#I apologise for the verbosity

[greenouillee]

This is entirely my own impression, and likely extensively re-treading common ground within the area of mathematical pedagogy, but it seems to me that there is an almost universal drawback to all higher-level mathematical education which has lingering negative effects, and it's a problem that I'm not even sure can be avoided: If you try to assess people on their understanding of a given topic or idea, they will, by necessity, focus their effort on the content being assessed. This is, of course, productive to understanding that content, but by the nature of students having to prioritise their resources, it acts as a massive disincentive to thinking deeply about the subject or asking further questions; it is, by nature, mathematical activity that goes unassessed and unrewarded. Alone, this is likely a good thing; it's widely reported that positively reinforcing activities which are already being pursued only creates stress and externalises the reward of the activity, which would likely only harm the student and their mathematics. However, given the demands on the student, I believe that this lack of award via grading in an exam-centric course contributes to students prioritising a surface-level understanding and thinking, which, if true, is antithetical to producing strong mathematicians. This is not a problem I believe necessarily should be solved if it even can be. One theoretical solution would be more open-ended, research-focused tasks, more similar to that of theses and dissertations, but obviously this cannot be the only method of assessment as it would not provide sufficient structure for many students, and would be ill-suited to teaching essential skills, especially early on in a degree. All of this is to say, TL;DR: Goodhart's Law ("When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure,") applies to all academia, but I think the effect on how it makes students think about mathematics in particular is interesting in that the target is both antithetical to good maths and yet simultaneously inextricable from it. Apologies if you came to this TED Talk.

[cottoncandyruby]

@theredquilt had to answer in two parts cos I wanted to include this clip below. Also this is way too long and very mushy because I am all soft inside.

29. Favourite story? So, I'm taking this to mean a favourite story they've shared or story about RandL and while I absolutely adore the "Evidently, I've hurt my left hip" story, the very brief story/memory Link shares in his first deconstruction video has to be my favourite hands down.

It's the "Picture of Forgiveness" story where Link recalls the first time he drank alcohol at a party without Rhett and the aftermath etc.

So, I actually joined the R&L fandom around the time their deconstruction vids came out; I'd been watching GMM and while it made me laugh and endeared me to them pretty quickly, it was seeing them be so vulnerable on EB that made me really fall for them - I was just so impressed by who they were as individuals not just creatives or comedians. They became people I didn't just want to watch but that I wanted to know and hold, just once, if I had the chance. And this moment ^^ was one of so many oh moments where I found myself just floored by the love they have for one another.

The profundity of their connection is consistently astonishing to me, like Link saw Rhett's forgiveness as the natural predecessor to God forgiving him, "if Rhett can overlook this, surely God can" and maybe it's just me and my religious ignorance factoring here but I would've thought it'd be the other way round? I don't know. I just picture a younger Link or even myself at his age and nobody’s rejection would’ve hit me the same way, even when I came out and was rejected by my best friend, it didn't break my heart the way Link's must've when Rhett told him to get out of that car. And then the beauty of Rhett choosing to walk all the way back to Link - I just - what better picture of love or even commitment to a person, a relationship? I just - I can't imagine needing/loving someone that much that at 16/17, my 'rejection' could impact them in such a way, could be compared to the love of a deity.

Sometimes I wonder if they're even aware of how astounding their love is, regardless of whether others, or Rhett and Link themselves, see it as platonic/romantic it's just frickin beautiful. This story also feels like the best encapsulation of their temperaments, their dynamic and the heart of the relationship outside of the humour and the creativity, there’s just an earnest desire to stay and grow beside someone.

Like, Link goes on to talk about how not only were they each devoted to God but that they were devoted to helping each other stay devoted to God, but I think he's omitting the best part: through it all, they are devoted to each other. At 16 they already evidenced the lengths they would go to stay together and I mean the blood oath, its just - there is so little to be sure of in life but they were sure of each other, each little act of "commitment" like this moment like the oath, it's a promise of forever and nobody's signing up to spend forever with someone they don't adore with every fibre of their being.

And to be honest, I just don't know what to do with that other than to write excessively about it on tumblr and to daydream about finding my own forever person(s) one day.

I love their love, this story was when I first realised that there ain't nothing else like it.

[callisteios]

How do you make personality quizzes? I adore your questions and results and been wondering how do you make them work.

ummm you know how in maths class they would ask you 'how did you solve this?' and you have absolutely no fucking clue? yeah

most important thing is that i have a theme that i a. know stuff about and b. have ideas/inspiration about.

e.g. greek gods, a topic i know a fair bit about and am very passionate about is an easy one for me.

i like to try and write results first (but i don't always), pick a tone and go with it. funny/sad/surreal etc. if doing a character quiz or whatever that's easier cause you've got set results, you just need to decide what they mean to you first. e.g. zeus is always presented as like the evil one but to me he's a loser ceo who has way too much responsibility and too many chaotic relatives. so write something to that effect. repeat.

it's harder when you're doing something a bit nebulous. for my what are you the god of quizzes.. that took some time. you just got to let creativity strike i guess?

questions are usually easier. i generally don't stick to the theme the entire time, i think it's fun to mix things up. it's especially fun to play with people's expectations. you can spend ten questions asking people their favourite films and still come away with a decent enough understanding of them to tell them something fun about themselves. people like to be surprised

but again the main advice is just, be creative/be inspired. don't force the questions, i think my worst quizzes are the ones where i've just asked stuff for the sake of having a question. it hasn't told me anything new about the person, it hasn't amused them, it hasn't taught them anything. so yeah cut if you're just going through the motions.

also try to break convention where you can, the entire reason i started making quizzes was because i would always take greek god quizzes and get SO PISSED OFF. they all have the same questions

favourite animal [animals commonly associated with the gods ]

what is your temprament [Stormy like the SEAS? peaceful like NATURE? MUSICAL? PASSIONATE?]

do you more value LOVE or LOGIC?

so do not write a quiz where a person who understands the topic can easily game their way into getting the desired answer. even if someone isn't trying to manipulate their result they're exactly aware of what you're thinking. it's dull and uninteresting. write questions about things you know, if all you know is embroidery ask them what their favourite stitch is, if you're a geologist what's their favourite rock, if you like music then what's the best genre. as long as you're interested they should be too

sorry i know most of that was what NOT to do. but like i said at the beginning, i sort of sit down, zone out for a few hours, and find myself with something mostly finished.

Thank you so much for the ask <3 I'm going through a reasonably horrible period at the moment so it's really nice to hear that you like my quizzes!!! i hope this helps you, make a quiz if you ever feel like it! it's actually quite fun. and if you do make one make sure to send it along !

[fingertipsmp3]

I think one of my closest friends is pulling away from me and I’m like 70% sure it’s all in my head but that conviction is dropping day by day because all the evidence says she does not want to interact with me. And it is absolutely fucking heartbreaking

[minhosimthings]

In Love with a Stripper

Request: hiiii! I love your work and I came up with this smut with a plot thing so it'll be great if you write it! So basically sunghoon and you are fuck buddies and so hoons friend got him a stripper for his birthday and it was you bc you filled up for your friend on that day and yeah yk yk mean dom!hoon punishing yn OMG.

Pairings: Sunghoon × fem!reader

Warnings: SMUT MINORS DNI, reader is a stripper, reader wears revealing clothes, dom!Sunghoon, fem!reader, degradation, oral (f receiving), anal sex, breeding kink, orgasm denial, p in v sex, unprotected sex (nope), swearing, mentions of pregnancy, mean dom Sunghoon, fluffy at the end, slight Heeseung × reader

A/N: alright I apologise this took so much time! I really didn't have any brain left in me to do shit so I had to stetch it out a bit. Thank you for the request anon! That's a nice kinky brain you got there! Also tagging @sumaneun-stars and @candewlsy because they deserve this after Mr Park's weverse selcas.

You never wanted to end up like this. In your entire life, you had never wanted to end up like this.

But here you were.

Fucking your 'best friend forever' while you were madly head over heels for him. But it was the Park Sunghoon, so you had no other choice. After all, the boss of a billion dollar company deserved more than a girl who danced in all the city's clubs. You could very egotistically say that you were basically a celebrity.

Sunghoon had often told you to give up dancing in the club and take up a dancing job somewhere, maybe even set up your own studio. But you had declined, dancing in the neon lighting and having whiskey by the lake, and then stripping off for Sunghoon's cock was more than enough for you. And while he never admitted it, he loved you to. But it wasn't allowed, it would never be, maybe he'd change the rules a bit for it to happen, but for now, it was just strolling off to your house every evening undercover and then jump under your covers. Perfect schedule wasn't it?

Until this faithful day.

"Minnie are you serious right now?" You put your glass onto the table, and stared daggers at the girl sitting in front of you.

"Come on babe, pleeease?" She pouted at you, making the cute face you knew you couldn't resist. Minnie was a lioness when it came to dancing but when it came to you? She was a cub.

"How about Miyeon?" You asked, pressing a finger to your temple. You were stressed today, and now with Minnie's news of her sudden departure and her inability to find someone else to cover her shift added to that stress.

"Nah she's booked for the Banhgs today. They're having some party for their cousin."

"Ugh fine but you owe me." You took another sip of your drink as Minnie excitedly clapped her hands and thanked you in a verbose manner.

"Yeah yeah I know I'm your saviour and all." You rolled your eyes and smiled at her, "Who's the shift for?"

"Uh it's for-" Minnie picked out a paper from her pocket which seemed to be an invite, "A Mr Lee Heeseung. He booked it for a quote unquote 'Park Sunghoon is turning old' party."

The only thing the other people in the bar heard probably for the rest of their life was Minnie's loud scream as you spat out your drink onto the table.

"Bitch what the fuck!?" She whisper shouted to you, diverting the attention of the other bar patrons from you.

"Minnie, I'm begging you, I'll bow at your feet, but not Park Sunghoon's party."

Minnie threw you a weird look and slid her paper across the table to you. No one knew what was happening between you and Sunghoon.

"Yeah no you're doing it, you agreed no take backs!"

And that was how you ended up in the back dressing rooms of one of the most glamorous clubs of Seoul, dressed in something you wouldn't have normally worn, but since it was Sunghoon, you decided to give him a bit extra considering the huge pay you were getting. It turned out that Minnie was actually a special book, carefully picked out by Heeseung, whom you knew you to one of Sunghoon's closest friends. But he didn't know about you, so you were thankful that he accepted you as a replacement when Minnie went out. And of course Sunghoon didn't know you were going to be coming either since Heeseung had specified that you were a top secret, extra gift. Playboys, you scoffed, always thinking women were objects they could play with, although a part of your mind said Sunghoon wasn't like that. Who were you kidding? He was the embodiment of that.

