in what he thought was love and losing his freedom as a direct result—

Years spent underground where he was forced to fight like a dog, an unwanted mutation that guaranteed his exile from society, that first bleak night in the sewers with nothing but the clothes on his back and four infants who depended upon him entirely and the utter conviction that he was going to fail them—

The resurrection of the Shredder, the collapse of Splinter’s home and the exodus of his children, the fear he had become unfortunately intimate with in those fraught hours—that his boys would become orphans, too—

Raphael’s escape pod opening and Leonardo tumbling out, eyes glassy and chest heaving with panic—sweet, sensitive Red covered in a fleshy pink parasite and forced to attack the siblings he loved more than life itself, those little turtles he had fussed over and carried and kept safe since he was just a little turtle himself—

But nothing compared to hearing the voice of his second youngest child as he prepared to end his own life.  

His precious Blue, who could sell water to a fish, bravely trying to convince his siblings that it was right for him to go. Already pulling away, beginning the vanishing act, even as Raphael begged him not to do it. 

All for that tiresome, nebulous greater good. As if any happy ending could possibly exist with Leonardo removed from the narrative. 

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was, but his heart, patchwork, secondhand thing that it was, had never broken like this before. He crumpled to the ground, and listened to Blue’s line on the comms explode into a strange whine and then static and then nothing, and it was over. 

His Blue would never crawl into his armchair for late night Spanish telenovelas again, Splinter realized. Would never wheedle and bribe and coerce him into chess matches, because he didn’t seem to know he could just ask and Splinter would play as many matches with him as there was time in a day for. Would never run from a successfully antagonized sibling and fill the lair with his ringing, infectious laughter. Would never fall asleep at the kitchen table over a medical textbook he pretended to be too cool for in the daylight hours. Would never effortlessly argue his twin out of the lab for dinner, would never lift Orange up on his shoulders to get a hard-to-reach mixing bowl because teamwork makes the dream work, would never painstakingly stitch together a ripped teddy bear for the brother whose fingers were too big to handle needle and thread ever, ever again. 

There is not a word for a parent who has lost a child. There is not a word for that particular flavor of grief that carves you empty at the same time that it fills you to the last hopeless, drowning inch. 

April sobbed openly beside him, her small, strong shoulders shaking. She had always been exactly what Splinter would have wished for in a daughter, and so the Hamato curse didn’t spare her, either. It takes and it takes and it takes. 

And then Michelangelo turned his back on despair and handed his family a miracle. 

Splinter could feel his remaining sons’ ninpo stir and then surge together, and the sheer forceful brilliance of it staggered him from all the way over on the other side of the city. He knew better than to hope—but he also knew that nothing existed in this world or the next that could possibly outstubborn his children, or strong-arm them into abandoning each other, or quite frankly make them do any single thing they adamantly as a group did not want to do. 

“Guys,” April choked out. “Talk to me, what’s going on? Hello?”

Thudding footfalls announced Casey approaching at a run. He jumped over one of the pinned Krang’s flailing tentacles as if he dodged ballistic alien parts every day of his life and skidded to the ground beside them on armored knees.

“I felt it,” Blue’s child from another life gasped, face tacky with half-dried tears. “That’s Uncle Angie opening a door. No one else could do it but him.”

Casey had a familiar katana at his side, blue and gleaming. His fingers seemed like they wanted to linger on the hilt but he handed it over to Splinter agreeably enough. The lingering ninpo in the blade usually welcomed Splinter warmly, eager to be of use, a telling mirror of the way Leonardo himself was so anxious to please and be praised. But this time the tool that Splinter picked up was an innate, lifeless thing. 

He prodded tentatively with his own qi. The runes flickered once, half-hearted, in the manner of a dog waking at the sound of a key in the door, ascertaining the person there was not the one it belonged to, and laying its head back down to sleep. 

Splinter would not be able to follow the whims of his son’s ninpo to create a portal while it lay dormant. His own uselessness crushed him. 

“Raph mentioned Staten Island earlier,” April said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm and pushing herself to her feet, business-like and brisk because she couldn’t afford to be anything else. “I doubt the ferry’s running, and the bridge is going to be a gridlock nightmare, so it looks like we’re stealing a boat.”

“If your mother asks, I did not condone this,” Splinter said hoarsely. “That said, the marina is too far to run to, so first we are stealing a car.”

They were halfway across the river in a cruiser that probably wasn’t meant to sustain the sixty miles an hour April was pushing when that startling shout of their family’s ninpo finally started to fade into a soft-spoken susurrus. 

Before it was too quiet to make out clearly, he felt it: that achingly familiar mischievous blue energy, like a playful breeze flying above everything. Much smaller than usual, less spirited—giving more of the impression of a tiny tide pool creature hiding inside its shell than a smartmouthed sixteen year old boy with the whole world in his corner—but present. 

Alive. 

“Sensei,” Casey whispered. 

“They got him,” April said, a ferocious, not-to-be-trifled-with look in her eye, all but daring the universe to try to make her a liar. “They saved him somehow, I know it.”

They were both Hamato enough to feel it as certainly as Splinter did.

But the boys hadn’t thought to include anyone else in their immediate, hard-won victory—and in fact, the call Splinter, April and Casey finally received some ten minutes later was one of outright panic. 

“Dad, dad, are you there?” Orange’s voice warbled. He sounded all of fifteen years old and frightened in a way that set Splinter’s fur on edge instantly. “Dad, Leo’s hurt bad. He was awake a second ago, and talking even, but then he stopped making sense and just—just fell—”

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Purple added, high-strung and liable to start biting if one more thing went catastrophically wrong within a mile of his person. “I’m scanning him but I don’t—I’m not a doctor I don’t know—”

“Send the readouts to me,” Casey said quickly, pulling his mask down, its lenses glowing green as the interface came to life. “Sensei trained me in field medicine, I can help with anything short of an open-heart surgery.”

“You take after your father,” Donatello replied. “Irredeemable overachievers.”

That faint thread of gratitude in his voice would go unheard by anyone who didn’t know him, but Casey huffed a near-silent exhale, having heard it loud and clear.

What Future Boy had to share with them wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the worst it could have been, either. Leonardo had sustained a number of broken bones and soft tissue damage, the cartilage in his right knee was torn as if the joint had been viciously twisted, one of his cheekbones was fractured, and even his shell had suffered a few hairline cracks. Altogether, he was looking at a long recovery, not unlike what the survivor of a traumatic car accident might have had to look forward to—but he would recover. 

It wasn’t enough to prepare Splinter for actually seeing him. His Baby Blue, a tiny little thing in Raphael’s arms, with a face so beaten it was hard to make out the bright red stripe on one side. 

“Okay,” April said, voice thick with anger and hurt and love. “Okay. Everyone on the boat.”

And finally they were home, after the longest day in history. Casey confirmed his initial diagnosis, with the caveat that they would know more when Leonardo woke up. He insisted to an audience of grim faces that it was a very good sign Leonardo had been awake and coherent in the first place, however briefly. 

So Blue was disinfected and splinted and bandaged and medicated and then tucked safely away in the infirmary bed. Everyone else was seen to in short order. It was an easier task than it usually was, since none of them were remotely willing to leave just yet. 

Splinter made a mental note to call Draxum to double-check that Michelangelo hadn’t pushed himself too far in creating a gateway—the glowing lines on his hands had faded, and beyond an occasional tremor, he promised his family up and down that he was actually fine. Donatello’s shell was a quiet source of concern, but the only person alive who could harass him into a checkup without getting maimed for his trouble was currently very much out of action. Raphael’s eye was definitely infected, and blood vessels had burst when he’d ripped the parasite away, coloring the sclera an alarming red. 

The rest of the clan watched in some unspoken, exhausted wonder as Casey unthinkingly maneuvered around Leonardo’s infirmary as if he’d spent part of every day of his life there, knowing which drawer to find compression gloves for Orange in, locating topical pain reliever for Purple that he could apply himself and medicated eyedrops for Red in quick succession, before ultimately offering a bottle of extra strength Tylenol to April, who accepted it gravely. 

“You’re a weird kid,” she said. From her, it was a declaration of approval. “You better plan on sticking around.”

“Oh,” Casey said at length, surprised. Clearly, he hadn’t thought ahead to what the after of his mission would be shaped like. His gaze lingered on Leo’s little bundled-up figure in the bed, so full of love and grief for a man who didn’t yet exist, and Splinter thought to hell with it. The kid was as good as his grandson if you squinted. 

“We’ll find a bed for you,” Splinter said, some tiny corner of his mind free from screaming worry and bone-deep exhaustion already plotting where to make room for another subway car. “In the meantime, the sofa is yours.”

With that, five out of six children had been packed off to sleep. It took April and Michelangelo combined to pry Donatello’s hand from Leonardo’s, and subsequently his entire person from the infirmary. Raphael pulled a chair up to Leonardo’s bed and Splinter didn’t try to argue him out, knowing when to pick his battles. 

Red had a familiar look on his face, an elephant in the room that often went unacknowledged for both their sakes. That look that said you’re his father but he’s my kid, too.

He had earned the right. No one could argue that. Late night vigils were his wheelhouse and had been ever since he was about nine years old. When Splinter didn’t have to be quite so present—when he started to let the tired gray encroach more and more, when he stopped getting out of bed right away at the sound of a child crying—Red quietly learned how to tend fevers and stomach bugs and bad dreams. 

Soon enough, the boys stopped calling for daddy when they were hurting and started calling for Raphie instead. And their Raphie always came when they called.   

Which was why it must have hurt like a blade piercing clean through his ribs when Leonardo finally stirred at something approaching two o’clock in the morning, blinked muddy gold eyes open slowly, looked up at the familiar shape of his biggest brother beside the bed, and flinched. 

The world hadn’t ended yesterday. It was happening now instead.

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was. But life did not seem to ever run out of brand new lessons to teach. 

“Leo,” Red whispered, heartbreak obvious in every inch of him. His hand was frozen in the air between them, arrested right in the middle of reaching out. 

“No,” Blue managed, twisting around like he would attempt an escape the second he figured out where his limbs were in relation to the bed, IV be damned. The lines on the heart rate monitor started to crest dramatically. 

“Leo it’s okay it’s—it’s me, I’m not—I’m not going to—I would never hurt—” 

His voice strangled itself into silence. After all, at least some of those grisly black and blue marks around Leonardo’s neck were from him. 

“Papa,” Leonardo cried out, the call reaching directly into Splinter’s heart with hooks and yanking him out of his chair. “I want papa, please, please—”

Clambering onto the bed, minding all the hardware, Splinter placed a careful hand on his second-youngest’s feverish head to soothe him. 

He felt like an imposter, especially with Red still frozen like a statue behind him, but that part of his heart that had been smothered once, allowing his children’s cries for him to go unanswered and someone else to pick up the slack, was the loudest part of him now. 

