#*spoiler* involves childhood abuse and generally traumatic things

[endlessfuckup]

unfortunately my laptop needs to be repaired so i cannot upload the fics ive been working on for a few weeks

(they weren't backed up anywhere else oops)

still cant decide which phanfic i want to start uploading first

first 2 chapters of fic #1 are written but need to be looked over again(whole story is completed just not in a readable format yet)

i am stuck on how to structure the 2nd fic as it (spoiler) involves a lot of flashbacks

i dont want the 2nd one to be too graphic but also dont want to sacrifice certain plot points

i also eventually want to do a few short stories that aren't d&p related

[mermaidsirennikita]

Have you read When the Duke was Wicked by Lorraine Heath? I've never read Heath before, and I'm looking for an opinion!

Oh, for sure! I love that book; it's one of my favorite Heaths. It's highly emotional and romantic, and I'd say it's fairly high angst, but not quite as angsty as Thee Angstiest Heaths I've read. I feel like when I first began reading Lorraine it wasn't given its proper due, but it's been slowly gaining icon status over the past few years--there are certain circles where you just have to go "RUM ON LIPS" and people will know which book you're talking about. And if you're into a rake hero, Lovingdon is one of my favorites. Deeply sexy, comes from a great family, would have benefited from some therapy. Great heroine, too--Grace is sweet but strong and very firm in her sense of self worth, while at the same struggling with her own trauma and how that's impacted the way she sees herself.

Without getting into spoilers, the book does deal heavily with grief (Lovingdon is a widower who lost his wife and child at the same time, and it deeply fucked with his head) as well as some intense past medical trauma. But I still would say that it's deeply optimistic and fun, and has some wacky Lorraine Heath third act shenanigans.

The one thing I will say, though... This book does begin its own series, but you do have a preceding series that's pretty connected? When the Duke Was Wicked kicks of the Scandalous Gentlemen of St. James series, but the Scoundrels of St. James series is about like... the parents of the Scandalous Gentlemen, basically. Like, Scoundrels has this scrappy group of former child thieves (lmao) and the Scandalous Gentlemen are their nepo baby kids.

Lovingdon is actually the son (well, in the case of the hero, stepson) of the hero and heroine of Between the Devil and Desire, which is another all-time Heath book, imo. That one is about an uptight duchess whose husband dies and leaves the guardianship of their son to some random she's never met before, who happens to be Jack Dodger, a Prototypical Heath Hero (put some respect on Jack Dodger's name, nothing but respect for my gambling club owner turned father who stepped up), a total scoundrel/ne'erdowell/rich guy with a big dick. Lovingdon, aka RUM ON LIPS, is the duchess's young son, who is extremely sweet in his mom's book and I don't know, learned some shit in between books I guess.

And Grace, the heroine, is the daughter of Sterling and Frannie from Surrender to the Devil, a book about a woman who has survived immense trauma now having to deal with this fuckin' drama queen of a duke who's started sniffing around.

Anyway, would recommend all these books with TW caveats (pretty much every Scoundrels book is going to touch on the traumatic childhoods of the Scoundrels, which involved general abuse as well as sexual assault for several of them).

Other Lorraine Heath books I'd consider starting with:

Waking Up with the Duke. Probably her best work. The last book in a series, but you can read it as a standalone. It's the one that begins with the heroine's husband telling the hero "YOU OWE ME A COCK" because the hero caused the accident that made the heroine's husband impotent. Anyway, as a friend, he agrees to impregnate the heroine, because like, if you're gonna have your bro impregnate your wife, you should probably choose the bro who's AMAZING in bed. Highly emotional, angsty as hell, he's wanted her so long he basically has an orgasm from eating her out (and the lightest caress of her hand).

Scoundrel of My Heart. A series starter. You open on this very conventional romance between a heroine and her best friend's obnoxiously charming older brother, where she finds out that this local duke is literally taking applicants for a wife, and the hero agrees to help her get said duke's attention. Obviously, they fall in love, and they're just about to truly get together before THE MOST INSANE SHIT HAPPENS LOL (I literally paused, read the sentence several times to make sure I read it correctly, and laughed in pure delight), and they're separated. The book does a year timeskip, she's now engaged to local duke, and she and the hero reconnect as changed people.

A benefit is that this leads directly into The Duchess Hunt, which is imo soooo much better if you read Scoundrel first. Spoiler alert, local duke does not get the girl, but he's still running like, Indeed for Wives, and he's doing it with the help of his literal Girl Friday, his secretary Penelope, a bad bitch who literally masturbates to the thought of him in a carriage, who he CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT but only AS AN EMPLOYEE, it's SUPER NORMAL GUYS. If she quits he'll like, jump off a cliff.

[unofficialadamtaurus]

Somewhere I read Adam was a 'monster' because he tried to make the world pay for what happened in his childhood, instead of being a selfless hero. But do you think that's a reason to trash his character? If we try to put ourselves in the shoes of a deeply traumatized and abused orphan, we could understand how much potential he has as a character. Yeah, he was a villain, but he wasn't born as one.

The idea that because Adam's actions stem from a place of vengeance sourced from his own personal trauma his actions are therefore Immoral and Bad is...certainly one that's out there, yeah.

tl;dr you can bash Adam for not expressing his trauma the “right” way or engaging in the “right” kind of activism the same way you can bash him for his fashion sense. It’s fundamentally a matter of opinion, as sensitive as the subject matter may be, and unless everyone involved is going in with the mindset that it’s okay to disagree on some fundamental questions, whatever discussion that follows is probably going to get very unpleasant very quickly.

Some people see characters that fall into this archetype (angry at personal injustice inflicted by societal ills and lashing out violently) and, though they can sympathize with their anger, cannot sympathize with it enough to justify the actions that follow. If a character's backstory doesn't connect with you, you're going to be more put off by the morally dubious things that character does than someone who does connect with that backstory. It's not necessarily a failing on the part of the story or on the audience; it's just a thing that is.

Whether or not someone thinks Adam's trauma precludes trashing his character comes down to a) their opinions on Adam in general and b) (with the very important caveat that opinions on fiction ≠ opinions on real people and events) their beliefs on morality. I, personally, vibe heavy with characters who lash out after being put through terrible injustice by some greater power. I find it very cathartic and just as entertaining, and I don't need some grand sob story to have a character's back.

To better explain what I’m getting at, let's pull away from Adam and RWBY as a whole to look at a different case: John Wick. Spoilers for the first movie in the next three paragraphs.

So anyway, Wick is attacked and his dog (his dead wife's final gift to him) is brutally killed. The crime that warranted this attack? Owning a car that a criminal boss's son happened to want and filling up that car at a gas station that son also happened to be at. So, the body count is: Wick's dog. Plus the emotional pain of that dog's connection to his dearly departed wife. And the stolen car.

What does Wick do to balance the scales? He murders dozens upon dozens of people in a one-man crusade to exact vengeance on the son. Dozens upon dozens of lives, many killed in horrific ways, for a dead wife's dog. It is an awe-inspiring display of violence. Now step back for a second and think: what if, as you're watching Wick rip and tear his way through these goons, your only thought is: "Is this really necessary?" Sure, you can understand that the guy's upset at losing the dog, and you can tell that he loved his wife with once-in-a-lifetime passion, but come on. It's not worth this. Killing just a few people to send a message or putting out a hit on the son or any of a dozen other methods would've saved a lot of trouble and lives. This isn’t balancing the scales; this is tipping them wildly in the other direction.

Now think about the opposite side of the coin personified as, say, a person sitting next to you in the theater who cheers at every murder because that asshole killed Wick's wife's dog, how dare he? Furthermore, that person, rather than being put off by all the murder and mayhem, came to the theater for those things and thus is far more willing to accept that reasoning behind Wick's rampage because it gets them to where they want to be. So you might say, "John Wick is a terrible character because he killed dozens of people over a dog." That's fine. What's also fine is what your seatmate might say: "John Wick is a great character because he killed dozens of people to avenge his dog, and he looked great doing it."

John Wick is far from a direct parallel to Adam Taurus - the horrific thing done to Wick was not based on systemic discrimination and Wick's vendetta is entirely personal - but it's an illustrative example for how character motivations can hit different people with different levels of efficacy and how someone's reasons for engaging with a character (in Wick's case, the entertainment of his violent expertise at work) further color their views of that character.

That's why, when fans and critics alike of Adam "put ourselves in the shoes of a deeply traumatized and abused orphan," we get different results. Keep in mind too that we didn’t have any knowledge of Adam’s trauma until minutes before he died. People watching the show as it aired knew him as an asshole abuser terrorist ex-boyfriend for a lot longer than they knew him as someone with the SDC logo seared into his skin.

So knowing Adam’s history, knowing that different people are okay with different levels of justification for a character’s violent actions...if a person is not on his side, which is valid, there’s this question: how much would Adam have to suffer for him to be sympathetic? By the same token, how much violence can a traumatized character commit/condone before they’re no longer sympathetic?

No one likes to interrogate themselves over what they would personally consider "enough" suffering to justify retaliatory violence. It's a deeply uncomfortable question, particularly for people who aren't part of a minority group looking at characters who are. Furthermore, fictional stories (like RWBY, with its focus on action and grand save-the-world plots over day-to-day injustices) don't often demand that level of introspection. Adam, with all of his horrible qualities, invites dismissal rather than engagement with his roots.

Plus I strongly dislike the idea that a character doing any action for selfish reasons makes that action negative. Why is a character trying to improve the world for selfless reasons inherently better than another doing it to help themselves?

To finally bring this back to your main question: Adam's history motivating his actions is a reason to trash his character just like his edgy tryhard aesthetic is one too. However. When people argue about Adam being justified or not, the argument often isn’t about that, not really. It’s arguing about one of the unnecessarily deep questions I brought up here. Recognizing that can save everyone involved a lot of time.

To top all of this off, his backstory has never even been confirmed; iirc, one of the writers tossed out a half-assed “he got in an argument and there just happened to be a warmed-up brand nearby” before later walking that back. Any point you bring up (orphan, traumatized, abused) can be argued into oblivion by a bad-faith dissenter.

People get prickly about morality, minorities, and godawful depictions of those two intersecting in media. Best not to engage with strangers online about it.

[bard-llama]

Iorveth’s Backstory

I was typing up/compiling my notes on Iorveth’s general backstory in all of my fics, so I figured I’d share. Warning for spoilers, I guess? These things will all definitely appear in fics at some point in a variety of ways

Childhood

Born 100 years before the Conjunction

He spent the first part of his life the baby of a family where everyone was busily involved and invested in their science specialty. Thus, no one particularly had any time for him and he grew up very lonely

Discovered music when he was around 15 (human equivalent: 8-9) and he wasn’t great at it, but he practiced and practiced and practiced, SUPER hyperfixated on it. And his skill grew a lot faster than his companions in music classes and eventually he was launched into a bit of a “prodigy” career.