From behind your curtain, you could hear Sunghoon's melodious laughter echo throughout the club. Just get it over with, you thought, just get it the fuck over with.

"And now, our dearest Hoonie, we have a gift for you." Heeseung could be heard saying on the other side of the curtain. You could also distinctively hear Sunghoon, Jake and Jay giggling like idiots.

"Ta Da!" The curtain flew open at Heeseung's words and Sunghoon's face fell flat.

You.

It couldn't be, was this a dream?, his thoughts ran wild, as Jake let out a sound of delight.

But you never danced at this specific club, Sunghoon thought. He knew most of the clubs you danced at, and this one was definetly not on the list.

"Dude, you good?" Jay nudged Sunghoon's arm as Jake and Heeseung made their way closer to the bar on top of which you'd give them a show they'll always remember. Heeseung had thought nothing of Sunghoon's reaction, he knew his friend well enough to understand when Sunghoon was shocked out of delight.

"Y-yeah I'm good thanks." Sunghoon answered, not taking his eyes off of the heaven in front of him. God you were looking extra attractive today. Perhaps it was the dress, or maybe the hair, or maybe the fact that you were dancing for him, for the first time.

Sunghoon moved a bit forward and sat directly in front of you, your legs dancing in front of him. If heaven's incarnate existed as a stripper, it would have been you, Sunghoon thought, as he looked up at your eyes, darkened and hooded like a cat's. Your hips seemed to have the universe on a belt, as they moved in synchronisation with the atmosphere. Sunghoon wanted nothing more but to brag that he had seen what was inside of the outfit you were wearing, as he heard Heeseung and Jake making comments on your waist.

"Nuh uh you can look don't touch." You bent down to Heeseung's level, his hand slowly retreating from your legs.

"Can I dance with you then?" Heeseung smirked at you. Although you never admitted it, you had always found Heeseung hot. The bastards smirk combined with his pretty eyes made you have a tiny bit of an urge to fuck him atleast once.

"Is the birthday boy not enjoying my performance?" You directed your eyes at Sunghoon, who widened his eyes to an almost comic level, "Or maybe he wants to join?"

You knew doing whatever you were doing right now would have it's consequences but boy were you enjoying teasing Sunghoon right now.

"Heeseung hyung can go first." Sunghoon leant back on his chair, spreading his legs a bit further. He gave you a cocky grin, one you knew way too well for it not to say 'you're going to be punished.'

You carefully tread down the platform onto the ground, with the support of Heeseung's very soft hands (you kept the thought of asking him what hand cream he used to yourself), your hips jutted against his. Yes this was not according to the job, to be grinding against a customer, but it wouldn't matter if one of the customers was the man you had inside you every night was it?

"God you're hot." Heeseung whispered in your ear, his hips moving in sync with yours, "You single?"

"Somewhat." You replied, throwing your arms onto Heeseung's neck. Jay and Jake had found other people to dance with too, and you couldn't spot Sunghoon anywhere.

"Where's Sunghoon?" You asked Heeseung, peeking over his shoulder, which made him raise a brow at you. God Heeseung smelled good too. Not as well as Sunghoon's pine cologne but this was fine.

"You know him well?" Heeseung asked with a smirk on his face, which made you laugh and shake your head. His crotch was now grinding against your clothed pussy, but you didn't budge.

"We know each other, like a bit. Why you want to steal me from him?"

"Your friend Minnie," Heeseung started, his arms squeezing your waist tighter, "She has another date with her boyfriend tonight. Oh yeah her boyfriend? It's me."

Your gasp was probably heard throughout the entire club. "Shut the fuck up absolute no way!" You laughed, looking at Heeseung's amused face, "The bitch never told me!"

"Well it's a secret." Heeseung shrugged his shoulders, "So can I know your secret now?"

"Hyung can I have a piece of her now?"

Before you could even open your mouth, Sunghoon's voice ran behind you, and as you spun around on your heel, there he was. Looking like the angriest man on earth.

"Sure she's all yours." Heeseung let go of your waist, "I'll see you then, pretty."

You were thankful that Sunghoon didn't hear Heeseung's last words which he carefully whispered into your ear.

"Try to stay alive."

"So you like Heeseung hyung huh doll?" Sunghoon cocked his head to the right, loosening his tie from the grasp it had on his neck.

Fuck he looked hot in dim lighting, you thought. You were surprised when Sunghoon didn't say anything to you at the club nor in the car when he took you home. It was...weird, to have him talk so casually with you, as if you were husband and wife, not even a tint of anger in his voice.

But as soon as you stepped foot in the house, you learnt why he did that. The touch of the cool metal of the handcuffs on your wrist made you wince as you tried to wriggle out of their grasp.

"So what if I do?" You spat, not looking at Sunghoon, "You never thought about telling me what I actually am to you so I thought I might look for..newer horizons."

"Oh yeah?" Sunghoon wore a cunning grin like an arctic fox ready to pounce on its prey, "Well we'll see about that later."

Bending down to your legs, Sunghoon spreads them further apart, his skin pressing against yours like hot iron. It was pathetic how the mere touch of his fingers made you whimper in pleasure.

Your cunt is already so wet, your folds swollen and muscles relaxed, ready and desperate for Sunghoon’s touch. He gently slides a finger into your entrance with little resistance. You clench around him as you search for his lips, which find yours instinctively. 

Sunghoon slides his finger out of you slowly. Your beloved was still mastering your body, but he always seemed to know when you were ready for more. As he slides a second finger into your entrance, he breaks your kisses, watching you as you take more of him. He pushes his long fingers into you until he is knuckles deep, which evolves your little whimpers into breathless moans.

Your wrists ached for the touch of his hair, his soft curls all tangled up between your fingers, but the handcuffs weren't allowing it. Your wriggling under Sunghoon's body made him chuckle.

"No can do baby." His eyes darkened, "Take my fingers like a good slut there we go."

Sunghoon watches as he unravels you with the curl of his fingers deep inside your cunt. Your eyes roll at the intense sensation, and you’re already seeing stars.

As Sunghoon is hitting that sweet spot deep within you, his thumb begins to circle your clit, causing your eyes to go wide as carnal pleasure possesses you. 

Suddenly, Sunghoon pulls out his fingers from you slowly, watching your needy expression with a smirk.

"You really think you can cum on my fingers after all you've done?" Sunghoon asks you, his fingers still lingering over your labia, you realised that your cunt was clenching around nothing even when he pulled out, "Whose slut are you now?"

You were confused as to whether or not you should give him an answer or not so you gave him a quizzed look, which he seemed to definetly not like.

"No answer? Tch tch." He clicked his tongue, "Answer me slut, and I'll think about letting those cuffs off."

He leaned forward and stared into your eyes with darkened eyes. "Whose fucking slut are you?"

"Y-Yours Daddy."

"Louder."

"Your- Ah fuck!" You let out a whimper of pleasure as his bulge rubbed over your pussy. Sunghoon reached over and carefully removed your cuffs. You let out a sigh, feeling satisfaction wash over you at the retreat of the col metal.

"Turn over," he said while pulling away, "all fours baby."

You followed his demands and pressed your face into the pillow, facing the side of the room where a large mirror sat, you watched him in the mirror as he pulled his sweats down letting them rest below his thighs, followed by his boxers. His cock sprung out hitting the fabric of his shirt, causing him to let out a hiss through his teeth. His tip red and needy, leaking with precum.

"try and be quiet." Sunghoon said while rubbing you lower back with his hands. You hummed in response while still watching him in the mirror as he lazily tugged on his cock before lining it up with your entrance, rubbing it up and down your slit, collecting your arousal before placing his tip into you.

Quiet moans and curses left his mouth as your ass bounced off his pelvis, the sound of skin slapping filling the room.

With every grind and suckle on your clit you were getting closer and closer to coming. It was a wet and filthy experience, your arousal dripping down Sunghoon’s chin and soaking his face. You could feel it down your thighs, his chin scratching against your delicate skin with every jaw movement, every grind. 

You could feel your slick dripping down your thighs as he picked his pace up, your eyes having no place to go but the back of my head. You both gave up on being quiet a while ago, more whimpers and groans filled the room.

“mmh, s-so close.” you moaned pathetically while gripping onto the pillow. You felt a sort of shame, feeling this good because of Sunghoon, who, at the moment, you were supposed to hate with all of your heart.

Wth one quick movement he pulled out and flipped you over, his eyes now locked onto yours.

"No cumming until I say so got it?" He growled in your ear, strands of his hair falling onto his face, making him look celestial. Not having the strength to answer him back, you whimpered, feeling his tip at your pussy.

“Say it.” He murmured, squeezing his fingers on the side of your neck to make it all woozy. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

“I want your cock… Daddy… please.”

You’re such a whore, the way you gasp at all the right times as his big cock stretches around your tight walls. He bets you’ve taken cock hundreds of times, but he’s determined to be the best, making sure you know what you’re worth. No one else deserved you, only he deserved you. Now, and forever.

He’s really pounding you now, hands gripping roughly at your hips in an attempt to drive himself further into your cunt, watching as your pussy leaves a milky ring around his base. His hair strands dangle in his face as he bends down to shove himself deeper into you.

‘god, you’re taking me so well,’ he grunts, bucking his hips in pleasure. ‘such a fuckin’ whore though.’

"Nuh uh not yet baby not yet." He says, grinding his hips against you again. Your fingers are pulling at his curls again and you're hopelessly taking what he's giving to you.

"I wasn't—" One of his hands trails down to your wet cunt, rubbing your clit a few times before pinching it softly. Your whiny moans only encourage him, feeling you clench around his fat cock. He pulls out before slamming himself back into your tight hole, pinching your puffy clit even harder.

"you were made for me. you're my whore." he whispered in your ear, licking your jaw as he thrusted mercilessly into your holes.

The sounds of skin slapping, squelching, groaning, whimpering, and moaning were the only things you could hear. The occasional degrading things or sweet nothings Sunghoon would whisper into your ear made your brain go foggy.

"gonna fill you up good n’ proper..." he whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut and biting into your neck, "Want to have my kids hmm princess?"

"Ah fuck-fuck- a-ah." You moaned, not being able to answer his question.

Your legs wrapped around him letting him know that you were close. Sunghoon had an urge to pull out, to teach you a lesson. But something in him told him to let you cum in him, to let him make you a mother, his child's mother. Tears streamed down your eyes as the pressure in your stomach built up.

“Daddy—‘cummin” you moaned out. Sunghoon began to fuck you harder and faster. You felt the tip hit the plushy part in you. Your brain turned into mush and drool began to run down your mouth.

“Cum for me princess. I wanna hear you scream my name~” he said in such a sweet sultry voice.

The knot in your stomach snapped.

“SUNGHOON!”

