#I have this hc that all the characters who r played by the same actor look the same and they’re all just like “tf I don’t look like them”

[pastriibunz]

we do NOT like Kai’s bio parents in this household

so much so they don’t even GET designs thats how much we don’t like them

[special thanks to @local-soda-can for helping write this :3]

[literallyshiv]

what r ur main character age hcs 👀! by main i mean your regular hcs

HEEHEE i was already halfway through a draft of this when i got this message get ready for a really long answer. for clarity's sake, all birth years are based on the succesion universe starting in fall 2018 and ending up in summer 2019 at the end of season three

starting with what we know for certain: kendall is 40 (born in spring 1979) and logan is 80 (b. 1938), making logan 40 when kendall was born.

with roman and shiv, i was a youngest sibling roman truther until i found out that the writers actually have shiv as the youngest (and also specifically said in the pilot script that roman is 38 lol), SO, the closest i can get to remedy this making them irish twins, roman age 37 (october 1981) and shiv age 36 (september 1982). they would have been in the same grade of school throughout their childhood.

connor is a little bit harder because of alan ruck's age, and while characters and actors don't have to be the same age, i absolutely cannot see him playing any younger than mid fifties. i like to put a definitive number on things though, so I'll say 55 (b. 1963), so that would make logan 25 when connor was born and i could see logan following the traditional route for when he was raised to marry and start a family early on in life. plus it makes connor about eighteen years older than shiv and roman, which i think works out nicely for him to have gone off to college just as shiv and roman were born and graduate just in time to come back into their lives when they are just old enough to have conscious memories and play a significant part in raising them

where this REALLY gets fun for me is to take ewan and marianne into account, because i think it's very fun to imagine that marianne and connor were close throughout their childhood. so what we know about logan and ewan's youth is that ewan is the older brother, and at some point he enlisted in the military during the vietnam war, according to logan, with the motivation to impress some girl. SO. i think that it easily could check out that ewan saw his younger brother get married and have a child before he did, felt extra motivation to commit to a partner himself, and enlist in the military while he was with the woman who would be marianne's mother.

im making this up wholecloth at this point, but i like the idea of him being with his girlfriend/wife while still serving in the war but occasionally coming home, and she becomes pregnant while he's still active, so she relies a lot on logan's family to help with her responsibilities on top of raising a child while ewan is away. this also provides a really good basis for the rift between logan and ewan because his entire motivation for enlisting in the first place would have been with the end goal of starting his own family, and then he misses out on a significant amount of that because he's on duty while his wife and child are in canada meanwhile logan IS there while ewan's child is growing up. and just for extra pizazz, lets say ewan was still active when logan starts waystar (we know that logan has been ceo of waystar for 50 years, making him 30 when it he started the company) and throw in one more year of active duty for logan to get the business off the ground to really rub salt in the wound.

to sort out the years: 1963 connor is born, 1964 ewan enlists, 1965 ewan gets married and they become pregnant, 1966 marianne is born, 1968 waystar is formally started, and 1969 ewan finishes his time in the military. SO: when ewan returns to canada to stay this time, he missed the first three years of his child growing up, his wife and daughter have spent the majority of the time with logan's family, and on top of it all logan has started a burgeoning business. that'd be a strong basis for ewan to harbor some bitterness for logan i think, even if their actual falling out doesnt occur for several more years, possibly decades, after all of that goes down.

ALRIGHT. MOVING ON. in the pilot script, we get the following ages: greg early 20s, shiv late 20s, tom late 30s. obviously i don't think these are accurate to what the character ended up being, but i do think the age gaps remained relatively the same, with each of them being just under a decade older. i already said i put shiv at 36, and i like to stick with ten years between her and tom, so i have him at 46 turning 47 soon (b. 1972)

with greg i like to imagine he specifically hasn't hit 30 yet mostly because i think it's funny to imagine the ordeal of his actual thirtieth birthday happening. i also already said i have marianne born in 1966 and i imagine she and greg's dad weren't initially together for very long given the whole "he's gay" thing, (timeline-wise it would also check out if his motivation for being with her was the homophobia towards young gay men in the late 80s early 90s), but then she gets pregnant and he feels some commitment to not just abandon her (and, personally, I don't think he ever straight up abandoned her and greg. they probably had a somewhat painful seperation given how greg never mentions him throughout the series but he does mention his mother, but i don't think he was some deadbeat or that he left to 'go to the store' and never came back. again— im entirely making this up lol this is just the version of events that exist in my mind) SO all that said, i think greg turned 28 sometime over the course of the series so far, putting his birthday in late 1990 or early 1991, making marianne 25 when she had him.

AND FINALLY. honorable mention to willa who we have no context for her age whatsoever other than the actress's age. i have her at 31 (b. 1987)— i think she's at the age where she's starting to think about the long term sustainability of escorting for her personally (whether she'll be able to continue making as much money as she does now), which makes the idea of committing to be exclusive with connor much more appealing in spite of the fact that she doesn't seem too excited about the prospect of doing so in season one

[kageyuji]

Some jealous hcs for the mm characters?

Jumin -

Composed(tm)

He will not say anything really, he just makes sure that he looks his best

Trust Fund Kid really do got some money though

He’ll do whatever he can to make the other person realize firstly, that you’re his and that secondly, he is not one to be messed with

He was sitting in a meeting, wanting nothing more than to be home with you and Elizabeth the third

And so he was texting you the entire time, he had to be present at the meeting but it didn’t necessarily mean he had to pay attention to what was going on

You were texting back, but it was clear you weren’t really giving all of your attention to the conversation

“Are you distracted by something, love?”

“Yeah sorry Ryan’s here.”

R Y A N??? WHO IS RYAN?

He is asking you so many questions, who is Ryan, where do you know him from, does he ever flirt with you, is ��old friend from school” code for something—

Dear lord someone help him

The second that meeting is over he is at your place

He’s smoothing out his suit and making sure his hair is straight and trying to open the door at the same time

But then when he gets into the room you’re in he’s got the calmest expression ever

“Hey darling, who’s this?”

No one in the room failed to notice how he had his hand grasping yours until the other guy left

He will completely deny being jealous

Yoosung -

Nervous af

After the other person leaves he’ll ask you if you love him or if maybe he’s doing something wrong

He’s gonna be a little clingy for the next few days but he’d rather lose his LOLOL rank than you

You were sitting on the couch, legs stretched over Yoosung’s lap and head resting on the other end of the couch

You giggled at a text from friend, and immediately Yoosung looked up from his own phone

“Y/n?”

“Yeah?” You said, the playful tone from your friend’s dumb joke still in your voice

“What’s funny?”

You shrugged, still smiling “Just my friend, you don’t know him, you wouldn’t get it.”

Instantly, he’s kind of hurt

Because he’s funny! And he can be more caring than some guy he’s never met! ...Right?

He moves so that he’s laying beside you and pulls you kind of half into his chest so he can wrap his arms around you

He doesn’t say anything, he ends up falling with his head in the crook of your neck

Although, he will admit he snuck a few glances up to your phone to see if your friend was getting flirty

Zen -

His confidence is a great mask, I will give him that credit

Zen is very cocky about the whole ordeal, probably telling the other person about his career and asking the other person what they do for a living

PDA also goes up a little bit, he’s pulling you into his lap or at least having an arm around your waist

He’s peppering your face with kisses, enough that it’s clear what he’s trying to say but not too much that it’s awkward

You and Zen were out on a double date with a friend of yours and his girlfriend

She had to leave soon after arriving at the restaurant, being that he boss called her saying he needed her to come into work

It left you, Zen, and your friend who undoubtedly felt like an awkward third wheel

In an attempt to fix that, you were talking to your friend and forgetting that it was supposed to be a date with Zen

You also failed to notice how his jaw was set and that he was staring daggers into your friend

“So,” he said abruptly. “Where do you work?”

“Oh! I work downtown at th-”

Zen cuts him off so quick I swear

“Cool, I’m an actor. Kind of popular, your girlfriend had probably seen some of my stuff.”

^^ This bitch, I cannot with him >:/

Your friend is just “??”

Zen just kind of grabs your hand and starts rubbing his thumb over your knuckles after personally attacking this man for no reason other than that he was jealous

Seven -

Seven’s confident act drops quickly when he’s jealous

He wont necessarily say anything out of the ordinary, but it’s mainly just because he shuts down

He won’t speak unless spoken to, he doesn’t move from where he’s sitting unless you grab his hand and practically drag him to somewhere else

You were at his place, talking to Vanderwood while Seven was “hacking”

In actuality you were trying to distract Vanderwood from hounding Seven all day, the poor boy needed to relax and play some games instead of hacking all day

But of course Seven’s dumbass thought you were genuinely enjoying your conversation with the other guy

Vanderwood walked away to go do who knows what, so you walked over to see what Seven was doing

You found that he was actually working

“Seven? Why are you working?”

“Vanderwood.” He said simply, voice a little quieter than it normally was

His tired tone didn’t go unnoticed by you

“What’s wrong? I was trying to get him off your back, babe.”

Seven went galaxy brain I stg

He kind of smiles a little and says some cheesy joke

Then he’ll switch to playing some game

Although, when Vanderwood comes back he does start talking to you a little more and interrupting your conversation

Jaehee -

She would like to think that she is a pretty calm and collected woman

And for the most part she is

But she will personally and emotionally attack any person she feels threatened by

Not to their face, no, but to you behind their back

She might admit she was jealous, but it’s quick and she won’t speak of it again

The two of you were in the library, looking for a book you’d recently heard of and had spiked your interest

Suddenly a guy walks up to you, smiling and seemingly ignoring Jaehee’s presence

He was clearly flirting with you and while you weren’t interested in him — since you had a girlfriend, obviously — you didn’t quite know how to tell him to back off

Jaehee was acting agitated, you could tell from the way she was antsy and kept reminding you that you needed to leave soon

“Hey, do you mind if I get your number?”

You were about to nicely decline the guy whenever Jaehee stepped in between the two of you, but still looking at the library shelves

It was as if she was completely ignoring that you two were having a conversation

“Y/n is taken, they are not interested. Thank you.”

After the guy left, you giggled and asked if she was jealous

She shrugged. “Maybe. He just looked rather unkempt and like he carries too much emotional baggage.”

You snorted, but she didn’t say anything else about it

V -

He gets insecure about the fact that he can’t see all that well

And therefore if it’s one thing that can make him jealous, it’s whenever someone compliments how you look or what you’re wearing

He knows what you look like, obviously

But he feels like he shouldn’t compliment your appearance a lot since it doesn’t play that big of a part in why he likes you

And so he doesn’t complement that a lot, he focuses more on saying things about your personality

The two of you were at a party, it wasn’t too fancy but it definitely wasn’t one that you could just go in casual clothes

So you wore something a little fancy and fixed yourself up a bit before going

V noticed, obviously, he didn’t say anything because he didn’t want you to feel like he’d stop loving you if he completely lost his sight

“Hi! Y/n, right?”