There was physically nothing else he could do but stroke that bruised forehead with the pad of his thumb and tell him, “Hush, Baby Blue, your papa is here. You are safe. You are home.” 

Leonardo turned his face into Splinter’s hand, hiding as much as he was capable of. Raphael took one staggering step back, then another, then turned on his heel and fled the way Splinter had no memory of him ever doing before, infirmary door crashing behind him. 

Torn completely in two, Splinter summoned conviction from those ancient spirits housed in his soul and forced himself at knife point to be strong for his family for once in his goddamn life. 

“What are these tears for, silly turtle?” he murmured, the same way he had when Leonardo still mostly fit in the palm of one hand. Back then, all Leonardo wanted was to be held. He wondered if that was still true. “You are the safest little turtle who ever lived. There is no one left in this world who is stronger than the people who love you, don’t you know that? Your baby brother pulled down the stars for you. Your twin did not let go of your hand even once. And your big brother carried you home. You are safe. You are so loved.”

It was a nonsense litany for the most part, all true things said to someone who clearly was only absorbing every third word or so. But Blue stopped hiding his face at some point, eyes wet with tears he is even now too stubborn to let fall. 

Splinter felt as though he was looking at a childhood memory of himself, trying to be strong when it would have been better—kinder—to allow himself a much-needed moment of weakness. 

“You think you’re too grown-up to cry in front of this old man?” he said, gently pinching Blue’s cheek on the side of his face that hadn’t been crushed beneath a monster’s fist. “Try again in about a hundred years.”

Blue blew a tired raspberry at him. Splinter laughed, surprised at the show of spirit, his heart doing cartwheels at this proof of his irrepressible little boy unchanged by the close brush with tragedy. Winning a laugh from his father was enough to coax the ghost of a smile across Blue’s face. 

“How are you feeling? We have some water for you here. No, don’t sit up. Let me help.”

He really ought to let everyone know Blue was awake, but they had just gone to sleep. His other kids needed their rest, too. It had been a truly terrible day. 

And now that Red was out of the room—that thought dripped with oily, unpleasant guilt—Blue seemed to be in a more solid state of mind. He had winced as he tried to sit up for water, but if he didn’t have whiplash after a psychotic alien flung him around like a terrier would its chew toy, Splinter would eat his tail. There were none of the red flags Casey had warned him to be on the lookout for. The only thing Draxum had done right in his life was develop a mutagen that made these boys all but indestructible. Splinter would have to find the mental fortitude to choke out a thank you to him for that. 

“It has been a long time since a sick little turtle has called for me,” Splinter murmured, stroking Blue’s forehead around the bandages. “Normally you are all ready to fight each other to the death to monopolize Red’s attention.” 

It was only partly a joke. Leonardo gazed up at him, eyes glassy. It was hard to gauge how much of their conversation was sticking the landing and how much was somersaulting straight over his sluggish head. 

Then Leonardo said, “He hates me.”

“Pardon?” Splinter said stupidly. 

His son blinked, and finally fat tears rolled down his cheeks, soaking into bandages on one side, unchecked on the other. 

“He hates me,” Blue insisted. “He’s right. It was my fault.”

“No one hates you,” Splinter said, reeling. He’d been right here the whole time and yet somehow he was suddenly flailing about two miles behind. 

“You didn’t see his face. You didn’t see—and his eye—all because I—I couldn’t—” He sobbed, an awful sound, and turned to press his face into his pillow. Once he started crying he couldn’t seem to stop. The rest of his words stumbled out thick and choked and terribly sincere. “I couldn’t just—be what I was supposed to be. And he—and it was all my fault.”

There were few things Splinter regretted more than his fumbling of the leadership role. He had always known that Blue was too clever for his own good, that he had a head for strategy—as evidenced by his early mastering of chess, entirely outpacing Splinter’s own skill level by the age of eleven. 

Acknowledging that in theory and learning to trust it in practice were two separate beasts, but watching from the front row as his baby outsmarted Big Mama of all people left little room for doubt. 

On the other hand, Red was as solid and dependable as they came, the foundation his siblings built their whole lives on. As far as they were concerned, the sun only rose in the morning because Raphael hung it up there. 

But Splinter’s eldest son was prone to anxiety that tended to fall on him like a guillotine, a kill switch to his rational thought. The twins floated terms like ‘panic disorder’ and the entire family was well-versed in helping him through his episodes, but if even an ounce of the burden on his shoulders could be reduced, that could only help. 

Red would be happier and function better in a support role, where his top priorities would be to protect his little brothers the way he always had protected them, and to smash whatever Leonardo pointed him at. 

Splinter should have sat them both down and explained it. He shouldn’t have left Red to feel as though he had done something wrong, that he had failed somehow. And he shouldn’t have let Blue believe he would be shoved into the deep end and left to sink or swim.

His boys were little gremlins who thrived in chaos and learned best on the fly. Splinter had thought the surprise announcement would have been an utter shock at first and the new normal by dinnertime. They were always so much on the same page, so in tune with one another, that he couldn’t have guessed it would turn into the tangled mess of hurt and frustration and miscommunication and blame that it did. 

He should have stepped in the first time Red punched through a wall in a fit of anger and Blue laughed as though his biggest brother’s good opinion of him didn’t matter in the slightest. Instead he was a coward, unable to face them and admit his wrongs. He left his children to resolve it themselves and suffer in the meantime. 

He should have done better. Maybe one day he would learn. 

For now Splinter held Blue’s face in one hand and wiped it clean with a cloth in the other, patient with every new flood of tears. The last time he had seen Blue cry was the night the Shredder destroyed their home and killed Karai. There had been no time to comfort him then. 

He takes after his Gram-gram, Splinter thought, and tried not to resent her for it. 

“No one hates my sweet Baby Blue,” he said, willing the stubborn child to hear him. “Especially not my other sweet baby Red. You are a very confused turtle, that’s all. You will see. No one hates you.”

“You don’t,” Leonardo mumbled. “You’re not allowed to. You’re my dad. You don’t have to like me, but you’re not allowed to hate me. S’in the—the contract. You signed it. Legally binding. No arbi-arbi—”

“Arbitration. I would like to study your mind under a microscope. Maybe then I will have a hope of understanding these twists and turns it takes.” 

Splinter’s voice sounded nothing but fond even to his own ears. 

His children were all incredible people worth knowing, worth living for, and it was a very special joy to still be surprised after all these years by how much more he loved them today than he did the day before. To think about how much more he would love them tomorrow, even though it felt impossible to love anyone more than he loved them right now. 

“You are so important, Leonardo,” Splinter said gently. “To me, and to your siblings, and to your friends. We would miss you so much if you weren’t here. We all want to see you get well.”

“It’s not about me,” Blue said, wobbly and miserable and matter-of-fact. “I know it’s not. I have to make up for it. I’ll prove—prove—”

“You have nothing to prove. It was not your fault.” Splinter pressed Leonardo’s chin gently to close his mouth when he inevitably opened it to argue. “Hush. You did not steal the key. You did not open the door. It was not even your responsibility to stop either of those things from happening. You are a child. It cannot be any one person’s duty to save this planet on their own. That doesn’t even make sense.” 

Blue’s expression was becoming thunderous, which was silly and endearing, because his cheeks were still tacky with the remnants of his tears and half of his face was a swathe of bandages and without his mask he looked years younger than he already was. Splinter felt affection unfold in his heart like one of those absurdly big tropical flowers with petals the size of dinner plates, taking up more room than it was allowed and spilling out the sides and going on forever. 

“Can I tell you something else? Your brothers aren’t allowed to hate you either. It’s in the contract as well.”

“They do,” Blue said tearfully, face still screwed up beneath Splinter’s hand. But his eyes drifted in the direction of the door, and the wanting in them was plain to see. Splinter took matters into his own hands. 

“If I’m right, you must finish watching The Strange Return of Diana Salazar with me.”

His son took a moment to digest that, slower on the uptake than usual. Finally, he asked, “Don’t we have like a hundred episodes left?”

“I said what I said,” Splinter said sagely, then patted his cheek and hopped down from the bed. 

He found Raphael exactly where he expected to find him, sitting just outside the cracked infirmary door, a hunched over shape that seemed unwilling to take up a single unnecessary inch of space. 

Red stared up at him, unbandaged eye wide. 

“I don’t hate him,” he blurted. “I could never—I wouldn’t even know how.”

“I know, my dear.”

“Even if he’d done it on purpose,” Red went on. “Even if he stole the key and took it to the Foot and opened the door with his own two hands, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.”

Splinter had worried when the turtles were very young that Raphael would frighten one of his siblings accidentally. He was so much bigger than them and toddlers were not well known for their self control or emotional regulation. It was a lingering fear that Red would say or do something he did not mean in the heat of the moment, and alienate himself. That something would happen in a split second that would cause his brothers to grow up wary of him. 

It was an unfounded worry. Raphael was a quiet little boy, the last of the four to start talking, and as sweet as an American dessert. Splinter’s little apple pie. Even as he got older and started playing rougher, testing his strength and raising his voice, he never forgot when he needed to be gentle. 

His brothers never ran from him unless they were avoiding bedtime or a well-deserved grounding or really did not want to go watch wrestling, Raph, it was boring. Otherwise he was their North star. 

Even now, Leonardo would rather hide himself away than face a world in which he no longer had a Raphael to run to. 

“How could he think that?” Red asked desperately. “He was going to die back there and he thought that’s what I wanted.”

Splinter cupped Red’s face in his hands and told him, “Blue was trying to do what his hero would have done. All of my children are so quick to sacrifice for each other. It is a wonderful thing to love someone so much, but consider the example you are setting.” Red’s good eye filled with tears, and Splinter was powerless to do anything but kiss him firmly on the forehead. “As empty as our lives would have been without him, they would have been just as empty without you. You are fundamental to us. Please remember that.”

“I know, pops,” Raphael whispered. “I’ll remember.”

“It is not always possible to win without losing but we must fight tooth and nail anyway. Abandon honor and heroism. Do what it takes to bring yourself and your brothers home. I would much sooner tell the great Hamato clan where they can stick it then let you join them before your time.”

It coaxed a shy smile from his eldest son, the barest exhale of a laugh. Still his sweet apple pie, no matter how big he got. 

“I’m gonna go see him,” Red said bravely. “I’m missing out on premium Leo time while the gremlins are asleep.”

“Very wise,” Splinter said, patting his cheeks in approval.

Leonardo had managed to drag the blanket up over his head while no one was around to stop him, and only one golden eye peered out at them from his makeshift shell. 

Raphael snorted and leaned over to peel it back down, heedless of his smaller brother’s protests. He let one hand linger on Leonardo’s scuffed plastron, and the other cupped the back of his bruised head. 

“You’re so dumb,” Red said. “I love you more than anything. If you ever try to go anywhere without me ever again, I’ll make your life a living hell. Capiche?”

Blue stared up at him. It’s very possible he didn’t understand every word of that. But the tone seemed to get through. 