“Cum with me, my darling.” Sunghoon whined with you, bringing his lips down to yours once again roughly. The moment his kiss was brought upon you, you felt like you exploded with pure bliss. Your legs shook against his arms again as you damn near screamed into his mouth. Sunghoon wasn't far behind you, moaning loudly into your own mouth as his cum spilled into you.

It wasn’t until after some time, when Sunghoon's cum was dripping against your walls, and his seed was flowing out of you that he pulled out. You were drooling, eyes rolled back and cum pooling on the bed.

Not saying a word to you, Sunghoon made his way off of the bed, and into the bathroom, where he quietly picked up all the stuff he knew you loved for aftercare.

"Hoonie..." You whined, feeling the empty space next to you, "I want to cuddle."

The sight of your pout melted Sunghoon's heart, and he couldn't resist. Cleaning you up quickly and lighting your favourite scented candle Sunghoon promptly jumped into bed and pulled you into his arms, his body heat successfully warming you up.

"I didn't hurt you did I?" Sunghoon asked you, looking down at you.

You simply nodded your head no and snuggled closer to him, sniffing in his cologne.

"Im sorry Y/N." Sunghoon sighed, positioning your face to his. His eyes were simply sparkling at you, and his expression seemed genuine.

"Im sorry for what I haven't said to you for so long." He breathed out, you could feel his heartbeat become quicker, "I love you, I really do, and-and I want us to be more than just friends."

"Why didn't you say so before you fucking idiot?" You giggled, pulling him in for a brief kiss, "I love you too."

"So, now you're my wife?"

"Girlfriend first Mr Casanova."

[sailtomarina]

I don’t regret it

cw: smut, feels

She watched the sliver of light arcing across the bedspread and his white blond hair. The curtains didn’t completely block out the sunlight. Hermione could reach for her wand to spell them shut if she knew where it was; at some point she’d lost it the previous night amidst the frantic fumbling. It was probably somewhere on the floor along with the rest of their clothing.

Even in sleep, he was breathtaking. His face glowed with a translucence that defied the lines of stress he wore when awake. The lips that scowled more than smiled these days were parted as he breathed deeply, pale pink and inviting. She shivered as she recalled the way they’d felt against her own, how they’d glided down her torso and discovered every sensitive point of her body. Silver grey eyes had glinted upward, frequently checking in on her every reaction as he wrung pleasure out of Hermione.

They hadn’t spoken a word since the kiss that started it all. They hadn’t needed to, their bodies communicating what their tongues could not. Draco, yes, “Draco”, not “Malfoy” anymore, seemed to need her more than life itself that night, and Hermione was compelled to respond in kind. She was a volatile potion of emotions just waiting to explode given the chance, and shatter she did in the arms of a young man she’d fallen deeply, passionately, irrevocably for over the course of the past few months.

Like the barely-there kiss, her feelings started small.

No. That wasn’t correct.

Her feelings for Draco had always been large; volatile, really. She’d hated everything he represented, the way he’d treated and looked at her, the years of animosity that they shared. But, she also pitied him. That pity, as threaded through with distrust as it had been, had transformed into begrudging respect.

He’d apologised to her. It hadn’t been overly passionate nor verbose. He’d found her alone and offered his remorse. He’d even go so far as to clearly state that forgiveness was not expected; he didn’t think he deserved it. Then, he’d gone his way and Hermione was left with an inner turmoil that struggled in search of an outlet.

She’d always known he was clever, and now with nothing but his studies to focus on, Draco finally showed what too much pressure and pride had stifled: a hungry mind that took mistakes in stride and used them as stepping stones to higher knowledge. For once, Hermione had a worthy rival.

And now, she was in his bed.

He sighed, then grumbled as the shaft of light hit his eyes. He turned further towards her, hands reaching out to tug her close. She allowed herself to be tucked against his chest, naked skin to naked skin. His heart beat strong and steady beneath her splayed hand. Circe, she loved breathing him in, a combination of body soap, woodsy cologne, and his own masculine scent. Slightly salty, probably from their exertions as he brought her to orgasm not once, not twice, but three times, once with his hands, then with his mouth, and finally on his cock as he folded her nearly in half to press in almost painfully deep. She’d relished the ache then, just as she delighted in the way her muscles smarted even now. They were reminders of their time together. If this turned out to be a one-time thing, then at least she’d always have that.

She sensed the moment he woke up, his steady inhales stuttering and turning into shorter intervals. Perhaps if she kept silent, she could hold on to this moment just a little bit longer. With their legs tangled together and his arms wrapped around her, Hermione could pretend that she was his and he was hers.

She bid her breathing to remain slow and measured. Kept her body relaxed. When his hand drifted down her back to cup one buttcheek, she fought to stay still. Then he tightened his hold and pressed his hips to hers and she felt him, hot and hard and wanting.

She could keep pretending to be asleep, but she wanted him inside of her more. It was time to open her eyes.

When she did so, tilting her head upward in the process, it was to find Draco already looking down at her. Eyes half-lidded, lips parted and descending. She met him part way. Any sour breath they might have had was overpowered by the sweetness of this kiss. It was soft, lingering, his tongue lightly rubbing against her own as he rotated his length against her in an unspoken question to which she arched in acceptance.

He rolled them so hovered above her, limbs caging her in, his soft hair hanging down into his eyes, which closed as he leaned forward to press his forehead to hers.

“Do you regret it?”

The first words since yesterday, and this was what he asked?

She realised that, like her, Draco was just as uncertain about the future. They’d never clearly stated their feelings about one another; they’d just gone with the flow and she’d assumed his heart was more fortified than her own.

“I wouldn’t be here if I did,” she replied. She opened her eyes to stare up at him, willing Draco to see the truth for himself. She wanted to be here, wanted him now and for as long as time allowed.

“Good, because I’m yours now.”

Her heart hammered at the declaration. The tightening of his jaw and his intent stare underlined the statement. She felt overwhelmed, tears of relief and desire threatening to spill. She could only nod, afraid she’d burst into ugly sobs and ruin the moment. That seemed to be enough for him.

He captured her lips, fitting the broad head of his cock to her opening at the same time and slowly pressing forward. It was tight, but she was wet with want and had been almost from the moment she’d woken up. She spread her legs to make more room for him, and he took advantage, thrusting to the hilt and groaning into the kiss as he did so. She felt impossibly full, even though she knew she’d taken him even deeper before. Even if she hadn’t, she could no longer deny him anything.

He brought a hand back down to tilt her hips at just the right angle for his pelvis to grind against her clit with every unrelenting drive of his cock. Along with the slide of his swollen shaft within her throbbing walls and the way his other hand plucked at her nipples, Hermione found herself right back at the precipice of her apogee. It was agonisingly close, yet still she withheld herself from the plummet, wanting him right there alongside her.

Draco picked up on her whining pants. She clawed at his muscled back and shoulders, and still he forged onward, pulling back nearly to the tip only to press right back into her depths, his balls slapping against her arse. Hermione might have blushed at the sound if she had the presence of mind to think of anything outside of him inside of her, but that was as likely as her ever letting go of him. She was beyond embarrassment or reproach.

He sounded pained as he moaned, low and deep, and Hermione could feel the way he thickened within her just before he froze, the tendons of his neck taut as he threw his head back. As the first spurts of his spend spilled into her, she finally let go, crying out her own release that seemed to go on and on as her body milked him of every last drop.

He caught himself on his forearms before falling on top of her, but Hermione wasn’t having any of that. She wrapped her arms around his neck and yanked him down. His weight was a comfort she could never find overbearing.

“Stay?” she murmured. She swept her hands up and down the warm planes of his back, then hugged him to her, holding tight to the shoulders that carried so much. Too much.

He chuckled, the puff of air tickling the crook of her neck where he rested.

“Always.”

1367 WC

2.25.24 Twitter prompt from DramionePrompts “I don’t regret it”

Cross-posted on Tumblr and AO3 (eventually)

I originally meant to write this as straight up unapologetic smut, but then couldn’t resist a bit of backstory. Ahhhhh! Why does the story always have to sneak in there somehow?

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

(Art for Commander Wake, John Gaius, and Ianthe Tridentarius used courtesy of @midnightcrows. Check her out, her art is fantastic!)

The top two characters will be eligible to proceed into the bracket!

Propaganda under the cut. Be warned, it is extensive - Locked Tomb fans are apparently... verbose.

Commander Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back To Reality Oops There Goes Gravity:

Leader of a terrorist organization devoted to killing God. After she died she hung on as a revenant through sheer self-righteous hatred, tried to kill two different saints, and tried charging God with crimes against humanity. Also she carried her daughter to term solely for the sake of killing her as a ritual sacrifice, and referred to the child only as "the bomb" throughout the series. She's morally ambiguous (instead of just awful) because she's probably right, but it's honestly a close-run thing.

She was the leader of an insurgent force who hate necromancers and want to destroy God, who are descended from filthy fucking capitalists. She was the most successful leader in years. She fucked a guy ordered to kill her and the guy's dead best friend who sometimes inhabited his body. She allied with two of God's saints to unlock the tomb. The saints fucked god and stole his cum. All the eggs the saints gave her died so she impregnated herself with the god cum and gave birth to a baby. She called the baby bomb. Her lover pushes her out of the airlock. Her ghost angrily recants his name and the people who find her baby name her after him. She possesses her daughter's two handed sword. Her daughter jumps on a fence to sacrifice herself for her homoerotic archrival slash best friend, and said best friend becomes one of god's saints. She possesses the body of one of god's dead saints to rekindle her relationship with the girl possessing the body of the guy who killed her. She invades her daughter's rival slash lover slash friend's mind and attacks ghosts contained in her fucked up dream bubble. She starts moving around the space station they're on in the real world while her daughter's consciousness possesses her arch rivals body after her arch rival enters said dream state. she saves her daughter with god's life. She argues with god and tries to charge him for war crimes. her ex kills her. but none of that matters what really matters is that “I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE” this quote. this quote is amazing. “I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU” also this one. anyways vote commander wake

Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity is commonly called Commander Wake. Her people are being colonized and oppressed by the Emperor Undying, the immortal emperor of a society of necromancers. Commander Wake is the leader of the resistance against this occupying force. As for her character: Commander Wake is unscrupulous and unyielding, definitely more prone to "the power of incredible violence" than "the power of love". She will use any methods at her disposal to fight back against the necromancers. She is described as proud and unforgiving. She never backs down and her strength of will and determination are unmatched. Some of her girlboss moments (spoilers for the entire The Locked Tomb book series): She is the only one the Emperor and his people consider a worthy foe. She colludes with the Emperor's most trusted soldiers and in fact has sex with two of them (who share a body but that's not important right now). She needs the Emperor's blood to defeat him, so she gets her colluding buddies to get her some of his semen to grow a child. When it doesn't go quite to plan, she simply decides to carry the child herself, fully intending to kill it for its blood when it is born. After she is killed, she haunts a sword (and the narrative) for years and years. Later she possesses a corpse and comes face to face with the Emperor, where she proceeds to argue with him about his warcrimes and never backs down. The woman she slept with is still obsessed with her a full book after her double-death. She had no necromantic powers but with technology and military strategy worked to understand and mitigate how necromancy works and what it can and cant do. She insists that the Emperor Undying use her full name, to his face, even when she is completely at his mercy! Her determination is strong enough to bend the genre of an entire haunted dream to her will! When the necromancers come at her with swords she comes at them with. Gun