The voice was familiar to you, but not your boyfriend

“Oh! Hi! Jack, it’s been a while, how are you?”

**confused V noises**

He’s jealous to begin with, whose this other guy and why are you so friendly with him? And why haven’t you introduced him to the other guys? Moreover, why haven’t you introduced him as your boyfriend?

But then your friend says “you look great!” And V panics

Instantly beside you and holding your hand, attempting to find an excuse to drag you away from the other guy

He will admit he’s jealous, but he will not admit why

[sanchoyo]

Looks like you’re gonna have to gush some more cuz I meant in general uwu🌸

🌺😌🤟 Always happy to! Okay here’s just some General bnha Thoughts �� Mostly Lov centric. You asked for them, and you said GUSH about them, so here’s. A Lot! :)

This isn’t a lov one but it’s really funny so I thought I’d put it out there:

-when bnha was first gaining traction on tumblr, it was all art of Tsuyu. I have no idea why. People were talking about the funky frog lesbian superhero anime. Maybe it was just the people I was following, maybe it was a general trend, but I LOVED her design!!! my fav color and frogs r super cute!!! And I already loved superhero media, so I was like. I’ll watch it. For Her. SO. FROPPY IS THE REASON I WATCHED/READ BNHA. I went in thinking she was the protag and I was sooo confused when Izuku was... tbh I still think it’d be more interesting if she was lmaooo aus where? ...seriously if anyone has good aus where this is the case send them LOL

-I don’t actually feel that bad abt what Shigaraki’s doing. I still feel bad for him. I’m this post. yes im an apologist. its not my fault hes sexy and has been running around shirtless. hes a lesbian icon like thor is. I want to touch his hair. hes never done anything wrong in his life. he could kill all might, deku, bakugo, whatever, I’d still be sayin this. I don’t feel bad for gt. like. was anyone genuinely attached to him? lmao

-well u know how spinner’s quirk is just sticking to things? We haven’t seen him use it in canon except like, (1) time iirc?? I think this is probably bc he’s embarrassed about it even in front of the league... I loooove the idea that he gets more comfortable with it around them :”) and also how shigaraki. um. does that falling asleep thing while standing up with his eyes open, canonly? (which I still love lmfao) Imagine someone in the league walking in a dark room, turning on the light n just seeing. Spinner upside down, stuck to the ceiling asleep bc heat rises and its Warmer Up There. (cold blooded thing like tsuyu?? come ON give him a big fuzzy coat and scarf...) and Shigaraki in the center of the room, slouched but still standing, eyes open and motionless. Theyre both sleeping. Whomever sees it just...slowly walks out. LMAO

-Toga roller derby au. No deep thoughts I just think she’d be good at it. 

-Toga 100% is a social butterfly and could befriend anyone if they didn’t just judge the fact she was trying to stab them smh :/ (ok but seriously anytime I see cute friendships with her n the other kids im like :) aw. I feel like her and Camie...would be good friends. Camie feels chill enough to be like ‘ok whatever thats totally fine I forgive you!!’ LMAO we love airheads here)

-HOW DID TOGA GET SO GOOD AT FIGHTING? We know she’s been on the run since middle school or so, but good enough to pin Deku down after he’s been formally trained at a ~hero school~ for a while? (she pinned him TWICE I think, once when his arms were messed up, but, the other time as Camie, so? AND THEN WAS ONE OF THE 100 PEOPLE TO GO THRU TO THE 2ND ROUND OF THAT? even tho she didn’t bc she had to leave) good enough to beat Aizawa in a fight and stab him? A professional hero and teacher for YEARS? Is that seriously just street training??? Can people acknowledge how amazing her combat skills and reflexes are??? More Toga appreciation when?? Also her backstory??? SO subversive and incredible, hate when people reduce her to just a ~typical anime yandere~ :/

-Tomura doing stuff with his hands/fingers to train his quirk!!! And to learn to be careful with it!! obv I’m a Big Fan of him playing piano to do this and video games are prob the canon answer, but like, guitar or any stringed instrument that requires Hands would work too. Or knitting/sewing? EMBROIDERING? ??? Please, let me give you the mental image of him knitting aggressively while mentally scheming, watching a twitch streamer or smth too while doing it. (Doing stuff with your hands is a great way to let your mind come up with creative stuff, that’s how I come up with writing/drawing ideas 70% of the time)

-Tomura actually PREFERS cutesty, relaxing games. I mean, he does fighting and bloody stuff irl, games are a way to relax...he’ll play shooters and gta type games with The Lads, but. on his own?? animal crossing. pokemon. kirby games. mario. zelda. BIG ZELDA FAN (not saying this bc I, personally, am biased, but,) slime rancher, stardew valley, funny simulator games... he really enjoys those :”) God forbid he has a kid bc they’re 100% getting named after a viddy game character unless someone can talk him out of it LOL. Toga and Tomura are that animal crossing /doom meme where she’d be asking for doom and him asking for animal crossing :”)

-Bits and pieces of Before are kinda stuck in Kurogiri’s brain, but like. mostly useless stuff the doctor didn’t care about removing. Like, types of clouds. So Tomura kinda picks up on stuff like that. He can just look at clouds and tell you what type they are because Kurogiri used to take him up to high places in the city and point them out to calm Tomura down from a panic attack when he was younger. He can tell you if the sky looks like it’ll rain with a 80% accuracy rate too. 

-Kurogiri left food out for kitties in the alley beside the bar. They weren’t allowed in for Health Reasons (it IS a bar with sanitation standards!!) And Tomura really wouldn’t stop it or encourage it either way so long as Kurogiri did his job, but occasionally would stand outside with Kurogiri and just watch the kitties from a distance. If any approached he’d go back in (lowkey afraid he’d hurt them by touching them :( ) They kinda kept that between them tho, bc they both Know AFO is a big bag of dicks and no fun

-people have pointed out how similar aizawa and tomura look. this was 100% the intention. tomura has a hatecrush on him. THIS IS SO FUNNY AND HORRIBLY AWKWARD FOR KUROGIRI LMAO

-Sako??? Mr. Dramatic?? Opera fan. Drama kid. Like, obviously, but. Really. He is. I feel like he can speak a dozen languages. I also feel like he used to be an overachiever but got too ambitious. He was def some kind of leader at one point of a diff Group or something that fell apart. I LOVE how creative he is with his quirk and the magician theme??? incredible. I don’t show him enough love but I Love Clowns :o)

-I don’t care what their canon heights are. Spinner and Dabi? short kings. My height hcs are (tallest to shortest) Kurogiri, Twice, Sako (who also has heels on his boots and a tall hat, keep in mind), Tomura, Magne (Tomura and Magne are about the same height imo) Toga, Spinner, Dabi. LISTEN. Dabi has short energy. Sorry. it’s true tho

-This is a semi-popular hc I think bc I KNOW I’ve seen it before, but Dabi having Terrible Vision and needing glasses is so so good. (seriously, with burns THAT close to his eyeballs, how could he not?) 

-he tries to be a tough loner coolguy. you’d think he’d smoke, but I hc his ‘weak constitution’ comes with weak lungs (esp from years of a flame quirk?? inhaling smoke over so much time is SO bad for you, most people who die in fires actually die of smoke inhalation...) so he’s got like, an inhaler, can’t smoke, actually gets carsick, needs glasses, overuses quirk to save friends constantly, likes napping, a little awkward and rude. Tomura put him in charge of the vanguard so he’s smart, and good with strategies too, like a nerd. this is the Dabi I wanna see, not the popular fandom version of him tbh also step on hawks one more time sir :”)

-I wish all the lov fics weren’t?? villain!deku like I said earlier, but also, chatfics? I have nothing against them but most of them are just a bombardment of Memes with NO PLOT!!! Listen. text/chatfics CAN have plot and be an interesting way to tell a story. I almost want to write one just to show what I mean...

I know I’ve said I like spinaraki and blackmagic, but I am a multishipper, so a few ships I don’t talk about that I like that involve the lov in some way:

-toga/any of the 1A girls??? or Camie??? super interesting. ALSO in the radio drama, bakugo’s voice actor said Toga was his favorite girl??? so?? bakugo/toga ?? I WANT TO SEE IT. but specifically my fav dynamic with her is when someone ELSE is the one to like her first, it’s what she deserves.

-Kurogiri/aizawa/mic?? any variety of that is also 👌🏻 I also kinda wanna see kurogiri/all might bc. Dads. COME ON. they bond over ‘well, I raised him, and you want to have a part in his life now?? ok. earn it. prove it. I’ll screen you first’ or something LMAO they’re both genuinely concerned for the boy, and SOOO biased. let them bond.

-WAIT WHERE IS THE MIC/COMPRESS CONTENT. THEYRE BOTH DRAMATIC. ENEMIES TO LOVERS?? HELLO??? SOMEONE?? ANYONE. rarepair hours

-giran/twice is cute. like he was hyping him up so much and so ready to go save him...

-dabi/magne where is the content. when. why not everywhere??? I’ve also seen magne/compress which was cute!! or twice/magne? they’re the big sibs of the lov...

-dabi/spinner?? come ON dabi could get over his learned biases and spend time with him and they could hold hands. I want them to.

-dabihawks. Obviously bc the Drama. yes even still, don’t @ me. (also, shigahawks, seen some REAL interesting fics with it tbh) or spinahawks?? adding hawks to a ship is like adding extra chili powder. makes it SPICY dramatic)

-nine/tomura don’t @ me once again. both kinda afo’s playthings, nine obviously was the test for tomura’s new upgrades...they both love their friends...That Scene in the Flower field </3 hmmm tragicships are fun.

-tomura/mirko. more enemies to lovers. big fan of her and bunnies. remember when he wore bunny ears in bnha smash. (ok its crack but. CUTE.) 

-I’ve also seen shiganatsu and shigafuyu and I’m like. these are cute, but also Dabi’s reaction always makes me cry laugh. so good.