His hand drifted up slowly, as if it weighed a thousand pounds, to cover the one planted on his chest. When the world didn’t end and his big brother continued to smile down at him like nothing between the two of them was any different than it used to be, Blue risked a smile back. 

“I capiche.”

“You’re not alone, okay?” Red went on, playfulness gentling into sincerity. “We’ll figure it out. I’m in your corner, right where I’ve always been. But for now let’s get some sleep, big man.”

He didn’t move his hands even after Leonardo had dozed off. He just hooked his foot around the leg of his chair and scooted it closer to the bed before sinking into it. 

Splinter joined him, and felt both aged by the last hour and rejuvenated. He needed a good pair of running shoes to keep up with these kids.     

“He never asks to play chess with anyone else you know,” Red said suddenly. 

Thrown by the non sequitur, Splinter could only offer an intelligent, “Huh?”

“Leo only learned how to play because of a comment you made once about—I don’t even remember what you said. But it stuck with him. He wanted to impress you. And he started learning Spanish because of those weird soaps you guys watch. He drove us crazy practicing every day but he never let up.

“I know that it seems like he does whatever he wants without rhyme or reason, but I think he just tries really hard to make it seem that way. Otherwise we’d all clue in to the fact that every single thing he does is just—him trying to get closer to us somehow. And then his cool guy cover would be blown. And god forbid that.” 

Raphael brushed his thumb over the crown of Leonardo’s head, much like the way Splinter had earlier. 

“He doesn’t love you for no reason, pops,” Red went on, not looking at him. “None of us do. Even when getting out of bed was the hardest thing in the world, you came running when I needed you. Every time I needed you. I learned all my moves from the best.”

Splinter had seen the worst of the world. He was no stranger to pain. 

It was only occurring to him now that the opposite was also true. 

His life was so full of impossibly good, underserved things; every day a little brighter, every night a little richer. 

Four little creatures tumbled into his world by chance and then filled it to the brim with mayhem and color and laughter and pride, and he would not take a second of it back. He would not change a single painful part. 

If only he had known as a young man where he would end up someday. It would have made those earlier years so much easier to survive. 

Pretending his own eyes weren’t wet, Splinter said, “It will be hell on earth in the morning when Orange discovers we let him sleep through Blue waking up. You had better rest while you can.”

Smiling to himself, Red folded his arms on the side of the bed and rested his head in them, tilted so that his brother was within line of sight of his good eye. He had capitulated to the changing of the guard without complaint, but he was still tense. Primed for danger. Anxiety no doubt at play. 

But Splinter was not without his tricks. He stroked Red’s carapace between the spikes, humming an old TV theme song under his breath. He did this for upwards of an hour once, back when Red was still small enough to be held in his lap, fussy and clingy after a bad dream. 

Sure enough, with a great, shuddering sigh, Raphael’s shoulders went slack, and his breathing evened out—asleep within moments after the day he’d had.  

“I’ve still got it,” Splinter murmured, and let himself have the win, as small as it was. If nothing else, he could give his children a safe place to rest. 

And that really was no small thing at all. 

[valtsv]

I'm going thru ur angelverse tag rn cuz I'm writing a bit about computer angels and you've got a lot of neat stuff in there and it's got me curious abt what that's about. 🎤

so angelverse is this original fiction setting i made up for an rp server that no longer exists. i lost the server in the divorce but kept all the lore and worldbuilding i came up with for it. which was pretty much all of it. it's an urban fantasy/cosmic horror story set in a universe where angels are these powerful eldritch machine aliens whose species is in decline due to their dysfunctional, heavily militaristic society, near-perpetual conflict between various political factions within that society, a mass lack of purpose beyond warfare, and dwindling resources available for the continued propagation of the species.

the story mainly focuses on exiles from this shattered civilization; fallen angels banished to earth, usually for heinous crimes or extreme miscarriages of justice, and angels who were considered unfit for active duty due to personality or utility flaws and "reassigned" there under the pretense of some kind of nebulous greater purpose, but actually just abandoned for being weak links without the disgrace and ceremony of being officially exiled.

these malcontents, misfits, murderers and weapons of mass destruction, and how the people of planet earth interact with their presence, create most of the central conflicts that drive the story - death, rebirth, the horror of having a body, the existence of free will, machiavellian schemes, supernatural turf wars, epic love stories, bloody revenge tragedies, cycles of violence, and those who seek to break those oppressive, infinite loops - but the threat of the various powers of the republic of angels finally resolving their differences and turning their attention to the unresolved issue of their discarded toys, or being called to war once more, this time by the increasingly frustrated human population that has unwillingly hosted the angels' castoff scraps for the past few thousand years, remains an ever-present threat that hangs over all like a sword.

i already answered an ask where i linked all of the worldbuilding info documents before, so i'll just tack that on here in case you're interested in knowing more

[sanctus-ingenium]

I'd looove to hear a little about your worldbuilding process if you don't mind sharing. How do you go about it? I know you have shared in a few posts already but just wanna know moree. Also where did it all begin? What inspired you? (eating it all uppp!!!)

hi!! I know I wrote a big long thing like last year or the year before about the process to making a setting but I cannot be arsed to find it rn so here's some disconnected thoughts

Overall I don't really make Headworlds or Worldbuilding Projects the way a lot of people do (which is why u keep hearing me say 'setting' over and over) because mainly what I make are stories in the order of characters -> plot -> world. those three things have to serve one another in that order of importance, so the world itself bends to serve the narrative. for example, ultimately idgaf where the holy beasts' skeletons come from, that is not important because the beasts are basically just a big plot device to serve the story. i can make some post-hoc justifications for their existence (and i did) but at the end of the day it will not and does not matter how they work or where they come from. the world is full of mysteries that will never be solved because the characters are not in a position to solve them. aside from a single border conflict, the world outside the mezian empire is nebulous and unimportant.

I don't enjoy working in a world -> narrative order because what I want to produce isn't just a series of info posts or artpieces about a setting, but a closed and self-contained story which is the justification for the entire world's existence. Headworlds that are all world and no character don't interest me.

So basically in the process of worldbuilding, I have to serve the story. A while back I made a post about continental history around Inver, all these wars and occupations and schisms and so on. All of those exist solely to provide a particular political climate, justification for Aquitan's theocratic structure, and the spread of the southern church north into Inver. I already had the idea of this church, that it would be integral to the country as a main political faction, so now I have to figure out how it got there and the political ramifications of that. It's all worldbuilding for sure, but it's a support structure underneath the story about how that church eventually changes world history, because i wanted to write a story about a church lol.

I guess if I wanted to explain The Process for a world -> characters setting i'd just be giving you How To Write A Story 101 lol. But basically: I think of a concept which interests me (big mechs yay). Then I think of a conflict that might arise (where does the fuel come from? who controls that supply? what might that do to the concentration of power in this area?). Then I put a character in what I consider to be the most interesting position to observe the effects of this conflict (a knight, an enginesmith, an exile), and honestly the main plot generally writes itself after that. I extrapolate the hook from that.

In terms of characters, I try to avoid calling them 'ocs' because in my mind 'oc' tends to be a very static stand-alone thing. Like I couldn't make a useful ref sheet of my characters because they are all changed by the story. I couldn't say 'he has a carefree personality' because in a few chapters no he fucking won't. in the same way i struggle a LOT to talk about my Siren setting which as close to a specbio 'headworld' as i'm ever gonna get, because I am worldbuilding in vastly different time periods at once in a world which is always changing, i can't make a post about for example a map of Siren because that's just a map from one era, I'd need to make a dozen maps to show how things change, how time affects it all, etc.

Because nothing is ever static and everything is in flux, pretty much the only way I can handle a setting like this is, again, just to focus on a few small stories centered around a cast of characters separated by time (i have... 4 distinct stories in Siren. maybe more). this is actually a frustrating barrier to me sharing any information at all about this place lol i'm the struggler

Where did it all begin? When I was 11 I used to write stories in my copybooks in class. There has never been a time where I was not making stories and where my stories were not the only important thing at all to me, superseding literally everything else. I learned how to draw digitally in 2011 because I wanted to draw my characters.

What inspires me? Everything lol. I actually don't have time to Consume Media much, I struggle watching movies or tv and I mostly hate video games because I would much rather be productive and sitting and watching a screen feels like a waste of my time. but I like reading books because I can take them with me on my phone. I get ideas from all sources but mostly non-media sources, like obviously mythology but also my history with the church and my scientific education. Usually nonfictional sources interest me the most (i was going to write a whole story that was a post-apocalyptic plague plot based on canine transmissible venereal cancer haha and even to this day that's where "the Immortal Hound" title comes from, little easter egg in inver)

[tyrantisterror]

What are your top favorite fairy tales? Either classic literarily stories, adaptations of literary fairy tales, wholly modern fairy tales, or even just stories that you think are structured like fairy tales. (Roald Dahl books, Studio Ghibli movies, even Shrek and Puss in Boots movies, etc.)

That is an unfathomably vast genre of fiction to try and condense into a ranked numbered list. I think... I think that may be impossible to actually answer as requested. But I can ramble about some of my favorites I suppose.

Let's do this sorta like the Oscars and divide things into categories.

Category 1: The Heavy Hitters

Some fairy tales are significantly more famous than others, so this category is for them: the heavy hitters, the classic fairy tales that are most well known, as defined by my own nebulous perception of which fairy tales are more popular than others.

Of the heavy hitters, my favorites are Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. Little Red Riding Hood is such a spooky story no matter which telling you're looking at, and has contributed a lot to both the fantasy and horror genres thanks to its simple yet evocative premise and visuals. Jack and the Beanstalk, meanwhile, is just a really solid story of a trickster fool, which is one of my favorite archetypes in all of fiction. Love a good trickster fool.

Category 2: The Obscurities

As I said, this ask is covering a HUGE amount of fiction in its topic, especially since the border between a fairy tale and, like, ANY folklore isn't really well-defined (not in a way anyone can agree too, anyway). But there are a lot of obscure folktales I love that are at least sometimes lumped in as fairy tales, and I'm gonna list them here:

The Lambton Worm - a classic tale of dragon-slaying and getting fucked over by prophecies

The Lindworm Prince - queen can't concieve and consults a witch, ignores witch's directions, gives birth to human baby and dragon baby. Dragon baby grows up and demands a wife before human baby can get his, and a clever girl decides this is her chance to get rewarded for monster fucking.

Maud and the Dragon of Mordiford - the story of a girl who adopts a dragon only for it to end tragically, which inspired one of the novels I'm gonna write one of these days

Tam Lin - the story of a woman who wanted that elf dick and wasn't afraid to do some weird shit to get it

Biancabella and Samaritana - a story about a girl and her sister who is a snake because her mother had trouble concieving

King Odd - a story about an odd king who's actually an exiled fairy queen in disguise, and the man who wins her heart after surviving her attempt to execute him. It's like a Nordic medieval Tenchi Muyo.