John Gaius, His Celestial Kindliness, the First Reborn, and The Necrolord Prime

John Gaius, His Celestial Kindliness, the First Reborn, and The Necrolord Prime is the Emperor and primary deity of The Nine Houses. He is perhaps (major spoilers for The Locked Tomb) not technically a girl, but by god does he - Gaslight (Erasing his friends' memories then telling them lies about their past and imposing his perceptions of their personalities onto them) - Gatekeep (Telling his closest followers they need to kill their life partners in order to become immortal WHICH IS NOT EVEN TRUE. John keeps the method of how HE became immortal a secret from them!) - GIRLBOSS (creates a multi-planetary society that worships him as a God) He is also morally grey: He necromantically resurrected millions of people after a planet-wide cataclysm. He caused said cataclysm by nuking the earth. He only nuked the earth because he wanted to stop the billionaires from escaping the planet, because in doing so they left everyone else to die. He wanted to save everyone. He loves the Earth. Even though he is a man he is SUCH a morally ambiguous girlboss

Prince Ianthe Naberius the First, the Lyctor Prince, the Saint of Awe, previously known as Ianthe Tridentarius, the Princess of Ida, heir to the House of the Third, Mouth of the Emperor, the Procession, House of the Shining Dead:

shes tall pale and has no ass. she has the ability to manipulate her fat distribution so she chooses to look like a wet cat. everybody forgets about her because her sister is so hot, but while everyone else is fucking around and trying to figure out whose been killing people, shes been figuring out the secrets to an ancient necromantic theorem. it turns out her hot sister isnt actually a necromancer and ianthe has been doing the work of two necromancers her whole life. she regularly does cannibalism. she eats the soul of her cavalier, who nobody cares about, and becomes a saint of the king undying. her sister is deeply upset that she did not eat her. she gets her arm ripped off by one of the original states. she performs a lobotomy on one of the main protagonists because she asks her to. they have immensely homoerotic tension but its entirely one sided. she cries every night. her soup recipe amounts to burning onions on the bottom of a pot. the scene in which said main protagonists creates her an arm out of bones is the closest the series has to a sex scene. she meets the other main protagonist and says "but your fist is so large and my ass is so small". she stops god from being killed, which everybody hates. in the space between books, she has a terrible terrible no good friend ship with the main protagonist i mentioned before. i love it. they probably fucked and it involved chussy. they have friendship bracelets. she possesses the body of her dead cavalier who nobody cares about to gallivant around in. shes dangerously obsessed with her sister, who after not being eaten has been radicalised and now is a leader in an insurgent cell. she is the target of "then perish" during the epilogue. apparently in the next book she is going to do something horrible. i love her immensely. she has very few redeeming qualities. she is my best friend

listen. she ate a man's heart to become immortal. she is described as the shadow of her twin sister. she calls the protag a fruitcake. she will betray anyone and anything to get what she wants.

Wet Rat who sucks commits cannibalism for won her way through the lyctor olympics of the first books ate her cavalier to go to gods party swinger yatch. She has no fucking idea of what she's doing but she's slaying all day everyday, literally and figuratively. Made everyone believe that her twin sister was a super good necromancer while her sister has no powers by necromancing for her in secret. Idk she's just. She's just so.

The uglier of the supposed pair of the genius necromantic princess twins. Jk, she’s the only necromantic one she's just so good she seems like two geniuses combined, she flies under the radar, doesn't take part in gruesome lessons on powerful necromancy but just figures everything out by thinking alone, kills a dude she known her whole life the moment she learns it will give her more political and magic power, does a truly villainous monolouge when caught for that murder cause who cares about a male dying why are you so mad. Then later murders her much stronger beloved mentor the minute she's asked to gain even more power and prestige and from a princess of one planet becomes a saint and prince and military powerhouse of a divine empire, loyal only as long as her hotter twin sister is safe, truly an inspiration for all feminists everywhere

Harrowhark Nonagesimus was submitted without propaganda.

[just-ray]

Most unreal irish politics things. Will reblog if I find more.

-sinn féin harmonica

-simon harris wet wipes

-"ohohoh, that's a great line, but unfortunately this graph here shows you're WRONG. YOU'RE WRONG, YOU'RE WRONG, YOU'RE WRONG! LOOK at the increase in social housing since MY party came into office. You are YET AGAIN WRONG. If there- if there was- if a contest in fluency and verbosity was an Olympic sport, you would certainly win a gold medal, but it won't build houses." (Quote taken from leaders questions)

-"I don't need you to Mary-Lou-Splain to me" (Quote taken from leaders questions)

-HEALTH MINISTER (now the taoiseach) references covid 19 as "the nineteenth coronavirus" (taken from radio interview)

-apologises on twitter saying he made "an awful booboo" (taken from twitter)

-Minister falls asleep in the Dáil

-Minister speaks out against short haul flights. Takes one comically soon afterwards.

-Taoiseach explains that chocolate is better out of the fridge

-Opposition Leader makes a tiktok video about struggling to play pool

-Taoiseach makes a tiktok video saying he has "a bone to pick with Taylor Swift"

-Tánaiste slanders ticket master

-Governemnt somehow get's conned out of more than a quarter of a million for a bike shed.

-The oppositions "simonopoly" video campaigning against Fine Gael by editing the Taoiseach onto the Monopoly man

-this 🔽

-the alan Kelly rap

-"ya ain't seen nothin yet" (taken from interview)

-the fact that the opposition and government genuinely team up whenever anything goes really REALLY badly wrong (which gives me a sliver of hope for this country ngl)

-michael healy rae and the cataracts thing

-opposition leader accusing the Tánaiste of mansplaining

-Eamon ryan pulling his house rubbish out of a bag and showing it off in the dáil

-the People Before Profit leader dabbing in the Dáil

-Past Taoiseach and Hulk Hogan

-opposition leader doing the macarena on tiktok

[dude-wheres-my-ankheg]

WIP Wednesday

(I was so slow to respond it is actually Wednesday again)

Thanks for the tag @ferindencadash!! (posting on the bg3 blog since its a BG3 WIP).

No pressure to join but tagging @insanefan, @sweetmage, @gothic-ivory, @tavyliasin, @hydropyro and anyone else who wants to play!!!

-----------

They all piled into the little blacksmith’s shop front, and immediately Lae’zel was at the counter, making requests that sounded like demands, as was her unfortunate way. Elorin was distracted looking at the wares as the woman behind the counter dove into her sales spiel. Lae’zel was just telling the poor woman to still her overactive tongue when Elorin finally turned his attention their way, ready to apologise on Lae’zel’s behalf (and likely meet the woman’s ire for it as usual), but his breath caught as he laid eyes on the shop keep.

She was a huge woman, plated in golden, glistening armour. That was not what had Elorin stricken though. The woman was a dragonborn. Utterly magnificent, a glorious reptilian snout with horns and spines decorating her skull. The most intriguing thing about her though was her scales – her incredible brass scales. His hand stopped halfway to his forehead, moving before he had even realised it.

The shopkeeper was halfway into her apology when her eyes fell on Elorin, and her shining amber eyes widened, jaw falling to expose her rows of pointed teeth.

“Your face!” she said, voice bright and full of wonder.

Elorin’s companions all cringed and sucked in breaths, ready for him to anger, but instead his face burst into a smile. Thank the gods she was the one to comment. He nodded, taking a step closer and all but elbowing Lae’zel out of his way.

“Look, just look!” the shop keep continued. “Are you a dragonborn? You don’t look like a dragonborn. And you’re so tiny! Oh, I’m sorry, I just mean-”

“It’s okay,” Elorin said, eyes wide with wonder as he peered up at her, a foolish open mouthed smile on his face. “Ava'yorn.”

Her already delighted face seemed to brighten further. “You speak the tongue?” she asked, her words in draconic.

“Not well,” Elorin said. “I was learning when...” He faltered a moment. “I lost my tutor.”

“You seem to speak it really well to me!” the woman said, and Elorin realised that he had been speaking it that whole time, and so was she. He floundered a moment, confused, but she carried on. “It’s great to meet you, I’m Exxvikyap!”

“Elorin,” he replied.

“You don’t look like any dragonborn I’ve ever met.”

“I’m a drow,” he said, before laughing a little bashfully. “Mostly.”

“A drow-gan!” Exxvikyap suggested and they both laughed. “A brass drow-gan too! The best kind, so I hear.”

He grinned. Her charm was infectious.

Lae’zel loudly cleared her throat next to them and Elorin caught himself.

“Oh, right,” he said, switching back to speaking common. It took more effort than he remembered. “Apologies. We were just talking.” He turned his attention back to Exxvikyap. “So you’re a blacksmith?”

She giggled, turning her snout to the side bashfully. “I wish. I mean, I hope to be. I work for Gyldro Angleiron. The Gyldro Angleiron. Just a shop assistant for now but one day an apprentice, I hope!”

Exxvikyap and Elorin began to excitedly converse about Exxvikyap’s aspirations, her words excited and swift, Elorin frequently interjecting with questions. The rest of the troupe watched with a growing sense of puzzlement.

“What is... happening?” Shadowheart’s lip was curled in utter confusion.

“I believe what we are witnessing,” Gale began as the pair babbled on before them, “is the convergence of two folk with ties to dragons, brass dragons to be specific, known very well to be, shall we say, rather keen to converse and somewhat verbose in their manner-”

Wyll stifled a chuckle. “Are we still talking about the dragons?”

Gale stopped mid word, a wry smile creeping onto his face as he gave Wyll a sidelong look. “There are people who travelled to hear my words, you know.”

“And those who travel to be rid of them,” Lae’zel said, though there was something like a smile touching the corners of her eyes. “And yet you follow.”

[myreallovelymind]

hi there! you're my favourite account 💕

i'm a fellow edging slut and recently got into denial, and your diary entries have helped me immensely in articulating my feelings about it. i actually realised i've been practicing denial for long stretches of time since i discovered how to masturbate, without having the vocabulary to explain why or what i was doing till later in life. has that been the case for you too - i.e., practicing some form of denial before you even knew what it was, or exploring it as a kink?

and (if you feel okay answering that) what was your partners' reaction to your choice to stay denied? i'm currently in a situationship where my wish is respected, but i know i'll end up single sooner or later and sometimes feel dread at the thought of having to explain my denial before sex to new people. i'm considering pretending to orgasm but i'm an awful actress. this is me being verbose rather than me asking for advice, so i guess i'm just sharing my frustration :/

Ps: if these questions are too intrusive, i apologise. regardless of whether you answer, i'm wishing you all the best 💕

Hi! Aw, thank you! I know it's going to be a sweet message when it starts with hearts!

