#Ns12

[destinysbounty]

I think what might easily be the funniest thing about Prime Empire is that even in a season where Zane is barely even present, they still find a way to torment him within an inch of his life

[fanfalc-616]

Hey so it has been a while since I’ve posted but. Ninjago text post memes (again)

Sources: tumblr and huh yeah that’s the only source this time funky

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[lightning-chicken]

prime empire au where the superstar rockin jay that the ninja meet acts like jay, thinks like jay, but fundamentally isn’t jay. ssrj is an npc, a decoy built by unigami to stop the ninja from searching for the real jay (who’s being used as a glorified battery) within the game.

of course, to make ssrj the perfect clone, even he doesn’t realise he’s an npc. he thinks he’s the real jay, and his ‘powers’ are fragments of the real jay’s lightning. even’s though ssrj’s memories of his life outside the game feel like they’re photographs, with himself behind the camera, not in the moment - all his memories are like that, so isn’t that what memories are supposed to feel like? 

ssrj is the ideal jay - a little bit too much like jay, perfect in the sense that he’s what the ninja (and everyone else) assume what jay is like. ssrj is jay without his deepest insecurities and darkest experiences, and therefore he’s jay without everything that makes him jay.

eventually, the ninja beat the game, and ‘defeat’ unigami - if unigami can make a digital clone of jay, faking his own destruction is laughably easy, especially when he’s got the element of lightning strengthening him. and yes, i said destruction - ssrj never had those doubts about his past, so why would he share them with unigami? 

ssrj and the other ninja continue their lives, blissfully unaware whilst the real jay is left to rot inside prime empire as unigami regains his strength. 

and if nya notices something slightly different about her yang, something slightly off about his smile or the delay when he’s reminiscing - well, she still died in prime empire, and the last time that happened jay changed. and if this change seems to be for the better, why should she complain?

[hiddensneker]

LOOK AT ME NOW

Prisoner inside of the body I possess 

“Teaming with power I will tear into your flesh”

[nin-jay-go]

They sell presentable, young, and so ingestible Sterile and collectible, safe, and I can't stand it This is a letter, my word is the Beretta The sound of my vendetta against the ones that planned it

[general-yasur]

[ninja-clips]

May I request the scene from s12 ep 16 where Jay and Pix rescue Zane from the portal? Thank you very much 💖

Poor Zane not even in the season for most of it and he still can’t escape the Zangst™️

[toastingpencils37]

The foreshadowing in the Gamer's Market set is insane.

First we have the Cole minifigure

And what is the next season? A Cole season that at some point actually does involve him mining (although unwillingly)

Then we have the Nya minifigure

And the next year we have the full Nya season where they are wearing scuba gear and everything, going deep undersea.

And honestly, it kind of sucks that we only had minifigure avatars of these two. Because imagine if they actually had similar avatars in the show.

For one, the minifigures would probably be much better, and two, can you imagine how many people would be talking about that foreshadowing if it was in the show rather than just the sets? (Based off everyone going wild about the Season 11 mirror foreshadowing after Crystalized Part 1 released)

[stellarwaffles]

> Would you like to enter Prime Empire?

[mittenslikescats]

My fav trans boys in their performer outfits. Also they’d make really good friends (positive on it). Anyways I originally was just gonna do Jay and MK in the middle then after I finished them I was eh why not do a background.

[ayleeyunn]

Did a full body of my avatar kai redesign he is a spray painter

[destinysbounty]

So here's my conflict. On the one hand, I agree that s12 wouldve been much more interesting if theyd gone with the original idea of having Libber act as a living battery for the game. It would have facilitated more emotional motivation for Jay, as well as a greater sense of thematic cohesion and parallel between him and Unagami. Plus, it would be cool to finally see what happened to Libber.

On the other hand, I feel like Jay never finding out why he was abandoned and learning to heal and move past it anyway has some understated potential to create a really interesting narrative. Like, Jay's whole thing is that he's insecure and worried that people will leave him. So I feel like sure, yeah, itd be cathartic for him to find closure knowing his parents had a good reason for abandoning him. BUT, I think it would be more compelling if Jay's arc featured him accepting that yes, sometimes people just leave you. You might never know why, and you might never get the chance to find out. Sometimes things happen and you never get proper closure. But it's still possible for you to move forward and find happiness in spite of that. Jay finding his mom and learning that she didnt abandon him intentionally is a satisfying story, but an easy one. Whereas Jay learning to accept that his mom is gone and he'll never know why is a much more nuanced one, in my opinion. (I just wish s12 had actually given it the proper development it needed)

Idk. I agree that the Libber plotline couldve added a lot more depth to Prime Empire overall, but I also feel like they could have very easily given that season depth even without her being there.