You've probably noticed some themes about my favorites right now - lots of stories with dragons, people being transformed into monsters, and heroes who are into that monster shit.

Category 3: Archetypal Pieces

Ok, so for this I'm going to focus less on individual folktales and more on recurring plotlines, character types, and story beats, which you begin to notice the more you read up on Fairy Tales in part because many of the more obscure ones take beats from ones you're probably more familiar with and mix them together in new ways. So, my favorite plot beats in fairy tales:

Any sort of monster, obviously

The villain who literally removed their heart out of fear of being vulnerable

The baleful polymorph (i.e. a human who inhabits a beast/monster body against their will)

Monsterfucker protagonists

Trickster Fool protagonists

Disobedient Girls (examples: Little Red, Goldilocks), though I don't like how this archetype is treated

You want to have a baby and seek a witch and she gives you VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS which you ignore because you really want this baby and oops you've got twins and one of them is some sort of monster good job asshole

The hero helps three (or more) people/creatures in need, and when shit hits the fan, they return the favor

Category 4: Modern(ish) Adaptations

Our penultimate category focuses on adaptations of fairy tales from, like, the 1900's on - anything made in a century I've lived in part of, basically. These arguably shouldn't be divided from "normal" fairy tales, but my brain regards them differently than, like, Victorian era fairy tale retellings, because hey, I lived in the age of these, more or less. They're "modern" for whatever nebulous definition of that word my brain's decided on.

And there's a lot for me to put in this category. Sleeping Beauty might be my favorite of Disney's fairy tale retellings, though Beauty and the Beast is a strong competitor for that role (and maybe Mulan, if we count its source material as a fairy tale, but I'm not sure we can). I think overall I like Sleeping Beauty's more stylized animation and character designs as well as its less conventional story-telling structure a bit more than B&B's, but Beauty and the Beast is still gorgeous and kind of perfectly scripted, so it's a tough competition.

My alltime favorite adaptation of fairy tales, though, would be Jim Henson's The Storyteller:

Using the magic of 1980's muppeteering, it adapts several fairy tales, many of which are more on the obscure side, and sometimes mashes a few different ones together to make sure each episode has a good three act structure. It's wonderful and fully captures the weirdness of fairy tales, while also having a lot of heart - The Heartless Giant is my favorite of the whole series.

Category 5: Works Inspired By Fairy Tales

I almost lumped the following stories into the above category, but while the division is, again, purely in my mind, there's something different about modern works that claim to adapt fairy tales 1:1 and ones that take fairy tale characters or concepts and throw them in entirely new tales with different directions, so that's what our final category will be.

I've gushed about Puss In Boots: The Last Wish enough that I don't think it'd surprise anyone that it would end up here - the same goes with the works of Rankin Bass, which is why I doubt anyone is surprised I'd put The Last Unicorn here too (technically based on a book, but it still fits the "has big fairy tale vibes despite not being based on one specific one" that I'm using to justify this category).

Pan's Labyrinth would also go in this category, with a protagonist who's both a trickster fool AND a disobedient girl, as well as a beautifully gothic take on fairy tale motifs. I'd put Company of Wolves here as well, being a very multifaceted riff on the Little Red Riding Hood story and a movie that sets both my analytical and creative parts of my brain on fire each time I want it.

I'd also put The Path, a short video game explicitly inspired by Company of Wolves, on this part of the favorites list. It's a game about, like, a DOZEN or so different takes on Red Riding Hood and her story, all with different flavors and subtext to analyze. It's unsettling but good.

Dimension 20 had a whole season focused on a horror-themed crossover of fairy tale characters called Neverafter that was fantastic, with one of the best riffs on Little Red Riding Hood I've ever seen, Puss in Boots and Pinocchio working together as con artists, and a vampire Snow White, so yeah 10/10 there, no notes.

And while I've only seen scattered bits of it, what I've seen of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, a sequel series to Disney's Rapunzel adaptation, is pretty great, though maybe I just think Cass is hot.

If you put an angry woman with a sword in your work of fiction I will at least stay for a few episodes to see what you do with her.

Given how much it consumed my brain in so little time, Revolutionary Girl Utena has to rank among my favorite Fairy Tale things ever - like, this is too chaotic a list to really rank things, but if I were to try, it'd at least be in the top 10. The same is true for Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which in addition to being a big fun crossover between a bunch of the Heavy Hitter fairy tales, is also one of the best musicals ever written - and indeed, one of the best stage shows of all time.

Shit, where do I put A Midsummer Night's Dream? It feels like it should be here, but it predates the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, whose works my brain categorizes as "old fairy tales" rather than "modern fairy tale retellings." Well, it'd be somewhere among these categories, being one of the best tales with fairies in it ever told.

The Princess Bride would be up high like Utena no matter what - it's one of the best works of fiction about love that we've got. Same goes with Galavant, which I consider its spiritual successor, although I think one could argue Galavant isn't specifically a fairy tale pastiche and is more just a lampooning of fantasy in general.

Oh, and The Hazards of Love, a concept album by The Decemberists, should be here too. That's the last one I can think of right now, but I'm sure I'll think of a few others later that I like enough to regret not putting on here.

[barbatusart]

adding on to the initial evil wyll post here, messy thinking outloud below the cut lol

one thing i really like doing with characters that feel underwritten is taking that nebulous quality at face value & as deliberate authorial choice. i also feel that in this light, it was no accident that wyll went from boisterous & egotistical to a more gentle & humble demeanor yet still retained the entire warlock pact backstory (which again if a character is in a warlock pact at all that says something about them imo)

mixing this all together for myself - the humble & charming persona, the “blade of frontiers” spoken of like he’s talking about someone who isn’t himself, the scorned boy striving to become the hero arguably to try & fill that psychic wound hole his father’s rejection left in him - im left with a portrait of a man with a nature steeped in a strange breed of the duplicitous. the nature of his pact with mizora demands secrecy to begin with (the reason for his banishment in the first place when he physically couldn’t speak a word of it to his father to explain) but i feel this motif goes a few steps further - on a surface level one could argue that he feels he needs to (for lack of a better word) “trick” those around him into believing he is heroic, he is chivalrous, he is kind, he is gracious, because he cannot attribute those qualities to his own self. which is wild because wyll IS heroic, chivalrous, kind, gracious, & all of these good qualities, he’s inarguably a very gentle & sweet man. i think that’s part of what “duplicitous” means here, but i feel the real core of it is something way harder to get his hands around than a lack of self esteem

to me, any time i run into a character that feels underwritten or nebulous it becomes an opportunity to consider them as a character who is ignorant of their own motivations. with the prior paragraph of needing to fill that void with other’s approvals to try & manufacture self worth, i think that’s what he’s doing & simultaneously is 100% unaware that he’s doing it on any conscious level. but take all that a step further into an evil wyll playthrough, the void of self worth is still present & he still is unaware he is trying to fill that hole, but leaning harder into his pact it becomes not only trying to fill that void with approval (to become the blade of frontiers) but with power. if he’s aware of trying to glean self worth from others’ love, it’s only on a subconscious level & therefore completely obscuring the real darkness of an evil run of that self worth manifesting as power - denied from his exile, arguably hunted for in his making a pact at all. a simultaneous “people will adore me” and “the people Will adore me.” acknowledging that At All however would completely fly in the face of the cover of wanting approval for approval’s sake, & in the same way he can’t bear to speak of himself as the blade i feel he certainly couldn’t bear to speak of himself as any kind of egomaniac, or anything Genuinely negative that would make him have to look at himself

and ultimately that’s what’s really interesting to me about my character interpretation of what we have of wyll, this subconscious damnation of the self for what amounts to extremely normal human things to want. everybody wants to be loved, everybody wants security. it’s not bad to do good deeds because they make you feel good, it’s not bad to enjoy praise & a pat on the back for a job well done. designwise if the eyes are the window to the soul & one has been clawed out and replaced with stone - outside of other people no longer being able to “see” the full picture of the bearer (lacking that window), what would a stone make of that self. i think if a stone could speak or think, it would be very black and white, rigid, and demanding of itself to be cold calculating perfect stone.

sloppy as always but still, much to think about

[jadegretz]

Sorceress: Defender of Grayskull by Jade Gretz

The Astral Abyss

The Sorceress of Grayskull stood at the precipice of reality, a cosmic precipice where the tangible world dissolved into the ethereal. The Astral Plane, a realm of infinite possibilities and unimaginable horrors, stretched before her, a cosmic ocean teeming with celestial currents and nebulous entities.

Her heart, a beacon of courage and wisdom, pulsed with a sense of dread. A cosmic alignment was imminent, a convergence of celestial bodies that threatened to tear the fabric of reality asunder. If the cataclysm occurred, not only Eternia would be consumed, but the entire cosmos.

Cloaked in the shimmering aura of her power, she stepped into the void, her spirit a solitary vessel navigating the cosmic tempest. The Astral Plane was a labyrinth of light and shadow, a place where logic and reason were exiled. Here, the mind was the only compass, and the soul the only anchor.

As she delved deeper into the Astral, the environment grew increasingly hostile. Malevolent entities, born from the primordial chaos, lurked in the shadows, their essence as corrosive as acid. These cosmic horrors, devoid of form or reason, were drawn to her light, their hunger for destruction insatiable.

The Sorceress fought with the ferocity of a cosmic storm, her magic a weapon of blinding brilliance. She conjured shields of starlight to deflect the attacks of the cosmic horrors, while her mind, a fortress of unwavering will, resisted their psychic onslaught. The battle was a symphony of cosmic forces, a clash of light and darkness that echoed through the infinite expanse.

As she journeyed deeper into the Astral, the landscape transformed. The once chaotic expanse gave way to a crystalline void, a place of eerie silence and profound isolation. Here, the cosmic alignment was taking shape, a malevolent star, a harbinger of destruction, growing in power.

A sense of urgency consumed her. The star was a cosmic anomaly, a wound in the fabric of reality. If it were allowed to fully manifest, it would become a black hole, devouring everything in its path. Time was running out. …(see the rest of the story at deviantart.com/jadegretzAI). For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)

[eparch]

The Four Great Houses of Nayos

(See my original post about kryptis noble houses for where I'm coming from for most of this, though a big chunk of the info there is outdated now.)

So Eparch's Nayos has four major houses: Nephus, Aurkus, Febe, and Mosyn are all named as the founders.

Several nobles also appear in the throne room. It's possible they are each indicative of a lesser house for each existing, perhaps ruling over territories across other parts of Nayos we haven't seen (and perhaps that means Heitor is of such a rank?)

That said, I think the four great houses provide an interesting split in responsibilities:

House Nephus and House Aurkus serve as military oriented houses, while House Febe and House Mosyn handle civil responsibilities.

House Nephus is fairly straightforward: it is composed of strong warriors and brilliant tacticians who would also go on to serve as officers of military. This was of course, run by Grand General Nephus, and its prominent members also include Deimos, Cerus, and Peitha, but with Nephus in exile from Zakiros alongside the rest of his house, it seems likely that Eparch and Labris placed the three siblings here in order to both give them status and to control them.