No question is too intrusive. I'm an open book here.

The first question in terms of masturbating pre-kink discovery. I actually found this denial kink on Tumblr when I was... 16/17 maybe. Probably younger. I used to cum and cum and cum to all these girls being achy and needy for years. It's not until just before COVID when Tumblr did it's porn ban and bdsmlr started that I explored it. I message this blog and the man behing it became my dom for 2 years. That's when I got into denial!

And about sharing with people about your denial. It depends! I made a vow to myself to not faking cumming anymore. I also try to date people who like kink in general because they tend to be more open-minded and I've learned that I can't date vanilla men. So a conversation about what we like always happens before sex, hence why telling them is easy for me. The guy I last slept with respected it, but I know he didn't like not making me cum but fuck him. It's a huge part of my sex life. Long story short, I think there are a few options:

They are open-minded and you tell them. You have that conversation about kink.

You don't cum easily so you don't need to fake it because you were never close. If they ask you, say you didn't and that's okay (I don't cum easily without toys)

You fake it but you can learn to believe that your 'fake' orgasm is your real one. I've done that before and it's a mind fuck. You get to incorporate your kink without them knowing. Con... You're not honest with them.

I hope I answered these questions <3

[paperbaacks]

review:

“I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed”

i wanted to love this one, i really did... almost every other review i read for this book talked about how it changed their life, about how this is a new favourite. and for the first half—up until regan and aldo are having their six conversations—i was completely on board. i was fully expecting this book to be an easy four star read.

it's only when i got to the second half of the book did i realise how wrong i was...

everything changes so quickly—the prose becomes extremely purple and verbose and dense. every plot point is reduced to sex. they fuck when they're bored and they fuck when they're horny, when they're fighting and apologising and when they're sad.

the sentences become choppy and repetitive to show regan's manic state—and it's fine!! it works out well for like two or three pages but then it genuinely becomes so difficult to focus on and to enjoy.

all in all, i can tell this book was a labour of love, it just... didn't come across as well as the author intended. i wish it would have ended with the six conversations, i would have enjoyed it so much more that way :(

[disniq]

Heya, I was wondering if I could get a quick comic book rec. I've read RHaTO Vol. 1 up to issue... 27 I think it was? (Basically the first 4 volumes) ans RHaTO Vol. 2 up to issue 18 (end of Vol. 3)

Are volumes 6 & 7 of RHaTO vol.1, Red Hood & Arsenal, volume 4 of RHaTO vol.2, and Red Hood: Outlaw, worth a read?

Hi Anon! I apologise in advance because I was very verbose in answering this yes or no question lmao.

Disclaimer first, because RHATOs is always gonna be written by Scott Lobdell, so it's always gonna be at least vaguely misogynistic and full of heavy handed abuse apologia because Lobdell is a misogynistic abuser. That said, if you can stomach that, there's usually *some* merit to most of them.

(and, just to be clear, I am certainly not recommending you *pay* for any of them 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️)

So, RHATO vol. 1.

Volume 5 is actually one of the better ones imo, it finishes up the story from volume 4, and then has a few self-contained stories focusing on Roy and Kori individually (so depending on your opinions of nu52 characterisation ymmv). Bonus points for this adorable panel;

Volume 6 and 7 are a really weird mishmash of main plot about Kori doing space-drugs (which is unsurprisingly lacking in any nuance, making it especially frustrating when the book also features a recovering addict and a guy who grew up surrounded by drug users), their nu52 origin stories (which are retconned again in Rebirth anyway), then there's the bizarre little Christmas issue (which I don't hate), and the weird flash forward issue (which I *do*) that is also retconned out with the Red Hood/Arsenal run so. These two are entirely skippable for me.

Red Hood/Arsenal

There are only two volumes of this, and if you managed rhato vol. 1 then this is fine. It's a lot lighter in tone, even if I'm not a big fan of the Joker's Daughter plot in volume 2. Personally, I think this run is worth it just for the jayroy dynamic - genuinely don't know what Lobdell was going for but he accidentally wrote a gay sitcom. I mean seriously, look at this break up scene;

RHATO Vol 2.

I canNOT believe I'm saying this, but you should probably read through this one. #25 (MY BELOATHED) is actually the conclusion to the Bruce and Jason trust arc of early rhato rebirth, and as much as I hate the direction they went with it, it does fit with the general state of Jason and Bruce's relationship in rebirth. It also seems to be the jumping off point they've used for more recent interactions (Cheer and TFZ).

Red Hood: Outlaw

Volume 1: Requiem for an Archer. So, this is the start of Lobdell's shameless projection onto Willis Todd, and naturally they skip right over any consequences of Bruce beating the shit out of his kid AGAIN, but I actually quite like this one. It's nice to see Jason work competently alone, and I think it does a good job of letting Jason's grief breathe, after the chaos of everything in the previous volume. Also, this is where he meets Dog and she's a good girl.

Volume 2: Prince of Gotham. I like this one too, actually. Jason gets to wear his fancy little suit and be clever and calculating, he gets to actually use his criminal links for once, and it's the biggest fuck you to Bruce since utrh imo. I hate the random ass non-plot point of Jason suddenly having a public civillian ID again, but that nonsense is worth it for this scene alone;

Volume 3: Generation Outlaw. This one... I like in theory lol. Jason gets to be a teacher, I think putting himself between Lex Luther and a bunch of impressionable young metas is something he would do, and one of the kids is a non-binary entity (it's a little ham-fisted, but I never say no to more enby characters!) HOWEVER. The writing takes a turn again here, and where Jason was clever in the last one he's now a bit of a bumbling idiot being outsmarted by a bunch of kids. The Artemis and Bizarro plotline is weird and a but pointless, but they are back by the end of this volume, and it contains the one jaytemis kiss that I like (because they both hate it lmao. wlw mlm solidarity).

Volume 4: Unspoken Truths. This is just out and out bad. The writing goes from bad to worse, Isabel is dragged back for absolutely no reason other than Lobdell wanting his blorbo JT to be surrounded by women he's slept with at all times, the art is terrible. There's a single Joker War crossover issue which is meaningless without context, and also drags Joker's Daughter back up AGAIN, and it ends with the Outlaws breaking up again because Jason isn't allowed to keep any friends ever.

ANYWAY. All of that was a complete non-answer because it really does depend on what you like and don't, but I hope my rambling at least helps a little!

[writer86]

The next morning, Selene and Shadowheart pack their camp without a word and move on. The ruin blocks their path further along the coast, so now they turn back the direction they'd come from. Just when it seems inevitable their path will cross back through the wreckage of the Nautloid, the rock face to their right flares with vibrant purple energy.

*You approach the sigil on the stone. Magic glitters and swirls from it erratically, as if malfunctioning. It looks slightly dangerous.*

Selene regards the sigil curiously, then glances back to Shadowheart. "What do you think?"

"It looks like a teleportation sigil gone wrong," Shadowheart answers. "In that state, no telling where it might take us."

"No telling what it might do if left alone in this state either," Selene points out.

"You want to touch it, don't you?" Shadowheart sighs.

There's a trace of a grin on Selene's face as she answers, "Engage with a possible threat without my ally's agreement? Wouldn't dream of it."

Shadowheart just scowls. A moment passes, then she sighs. "Get on with it, then."

"As you wish," Selene answers. She reaches out...

... and recoils as if stung. The next moment, an arm is abruptly thrust outward from the dark center, and a voice cries out, "A hand? Anyone?"

Somewhat taken aback, Selene exchanges a look with Shadowheart, who returns a similar expression. Feeling as though their time is short, Selene steps forward:

Let flow some words of prayer to soothe the sigil's magic. [Wisdom] Success.

The voice from within shouts, "Whatever you're doing, it's working wonders! Now a quick little pull should do the trick."

And sure enough:

"Oooft, hello!" the man says with a bright smile once he's free and upright. "I'm Gale of Waterdeep." Abruptly, he surges forward, seizes Selene's hand and gives it a quick shake. "Apologies, I'm usually better at this."

Already, this interaction is a significant improvement over the rest of their time in this region. A request for help, an introduction, a handshake, and an apology. Selene looks him over for signs of obvious injury and finds none... but that doesn't mean he's uninjured.

"No need to apologise," she says quickly. "Are you all right?"

"A bit shocked, but friend, it is a relief and a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Say, but I know you, don't I? In a manner of speaking. You were on the Nautloid as well."

He's certainly not lacking for things to say, Selene notes with an amused glance to Shadowheart beside her. Already, the other cleric's arms are crossed, as though she's trying to defend herself against the onslaught of Gale's verbose manner.

"I was, yes," Selene agrees.

"Then I can only assume you too were on the receiving end of a rather unwelcome insertion in the ocular region."

When next Selene glances to Shadowheart, her fellow cleric's distrust has shifted into incredulity. Selene can almost hear her thinking who talks like that?

The answer, as Selene well knows: Wizards. She stifles a smile and says, "Go on."

And Gale is all too happy to do so...

... though his enthusiasm does shift into a bit more serious a tone to match the subject of his monologue:

"The insertee we speak of, this parasite - are you aware that after a period of excruciating gestation, it will turn us into mind flayers? It's a process known as ceremorphosis, and let me assure you: it is to be avoided. You don't happen to be a cleric, by any chance, do you? A doctor? Surgeon?" Here, the grin reappears. "Uncannily adroit with a knitting needle?"

Shadowheart has had enough:

"You seem to know enough about our condition to realize it is beyond most clerics' skills," she snaps irritably.

"Most, no doubt," Gale agrees. "But I find myself hoping to be in the presence of the few. You don't happen to be one of them?"

Selene's immediate thought is to respond, Yes, of course, but the moment the thought occurs to her, she pulls up short.

(A/N: Yes I'm reusing a screenshot, because the expression on Selene's face is perfect for how she's feeling now as well.)

A few days ago, that would have been her answer. But the level of power she's used to throwing around is lost to her now, never clearer than when she fell from the Nautloid and had no wings upon which to catch herself. She and Shadowheart have stated their necessity for a healer on more than one occasion, but only now has it finally sunk in for Selene: that isn't her.

She hesitates a moment longer before saying, "... I was going to ask you the same question."

She was not, but Gale doesn't seem to realize.

"Then it seems we're both starved for answers," he says mildly. "We're most certainly going to need a healer, and soon too. How about we lend each other a helping hand once more and look for a healer together?"