-MOST EVERYONE IN THE LOV IS LGBTQA+!!! heres my personal headcanons:

Toga: pan or bi (CANON BASICALLY)

Magne: transwoman (CANON BABEY) bi, leans towards men. (her crush on dabi in bnha smash... uwu content where)

Shuichi: gets sooooo flustered canonly, I think he’d go for the first person Who Hit On Him (I can see him being the target of those mean pranks where someone says ‘my friend likes you!!’ and the friend is like ‘eww!!’ :(((( ) he’s super hesitant for romance, lots of repressed stuff. gay but takes sooo long to realize it bc he thinks most women are conventionally pretty Aesthethically, feels obligated to Like Them, but has bad self esteem so never goes after them, then only likes (1) guy so hes like?? is this allowed?? is this allowed???? (HES LIKE. IN LOVE WITH SHIGARAKI)

Dabi: bi but rly hasn’t ever gotten to date anyone, so he’s actually more reserved about it and while he’ll tease, he absolutely is absent and kinda oblivious (again, I KNOWWWW bnha smash isnt canon, but. my god. when magne is hitting on him and he Just Doesnt Understand.) also hes ace

Tomura: doesn’t care. (just prob says ‘its whatever’) trans/nonbinary (i’M NOT PROJECTING, BUT. :’/) probably goes with like, the label queer if any but doesn’t care much for labels

Kurogiri: bi??? kind of??? I say kind of bc well, I hc U Know Whom as bi, I feel like thatd carry over but he’d be really avoidant to date anyone bc hes gotta Watch His Kid u know? this is gonna sound surprising but I think he’d be the type to be like ‘ok we can have a one night stand/fling BUT it cant get personal bc I have a Job to Do for my Son so don’t get up in your feelings’ and act a little coldly at first or very ..not personable... depending on who it was he’d prob turn around eventually, esp if that person valued his feelings/job :”)

Sako: that mans Not Straight. I hc him as gay and also trans :3c

Twice: Bi and HAS dated prob more than anyone else in the league imo, super comfortable with his sexuality and supportive of everyone else’s :)

ok that’s about all I can think of atm, come back in 5 minutes and my brain will refill with lov headcanons :3 thank you for asking!!

[normal-thoughts-official]

anyway so a friend asked me why i don’t consider that just because a sh character has an actor of color, it means that they’re a character of color, and i think that explaining that to them i managed to get my point across quite nicely so i’m putting this here too in case anyone cares about my views on this

usually whatever race the actor is the character is, that mostly works

but it doesnt for sh because they hired a lot of actors of color for characters who are explicitly supposed to be white, and written as such. not just from the books but just like, for the story to work

Lorenzo is the most obvious example of that, Javier is latino but Lorenzo is explicitly white in show canon ("needless to say, being born in spain during the siglo de oro was quite the experience";  he's not only a spaniard, but explicitly a spaniard who was born at the height of the colonization and exploitation of the Americas and directly benefitted from it. his riches and influence are all the direct result of colonization. not only is he white, he is a literal colonizer and he's directly involved in the historic exploitation of latino and african ppl. so obviously Lorenzo is not latino, even if Javier is). but that logic applies to a lot of the charactes

take izzy for example. izzy wasn’t written as a latina woman, she was written as a white woman. i think that becomes particularly clear in the r*zzy plotline, and how the show writing treats it

recapitulating: izzy goes after the vampires, looking for a bite. they almost kill her. raphael sweeps in and saves her, and tells her to go away and sweat it out. in an attempt to show his empathy, he mentions that he’s handled addiction before, that he’s been addicted to human blood. izzy then slits her wrist and shoves it in raphael’s face, clearly seeing how this affects him. he still tries to tell her no, but she pushes him anyway. finally, he caves in and ends up drinking her blood. later, that same theme continues, with raphael not wanting to take izzy’s blood, and izzy triggering his addiction on purpose to make him. at one point, she threatened him with a sword to get him to drink her blood 

so far so good, yes? but then we see the way that the writing treats this plotline, and it doesn’t add up

alec sees them and punches the shit out of raphael, up until magnus stops him. later, when he leaves, magnus talks to raphael and all but scolds him for what he’s doing (“let’s see if you still think that when you’re not getting high”) without even learning the full story. in fact, the fact that izzy was the one who triggered raphael’s addiction (repeatedly) is never brought up again. when izzy talks about it with simon, later, he’s all worried and tells her to stay away from raphael. and none of this is never questioned by any of the writing. we never see raphael getting any support, except for magnus taking him into his home again. we don’t see him struggling with his own addiction and his issues. we only see izzy, and in that process, raphael is unquestioningly framed as the villain, as the one who “lured” and got her addicted, despite the fact that this is objectively not true

this doesn’t make any sense at all, unless you take into account that izzy was supposed to be a white woman

and then we see what’s going on. obviously, sexy vampire who lures the unsuspecting mundane woman stereotypes also play into this, sure. all the scenes with blood drinking are weirdly sexualized; the first time that raphael bites izzy’s wrist, she moans and kind of leans back against the car and he’s over her body and it looks every bit like some sort of “sexual predator taking advantage of poor woman” painting, or trope, or whatever. but that’s also- well, a stereotype that’s used with white women

because women of color aren’t typically painted as the victims of luring and using and abusing. on the contrary, they are usually painted as the ones who lure the men in, the ones who are “intoxicating”, exotic, dangerous, irresistible, the femme fatale stereotype, etc 

white women are the ones who are helpless and need to be protected by everyone, who are used and abused and taken by men (particularly moc, let’s not forget the historical use of “protecting white women from predators” as an excuse to increase policing and repression in neighborhoods of color, as well as the lynching and murdering of moc). white women are the ones who are unsuspectingly lured into a drug addiction and then used, needing to be later saved be everyone. white women are victims, and moc are predators. latino men in particular are also drug dealers and criminals and gang leaders. sounds familiar? yeah

so when izzy was being written - when this entire plotline was being written - she was written as a white woman. it doesn’t make sense otherwise. it doesn’t work otherwise. the entire plotline relies on racial tropes and stereotypes, and the writing lays that in so thick and naturalizes the narrative that izzy is being used so much that almost the entire fandom buys that idea, and never talks about how izzy used and triggered and abused raphael, and frequently writes him, if not as the culpable one, at the very least as co-responsible for her suffering. never as the victim, despite that being, through any objective lenses, what he is 

so i think it’s indisputable that izzy was written as a white woman, that even as the writers knew that emeraude was playing izzy, they were still imagining a white woman as they wrote her. they weren’t thinking about that when they hired emeraude to play her (in fact, emeraude was chosen to play izzy because izzy is supposed to have ��exotic beauty”), otherwise alec (and robert and max) wouldn’t be white. it doesn’t WORK

which gets us to: why are there so many actors of color playing characters who were originally white, and who were explicitly written as such, in sh? 

i think the main reason sh had so many actors of color playing white characters is because it's cheaper

actors of color, particularly immigrants, can get lower salaries because they dont have the same opportunities as other actors. for the same price you could get a bad white actor, you can get a reasonable actor of color, but most studios choose the white actor anyway. sh hired many actors of color because then they could get better actors for a lesser price, and it fit the whole "woke, there is rep in it" vibe the show was going for

that's my two cents, of course. i dont have proof of that but i think its highly likely that's what happened.

so that puts the racial relations in this particular fandom in a unique perspective. because the characters are white and that shows in writing, but due to the fact that the actors ARENT, the fandom still sees them with racial bias, so it's a loose and complicated intersection. i’ve seen plenty of racist depictions of izzy in fandom, so much so that i got triggered by the way she’s written as a sexual object for white people, the way she’s written as servicing in ships with white women and men and her pain and abuse is fetishized, among other things

so it’s a very complicated and particular situation, but as a whole, for these characters, the racism comes from the fandom, not from the writing. because they are written as white, i consider them white, but that doesn’t mean that the fandom treatment of them can’t be influenced by racist views and stereotypes. 

in short: in the sh universe, they are white, but to the viewers, they might not be, so they’re still subjected to racist treatment in fandom. there’s a disparity between their race in-universe and outside of it, and that creates unique intersections and views and writing of these characters

(this doesn’t apply to every character who was originally white and played by an actor of color; luke, for example, isn’t explicitly written as white at any point, so i consider him black. but izzy, lorenzo, maryse, camille, and others, were written as white, so i consider them white)

(besides, white actors play poc all the time, so why the fuck not have it be the other way around for once)

and look i mean obviously it's perfectly valid to hc those characters as poc and write them as such, especially in aus, but to me that’s that, a hc (well except for Lorenzo because hc-ning him as a poc when he explicitly was their oppressor historically is frankly disrespectful, and I'm not saying that because i dont like him, im saying that because thats how i see it), and not a fact in the writing & story

and that’s my take basically

[bravadoseries]

Not really stars and stripes related but who would you fancast for the Avengers?

oooh this was fun! thank you!  sorry my reasons r so nerdy lmfao . the american studies major really jumped out 

tony: michael b jordan; i think if tony had been Black it would’ve been more interesting for two reasons which is 1) would have granted representation to Black engineers thru tony and howard bc Black people’s inventions were often overlooked or straight up Stolen for much of american history and 2) i think it magnifies a lot of the tension tony eventually has with the us government because of how direct the impact of state violence has been on Black communities

steve: jin ha; the idea of Asian captain america fascinates me because the us government used military service as a trade-off for citizenship for a lot of ethnic minorities, and a propagandized Asian man attempting to appeal to other Asian Americans/minority Americans before realizing how fucked up the whole thing is and going into the fight himself adds depth beyond U.S. good guys Germany bad guys.  like germany was the bad guys obviously but on the u.s. side i think it was a lot more complex

thor: to be honest i like hemsworth but i think jason mamoa would also really slap?  especially if taika had directed all the thor movies because ragnarok was so distinctly indigenous and if thor had been played by an indigenous actor i think it would have been even more impactful

natasha: devon aoki . thanks so much . i like devon for 2 reasons 1) reparations against scarlett johannson and 2) devon isn’t chinese but exploring the interactions between the ussr and various asian countries would b so cool .... the idea of the second world .... i think that would hit 

clint: joel mchale ?? maybe then he would have had some personality. god bless also fuck jeremy renner on a really real level

bruce: oscar isaac; i think he has the same sort of charm that makes ruffalo’s portrayal not boring the way edward norton’s was boring.  obviously i like ruffalo for bruce lmao but i think oscar isaac has the ability to do well both as bruce and the hulk ???  also generally yeah . i get hot professor vibes and i’m not afraid to admit it.

bucky: rami malek; i just think he has the cheekbones for it

peter parker: keiynan lonsdale; i actually read a long hc a while ago about how peter parker’s story could have easily been not so boring and also much more relevant if the origins had been as a result of uncle ben being wrongfully killed by the nypd; it would emphasize the importance in peter’s eyes of justice being delivered outside of the police and why justice and policing are not the same thing

wanda: alba flores; alba’s actually romani so then the casting would be more ethnically correct; she isn’t jewish and the maximoffs are supposed to be mixed romani/jewish so that is also important to mention, but i could not find any faceclaims

pietro: kendji girac, for the same reason lol. UPDATE: okay so @daaeleira reminded me that the maximoffs are romani and jewish which reminded me of a conversation we had a few years ago; aaron taylor johnson is jewish and i know this is not how twins work but if he was pietro he also is at least representing that part of their background; it’s not ideal but it’s more accurate

carol danvers: kelly marie tran; i think a vietnamese carol danvers would have made the refugee plotline a lot more poignant and powerful, esp. if she had started off as a more conservative character like many vietnamese refugees were before realizing that she should show solidarity w the skrulls 

i think sam, t’challa, fury, and valkyrie were all well casted i am not gonna lie, and i also don’t feel comfortable recasting minorities.  but i did other side characters/love interests bc im answering this instead of writing an essay lol

sharon carter: i love emily but if peggy is jameela jamil i think sharon should be naomi scott

peggy carter: jameela jamil

jane foster: tia carrere; ok i also think if jane was pacifika it would have been excellent bc of how deep the connection is between indigenous pacifika people and astronomy

pepper potts: melissa fumero. she has the energies

coulson: aubrey plaza i just also think she has the energies 

loki: BEN BARNES ??