House Aurkus is composed of assassins and inquisitors, serving to root out dissent discretely and identify threats to the Midnight Throne before they take ground. Aurkus, as far as I can tell, has never appeared directly in-game, but mentions of him include him whispering in Eparch's ear or being horribly sadistic to inquisitorial targets. Kanaxai is, of course, the most prominent member of this house to us. There's also a subtle religious slant to this house in the use of "inquisitors"—Kanaxai's memory of Mosyn even calls her words blasphemies.

House Mosyn is composed of artists and creative talents. Mosyn herself was a singer and a painter, so we can extend these to the rest of the house. It's possible they also served as architects and builders for the kingdom. Mosyn is the only member of the house we know of, though it's possible there were some in-game simply left unstated. Mosyn was unfortunately assassinated by Kanaxai at Aurkus's orders.

House Febe is where things are a little nebulous. We have no clear indication of what role Febe held outside of his relationship with Mosyn, but based on the Temple of Febe and the way religion exists for kryptis as upholding Eparch and Labris as divine (the Thirst for Power book in particular invokes religious imagery for Labris as the "Mother of Nayos" using such things as a "chalice"), perhaps House Febe was the closest to clergy that the kryptis had? If so, they may also have facilitated intellectual pursuits alongside spiritual matters, making them suited to working with House Mosyn. As with House Mosyn, Febe is the only member of this house we know of with the possibility of unstated members. Despite his status under Eparch, he was an outspoken proponent of breaking away from Eparch's tyranny, up until Eparch had Deimos kill him in front of Cerus.

If my assumptions are correct, you could also then place Houses Nephus and Mosyn as largely secular while Houses Aurkus and Febe have more religious slants.

[wumblr]

i think it's specious at best to attribute polarization to the ever-nebulous "media." like sure there is an element of truth but out of the two extremes of polarized opinion (either it's all fake or it represents a genuine threat to your mental well-being), i regret to inform you which of those two is both more productive, and closer to the factual reality (news is filtered through the accumulated-capital lens of the sinclair broadcast corporation. feigning ignorance to preserve your peace of mind is liable to cause a meltdown when something finally gets through your defenses, which is less likely to occur if you train yourself to tolerate it and seek out the underlying facts)

how exactly is the media going to be responsible for polarizing two groups of people who have deliberately pulled away from it? i think there are at least three other factors at play here

1) escalation of commitment to a failing course of action, 2) expectations for a social echo chamber, and 3) the effectiveness of negative behavioral reinforcement

1) there's this ineffective presumption over here on the left, that we've been talking about for years, where the error of thinking goes that, if only these people on the opposite side of the aisle could be presented with the truth, they would realize their mistake and change. this could not be further from the truth, and what you're really doing by having these conversations more often than not makes the problem worse. you're providing ammunition for escalation of commitment

when someone whose mind is already made up is presented with information that counters their expectations, this leads them to more thoroughly flesh out their opinion on why that must be wrong, up to and including completely irrational behavior

2) on the far-right side, the expectation for a social echo chamber is that when someone reveals themselves to not be a member of the in-group, they're immediately and summarily ousted from the group. they expect the group delineation to be enforced by adherence to its standards. here on the left, the presumption of dangerous news leads to willfull ignorance about what exactly our opponents stances even are, which allows groups like terfs, catholics, 4channers, to be mistaken for harmless edgelords while they make surreptitious inroads into our community. this is compounded by the assumption that being presented with the correct information will change them when it is far more likely to lead to escalation of commitment. we expect the group to recruit by exposing others to its precepts. again, i regret to inform you which of these is more effective

3) the purpose of negative behavioral reinforcement is not to change behavior, it's to change the way the enforcer feels. so there's, on the right, total exile for lack of adherence to group standards, and here on the left, there's a total lack of recognition that shouting someone down does not change their point of view. because that wasn't the mechanism. the mechanism was to make you feel better about it for having said the right thing, exposed them to the correct information, and then it doesn't matter what they do with it (they escalate their commitment to their preexisting point of view). again! i regret to inform you which of these is more effective!

[markrosewater]

Panglacial Wurm

I've seen sufficient debate from rules experts about whether or not Panglacial Wurm actually functions within the rules - or if it's merely accepted as an oddity and any possible rules issues brushed off. Regardless, it's odd such a nebulous rules space is permitted for a the benefit of a single card.

Has WotC ever considered an erratum to tweak the rules slightly? What were the strongest arguments and obstacles that came up?

Example erratum: "While you're searching your library, you may exile P.W. from your library. When you do, you may cast it from exile."

This could alternatively be a rules update that formally defines how 'casting while searching' works. This particular version would have mechanical distinctions of possible relevance, but I believe it would preserve the vast majority of the card's function while making the rules surrounding it more straight-forward.

Sometimes we do something that we retroactively realize we shouldn’t have done. Our general strategy is to avoid doing it again rather than double down on figuring out how to make it work a little better.

[ratasum]

Qirri Tinkerfirst: Early Timeline

Qirri is the youngest daughter of four to their parents, Pazz and Tixzi. Pazz is a very successful asura in his own right, heading a respected medical krewe and actually having been tapped for a council spot at one point before Qirri helped him decide he wanted nothing to do with it but we'll get to that.

No brothers, and Pazz and Tixzi had a life contract, so they were outliers within their society. Staying together instead of practicing serial monogamy. The two oldest girls are twins, Pyrria and Izza, and they're both ten years older than Qirri. Next is @wall-legion's Rissia, at seven years older than her.

Qirri herself was an "oopsie baby," as Tixzi wasn't supposed to have any more kids. But she did anyway, and their youngest was born dangerously premature, with underdeveloped lungs and a weak immune system.

(The albinism runs in their families. No one was surprised by that.)

Qirri actually got sick a lot in the first few years of her life. Their family doctor was worried she wouldn't live to even see toddler age, let alone growing up at all. But Qirri's stubbornness apparently just was a thread she'd have rolling through her whole life, as she just kept surviving. Maybe not thriving… she was underweight and got sick easily. By the time she was six, she was the size of a toddler.

But she was alive. And more than that, she was a genius in every sense of the word. A true prodigy.

Her very first invention was modifying a toy Wintersday golem to carry her nebulizer and all her medications.

She was four.

When she was six, that's when Pazz was nominated for a council seat (one that would end up going to Yahk). Seeing that this was a big deal, Pazz took his whole family to the kind of "meet and greet" in the Arcane Council chambers. And of course, he was introducing his partner and daughters around to all the councilors.

So here Pazz is, introducing this little thing around, and he gets. To Councilor Phlunt. Phlunt gives this tiny little thing a very scrutinizing glance, then says "Awfully small for six, isn't she?" before going to pat her head.

Now something you should know about Pazz and his daughters: Pazz loves his daughters with every fiber of his being. He cares about their safety and their personal autonomy. He taught every single one of his daughters that should they feel threatened, should someone be entering their space that has not asked permission, they are permitted to do everything in their power to stop the unwanted interaction.

Including biting.

So when this strange old man reached out with the audacity to pat her atop her curly little head, she reacted exactly as her daddy told her to: she bit the everloving FUCK out of Phlunt's hand.

And boy did that go badly. Tixzi freaked out, Phlunt obviously reacted badly, Qirri got a swat on the ear that got Pazz yelling at Phlunt for hurting her, and Tixzi was handed Qirri to take her and the other girls all home.

Pazz, obviously, wasn't upset with her. Tixzi wasn't either, not really, but this was a very important event. And Qirri, being all of six years old and very sheltered, was horrified, thinking she'd just ruined her dad's chances of ever getting to be a councilor and their family was going to get booted out of Rata Sum and be exiles forever.

So she IMMEDIATELY hid under her bed crying. It took Rissia sitting next to the bed with snacks to coax her out, eventually.

They weren't going to get kicked out. The ALERT Krewe was still very highly respected. Pazz passed on the council opportunity and went back to krewe leadership. And Qirri moved on in her tiny little life. Which is where we get to: Qirri never got to go to a traditional progeny school!

Part of her being so frighteningly premature, other than her lungs being underdeveloped, is that her immune system also didn't cook as well as it should. Tixzi was concerned that being around a bunch of other progeny could wind up with her getting sick. After all: we all know that schools are basically petri dishes, so she wasn't ENTIRELY wrong.

Instead, she hired a tutor to come in and teach Qirri in private one on one lessons to minimize her exposure to potential pathogens. Qirri very quickly outpaced her teacher, but they did their best. But it had the tragic side effect that she just… never got to interact with other progeny her age. She only ever really had her sisters… who, again, are considerably older than her. When Qirri was six, Rissia was thirteen and the twins were sixteen.

(Worth noting: Qirri's relationship with the twins was always rocky. They saw her as more of a doll than a kid sometimes. And gave her a complex about her ears for a little bit as a kid because they told her Rissia swung her around by them when she was a baby, and that's why her ears were so weird and big.)

It is worth noting here: Qirri's relationship with her mother growing up. Tixzi is… protective. She loves all of her daughters, but Qirri… wasn't really supposed to even be there? And it's not like she makes difference. She doesn't regret having Qirri. She decided to keep her for a reason. But Qirri's health is fragile, and she knows it. And she gets… tetchy about it. Every interaction is a potential risk. Be it to her lungs or to her immune system.

So she just… she did everything in her power to keep her baby safe. And it unfortunately meant that sometimes Qirri just… didn't get to have experiences other progeny her age did.

Qirri was a child that didn't get to be a child. Qirri, don't wander too far. Qirri, don't eat that. Qirri, stay away from there. Tixzi hobbled her without meaning to. And it was just to try to keep her safe! She didn't MEAN anything by coddling her like she did; she wanted her to live!

But this bled into Qirri's life growing up. She only ever saw the outside of Rata Sum ONCE before she was fifteen.

She was eight. Pazz had a meeting and Qirri had a doctor's appointment on the same day, so he offered to take her so Tixzi could focus on her project. And while they were out, Pazz let it slip to Qirri that… he had a lot of time between her appointment and his meeting. And he knew about a restaurant that did deep fried lightning bug bulbs, just outside the city in Soren Draa.

And deep fried lightning bug bulbs have always been Qirri's very favorite food. So he took her out there to get her a big basket of them that she could eat to her heart's content. Tixzi was upset for being duped, but Qirri got to sit in the ALERT Krewe workshop and eat lightning bug bulbs. And get doted on by the rest of the ALERT Krewe, who loved having Qirri around when she was a kid because she was sharp as a tack and would sit and work on things with them.

It would eventually come to pass, however, that it was her private instructor that suggested they look into getting Qirri into college early. She was brilliant for her young age, always eager to get her hands on things, clever and inventive. A perfect candidate for Dynamics. Which was a shock to the rest of her family: her father, mother, and sisters all went to either Synergetics or Statics.