Selene again glances to Shadowheart, who looks thoroughly less than impressed. But Selene just murmurs under her breath, "Ally..." and Shadowheart sighs.

Putting on her sweetest smile, Selene says, "Sounds like a plan. You're welcome to join us."

Gale returns her smile with a grin of his own and says exuberantly, "Most excellent! A parasite shared is a parasite... halved. Or something to that effect."

Behind Selene, Shadowheart coughs to cover a groan.

"Oh! But before you think you're about to embark on a journey with a most ill-mannered a man: thank you for pulling me out of that stone. It was an act of foresighted kindness I assure you, for I have the feeling ample opportunities will present themselves for me to return the favor."

And this time, Shadowheart does laugh aloud. "No doubt," she agrees.

[pokelolmc]

10 Danny Phantom Episodes with Good Concepts that Sorely Disappointed Me: “The Ultimate Enemy” (Part 2)

Alright, here I am, everyone—part two of my critical analysis on “The Ultimate Enemy”, and how its faulty writing let down a good episode idea. For those stumbling across this for the first time, I am in the process of composing an analytical list of ten Danny Phantom episodes whose concepts I liked, but didn’t like the execution of. “The Ultimate Enemy” is the first on this list. Due to the size of my complaints with the episode, I’ve split my arguments into multiple categories across multiple posts; I highly suggest you start from the beginning with part 1 here before moving onto this post. It covered the main introduction, and Category A of my problems with the episode: the plot points that were primarily irrelevant to Dan’s character.

For those of you continuing from the first part, I apologise for this part being overdue. I proposed I would edit and upload part two roughly a day after part one, but those days dragged on due to constant re-editing and problems with my mental health. Parts three and four shall probably take longer than a few days to edit and upload as well, as I discovered arguments in the essay that needed massive overhauls before posting. I can guarantee they’re coming eventually (the whole thing essay is fully written, point-wise); I need to rework and trim the fat off some paragraphs.

Without further ado, this post will take a look at everything I’ve chucked into Category B—my issues with Dan’s characterisation, and how what the episode showed us about who deserved responsibility for Dan contradicted what it told us about how Dan was created.

(Also, because of my saltiness seeping in when I was writing, my captions for the images got a little too snarky for an analytical essay, but I am too tired of re-editing this section to remove them. Hopefully, they’ll serve as humour; if not, I apologise.)

1. The episode incorrectly portrayed Danny as the only one responsible for Dan’s existence, and for the wrong reasons (the wrong events in the timeline). Upon scrutiny of the actual sequence of events that led to Dan’s creation, the direct responsibility for Dan’s birth was either an even split between Danny and Vlad, or slightly more Vlad’s fault (depending upon the interpretation of the event that did actually cause Dan).

(Spoiler alert: No. No, it was not.)

The episode initially chose to establish Danny cheating on the CAT as the cause for Dan’s existence. While this was partially, indirectly true (since it set up the chain of events that led to Dan’s creation), it was not the event that directly caused Dan—yet, the episode treated it as a highly important tipping point, close to the point of no return that led to Dan. Looking at Dan’s backstory from the information Future Vlad gave (as dubious as it was), and working backwards, it was clear that Danny cheating on the test was not the vital “point of no return” by any means. Neither was the explosion at the Nasty Burger, for that matter (which the episode treated as the point of no return after Dan cheated on the CAT in Danny’s place, which required the episode to postpone the narrative stakes of preventing Dan’s creation to the Nasty Burger fight).

(Well...not exactly--it didn’t ruin Dan’s future, but it did ruin Danny’s. There’s a distinction.)

Kick-starting the entire chain of events that set up the eventual moment of Dan’s birth was not synonymous with directly creating Dan, and blaming the causality for Dan’s existence on Danny cheating (the leap of logic that “Danny became evil in the future because he cheated on a test”) or even his loved ones dying at the Nasty Burger was incorrect.

To demonstrate the argument, I’ll shift to an in-universe hypothetical:

Imagine yourself in Clockwork’s shoes: an “evil future version of Danny” has been created, and you have to prevent Dan’s existence by searching through the events that led his creation to find as many openings between key events as possible, in order to change one and subsequently avert all the events (including Dan’s creation) that followed.

To lay it out in full, the chain (separating the events based on intervention windows) was as follows: (1) Danny cheated on the CAT -> (2) Mr. Lancer met with Danny’s parents at the Nasty Burger to discuss it -> (3) they (including Sam, Tucker and Jazz) died in the Nasty Burger explosion -> (4) a grief-stricken Danny went to Vlad in Wisconsin -> (5) Danny requested that Vlad numb his emotional pain -> (6) Vlad split Danny’s ghost half from his human half—only for the ghost half to immediately pull out Vlad’s own and fuse with it into Dan.

Dan’s existence being the result of (what was essentially) a disastrous line of falling dominoes made his origin more sinister, but also highly easy to prevent (at least, without taking into account the mess caused by the story’s poorly thought out use of time travel, which I’ll explain later in section C). After all, the more complex a system (the more elements necessary for a system to successfully operate and achieve a desired result), the more weak spots it has—as meddling with one part can affect all the other parts and lead the entire operation to fail.

Utilising any of the intervention room between the events in “The Ultimate Enemy’s” alternate timeline would prevent Dan’s entire existence. The only event, therefore, that could be labelled the direct cause of Dan’s existence was the event that immediately resulted in Dan’s birth, and the most dire pivotal point—which rendered Dan inevitable—was the event directly before that. The event of Dan’s creation itself (or the cause of Dan) was event number six—the removal of both Danny and Vlad’s ghost halves using the Ghost Gauntlets, and their subsequent fusion with each other. The event which led to this—event number five, which was Danny’s request for Vlad to remove his emotional pain—was the direct catalyst for the procedure, and therefore the important “point of no return” leading to Dan that the episode tried to make Danny cheating on the CAT (and once that was over, the act of losing his loved ones) out to be. (Technically speaking, it was one of possibly two options for the event upon which Dan’s existence truly hinged—number four was also a likely candidate).

Danny cheating on the CAT was not the cause of Dan (even if it set the eventual stage), because there were numerous ways to interfere after the incident of Danny cheating the CATs and still prevent Dan from existing. Clockwork could’ve interfered between events one and two, by changing Mr. Lancer’s parent-teacher meeting location to anywhere safer than the Nasty Burger, so no one died (he could’ve utilised Jazz to sway Mr. Lancer, perhaps—it’s safe to assume Clockwork was aware of her knowledge on Danny’s secret, and she was the one Mr. Lancer approached about Danny cheating). He could’ve interfered between events three and four—had Danny’s loved ones still die at the Nasty Burger but convinced Danny himself not to go to Vlad. He could’ve popped in between events four and five and convinced Danny, right after moving in with Vlad, to not ask for a way to numb his emotional pain. However, Vlad proved to be a dubious source in the flashback of Dan’s origin story, and was typically too much of a wild card, so preventing Danny from moving in with Vlad at all is likely the safest option.

Ergo, either event four or five should’ve been treated as the important point that led to Dan’s existence. On top of that, Vlad’s role in event six proved he was partially responsible for Dan’s creation, but the rest of the episode outside of the flashback neglected this fact in favour of pushing the “Dan was all Danny’s fault” message.

(Begin Vlad’s unreliable narratorhood in 3...2...1...)

However, Future Vlad behaved like an unreliable narrator of the “Dan’s creation” flashback, so his explanation of events shouldn’t be taken at face value. Assuming the basic outline of events was trustworthy, however, the episode indicated to us that Vlad was roughly equally as responsible for Dan’s creation as Danny. He conceded to Danny’s desire to escape his emotions and responded with the halfa-splitting operation that caused Dan’s fusion.

He stretched the reality of the event to Present Danny when he exaggerated the delivery of some (if not most) of his narration lines in the flashback. It was most blatantly clear in the line where he inflated his importance to Danny after the tragedy, “With nowhere else to go, you came to me—the only person left on the planet who could possibly hope to understand your situation.” He verbally emphasised the words ‘me’ and ‘possibly’, and the phrases “the only person left on the planet” and “could possibly understand” were hyperbole in their own right. Another was the line, “No more painful human emotions to drag you down,” where he spoke the italicised words with overt disdain for Danny’s emotions. It could be interpreted simply as Vlad’s typical habit of speaking in a dramatised manner, rather than trying to make himself look good to Danny by stretching the truth. However, even if choosing to interpret Vlad’s delivery as the latter, he still skewed his recount through vagueness and omission in the literal content of his narration (when linked to the visuals that ran alongside his lines).

According to Future Vlad, Danny asked for his emotional pain to be taken away; and Vlad removed his ghost half to “[honour] [his] wishes,” while the shot changed from Vlad’s sympathetic face at the grieving Danny to the procedure with the Ghost Gauntlets. Future Vlad never explicitly stated whether it was Danny or him that decided removing Danny’s ghost half was the course of action to take, Vlad only explained that Danny “wanted to make the hurt go away”, and then the shot cut to Vlad removing Danny’s ghost half with the only explanation that he was acting in accordance with that wish.

On top of not explicitly saying whose idea it was, (though, with Vlad’s knowledge and experience with halfa research far exceeding Danny’s, it was almost certainly his) the episode did not explain how his logic leapt from “remove Danny’s emotional pain” to “remove Danny’s ghost half”, which was an insensible method to solve Danny’s problems.

The “no more human emotions” line indicated that his intention behind the procedure was to remove Danny’s human emotions, yet he knew that the procedure entailed removing Danny’s ghost half.

It made no sense, in universe, for Vlad to competently assume that removing Danny’s ghost half from him would work to remove an emotionality rooted in his human half (the episode overall, by the way Dan referred to human emotions and sentimentalities as a “humanity” he gave up, implied that it intended to frame the emotional attachment to Danny’s loved ones as part of his human half). If it could be chalked up to an external fault, like the lack of clear research into the procedure’s outcome, and not Vlad’s failure to realise the logical inconsistency, the episode needed to give evidence of this. Without that information, the only feasible assumptions were either that he wasn’t making any sense in-universe, he was supposed to be sensible but the episode’s writing didn’t make sense, or he had an ulterior motive for convincing Danny into going through with the operation. Either way, it was yet another part of Dan’s creation that Vlad was responsible for, not Danny, and the episode’s message was illogical to contradict this.

Through potentially exaggerating his sympathy for the alternate Danny in his verbal intonation, and blatantly failing to mention the details of why he chose removing Danny’s ghost half to fix a “human” problem, Vlad told his version of Dan’s birth in a way that would minimise his moral fault in the incident to Present Danny. His only logically feasible motivation for this was to hide further moral accountability for Dan’s creation than what we already saw in the face-value version of the flashback.