Adult Life (Pre-Conjunction of the Spheres)

Probably around the 16-21 range, Iorveth started to gain a following as an up and coming talented musician. Then he met Chandel.

Chandel is kind of a has-been musician clinging to Iorveth’s coattails. He is loud and flamboyant and outrageous and loves to cause a scandal. He’s also the one who taught Iorveth to embrace his inner drama queen an go all in on the costuming. 

One thing Chandel pressured him to get was piercings. Specifically belly button (acceptable) and nipple (unacceptable) piercings.

i do think he's come to like them and when he was still famous but broken up with the asshole, he liked to just barely expose them 'cause it made him unique and scandalous

Laurel leaves – one of his first pieces of jewelry. The leaves are decorated with tiny little emerald and citrine chips making the leaves yellow and green. He takes meticulous care of it as it’s the only real reminder he has that his family wasn’t all awful. After all, it had been their money that bought his fancy jewelry.

He understands how Roche has fallen prey to Foltest. Also understands what it’s like for their abuser to die before they really reconciled their feelings about it

Conjunction of the Spheres

When the Conjunction of the Spheres happens, he’s 100 years old and has been with Chandel for most of that time. The situation is extremely hectic with portals opening and closing everywhere and Iorveth is running, towing Chandel along – and then a portal opens halfway up Chandel’s arm and suddenly Iorveth is left holding a hand and forearm with no body attached. 

Obviously this is severely traumatizing, but it also means he never gets resolution as he starts to realize that some of the ways he’d been treated were not okay.

Life as a Musician Post-Humanity

From about age 40 or so to 1100, he spent his life as a traveling musician, touring around concert halls and venues and living the high life (ish). The high life rapidly declined after humanity started their conquest, but Iorveth was content to live beside humans as long as he could make music.

During this time, Iorveth “lived” in Loc Muinne, but really traveled a majority of the time.

He also met Cedric somewhere in this time and Cedric introduced him to monsterfucking (more or less, barring 1 nekker gangbang). Iorveth was 100% a slut on the road and sought out monsters to fuck. If they could pass the Harkness Test, he wanted them to fuck him and/or to be able to fuck them.

Loc Muinne

(sometime around 1050s?) Then General Raupernack of Redania massacred Loc Muinne, slaughtering all the elves in the city, most of them in their sleep. Then Redania set fire to it and cordoned off access to Loc Muinne. They refused to let any elves inside to search for relatives or lay dead elves to rest or discover if anything of their life remained.

Iorveth had been performing in Novigrad (and chilling with his new buddy Elihal) when the massacre happened. The only thing to survive, once he was finally able to sneak into the city, was the stuffed dragon Triss gives him in the time travel AU for DCfMT. Fortunately, that’s not all he has from his life before, as he’d taken some things with him. But he lost a lot.

Fighting Humanity

In the 1060s, Aelirenn starts inspiring a following. Iorveth joins her ranks and she teaches him how to wield war fans. He’s still a traveling musician at this point, but he’s also kind of a spy.

In his first battle, Iorveth flees cowardly. For a long while, he struggles with wanting and trying to fight and kill humans and failing to gather the nerve.

Something hits the breaking point and Iorveth makes his first human kill.

After that, Iorveth begins to fight humans truly and joins various uprisings and fighting forces until the Vrihedd Brigade is formed (1267). 

In 1269, 55 Vrihedd Brigade officers are executed as part of the Peace of Cintra agreement. Iorveth and Isengrim somehow manage to escape the fate that befell their companions.

The remnants of the Vrihedd Brigade formed the Scoia’tael and Iorveth quickly rose to prominence as an effective and ruthless leader.

Too ruthless, eventually. 

Cedric decides that Iorveth has gone too far and cuts him out of his life entirely, throwing away their centuries long friendship. This is the moment Iorveth realizes he is unlovable.

The Blue Stripes are formed, one of a dozen other special forces groups created by the northern kings to fight the Scoia’tael. Only all the others fall to Iorveth easily. Vernon Roche and the Blue Stripes refuse to do so.

And that brings us to Witcher 2! Obviously some of these details vary if the universe calls for it, but for the most part, this is the backstory I picture for Iorveth in all my fics.

[cherry-valentine]

So I recently read Killing Stalking over the course of two days. The first day was spent fleeing my home from flood waters and so I read the first half of the manwha on my phone in the parking lot of a grocery store. I was so absorbed in the story that I didn’t have time to worry about whether or not my house was washing away (it didn’t, and there was no damage, thanks for asking). I know I was pretty late to the party on this one, and it wasn’t because I wanted to avoid the series. To be honest it sounded like something I would love from the moment I heard about it, but at the time, I was busy and ended up forgetting it. I saw some pictures from it on Tumblr a few days back, was reminded, and decided to give it a shot. I have some feelings and random opinions on it that I felt like sharing. Most of these will include spoilers for the entire story, so be warned. Also: TW: ABUSE

But first, my non-spoilery plea to others who haven’t read it (and I guess the first thing I wanted to talk about): If you’re avoiding the series because you’ve heard that it glorifies or romanticizes abusive relationships, you can put that concern to rest. I honestly don’t know how anyone can walk away from the series with that take. The relationship portrayed in the series is nightmarish, and even the parts that aren’t so nightmarish are tense and very much realistic in the way abusive relationships actually work. Abusers aren’t abusive 100% of the time, and that’s what makes them so insidious. If they were terrible all the time, it would be much easier to hate them, leave them, and forget them. Instead, they are often kind, generous, and loving between incidents of abuse. This is to keep their victims emotionally attached to them. For many of these abusers, they may even feel actual love for their victims (a twisted, selfish love for sure, but I’ve always been of the belief that love can be a bad thing in certain situations). So even though there are moments in the series where the relationship seems to be going “well”, there’s always a sense of dread hanging over it, the feeling that at any moment, things are going to explode.

From here on out, there are !!MAJOR SPOILERS!! for the entire series.

A lot of people have identified the most sad or tragic or painful moments for them while reading, and those moments vary quite a bit between people. For me, the moment that gouged out my heart, the moment that was such a punch to the gut that I almost felt physical pain, was just a tiny thing. Toward the end, the first time Bum tries to go to the hospital Sangwoo is at, and the cab driver treats him like shit, Bum thinks “Why does everyone treat me like this?” And then we see flashbacks of moments when Sangwoo was kind to him. And... that right there. That got me. The fact that his abuser, the person who had treated him so cruelly, was also the only person who had treated him with actual kindness, broke my heart. The fact that he’d lived his whole life and experienced nothing but cruelty or indifference or betrayal. The only person who ever made him feel special, feel loved, was also the person who had tormented him. And it hurt so much to read, because I know that’s how many real life abuse victims feel. It was, in my opinion, the most tragic aspect of the series.

My last opinion might be a little controversial. Something I noticed when checking out the fandom for the series was how anyone who even hinted that they’d like for Sangwoo and Bum to be happy together was met with absolute hate and fury (slinging around lots of terrible insults like “failed abortion” and things I won’t repeat here - like yeah great idea explaining how abusive relationships are bad by being verbally abusive). Now, as a logical adult, I know it would be totally impossible for them to have a happy relationship (and indeed they didn’t). I didn’t even want them to be together. I just wanted them both to get a lot of therapy. The “headcanon” I came up with to make myself feel less depressed after the ending was that they both died and were then reborn into loving, nurturing environments where they grew up to be happy, well-adjusted people who would meet in college and have a healthy relationship. But I do understand the people who saw the less horrible moments and thought, “I wish they could just be happy together”. Because it did feel like these two thoroughly broken people had found a tiny, miniscule amount of happiness and love, even if it was clear it definitely would not last and definitely was not healthy. I get feeling that way.

And actually, the series plays a fairly clever trick on the reader. Just like real life abuse victims have trouble hating and leaving their abusers when those abusers are kind or show a more human side to them, Sangwoo became much harder to hate and dismiss once his traumatic childhood was revealed and he showed some kindness to Bum. It’s like the series was showing us exactly how abuse victims remain attached to their abusers, by making us stay attached to Sangwoo as a character. For the first half of the series I despised him, but the series tricked me into sympathizing with him and even feeling sorry for him and wishing he could be happy. And that. right. there. That’s how abusers get you. I thought it was a very smart way to portray this concept.

I also get that some BL fans DID romanticize and even fetishize the relationship. But, and hear me out please, I don’t think that’s a reason to totally dunk on those fans. Most of the fans who felt that way are probably fairly young, probably naive, probably exploring some dark fantasies for (perhaps) the first time in their lives. I think most people have something that introduced them to darker fantasies (rape fantasies, violent kinks, etc.). When you’re young, these are pretty thrilling to think about, and as long as you limit this exploration to works of fiction, it’s a safe way to dig into these fantasies. For most people, they grow out of them. The thrill wears off as they get older or they become mature enough to realize how horrible and scary those situations would be in real life. Some people keep those kinds of kinks all their lives, and as long as they limit it to fantasy and fiction, or consensual situations, that’s fine. But we need to understand that Killing Stalking, just by nature of having a very attractive character like Sangwoo, is going to be that piece of media that introduces a lot of younger people to those darker fantasies. And it’s not necessarily a terrible thing to let them safely explore those fantasies with this story. Because the story doesn’t encourage it. It doesn’t paint a rosey picture of this kind of relationship. It’s horrifying and ends in tragedy and trauma for everyone involved.

My “thing” that introduced me to darker fantasies was a movie called Boxing Helena, which I watched when I was most definitely too young. For those who haven’t seen it, it actually shares some themes with Killing Stalking (involving a sexy but psychotic man who had lots of issues relating to his mother and keeps a woman captive in his home, partly because she reminds him of his mother, and does horrible things to her - there’s even a scene where he brings another woman home and has sex with her while the captive woman is forced to watch through a cracked door. Sounds familiar, right?). It felt dark and dangerous and taboo, because it was also horrific. But it was exciting. Of course, I grew out of things like that, but it would have been absolutely no help to have a ton of people screaming at me that I was a sick pervert for finding the psycho guy hot (I mean it was Julian Sands in the 90’s, can you really blame me?).

If you come across younger fans who think Killing Stalking was sexy and say dumb things like, “I’d like to be in Sangwoo’s basement!” (actual comment I saw), don’t immediately harp on them and make them feel bad. They’re just exploring their own fantasies. It would be much more helpful to calmly and patiently talk to them and point out that it’s okay to like this stuff in fiction, but to be very careful about how they explore these feelings in reality. I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of these people are just virginal teenagers who would never in a million years get involved in a dangerous relationship. So let’s cut them a little slack.