[21st-century-ninja]

why is the climax of prime empire so solid tho.  jay + unagami one of the best ninja/villain dynamics of the show fight me

[lightning-chicken]

Unfamiliar, Familiar Dances

(tags from this post, via @finn-m-corvex)

i like how you think, finn! in fact, i liked it so much that i went ahead and wrote this:

(set during s13 ep1, ao3 version here)

“What? What happened? Someone’s located the Teapot of Tyrahn? Uh, Pythor’s back? My father’s been found? What?”

The postman only chuckled in response to Lloyd’s questions. “Heh, you got an invitation. To Shintaro!” 

“Shintaro?” Lloyd echoed.

“Mm-hmm, the Ivory City!” Satisfaction and pride at a job well done beamed from the postman. “You don’t deliver one of these every day. No siree.”

As the others chattered away, Nya glanced at Jay to gauge how much of Lloyd’s anxious speculation he picked up.

Someone’s located the Teapot of Tyrahn?

The only reason why the rest of the ninja knew that particular object existed was because of a precaution. Neither Nya nor Jay had been keen on the idea of revealing the alternate turn of events that had upended their lives; though it would’ve been nice to lift some of the burden off of their chests, the questions and confusion that would follow would be too much to deal with. Just the idea of an alternate timeline would concern the other ninja, and that wasn’t even including everything that happened during it. FSM, how would Kai react if he found out she’d—

Not now, Nya.

Through an unspoken agreement, Nya and Jay had decided to keep those events to themselves. Small details, like the Teapot of Tyrahn, could be mentioned in passing as objects of interest, but nothing more than that. Everything else—all of the festering guilt and old hopes and moments that Nya pretended didn’t bother her—got shoved away in that little locked box where Nya kept all the essential, pointless things that got in the way. 

(She knew it was one of her old, bad habits, and she was working on prying that lock open and dealing with every little thing one at a time, but sometimes it was simply so much easier to deal with things later. If laterever came around.)

If they ever needed to talk about it, they could talk to each other.

Not that they did that often.

All the ninja had a particular manner of tiptoeing their way around all the unpleasant things they’d experienced in their years as Ninjago’s protectors. They addressed things by not addressing them at all. Something catastrophic would happen, but nothing would change except for deeper layers under ordinary actions: How are you doings were expressed in breakfast offers, sorrys were layered in lingering hugs, I love yous were lent in borrowed clothes. None of it was ever really said aloud; saying it aloud would be an admission that something was wrong in the first place. Instead, they all attempted to return to the safety of normal. Over the years of grieving and ignoring almost-failures and almost-tragedies, the ninja had perfected this uncomfortably familiar dance. The steps were memorised.

At first, Nya had loathed this dance. The ninja’s determination to awkwardly skirt around any mention of sensitive topics infuriated her to no end. She couldn’t see why they didn’t just get any bothersome feelings out in the open and move on. They were ninja, for FSM’s sake—the city needed a set of strong elemental masters, not a group of damaged teenagers.

Then she learned what dying felt like, and she realised that one was a result of the other.

In all honesty, they’d gotten better at coping with things over the years. Weekly sleepovers were established, with pillow forts and fierce competition over who got to choose the movie for the evening. And when the lights dimmed and eyes lulled closed, sometimes one of them would let slip a disquieting thought that’d been bugging them, and that was okay.

They would be okay.

What wasn’t okay, though, was how Nya and Jay had dealt with the events that had happened but also didn’t happen. At the start, they hadn’t talked about it at all, preferring to pretend that everything was (that they were) normal. 

All that had come crashing down when Nya caught Jay in the middle of a nightmare, tears dripping down his face when she woke him up, both their hearts pounding too fast to ever be considered normal.

Now they had settled into their own version of the dance. Jay was there to grab her hand when he caught it absentmindedly rubbing her chest where the venom had been, or when she stared at a white dress in horrified rapture. In return, Nya was there to soothe him when someone moved in a certain way and he flinched, or when he spiralled into a panic over details that meant nothing to other people but meant so many things to him. And they were both there to check on the other when often-innocent mentions of that timeline caught them unawares.