It was around this time as well, going on when she was 10-ish, that her intelligence and stubbornness caught Zojja's attention… leading to her approaching Pazz and Tixzi with interest in taking Qirri on as her first apprentice. True, Qirri had interests in a different college than she attended. But Qirri was a young prodigy. Brilliant, angry, and stubborn. The sort of bullheaded stubborn energy she had herself, once upon a time. (And still did, let's be real with ourselves here.)

It was from Zojja that Qirri learned to hone much of her bull-headed stubbornness into a battering ram. Refusing to back down when people tried to tell her she couldn't. (This is a surprise tool character element that will be useful to us later.)

She was also where Qirri learned the lesson that she can't let anyone think she's weak, because Rata Sum would eat her alive otherwise. Qirri unfortunately took this entirely the wrong way and spent the next 15 years basically trying to ignore her disability and power through even at the worst of times.

And it was under Zojja's direction that Qirri took her old modified golem and turned it into one of her own. Her first invention was a modified nebulizer carried in a floating storage unit meant to travel with its owner, with sensors to determine when the user was in need of medication. It's the invention that got Qirri into college at age 12.

College, however, wasn't wasn't a good time for her. She had never been around progeny her own age, really, and while these students were closer to her in age, she didn't exactly get a lot of experience socializing outside of her family and any cousins she may have interacted with.

As a result, when she started college, it was… rocky. She wasn't sure how to interact well with fellow students and misstepped more often than most. Her young age meant she was talked down to and treated like a child by more than a few of her classmates. Enough that it was stressful and dishearetning for a young prodigy.

People she easily outpaced in lessons treated her like she was some kind of oddity. None of this was really her fault: is it fair to blame her for being as intelligent as she is? She wanted to make friends. But connecting with anyone was blisteringly hard, especially when they all just saw her as a novelty that would wear off with time.

It didn't help that her health was still fragile. While years and exposure therapy did give her some defenses she didn't initially have as a small child, she got sick easily, and fell behind in classwork not because she couldn't do it but because she was too damn sick to do the work.

She could've graduated by the time she was fifteen, but her entire college career at that point was fits and starts. Even with the support of Zojja and her family, she couldn't keep up. And for someone with a mind like hers, it was devastating. Immensely frustrating. Everyone had lauded her as this super intelligent prodigy when she was growing up, so why couldn't she do this one simple thing?

The friends she thought she made often just leaned on her for her intellect, and once they were done they faded out of her life as quickly as they came in. It was a painfully lonely experience. She'll talk about how good college was now, but most of it is to avoid talking about the very real fact that she hated it.

She hated having to posture like she didn't understand things, that she was held back by the speed of other students and her own poor health.

Rata Sum is not kind to the different, or the disabled.

So Qirri struggled. And she pushed herself through so hard, and it resulted in her getting sick a lot more frequently than anyone would have liked.

But it did mean that by the time she turned fifteen, she was set up to be ready to graduate. Three years! A fifteen year old prodigy who kept falling behind, fully ready to get that damn graduate certification.

This was not good or inspirational.

This was not to be lauded, even though her peers did praise her for it.

This was a chronically ill child being forced through a system that was built for the able bodied because everyone, even those who meant the best for her, didn't realize how badly it was destroying her.

And then it happened. All that stress, all that pushing herself, it finally broke. She collapsed in the middle of a presentation in one of her classes, fully out cold, with a wicked fever and struggling to breathe...

[bigfloomfa]

an overwhelmingly extensive write-up of my incarnation of mighty the armadillo

Never once have I been asked "hey nikki!!!! whats your mighty like!!" but also I don't care!!! I like to write and roleplay him!!! So here's a short rundown of my version of the best Sonic character in the franchise, because I should post something with proper substance on here for once.

General Info

Mighty the Armadillo is a protector at heart. He's the first one to offer help, defending those who can't protect themselves or tanking hits for his teammates. While he carries intense remorse over his inability to save his parents or his sister, he uses it as fuel to overcome doubt or help drive his protective nature. Mighty deeply cares for everybody who joins his team, and takes it upon himself to make sure they can handle themselves prior to any adventure.

Having all of his immense strength, Mighty has become somewhat of a pacifist. While he enjoys a good fight, he worries that were he to unleash all of his power and actually try, he would seriously injure or incapacitate whoever was on the receiving end, leaving him to often try words first. He's taken to training his sidekick, Ray, in hopes that one day he could get as strong as himself. The desire for a good fight with no bruisers tough enough to give him one has lead him to develop a small Saitama Complex.

As an amalgamation of Fleetway, IDW's Annual, Pre- and Post-SGW Archie, he takes the best of all worlds and folds things together neatly. With an extended family and a few alternate zones below the fold, there's quite a lot for this silly shell boy.

A (relatively) Brief History

Born to a family of thieves, Mighty's upbringing was destined for some form of tragedy. While he would be soon accompanied by a younger sister, his family would be arrested and were set to be executed by the King of Mercia. He would strike a deal with the mysterious Mammoth Mogul, giving the armadillo unfathomable power in exchange for a nebulous 'favor' that would be forgotten due to the wizard's hypnosis.

Despite the newfound power, a lack of training and control would lead Mighty unable to save his parents from what looked to be their doom, leaving him to place his sister in foster care, exile himself, and wander the lands. Eventually captured by Robotnik, Mighty would be imprisoned alongside Ray the Flying Squirrel and Fiona Fox, and placed in special shackles to override his strength.

Once the blue blur had made his debut, him and Mighty would cause a riot that allowed themselves and Ray to escape via a power gem, though Fiona was captured and Ray was lost during zone-travel. Mighty and Sonic would part ways, but Mighty wasn't alone for long as he would soon come across Newtrogic High Zone. After realizing the island was in the process of being terraformed by Robotnik, he would steel himself and decide to take the mad doctor down!

Thankfully for him, there were another batch of people there ready to do the same! Knuckles, Espio, Charmy, Vector, Heavy & Bomb, all on the island for their own reasons, would join forces and use the Chaos Rings to free the island! Also, busting up Metal Sonic as a nice bonus. While the group would part ways after, they would all remain in contact. After a few more adventures involving the Dark Legion, Enerjak, and other fun activities, Mighty would come across Nic the Weasel.

Mighty and his new companion would meet Fiona once more, who was not pleased with not being saved back then, but would find and rescue Ray nonetheless. The squirrel had hardly aged since the initial zone-travel, leaving him much younger than Mighty and Fiona. After the reunion, he would adopt Ray as his younger brother and the two would begin to wander, just as Mighty had done before.

After a crisis against the Xorda, and then an attack on Angel Island to free Locke, then a massive battle against Mogul, Ixis Naugus, the Destructix and Arachne Clan, the whole Great Harmony thing, a mission with Charmy's old home, a brief scare with Snively's mech, Enerjak returning, launching a massive attack on Eggman's Empire, and then fighting the Iron Dominion and Dr. Finitevus... a lot happened, okay? I'm trying to be brief here and get to the fun part.

Mighty and Ray would return to wandering, as Espio had revealed the armadillo's sister was alive and working for Eggman! During their travels, the two would wind up coming across a calm sage named Moss the Sloth, where the three of them would get along swimmingly, and would begin to stay with the sloth while Mighty searched for traces of his sister.

His history ends with Moss, as everything afterwards is usually where the roleplaying or fanfiction comes in.

What makes him "Mighty"

With unrivaled strength and speed that used to keep up with Sonic himself, capped off by a shell that can take any punishment you could imagine, Mighty is a formidable lightning bruiser that can tear through tanks like a hot knife through butter. Heck, even without his shell he can take some heavier hits, it takes quite a lot to put him down. Thanks to training with Espio and generally sparring with the Chaotix, he is also a very skilled martial artist. Should he be enraged, his strength can soar even further off the charts.

In terms of proper techniques, he is capable of his trademarked Hammer Drop, the Homing Attack, the Spin Dash, and the Boost. Other moves include typical anime air-pressure punches and launching himself while curled in his shell like a railgun. While he may not have much in the way of range, he knows his way around a battle and can close a gap when he has to.

The Family

"Blockhead" Bill - Mighty's grandfather and a now-senile crime fighter of old, Bill is a stupid yet skilled fighter. With an ornate yellow shell on his back, he's pretty durable, but not as much as the rest of his family. While he used to have the super strength associated with Mighty's family, he's since lost it with age. He spends most of his day at home with his partner, Max.

"Society" Max - Mighty's basically-second grandfather, and a more refined crime fighter of old. Max is Bill's partner, in more ways than one, and is a red dinosaur of average heights. When consuming a strange vegetable known as a Mandrake Root, he can grow to a proper dinosaur that is very capable in combat and can carry Bill. He spends most of his day at home with Bill.

Hunter the Armadillo - Mighty's father, a former thief who's thought to be dead. Unbeknownst to Mighty and the rest of his family, he and his wife had escaped the clutches of the Mercian prison system, thanks to chaos caused by a Robotnik attack. With an orange shell and his family's typical super strength, he's a force to be reckoned with, and currently seems to be living in a town stationed in the Great Desert.

Hunter mostly takes bounties, and handily at that. He often wears a brown cloak and obscures his face, creating a persona known as 'The Hunter', hiding his true identity in plain sight. He's generally well-respected and a little feared by the rest of the residents of his town, but he's a well-meaning and caring guy who morally struggles with some bounties he has to take. Once he manages to save enough money, he's planning on moving his wife to a safer, nicer town and dealing with Robotnik himself.

Rose the Armadillo - Mighty's mother and Hunter's wife, Rose was able to escape the grasp of the Mercian prison system with her husband. She has a pink shell, but isn't nearly as strong as the rest of her family. She cares deeply for her children, and is deeply affected by their absence, believing she's failed as a mother and that the two of them have passed.

Overall a loving and peaceful woman, Rose is an excellent cook and spends her days tending to her house. A small part of her heart still holds out hope that her children managed to survive on their own, and that one day she'll be able to meet them again. She's loved by her town and often treats the nicer folk to food and hanging out, though her husband makes himself scarce when she does, in order to preserve his persona. The two of the make an okay living together, but fate may have other plans for the family...

Moss the Sloth - Moss is Mighty and Ray's current mentor, and has become somewhat of a father figure to the armadillo. Despite being a sloth, he's fairly fast, able to outpace Mighty when swinging through his jungle. He is extremely empathetic and capable of seeing what drives someone, or dark forces within someone. After his initial meeting with Mighty and Ray, he would offer the two housing within his humble abode, where the pair continues to live into current day.

Ray the Flying Squirrel - His best friend and now-brother, Ray is the most important person in Mighty's life at the moment. A blonde flying squirrel, he's the Tails to Mighty's Sonic, with a bond just as strong. The two of them go just about anywhere together, traveling through Mobius when they can, and searching for information on Mighty's sister. Him and Mighty continue to train with each other and take lessons from Moss.