Note: When I refer to younger fans, I’m thinking 18-20 or so, and of course the younger teens who are going to read this whether we want them to or not. I am in no way suggesting that we should encourage younger people to read it. Just that, if you come across a younger person who has already read it, yelling insults at them over their naive opinions on it isn’t going to be helpful to anyone.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about it for now. I just felt very strongly about it and felt like sharing.

[purplebunniboy]

Retrograde AU

Can I summarize this,,,let’s find out. This has been a rough WIP since 2016. Boy has it been a Process.

Before I start let me just state for the record that this is an AU it exists in it’s own universe and ties in aspects of both books and games as well as headcanons that I Know not everybody will agree with! Hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

Warnings before reading: This AU does contain spoilers for the book trilogy, there are some heavy and dark themes mostly involving physical and emotional abuse as well as blood and gore.

This AU is split into 2 parts: pre-scooped and post-scooped. The first is his childhood and early adult life where he is known as Michael Afton leading up to when he got his insides scooped out. The second half is an older adult, when he got a whopping load of amnesia immediately after being scooped and is known as Mike Schmidt.

Pre-scooped:

Michael grew up in the same town Fredbear’s is located in, a few miles out of Hurricane (same place Charlie lived in the books.)

Michael is the older brother from the 4th game’s minigames. The younger brother/ crying child is Cassidy Afton. Cassidy witnessed Charlie’s murder and was absolutely traumatized but no one would believe him. William was really the cause of the bite, needing the kid to keep quiet about the whole thing, but staged it to be an accident to shift the blame on to someone else.

There is 2 seperate bites, Cassidy being the Bite of ‘83 victim. Michael was still the accidental cause of both.

His friend group consisted of the bullies from the 4th game--Bear mask kid is Michelle/Mitchie, bunny mask kid is David/Davie, chicken mask kid is Christopher/Chris. Some basics about them:

Mitchie is a girl, though a total tomboy, and is strong enough that the others know not to mess with her. She has a superiority complex, always feeling like she Has to prove she’s the best. She has a younger brother.

Davie is the bigger kid and designated meat shield of the group. He doesn’t put himself in bad situations but the group tends to throw him into them anyway. 

Chris is a bit of a runt but like to run his mouth a lot. He’s the type to always feel the need to put his two cents in even if it adds nothing to the conversation and is mostly just him being a sassy smartass.

Michael is of course the kid always picking fights. He’ll throw the first punch at the drop of a hat and almost always sports a bruise or a cut somewhere on his face. Some have even turned into scars.

When he was especially younger, Michael got along really well with his dad, drawing up doodles of characters that would eventually become the Funtimes, and always claiming he wanted to be just like him. William would often bring him into the workshop and teach him the basics of how animatronics work, carefully avoiding the subject of springlocks altogether. Obviously as he grew older, he realized his dad was a major ass and grew distant and hateful of him, taking his anger out on those around him rather than actually deal with the problems. 

Michael built his fox mask himself and included a few added feature such as moving/turning ears and fancy lights. His friends demanded he make them some as well to which he happily obliged. 

The Afton and Emily families were good friends! This was before, you know, William decided to remove Charlie’s alive rights. There were nights where all the parents would go out and Michael would get stuck with babysitting all of them at once and chaos ensued. Charlie, Sammy, and Elizabeth were the same age but Elizabeth was a bit of a brat so she didn’t get along very well with them. Charlie and Cassidy, despite age difference were good friends. Charlie and Sammy were a tag team and rarely did you ever see the two of them apart from the other.

After the accident and Cassidy’s death, everyone turned away from Michael except Elizabeth, who Michael swore he would be a better brother for. He continued developing his robotics skills by building her little toys just like Henry did for Charlie. Though unlike Henry’s, the toys were in no way technologically advanced and the most impressive thing he could do was add a wind up music box in them.

William finds old drawing of Michael’s and uses them as inspiration for the Funtime Animatronics which of course eventually lead to the accident with Elizabeth.

After so many years it finally comes together that Michael realizes his dad is actually a psycho murderer. He runs away, trying to figure out ways to set the spirits free. As he travels, continually changing his name, he does eventually find Henry and enlists his help. He is ultimately unsuccessful as he follow the trail into Circus Baby’s and is eventually scooped.

Jeremy Fitzgerald also has a minimal part in this AU. He and Michael met in early adulthood, he eventually tries to help Michael in his task to help set the children free. They go to what is the fnaf 2 location in an attempt to put them all back together but something goes terribly wrong and Jeremy is the unfortunate victim of the bite of ‘87 and loses his frontal lobe in the process. He is the same Jeremy from the VR games.

It is William and his manipulative tactics that convince Michael to go into the underground in the first place, knowing that his sister will be there. With the promise that he can find her and the others and put them all back together.

Post-scooped:

Immediately after the events of the underground, he’s visited by Cassidy’s ghost who warns him he’s going to forget and tells him to “come find him when he remembers.” He wakes up in Hurricane with barely any memories. He’s told his name is Mike Schmidt, as stated by records found mostly in his car. Clay Burke takes him under his wing and helps get him back on his feet, basically becoming like a father figure to him. It’s through this interaction that Mike meets Carlton and becomes part of that whole group.

While the main events of the books did not happen, the friend group is still there and there are certain elements that remain the same. The group is obvi older than they were in the original canon source. 

Henry still moved to Hurricane and built the four closets but instead of offing himself, he saw them to completion, dropped them on Aunt Jen, then disappeared without a trace. So it is still the same that Charlie “moved away” and the group stayed connected through letters they sent back and forth (Though mostly it had been Aunt Jen writing them.)

Instead of Charlie coming back for the funeral type celebration like in The Silver Eyes, she went back specifically to reconnect with friends to see them graduate. As they got older, letters turned to email and live chat rooms. Charlie still went with Jessica to college and the two continue to live together. Charlie has a degree in robotics and programming, Jessica has a degree in anthropology. Charlie and John maintain a long distance relationship as he lives and works out of state. Carlton also left town for college, got his degree in performing arts and moved back to Hurricane. Marla is happily married but still keeps up communication with the others and visits occasionally. 

There is a separation between alive robot Charlie and dead child Charlotte, since The Puppet is still a present figure. Charlie is content with the fact that she is actually a robot, having discovered that years ago. John is the only other one who knows.

Mike and Carlton have a thing going on. 

Mike works at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza as is shown game 1. He works there not only out of desperation but because he feels a connection to the building and wants desperately to know about his past.

He found Springtrap in the back saferoom and since then, the rabbit does not leave him alone. He acts as Mike’s helper buddy, assisting in keep the animatronics away for the most part. He is completely silent though if you were to listen really really close you might hear motors running, a fan or two kicking on, and raspy breathing. 

Helpy is another helper to Mike but is more of a portable buddy rather than a work only buddy. He found the little bear as barely more than scraps in a trash heap, took him home and enlisted Charlie’s help in building him into the lovable little pink and white robot.

Most dreams/nightmares Mike has have to do with reliving past memories though generally he doesn’t remember what they were about once he’s awake. When he’s at the pizzeria he sometimes sees the spirits of the children who help lead him to clues about his missing memories. What would seem like hallucinations to most people, are actually clues from the spirits. But Springtrap tends to chase off any that appear when he is also there. 

Will hopefully post designs of the characters soon! And I’m in the process of writing an actual coherent story for this.

[adhd-wifi]

Wei WuXian, Trauma, & ADHD (Part One???)

What’s up y’all I’m here with another ADHD-Wei Ying post, featuring his trauma this time. In case anyone is wondering, here’s the first one. Full disclosure, I have not formally studied psychology and mental illnesses, speaking only from my own experiences plus what I’ve researched to understand my own conditions and otherwise. Specifically, I will be talking about ADHD and its relationship with PTSD, but not as much about the latter as I know less about it.

As usual, this is long and rambly and contains a bunch of spoilers, so it’s under the cut we go. :P

== Line Break ==

Wei WuXian grew up with a strong sense of loyalty towards the Jiang Sect, especially Jiang FengMian, believing that he owed them for giving him a home, a happy life, and the chance to become a cultivator, but never truly considering himself a proper family member, mostly due to Yu ZiYuan as her abuse towards him often targeted the fact that he wasn’t a “true” son to her and JFM. She also often compared Jiang Cheng to him, and JFM never bothered to address that problem and continued to favour WWX. As a result, WWX, who didn’t see JFM’s flaws due to gratitude and being spoilt by the man, ended up blaming himself for YZY’s abuse of himself and JC, and this led to him growing up internalizing the idea that he was a “burden”. 

This is a common response in children with ADHD, since ADHD causes difficulty with emotional control and children in general tend to blame themselves when they are put into such a situation, so an ADHD-WWX would take this to quite an extreme (more on that later). Of course, we must also remember that he had been alone on the streets as a child for months, and there are surely factors of trauma involved in there. But I’ll also get into that later when I talk about this trauma as a whole. 

Moving on, after Lotus Pier fell, we know WWX’s sense of guilt and debt to the Jiang Sect increased severely, and then he went through three more extremely traumatic experiences, namely; the golden core transfer, being thrown into the Burial Mounds, then actively taking part in a literal war. This was basically the most traumatic period of his entire life, and he was incredibly driven by a terrifying desire for revenge against the Wen Sect, which JC encouraged. 

WWX maintained his sanity (for the most part) throughout all this. Of course, we do see him change drastically, his happy and positive personality almost completely gone, but for the most part, he seems…”alright”. Now, it’s important to note that WWX not EXPLICITLY showing signs of trauma is in fact fairly common, as people suffering from PTSD do often repress things and pretend things are okay, so take this theory I have with a grain of salt. 

That theory is because he’s “alright” because he’s used to the trauma symptoms already. To elaborate, ADHD and PTSD (assuming this is what he ended up with), actually have a lot of overlap, to the point that even today there are multiple cases of misdiagnosis between the two, especially in terms of childhood trauma. In my theory, I’m guessing that WWX honestly thinks “he’s fine, because the symptoms he’s experiencing are basically things he’s already lived with throughout his life, and they just “got worse” because he lost his golden core”. 

Of course, this begs the question: “What if he just has PTSD (as a child) and not ADHD then? He does have trauma from being on the streets and abuse with the Jiangs.” 