[ayankun]

Ok, if you haven’t already (I say this to be polite, I know you haven’t) go put your eyes on this episode synopsis first.  Why?  Because it’s a good time.  But mostly because I want you to be tangentially familiar with certain topics so I can better explain what happened to my brain while watching this one.

oh, right, this post is a synopsis of the VR Troopers episode 2x13 “Kaitlin Through the Looking Glass” btw

4

3

2

1

WE

ARE

V

R

Now that you’ve got this far, here’s some housekeeping before we start:

I watched this show sporadically as a kid and have very fond memories of it “being better than Power Rangers” but really didn’t know anything about it at the time.  I am watching it as an adult partly due to nostalgia but mostly because I genuinely enjoy it.  Not necessarily because of the reasons they intended, but, you know.

As an adult, with a different understanding of the world than when I was seven, I willfully misconstrue the main characters as being in a polyamorous relationship.  OT3 baybee

On a similar tangent, Ryan “Trooper TRANSform” Steele is obviously trans.  (transgent??)

Hell, maybe they all are.  The more the merrier amirite.

They all call the Professor “Puhfessor,” so I will, too.

Still with me?  Let’s begin.

(first up, though, the title sequence is over a minute long, when really they only needed like, maybe 15 seconds to get the point across.  there is also a ton of footage used that portrays events that never occur and also the song is not catchy enough to warrant any of this and I love it)

So in Ryan’s flashback intro, he muses about how, as a kid, he felt the need to prove himself.  He expresses this to his dad by asking when he’ll get a black belt, and his dad is a good supportive dad who tells him:

“It’s not the belt that’s important, son,”

Ryan’s dad says trans rights.

Ryan’s VO goes on to say "My dad taught me that it’s not outward appearances that really count, and that was an important lesson that would come in handy time and time again.”

Ryan really loves memories of his dad.

Which I think is a sweet lesson to learn when you’re young and other youngs (and olds) are going to give you crap about how you look, but it’s also hilariously phrased considering how superficial the concept of “outward appearances” is to this episode.

So we jump into things down at the ... Voice Underground Daily idk what the newspaper is called, I’m just trying to read the sign on the wall tbh.  We’re at Kaitlin’s place of business, and Woody (I think his name is Woody LOLOL how many episodes have I seen) shows Kaitlin this front page article which appears to have the headline:

ZIKTOR DEFEATED AT CITY HALL -- NO TOXIC WASTE DUMPING AT CROSS WORLD PARK

Ok, a couple of things.

Kaitlin and Percy are just ... chilling out at the copy machine like they’re friends and this is where the cool kids hang out.

Which can’t possibly be true because the actual cool kids are there in the back, just reading newspapers like Actual Cool Kids do.

They’re an indie paper, right?  How can they afford to print headlines that verbose?  ... Or full color glossy, for that matter

THEY ACCIDENTALLY PLAYED THIS LIKE THEY WERE EXCITED ABOUT THE NEWS ITSELF AND NOT ABOUT KAITLIN DOING A GOOD JOB ON AN IMPORTANT FRONT PAGE PIECE

Environmentalism was No Joke in kids’ media in the 90s.  I specifically remember learning the word “toxic” from a Power Rangers episode where Billy tested the lake water.  I literally had to look it up.

and they say you can’t learn nuffink from tv

Anyway, part of the excitement is that this article is the follow up to an expose of Ziktor, also authored by Kaitlin, which inspired the city officials to veto his waste-dumping proposal.  So we’re proud of Kaitlin for doing a good job at journalism and for protecting the world!

JB does what JB does best and attempts to arrange a date.

The line is, “Hey, let’s celebrate!  With lunch!  At Hamburger Hutch” but I guess someone at Netflix got lazy for a second.

I forgot to mention, in my HC he’s our token ace (as my favorites often are), so he tends to go overboard with the romance.  You don’t have to compensate for anything, JB!

Kaitlin appreciates the gesture.

But then Woody interjects and I let my adult sense of humor get the better of me...

come on, the man’s name is Woody I can’t be the only one with my mind in the gutter can I

Also the line is “I don’t want you boys filling up my star reporter” so what am I supposed to thINK

--WITH JUNK FOOD.  Dodged an FCC bullet there.

So I just now gave it 2 seconds thought and the discrepancies with the subtitles probably have something to do with the expectation that children would be watching this show and can’t read that fast.  BOY DO I NOT FIT THE DEMOGRAPHIC

Ok well.

Where Woody’s going with this is that he wants to impose a health shake on Kaitlin for godknowswhy.  But it’s all good because as he todders off to get started on what will surely be a monstrosity, we get this ADORABLE moment where Kaitlin tries to get JB to come to her rescue.

She just runs up and grabs him.  I’m all a-flutter.

But JB is of no help.  Instead, he calls dibs on her fries.

There’s a weird, under-baked joke going on here that seems to be rooted in the idea that if one is dieting then others benefit from this self-sacrifice by gleefully picking up the slack?  Anyway Kaitlin’s not on a diet?  This vitamin shake angle literally came out of nowhere?  Is against her will???

Just one burger, please.  Protein style :<

et tu, Jeb??

Anyway, this weird exchange just passes the time to get Woody all set up.  He turns on the blender and THE WHOLE WORLD STARTS SHAKING. 

Percy runs over to be the hero, demanding Woody turn the blender off, while everyone else just rumbles around looking distraught and not practicing anything resembling safe earthquake response.  Percy manages to get a hold of the blender, lifting it off the counter, and -- you guessed it -- the lid comes off and purreed-carrot-baby-food-looking goop gets all over his nerdy white button up.

The shaking stops.  Percy’s very proud of himself (and disdainful of the others who didn’t come to his heroic conclusion).  End scene.

I’ll be real.  At this juncture, literally thought that the blender HAD caused a natural disaster, and it was just a wacky 90s gag that went on for far too long.

More on this story as it develops.  We’re moving on.

How many cities in the world do you think have ominous buildings in them that aren’t secret headquarters for supervillains?

Our good buddy Karl Ziktor is reading -- wait for it -- Kaitlin’s article.  It has a headline so long they had to dedicate the full front page for it.  I’m pretty sure that’s not how newspapers are commonly formatted.

That is literally just a couple of newspaper clippings taped to a big piece of paper.

Oh he’s mad.  He tells Juliet all about his evil plan for revenge, which is to “steal her virtual image and create a second Kaitlin Starr [that serves him]”.

Same, Juliet.

Off that yikes, a henchwoman comes in to appraise Ziktor of the status of phase one, which is underway.  A so-called Stingbot is “in the basement of the Underground Voice” so that’s what the paper’s name is, anyway.

Anyway so Stingbot was the one responsible for the earlier tremors.  And, yeah, I mean I know they were new cobbling stories together from old footage, but What The Hell do “sting” and “earthquake” and “outward appearances” have in common?

And that is how a Stingbot do.

My question is partially answered, in that Stingbot’s earthquakes are a distraction so that some skugs can plant the “Virtual Mirror Transmitter” on Kaitlin, which is the nefarious device that will create the aforementioned Kaitlin-2.  Bold of him to assume that just because Kaitlin’s a woman that she 1) carries a purse 2) stores a mini pink mirror in the purse 3) will look at herself in the mirror unprovoked.

It’s such a wildly twentieth-century concept.  Here in good ol’ 2020, I, for one, have not looked in a mirror in months.

Ugh more gross than this use of outdated stereotypes is this weird tongue thing Ziktor does while almost literally salivating after his upcoming revenge.  You’ll have to go see it for yourself, I’m not going to watch it again to cap it.

(This guy gives his 200% to this role, though.  What a legend. RIP Gardner Baldwin)

So Ziktor blue-skadoos into his virtual stronghold and gets an update from his generals.  There’s this new guy that I’ve already also forgotten the name, and since he has a human face, there’s a lot of awkward cuts between him and his Japanese counterpart in the footage that’s already ten years old at the time.  It probably looked great.  I was an adult before I found out that Rita Repulsa was the original Japanese actress in the original dubbed Japanese footage.

Anyway, he looks great.

I think I read that for season 2 they had access to and/or recreated the costumes used in/matching the source material, so there’s a noticeable uptick in cool-looking sets with American actors wearing cool-looking costumes, like this one.

You said it.

That’s about it for this scene, but before we go to commercials, Grimlord says this nonsense:  “I will destroy Kaitlin Starr with the one weapon she cannot defend against -- herself.”

Confirmed: Kaitlin is a deadlier weapon than, say, a homing missile.  (she can defend herself from those)

Ok we’re back at the Underground Voice and there’s still an earthquake going on.  Also, and let me tell you this with a large amount of regret of my life-choices, I’ve been sitting here for just about two hours and we are only five minutes into the episode (and that includes the minute long opening credits.)

Let’s roll!

JB gets off the phone with who knows who, having learned that there’s no earthquake registering anywhere, it’s a localized mysterious incident.  Ryan recommends they clear the building “just to be safe.”  My boy, why wasn’t that everyone’s first thought?  Are they really just standing around waiting to be told?  We had drills for this for a reason!

(Actually, I’m not sure where Cross World City is located.  Maybe they’re not on a fault line and do not actually do drills)

In any case, there’s a brief PSA where Woody wants to collect his valuables to take with him, and everyone has to inform him that that’s ill-advised behavior in an evacuation scenario.

He responds in classic Woody nonsense, by putting on a captain’s hat and insisting he’ll go down with his ship.  AND OUR BOY JB SAYS

He’s still thinking about that date.

LOOK.  There’s no rule that says asexuals can’t make dirty jokes.  Because we can and do.  Let me have this.

So our heroes herd everyone out of the building and then stay behind to call the Puhfessor.  Just as they get him on the computer, the earthquake stops. 

It’s not all good news, though.  The Puhfessor taps into some kind of impossible CC feed and they watch Stingbot undermining the structural integrity of the building.  Stingbot, by the way, has one of those creepy child laughs that is insane.  It’s so good.