Matilda the Armadillo - Mighty's younger sister (affectionately nicknamed 'Tilly'), who was long thought to be dead, is a green-shelled armadillo who is currently working under the Egg Boss; Beauregard Rabbot. Originally placed into an orphanage, then roboticized and de-roboticized, before finally being legionized, Matilda's stressful life has left her vacant emotionally and cold. While her natural strength isn't anywhere near Mighty's, her cybernetic arms allow her to get very close. Now that Mighty is aware of her, he spends a large majority of his time searching for information on her.

Stout the Armadillo - Only existing in X Years Later timelines or the occasional Silver's Future timeline, Stout is Mighty's son. His mother is unknown at this time. He is a brown-shelled armadillo who wanders Mobius, acting as a traveling hero. He has taken inspiration from his father's friends, specifically Bark and Amy, wearing a scarf and knowing how to grapple, and using a Mighty-colored hammer called the Shell Smasher. He's not as powerful as his father, but with the Shell Smasher, he can come pretty close.

Counterparts & Alternate Zones

Much like the main cast of the games, there exists several alternate universes which house their own variations of Mighty, each of them different than the last in a way. There are even some counterparts that come from Mobius... Some of them include...

Mobius

Metal Mighty - A robotic doppelganger created by Eggman after realizing how much trouble the solitary armadillo could prove, Metal Mighty is an equal to Mighty in every way, with only one flaw. The lack of emotions makes it so it cannot gain the same strength increase as Mighty when enraged. The two haven't met yet, as Metal Mighty has yet to be deployed.

The Boom Universe

Mighty - Within the confines of the lighthearted Boom continuity, Mighty is a treasure hunting powerhouse. He's very physically strong, much like Knuckles, though keeps his standard size and shape, leaving a comedic height difference despite the strength gap. Thanks to a custom-made set of Communicators, he can stay in contact with his Ray and Matilda at all times. They all contain their own Enerbeam functions, allowing the trio for easier exploration across ancient ruins.

Boom Mighty's life is marginally better than his prime counterpart's, as his Matilda is already with him and Ray as part of Team Traffic Light, and the lighthearted universe allows them to escape the tragic origins of the prime zone. His anime-esque rage boosts are more exaggerated, leaving most of the comic-relief villains in the zone afraid of him.

Camelot

Sir Galehaut - An extremely powerful and skilled knight, who conquered many lands. Called the 'Uncrowned King', he could best even King Arthur. The skirmishes between his knights and the Knights of the Roundtable would last for months. While he could've potentially usurped King Arthur, the events of Black Knight happened before he had the chance, leaving him to long for the chance to duel Sonic one day. Unlike Arthur, Galehaut is actually quite beloved by his people, and considered a benevolent knight. He refuses the throne until he can defeat Arthur in direct combat.

Classic

Classic Mighty - In the parallel dimension of the Classic timeline, where the Time Eater had never appeared and the timeline never split, Mighty is a young armadillo boy who doesn't quite have a grasp on his strength. He often accidentally sends his friends flying through walls, but he's also able to take out some weaker boss mechs in single blows, which is nice. Able to scare Metal Sonic himself into using a hostage, Mighty's still a force to be reckoned with, and he's a bit less pacifistic than most of his other counterparts, coming with a shorter fuse to boot.

Moebius

Malice, the Anti-Mighty - Within Moebius there lives a terrible, horrible scrapper who's taken to calling himself Malice. Whereas Mighty gives people affectionate nicknames, such as 'big guy', or 'lil dude', or what have you, Malice is often degrading and insulting, calling women 'sweetheart' and the like. He carries a fistful of powder to use as pocket sand in the rare case he's losing, and goes around Moebius picking as many fights as possible.

Malice, the menace he is, is an underhanded fighter. While the general 'power level' of Moebius' cast is higher than Mobius', Malice is still usually bored and able to beat down anybody he feels like. His unparalleled strength is still boosted by anger, and his temper is incredibly short. The Anti-Bark and him have a brutal rivalry, culminating in Malice's left arm being torn off during one of Malice's bounty hunting jobs, leaving him to force Miles to make him a cybernetic replacement.

No-Zone

Zighty the Zone Cop - Zighty is the top enforcer of the Zone Cops, able to quell entire riots with just a single blow. While he would be a valuable asset in taking on the terrible Dr. Nega, Zighty actively prefers keeping an eye on the prison, especially after Scourge's jailbreak. Overall, he's Mighty with a laser blaster, he's very deadly but has the discipline to restrain.

The Shatterverse

Molten Mighty - A one man army kept under heavy guard by the Chaos Council, who's usually powered down deep underground in a special facility. A cyborg Mighty who runs without a flicky, Molten Mighty is the most physically powerful thing in New Yoke City, acting as essentially their nuke. With all of Mighty's strength and cybernetic enhancements, he is a truly deadly foe. His Hammer Drop is capable of causing magma to erupt from the ground. Each member of the council has their own key, and he may only be unleashed with at least three of them.

Muscle - Mighty's counterpart for the Boscage Maze, Muscle is a powerful brawler who lives in the jungle. Muscle holds a deep respect for nature, and is allowed to stay in his own cave by Thorn Rose. He mostly goes about his day picking fruits for his family and Thorn.

Captain Might - Captain of the Royal's Bane, Might is a benevolent captain who shares all of his loot with his crew, consisting of a Ray and Matilda counterpart. While small, they are tightly-knit, and more than effective enough to make up for the number disadvantage. They pillage pirates they consider to be dangerous or evil, but leave others like the Angel's Voyage alone.

"Where was Mighty during ㅤㅤㅤㅤ-------?"

Sonic 1, CD, 2, 3 & Knuckles, Chaos, Triple Trouble, Spinball, etc.? - Wandering in his self-exile. While he had met Sonic, they were not a team yet. He would go on to meet the Chaotix after the events of Sonic 3 and Knuckles. After the events of Chaotix, he returns to wandering until otherwise stated.

Sonic the Fighters? - Between Chaotix and Fighters, Ray's rescue should take place. Mighty and Ray were actually invited to the Chaos Emerald tournament, but their invitations were stolen by Fang and Bean, starting a long-lasting grudge between Mighty & Ray and the Hooligans. Except Bark. Bark was already invited, we love Bark.

Sonic R? - He considered showing up to the Grand Prix, however him and Ray were busy trailing the Hooligans in order to teach them a lesson. After hearing about it later, he wishes he made it so he could've fought that Metal Knuckles guy. Perhaps the looming idea of Mighty showing up was what made Robotnik build Metal Mighty, though he was replaced by the Eggrobo in order to keep it secret after realizing Mighty wouldn't be making it?

Sonic Adventure? - Old habits die hard! During the start of the story, the two would be busy with the Hooligans. When Perfect Chaos' attack had happened, Mighty would hear about it from the news, and about how Super Sonic had saved the world. Mighty would consider meeting back up with his old friends, but decided against it for now.

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle? - Mighty and Ray were entirely unaware of the early plot, though would see the moon being blown up. They'd be unable to make a difference as by the time they could get anywhere close to Team Sonic, the story would've entirely gone to space. They'd intently listen to Sonic talk about it after the plot had finished and they met up again.

Sonic Battle, Advance 1, 2, 3? - Smaller scale plots, Mighty wouldn't be aware of them and would continue his wanderings with Ray.

Sonic Heroes? - While UNFORTUNATELY we didn't get the planned team of METAL SONIC and MIGHTY & RAY for Heroes' original release, perhaps the duo had stumbled across a certain scrapnik during the game's story, and merely never crossed paths with the main plot?

Shadow the Hedgehog? - Mighty spent most of the game's time trying not to get directly involved. Aside from a few scattered encounters with Black Arms, who were promptly blown away, and saving some villages or small cities, by the time Mighty decided to properly do something about it, Super Shadow and the Eclipse Cannon would destroy the Black Comet and kill Black Doom.

Sonic Rush, Rush Adventure? - Mighty would manage to hear about Blaze from Knuckles some time after the echidna was knocked out cold by the Sol Guardian. While this left Mighty with a vague distaste for the cat, and a vague urge to meet her at some point, he wouldn't be able to find her as the plot had long since wrapped up. Some time after Rush Adventure, he would be informed of Matilda's situation, and would be even less active than he already was.

Sonic Rivals, 2? - During these games, he should have found Moss and would thus be busy getting accustomed to his new home.

Sonic Riders, Zero Gravity, Free Riders? - While the idea of Extreme Gear really caught his eye, he would have found Moss by now and would be focused on his search for Matilda. For obvious reasons, he wouldn't want to distract himself from that. He has definitely marked Extreme Gear racing on his bucket list for once he does find Matilda, however.

Secret Rings, Black Knight? - he didnt read the books

Sonic '06? - The plot of 06 is quick, quiet, and involves a lot of time travel. Even if Mighty were to hear about it he wouldn't be able to even begin to find the main crew. Sonic's death would definitely be enough to fire him up, but that event caused the Last Episode and the subsequent retcon, leading Mighty no chance to intervene in the plot. He had minor deja vu that day though, he could've sworn he'd already read that archive...

Sonic Unleashed? - While this should fall under the Shattered World arc in the comics where Mighty scraps with the Werehog, if that's out of the question then he would be relaxing at Moss' place in the background, choosing to research Matilda rather than involve himself with the plot.

Sonic Colors? - Mighty and Ray... would actually take a trip to the theme park! They didn't believe Eggman's reasoning for a minute, obviously, but they still thought it could be fun. They got in early and had fun on a few attractions. Unfortunately the duo missed the plot, and had left by the time it was destroyed, though Mighty would be very annoyed at himself in the future due to not knowing about the wisps or trying to help them.

Sonic Generations? - As Eggman was using the Time Eater to erase his losses to Sonic, the encounter at Newtrogic High Zone with the Chaotix was untouched, leaving Mighty uninvolved in the main plot of the game. As for the birthday, he just showed up late, they celebrated with everyone after the credits. It's canon. Promise.

Sonic Lost World? - Home with Moss, this game's basically a filler arc anyway, who cares.

Sonic Forces? - The events of Forces are what finally get Mighty to take proper action. The Eggman Empire would waste a lot of fodder and even a few mass produced Death Egg Robots trying to squash out that small hut in the jungle, and briefly considered sending out Metal Mighty, but would decide to just leave it alone since Mighty wasn't directly attacking him and everything that was sent ended up as scrap. The trio of Mighty, Ray, and Moss would turtle down in their abode.

Once the Eggman Empire was defeated, Mighty and Ray would have managed to finally find Matilda's location, and they finally departed to find her in person. Now that all of Eggman's forces were unanimously weakened by the Resistance, he was more hopeful than ever.

Other Misc. Headcanons

Mighty and Ray carry two Chaos Rings. Mighty the blue one, and Ray the yellow one. Knuckles, Espio, Charmy, and Vector hold on to the other four. The Chaos Rings can also turn someone Super, because they're literally Chaos Emeralds formed around Power Rings.