It’s certainly possible, and I will admit that part of the reason I so badly want to think that WWX has ADHD is because I have it and I relate to him, but it really isn’t the only reason. I do see signs of ADHD that aren’t inherently related to PTSD (they could be, as everyone reacts and responds to trauma differently, but it’s not likely). Said signs which I mostly copy-pasted from my previous ADHD Wei Ying post are: 

Came up with a wild and unorthodox solution for a difficult question despite already knowing the “proper” solutions (Literally just his head being full of thoughts and ideas that aren’t necessarily anxiety-based)

His idea of organisation is a chaotic mess to everyone else (Inability to recognise mess rather than the inability to keep things organised)

Obsessed with spicy food because everything else is is too bland (Sensory issues)

Locked himself in a cave to work on inventions while forgetting to eat and sleep (Hyperfixative behaviour)

Somehow remembered a short, nameless tune Lan Zhan played for him once despite there being several factors that should’ve led to him forgetting, all because that tune was a special moment between him and Lan Zhan 

Now, I want to talk about one specific trait that is a symptom of both ADHD and PTSD-related trauma responses, which is the fact that WWX reacts explosively when he’s angered, though he never reacts like that for his own sake. Let’s examine the two scenes when he punched Jin ZiXuan for insulting/hurting Jiang YanLi. 

In the first incident at the Cloud Recesses, he punched JZX and fought him badly enough to get himself expelled and caused JFM and the Jin-Thot himself to directly speak to Lan QiRen about it, but WWX is shown to have gotten over it fairly quickly, even playing with ants during his punishment and being proud of punching the peacock. In the second incident, which we know as the war camp soup incident, WWX again punched JZX but instead of fighting him, he angrily leads JYL away while making it clear that he thinks JZX doesn’t deserve her. We also know that WWX remained angry for quite a bit afterwards. 

While it’s obvious the second incident is much more severe than the first, with JYL actually present and brought to tears because of JZX, and also the stress factor of them being in the middle of war, it’s still also very obvious that WWX’s explosive anger response has very significantly worsened. The main difference here is the fact that remained angry afterwards, meaning he’s lingering on the incident longer, while he got over the first incident easily. This alone leads me to believe that the first incident was more of an explosive ADHD response, while the latter was the result of both trauma and ADHD. 

So anyways, this post got longer than expected and I’m honestly still not done. For now, I’ll leave this post as “Basically why I think Wei WuXian has both ADHD and PTSD”, and MAYBE post a part two about the specifics and comparisons of the two conditions. 

I would love to discuss this further with anyone who may have better knowledge of PTSD and trauma responses, because I do find Wei WuXian’s relationship with his mental health a really strong point of his character. So if you do had knowledge in that field, please let me know if I made any mistakes and feel free to ramble on right back at me. 

Thanks for reading!

[liathgray]

Anyways, here’s that essay

Please keep in kind this was not written to be consumed by people familiar with the source material, it was for a class. It’s focused on weird stuff and was meant to compare and contrast the Judas Contact storyline and season two of Titans.

Okay, here we go.

In 1984, a four-part story was published as an arc in Tales of the Teen Titans titled as The Judas Contract. Since, it has become one of the most influential and well-known stories to come out of the DC publishing company for its bold story choices and permanently changing characters who had been around for decades, as well as introducing death as something that can occur in the present, not just in the mechanics of a backstory. It garnered four separate adaptations, the most recent of which being the second season of Titans, a loose live-action version of the titular team. Between the two, there are many small plot and character details that do not line up, so for the sake of simplicity, pedantic plot elements will be removed from the comparison, instead focusing on individual motivation, the importance of the setting, and how characters are impacted and changed by the actions in the narrative.

The Judas Contract proper follows a team of pre-established young heroes being unknowingly spied on by their newest superpowered member, Tara Markov. She works alongside Slade Wilson, a mercenary and personal rogue of the Teen Titans, feeding him important information in order to fulfill his contract to kidnap them, hence the title of the arc; there is a Judas among them. The contract is almost completed until Slade’s son, Joey, enters the picture, determined to prevent any more death at hands of his father, emotionally conflicting Slade enough for Tara to feel betrayed and collapse the cavern they had been in, killing herself in the process. In the end, it is her story alongside the former Robin, Dick Grayson, who is inspired to take up a new vigilante identity as a result. Titans, has the same basic idea of there being a mole in the group and the evolution of Dick from Robin to Nightwing, but the surrounding plot and progression are entirely different. The Titans had existed previously, but broke up due to a series of events involving Slade, starting with the murder of a teammate, and ending in the death of Joey. There’s much grief and trauma surrounding this, so when years later Dick decides to reopen the team’s old headquarters to house and train new young heroes he stumbled across, his old friends are a mix of angry, re-traumatized, and reluctant, especially with the re-emergence of their aforementioned enemy. In the place of Tara, there is Rose. Daughter of Slade and, again, the spy on the team who, unlike Tara, has a change of heart and reveals her betrayal in an attempt to warn her newfound friends.

The most striking element of both is the use of character, and in what direction the agents go in, especially in light of the overarching themes that they share; that of redemption, recovery, guilt, and betrayal. In the comic, the focal point for all of this is Tara. She is continually treated well by her teammates whom remain compassionate to her, despite her brashness and tendency to get violent. They know little of her, yet still welcome her into their home and personal lives. It is revealed to the audience early on that Tara is working for Slade, which makes each interaction she has with those she is deceiving all the more upsetting, even distressing to watch. Tara’s particular flavor of trauma deals with abandonment, something she acquired after being forced out of her home country, which later developed into malignant narcissism. She becomes very attached to the idea of being in a position of power and finds comfort in the presence of Slade, as he was the first person to justify her being alive. Tara, in the end, fails to redeem herself, instead the illusion she had built of stability and power came crumbling down after she spends ally after ally until there is no one, and she has no power left. Though it’s somewhat cynical, the idea here is that these cycles of betrayal and neglect cannot always be broken, that’s the point of this character; sometimes people are just too dysfunctional and if they are not willing to put in the work to get better and heal, they just won’t.

Rose, Tara’s counterpart, goes through a very different metamorphosis, despite the setup being similar. Her initial motivation was revenge for the brother she never knew, having been told it was the Titans who killed him when in fact it had been Slade, though it wasn’t intentional. Slade, however, blamed the Titans, specifically Dick, thus Rose believed him and was willing to participate as a double agent. When she encounters them for the first time, she is met with sympathy and understanding, people who didn’t value her as a weapon, creating incongruity with the story she was fed of elite fighters and master manipulators. Upon learning the truth about the circumstances under which her brother died, and who exactly killed him, she backs out. Rose realized she was lied to and manipulated, almost immediately grasping the gravity of the situation and seeing how hard she was pushing people whose greatest crime was daring to care about the very person she thought she was avenging. Later, she tells her newly acquired love interest the truth, following it up by saying, “I’d take it all back if I could. But I can’t.” (Zhang). Where Tara failed, Rose succeeded; she got rid of the poison in her life and recognized that she was the bad guy, alongside seeing the humanity of those she attempted to sabotage.

The theme of redemption and recovery doesn’t stop with Rose. It is furthered by all the other existing characters, young and old. On the basis of new beginnings for the second generation, and moving past the collective trauma and fear associated with teamwork for the first. More so than anyone else, this idea is present in the journey of Dick Grayson. In the original story, he is motivated to save his friends from an ugly fate while in the throes of a very real identity crisis involving the title of Robin, which he had recently discarded, believing that it was time for him to grow past the role and create a legacy entirely his own. Which he does do; he rebrands himself as Nightwing, rising to the occasion and overcoming the difficulties of abandoning a role that represented his culminative childhood and heritage to do save the people he loves. It is very much about the conquering of his external obstacles.

This is not the case in Titans, it is largely about his spectacular fall from grace and the struggle of building himself back up from rock bottom. He had kept a secret from all his closest friends about the death of Joey; he told them Joey was murdered before he found him, when in fact, he wasn’t. Joey died trying to protect Dick from Slade, and Dick felt so much guilt and shame in having been partially responsible that he lied about it for years. When his teammates find out, his worst nightmare comes true: they leave him. He is with next to no support, devoid of the family he fought tooth and nail to keep together, and is left in the tomb of his last chance to remain stable. While Rose and Tara had to redeem themselves to other people, Dick’s story is a redemption to himself, not anyone else. He stops doing things for other people and imagines himself of deserving the loneliness of, in essence, being re-orphaned. In a desperate attempt to find forgiveness, he seeks out Slade who, instead of offering the sought after peace of mind, says, “I sentence you to live alone (…) Forever knowing that your Titans family lives and breathes somewhere out there in the world, but you can never be with them.” (Morales). His lowest point is monumentally more devastating than his comic counterpart; he isolates himself entirely, going as far as to get himself jailed to carry out the self-imposed punishment, expecting to be abused and killed alone in a prison, the prospect of death barely startling him. In moments like this, the tragedy of the character hurts so much more because the audience knows that if he gets knocked down, he may not get back up, he has every reason not to. Which is why it is so earnest and exhilarating when he does. Dick was broken down to his factory parts, every mistake and bad trait not only was put on display, but magnified. He was made to confront those things before being able to piece himself back together, only then could he take on a new identity as Nightwing. Seeing him fall again is tangibly damaging to the character, so seeing him climb his way back up, scratching, clawing, slipping up, and struggling all the way, it’s all the more satisfying when he reaches the top.

A large part of this fall and rise, or in the case of The Judas Contract, the lack off a fall, is to do with the setting. The comic has all their main characters living in relative harmony or with their own spaces. When they are not off stopping cults from destroying political landscapes or battling supervillains, they are at home, going about their daily lives as somewhat normal people with jobs and relationships. It exemplifies that they all have a decent grasp on who they are, and even if they don’t, they have a bed to go back to and a support system to rely on. This is an established team with a running headquarters, lovingly named Titans Tower, the scene is only a part of the narrative as the backdrop, as a story punching bag that ultimately doesn’t matter, and that is all it needs to be. The story is much more interested in the series of events taking place, otherwise known as the act. Everything that goes down becomes a spoiler because there are so many plot points to cover and twists to reveal, thus the scene becomes story fuel, which in turn fuels the act, fueling the actors. There is less of a fall because they all have a home to turn to; it is built around the idea that the primary agents are at least somewhat realized people, with lives of their own. They react to the world around them as it throws obstacles, and the idea is re-enforced by the irrelevance of where the action takes place, wholly opposing the priorities of its live-action adaptation.