Ryan decides to check out the basement himself while Kaitlin and JB keep everyone else outside.  He finds some creepy janitors down there, and they head on up like creeps normal janitors.

Maybe they were just hotboxing down there.

Stingbot’s also in the basement!  Who knows what he was doing down there, because

Murder hornet, colorized, 2020

Which is a weird thing to say until you remember the slight, throwaway “yummy!” he says earlier while drilling into the building.  I had forgotten it in the 40 seconds it took for me to get from that moment to here.

Ryan insults Stingbot’s outward appearance, which is odd because I thought he learned that lesson as a kid.  Either way, it’s time to

WE ARE V R

Only to spend about half a second on recycled footage just to have Stingbot go “lol, later loser.”  Because those perfectly normal janitors are upstairs swapping Kaitlin’s purse mirror with the evil thing.

Can you imagine trying to pull a stunt like this today?

Outside, things have calmed down enough that JB thinks Ryan’s got it under control.  He’s gonna go back in “to see if the building’s safe enough to reenter.”  I know he knows it’s not a real earthquake, but also I don’t think I’d trust a non-professional to assess my office’s structural integrity.

Kaitlin’s going to join him, which causes Percy to pipe up, Pavlovianly ... just to chicken out and stay put.  GOOD JOB PERCY.  USING YOUR HEAD FOR ONCE I SEE.

(kids, don’t volunteer to check that a building is safe after an incident where its safety may be in question.  it is not cowardly to leave it to Someone Who Knows What They’re Doing)

So JB and Kaitlin come back in to find the Normal Janitors shadily stealing a floppy disk from Kaitlin’s desk.  (kids, a floppy disk is a real object that looks a lot like the “save” icon)   BUT OF COURSE THEY’RE SKUGS SO JB AND KAITLIN HAVE TO THROW DOWN.

Let’s just say there’s a good thing they have an earthquake to blame all this property damage on.

JB’s a little snippy.

All he wanted was to go to lunch with his girlfriend and boyfriend.

The gold skugs do their fusion dance thing and turn into the oni-mask skug variant, which I’m assuming is a constraint of these later episodes where they used footage from a show that did not have the gold ones in.

FLIRTY BATTLEFIELD BANTER UGH I SHIP IT

Once that’s handled, we find out what Ryan’s been up to in the basement by himself this whole time.

Um.  I’m not touching that one with a 10-foot ... wait.

Ohhhh

Ryan heads back up and swaps notes with JB and Kaitlin.  Stingbot said that its work was done, so what exactly was it trying to accomplish?  Ryan then runs from there outside to check on everyone else.

Kaitlin then decides she needs to freshen up, which is something I don’t recall her ever needing or wanting to do after any other natural disaster/fight portrayed on this show.

But look how cute they are with their mutual post-fight shoulder-pat.  JB even gives her this cute little look as she darts off.  He is smitten.

He is smote.

Kaitlin gets her mirror out of her purse, as planned, and checks herself out.  You know.  Like how woman do.

She gets it.

This is it!  Grimlord’s chance to strike!  He will have his revenge, Juliet, just you wait!

for great justice

We are treated to a brief bit of delightful 80s Japanese sci-fi, all flashing lights and chonky beep boop buttons.  It works!  A tastefully gendered laser light shoots out of Kaitlin’s mirror and STEALS HER FACE OFF HER FACE

FACE/OFF

The experience seems highly unpleasant, but she’s mostly ok...

But wait, who’s this ...

It’s not really the Mirror Universe unless someone gets a goatee.

Kaitlin’s freaked out, but we don’t have time to see her process what it was that just happened.  More beep boop 80s lights (seizure warning much), and the virtual replica Kaitlin is 3D printed in Grimlord’s lair.

lol he’s got a play date

So this Kaitlin is the same exact person as real Kaitlin, with one major difference.

So this got dark, right?  This is different from that time they cloned Ryan, because that was just a DNA clone man baby with evil sunglasses; this is actually Kaitlin, the person, just with some programming differences, who’s gonna go back out there and hurt her boys herself.

Needless to say, Grimlord is delighted.

Check out that disgruntled wall snake, tho.  “I thought I was your lovely child”

Now Grimlord’s plan is to send Kaitlin into the wild with a device called the “fissicator” which is a “sTUn ray!!” (you have to hear him say it, it’s so good) as well as a thing that will reprogram the Trooper’s “contact disk.”

I didn’t mention it earlier, but that’s the disk that the janitors skugs were trying to steal, and it was also how Kaitlin called up the Puhfessor on her work computer.  I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen it before and we never see it again.  It’s Not A Thing.

So Kaitlin goes to Tao’s, where Ryan’s just chilling there by himself.  I guess everyone was okay after the earthquake, then.  (It is unclear how much time has passed)  Maybe it’s been hundreds of years, because Ryan acts like he’s not sure who she is.

Wait, hold on.  I did NOT pay close enough attention the first time, but -- either it’s much later the same day and/or they missed a scene.  They’re still wearing the same clothes ... and Ryan says he thought she was heading (back?) to the paper ... and then she says ....

Ryan.exe has stopped executing

Wait so WHAT.  What workout.  We have not been to Tao’s yet this episode.  ???

It’s really just a ruse to get Ryan to fight her, though.  But also.  Why need ruse?  Evil clone?  Just attack tho, right?

But also no NO.  DONT attack.  We’ve already seen JB be beat up by his evil clone boyfriend.  It’s rough.  (spoiler alert, this one’s gonna be rough, too)

So Ryan tries to let her down easy by saying he doesn’t have time -- and I can’t tell with this video quality, but I don’t think he’s wearing a watch but he does the “look at wrist” technique and it’s p good.

Kaitlin-2 refuses to be let down easy.

Them’s fightin words

Ryan ends up splayed out on the desk but seriously, now is not the time.

He rightfully wants to know what’s up, but she keeps taunting him to fight her.  She takes the first shot, which he dodges and blocks before disengaging.  Remember, kids, just because somebody picks a fight with you doesn’t mean you don’t have any other options!

She won’t stop coming for him, though, so he gets her arms pinned so he can try talking her down again. 

This technique backfires.

no more mr nice kaitlin

So in the other clone episode, this scene was staged in a room full of people, and even though JB was blindsided, he and Ryan are ostensibly evenly matched.  It wasn’t nice for JB, but at least someone was there to break up the fight.

This time though, Ryan’s been gently if firmly trying to diffuse a confusing situation where someone without his training is behaving irrationally and is going to get both of them hurt.  So far his attempts to de-escalate have failed, and there is no deus ex intervention incoming.

AND THEN she goes and plays the superpowers card on him.  Black belt or no, the whole point of having the Trooper alter ego is that they come with amazingly OP combat powers capable of defeating all manner of monsters.

And Kaitlin, a very very very dear close friend has just walked up out of nowhere and dropped a nuke on him.

Okay, so she throws him over a table, it’s the principle of the thing.

This overkill maneuver knocks him out cold.  She lifts Ryan’s Trooper communicator (so he can’t call for help when he comes to -- omg this is so chilling) and then uses the fissicator to call Grimlord for further instructions.

Gotta catch ‘em all

New Kaitlin, who dis?

So he now wants her to steal the disk, reprogram the disk, and use the reprogrammed disk to break all the Trooper computer stuff.  She reads his order back like

Close enough, I guess.

She gleefully moves on to her next task, leaving a helpless Ryan struggling and failing to regain consciousness.  :<<<<<<<

At the paper, real Kaitlin gets a message from JB on her little Trooper video phone and secretly Trooper TRANSforms out of there from inside the darkroom.  This was the point where I realized they had different ones!  Hers and JB’s are red and white, while Ryan’s (that just got stole) is red/blue.

Also, you can just see under all those crayons, but that’s the “contact disk” that Kaitlin-2 is coming for.  (how many crayons does a professional journalist need, anyhow?)

So there’s a joke in there were Percy sees Kaitlin go into the darkroom and then Kaitlin-2 walks in, and then also when he checks the darkroom, it’s empty.

Oh, so that means Kaitlin-2 successfully steals the contact disk, btw.

Back at Tao’s, Ryan has woken up and some how his backpack has, like, crawled down to see if he’s okay?  Which is helpful because that’s how he is able to quickly identify that on top of assault, there’s been a robbery.

I hope she doesn’t delete my save files

And this was the moment (right now, doing the caps) that I realized the little phones are called VRVTs!

But seriously, imagine being knocked out cold by a loved one, with no reason, no hint at an explanation, and not only has she left you for dead, she’s taken your phone so you can’t call for help.  He has no idea that she’s an evil clone!!!!  This is a real tragedy of a thing.  A gutting betrayal.

It looks like Ryan has his own contact disk, tho?  And he uses this on Tao’s PC to call up the Puhfessor.

spelled it rong

Just as a note, this subtitle comes up WAY too soon, so for a couple of frames it just looks like some kind of meme.  A++

 Ryan starts to relate his traumatic experience to the Puhfessor, but luckily he’s cut off with the good news that his “sensors” somehow correctly identify Ryan’s assailant as Kaitlin’s virtual double.

geez, you guys, look at how Ryan deflates hearing this.  I mean, it’s not great that he was probably concussed, but it’s a relief that his world still makes some kind of sense.

poor bb

Also, you can’t tell as much here, but there’s a really subtle punch in as the moment progresses, bringing us closer and making the moment more intimate as he grapples with this new information.  There’s a lot of dumb half-assed stuff in this show, but I gotta call attention to the stuff that is excellent for any era.

Also it’s so efficient from a time-management perspective.  Just look at the opening shot, which was a medium type establishing shot so you can picture Ryan in the space, but the PC’s right there for both the viewer and Ryan to reach.  Then we slowly zoom in, which serves double duty in that it provides the appropriate emotional impact, and at the end we’re on a nice close up of Ryan as he jumps into action.  Three shots with just one set up (and probably done in one take, with room to splice the PC shots in)!  I’m very pleased with this.

Down to brass tacks

The Puhfessor ominously tells him that they have their own troubles and we go straight from there into some source footage of them fighting some skugs and what I think is General Ivar.

After about three seconds of that, we cut back to the lab, where Ryan busts in on Kaitlin-2 just as she’s hacking up a storm.

im in ur base, haxxoring ur mainframez

Kaitlin-2 shows him the contact disk, which is now “encoded with a self-destruct program” that she’s going to use to overheat the lab’s power core and destroy like all the things.  Ryan is noticeably concerned, but Kaitlin-2 points the fissicator at him to get him to stay in line.