To summarise this entire sub-category of arguments, the episode was wrong to pin Dan’s existence on Danny cheating on the CAT (and even on losing his family, as the second half of the episode changed gears to), rather than his desire to remove/escape his emotions (even if the deaths resulted in the pain that he wanted to remove in the first place, which I shall explain later in Section D). It was also mistaken to portray Danny as the primary cause of Dan, rather than acknowledge that Vlad was equally (if not more), responsible than him.

Additionally, the fact that Vlad, as an in-universe character, tried to minimise his moral role/accountability in the physical causality of Dan’s creation by skirting around the truth in his retelling was something that the episode itself should’ve acknowledged or called out, through more reliable information from a third-person or other characters’ perspectives such as Danny, Dan’s or Clockwork’s—but it didn’t.

2.  On top of physical responsibility for Dan, the episode was wrong to pin Danny with the moral blame and identity of Dan. It treated the two of them as essentially the same person, and portrayed Dan as just a Danny from the future who turned evil because of a combination of Danny’s potential evilness (potential to do “selfish/evil” things) and tragic circumstances. Considering Dan’s backstory, it made no sense for Danny to be the sole owner of either Dan’s immorality or identity/personhood.

Dan’s backstory told us that physically Danny wasn’t solely responsible for his creation, but the rest of the narrative still deeply connected Dan to Danny alone by treating Dan as what would happen if Danny let his pre-existing moral flaws take over him—that Dan’s villainy (or evil nature) came from Danny.

Clockwork referred to Danny Phantom as “grow[ing] up into the most evil ghost on the planet” in the cold open (which, given that Dan was a product of a fusion, was blatantly false.)

“The Ultimate Enemy” attempted to build up the idea that Danny had the potential for evil, and that Dan was him realising his own evil, in the scene where the trio entered Clockwork’s lair. As they watched Dan’s carnage through the observation window, Danny excitedly admired Dan’s Ghostly Wail, completely oblivious to the seriousness of the situation, and Sam called him out for not reading the room.

(Though, Sam’s condemnation of Dan’s villainy was extremely underwhelming—calling a world-destroyer and (presumable) mass murderer just “kind of a jerk” in a snarky tone did not do the severity of Dan’s actions any justice.)

When they confronted Clockwork, Danny scoffed at him to find just “one” evil thing he’d done. The shot then immediately focussed onto “examples” of Danny’s “evil” in the time window—first, Jazz finding out Danny was going to cheat the CATs (which, as established in point one, was not as morally significant as the episode tried to portray it—that shall be further elaborated later in Section D). After Tucker sassed at Clockwork, “[I] bet you can’t find two!”, the time window changed to Dan standing atop his destruction in the alternate future, and Clockwork replied, “How about two thousand?”—implying that Clockwork was referring to what Dan did in the future as at least part of the (supposedly numerous) evil things Danny did (or would do). This made no sense unless the episode was implying that Dan’s immorality was Danny’s own. However, this implication was incorrect, leaving Clockwork to state that he had seen countless instances of Danny Fenton/Phantom being evil with no valid examples to show for it whatsoever.

Dan’s atrocities had no weight as examples of Danny’s morality flaws due to the fact that Dan’s evil was not primarily Danny’s to begin with, creating a feedback loop of invalidation; evidence for the argument was invalid because its own validity was dependent on the validity of the very argument it was supposed to be supporting.

(Danny, despite the episode’s reluctance to be fair to him with its accusations of his “potential villainy”, was actually justified in asking this of Clockwork. You know there’s something wrong with your story when your self-centred, short-sighted teenage protagonist is righter than your supposedly all-knowing Master of Time in this situation.)

(Cheating on a test is not evil, Clockwork, try again.)

(Nope, sorry, Dan’s evil is not Danny’s “evil”; your argument is invalid.)

(I typically put the “improvements/fixes” part at the end of each point, but for the sake of its direct relevance to the aforementioned example, I’ll put it here to avoid structural confusion in the essay:

“The Ultimate Enemy”, for some reason decided that its reason/foreshadowing of Danny’s potential for evil had to be self-contained; ironically, almost all (sans a small few) of the episode’s examples of Danny’s moral flaws weren’t “evil” at all, and they would’ve been far better off using actual events of Danny showing potentially villainous traits from previous episodes. Danny may have been justified in asking Clockwork to name one evil thing he’d done, because that accusation had no basis at that point, but Clockwork’s response should’ve been to show previous instances in the series where Danny took advantage of others with his powers.

For example, imagine if in the episode, when Danny demanded, “Name one evil thing I’ve done!”, Clockwork’s time window had switched to moments like the end of “Maternal Instincts”, where he manipulated Vlad into lowering his guard, or his acts of overshadowing Dash for petty revenge in “Splitting Images” or “Reign Storm”? Not only were they more legitimate examples of morally corrupt characteristics—tricking people for his own gain/victory and abusing his powers to the detriment of others—it would’ve given such a significant episode in the series more continuity with the previous ones. In fact, the examples in two of those previous episodes resulted in Vlad pointing out that Danny was becoming more like him, as a way to use Vlad’s relationship as Danny’s nemesis/character foil for the sake of tension. “The Ultimate Enemy” could’ve used those examples in its own narrative to turn Dan into a proper payoff of this long-term build-up of Vlad’s whole “We’re not so different, you and I” thing going on with Danny.

Also, it would add to the thematic irony of Dan being a fusion of Danny and Vlad’s ghost halves, if that aspect of his backstory was not altered in a rewrite of TUE.)

Vlad owned Dan’s evil nature equally as much as (if not more than) Danny because Dan was also half-Vlad. However, the episode neglected to acknowledge this outside of a few seconds on Dan’s birth in the flashback. While explaining the scene of the two ghost halves fusing into Dan, Future Vlad’s most honest lines of narration (because they straightforwardly confessed he was morally accountable for Dan to Danny, and thus had no motivation to be a lie) explained that, “My [ghost half’s] evil side overwhelmed you”. This implied that the reason Dan turned out evil in the first place was that Vlad’s evil took over Danny’s mind during the fusion.

Given that we trust Vlad’s line, Vlad (or Plasmius, as Vlad’s ghost half) deserved most of the accountability for Dan’s lust for destruction and lack of a moral compass, not Danny. So, calling Dan “Danny’s evil future self” was only accurate in the literal sense of “this is what remained of Danny’s mind/existence in the future—his ghost half—even though it’s only a part of a larger fusion with another ghost, and this fusion is evil”. Dan was not a warning that “Danny was going to turn evil”, because Danny was not the primary source of Dan’s villainy.

In regards to overall personal identity, rather than just morality, Dan was also not “Danny’s evil future self” on account of the fact that he was not “Danny’s future self”, period. He shouldn’t have been an “older Danny” (or essentially the same person as Danny but older and evil), according to his backstory’s statement that he was half-Phantom, half-Plasmius. Yet, for some asinine reason, Dan only identified himself personally as “Danny” for the duration of the episode (without mention of Vlad).

After travelling to the past under Danny’s guise, Dan referred to Danny’s bedroom and face in the mirror as his own.

(Whoops--another image where I goofed the subtitles, this time in formatting...and MS Paint’s lack of layers makes redoing it an unnecessary pain. Sorry about that.)

When he met Sam and Tucker in the future, he explained his cold response to seeing them again as a result of “[surrendering his] human half a long time ago”. His singular human half. Not plural…because even Dan himself wanted to pretend that he wasn’t half Vlad, for some reason.

Perhaps it could be chalked up to people behaving differently in different social contexts; in that case, it was understandable that—even if he was part-Vlad—his Danny-side and memories influenced him the most in front of Danny’s friends…but that alone didn’t justify him stating that he only had one human half as a fact. The only other option that made in-universe sense was that it was a deceit/falsehood on Dan’s part, and therefore knowingly untrue. Perhaps Dan didn’t want to admit that he had more than one human half to Sam and Tucker—because he was not obliged to divulge that information to them—or that he preferred to mentally distance himself from Vlad’s human half because the latter was still alive, and separate from Dan. However, it was still untrue to link Dan and Danny together as people, but not Vlad, with the idea of only owning Danny’s human half.

The assumption that Dan was a future, evil Danny in person (and not also part-Vlad in person, or a new person from either of them entirely) implied that the fusion resulted in Plasmius’s mind giving his evil to Danny’s and then disappearing into the aether. It implied that a fusion of two people resulted in a powered-up being that was solely one of them psychologically, in order to purport that Danny (or, at least Phantom as his ghost half) was still Danny in sense of self for the last ten years in the alternate future. This contradicted the more logically valid implication that Plasmius’s mind or identity still existed as a component inside Dan, and Dan was at least both Danny and Vlad mentally.

Vlad explained in the flashback, “[Vlad’s] evil ghost half mixed with [Danny’s].” The general interpretation of “mixing” implied that the two ghost halves merged together into a new being and their traits and minds blended together. His identity should, theoretically, be either a half-and-half joining of the two halfas, or a whole new person with Vlad and Danny’s ghost halves as mere fusion ingredients. Ten years of existence and experience after the initial fusion would also, theoretically, give Dan enough time to develop this new mixed mind into his own individual sense of self beyond who/what either of Danny or Vlad were as people (prior to the ghost half fusion). In that case, Dan was not Danny’s “future self” in identity, and had little reason to identify Danny’s face, room and family as “his old [life]” (or, at least his only one). 

The next most obvious theory (about Dan’s psychological makeup as a fusion) is that one half was more dominant than the other during the fusion, leading to Dan to become primarily just one of them in identity. That dominant one had to have been Danny, based on how Dan identified himself in the episode, but that wouldn’t make sense. Phantom taking full control of the fusion and assimilating Plasmius into himself required that a grief-stricken fourteen year old was somehow capable of winning against a more experienced forty-something in a battle of minds, thoroughly enough to the point of absorbing the latter. Considering that Phantom was mentally weak enough to be the one “overwhelmed” by Plasmius’s evil (a single facet of Plasmius’s larger mind) almost immediately, that hypothesis seems unlikely. The notion of Phantom overwhelming Plasmius in the fusion to gain dominance, and Plasmius being the one to overwhelm him to turn him evil, contradict each other. Ergo, Dan being a mix of both Phantom and Plasmius was the most likely (and sensible) outcome of the fusion.

In that case, the episode was thoughtless and inaccurate to treat Dan as “Danny’s future self who became a villain”. Dan was not inherently linked to Danny in either the majority of his morality or his identity, due to the part Vlad played in Dan’s creation, and his mental component in Dan’s fusion.

2.5.A notable counterpoint, for the sake of not one-sidedly flipping all of the fault for Dan onto Vlad:

To be fair—as the idea of solely blaming Vlad would also be inaccurate to what Dan’s origin story showed—I should acknowledge a piece of evidence explicitly indicating that Danny still contributed some of his own darkness to Dan’s villainy, albeit less than Vlad. Once separated from his human half, Phantom ripped out and fused with Vlad’s ghost half of his own volition, all with a malicious grin on his face.