Not to say that Titans doesn’t jump from place to place, in fact it shifts its characters around quite a lot, but those moves are reactions to and influenced by the primary setting. The Titans operate out of, again, Titans Tower, but instead of a home and safe place, it is a monument to their old team’s sins. A ghost town that continues to haunt them, bringing back their darkest times and motivating nearly every move they make. When they first arrive, it’s tense, they’re subconsciously expecting the worst and prepare to bail at the first signs of trouble, which they eventually do. It is their return that sparks the entire story moving forward, and the presence of a looming shadow built from mistakes colours their reactions and triggers a sort of trauma response. Conversely, it is a beacon of hope and rebirth for the younger members. It is the first place wherein they have been allowed to be themselves, even at their worst, then collectively learn to get better as a group, a family even. The motif of past and present, trauma and recovery, informs the presentation of Titans Tower, making the growth visible in ways it previously hadn’t been. Using the setting as story plays into how Titans is structured; it drip-feeds the audience information, allowing the plot to meander so each development can happen and be processed before the next major plot point kicks in, and if they lose the setting, their home, there’s nothing else, thus the consequences are much steeper.

Throughout its two seasons run, Titans has been unapologetically divisive; deeply flawed characters with a universe quite different from that of the comics. It was not designed to make audiences comfortable, often forcing them to look at the worst parts of characters they might have previously idolized and showing the amount of hard work that has to be put into self-betterment. It is highly character-driven, mostly following interpersonal relationships and intimate growth. Barely anyone feels self-assured, often scrambling for any sense of identity. Though everyone goes through their fair share of change, this is ultimately Dick’s redemption story to himself. It departs from the source material, which often showed readers the best parts of people, that the downfall of heroes comes from outside sources while overall making a cynical statement about the cycle of abuse regarding Tara. These are heroes who know who they are and have no problem in the actions they make, whereas in the adaptation, almost every conflict is generated internally by lies and secrecy. The adaptation removes the halo from these supposed heroes and allows the emotions to be a bit dirty and muddled, creating an equally satisfying but very different take on a classic comic story.

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s Loki Episode 4: MCU Easter Eggs and References

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This article contains Loki spoilers.

“Marvel, you’ve done it again!”

OK, but seriously…this is the best episode of Loki yet, and one of the best examples of the MCU’s Disney+ TV strategy full stop. Plenty of drama and action, to be sure, but also packed with surprises, some of which are very much things that Marvel Comics and MCU fans will be excited about, and others a little more subtle.

Here’s all the good stuff we’ve found in Loki episode 4 so far. If you spot anything we missed, let us know in the comments!

Valkyrie

Young Sylvie (young Lady Loki? What’s the correct nomenclature here?) is playing with her toys, and is reenacting (or imagining) a legendary battle involving one of the Valkyrie.

The Origin of Sylvie

This episode makes it pretty clear that Sylvie is 100% a Loki, and had at least part of a childhood on Asgard.

There are some subtle touches with how we see her booked into the TVA. The pile of papers indicating “everything you’ve ever said” is much smaller than the one presented to Loki in episode one. The camera lingers on the scorched floor to indicate the real danger (and the one a child would feel) of that checkpoint disintegrating you, etc.

Considering the extremely traumatic and messed up way the TVA just stormed in and took Sylvie away, it pretty much explains her habit of never wanting to sit with her back to doors.

Not Natasha!

Hey, remember when the trailers for this show were hitting and everyone (including us) thought there was a shot of Loki talking to Black Widow’s soul on Vormir? Whoops! Turns out that was just Loki and Sylvie on Lamentis-1 after all!

Blade is Coming to the MCU

Mobius talks up all the different types of beings that they’ve dealt with, including “Kree, Titans, and vampires.” This is the first confirmation of vampires existing in the MCU, right? Blade reboot, here we come!

The Eternals Connection

When Mobius mentions “Titans” he isn’t talking about the team of DC heroes. Instead, the Marvel Titans are Eternals who primarily inhabit (wait for it) Titan, the homeworld of Thanos.

Kree

Any self-respecting MCU and Captain Marvel fan knows who the Kree are at this point, of course. But remember that we also saw a member of their rival species, a Skrull, being booked into the TVA in the first episode. The TVA’s jurisdiction is truly boundless.

Lady Sif

Loki is tortured by the (justifiably) abusive words and punches of Lady Sif, as played by Jaimie Alexander. Previously, Sif was quietly forgotten due to her notable lack of appearance in Thor: Ragnarok and the lack of any reference to her since then. In real life, it was because Alexander was busy with her TV show Blindspot. 

As for the in-story reason, according to Kevin Feige, the official explanation is that after her appearances on Agents of SHIELD, Sif was banished from Asgard by Loki (disguised as Odin) in fear that she could expose his ruse to the rest of the realm. She was one of Thanos’ victims during the big snap, but was brought back five years later.

Interestingly, this encounter with Sif seems to be referencing a story from Norse mythology, although in a slightly skewed fashion. Here, Sif is annoyed with Loki for cutting her hair without her permission. But in Norse mythology (and at least one Marvel Comics story), Loki was the reason that Sif’s hair was black and not blonde, having magically changed it while she slept as a joke.

The Time-Keepers are Fake!

In the first Avengers movie, Nick Fury compared Loki to the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz, giving us the famous, “I understood that reference!” Captain America meme. This episode keeps the Loki/Wizard of Oz connection going with the way the Timekeepers are merely a fake identity meant to scare and grandstand. I guess we’ll have to wait to see who’s really behind the curtain, though.

Considering the way they’re laid out and dressed, the Timekeepers are most definitely supposed to be reminiscent of the Three Most Important People in the World, the futuristic utopian rulers who set things in motion in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure to keep the correct timeline intact.

#47

Sylvie is held in Time Theater 47. The number 47 has a strangely deep connection to science fiction. The number occurs frequently in Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is because writer Joe Menosky attended Pomona College, where 47 is something of a meme, due to two students in the ‘60s researching whether the number appears more frequently than others. The nameless protagonist of the Hitman videogame series is also named Agent 47.

The Variant Lokis and the Post-Credits Scene

Loki wakes up and we get an homage to that famed shot in Avengers when Loki finds himself on the ground, surrounded by hostile heroes. Except this time they are Lokis. And…is that a crumbling Avengers tower we see in the background.

Of all the variant Lokis, the most significant of these is…

Kid Loki

Kid Loki made his first appearance in Thor #617 in 2010. Feeling he had hit a dead end as the God of Mischief and was too distrusted for his schemes to matter, Loki set up his own death in the event Siege, where he was killed by the Void. He was reborn as his child self, from back when he was beloved and still relatively innocent. While mischievous, Kid Loki tried to break the chains of what his previous self had become and used his powers to help Asgard and his brother. By the time he proved himself heroic, the soul of the previous Loki was able to overtake his body and ride on his reputation.

The conclusion of that story suggested that the status quo wouldn’t allow for a heroic Loki for too long, but instead of going full-on evil again, the new form of Loki instead fell into bouts of guilt over his actions. This led to Kid Loki joining the Young Avengers and eventually aging himself up to a young adult.

So hey, Disney+ shows are three-for-three on introducing Young Avengers characters!

Alligator Loki

The alligator Loki doesn’t exactly come from the comics, but it does seem to be a nod to the incident where Loki transformed Thor into a frog during the Walt Simonson run of the Thor comics. While the adventure was short lived, Frog Thor was such a beloved concept that it’s been revisited various times, including making it a separate character (real name Simon Walterson, because of course).

Classic Loki

Richard E. Grant makes an absolutely perfect comics-accurate Loki. Not only is the costume a perfect version of the way the character was portrayed in the pages of Marvel Comics for decades, where Loki was far more evil than MCU fans might be used to and…also kind of looked like Richard E. Grant now that we think about it.

Also, folks who have been rightly noting the Doctor Who parallels on this show will also note Grant has played the Doctor in a couple of forms in his time, as well.

“Boastful Loki”

We don’t know who that cool looking armored Loki wielding what looks like Mjolnir is exactly, but he’s credited as “Boastful Loki.” He sounds fun.

Miscellaneous Time Variants

Even though they’ve been around since the first episode, the “So… you’re a variant,” posters on the desk in the end credits certainly hits differently, doesn’t it?

The Moonlighting energy that we were getting last week with Sylvie and Loki seems to have been transferred this week to Loki and Mobius. Not that we’re complaining.

When Loki wakes up during the post-credits scene, he wonders whether he has arrived in hell. But of course, the closed captioning reveals that Loki is speaking of Hel, the Norse underworld overseen by the goddess Hel.

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Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s Loki Episode 4: MCU Easter Eggs and References appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[flukeoffate]

Governor Pryce Appreciation

(Contains spoilers for the Thrawn Novel)

There has been a few anti-Pryce posts on my dash this week and My thoughts on her spiraled out of control. I just wanted to throw my two cents in without making a mess of those posts. This is in no way meant to attack other people’s opinions, just studying what I like and dislike and considering reasons for the various reactions she gets.

(Extremely long character examination essay that I may have spent the better part of three or four hours on under the cut.)

I like Pryce. And I admit, the more I thought about her story and personality while writing this, I have maybe even grown to love her.

Is she a likeable person? Well, by the time of Rebels: no. Definitely not. But how many villains are likeable within the time of their introductory story? Few, I think. What I believe makes a villain likeable is their backstory, and also how charismatic they are during their screentime.

I want to examine some famous Star Wars villains. IMO there are very few Star Wars villains that are interesting until you dig deeper into their characters.

Unpopular opinion time: Vader and Tarkin are stupidly boring characters in A New Hope. They show up, kill some people, then lose a battle. We don’t know about Vader being Anakin Skywalker. He just looks cool. And Tarkin-well, I frankly think his interest came more from Peter Cushing’s acting more than the character itself. It is no secret that I’m a huge Hux fan, but the thing that drew me to him initially was his screaming speech. Other than being the ‘Tarkin’ of TFA, (and I use this description begrudgingly for the comparison) Hux doesn’t do much more than Tarkin ever did. All three of these guys are boring cardboard villains until you delve into their histories. Vader=Anakin? Holy shit, tell me more! Tarkin is classy AF and came from Space Australia? Sign me the fuck up! Hux has an abusive father and the weight of the First Order’s future on his shoulders? Damn, that is something to examine!

Pryce has the same problem as the above three: when they are introduced, they are already fully formed villains. You don’t see their developement. It’s done. Their story is pretty much over. No development is expected within their initial debut, their sob stories are not the focus of the plot. Like the aforementioned three, Pryce is 2D boring until you read her backstory. Why is she singled out as terrible compared to the others?

Well, without playing the gender card, I want to say it’s because she doesn’t display the charisma of the others. She is cold, doesn’t look flashy, and lacks charisma in Rebels. She just has one thing going for her: a generally evil and contemptuous thirst for authority and control. It’s standard and boring. I will grant that.

Where I differ from a lot of readers: I think she is a fantastic villain after reading the Thrawn book.