Ok ok ok ok so here’s where we get to the point where, when I watched this today, I fully turned away from whatever it was I was doing to go wwwwwwwwwwwwtf

Kaitlin-2 has a disk that will blow up the lab -- and there’s nothing Ryan can do to stop her--

huh

bruh what are you

bro srsly what

is happening

You’re trying to tell me that Ryan “killed his own clone with no ragrets” Steele is trying to make an emotional appeal to this clone in order to undermine her sense of purpose?

...did she ever think that Grimlord cared about her?  As a person?  I feel like that wasn’t in the contract when she was 3D printed with the sole purpose of serving her dark master, and she shouldn’t have any emotional reaction to this assumed expectation being challenged.

And .... did they ... did they read my other post?  The one about wanting to keep the clone around ..... ??????

what is happening right now

Ryan leans hard into this “embrace your humanity” tactic and has the Puhfessor show them a live feed of JB and Kaitlin’s fight.

“...She sure could use our help...”

wait for it

When she balks, he gives her one last over the top inspirational blurb that despite of whatever it was Grimlord did to her, she’s still the same (good) person as Kaitlin.

It starts to sink it.

(also just check out these sweet eyelines, you can tell that the screen they’re watching is slightly to his left,  sort of behind her to her right, which makes sense!)

He keeps at it.

Looks like it’s working?  She starts to reconsider her whole existence ...

...considers Kaitlin’s ...

... moment of truth ...

And it works!

BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE YOU GUYS

“NOW GO HELP HER” RYAN COMMANDS

AND

OMG

CLONE KAITLIN-2 IS ALL

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess, I mean, obviously Ryan’s evil clone did that whole thing where he stole Ryan’s virtualizer and started flying the Skybase, so if this Kaitlin is the same as the other Kaitlin then obviously she’d be able to do this, too.

But like!  She was the main villain until like four seconds ago, somebody who did Ryan dirty.  Just another of Grimlord’s nefarious tools of warfare.  And Ryan, a man who’s killed his own clone before, who took a beating from her only hours prior, is suddenly the bigger man who is capable of seeing past all that in order to turn an agent of his enemy.  And to go do his job, no less!

This has never happened before.  This show’s always been kill or be killed.  There’s a good reason for this, and we’ll get to that in one moment.

But I like to think Ryan learned from his mistake.  He didn’t even try to to connect to his evil clone.  He just got beat up and went back for revenge.  (I’m looking back at my caps for that episode, and it seems it was the Puhfessor’s idea to kill the evil clone, and maybe there was a MacGuffin reason why it was The Only Way, I forget.)  Maybe he thought long and hard about the repercussions of his actions -- maybe he thought that, had he been able to better understand his evil self, that maybe that shadow version of him would have liked to have been given the benefit of the doubt?

At the end of the day, I can think whatever I want.  But why we never get any other reformed villains until now is only because

It’s almost like they recycled footage from a different show(s) and just had to roll with the punches.

So then JB and the Kaitlins fight some skugs and there’s a big explosion and a lot of jumping.  JB and Kaitlin get caught up with the SparkNotes version of who tf extra Kaitlin is and then they fight Stingbot, teleport to a quarry, you know, all the everyday stuff.

Back at the lab, Ryan’s feverishly trying to undo Kaitlin-2′s handiwork and keep the core from melting down.  Can he do i-- well yes.  He can and he does do it.  Then he TROOPER TRANSFORMs away and ... flies off to fight ... some jets ... I guess? 

pew pew pew

In the quarry, JB is going toe to toe with Stingbot.  Stingbot has some cute little wasp drones that electrocute everyone.  They’re having a good time out there.

it’s super effective

Ryan shoots some more jets ... JB dislodges his wasp and slices one off a Kaitlin with a sword ... the third one just .. pops off on its own *shrug*

Stingbot shoots some acid (oh he did that before, too, in the basement, but it was irrelevant) which evaporates a boulder ... Kaitlin goes back to her battlefield quips but they’re not nearly as flirty as the last time ...

JB gets out his lightsaber and GOES TO TOWN on the remaining bad guys.  That thing makes the BEST wvungwvungwvung sounds, just btw.

And that’s it!

Almost.

Grimlord spends his obligatory seven seconds ruing the day he ever met a VR Trooper and swearing revenge.

ya it’s called being a parent

Turns out he still hopes that the two Kaitlins will destroy each other!  Very optimistic guy, our Grimlord.

Back at ol’ HQ, JB and the Kaitlins stroll in and explain the sitch to Jeb.  Kaitlin-2 seems fully reformed!

yee gurrl

But oh-hoho, does the Puhfessor HATE clones.

buzzkill, emphasis on kill

So it turns out, and I quote, “two Kaitlins cannot exist in the same reality.”  I guess technically she’s not a clone, but a virtual double from the mirrorverse/VR land, so that kind of makes some sort of sense.  This dimension is too small for the both of you!

The stakes are that if the two Kaitlins are not rejoined within 24 hours, both Kaitlins will byte the dust. 

Oh no!!

This was the point where, having a pretty good internal clock as well as a refined sense of story structure, I literally smirked at the screen thinking “soooooooo what.  you have like two minutes left and you’re gonna fix it in time for the credits.  overdramatic stakes are overdramatic.”

AND

THEN

THE

KICKER

OH-HOHO

I WAS

SO WRONG

SAME THO?1

:D

[spacebrick3]

WHG - Kjiersten’s Victory

Alright, so I felt I should make something to describe Kjiersten’s victory in the Writeblr Hunger Games; (I can’t do any of the other days really since this turned out to be like 3k words already and I do need to actually get other stuff done haha)

 It’s going along with the rebellion/conspiracy started by @ratracechronicler and @concealeddarkness13 - also, @writer-denois and @owlsofstarlight your characters Ra’ae and Maldl showed up as the only other two in the final days of the Games.

I should have an ‘after-the-games’ post made for Kjiersten as well sometime, but here’s my take on how the Games ended;

Day 19:

Kjiersten stood at the edge of the forest, thinking. All three of the tributes had managed to get together the night before, but with the Capitol clearly listening in, there had been no way to discuss how they would get out. It had been an awkward conversation, then, none of them able to say what was on their minds, but there had been some interesting topics brought up, and they had been able to learn a bit more. Like the fact that Maldl had once served in a communication outpost left over from the days before Panem, handling the wires there.

They glanced over at the trees. It seemed like a nice day for some whittling.

Grabbing a vaguely straight tree branch, they hiked back into the forest, around where they knew the other two tributes had been last night. They were both District 11, so they’d likely stick together. Then, making sure he was close enough to the clearing that the tributes would be able to hear them, they started scraping at the edge of the branch with their knife.

Scrape. Scrrrrrrrape. Scrape. Scrape. Pause. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Pause. Scrrrrrrrape. Pause. Scrrrrrrrape. Scrape. They kept methodically slicing at the edge of the bark, making as much noise as possible, until they were almost sure they had to have attracted the attention of at least one of them. Then they repeated their small statement, making sure that Maldl would be able to understand it:

Lstn. Msg. Rply w 1 arw e.

They were sitting about to the southeast of the clearing. Ra’ae had been carrying a massive longbow the day before, and Kjiersten waited for about five minutes before a long, black-shafted arrow came whistling through the trees a few meters away from them, directly east. They had their attention. Again they turned their attention to the branch, clearing another section of bark to get the next message across:

hg nds. tdy o tmrw. o Cp wl snd smthg. Y? N?

Another few minutes passed, presumably while the two of them translated the message. Then came the sound of an axe chopping at wood, five strokes delivered quick, then the same five to repeated the message.

Chop. Chop. Chop. Chop. Pause. Chop.

SN. Understood. Maldl and Ra’ae were agreeing, and also implicitly stating that they would follow their lead on this. Kjiersten mulled for a second about how the other two could fake their deaths. It would be the best course of action, especially since the Capitol had always been suspicious of their leadership of the Connection Project. Losing the Games would mean losing that - at least in the open - and that couldn’t happen. And besides, he thought a little ruefully, it would be nice to win the Games, at least in practice if not theory.

R, they finally sent. expls at nw cnr. st off nd rmv trckr. hc pk. QSL? (Do you acknowledge?)

QSL, came the reply. Acknowledged. Ra’ae was going to go find the explosive Kjiersten had rigged up back - was it two weeks ago now? The Games were really starting to blur their perception of time. Ra’ae would set it off from a distance, with any projectile he could find, then rip his tracker out. The others - Tom and Kallias especially, although they guessed a majority of the mentors might be in on it by now - would come collect them then, and most of the Capitol would be none the wiser.

What about Maldl, though? Both of District 11 dying together, especially after having been alive so long, would be suspicious. And if they died simply setting off a trap, the Gamemakers would be even more incensed. Best to let things go out with a bang, then.

M. Tmrw. Hr. Fht s Cp wnt spct ayt. Fg ot wo srv thr. QSL?

More silence, and they worried that they’d omitted too many letters in the interest of speed. But finally the reply came back QSL, and they sighed in relief. Tomorrow morning, they and Maldl would meet back here for a fight, and they’d decide then who would win and who would fake their death. But until then, there was nothing to do but kill a few hours until the next day, although hopefully not literal killing.

What to do until then? They looked down at the now mostly-shaved stick in their hand, and shrugged. Why not whittling?

Night 19:

The anthem had just finished playing. They had managed to get to a hill overlooking the northwest part of the forest, and looked up just in time to see a blinding flash of light illuminate the edge of the dark mass of trees. Flaming debris lit a few of nearby trees ablaze, and they burned with bright yellow light. Smoke billowed into the air.

Even though they knew it was fake, they couldn’t help but wince. That was a much bigger explosion than they had expected, and they hoped Ra’ae had known more about the explosives than they had and had been able to get out of the way in time. But they couldn’t know, not until after the Games ended. Even as they still stared down at the conflagration, a pitch-black Capitol hovercraft descended through the smoke and fire to retrieve him. It hovered only a second over the edge of the flames before launching itself back into the sky.

Kjiersten watched it go until it was only a speck in the sky. They hoped desperately that Ra’ae was alright, and that they hadn’t just witnessed a sacrifice like Val had performed the Games before in order to make Dean’s win believable. Something like that shouldn’t have to happen here. Everyone else had been able to get out fine - Veth, Kaine, Erya, Kallias - they’d watched them all get rescued, picked up in nondescript hovercraft and taken to the safe house. Sadie too, although they were sure there’d be no shortage of teasing about the fall that had allowed her to rip her tracker out. Especially since they themselves had managed to get up the trees several times to rest.

Tomorrow was coming fast and with it, the end of the Games, one way or another.

Day 20:

It was time. Early this morning, they had hiked back down from their hill and back to the clearing, trying to decide which weapon would be best for a theatrical fight. They found a mace they didn’t remember picking up or even carrying around, as well as a few different knives and one Molotov cocktail, but no matches. Barring anything else, the mace would probably be best to give the Capitol a show. At the very least, it looked interesting. They shuddered at the thought of having to actually use it, though, and hoped Maldl had either a way to convincingly fake his or their death.