Knuckles used Master Emerald Shenanigans to knock Sonic out of Super. Mighty can just do that with a full power attack.

Mighty is the strongest mobian! Big is not a mobian, he is Big.

Mighty would beat the hell out of Sonic. He's closer to Blaze, Shadow, Scourge or Silver in terms of power, rather than Sonic, Knuckles or Espio.

Mighty would enjoy TTRPGs, and any form of action video games. All the fun of a fight, with none of the maiming!

An angry Mighty is worth the same as a Chaos Boost Shadow or an ESP Silver. A Super Mighty is a force of nature.

Mighty could crush the Hooligans if he wanted to. His bitterness towards them is surface-level, and he genuinely enjoys sparring with Bark, he just wishes they would knock it off sometimes. If he was mad, he could just ping-pong off Fang and Bean, and rapid-fire homing attack Bark into next week.

Knuckles is as strong as Sonic is fast, but Mina is nowhere near as fast as Sonic, so why is Mighty so strong? Because his family was already really physically strong. He was already set to contend with Knuckles, and then he got the Mogul boost on top of that!

Voice claim is Joe Zieja, specifically as Claude from Three Houses.

Closing Thoughts

All art provided is credit to Fleetway Comics, Archie Comics, and SEGA.

Unfortunately there's no Secret Rings counterpart as I'm not familiar with arabic folklore, I didn't just forget about it or anything. If there are any questions or suggestions, my ask box is open and I am more than glad to respond and engage in Mighty discussion!

[cdroloisms]

If you're not already burnt out from analysis, do you have any thoughts on the Mexican L'Manberg debates?

hmm i have to rewatch the vod tbh it's been a bit--not many thoughts that haven't been regurgitated a million times though.

something that has always interested me is the whole dethronement debacle/mexican lmanburg debates in relation to how leadership has worked for the greater smp faction, largely because the dsmp was never meant to be a faction and the creation of the official kingship for c!Eret was very much in response to L'manburg at the time. and there is honestly quite a bit of conflict that rises from the fact that the greater dsmp faction was never really meant to have a king in the first place, and the confusion that would arise about what the role of the king even was supposed to be (especially as the idea of c!Dream having any kind of legitimacy was worn away over time.) it'd be an interesting meta to write if i could think of a way to word it all--but it's always fascinated me, in this conflict, how the progression of "he's in charge of the server, i'm in charge of the land" to c!Dream's no-mans-land position of leadership in the dsmp faction progresses as the server goes on is utilized in c!Quackity's favor to effectively block c!Dream out of the conversation (even with so much of this being quite directly an attack on dream in the first place.) something something being king of the dsmp comes with a level of restriction, yes, but also a level of protection--and while c!dream, viewed nebulously as a leader, was also subject to a certain level of restriction to a certain extent (see: his asserting that he couldn't publicly stand against schlatt because of the peace treaty between their two nations), the fact that his leadership was more de facto early on (because the dsmp faction wasn't yet a faction) as compared to the kingship, this conflict is a clear demonstration of how he doesn't have the same political sway as the dsmp king to be able to ask for quite the same level of protection (and hence, how his request for an apology in the peace treaty goes unheeded and how he ends up as a trading piece in the negotiations.)

otherwise, mexican lmanburg definitely has a lot in terms of echoes of c!wilbur and the lmanburg narrative, particularly regarding c!dream's view on factions, which is interesting--c!dream has never actually been "anti-people doing what they want in a group," but of course that's how things ended up being popularly seen because. gestures. and of course, there's the whole idea that every single conflict on the server ever was initiated by c!dream which...again, lmao. along those lines:

[thinks abt lmanburg. a lot] yeah.

and lastly...this isn't really just a mexican lmanburg thing, but c!dream around this time was kinda known to reacting to threats by basically doing the thing where he would make like, a laundry list of threats, right, just really over-the-top stuff that would freak people out like hell, right? we see it in exile negotiations, we see it in mexican lmanburg debates--

and you know, they've regularly been pointed to as you know, look how crazy evil he is an how he overreacts to shit and etc, whatever. and it does interest me how these speeches are quite similar in pattern to moments post-prison as well:

specifically being quite consistent with moments where he's feeling, well, a bit unstable. it's an intimidation tactic that c!dream has long used, of course (white flags speech is a well-known example) but it's interesting to see it often in context of c!dream being to some degree, scared (or paranoid)--even in white flags, that was obviously a conflict that c!dream treated seriously that was quite a bit different in character from conflicts that preceded it on the server and therefore demanded a greater level of wariness and caution from him. always interesting, to me, the ways that certain actions for c!Dream are so deeply related to fear, feeling attacked (compared to, say, c!sam who would do the whole I Am The Warden power play against anyone that he felt challenged his authority)

very very scattered thoughts, but um--yeah! i really should rewatch this stream especially bc the transcript is incomplete, but alas

[escapismartist]

following up on my last post and continuing the yapathon. this edition is sexuality and gender identity headcanons for the ouppies. i won’t support any of these with anything from canon im purely going from vibes and what i want to do

it is my god given right to play with these dragons like little dolls

clay immediately hits me as a demiboy using all pronouns. pansexual too i think he absolutely doesn’t care abt his partner’s gender

tsunami feels like a she/him cis girl. if she was human she’d be a butch lesbian. does this make sense?

glory,,, gender fluid came to me in a dream once. biromantic asexual

sunny,,,, aroace is really all i see for her even though i am a slight sunnyspeaker shipper so maybe demiromantic demisexual? all pronouns freak (affectionate) probably doesn’t give enough of a fuck to label her gender

arc 2 has more trans coded characters to me idk like all these bitches trans

moon is not cis for sure. trans fem perhaps? or bigender? she’d play with her gender for sure i think. bi or pan

winter is cis for so long and then gets exiled from icewing society and immediately gets awoken. genderfluid to the max but probably feminine more often than masculine. GAYYYYYY

peril is so trans fem to me <3 she/her. aroace or a lesbian i accept either

turtle is SOOOOOO trans fem to me. she is trans fem. her mom would accept her but she wouldn’t tell coral until coral got chill about her heirs bc she’d rather die than run a kingdom. sexuality is nebulous and lowkey idk. maybe she doesn’t either

qibli. cis and bi maybe. he reads so cis to me but idk why. i am willing to hear anyone out on this

kinkajou is totally genderfluid + pan she can not be contained

i really don’t think about arc 3 a lot so i started writing these out and realized i had fucking nothing 😭 uhhh so send me your arc 3 character headcanons please

[selfoftheseus]

So, I was lostsoaringexile, but you’ll notice I’ve changed my name! It’s probably a good time to make a pinned post.

That insomnia be hittin, even though I took Benadryl, and I randomly thought of a cool new name and it wasn’t taken, and the hat man also thought it sounded like a good name, so here we go! I may or may not keep my name as this, but being that I’ve been on T for approaching a year now I’m learning so much about myself. I made this blog to return to more positive socials off facebook and Twitter after a bad breakup while breathing and relearning who I was, not too many months after starting T, so I haven’t even really introduced myself on here.

Let’s get started! You can call me JB, or my @, or exile, or I may tell you another name you can use if you ever wanna chat. I’m a 26 year old trans guy in the middle of the United States. As of May 2024 I’ve been on T for about 9 months. I’m also @trekmascing.

I post a lot of Forcemasc content as well as anything that appeals to me. If you like what I post, feel free to stick around and interact if you aren’t a minor. As I do post NSFW content I ask that minors DNI.

I’ve been spending the last year learning who I am and becoming the me that feels more like me. As that happens and I replace and change bits and pieces I’ve learned that while my sense of self is nebulous I’m still me. I like the concept of the ship of Theseus as it applies to transition.

That’s all, for now!

[carrotsnake]

dungeon meshi fandom rant

i usually stay away from fictional autism headcanons or indulging in them wholesale because i'm more on the 'characters are constructs' side of things. some may exhibit traits we relate to but placing real-world diagnostic labels on walking metaphors makes things too nebulous. however laios touden is an exception to me since autism allegories (despite no authorial intent) are pretty hard-wired into both his arc and dungeon meshi's core themes about being an outsider. so for once the fandom autism memes feel genuine to me lol. it doesn't feel as fanon-heavy or platitudinous, actually it's pretty uplifting. i appreciate the positivity.

that being said the most dogshit dunmesh take i've seen lately is the assertion that laios and falin show us autistic men are villified for things autistic women are accepted for. the fuck are you people smoking? some rebranded MRA-pilled bullshit? log off tumblr and go outside, then point and show me where this is the truth. i don't know if you guys are all living in a feminist utopia that i'm not privy too, but if so send me the address because things couldn't be less like that everywhere i've ever been.

countless times i've been told 'oh you're exactly like a female copy of [socially anxious male friend/co-worker/family member who shares my personality] and then i gotta watch them get special treatment as i get left behind and scolded for not being normal enough. him being blunt is rebellious & brutally honest, me being blunt is just being a b*tch with no filter. how many times do you see autistic women reaching high positions of power and being revered as a misunderstood genius.

how about everyone reminding us to 'be nice' to the supposedly harmless awkward guy who keeps making sexual comments & invading our boundaries because he can't help it apparently. but strangely enough, i have gone my whole life without creeping on others. only to be called creepy and off-putting by these same social equality preachers for not applying makeup or styling my hair right. autistic women are more likely to be sexually harrassed and/or abused than neurotypical women and no one gaf (let's b real they don't care when it happens to neurotypical women either if the man has a good enough sob story.) shit like walking strangely, having a speech impediment and talking too much about esoteric topics was enough to be outcasted for us. once more, with feeling: what are you people smoking?

and critically, falin is pretty. she's conventionally pure, self-sacrificial, beautiful with hollywood curves, soft-spoken, and never questions anyone nor asserts herself over others when her needs aren't being met. her dislikes in the adventurer's bible are 'nothing in particular', she never spoke out against her village's bullying even when she had it worse than laios, quickly forgives her parents for exiling her, and never shows any opinion on marcille's use of dark magic. she's a paragon of femininity. anything less than that, and she would probably invoke similar if not more disgust from her peers than laios through the audacity of not conforming to gender expectations. but she likes holding bugs or whatever so...whoa! she's so feral and subversive amiright guys. but crucially she looks cute while doing it so we're not too uncomfortable to stan.

i love laios so much, he's in my newest blorbo collection for sure but calling the female characters who don't like him judgemental is not a good look. we as the readers who have been inside the main chara's head know he's a good guy - but in the context of dungeon meshi's world, where sexism is as prevalent as stranger danger, it's fair for them to assume bad intent and keep their distance. they're looking out for their own safety and you're mad about that because, what, it makes your 2D nigel sad? cry about it.

so quit using anime characters as fodder for your thinly-veiled 'everyday men milk themselves' preaches. the touden siblings are not a good example of this. if you unironically agree with that take: it's time to go talk to some real women broski.