The most popular villains are either someone who has characteristics that you either identify with, or you aspire to have. And the more I think about Pryce, the more I realize that her story is actually very relatable, at least to me.

Pryce starts out as a member of a prominent family with a profitable mining company. She has aspirations of getting away from her backwater planet. Fuck, a lot of people have that urge. It’s not an evil trait in itself. When it the mine is forcibly taken from her family (more specifically her parents are threatened) she vows revenge, and it catipults her into motion. She gets out of there and to Coruscant. Ok, pretty basic. A lot of people hold grudges, it’s not super villain stuff yet. It’s a pretty simple vendetta focused on destroying one obviously corrupt and dislikable government official. (Which, seeing as the entirety of Star Wars is based on fighting evil and corruption, I find it ironic that her initial motive has come under scrutiny.)

All things considered, Pryce is pretty crafty in her plans. Sure, she can be devious. She has the makings of a good spy if she were properly trained. But for the most part, her plan revolves around using the established system against her enemies. THAT is a direct parallel to Thrawn himself. He makes his plans work through ingenuity and finding loopholes. But where Thrawn lacks the ability to manipulate the politics of the system, she can. But more importantly, she grows: she isn’t perfect at navigating the political system to start. It takes a fall from grace to lead her there.

And here we come to the crux of her relatability: her biggest downfall was betrayal from those she trusted the most. People she worked with, people who claimed she was their friend, people who claimed the friendship was genuine even after their schemes had been revealed.

I have had ‘friends’ betray me. Let me tell you it is a mind-blowing and traumatic experience. My therapist actively made me recognize my ex-friend drama as a real traumatic event that should not be trivialized. 

And Pryce faces trauma. She was betrayed in the worst of ways, systematically and over a period of years. Pryce was physically, emotionally, and professionally assaulted. When she was drugged during ascension week and threatened? Holy shit, that is the kind of scenario associated with kidnapping and rape. And it was used as blackmail. You don’t shrug something like that off. I felt genuine disgust and fear for her in that scene. Then later, her ‘friends’ involve her in a plot that mixes her up with SAME PERSON who attacked her? Holy shit, wonderful way to reinforce that trauma. And then her friends bring her deeper into their plot by actually endangering her in order to manufacture more trust. And that same plot was made to FRAME Pryce in the event of a take down. She could have been imprisoned or worse, all because of her ‘friends’.

But you know what? Pryce overcame all of this. She fought any fear and pushed it down. She took control of the situation with grace and dignity. She knew what she wanted and how to get it. She manipulated her attackers, destroyed them with cleverly obtained evidence, and took them down with the law at her side. And she never forgives them.

I think that is something people don’t like. That she doesn’t forgive.

Frankly, she doesn’t owe her ‘friends’ a goddamn thing. They are as brutal and manipulative as Pryce becomes. They don’t get a free pass on this for being on the “right” side of things. They are horrible people. Good on Pryce for letting them rot. They fucking deserve it.

I often find myself wishing I could do the same to the people who hurt me. I’m glad she got the opportunity and took it. I would not have the same courage. Fuck all that nonsense about forgiveness being the brave thing to do. In my experience, forgiveness is a lip service phrase followed by a societal pressure to ‘be nice’. Fuck that. I want to be angry. I want them to suffer. But I don’t follow through—because revenge is seen as a negative trait, especially for a woman. There is a reason women resort to sneaky tactics for revenge: it is unbecoming to outwardly express our rage.

Pryce is never shown to have more than a few friends. All of them betrayed her trust.

I relate to that. Viscerally.

You know who has not betrayed her?

Her parents.

We don’t have the full scope of their relationship, but from the getgo we see that Pryce is ready to pounce on anyone threatening her parents. That is a constant through the book. And her parents obviously love her at least as much as any parent should be expected. They are concerned for her wellbeing, and are generally in touch with her. And by the end of the book, she isn’t the same person who vowed to ruin a corrupt official. She has taken up her mantle of anger and distrust. She discovers that she is ready, willing, and able to kill for her family and damn the casualties. She doesn’t care about other people. Other people never cared about her. Her life has proven to her one truth: trust no one. Beyond her parents, she has no love for anyone. The times she tried were a disaster.

There is a tragedy in that. I have experienced betrayal. But I have also had true friendship. We have no indication she ever had the good with the bad. I’m pretty sure that if I can pity Hux for having a shitty childhood, I can pity her for the events that left her so jaded.

So, yes. I like Pryce. I think she has damn good reasons for being the way she is. Do I condone her actions at Batonn? Hell no. Do I hate how she affects Thrawn? Yes. But Batonn is her Anakin to Darth Vader moment, the point where she truly goes to ‘the dark side’. I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to see it unfold. She can continue to be the frigid flat villain in Rebels, because now we know where she comes from. Rewatching Rebels shows her in a new light just as much as it changes how we see Thrawn. And we might see her comments now and think: you evil bitch! But damn, if that doesn’t make me like her more. Before the book, she was a generic Imperial baddie. Now I actually have an emotional response to back it up, and that is WAYYYYY more interesting.

I think the one big thing that prevents her from getting more love is that she doesn’t have the traits that fans typically like to explore in fanfic. She is closed off, and has no real big candidate for shipping purposes. And she doesn’t have any meaningful commonality with the heroes in Rebels beyond being the Governor of Lothal and therefore the enemy. She doesn’t have a specific vendetta driving her actions, she is just doing her job. By the time Rebels takes place, Pryce is not making impressive plans of destruction and she is done with any self reflection that might garner sympathy. But I don’t think she needs it. The book is enough.

With characters like Kallus, you could see than he had a sort of joy for the hunt in the first seasons. Then you learned more about his personality and he grew. Pryce doesn’t get the same treatment. Some people love Phasma for being an absolutely cold monster with no emotion. But Pryce isn’t cold or monsterous enough to have the same level of ‘wtf?’ that makes Phasma interesting (again, adding to the list of boring characters that are only great with their backstory considered...) Most of us can’t relate to the sheer heartlessness of Phasma and are compelled by it. Both Pryce and Phasma are self centered and power hungry individuals. But where Phasma has no conscience or hint or moral code, Pryce does have the capacity for such things, and that make readers see her selfishness as a negative trait to be hated instead of studied.

Maybe people find Pryce’s motivations too easy—a lot of us have friends who aren’t friends, and love our parents. Maybe her relatability is so common that we forget that these still qualify as three dimensional traits. Maybe we are afraid to admit that we have anything in common with her.

Pryce is a good character. I liked her parts in Thrawn. I was scared for her when she was drugged. I felt her loneliness when she couldn’t confide in her friends. I laughed my ass off at the unemployment office scene. I felt her shock and sorrow when she realized no one could be trusted. I envy her tenacity and bold resolve. I don’t have half her courage.

I like Pryce.

[prosecutormiles]

Edgeworth & Mental Illness

In honor of May being Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought I would talk a little bit (spoiler alert: there is nothing “a little bit” about this post) about the different mental illnesses that I write Miles with.  Keep in mind that I'm not a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm going on my own research and experience for a lot of this.  This is, of course, my own personal interpretation.

This is not a comprehensive list, and it's bound to shift and change as I develop my writing.  Please be aware that this isn't fun stuff.  I'll put a full trigger list under the cut.

#child abuse #trauma #suicide attempt #suicidal ideation #self harm #addiction #drug use

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD is a mental disorder that can develop after a person is exposed to a traumatic event.  According to the ADAA, the disorder is characterized by three main types of symptoms:

Re-experiencing the trauma through intrusive distressing recollections of the event, flashbacks, and nightmares.

Emotional numbness and avoidance of places, people, and activities that are reminders of the trauma.

Increased arousal such as difficulty sleeping and concentrating, feeling jumpy, and being easily irritated and angered.

Miles canonically experiences symptoms of PTSD.  He has flashbacks triggered by earthquakes, he has recurring nightmares, and he avoids elevators.  Within blog canon, he also suffers from insomnia, panic attacks, and hypervigilance, particularly under times of high stress.  He is also claustrophobic and experiences anxiety from things that restrict his breathing, such as tight ties/shirt collars and swimming underwater.

It should be noted that Miles' PTSD stems not only from witnessing his father's murder, but also the abuse he suffered under von Karma.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

GAD is a mental disorder characterized by persistent and excessive worry about a number of different things, coupled with the inability to control that worry.

This is something Miles had since childhood, but he had a decent support system when he was young.  It was exacerbated greatly by his father's death, and further from training under von Karma.  A lot of this overlaps with his PTSD, but I do hold that it is alongside rather than a part of it.

A lot of his anxiety is stemmed from his triggers, but he has developed a good deal of smaller worries concerning (mostly) unrelated things: ladders, large bodies of water (such as oceans, not lakes), thunderstorms, etc. He also has a crippling fear of failure and losing control.

Major Depressive Disorder

MDD is a mental condition in which a person suffers at least one major depressive episode in their lifetime.  The qualifications for one of these episodes involve a certain set of symptoms being persistent for at least two weeks and generally will interfere with one's ability to perform their normal everyday activities.

Miles experienced a major depressive episode following the State vs. Skye case (Rise From the Ashes), although he had been spiraling since before the State vs. Edgeworth case (Turnabout Goodbyes).  Before that point, he likely would have been diagnosed with Persistent Depressive Disorder (PPD), which is a less severe version of MDD but generally lasts longer than a single episode.  Miles has had major depressive episodes before the one that ultimately saw him leaving his job and disappearing for a year, but they were less severe.

The symptoms he experiences include feelings of extreme guilt and hopelessness, loss of pleasure of things he normally enjoys, decreased appetite, insomnia, fatigue, lack of concentration, and suicidal ideation.

He was likely predisposed to MDD, but it manifested because of his trauma and abuse history.  He might have it without those things, but the severity would likely be a bit lower.

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder

I'm a bit hesitant with this one because personality disorders are a whole different category, and diagnosing them is really complex. Personality disorders are called such because they are rooted within someone's personality, sometimes due to years of maladaptive patterns of behavior.  It often has to do with using juvenile coping methods and never really learning to use better ones.  Miles does fit a lot of the patterns, but I'm not sure it's the perfect diagnosis for him because it's difficult to tell if it's a part of his personality or some sort of chemical imbalance (believed to be the cause of many mental illnesses that are not personality disorders).

OCPD, which is also called Anankastic Personality Disorder, is a kind of personality disorder that is characterized by perfectionism, need for control, and cognitive rigidity.  It is similar in some ways to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but it is considered a separate diagnosis.

Miles' symptoms include preoccupation with orderliness and organization, obsession with rules, perfectionism to the point where it interferes with productivity (i.e. he may not sleep the night before a trial because he feels the need to prepare for every single possibility that may come up in court, rather than not getting his work done on time), rigidity and stubbornness, and inflexibility about moral issues (i.e. everything is either good or bad, black or white; there are no gray areas).

While the exact cause of OCPD is unknown, it's likely that this was influenced greatly by von Karma.

With this cocktail of mental illnesses comes certain behavioral patterns and coping mechanisms.  Due to the fact that Miles is a functional member of society with a high stress job that he is very, very good at, it's clear that his coping mechanisms are working for him, at least for the short term. However, he has a distinct lack of a social life and not very many friends, along with the fact that his abuser is still a part of his life after he moves out.  Without treatment and removing the severely negative factors in his life, it's likely a major depressive episode was inevitable.

Miles' coping methods were effective in the short term, but they were not positive coping methods.  Here is a non-comprehensive list of his coping methods:

Distraction. He will bury himself in work to avoid dealing with his emotions. (Note: this is not necessarily a negative coping method, but being as he never actually deals with things, it's not a positive one either.)

Self-medication. He abuses prescription benzodiazepines (like Xanax or Ativan).  However, there is a stipulation to this:  he has a legitimate prescription, and, while he almost always takes at least one a day, he will not resort to breaking the law to get extra.  The last few days before he is allowed to refill his prescription are days you want to stay very far away from him.

Self harm.  Although less prevalent in adulthood, he was a cutter the entire time he was living under von Karma's roof.  His cuts are very well hidden, mostly on his thighs.

Avoidance. He actively avoids situations that will spike his anxiety, to the point where he climbs twelve flights of stairs every single day so that he doesn't have to take the elevator.  (Also not necessarily a negative coping mechanism, except for the great lengths he'll go to to avoid certain things.)

Aggression. While much of the time, his reprimands to subordinates are due to a lack of competency on their parts, he also sometimes derives pleasure from putting other people down.  This is especially true in the courtroom, where he can generally outwit a defense attorney.

So, what can he do about it?

This blog's canon is that Miles started receiving psychiatric treatment after leaving his suicide note and fleeing the country.  I'm not sure if this happened because of an actual suicide attempt or for some other reason.  With official diagnoses and proper therapy and medication, he was able to rebuild himself into the man we see in the later games.

He also got Pess while he was in Europe, who is a certified service dog trained to help him deal with his PTSD symptoms in particular.  She is more than an emotional support dog, although she performs those tasks for him as well.  What makes her a service dog is that she is trained to get him to safety in earthquakes, protect him in the event of a full flashback, wake him up from nightmares, etc.

She is the absolute light of his life, and he adores her.  He takes her just about everywhere, although he doesn't always need her services. The main place she does not go with him is the courthouse.  But she has a doggy bed in his office and strolls around the twelfth floor most of the day.

Just because Miles is in treatment and on medications doesn't mean he is magically better, though.  Many of the things he deals with now, he will be dealing with the rest of his life.  The difference is that he is getting the resources he needs to deal with these things in a healthier manner.  There will still be bad days and weeks and months, and there are still things he hasn't addressed. For instance, his addiction to benzos is still something he won't admit to needing to deal with and is very good at hiding it from his acquaintances. He still hasn't completely processed the idea that his life was so incredibly influenced by a man who was setting him up for failure from the beginning.  He still has trouble admitting that what happened to him was abuse.

It's a long process, but he is finally on the right path.

[jmkitsune]

so like FULL of Star Wars Spoilers

but with Episode IX coming out let’s take a minute to remember that the Skywalker Saga is LITERALLY a rhyming poem

Starting with Anakin

a young slave boy who was bathed in optimistic light when freed by Qui Gon to be Raised as a the Chosen one in the Jedi Order, but being influenced and pulled to the dark by Palpatine and we’re seeing it END with Ben Solo- essentially a PRINCE who we see start “his journey” in the darkness due to Snoke while feeling the pull to the Light.

Both young men sadly in their pain, darkest points of their lives- are brought to the point where they commit patricide (Anakin killing Obi Wan who raised him and was more than a father to him, and Ben killing his father because his father came to save him)

Anakin and Ben both had a life of pain

Anakin

spent his childhood as a slave

watched his mother die in his arms

lost his arm traumatically in combat 

was a general in a galaxy spanning war from the ages of ~20-23, where under his command- MANY clones died because of his orders and he suffered injuries including a scar on his face and many electrocutions

during a dark as hell fall to the Sith, slaughtered children and those who til that night he considered his family (the Jedi Order) including children

lost his legs and other arm to his former best friend

suffered EXTREME full body burns

believed he killed his wife and unborn child(ren)

Ben

from the womb was being influenced by Snoke

had parents who were not TOO busy for him but home life was less than ideal

exhibited his powers early and was “too much” for his parents who were not equipped to handle that due to their lives (politics and smuggling/racing/etc)

was in the dark about his grandfather

trained by a LIVING LEGEND/is the nephew of said legend, discovered hes the grandson of the most hated person in the galaxy

believes his uncle tried to kill him

abused and tortured mentally/emotionally by his second teacher (Snoke)

both these men went through all of this practically alone

Anakin because the Jedi were...failures for lack of better terminology in terms of raising ACTUAL feeling people- they told this 9 year old who grew up a slave that he was their messiah but then spent 10+ years throwing limits and rules and distrust and hypocrisy at them during a time where he is pulled into a galactic conflict/civil war and has to make decisions that impact so many- his own instructor/father figure wasn’t READY to raise a child due to trauma he had experienced in losing his master before taking on Anakin out of loyalty to said dead teacher on top of Anakin being forced to hide his wife/fears regarding her fate all so that the mentor figure who DID know...manipulated it

Ben grew up feeling unwanted, undeserving of anything good because his mother was involved extremely in politics and was’t as adept in the Force, his own father openly said he exhibited traits like Vader, his uncle/mother/father hid the identity of his grandfather and he FOUND OUT not from family so the betrayal/fear and anger coming from that lie of omission destroyed trust 

Snoke and Palpatine BOTH abused their apprentices

Palpatine abused Anakin/Vader by gas lighting him, grooming him to distrust those who cared about him, implanted fear he would fail at the things he expressed anxiety of (protecting his wife) then when he needed the suit to live- Palpatine purposely spent YEARS abusing him for failing to kill Obi Wan/suffering the injuries he endured. The way of the Sith or not...it was abuse from a teacher that resulted in decades of Anakin hating himself more than ANYTHING in the galaxy it was the source of his darkness- a never ending pit of self hatred

Snoke physically and emotionally beat and broke Ben- comparing him to Vader but implying he wasn’t STRONG ENOUGH to surpass his grandfather, flat out stating that if Snoke could turn Luke, he would not even THINK about Ben as worth his time, screams at him and strikes him with force lightning when Ben failed to defeat Rey and even more- ridicules and publicly humiliates him in front of Hux/Praetorian guards to make an example

Now are they 100% free from responsibility? NO not in the SLIGHTEST

Ben and Anakin both could have done MANY things to change their fates, however to place all the blame SOLELY on them, but then accept Anakin’s redemption but refute Ben’s

especially when only Padme/Luke forgave/believe in Anakin (Obi Wan/Yoda- wrote him off were ready to kill him- instructed LUKE to do it HIS SON WAS BRED TO KILL THE FATHER- thats A+ child raising there)

Luke, Leia, Rey and HAN all forgive Ben. They love him and want him to come home. Meaning he’s still deserving too.

The two men are mirrors of each other

Anakin “was too weak” and Vader “destroyed him”

Ben Solo was weak...and Kylo Ren destroyed him

both are literally examples of masculinity being so toxic that the dark parts of it (hatred, anger, abuse, jealousy, fear, anxiety, etc) consume and destroy the good

Anakin and Ben suffer consequences for their falls (loss of family, friends, loved ones, physical deformation, scarring, mental/emotional wounds that would take YEARS of therapy to come back from) but despite all that- deep down both keep humanity sparks in that dark pit.

Anakin upon discovering Luke’s his son- REACHES OUT and TRIES to form a bond. YES A BAD ONE (turn luke to kill the emperor as father/son combo) but it was that bond, that SON that saved him he died saving his son because it was all he had left of Padme, of Obi Wan, of his humanity.

Ben...yes killed his father. Yes “killed his uncle/teacher” (just like his grammpy) but struggles to kill Rey- looking for ways to keep her alive/by his side and ACTUALLY CHOSE to not kill his mother when he HAD THE CHANCE another First Order TIE Fighter took the shot, after Ben took his hand off the trigger. His mother - the FEMININE stayed his hand.

Both men are drowning in the toxic masculinity, they need to climb out on their own and pay for their crimes yes, but the help from feminine in their lives (the women/ hell even healthy masculine) has to be introduced and allowed to flourish in them externally

[recentanimenews]

An Introduction to the "SAIYUKI" Anime

An Introduction to the SAIYUKI Anime... As Told By a Fan Who Read the Manga Almost a Decade Ago

By Dee Hogan

After being off the air for nearly 13 years, Saiyuki has at last returned to grace our televisions with attractive men beating the crap out of each other while waxing poetic about their dark-and-stormy pasts. But with Saiyuki's previous anime seasons scarce and its manga volumes even scarcer, you might be hesitant to check out the new series.

  Well, fear not! I, an ardent Saiyuki fan who read the manga as it was coming out almost 10 years ago, am here to provide you with the story exactly as I remember it. Which is to say: Very vaguely! Now you, too, can enjoy Saiyuki Reload Blast as if you were right there with the rest of the fandom, reading the manga in the mid '00s, selling the volumes to help pay for grad school, and now racking your brain to piece together the semi-existent plot of that gloriously feelsy action series you still love so very, very much.

  Come along with me on this journey, won't you? This journey...TO THE MAX!

Caution: Loving irreverence, questionable accuracy, and spoilers for the Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload manga below. Content warning for mentions of child abuse.

  But First, a History Lesson!

Saiyuki began as a manga created by Kazuya Minekura. Well, I guess technically it began as the Chinese novel Journey to the West. Saiyuki is based on that classic epic, in the same way that Taco Bell is based on Mexican food.

Journey to the West is a Buddhist-inspired comic adventure story that follows a monk, a monkey king, a half-pig man, and an exiled immortal as they travel to India to retrieve sacred sutras. It's a complete story that has been translated in its entirety into English, unlike the Saiyuki manga, which is neither complete nor fully translated. Tokyopop imploded (along with half the U.S. anime industry) in the late '00s, leaving us one volume short from finishing Saiyuki Reload, and we've seen neither hide nor hair of the manga since. I am still salty about this.

  Pictured: Saiyuki sexily locked out of the U.S.