However, there was no clear motivation or reason for the separated Phantom to fuse with Plasmius (the physical cause of Dan that Danny/Phantom could be blamed for) —in fact, it made no sense for there to be any premeditated intention for Phantom to fuse with him, since he couldn’t have known that fusion with another halfa’s isolated ghost half was even possible at that point; it was an untried, never-seen-before method, hardly likely to mentally occur to Danny in the first place. Phantom resorted to attacking Vlad, stealing the Ghost Gauntlets and pulling out Plasmius for some unknown reason, but ghost-half fusion could not have sensibly been it. The Gauntlet attack simply demonstrated that Phantom took ill-willed pleasure from the act of hurting or depowering Vlad. After removing Vlad’s ghost half, fusing with it was the second step. Danny could be held responsible for his ghost half explicitly harbouring malice/potential evil in the attack (and his ghost half’s response to being removed was part of Danny’s responsibility in Dan’s creation), but that wouldn’t explain the crucial next step of the fusion itself.

This is where my ideas for potential improvements for the story of “The Ultimate Enemy” come in, as the exact extent of Danny’s contribution to Dan (in physical responsibility and mentality) wasn’t entirely clear—outside of this explicit evidence of Phantom’s facial expression. This uncertainty leaves the room for a do-over of the narrative to ask a lot of questions about how physically and morally accountable for Dan’s birth and evilness Danny actually was.

We could assume implicit evidence that Danny had some sort of inner darkness which contributed to Dan, even if only the minority, from the possibility that his grief at the loss of his loved ones (as well at helplessness at not being able to do anything to save them, and low evaluation of his own worth as a person) led to buried malice, anger and a desire for power to compensate.

Based on how splitting halfas apart worked in “Identity Crisis”, it made sense that Phantom had a sense of hostility and motivation to hurt Vlad once separated from Danny in “The Ultimate Enemy”. When Danny was split in half the first time, the halves took on the mental characteristics of the whole Danny’s momentary intents and desires. When Danny wanted his ghost half to do all the hero work so his human half could have the time to have fun, his ghost half took on an exaggerated hero personality and his human half an irresponsible teenager personality. Assuming this logic consistently determines the split halves’ personalities each time, and the fact that Danny’s desires in the alternate future revolved around escaping his emotional pain, it was logical that one of the split halves inherited a condensed majority of Danny’s pain (in this case, the ghost half), while the other half (the human one) was innocently blind to most of Danny’s grief and self-hatred—and that the suffering half acted out aggressively or malevolently as a result.

However, since we could logically assume that fusing with Plasmius was not the initial reason Phantom removed him from Vlad (and we assume the fusion was a spur-of-the-moment decision that occurred to him afterwards), why did he remove Plasmius in the first place? Was he intending to spite Vlad after all the grief he caused Danny in their rivalry? Was it a sense of inferiority telling him to tear Vlad down from his superior position? Was it to avoid letting Vlad stay a possible physical threat to Danny? There is such a large gap here, one could brainstorm countless possible motivations.

Furthermore, if that only covered his motivation to remove Plasmius, then what made him decide to fuse with him? Was he attempting to possess Plasmius as one ghost half trying to possess another for some reason? Was it internal panic? Was it a hunger for power pushing him to seize the opportunity that opened up? Why didn’t/couldn’t Plasmius fight Phantom off in the fusion scene?

These questions could be explored if the story of “The Ultimate Enemy” was redone. Present Danny, the Danny whose point of view we saw the episode from (rather than the Alternate Danny) hadn’t experienced the Dan future himself, so he didn’t know what was going through his alternate self’s head (human or ghost) during Dan’s creation. How much of it was his fault? How much of it wasn’t? How did he fill in the holes in the story Future Vlad told to him based on his own insecurities, and what did he blame himself for?

For that matter, why not get present Vlad wrapped up in it too? Have him take responsibility for what is HIS. If not, the episode should’ve at least acknowledged that Dan was not entirely “Danny’s evil”, and made it clear that he was cleaning up both his and Vlad’s collective mess by himself. If the message of the evil future self being Danny corrupted to the side of evil was so necessary for the episode, then simply remove the fusion plot entirely from Dan’s origin and have Danny become a villain by his own moral corruption. It weakened the impact of the future-self villain being a warning of “what the hero should avoid becoming” by having the main character only become evil by fusing with an already malevolent character.

3.      The Observants’ conclusion that they had to kill Danny to save the world from Dan didn’t make sense, due to Vlad being primarily responsible for Dan’s evilness—but the episode, instead of acknowledging this inanity, actually reinforced the opposite.

Having now established that Vlad was half (if not more) at fault for Dan’s evil than Danny, the plot to kill Danny in the episode lost any of the ground it had to stand on.

(Nope...no, he didn’t have to.)

It was illogical for the Observants to assume killing Danny was the best way to stop Dan from existing when killing Vlad would equally achieve this (not to mention that either of these options were overkill, in the presence of the intervention methods mentioned in Section A). Without Vlad, Dan could not exist either. Eliminating Vlad would stop his continuous crimes against both worlds, and let Danny live to continue doing the good he’d done. After the events of “Reign Storm”, a large part of the Ghost Zone knew that Danny had saving Amity Park, and the entire Ghost Zone, under his belt—if an entire wasteland civilisation like the Far Frozen came to worship Danny for his victory against Pariah Dark (as shown in season three’s “Infinite Realms”).

(For that matter, where were the Observants hounding Clockwork to get on Vlad’s troublesome ass when he tried to steal the Crown of Fire and the Ring of Rage in “Reign Storm”, if Pariah Dark was so dangerous?)

If they were being somewhat rational, it was possible that they chose Danny as Vlad’s less powerful counterpart, and an easier target—even though they delegated the task off to Clockwork because intervention wasn’t their job, and they clearly acknowledged Clockwork’s power and competence to some degree. The Observants openly referred to Clockwork as the master of time while shirking their responsibility for fixing the future onto him, so whether or not killing Vlad would be too difficult for themselves would be irrelevant, since they made it Clockwork’s problem and became backseat commentators. Though, Clockwork would’ve probably foreseen Vlad’s importance in Danny’s emotional growth as his nemesis and also kept him alive anyway—but from a purely logical standpoint, it made little sense to execute Danny over Vlad, if they ever needed to kill anyone at all.

To be honest, the episode could’ve used the invalidity of the Observants’ plan to paint their incompetence more, expanding on Clockwork’s disdain for them and how he told the audience they “just observe”. However, to do that, the episode itself would’ve had to actually portray the Observants’ plan (not just the Observants themselves, but their actual plan to kill Danny itself) as nonsensical. The episode never did, however, as it had Clockwork—the character portrayed as bolder and wiser than the Observants—reinforce their proposition as worth trying and go along with their request for Danny’s demise. He sent two ghosts to attack Danny (although the fight with Boxed Lunch was more of a moral test about giving Danny the CAT answers, rather than an attempt on his life, Danny “failed” that moral test before Clockwork sent Skulktech after him—so, the latter at least counted as a potential hit on Danny) to the extent of attempting to kill Danny himself on the last attempt. That Clockwork went along with the Observants’ plan showed that the episode saw the plan as reasonable, despite its illogicality.

(While there is a possible argument for Clockwork’s knowledge of how the episode would end—insinuating that he knew Danny would never actually end up dying—justifying why he went along with the plan in the first place, the next section of the essay shall tackle that. Since Clockwork is the Master of Time, and the issues with his character were heavily intertwined with the effects the time travel lore had on the plot, that shall be addressed in Category C, the section covering the mess created by the time-travel in the episode.)

...actually, that just gave me an idea. You know what would be interesting, if a little too much to content to stuff into the narrative? Having an Observant character distinguished as their own individual, who doubts the other Observants’ unreasonable decisions and becomes a rogue element to the rest of the council, directly intervening in the timeline themselves. The rogue Observant could abandon the council of Observants to side with Clockwork, and characterise Clockwork by having him change his globalised impression of the Observants to understand this new, non-conformist one as an ally. Or, perhaps the Observant plays a more compassionate foil to Clockwork, choosing to himself save Danny’s life from the ghost attacks Clockwork sent after him?)

[mx-princey]

[IMAGE ONE ID: A pride flag made up of 7 horizontal lines. In descending order, the colour of the lines are orange, brown, light grey, dark grey, light grey, dark purple, light purple.] [IMAGE TWO ID: The same pride flag, but with annotated text bubbles pointing to and explaining the colour choice of each line, The explanations can be found under the read-more of this post.] NOW PRESENTING: A NEW GENDER, WHICH I MADE, WHICH I WILL NOW BE GRACING YOU ALL WITH; ASTROLLIGENDER You’re under no obligation to use or identify with it, even if the description matches you / your identity. But if you do identify with this - great! Welcome to the club. The flag is free to use, but if you create anything with it I’d love to be tagged or have it sent to me, just so I can see what’s being done with it! (Also, even though I made this for gender specifically, I guess you’d be allowed to use it as some sort of generic “(homestuck) troll pride flag” as well? I’m not going to stop you and it still works for that too!) ASTROLLIGENDER* A gender for those whose gender identity is influenced by the troll concept of gender / sex, or who identify with troll biology in some way. May or may not experience dysphoria. May or may not be due to kin reasons. Orange: Troll Biology (and its differences to human biology) This colour is taken from troll horns, as the horns are the most immediately obvious difference between troll and human anatomy. Brown: Trolls with furry-esque physiology This colour is similar to Tavros’ bronze colour, as he could commune with and is associated with animals. Light Grey: Trolls with humanoid physiology This colour is taken from Karkat’s symbol, which was representative of his red blood. Dark Grey: The canon trolls and the window they provided into the troll lifestyle This colour is used as dark, often dark grey tones are usually associated with the trolls. Dark Purple: Trolls with bug-esque physiology This colour is similar to Sollux’s bees. Light Purple: Troll culture and society (and its differences to human culture). This colour is similar to the purple of SGRUB’s logo, as well as purple being a prominent colour on Alternia. *not called “trollgender” due to the negative connotations of the term “troll.” as the trolls of homestuck have a connection with astrology, the two words have been combined - ie, “astrolligender.”

[blackwaxidol]

"you desire a witness to your emotion and not a thing more. you strike this balance because you are terrified of being perceived as irritating or burdensome so you have conditioned yourself to derive joy from the most basal of human attention and from dissecting your brain and putting it on display and you do not realise that what you are doing is a roundabout manner of reassuring yourself that you are rational and in control and low maintenance and appear so to onlookers. you are a circus animal performing acts beaten into it," says Aries to me.