Maldl had gotten there before them, and stood, bored, leaning on a massive longsword. They were taken aback slightly - where had he managed to hide that when the three of them had been talking? - but recovered, trying to adopt the same casual position with the ‘mace-over-the-shoulder-“ look. Since that nearly overbalanced them and made them fall over, they decided against it.

“So!” he called, voice echoing. “This is where it ends. Right here, right now!”

Typical theatre. The Capitol would be eating it up. “Unless you want to keep chasing each other back and forth. There’s just the two of us now. No point in dragging it any further!” they shouted back.

“Well then, who’s it going to be? Me or you?” he shouted again, raising the sword and charging. Kjiersten managed to drag the mace of the ground and block his stroke, the longsword locking against the head of the mace. “So what’s our plan?” Maldl hissed against the rasp of steel on steel.

“One of us has to fake dying!” they whispered back, pulling the mace away and stumbling back. He spun the sword in his hands, an impressively agile move for a five-foot-long blade, then spun an underhand stroke at them, which they were only barely able to block.

“Again, me or you?”

“I don’t know! Are you a good actor?”

He grinned. “The best.” Then he twisted his sword, wrenching the mace up and out of Kjiersten’s hands. Dimly, they heard it clatter to the ground behind them. “At acting, that is.”

“What?” they asked, taking a nervous step back. “No - no, you’re not doing this.”

“I am,” he said, his face changing from his amiable smile into something harder. “But you’d know about it, wouldn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” they asked desperately. “Please - I just want to help everybody get out of here alive? Why are you trying to stop that?”

“Get everybody out alive?” he asked mockingly. “You tell that to Ra’ae too, before you killed him?”

“I-“

“You modified that explosive last night! Gave it a bigger radius and everything! I watched him die, Kjiersten! He thought he was safe and then you killed him!”

They felt their blood run cold. So their suspicions last night had been correct. The blast radius of the mines had been changed to be larger than usual, probably by some sadistic or ‘tech-savvy’ sponsor. They hadn’t known, even though probably even a cursory inspection could have revealed it. And now Ra’ae was dead because of it. Actually dead, not all this Games faking-your-death stunts they’d been trying to arrange. “Why?” they whispered to themselves. “Why did this have to happen?” they asked again, louder this time. Falling to their knees, they stared at the ground as if it could hold the answers now.

“He was my friend!” Maldl shouted. “So now I’m just paying you back! You thought you were safe here, and now you’re going to die! Sound familiar?” As he shouted, he spun the sword again, then brought it down in a sweeping arc. Silver flashed bright in the morning sun as the blade whistled through the air.

Just before it hit, Kjiersten looked up at it. Time seemed to slow, and they realized something. Even though it felt like a part of them had been ripped out at the news of Ra’ae’s death, they hadn’t done it. They hadn’t made the mine or even modified it. Maybe they were complicit, but they were not at fault. Maldl was wrong.And despite everything, they still didn’t want to die.

With a cry of despair, they dove out of the way. A tearing pain split their left side as the sword came down, but they managed to get far enough that they could claw their way back up to a standing position. “Not ready to die quite yet?” Maldl asked, venom in his words. “That’s alright. Ra’ae wasn’t either.”

“I didn’t do it!” they managed to choke out. “Can’t you understand? I wasn’t the one who modified that mine!”

“Sure. Tell that to Ra’ae.”

“Damn it, Maldl, I’m trying to help you!” they shouted, wincing as the pain in their side flared again. Pressing a hand to it, they found it sticky with blood. “We can still both make it!”

He lowered the sword for a second, eyes blazing with anger. “One of us is going to die here today. If the only way to live is to accept the help of a murderer, then I believe I will be happy to go down fighting.”

“Please! No matter who dies today, Ra’ae’s still going to be dead!” They stumbled over to where the mace lay. Suns of Thiorna, they didn’t want to fight. But they didn’t want to die either. And they had a terrible feeling that, in just a few minutes, those desires would enter direct conflict.

“Yes, he is,” he agreed. “But, personally, I have a feeling that it might be more than a little dishonorable to his memory to accept the help of his murderer.” He adopted a fighting stance, sword held out straight in front of him. “No more words. It ends here.”

“PLEASE!” Kjiersten shouted, but it didn’t do any good. Maldl charged. They managed to dive out of the way, raising the weapon defensively and listening to the shrieks of metal on metal. No theater this time. “I didn’t kill him! I had no idea the mines were changed! Just listen!”

“No. You broke your word to Ra’ae,” he said, swiping at their head and missing by just a few inches. “I’ve no reason to trust whatever you say.”

They raised the mace to fend off a particularly vicious swing. “Maldl. Please! I am begging you – just let us get out of here! Continue-“ Metal clashed on metal again as he slowly drove them back, their feet sliding uselessly on the ground. “-continue your vendetta later! But right now you’re just playing into the Capitol’s hands!”

“So were you!” he shouted. “Betraying Ra’ae with a trap! I’m sure the Gamemakers just loved that!”

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill him!” They knew it was useless, though. Maldl had seen Ra’ae die and blamed Kjiersten for it, and in all honesty it was an understandable reaction. If they had watched Sadie die – following orders from someone who had promised them safety – they suspected they’d react similarly. “Please, Maldl!”

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.” Then he started to advance again, swinging the sword wildly in front of him.

They stumbled backwards, frantically looking for a way out. In a perfect world, they would have had the advantage here – Maldl was almost blind with rage now, and any experienced fighter would have been able to slip through his defense. The problem, of course, was that the world was not perfect and that they were far from an experienced fighter. Plus, they didn’t want to kill Maldl if it could be helped, but he appeared to have no such qualms.

So what could they do? Kjiersten was fairly sure almost the entire Capitol hovercraft fleet was under their control – if they could make it look like Maldl was dead, and remove the tracker somehow, then he could be picked up. But he was getting closer, sword still windmilling in front of him, and they were running out of places to go to.

Their gaze fell on their backpack, on the other side of the clearing, and something resembling a plan began to form. There were weapons there, weapons he wouldn’t know about. That could give them enough of an edge, at least for a few seconds, that it was possible they could overpower him and win the fight. It’d be hard to get around him, though, and-

You know what? they decided. Screw the worrying. Either I do it right or it’s not my problem anymore. And with those inspiring words, they grabbed the mace and threw it at him, whipping it through the air towards his head.

He flinched and ducked, which gave them the opening they needed to dive past him and start running. The backpack was close, and they had just managed to scoop it up when Maldl tackled them from behind. They crashed to the ground, managing to keep their grip on the backpack but screaming in pain as the fall seemed to rip open their side again. Somehow they managed to roll over, and found themselves looking up into a face contorted in rage.

“This is how it ends!” he shouted, levelling the sword.

“Maldl-“ they managed to gasp out. “Just – one – Ra’ae said something – for you – he talked to me-“

“Did he now?” he asked, putting a little less pressure on.

No.“Yes – he was talking to me – about you – and he said-“ While they were trying to think what a fictional Ra’ae would have said about Maldl, their other hand scrabbled in the backpack, looking for – where was it? – there.

“What did he say?!” he almost screamed at them, pressing the sword once more into their neck. “Tell me nowor you die!”

“He – he said-“ In one movement, they pulled their hand out of the backpack and threw what they had managed to grab at Maldl. The Molotov, though it wasn’t lit, was still a fragile glass bottle full of liquid. It shattered in a burst of glass shards and alcohol, sending him reeling back, almost dropping the sword as he clawed at his face.

They didn’t wait. Closing their fingers around one of the knives, they lunged at Maldl and buried it in his upper arm. He screamed in pain, but they still twisted the knife, burying it deeper until they saw a glint of gold and copper instead of the silver knife. A flick of the blade, and the small computer chip was out.

Maldl was still fighting, though, and he managed to backhand Kjiersten with the butt of the sword. They managed to stay upright, but it gave him the time he needed to clear the blood, glass, and alcohol from his face. If he had been murderous before, they thought distantly, now he was pushing the verge of madness. His eyes gleamed with a burning light through the mess of cuts and bruises, and his mouth was twisted into a snarl.

“Now-“ they started, but he cut them off. With an incoherent scream of rage, he threw himself towards Kjiersten, who only barely managed to dodge in time. They dropped the knife, leaving themselves with only the mace – a knife wouldn’t help against this kind of fighting. No more time to think as Maldl barreled towards him again, sword whistling in a deadly arc.

Think – what could they use? They weren’t more experienced fighters than Maldl, not even in his state of unthinking rage. So they had to be smarter. He had brute strength on his side, but he wasn’t using it as well as he could have. So how could they use that to their advantage?

The first thought that came to their mind was leverage. Their mace was heavier than his sword, and with the way he was swinging it…They waited for Maldl to take a particularly vicious swipe, bringing the sword in from the left. Then, gritting their teeth and knowing that there were about a hundred ways this could go wrong, they stepped betweenhim and the blade, using the mace and the weight of their body to twist the sword from his hands.

Maldl tried to step back and recover, but Kjiersten didn’t let him. This might be their only chance, and they didn’t want to let it slip away now. They wrenched the mace up and over and slammed it into his head. As they had brought it down, though, they had let their fingers slip down the handle to the point where only the handle, and not the spiked end, had slammed into his head. He was unconscious, cut and bloody, but he was alive. The Games were not going to claim another victim.

He looked terrible, though – crumpled on the ground, with his face covered in blood. His arm looked a mess, and they hoped they hadn’t damaged anything while they were trying to cut the tracker out. But it was necessary – Maldl had to both look dead and act dead, and they didn’t think he would have done either of those willingly.

After just a few minutes, a silvery-grey hovercraft descended from the sky. They knew they should get out of the way, but they had a question they needed to ask. The pilot, who they recognized as one of the mentors, emerged from the ship to pick up Maldl, and shook his head. “You should get out of here,” he said. “Dangerous for you to be seen too close.”

“Wait – please,” they said, raising their hands in a pleading gesture. “I just need to know – is Ra’ae really dead? Did that explosive really kill him?”

The pilot was silent for a second. “I don’t know,” he said. “It wasn’t one of ours which picked him up – it was a genuine Capitol hovercraft. How they got there before us, I don’t know. So Ra’ae might be alive, just in the Capitol’s custody. We’re thinking of mounting a mission to get inside – possibly with the help of your Connection Project – and seeing if we can find him. You’ll be updated as things happen.”

They nodded. “Thank you.” The pilot saluted, and turned back to the craft with Maldl’s limp form in tow. Kjiersten watched as the hovercraft lifted off again, engines rotating back to horizontal once the ship had cleared the trees.