  The anime adaptations have fared somewhat better, at least: the three TV series (Gensomaden Saiyuki, Saiyuki ReLoad, and Saiyuki ReLoad Gunlock) were all released in the U.S., as was the film (Saiyuki Requiem) and the most recent OVA series (Saiyuki Gaiden). I only caught about 15 episodes of the anime, but my memory is that it's a reasonably faithful adaptation, albeit one that tones down the R-rated elements and adds a bunch of filler stories. Depending on where you live, you can stream both the original TV series and the Gaiden OVAs, but the two ReLoad sequels are confined to dusty DVD shelves for the time being.

  And if all these title variants are confusing you, then congratulations! You're well on your way to being a Saiyuki fan, because they're confusing to me, too. Saiyuki is to manga as Kingdom Hearts is to video games. The series has been running off and on for twenty whopping years, and it's splintered in a  bunch of directions along the way. For now, all you really need to know is that the central story goes Saiyuki, then Reload, then Reload Blast. Everything else is prequels and side stories.

  As for what that central story is all about, well...

    The Story!

Saiyuki takes place in Shangri-La, a fantasy world created by plucking Chinese fiction and history fruits from across the centuries, tossing them in a blender, and adding a splash of good old-fashioned manga tropes for spice. Humans and youkai share the land, six-shooters are as common as swords, and the main characters ride around in a jeep that's actually a dragon. (Or is it a dragon that's actually a jeep?)

  Things are going great until a youkai sorceress hooks up with a mad scientist and they start brainwashing youkai into murdering the faces off every human they can get their hands on. Then the local humans start panicking and murdering the faces off every youkai they can get their hands on, whether they've been brainwashed or not, and pretty soon everyone in Shangri-La is starting to feel pretty Shangri-Low.

To keep the peace, the local Bodhisattvas decide to send their Top Man, Double-Oh Sanzo, out West to find the culprits and tell them to knock it off. Our priest is joined on his quest by three companions: Goku, Gojyo, and Hakkai, each with their own uniquely upsetting backstory and particular set of skills. They're also all youkai (or at least youkai-adjacent), but they've been equipped with handy-dandy power limiters to keep them from going berserk like the others.

  Together our quartet travel across the lands, getting into scrapes, fighting off the minions their mysterious antagonists send after them, and frequently threatening to kill each other as they journey ever Westward, hoping to one day reach their foes and stop their nefarious scheme.

    And I'd tell you all about that nefarious scheme, but I have straight-up forgotten it. The Big Bads' oh-so-sympathetic underlings are prominent in the original Saiyuki series, but then they have to take an extended spa vacation, so most of Reload is one long semi-self-contained arc about cowboys and necromancers. It's GREAT, mind you, but all the tension and shootouts and good good angst have shoved what's-her-name and scientist-face and their plan to do something-or-other straight out of my head.

  Honestly? It doesn't matter. Saiyuki is about the journey, not the destination. More to the point, it's about the people you get to hang out with along the way.

  And speaking of...

    The Characters!

  There are a lot of compelling supporting characters (mostly antagonists) who drift in and out of the Saiyuniverse, particularly Kougaiji and his merry band of Youkai In Need of Hugs. But the story is carried by its four protagonists—most of whom you're also going to want to hug, and two of whom may try to kill you if you do—so you're gonna want to get to know them.

    A chain-smoking, booze-slinging, trigger-happy, permanently irritated Buddhist priest, he's the current holder of the Sanzo title and the wielder of some very powerful sutras, though he's usually content to keep those stored away and just shoot people in their dumb faces instead (all faces are dumb to Sanzo, I'm pretty sure). He met his trio of party members through various traumatic adventures and brought them together, offering them a chance to start over. Despite his grouchy exterior, deep down he's a good guy.

  ...Deeper than that. No, further. Little further. There it is! See? Good guy.

  Sanzo's history is told in fits and starts, which is to say I can't keep it straight anymore. I feel pretty confident saying he had a rough childhood, because this is Saiyuki we're talking about. And I know he witnessed his master's murder and it messed him up right proper. I have a working theory that Mr. Mad Scientist (Jianyi! That's his name!) is involved, because he used to be a Sanzo priest himself and sure seems to know a lot about our Sanzo, but take that with a grain of salt. Sure would make for some good drama though, yeah?

    Goku's the youngest-looking of the gang and often acts like it. Don't let that fool you, though: He's actually a powerful monkey king who was imprisoned on a mountain for hundreds of years. His memory's as patchy as mine, so all he really remembers is being lonely and then Sanzo freeing him and then him not being lonely anymore. See, happy things do happen in this story!

  Like another Son Goku you may know (who's also based on the monkey king in Journey to the West, by the by), this one fights with a staff and loves to eat. He's generally cheerful and friendly, but if you take off his diadem, he gets real angry, and not just because that diadem brings his whole outfit together, you uncultured boor. Mostly it's because the diadem is his power limiter, and removing it makes him hulk out somethin' fierce.

  I know this is the part where I'm supposed to say “you won't like him when he's angry,” but berserker Goku leads to some of the best fights and dramatic beats of the series. I like him when he's angry a lot more than I should.

    Half-youkai, half-human, Gojyo is the child of a “forbidden” affair between the two species. A literal redheaded stepchild, he was abused by his youkai stepmom and shunned by society at large. He had an older brother he loved (not like that, you pervs) who stepped in to defend him, to the point where he was eventually forced to kill his own mother to protect his brother. The two eventually meet again and it's... it's real sad, y'all. Gojyo's backstory is real sad.

  Nowadays he's a foul-mouthed gambler who likes to pick fights with Sanzo and quarrel with Goku, but he's maybe the most loyal member of the team and (despite being the least powerful) doesn't hesitate to step up to defend others. An asshole with a heart of gold, more or less. He fights with a sickle-flail that doesn't make sense but looks real cool, and he's technically a womanizer, but don't let that stop you from 'shipping him with one of his teammates. Gojyo is Extremely Shippable, you see.

    There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who think Hakkai is the best character in Saiyuki, and those who are wrong. Since the rest of the team has zero chill, Hakkai has an excess of chill to balance them out. Perpetually smiling and perpetually The Saddest, he's the team peacemaker and magic user, the owner-driver of the Dragon-Jeep, and a secret badass. Hakkai has removed his power limiters exactly twice, and exactly twice he has ruined his opponents. Other fun facts include: Can and will drink you under a table. Technically died once to save his friends. (Don't worry, he got better.)

  His backstory is basically one big D: emoji. Born a human, he had an older sister he loved (yes, exactly like that, you pervs) who was kidnapped by the resident evil youkai noble. Hakkai slaughtered ONE THOUSAND MUTHAFUGGIN YOUKAI on his way to rescue her, but she died anyway because Kazuya Minekura is a cruel, cruel manga-ka. Also, it turns out that when you slaughter ONE THOUSAND MUTHAFUGGIN YOUKAI, you, uh...turn into a muthafuggin youkai yourself. Womp womp.

  Hakkai wasn't doing so hot after all that. In a fit of guilt and despair, he even ripped out his own eye to appease a vengeful youkai (he eventually replaced it with a fake one, and got a rad monocle to match). He was ready to rip out the other eye, too, but Team Sanzo showed up in time to slap his hand away and offer him a new life and a second chance. They're his FAMILY now and he loves them VERY MUCH and they all need to PROTECT each other and—

  Er. Ah-hem.

  So. Uh. Yeah. I used to scour eBay looking for a UFO doll of this guy because that's how badly I needed to give him a hug. Hakkai is Best Boy. It is known.

    Okay, But What's it About?

  Kicking ass and having feelings and looking damn fine while doing it.

  And if that's not enough for you, then here's a bit more: The title of the manga (最遊記) is a play on the Japanese title for Journey to the West (西遊記). They're both read as Saiyuki, but the manga replaces the kanji for “west” with the kanji for “most” or “extreme.”  With one simple character, our journey to the West has turned into a journey... TO THE MAX!

  And, honestly, that's what Saiyuki is about. Big expansive world, big bombastic fights, big heart-on-sleeve emotions, big tragic histories, big meandering narrative. Everything is cranked up to 11. The series first ran in a shounen magazine (targeted at boys) before later finding a home in a josei one (targeted at adult women), which I think speaks to the way it dances between all those extremes: From rip-roaring action-adventure to character (melo)drama and on over to broad or black comedy before bouncing right back to one of its other modes again.

    Is it over-the-top, unfocused, and unapologetically packed with shipteases and emotional fanservice? Oh, yeah. One hundred percent. But, all teasing aside, I love it. I used to devour new volumes in one sitting, cheer out loud during the fights, bite my nails when my boys were in danger, giggle at their down-time bickering, and lap up all those theatrical, quasi-philosophical monologues.

  I love it in a way that's hard to put into words because it's so intricately tied to being a stressed-out high school/college kid in the mid-to-late '00s, but I think it comes down the series' overall tone and message. Because, despite its many moments of levity (particularly in the early going), as bullets fly and youkai rampage, the story always comes back to a bunch of sad-yet-defiant survivors trying to make it in a world that seems fundamentally, maybe even permanently broken.

  It's devastatingly grim at times, but even at its most dismal, it always manages to offer a kind of skeptical hope instead of just pessimistic tragedy porn. “Everything is terrible, but I'm not gonna give up,” in essence. Or maybe more to the point: “Everything is terrible, but I have people who support me, so I can get through it.” And there are times even now when that message has been a comfort to me, melodramatics or no.

  Saiyuki is too gleefully ridiculous, both in terms of world-building and staging, for me to take it too seriously or champion it as A Great Classic That Everyone Should Try. Frankly, if you read “a jeep that's actually a dragon” and didn't at least crack a smile, you probably should have walked away right there.

  Even so, with its raging battles, skewed sense of humor, smokin' hot anti-heroes, and willingness to dive head-first into sensationalized but nevertheless sincere explorations of trauma, depression, community, and identity, it scratches a particular itch and does so very effectively. Saiyukiis intense and bombastic, as overloaded with bullets as it is with feelings. It's stylish, heartfelt, top-tier trash, and I can't wait to roll around in it all over again. Lock and reload, gang. It's gonna be a blast.

  About the author, Dee Hogan

Dee is a nerd of all trades and a master of one. She has bachelor’s degrees in English and East Asian studies and an MFA in Creative Writing. To pay the bills, she works as a technical writer. To not pay the bills, she devours novels and comics, watches far too much anime, and cheers very loudly for the Kansas Jayhawks. You can hang out with her at The Josei Next Door, a friendly neighborhood anime blog for long-time fans and newbies alike, as well as on Tumblr and Twitter.

  SAIYUKI RELOAD BLAST is available for viewing now on Crunchyroll!

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