Like now.

Someone’s located the Teapot of Tyrahn?

Turning to face her yang, Nya studied him for any kind of reaction. Jay—who she would usually catch doing the same thing—didn’t seem to notice. At all. He was fully engaged in the conversation, oohing and ahhing over the fancy envelope along with the other ninja. Maybe he hadn’t heard it?

No, he definitely did. He always did.

Gently grabbing his wrist, Nya steers Jay away from the others. They’re all too busy talking about Shintaro (whatever that was, she wasn’t really paying attention) to pick up Nya’s murmured, “You okay?”

A sweetly bemused smile bloomed on his face; it was an expression he’d been adopting more frequently than usual. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Nya knew Jay. She’d known him through years of winning and losing, through years of fighting and surviving, and through the best and worst years of their lives—in some cases, she could even say she knew too muchabout him. 

(Jay had never quite mastered the art of knowing when some information was too much information.)

She knew about his tendency to ramble when he was nervous, about the way he fidgeted with his fingers when he was flustered, about how his eyes would light up with a blue too bright to be normal when he got an idea. Nya knew what made Jay… well, Jay. 

When Jay spoke, there wasn’t any rush to the words, or forced cheerfulness she’d learned to discern from his usual upbeat tone, or tell-tale tremble under his voice. In short, there were none of the things that usually indicated Jay was hiding something.

None.

Nya didn’t know what worried her more: the possibility that Jay had suddenly gotten very, very good at lying; or the idea that he genuinely didn’t know what she was talking about.

Because the Jay she knew wouldn’t—couldn’t—have been so calm about it.

Of course, there was the possibility that he’d finally moved on from it. They hadn’t had to talk about it for months, after all. Maybe she was the one with the leftover baggage.

Still, Nya couldn’t shake off her lingering doubts.

It didn’t make sense. After they both got trapped inside Prime Empire, and after she… disappeared, she would’ve thought that he’d be more aware of the last time something like that had happened, not less. Even Nya was still frazzled by it; for a moment, she’d been…

Death didn’t feel like it did the first time.

Losing her last life in Prime Empire had been quick. Painless. No permeating chill, no agony of drowning in your own body, no dimming view of the person she’d realised that she’d loved all along.

And she’d come back! 

She was fine.

Everything was fine.

Jay tilted his head, catching her attention. Judging by his quizzical look, she’d been quiet for far too long. Nya gripped his hand and squeezed it, ignoring how it didn’t fit against hers like it used to. “Nothing, nothing. Just making sure you’re alright.”

Jay hummed.

Usually, when Nya shut down his questions like that, he’d give her space at first, but later approach her just to make sure she was okay.  Now, he rejoined the conversation with ease, and she already knew there wasn’t going to be any check-up later.

Inexplicable dread crept up her spine.

Whilst the others started making plans, Kai glanced at Nya for her opinions, only to realise that she wasn’t with the rest of the group anymore. After making his way over to her, he leaned his arm on her shoulder in the older-brotherly way she’d always associated with him. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Kai must’ve noticed the way her eyes had flicked from him to Jay, because the next thing he asked was, “Do you want me to talk to him for you?”

“What? No. No, he hasn’t done anything.”

And that was the problem. 

But what kind of problem was that?

A coil of unease tightened around her stomach.

“You sure?” Kai didn’t sound convinced. But Kai was sceptical of a lot of things; it was in his nature, since the early days when the Smith family became two instead of four. Maybe it was in her nature, too.

The coil began to unwind.

Maybe Jay really hadn’t heard what Lloyd said. Maybe she was extrapolating things out of control, trying to connect dots that didn’t exist. Maybe she shouldn’t be doubting Jay: her yang, one of the people she cared about most in the world.

“I’m sure.”

Her stupid line of reasoning didn’t make sense anyway. So what if Jay had changed? Everyone did. People got older. Trying to stop it would be futile, and so would be trying to deny it.

What Nya couldn’t deny was the incessant fact that this Jay wasn’t the same person as her old Jay. Somewhere in the middle of the past few years or months (she couldn’t pinpoint it exactly), her Jay had changed.

There was nothing she could do about that.

Even so, she couldn’t help but wonder why.

[hiddensneker]

More KA.I au I love him so much

[crayonsfunkyartcorner]

SUPERSTAR ROCKIN’ JAY!!!

Just finished Prime Empire and it was a blast to watch, Jay’s outfit was so cool.