It was over. They had won the Hunger Games. Almost all of the tributes from this Games had been rescued – a greater percentage than they’d ever managed before. They were people who would be able to build or continue their lives back home, or join the rebellion and help to build better lives for everybody.

It should have been an achievement. They should have felt proud – after all, winning the Games was almost the ultimate status symbol in Panem. But it felt like a hollow victory. It felt like they had failed the people they were supposed to be protecting.

Just one, he thought miserably. One tribute. One out of the six. Five others got rescued. That’s a pretty good percentage, isn’t it?

No. Because it’s one tribute who I failed. Who’s not going to get back to their family. Who’s not going to be able to live the life they could have had. And that’s the problem here. Rescuing tributes from the Games is just treating the symptoms. The Capitol needs to fall for any of this to be worth it.

But you did the best you could. You couldn’t have known that the explosive would have been modified.

I could have checked. Because there’s no room for ‘good enough’ in engineering and there’s no room for it here. I should have done better.

It’s too late now, isn’t it?

No .Because it wasn’t over yet. There was still the messy business of revolution to come, and they would need people to help, to protect those who were trying to make the world better. They’d been hesitant, before, about committing the resources of the Connection Project to the revolution. But the revolution would need it. And now they knew what the others had been through. How they’d suffered just to stay alive. And as they stood there, hovercraft long vanished into the clear blue sky, they promised themselves that nobody else – not a single person– would have to go through it again.

A note: Transcript of each of the messages in Day 19:

Kjiersten: Listen. Message. Reply [to acknowledge] with one arrow east. [arrow is shot east] Kjiersten: Hunger Games end. Today or tomorrow. Or the Capitol will send something. Yes or no? Maldl: Understood Kjiersten: Ra’ae. Explosive at the northwest corner [of the forest]. Set it off and remove your tracker. Hovercraft will pick you up. Do you acknowledge? Ra’ae: Acknowledged Kjiersten: Maldl. Tomorrow. Here. Fight so the Capitol won’t suspect anything. Figure out who survives there. Do you acknowledge? Maldl: Acknowledged.

[soyqan-blog]

very, very, very long post re; important muse info && other hcs. 

note; strike -- through text = “ to do later “ ( inc. stuff not yet pondered or not pondered enough / stuff i can’t put into words very well right now ). post will be updated with new information as it comes.

General Information

Name: adam ronen cuypers -- daalmans. Pronunciation: ah-dum roh-nun kai-pers dahl-mens Name Meaning: adam; red / man. ronen; song / joy. cuypers; barrel maker / cooper. daalmans; of daal. Name Origin: dutch / hebrew mix. Other Names: adam taurus. Gender: male. Titles: master, mister, “ brother “.

Birth Name: same as “ name “. Birth Date: july 1st. Birth Length: n / a. Birth Weight: n / a. Birth Place: forever fall forest, vale, remnant. Manner of Birth: long labour but a relatively average birth as a whole. First Word(s): vis ( dutch for “ fish “ ).

Dominant Hand: right. Astrological Sign: cancer. Catchphrase: i’m gonna have to go with “ no “. Handwriting: depends. sometimes it’s neat && joined, sometimes it’s squiggles.

Appearance

Picture:

Height: 6′6″. Weight: n / a. Species: goat. Race: faunus. Blood Type: n / a. Symbol: red rose.

Skin Color: white, pale. Birthmarks: n / a. Extra Anatomy: a pair of black backwards -- growing horns atop his head. Somatotype: ectomorph. Locomotion: bipedal.

Hair Color: crimson red, natural. Hair Length: just past his ears with the exception of a couple of longer tufts just above the nape of his neck. Hair Type: slightly curly. Hair Style: generally just a mess. Widow's Peak: no. Ear Shape: average ?? Ear Type: human ears. Eye Color: green with a gold ring around the iris. Eye Type: human eyes. Eyebrows: somewhat flat in nature but typically arched in a display of annoyance / anger. thin, neat. Nose Color: same as the rest of his skin. Nose Shape: average. Teeth: average; clean, straight, none missing. Face Shape: rectancle / heart hybrid. Complexion: an abundance of freckles adorning every inch of him. Facial Hair: none.

Alternative Appearances:

Health and Image

Diet: fish, berries, fruits, && vegetables. Exercise: every day. running, weight -- lifting. Fitness: very fit, despite other aspects of his lifestyle. mainly due to his non -- physical faunus traits. Maximum Load: unknown. Running Speed: keemstar voice.......... Posture: slouches when seated, bolt upright when still / walking, && slouches some while running. Dexterity: very good balance ( except when drunk ), steady on his feet, capable of being graceful. Reflexes: ( keemstar voice ) f a s t as fuck, boiiiii.

Abnormalities: n / a. Vulnerabilities: mentally vulnerable due to life experiences && mental health issues. Handicaps: n / a.  Aids: n / a. Medication: n / a.  Augmentations: n / a. Allergies: n / a. Diseases: asthma. Illnesses: n / a. Disorders: depression, ptsd, pyrophobia. others but haven’t yet been decided on or discovered / named yet due to lack of research on my end. Imperfections: n / a. Broken Bones: very, very rarely. Reason for Health: t r a u m a && lots of it.

Wardrobe: he wears whatever the heck he has made or feels like making. usually either loose -- ish casual wear or somewhat casual formal wear. Accessories: gloves. Equipment: wilt && blush, his chokuto && rifle. Musical Instruments: plays guitar but incredibly rarely. thank pure boredom. Amulets: n / a. Piercings: n / a. Hygiene: very good hygiene. he has no patience for anyone who doesn’t take care of themselves in such a manner. Perfume / Cologne: n / a. Scent: alcohol. Scars: couple of burns && battle scars. Tattoos: n / a.

Voice

Accent / Dialect: Voice: Pitch: Range: Volume: Laughter: Impediments:

Psychology

IQ: unknown. Languages: english, dutch, hebrew. Vocabulary: swearing. Memory: better than he wants it to be. Temperament: anger. Learning Style: Emotional Stability: none. Mental Health: Very Bad. Instincts: a mess.

Bodily-Kinesthetic: Interpersonal: Intrapersonal: Linguistic: Logical-Mathematical: Musical: Naturalistic: Spatial: Existential:

Perception

Audition: Gustation: Olfaction: Tactition: Vision: Intuition: Synesthesia:

Philosophy

Religion: satanism. Devotion: Superstitions: some, here && there... they’re not to be shared with outsiders of his village though. Spirit Animal: Deathwish:

Allegiance: Political Party: Political Awareness:

Morality: Etiquette: Alignment: Attitude: Outlook on Life: Perception: Philosophy / Motto: Taboos: Vices: Virtues:

Character

Primary Objective: tell humans to fuck off && stop being assholes. Secondary Objectives: to love on blake. Priorities: blake, his need for revenge. Motivation: ...anger. Self Confidence: none. Self Control: none. Self Esteem: none.

Quirks: Hobbies: Closet Hobbies: Guilty Pleasures: baking, even if he doesn’t actually eat what he has produced. very rare too since he can’t get the ingredients very easily. Habits:

Desires: Wishes: Lures: Manias: Afflictions: Traumas: Worries: Nervous Tics: Instigators: Soothers: Savvies: Ineptities: Soft Spots: Cruel Streaks:

Accomplishments: Greatest Achievement: Failures: Biggest Failure: Obituary:

Favorite Dream: Worst Nightmare: Earliest Memory: Fondest Memory: Worst Memory: Funniest Moment: Happiest Moment: Saddest Moment: Most Prized Possession: Most Valuable Possession: Collections:

Embarrassments: Mannerisms: Humor: Regrets: Secrets: Darkest Secret: Pet Peeves: Phobias: pyrophobia. Greatest Fear:

Confidence: Creativity: Generosity: Honesty: Loyalty: Insecurities: Patience: Predictability: Reliability: Respect: Responsibility: Trustworthiness:

Common...

Compliments: Insults: Expletives: all of them, probably. Farewells: Greetings: Mood: bad. Words: Emotional Status: anger.

Preferences

Likes: Dislikes: Favorites: Least Favorites:

Combat

Ability: Element: Martial Arts: Immunities: Resistances: Strengths: Weaknesses: Futilities: Restrictions: Origin: Source:

Specialty: Signature Move: Special Attack: Courage:

Home, Work, and Education

Abode: Hometown: vale, remnant. Citizenship:  Culture: see sep. posts. Traditions: same as above. Routine: hahahaha. Sleep Patterns: random. Eating Habits: generally does not like to eat && does so whenever he can be bothered. so, at random times. portion sizes change a lot too but never more than “ a little bit of food “. Pets: none.

Social

Mother: daube cuypers. Father: aapeli daalmans. Guardians: none. Siblings: none. Children: none. Close Relatives: unknown. Distant Relatives: unknown. Ancestors: unknown.

Best Friend: blake belladonna. Close Friends: none. Confidantes: none. Friends: none. Allies: none. Acquaintances: a couple, i guess. maybe. Followers: no real ones. not that he wants any. Subordinates: Rivals: none. Enemies: too many.

Inspirations: his parents. Role Models: his parents. Heroes: his parents. Mentors:

Family Dynamics: Communication: Discriminations: Reputation: Dominance: Expression: Cooperation: Sociability: Status: Class: Livelihood:

Memberships: Community:

Romance

First Love: blake belladonna. Love Interests: see above. Marital Status: single / taken, verse dependent. Orientation: heteroromantic heterosexual. Significant Other: blake belladonna.

Love Style: Flirtiness: Turnons: Turnoffs: Fetishes: Virginity: went bye bye.

Story Information

Verse:

Archetype: Enneagram: Flaws: Tropes: Clichés:

Role: Fulfilment: Significance: Advice:

Analogue: Inspiration: Voice Actor: One Word: Tagline: Theme Song: Soundtrack:

Date of Creation: First Appearance (Date, Location, Event): Earliest Appearance (Date, Location, Event): Last Appearance (Date, Location, Event): Latest Appearance (Date, Location, Event):

Centric Stories: Centric Episodes: Episode Count:

Reactions

Angry: Anxious: Conflicted: Criticized: Depressed: Embarrassed: Excited: Frightened: Guilty: Happy: Mistaken: Nervous: Offended: Praised: Rejected: Sad: Stressed: Thoughtful:

Impressions

First:  Self: Family: Lover: Friends: Associates: Authority: Strangers: Enemies: Post Mortem: Creator:

Personality

MBTI Personality Type: Anima: Personas: Idiosyncrasies:

Biography

Infancy (0-3):

Childhood (4-12):

Adolescence (13-19):

Adulthood (20-54):

Seniority (55+):

Development

Personal: Social: Physical: Spiritual:

Miscellaneous

Defining Moment: his capture && forced place in crmen && wtch’s plan. Other Information: