#That he's all seeing and yet his perception of people and the world and thus himself both present and past is skewed and biased

[teapot-of-tyrahn]

Mumpearl Drabble please :3?

His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo.

PearlescentMoon has gone by many names: Peril. Farmer Queen. Santa Perla. Madre de Girasoles. The Great Lunar Neighbour. Even Moonatrix Octa. She was no stranger to deification. She'd been worshipped by a wide variety of people. By her own Helianthias, by the Harengons of Sanctuary, by Jeremys of Stratos: and, now, even by The Order of Octa. And yet, out of all these followings, out of all these flocks of religions, cults and sects dedicated to her image… there was only one she was interested in. The Mooners. Or, rather, its founder. And his name was Mumbo Jumbo. She had to admit, it was odd. She’d been worshipped by countless mortals throughout history, but this wasn't just another mindless devotee, no, before that, he had been someone she'd known; somebody she'd loved. A friend. Before he had been a Mooner he had been apart of Boatem. He still was. It was surreal to see the same man she'd laughed with, the same man who had teased her and taught her what it was like to love and be loved and be human… worship the very thing about her that wasn't. Worship the idea of her, worship the concept of a omnipotent, despotic rock in the sky, worship everything about herself she hated. She had hated being a goddess. That's why she had come to Hermitcraft in the first place. She was sick of being treated as a stagnant notion - something simultaneously too abstract to comprehend and yet something superficial enough to be classified by one word: perfect. She wasn't a person, just an idea. A deity. But Mumbo Jumbo had taught her how to be a person. No… he'd been the one who had made her a person. Or maybe he had just showed her that she had always been one. He made her laugh. Cry. Love. Hate. Learn. Live. Experience. He taught her how to feel, want, explore, be… he had showed her the wonders of this world, shown her that everything alive was sacred and unkillable, that this planet was alive and thus beautiful. He had made her fall in love with the dull world that she had grown to loathe over the centuries all over again. He had made her fall in love with him. And so, watching him fall in love, not with her — not with the genuine, real version of herself she'd become — but with postulated perception of herself she'd been trying so hard to unbecome? The dehumanized idea of what she was supposed to be? The version of herself he'd unwittingly taught her she wasn't defined by? It felt like death. It felt like she was dying. Was this heartache? Could somebody who never had a heart have it break? Pearl loved Mumbo. But Mumbo only loved the Moon. Not Pearlescent.

The moon had two faces; one of which was always hidden from sight. One face could never be seen the human eye. No matter how much they tried, no matter what they used — whether it be telescopes, binoculars, spectrometers, or observation stations… nobody could ever see the far side of the moon. Nobody could ever see her in full display. Only in facets; fragments. In some ways, Pearl resented this fact. Nobody could ever know her; not truly. Nobody could never know her in her entirety. What would happen if they knew the new Australian Hermit wasn't from Australia at all, but from the moon, anyway? No, actually, she wasn't from the moon, she was the moon. She was just the actual, literal moon. That big 'ol floating rock in the sky? The one rapidly plummeting towards their planet on a path set to destruction? Yeah, that was her. Well, not exactly her, but her divine shell, which missed its' goddess after she had taken mortal form so much it was trying to reunite with her by colliding with Hermitcraft… Oopsie-daisy, yeah, my bad, sorry about the impending doom! On the slim chance they didn't immediately kick her off the server due to her very presence being a threat not only to everyone but the world itself's safety, what would they think of her, then? If the fact half of the Hermit's first instincts were to start cults around The Moon in response to its enlargement was any indication, something told her they wouldn't treat her like a regular Hermit anymore. They'd start treating her exactly like what she'd come here to get away from: a goddess. She wouldn't be Pearl anymore. She wouldn't have friends anymore. Just followers. She hated that sometimes she considered it. Oh, how easy it would be, to tell Mumbo she was the Great Lunar Neighbour he loved so much. That she was who he'd been unknowingly worshipping this entire time; she was his goddess. Her feelings for him would be reciprocated in a heartbeat. He'd love her in the same way she loved him; endlessly and entirely. …But he wouldn't. Not really. He wouldn't love her. He'd love the idealized idea of her he thought she was, this version of her he'd made up in his head. And even saying he'd love her would be a stretch… no, he wouldn't love her. He'd revere her, worship her, exalt her… but not love. Not in the ways mortals loved each other. He wouldn't love her for who she was, but for what she was. And, so, she wouldn't tell him. Because as long as he didn't know, there was still a chance he could love her; the actual her. She just had to be patient. Though it was times like this her patience really ran thin.

"I don't understand," Mumbo sobbed; the sound was hoarse, gravelly and guttural. He hadn't slept in… nobody knew how long, and the hysteric delirium of sleep-deprivation seemed to finally be catching up with him. "I — I did… I did everything right! I'm doing everything right, I don't — I don't understand what I did wrong. What am I doing wrong?" He cried. "Shh, shh… you're not doing anything wrong, Mumbs. You didn't do anything wrong. You're perfect. You've done everything perfect," Pearl consoled him, running her fingertips' through his hair in an assuaging manner, trying to coax him to calmness in the same way somebody might try to coax a crying infant back to sleep in the late hours of the night… which, was what she was doing, really, in a sense. His locks were unkempt, disheveled and sloven, bedraggled despite the fact he hadn't touched a bed for weeks. But even in his grotty state, to her, he was still gorgeous. He was still perfect. "Then why is she still mad? I — I made her a temple, I made her altars, I built her shrines, and — and — and — I even convinced Boatem to give up their beds! I even —  I don't understand… I thought — I thought that would fix it… I thought that would make her happy, but she's still — is it not enough? Am I not doing enough..?" Mumbo sniffled as he looked at her with hollow, sunken eyes, a strange mixture of devotion and desperation on his face. His eyebags were so heavy they weighed down his cheeks' like an anchor, an anvil. "Can't she tell I love her? I — I just want to make her happy. I just want her to know — I — I just… I just want her to know how much I love her." Pearl's heart ached. I know. "She knows," she whispered, trying to keep her voice from hitching, trying to control her pitch. "She knows you love her. She… she loves you too. So, so much." I love you too. I love you so, so much. "No," Mumbo shook his head with a strangled snuffle, dismissing her words as nothing but empty consolations. He didn't know how true they really were, he didn't know they weren't just a friend's weak attempt to lift his spirits, but that they were a love confession from the very God he had devoted his entire being too. That she really did love him, too, more than he could possibly fathom. "If — if she loved me, she… she wouldn't still be upset. If she knew how much I loved her, she wouldn't be — she wouldn't still be causing earthquakes and stealing blocks, and — I just, I need — I need to try harder. I need to show her, I need her to know, I need her to see…" No, you just need to see. You just need to see it's me. I'm right here - why can't you see? I'm not mad. I was never mad. I could never be mad at you. I love you. Please, please, please… stop. I don't want this. I'd never want you to do this to yourself. But he never listened. He would never listen to Pearl; and the one voice he would listen to was one she couldn't admit was her own. It was infuriating… He loved her so, so much, too much, and yet he didn't love her at all. He could never love her while he still loved who she had been. Who had to be. He could never love her while his love for her was destroying him. It was killing him. And, so, it seemed there was only one solution. She had to make him hate her. She had to make him hate The Moon. She had to make him hate her as much as she hated herself. And with the fact he didn't already, despite the fact her old vessel had actively been spreading insanity amongst the Hermits, causing earthquakes and disasters, destroying the landscape? It would take some drastic measures. Lengths she didn't want to go to. But knew she had too. For his sake and her own.

When she'd abandoned her celestial form, she'd abandoned most of her deific abilities with it. Fortunately, not all of them. She had enough power in reserve to call upon a mite of her old body down to Earth; a meteor. Little more than an atom compared to her mass. But enough to serve as a teensy deposit of her powers she could tap into and exploit. Enough to influence those around around her with The Moon's voice. Enough to make it clear love wouldn't work. Enough to make it clear there was only one option.

"…'I must have them'? Who must she have? Who must she have? Is it us? Must she have me? Must she have Doc? Who? Who does she need…?"

"He who doth preach to us on the first day of the server… so doth shall be returned to dust first." "His name is Mumbo Jumbo."

His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo. His name is Mumbo Jumbo.

Make love, not war. But if love doesn't work… use war.

-- so. uh. you asked for a drabble. this is uh..... this is 1.8k words. i may have. i may have gotten a little carried away. approximately 18 times the requested length carried away. I'M SO SORRY. I AM....... SO SORRY. I GOT A LITTLE BIT ILL ABOUT THEM. I HOPE THIS IS OK LOL. ANYWAY. thinking about hc s8 mumbo and the moon's strange relationship......... what do you MEAN mumbo made a cult and a temple and a shrine completely dedicated to the moon? what do you MEAN the first thing the moon did when it gained control over ren and doc's minds was make them sacrifice mumbo jumbo specifically ? and then cub ALSO sacrificed [an imitation of] mumbo jumbo SPECIFICALLY to appease the moon ? the moon was JUST as insane about mumbo as mumbo was about the moon. mumpearl is real guys i don't know what to tell you they're obsessed with each other they're deranged yuri

[blueteller]

Kim Rok Soo, and "Foresight"

You know, something occurred to me recently...

We all know that on Earth 2, the "lie" Cale told about being able to see the future was half-true, in a way. He'd seen a version of the future, in a different world. While the kid with "Lie Detection" power could tell that this was a lie – as in, "Foresight" wasn't actually an Ability – it was still true to some extent.

But you know, I started thinking... while it might have been a "lie" from Cale... it was actually NOT a lie for Kim Rok Soo. ...The other one. The 20-year-old KRS from Earth 2.

Think about it. By arriving via Sealed God's test, Cale possessed that KRS's body – but that wasn't all he did. He actually shared memories with him. It might be an aspect of "Record", or it might have been a side effect of a god placing two versions of the same person in one body. Either way, that KRS actually inherited those memories for good. The full 15 years of the other timeline, and all the knowledge that comes with it.

Thus, KRS actually became a prophet.

It must be incredibly interesting from an outsider's perspective. The older KRS was someone who eventually developed at least 2 time-related powers: Record, which allows him to remember the past flawlessly... and Instant, which allows him to transcend the limits of time. That means, the other KRS would eventually have at least 3 time-related powers. (And it's completely possible that there could be more, as the author had been teasing us with the possibility since forever.)

Now, as far as the Koreans of Earth 2 know, KRS was some 20-year-old punk who suddenly developed a bunch of super powerful abilities on top of "Foresight".... and then suddenly "lost them", for some reason. Since it's a trend in TCF that people never actually question our protagonist, and make up a bunch of quite-crazy-yet-quite-accurate theories about him instead... I'm pretty sure they're going to assume that KRS "sacrificed" those powers for the sake of changing the future. As in, that KRS was able to access those abilities because he saw himself having them in the future. Which, again, is not quite true, but not completely a lie either.

By changing the "future" of Earth 2, Cale actually did make KRS sacrifice the potential of eventually transmigrating as Cale Henituse and getting those Ancient Powers in another dimension. ...Meaning, it wouldn't be completely false. It would put "yet another" time-related Ability on KRS's tab: the ability to use your own "future powers", at the cost of losing them forever by abusing the ability. ....Again, which is not exactly what happened, but it's not totally wrong either.

Basically: by the whole misadventure of "getting possessed by yourself from another dimension", KRS got more "time-related abilities" on his tab – both as an actual thing, since the "future" memories were real, and also in the perception of other people.

In other words... KRS is constantly involved in time shenanigans, no matter what dimension, lol

[fumifooms]

Marcille & Chilchuck contrasts & similarities

Yesterday in the Dunmeshi Discord we talked about narrative foils and I ended up writing a lot about my fave duo so. Informal character analysis time. I give some in-depth interpretations on aspects of Chilchuck’s character near the end as well, not just analyzing their characters in how they contrast each other

Marcille and Chil are so foils to me. "Has experienced loss through death and now clings onto the people around her and is overly interested in engaging in social gossip" vs "has experienced loss through rejection and now refuses to open up to anyone until socially starved", both are responding to their experience with loss in fully different ways, socializing and trying to learn all she can for the short time she has with others but trying to keep digestible enough that she’s not too attached if she loses them, vs refusing to socialize so the problem stops before it begins but eventually unable to resist the pull that comes with being a social creature. Like I guess what I’m trying to say is that Marcille engaging with social gossip could be a shallow way for her to vicariously experience social relationships if she feels like forming deep bonds is unsafe. Family is a core motivation and value for them but in different ways. Both want to keep the status quo but in different ways.

Divorcee who avoids love wether it be in the people around him or thinking about his own (past?) romance vs hopeless romantic that idealizes love without herself having been in a relationship or even in love herself as far as we know. Middle child vs only child. Emotional constipation vs emotional intelligence. Streets savvy vs prestigious academic, field experience vs book smarts. Crass vs prim. Overbearingly social vs private to a fault. Never externalizes his feelings and to a degree represses them vs wears her heart on her sleeve and her feelings on her face. They start out underestimating each other in different ways, one by assuming his age and the other by undermining her skills, experience and willpower. Both seeing each other’s motives as somewhat skewed (money and research of shady magic respectively) but growing to respect them.

They also both seek approval and validation from others, unlike Senshi and even Laios who don’t seem to care about outside perception as much, Marcille worries early on that she’s not helpful enough and slowing the party down meanwhile Chilchuck is almost always trying to prove a point early on that he’s capable and mature. Coincidentally enough, Chilchuck’s approval was both the catalyst and the key to resolving her arc about it in the mandrake chapter, meanwhile besides Senshi Marcille is the one whose perception of Chilchuck gets the most changed over the course of the whole manga. Something else notable is how they deal differently with their races being judged, while Chilchuck reaffirms himself as a proud half-foot, Marcille hides her half-elf nature and is embarrassed of it when it’s revealed. Something subtle yet interesting is also how they both are shown to prefer lying in a way that makes them look bad rather than admitting ignorance on something. Chilchuck says that he cheated on his wife and that’s why she left rather than just saying that he doesn’t know why she did. Marcille in the mandrake chapter says that she has used a dog to harvest mandrakes (thus killing it) before while in truth she never has, and everyone including herself is like "That’s horrible… The poor dog!"

Their dad dies. Chil is like "Hm. Cool. Anyways he died doing smth he loved right so haha lemme drink myself into an early death bed too yolo 🔥🤟" vs "He died and it shattered my world and I must devote all my life to wiping death out of existence".

"I am going to knowingly shorten my lifestyle through unhealthy habits actually."

Problem solving approaches

One thing I love about them is how they have complete opposite approaches to problem solving. Besides striving for workers’ rights and job stability for halflings with an union, he’s very "laissez-faire". He won’t do the righteous thing just because it’s the right thing if he doesn’t have an incentive or a safety net, like going to save Falin. He doesn’t chase after his wife to talk it out and make amends, he gives her space and either hopes she’ll talk when she’s ready or figures that he shouldn’t try to do anything about it. He doesn’t mention the mimic he noticed to the others to not make a big deal out of it and hopefully it won’t come up again. He’s a "if the glass is half-full that’s fine enough for me, I don’t need things to be as good as they could be" type, a "leave it alone until it figures itself out" type.

Marcille? Marcille is idealistic and in-your-face. If there is an issue you better believe Marcille will address it and try her hardest to fix it, will talk it out and attempt to understand & strive to make things as best possible for everyone involved. She will FORCE you to talk about your FEELINGS wether you like it or NOT. Leaving it alone? Keeping things as just okay when they could be great instead? No no no no no, that’s not right, she’s going to try and fix it now. She will make you stand up and fight for the best that your life could be, to be honest when something bothers you and do something about it, will make you stop suppressing yourself because you’re scared of things getting worse.

Which, you know, both methods certainly have their pros and cons, but they’re very complimentary in that way. He grounds her into a more down to earth mindset and teaches by example that it’s okay if things don’t necessarily work out and moving on is possible and not necessarily miserable, while she encourages him to not give up so fast or stay quiet on things that bother so much. He soothes and she emboldens 🔥 Funny, because you could have thought it would’ve been the contrary, which is not untrue either, but he’s the "has experienced the harshness of life and has settled for something comfortable but modest" while she’s the "wants to make the world better and goes to great lengths to change it while still trying to find herself & uncomfortable with some aspects of life like loss".

One overly focuses on dealing with issues by changing things around her while the other overly focuses on only changing himself.

——

Chilchuck leaves things alone if he thinks they’re best left unaddressed or thinks they’ll work itself out. Like the mimic he didn’t tell the group about but it backfired later. Like how he didn’t chase after his wife or seemingly tried to contact her at all. Like how he prefers not to dig into people’s personal issues in parties and be left alone to deal with his stuff on his own as well.

Meanwhile Marcille is overbearingly in-your-face and loud and "if there’s a problem we’re dishing it out right here right now. Your wife left you?? And you didn’t try to get her back?? I am going to write out a script and a plan for you to apologize and please bring these piles of presents."

She’s secretive about her fair share of things as well but she’s very proactive. While she seeks to research something that’s a core motivation and life goal to her + save someone she deeply cares for Chil is there for his job and to get money and "hey if something happens I’ll have done my part. I took you guys here now you guys figure out the rest and fight the monsters or something". They both like to have a say in the strategy, Chilchuck moreso as time goes on, but Marcille involves herself much more into almost everything.

Espescially early on, they’re always sticking by each other judging Senshi & Laios together and being like "Am I seeing this shit right. They’re crazy right? Tell me I’m not the only one here with common sense" and forming a 🤝 relationship over it and considering that, it sometimes feel… Contradicting? How they also have a lot of conflict together over time about how different they truly are. But it’s interesting and nice to see how even though they do have arguments it always gets resolved pretty promptly, like they’re truly hashing it out as equals and then when that’s done they’re back to being on the same wavelength. The exception would be Marcille taking a long time to come around on Chil being old, but arguments and debates like the one on dark magic and if it’s okay or wrong to use it, which was pretty serious and not just banter? They came to find a middle ground or at least understanding, and it didn’t seem to lower the respect they hold for another afterwards.

Chilchuck’s repressing habit

I do think Chilchuck has a repressed thing where he doesn’t WANT to think about it about his feelings sometimes, like with his wife- and maybe with his father? But the way he was so casual and nonchalant about his father dying has always struck me. I’m not sure if this is a "my feelings on my father were mixed and complicated at best" thing or a "I just don’t want to spend time thinking about it" thing or something else, but it gives food for thought.

When it comes to alcohol there’s this saying where an alcoholic parent will have 2 kids and one will grow to be alcoholic too while the other will never even touch a drop of alcohol and both when asked why will say "I watched my father". Chilchuck is def the first I think. He gives the vibe of "An alcoholic parent puts a strain on familial relationships?? Pshh, my father was and look at me! I turned out great!" Which is something I’ve heard irl lol which always makes you go like 👀 yes indeed you’re perfectly well-adjusted and haven’t been affected by your father’s alcoholism at all it’s clear as day. On that topic, Chilchuck’s family, both currently and when he was a kid, are very interesting topics to theorize about with the hints and cues we have, how his wife truly felt and what happened for her to feel unappreciated enough to leave, how distant is he from his daughters if they haven’t seen each other in the same year either and Flertom was the only one to send him a letter? But that’s a topic for another day

Chilchuck probably has such a complex…. Of like not being… Like allowed to take space I guess? And he does wish to affirm that right, he takes space and asks for it so very overtly, he formed a half-foot guild to demand better working conditions as one of the biggest examples of that. He grew up poor and undermined but he knows that he’s capable and someone worthy of respect and demands it, and takes every opportunity to prove himself. But on the other end, he doesn’t seem to want to keep his hopes up in general, like asking for something to be better is bound to fail, that it’d be too good to be true. He tries to keep out of where his job doesn’t need him, from a sense of efficiency that cuts down on unnecessary stops but also because he just thinks it isn’t his place to do so. It strikes me that it’s hinted that like… He doesn’t even really consider the possibility of going to his wife and trying to mend the relationship. Like it’s either she’ll decide to take him back on her own or he’ll be left out in the cold waiting, never knowing just where he’s truly at with her and if things are over for good. Like… Shooting his shot and making his case doesn’t even register as an option? Like he’s not worth fighting for, like whatever he did wouldn’t change her opinion anyways?

He def has a "life isn’t like a fairytale where everything goes well" philosophy where sometimes it feels like he just gives up on how things maybe could be better, especially interpersonally. Maybe it’s why he focuses on simple joys like alcohol instead of trying to keep up with relationships which can be complex and very fickle, in his own words. Something like alcohol is predictable, always there to fall back on, safe, gives him sensations without other emotional/social risks attached. Ironic for someone whose job is all about risks, but understandable

He contradicts even himself… Bro yes you’re capable, yes you’re great, yes you matter, now maybe speak about your feelings maybe??? Or do you not think your emotional issues deserve to get fixed and have closure???? Are you so used to being dismissed, overlooked and undermined that you think no one will listen even if you speak up?? And this recontextualize his "I’m not even gonna try and talk this issue out because I know (assume) that it won’t solve anything anyways" approach, doesn’t it.

"I must break my party members’ stuff or lie to them because if I just tell them my opinion and my feelings that I don’t want them to die they won’t care anyways and keep going"

In a way everyone is the glue of the party in different ways, Laios giving the group a direction and a plan, Senshi keeping them fed and grounded, Marcille making everyone more social and encouraging bonds to form, and for Chilchuck he’s the one most focused on actually keeping everyone alive I think.

Conclusion

Idk I’m not gonna repeat every point but have this as a parting contrast:

Guy with shortest lifespan possible who doesn’t mind knowingly shortening his own with an unhealthy habit, here for a good time not a long time, VS girl with longest lifespan possible who wants to lengthen everyone’s life, who focuses on how long she can keep something or someone rather than how happy her time with it has made her already. They’re both loud in their own way, and both are still insecure despite appearances. In a way, both of them focus on taking care of others while overlooking their own demons.

[musashi]

You think the brand of people who hate MVK and call him neglectful also hate Misty or does she get a free pass as a Girlboss(TM)

no, they're just as bad to misty (but weirdly fine with morgan?)

honestly the person i compare misty to isn't mvk, it's miles. miles and misty both did the same thing (jouhatsu) but miles is forgiven, rarely held accountable, lauded as morally complex or untouchable because he's twaumatiiiiized but misty is demonized always and forever as a neglectful, absent mother whose love is worthless because of the choice she made.

i've never met a single person in this fandom with a favourable opinion on misty, it's fucking depressing as all hell. meanwhile no one gives a shit about morgan who canonically beats her fucking daughter (amongst many, MANY other things)

how the aa fandom chooses to declare parents abusive has nothing to do with the parents and everything to do with how easy it is to project onto their "victims." case in point:

misty fey: morally complex in canon. maya, while not super popular, is growing as projectionbait due to her self-worth issues & the fact that she's often shipped with franziska who everyone is inexplicably horny for. VERDICT: ABUSER.

morgan fey: abusive in canon. beats her youngest daughter & controls her access to the outside world. manipulated all three of her children into committing attempted murder for her. iris is not projectionbait because she is viewed primarily as a threat to narumitsu and thus despised. dahlia is not projectionbait because she is not mentally ill in a sympathetic way, instead exhibiting severe cluster b tendencies and being "one of the bad ones." no sympathy is given to dahlia despite the fact that she was clearly a severely mentally ill child in need of support. pearl is not projectionbait because people's only perception of her personality is "child" and nothing more. VERDICT: NOT ABUSIVE, SIMPLY A CHARISMATIC VILLAIN.

blaise debeste-winner: abusive in canon. berates his son every single opportunity he gets. i am almost certain he does worse by the end of the game but have not yet finished it. eustace is not projectionbait because he is a narcissist and that is not one of the acceptable mental illnesses, see dahlia. VERDICT: NOT ABUSIVE.

manfred von karma: not abusive in canon, I AM INVITING EVERYONE READING THIS MESSAGE TO COME INTO MY INBOX AND DEBATE ME ON THAT POINT RIGHT NOW. DO IT, COWARD. cartoonishly evil. ridiculously so. so evil that it loops back around into being hilarious. morally complex in that we are rarely allowed to know what he is thinking, and so many interpretations of it arise, rightfully so. miles was made to be projectionbait. punitive view on justice that all the fucking catholics on this website share. canonical post-traumatic stress disorder. attractive young gentleman. shippable with the protagonist. severe guilt complex. deep-seated self loathing. would identify as an "anti" if he were on fandom twitter. depending on your interpretations of canon, suicidal. franziska is debatable projectionbait--being like dahlia in that she is the 'wrong' kind of mentally ill--but she inches ahead into a firm yes because she is a burning-out gifted kid and, again, annoying lesbians on this website want to have sex with her. VERDICT: MANFRED VON KARMA INVENTED CHILD ABUSE AND IF YOU COME AWAY FROM THE TEXT WITH ANY KINDER INTERPRETATION ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS KIDS WE WILL UNPERSON YOU ON TWITTER.

i could go on, but i love myself, so i won't.

[manicpixieyandere]

Homelander & DID

Today we wanted to talk about Homelander from The Boys! Specifically Homelander's DID. Now we haven't read the comics, and have heard he's a bit different there. So this post will just be about Homelander from the show.

Even in the earlier seasons we noticed Homelander tended to "zone out" and then start masking. At least that's what it looked like at first. But as it kept happening in the show more and more, we started to think maybe he has DID? Then in season 3 and 4 they basically confirm he has alters and a system with internal communication. Now we don't know a lot about his system. No alters have names or anything, but they do seem to have clear characteristics from the brief seconds we got with them all together.

Homelander having DID can be quite problematic but also interesting. Let's get the problematic stuff stated as it's important. DID rep in media has never been amazing. You have movies like Split with the evil alter trope that caused massive damage to the world's perception of DID and other dissociative disorders. But Homelander is a bit different than that. In the sense he doesn't really seem to have an evil alter, they all suck in one way or another.

We have a love hate relationship with Homelander's DID. Obviously the DID community deserves more rep that aren't villains and murderers. But also Homelander is incredibly well written and his DID is handled with care. He flips the trope of the evil alter on its head by being all evil. Some have said he may have a good alter, his human side. That would just continue to make him flip the trope on its head even more. He has a good alter amongst a system of evil. A complete inverse of the usual trope. We find it incredibly interesting.

But back to his DID being handled with care. The show never tries to sugar coat Homelander's trauma or make it his fault for being abused. He was manipulated his whole life into being tortured by the only people he ever knew. He was a child. And the show knows this. In fact we'd argue the scenes where he punishes the scientists who raised them are quite uplifting. Obviously no one IRL can do that to their abusers, but it's a power fantasy many victims have had. It was powerful to see on screen. That's about the only good thing that man has done.

But of course he's still a horrible person. Murder, r*pe, you name it. But even then his mental condition is still treated with care. It would have been easy to say his DID is what made him evil. But they aren't. He had a rough childhood, but he's still evil because he is actively choosing to do all these horrible things to people. That was his choice, not the scientists. We have never seen a scene of his alters fighting on whether or not to do the right thing, because none of them really care to.

The thing with villainous rep of neurodivergent characters is it can be a damaging stereotype but also something those of the same condition enjoy seeing on screen. Take the popularity of Jinx from Arcane for example. The poster girl of BPD. She is a murderer and terrorist. Yet her trauma in the show is also handled with care. She's a villain, but many still relate to certain aspects of her character. It's fiction. Many ND people have been told all their life they're monsters for the conditions they have. Thus it can be freeing to see a character just like you, being just that. It's fiction, they didn't really murder anyone. Characters are just toys in a story to play around with.

But the thing is those toys can still cause harm. In a perfect world a character like Homelander would be fine. Because you'd have plenty of characters with DID who are both heroes and villains. And also many inbetween. But it's not a perfect world. The fact is DID rep has been mostly harmful. And this doesn't really help. So while Homelander is an extremely interesting and well written character, the DID aspect was perhaps not needed and may do more harm than good. I think they did an ok enough job in not making it a complete shit show. The DID is not the biggest part of his character, nor the reason he is evil. The condition itself is handled with care. But in a world that desperately needs good DID rep, it's just more of the same.

So while we personally may enjoy a good ND villain, we can also recognize the problems here. We think it's good to look at both the good and bad of what we were given. Not everything is black and white. But at the same time, this is quite a dark shade of gray.

[smile-files]

there is definitely a through line here between luke and arianna...

children whose mothers have been gone for a while, and whose fathers, men in positions of power, are somehow absent: and these fathers are ones who've done things to harm people - perhaps others, perhaps the children in question - but whom luke and arianna can't seem to really feel anger towards, despite feeling hurt by their actions. instead, luke and arianna detach themselves from their fathers and from the rest of town: indeed, the townsfolk see them superficially as an "other" on account of the privilege they have paternally inherited, and this does affect the townsfolk's perception of them, but luke and arianna (more so the latter) falsely assume this perception completely clouds their peers' view of the grief they are currently experiencing. the main divergence between luke and arianna is that luke feels more detached from his father, while arianna feels more detached from the people of misthallery altogether: both view said entity as uncaring towards them, while giving it the benefit of the doubt, recognizing that perhaps they are not without reason in apparently forsaking them...

thus luke and arianna feel alienated from the children they're meant to be, and are all too quick to cast themselves as mature, self-sufficient, otherworldly figures - the oracle and the witch, respectively - for whom isolation is perhaps necessary or deserved. meanwhile, both have found solace in the non-human relationships they've forged: arianna is best friends with loosha, and luke is acquainted with all sorts of animals with whom he can communicate. these animal relationships are incredibly valuable, but they cannot fully fill the hole left in these children's hearts by the absence of paternal love and childhood friendship - and in that absence, luke and arianna continue to withdraw into themselves.

they are sensitive children trying to desensitize themselves to the world; sensitive children once privileged with an abundance of safety and comfort, but now that they no longer have them, they are forcing themselves to grow up so they no longer need them. and yet they still need to be cared for, even if they won't let themselves recognize that... and there is an entire town waiting to care for them like parents, like friends... but thinking they were alone, luke and arianna locked themselves in their ivory towers, such that few could find them: whether intentionally or not, both children made it so only those who solved their puzzle could be let into their world.*

it just so happens that professor layton is a master of puzzles, both literal and figurative, and can see the pain these children are so hesitant to share... and by promising luke and arianna his care, and keeping that promise again and again and again, perhaps they can learn to trust again that they will be cared for, that they can be cared for - that they aren't left alone in the world to fend for themselves. and with that strengthened trust, they can once again open their hearts to those who cared for them. luke can let his father back into his heart, and arianna can let misthallery back into hers.

*it's almost as if luke and arianna are both playing the combined role of baron reinhold and flora reinhold, protective father and fragile child: they do not trust any adult to care for them, and so they lock themselves up in a giant puzzle which can only be solved by the wisest and gentlest of people, thus promising themselves a guardian (temporary to semi-permanent) who can fill the role of parent they've been longing for. in the meanwhile, of course, they are terribly sad and lonely, sitting in the luxurious, empty prison of their own heart's devising...

[breakonthroough]

How little I need to be happy - just a few frames with Doffy in the new One Piece chapter. Frames with Doffy who discusses with Magellan himself about the potential doom of most of the world's cities after rising water levels.

And yet I am very interested in the special attitude towards this prisoner of Impel Down. He was initially allowed to keep his glasses, which hid the secret of his eyes; they brought him fresh newspapers and carefully protected him from possible attempts on his life. In addition he is visited either by Tsuru or by Magellan who also personally brought him transponder snail with the Vegapunk's broadcast to the all people. So that Doflamingo would remain aware of the latest world events. I wonder if this is due to his special position in the world hierarchy due to his knowledge of some of the secrets of this world? Or his noble origins and possible connection to Imu as suggested by some One Piece theorists? Or something else? Or because of someone's mysterious plans for the former Shichibukai and his role in the future? Who besides Oda knows.

My distorted perception of events and sick imagination add to these possible reasons another personal one of mine (of course it has nothing to do with reality but evokes very definite feelings in me). What can I do (I'm crazy woman) and when I see Doffy - I'm looking for an opportunity to come up with a possible connection between current events and his brother - in my imagination they are inextricably linked even after Roci's death. Thus in special treatment to the prisoner Doflamingo I would like to see Sengoku’s personal order which he managed to give before resigning. I want to see in this a possible special ask by Rocinante. His personal condition to the future imprisonment of Doflamingo in Impel Down which Roci could have expressed to his boss and foster father when he was going on his special mission: to preserve as much as possible some privileges for his brother in jail. And to observe all the conditions to ensure his safety during his detention there. I think Roci would definitely have taken care of this if he had lived.

[whereconfusionisarhyme]

okay the way the fandom draws hobie brown is such an interesting indication into the way subconscious racial stereotypes play into characterization and it's,,,it's just interesting.

now, i spend A Lot of time in this fandom. and something i've noticed a lot of is hobie brown being drawn HUGE. like, they're making mans into a TANK. and he's just,,,not that??

like yeah, he has broad shoulders, and he's tall, but that's literally just most any black teen boy let's be honest. if you look at his actual canonical character design, he is LANKY. and yet everyone is drawing him super buff. now at first i didn't think much of it--people like buff men, and fanartists are always gonna take some liberties (honestly, i love when they put their special little twists on the characters). but as i saw it more and more, it bothered me more and more and felt a lot more indicative of some underlying biases within the fandom.

hobie being mischaracterized and stereotyped isn't shocking or new, but that mischaracterization leaking into physical depictions of him is! not to get too deep into it, but throughout american history*, black men have not been able to protect their loved ones in any way other than physical thanks to slavery and horrid mistreatment within an inherently racist system. thus gave birth to the trope of the big, aggressive black man who solves his problems with his twists. and after that, the big aggressive black man who is actually a sweetheart on the inside, but just has raging anger issues (and probably an abusive father as well).

*im aware that movie!hobie is not american and that not the entire fandom is either, but seeing as a large chunk of it is, and are going to be viewing hobie through an american lense, i think this is an appropriate connection to make. also, african slavery was very much a thing outside of america as well. also ALSO, the rest of the worlds perception of black men is affected by american (and english) views just because of how huge the two countries are within the global landscape.

now, the reason this was even bothering me at all in the first place is because when i first watched the movie, the fact that hobie wasn't overly muscular was super novel to me. i was glad that we got to see a black male character who was strong without taking strength from others, loud without obnoxiously talking over others, violent without being aggressive, assertive without being framed as forgetting this place or naive about the world. in terms of personal experience, it pisses me just that bit more than the last time whenever i hear my father insist to my (very sensitive and emotional) brother that the proper way to deal with any and every problem was by fighting. i was glad my brother (severely lacking in good black male role models) got to see this cool guy, someone you're meant to look up to, who is strong without being ripped and punching all of his problems. that black masculinity is more than how well you can fight.

so, the way a lot of the fandom forces hobie into this box, this preconceived idea of what a black man (or boy, more like, but the erasure of childhood from black kids is a topic all its own) should be, just. sits wrong.

[summerscaries]

The show London Spy was so good and so slept on and it’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about when I say I want more queer media. I don’t need another coming of age love story, I want cool shit 😭😭

🚨SPOILERS AHEAD🚨 TLDR: London Spy is a fucking masterpiece and if you are a queer person who has experienced heavy grief and like mysteries and government conspiracy dramas,,, please watch it 🚨

There are aspects of queer life and identity in this show that I have yet to see handled similarly: personal relationships to sex, external expectations of a queer persons relationship to sex and kink, personal perception and the external viewer, and loneliness.

Every queer fucking character in this show is lonely. They all possess an emptiness, an ache, even if it’s for drastically different reasons. I think that most queer people have that piece of them that shows through sometimes, making them feel hopeless and alone.

There is so much care poured into Danny’s loneliness, this feeling of complete disputation between himself and every other person in the world. Every family, every organization. He has two friends, only one he actually converses freely with, and that friend is himself alone.

He connects truly and deeply and is truly un-alone with one person in the entire series - Alex. And when Alex is taken from him Danny’s loneliness is at an ultimate peak, thus continues the ongoing conversation of grief throughout London Spy.

This show is such a think piece on grief. You go through all of Danny’s emotions and steps through mourning. The entire show is bathed in this haze of confusion and draining sorrow, it itself is an expression of grief as a concept and Danny’s personally.

Dannys grief doesn’t just start with Alex’s death, it’s present from the very beginning of the show. He is in a rough fucking place and has been since he was 19, his entire life is shrouded in pain and darkness but yet he still chooses to be a light — a broad queer truth

The way that Danny stands solitarily against and between everyone and everything that is thrown at him is astounding. He is broken and week and misinterpreted and purposely slandered. But his will is so fucking strong, he does not back down — another common trait in queer folk

[tribbetherium]

The Middle Temperocene: 150 million years + 1000 years post-establishment

What Measure Is A Moouk: An Army Of Almost-People

Evolution was not a straight line. It was a tree, that sprouted at a root, and branched off many times, some branches lower down the stem splitting off earlier than others, some continuing to grow and split further, others staying where they were.

None were more or less-evolved than any other. Some merely changed more, others stayed the same. On this world of unimaginable diversity, some creatures have changed little from the first pioneers released upon the world, small, scurrying rodents akin to the first forebearers. Others had changed beyond recognition, shaped by the forces of the world around, pushed by the quest to survive, not to become bigger, better, stronger or smarter, but merely to better pass on their genes, whatever worked.

And the diversity of the planet was but a mere side effect of that.

It comes as not any surprise thus, when thinking minds arose for the third time in the planet, minds capable of perception, of thought, of belief, there was no clear division between being and beast. There was a spectrum, a very blurred line, between a thinking person and a very smart animal. A hazy boundary that had much potential for darkness.

----------

Ashfall overlooked the gathered masses of his pack, still fresh from a crippling defeat. His forces numbered at but less than a hundred, perhaps less given the casualties. And the Thems numbered more than twice that.

Thems, united. Combined, with all their complementing strengths synchronized to devastating effect. Would they come to the valley? The valley of the Us? Would the Us be trampled should the Them come to siege in turn?

Ashfall glanced at his pack, many wounded, and still recovering.

He looked at his mate Wildwind, her shoulder wound still swollen, and at his son Darklight, whose wounded eye might never see again.

He felt a hint of regret.

He didn't see them the way he had seen Wind-Storm and Whitesmoke. But now, he didn't want them to be another Wind-Storm and Whitesmoke.

To the Thems, he was a monster.

To the Us, he was a leader. A protector.

"Not enough. Us, few." noted Goldeye, one of his higher-ranking fighters.

"Them, many. Too many!" Ashfall growled. The urgency to destroy them now, now as they were deadlier, posed more danger to his pack than ever, was never more evident. Yet how? If he attacked again now, it would be a massacre.

He had shown Them no mercy, and now the tide had turned, he did not expect any from Them.

"Us need more!" he barked in frustration. "Not enough!"

"Us need...Them." Goldeye suggested.

Ashfall's ears perked up at the suggestion. "Other Them? Make fight? For Us?"

"Them fight one another," Goldeye added.

"No. They together! Them is one now! As one!"

"Some pack, other pack, enemy?"

"Too smart now. Them...learn."

Ashfall knew that trying to sow discord in the foe was not an option.

Their ideals were strong, and as word of the coastfolk's victory spread, more and more packs began to band together.

Lies and deception were never the Outlanders' specialty. They fought with brute force.

What they needed was more brute force. More jaws, more teeth.

And it was a wild idea, perhaps even an insane one, but Ashfall and Goldeye knew where he might find what he sought.

---------

"They are Thems?" asked Wildwind, as Ashfall spread his word to the rest of the pack, the following morning.

"They are moouk."

Moouk was a term they reserved for a particular kind of Thems. The other Thems that looked even less like the Us. Dwelling in the forests in great numbers, preying upon the wild horn-herders that lived there.

Hideous, malformed things, snouts too long, heads too small. Vile creatures, savages, who ate their dung and and scavenged their dead and mated with their own kin.

Smarter than other beasts in their own right, yet still servants of instinct. Devoid of morals, like a wild child.

And perhaps, with a show of dominance, servants of the Us. Taught like child.

"Make moouk fight for Us? How?" asked Darklight.

"Simple things. Stupid things," Ashfall mused.

"Wild things," Dungstain cautiously chimed in.

"Exactly!" Goldeye exclaimed. "Better than other Thems."

"Smart enough...to follow. Not smart enough...to question."

Ashfall gave Dungstain a bitter aside glare.

"How? How plan them? How call them to us?" Wildwind asked.

"Fight them. Fight their strongest. Until they obey."

-------------

The saddled baskerville occupied a very precarious place in the houndfolk's culture. For it was a not-quite-person. An almost-person. A beast that was too being to be considered beast. A being too beast to consider being.

Some could call truces with them, by learning their simple words. Yet they told no stories, pondered not the world with tales, or expressed deeper feelings.

They used tools, but did not invent or improvise, at least not to such a degree.

They solved problems, but did not imagine or speculate.

They cared for their kin, but of instinctive duty.

Like grown pups who could not learn any more.

To some tribes of the dark-ears, they could be spoken to to some extent. Yet they could not be fully accepted or trusted. They still were wild creatures, slaves to basal urges, unpredictable. They knew not right or wrong, good from evil. And it was a fact the dark-ears respected.

That their wild kin would always be wild, and left to live their lives in their own devices.

Yet Ashfall had other plans.

-------

The red-sun shone alone in the dim crimson sky, casting its bloody hue over the needles of the conifer trees of the southern woods. There, their pointed shapes and darkened trunks cast irregular shadows upon the forest floor, where unusual residents trod about in the cover of the sanguine dusk.

The leader of a moouk-pack had just returned from an unsuccessful hunt, concerned only with reaching his den,resting and recovering his strength from the exertion for the next hunt. He gave a momentary pause, and glanced up at the sky--not to ponder its mysteries, or to dream of tales of forces and beings unseen, but merely judge the position of the red-sun to help him find his way.

He was simple-minded and practical. Imagined thoughts would not feed him today.

He had no name, for the moouk knew not what names were. They identified themselves with simple calls of "friend" to their packmates to signify they were not a threat.

His mate greeted him at the entrance of the den.

"Food," she called.

"No food," came the reply, and she ducked back down to continue digging out the den.

That was the extent of the moouk's conversations. Brief exchanges of concrete information. Alarm calls to warn of danger, sharp barks of mothers to call their young, courtship calls to impress a potential mate. No songs speaking words, or stories of gods and spirits, or puzzles or riddles or jokes. Just a simple straightforward fact with no other meaning.

The den the pair resided in had once belonged to another moouk with pups. They had driven her out by force, and her pups as well, out alone to who knows where to brave the dangerous outside world and whose fates were unknown.

Were they cruel, or evil, for doing so? They knew not even the meaning ot the word. It was something they did, without regret. It was just what they must do, always done, to survive, and they never thought otherwise.

They were but agents of nature's neutral indifference.

They were no more cruel or wicked than flyer-beasts snatching sea-creatures from the waves, hauling them to their nests to strip them of flesh while they squirmed and struggled for breath in the dry air.

They were no more malicious than the scaly-creepers that slithered into the burrows of small digger-beasts and pumped their squealing quarry full of venom.

And to the moouk, to drive off a a rival to wander homeless and hungry, was but a natural thing to do.

Had they gotten the chance, they would even have preyed upon her pups. For the sake of reducing rivals to their own pups in the future.

They had just enough brain to anticipate those effects and what good it would do them-- but not enough to understand why that would be wrong.

They were creatures of habit, who hunted when they hungered, who courted when the time came to mate, who reared their young and gave them care, only to drive them away without further concern when the next pups came.

Agents of a cycle, that was never broken, until now.

There was movement in the distance.

A terrible howl broke the air, sending the moouk pair into alert. There were intruders in their territory!

They stood their ground, snarling, ready to attack mercilessly whatever it was that threatened them. Perhaps a rival of their own kind, or the fold-paws that too were their enemies.

But this time, it was something far beyond their simple comprehension.

Other fellow hunt-beasts, more numerous than ever before. Creatures like them, yet strange, yet wrong, with flat short faces and big bulbous heads, who made noises more complex than what the moouk could understand.

They came from all directions, rounding them up. From further away, others like them, other moouk, were rounded up, whose presence in their territory would have been unwelcome, had the big-headed invaders not been harrying them too.

They resisted, snarling, as strips of ropy hide were thrown over them, tying them in place.

What did they want?

What did they need?

The moouk did not understand. All that crossed his moderate brain was the thought of escape and retaliation.

The thought of survival.

He resisted, crying out, as he was bound by the invaders. He howled for assistance, but none came.

In the distance, his mate had fled. She paused, looked back and cried out. In a simple, primal, momentary way, she cried in grief.

But the instinct of self-preservation overrode her loyalty, and she fled, deep into the forest, where the attackers did not follow.

In days to come, she would concern herself less of his disappearance, and again more with finding food. In time she would court another again. And she would forget.

The beasts of the wild did not dwell on the past.

-------

Atop a small raised hill, Ashfall surveyed his pack, as they commenced their latest conquest.

Dungstain, surprisingly had joined the fray eagerly, despite his growing contempt for Ashfall. He was here but for the chance to gleefuly wreak brutality upon the hapless moouk.

"Do not kill them." Ashfall warned. "Need...alive."

Dungstain paused in momentary disappointment. At least he got to partake of the twisted joy of war, somewhat.

Around them, Outlanders ran rings around the fleeing moouk, forcing them to gather, some bringing torches, to frighten the moouk with flame.

Like the dark-ears, the Outlanders had eventually learned to make use of the inedible gut and sinew of the horn-herders they had rustled from the highbrows. Drying them in the hot sunlight, tearing them into long, thin strips, to make collars and ropes.

Yet not for their use. These were not for protection, but for control.

Some Outlanders left the woods, towing tethered moouk with them, two for each captive. Some, which struggled defiantly, others, which complied meekly, their wild spirit broken, too exhausted to resist any longer.

And aside from crafting the ropes, there was one other thing some of the Outlanders could do like the dark-ears did.

"Follow." Goldeye said, as a large male moouk was brought before him. Not in his own words...but in the simple, rudimentary tongue of the moouk, of but few vocabulary of barely a hundred "words".

Simple, infantile words like "follow, stay, leave, friend, fight, run, food."

"Leave!" the moouk cried in retaliation.

In response, Goldeye pounced on the captive, restrained by rope by two other Outlanders. He sank his teeth into the moouk's shoulder, who cried out in pain.

"Follow!" He demanded again, through bloodstained lips.

"Leave," was again the reply.

Thus came another painful bite.

And another, and another, each time the moouk resisted. Each time he defied.

Until, even in his primitive brain, he made the connection.

"FOLLOW!" roared Goldeye.

There was a pause.

"...f-follow..." the moouk whimpered at last, knowing it was the only way for the pain to stop.

Goldeye pinned the captive's head to the floor with his forepaw, in a display of dominance, and sprayed him, as one would spray a tree to mark ownership, branding him with their scent.

He belonged to them now.

-------

The moouk were plentiful, for they lived wild, and bred often. When they came in heat, they would mate without a second thought. Every two seasons they came to heat and bore a litter in the spring and in the fall, bigger than those of the houndfolk, four to six apiece.

A failsafe. Because many did not survive.

But if made to survive, beyond the wills of nature, there could be many of them.

Born into a world where they will never know freedom.

Goldeye and Ashfall watched, as some of the Outlanders came forth from the woods, carrying moouk-pups by the scruffs of their necks. It had been their breeding season.

"Young ones. Easy to teach." Goldeye remarked.

"Teach fight. For war." Ashfall responded.

Taught to know that to obey would be in their best interest.

Taught since puphood to feel helpless against their masters.

Their owners.

Ashfall did not want any more of his pack, of his Us, to fall against the Them. No more Wind-Storms, or Whitesmokes, to befell them.

But these nameless beasts were not Us.

They were Thems, the lowest kind of Thems, and they were many.

They could die, and he would not care.

They could fall in place of his people, and there would be many more.

The Outlanders, though vicious, valued their own, their fellow people.

These were not their own.

These were not people.

They were moouk.

--------

[diamondperfumes]

I will be debunking this post about Skahaz being the Harpy.

Just as Daenerys is ruminating on equally implausible answers, the author introduces a wolf, unseen and far away but present enough to interrupt her thoughts. It is a deliberately jarring, almost incongruous moment: Daenerys certainly never encounters this wolf, and the threat of a lupine predator only briefly reenters her mind once more in the chapter. The story jumps from Daenerys' musings to the wolf's howling with a sharp immediacy, juxtaposing the theoretical considerations of a clearly political plot and the dangerous ambiance of the Dothraki Sea without any apparent justification for doing so. Yet I think the author includes the howling wolf in this moment specifically to identify the person Daenerys could not - that is, the individual actually responsible for the poisoning at Daznak's Pit. After all, the chapter immediately preceding "Daenerys X" is "The Queen's Hand" - a chapter which features none other than Skahaz mo Kandaq in a "new" Brazen Beasts mask, "a wolf's head with lolling tongue". If Skahaz has not yet openly taken credit for the poisoning - instead cleverly using the naturally suspicious Barristan to frame Hizdahr for the crime and thus bring down his, Skahaz's, great political enemy - the Shavepate has slyly hinted as much (andindeed by using masks): when Barristan and Skahaz enter the Great Pyramid to depose Hizdahr, Skahaz has his Brazen Beasts wear locust masks, and even tells Barristan that he "ha[s] more locusts if [Barristan] need[s] them". Now, in "Daenerys X", the story allows Skahaz the same sort of subtle boasting: narratively transformed into the natural equivalent of his bronze disguise, Skahaz presents himself as the true poisoner, the solution Daenerys herself could not reach. If we do in fact get an admission from Skahaz on this point - and I would not be entirely surprised if he said so in the moments before he also kills Barristan Selmy - then we can look to this moment for the author's clue to that revelation[.]

I agree with the introduction of the wolf being a tie into her political plot, but the parallel is with Jon Snow being betrayed, just as Dany was betrayed by someone she trusted. Jon Snow is killed for breaking his Night's Watch vows, upon declaring war to save his sister. Dany is betrayed by the Harpy, a figure she gives weighty political authority to during her rule in Meereen. The Harpy is a key figure on her Court.

The wolf's howling makes Dany feel "sad and lonely." Not angry or hurt, but sad and lonely. Yes, Skahaz wears a wolf mask in ADWD Chapter 70, but Jon Snow dies in ADWD Chapter 69, around the same time that ADWD Chapter 71 is taking place. There is a tonal shift from Dany ruminating on who may have betrayed her, to Dany empathizing with the wolf's loneliness. How the wolf's howl makes her feel is key to interpreting the passage.

Dany falls asleep after she hears the wolf howl. To reinforce the connection to Jon Snow/the politics at the Wall, George includes this passage when she wakes up:

“It turned out that their anthill was on the other side of her wall. She wondered how the ants had managed to climb over it and find her. To them these tumbledown stones must loom as huge as the Wall of Westeros. The biggest wall in all the world, her brother Viserys used to say, as proud as if he’d built it himself."

Ants are crawling all over Dany when she wakes up, and she compares their perception of her makeshift Dragonstone to how people must see the Wall of Westeros, the biggest wall in the world. This is a very deliberate analogy for George to make. He could have used any comparison, but he chose to analogize the ants crawling on the makeshift Dragonstone to the people on the Wall, right after a night where Dany has dreams of starlight and Quaithe, when she falls asleep hearing a lonely wolf's howl.

Skahaz's Brazen Beasts wearing locust masks is a deliberate anti-parallel to the Harpy using locusts to poison Dany. The Harpy is trying to take Dany down, and Skahaz is trying to take Hizdahr down. However, Skahaz would not wear locust masks to hint to Barristan that he's the real poisoner, because it would only make Barristan suspicious of him. The irony is in freedmen wearing the faces of the very insects that slavers devour as a delicacy, and that they attempted to use to poison Dany. It's a way of mocking the slaver hegemony. While Skahaz has political reasons to have Hizdahr arrested, he gains nothing from poisoning Dany. In the aftermath of Dany's flight, Skahaz is deposed and Hizdahr, as king, holds all the power, and is able to chip away at everything Dany achieved as Queen of Meereen. If Skahaz's goal is to get rid of Hizdahr, poisoning Dany, which leaves a vacuum in her absence that strengthens Hizdahr, does not service him at all, especially because Dany is the one who gave him power.

Moreover, Barristan in that very chapter realizes that the poisoner is not Hizdahr:

“In return he gave her peace. Do not cast it away, ser, I beg you. Peace is the pearl beyond price. Hizdahr is of Loraq. Never would he soil his hands with poison. He is innocent.” “How can you be certain?” Unless you know the poisoner.

Barristan understands that the person who poisoned the locusts––the person who coerced Hizdahr's confectioner by kidnapping his daughter, the person who butchered his daughter into nine pieces when he failed to poison Dany––is the same person who so confidently guarantees that Hizdahr would never poison Dany, who engineered Hizdahr's marriage to Dany, the one whom neither Dany nor Barristan suspected of poisoning the locusts or being the Harpy.

Hizdahr is not the poisoner or the Harpy, but he is a son of the Harpy.

The person who benefits most from Dany being poisoned is the Harpy. Skahaz and Hizdahr are both narratively framed as potential poisoners. Attention is drawn as far away from the real Harpy as possible in adjudicating who the real poisoner is. Hizdahr, to gain a throne and roll back Dany's antislavery accomplishments. Skahaz, to have Hizdahr framed for the crime and removed from power. Both are presented as viable political actors with realistic motivations for wanting to poison Dany––how did Hizdahr truly secure the peace? how did Skahaz know all the details about the confectioner?––while the Harpy herself is distanced from the act, from the means of the act, and from the motivation for the act.

Barristan certainly will die defending Dany from the Harpy. But it will not be a death in the shadows. It will occur in the moment where action is taking place, where Barristan is bodily defending Dany:

“The scarab unfolded with a hiss. Dany caught a glimpse of a malign black face, almost human, and an arched tail dripping venom … and then the box flew from her hand in pieces, turning end over end. Sudden pain twisted her fingers. As she cried out and clutched her hand, the brass merchant let out a shriek, a woman screamed, and suddenly the Qartheen were shouting and pushing each other aside. Ser Jorah slammed past her, and Dany stumbled to one knee. She heard the hiss again. The old man drove the butt of his staff into the ground, Aggo came riding through an eggseller’s stall and vaulted from his saddle, Jhogo’s whip cracked overhead, Ser Jorah slammed the eunuch over the head with the brass platter, sailors and whores and merchants were fleeing or shouting or both …” (ACOK Dany V) - “The old man feinted with one end of the staff, pulled it back, and whipped the other end about faster than Dany would have believed. The Titan’s Bastard staggered back into the surf, spitting blood and broken teeth from the ruin of his mouth. Whitebeard put Dany behind him. Mero slashed at his face. The old man jerked back, cat-quick. The staff thumped Mero’s ribs, sending him reeling. Arstan splashed sideways, parried a looping cut, danced away from a second, checked a third mid-swing. The moves were so fast she could hardly follow.” (ASOS Dany V)

In the fifth chapters of her ACOK and ASOS arcs, Barristan defends Dany from an assassin––the manticore and the Titan's Bastard. It will only be fitting that he finds his end defending Dany from the Harpy of Meereen, completing the pattern of threes where some symbol/figure of an antagonistic political institution (the Sorrowful Men of Qarth & Mero of Braavos, the original commander of the initially slaver-aligned sellsword company, the Second Sons) comes to murder Dany.

[inposterumcumgaudio]

Maybe u could talk about the Byngs? Not necessarily as a family unit, I just never see people talk about them in depth despite their importance in the game and lore.

You know what I noticed the other day? When Victoria meets with General Byng after her jailbreak, he offers her a place in his safehouse. This would have to be after Sally's escape from it or else he'd be planning for her to stay there instead (and also because by this point, Victoria's begun her assault on the Joy supply in the water so the town is going properly insane about it). And yet, Byng's not got his face all slashed up as he should. I think Victoria would have noticed that.

You could write that off as unintentional oversight, but they do have a texture of slashed-face Byng they could have used. On the other hand, that texture is only seen for a split-second in Sally's act.

It happens so fast one might even wonder if it actually happened at all.

The foundation for questioning Sally's perception of things is a whole other post (which this fandom desperately needs), but let's just say that everyone is the hero of their own story and wants to remember themselves as more than they probably were in a moment.

A lot of what we know about Byng is through the lens of him as a burdensome necessity to Sally's survival. Sally certainly spends a lot of her time soliloquizing to herself about how much of a chore entertaining him (and men like him) is. But she also fondly calls him "Byng-a-ling" on her clientele list that no one but her will ever see. She likes Byng, but she has to complain to herself to maintain her self-perception as the put-upon pretty girl.

I would argue Byng is actually the best suitor she's had, exactly what she's spent her entire adult life looking for. She can lie to herself about wanting Arthur, but if an Arthur was what she wanted, she could have found one. You can't throw a dead rat in Wellington Wells without hitting an Arthur. But she doesn't actually go for Arthurs, does she?

What she seeks out are men who can do something for her. But those men want things in exchange, they make demands on her time and attention. She has to give to get. Men like Stewart Adams are happy to give her practically anything for a smile, but they hardly have anything to give. She complains constantly about how Verloc required all of her attention, but she got status, education, access to chemicals and equipment, the list goes on.

But Byng! Byng shows up, what, once every week or so? A spritz in the mouth and a little manic-pixie-dream-girl dance and he's good. Very low maintenance comparatively.

And he gives her equally as much as Verloc did with the added bonus of protecting her from Verloc. Really, his only overt demand is still a passive one: keep the Bobbies supplied with Blackberry, thus maintaining the power balance in the town to Byng's favor. She'd have to do that anyway.

And the difference is Byng sees this relationship the way Sally would like the relationship to be. They meet periodically, she gets everything she wants from him and barely has to do anything for it. The promise of being the prettiest girl in the world, finally fulfilled! Even that once-a-week encounter can't be that much of a chore. Imagine being a girl as insecure as Sally, thinking your only power in the world is your looks, you just had a baby when everyone around you is a waif and the local tabloid said you could stand to lose some weight, and the most powerful man in town is content to get high, watch you do a little dance, and fuck on off when he wakes up without even demanding a goodbye. That's quite ideal, if you didn't have a baby upstairs.

But she has to think of it as a hassle because otherwise, she'd have to admit that it's what she always thought she was entitled to.

She only really starts to turn on Byng when he suggests that she should let him take Gwen across the bridge. And that sounds just monstrous if you're Sally but... is that really so unreasonable? If you are looking at this objectively, that's whole-ass a plan. Wellington Wells is incredibly unsafe for a baby!

I'm not saying Sally's wrong for being like, "Uh, no?" about that because she does not know what's on the other side of the bridge. We know there are children out there, as evidenced by Shitty Day Kid. You don't learn about him until after Ollie's act, so you don't know when Byng is making this offer to Sally, but there is conceivably a place for Gwen to go. Therefore, there's no reason why we should assume any nefarious intent behind his offer to get her out.

Yes, Byng does have his ulterior motives for wanting to send Gwen across but not Sally. He needs Sally; the entire town does. Her departure would have meant the end of order in Wellington Wells, even outside of Arthur's, Ollie's, and Victoria's actions. And, if you are Byng, even if (as Indira says in a cut line) "an Englishman’s duty has an uncanny knack of being whatever it is he wants to do anyway", well, it is in this case. His duty to Wellington Wells would very explicitly be to not allow - let alone enable - one of its most valuable assets to leave.

I think my favorite thing about Byng, though, is that he often has to be the adult in the room to a populace that has elected to remain children. And as such, because you are as a player made to empathize with these adult children (and indeed because most of the people who played this game were children themselves), this more than anything is why Byng comes off as the game's ultimate villain.

Unfortunately, he's also very often right.

"Sally. Do you love her? Or do you just love having someone who needs you?"

"Really? Would the good townsfolk of Wellington Wells have followed me into the machine guns? Or would they all have hidden in their basements?"

"[The Executive Committee]'d tear me apart like starved jackals. And then they'd pop a Joy."

"Nothing is exactly what we must do. If our people realize they're running out of food, they'll kill each other for the last box of V-Meat!"

Like, none of these statements are untrue. In the context that you hear all of them, you're in the position to read them as self-serving excuses and rationalizations. But Byng is perhaps the person best equipped to see the big picture. He does not take Joy like Victoria, he's not under the same pressure and emotional distress as Verloc, he has been awake and aware the entire time. "Excruciatingly well informed," as a certain memory of an ex-wife once put it.

He's also a skilled tactician and knows the limits of his own powers (which he makes a point of multiple times: "there's only so many strings I can pull" to Victoria, "even I won't be able to save you then" to Sally, "you don't think I'm the one who decides these things, do you?" to Ollie). He can predict what outcomes will occur based on what he can do with the resources available to him and frankly, Wellington Wells is not the best hand to be dealt. Like I said in the Haworth and Verloc post, it's a city of cowards and savages.

Even the point at which Victoria loses all faith in him, when he says that "Our duty now… is to rescue what we can. Salvage something from this whole rotten mess. Even if it's only two or three people," is not an unreasonable position to take from his perspective. The citizens of Wellington Wells are behaving exactly as predicted. To narrow the scope of his interest to just the few people he can save, and narrowing it again as those people reject his offers? It's a tactical reallocation of resources. Every day is a fuckin' battle when you're the General.

I'm not saying he's a good person. He's not. Even his own biography - which presumably would tell you how he himself would like to be perceived - paints him as a self-serving tattletale. He's as much a shitheel as everyone else in this game. But I do think anything you hear about him (and this is true of everyone in this game, all the time) needs to be viewed in the context of the person who's stating that opinion.

And always remember what they tell you right at the beginning of Sally's act:

[theinsanecrayonbox]

Sabretooth War part 10

alrighty kids, we are FINALLY at the end of this mess. we all agree it won't be satisfactory, but let's see just how much of a let down it really is

It was 28* pages. the whole book was 55 pages. an average issue is 22 pages. i get it, it's the 50th milestone, and we're also doing the Wolverine anniversary, but sill... (*there are several splash pages/2-page spreads so my reader read those as singular pages, so it might more more??)

also, this is kinda one of the most lack luster out of the covers for this saga. it's not that engaging, it's kinda stock posed (especially for them) and it's just...not cool? we're at issue #50, we're doing anniversary stuff, this should be more appealing

we pick up where we left off; Logan vs Graydon on the beach while the Pit Gang and X-Force have ringside seats. Graydon saying his only goal in life is to be a wiener; yes, that's fine. Logan admitting he's a terrible parent after it's pointed out; that is good. Logan trying to talk Graydon into being a good guy; no. when Logan has done nothing but tear down Victor into being something pure evil that has no chance of redemption, as an immutable taint on existence itself, why would he assume anything connected to him could be anything good? do i think that; pft no, but i think Graydon's a wiener. but we're not talking about my perception, we're talking about Logan's and everyone in-universe. they all believe that the Creeds are vile and should be erased, that every bad action they have ever committed, no matter the reasoning behind it, is punishable. Graydon should NOT be exempt from that idea (not to mention he IS that terrible, deserves that treatment, and has NEVER tried to be anything other than that)

oh shutup, it would indeed

oh...never mind, the wiener boy is taken out IMMEDIATELY WITH NO FANFARE OR ANYTHING. WHY DID WE DEVOTE PLOT TO HIM IF HE'S USELESS AND WORTHLESS??? you built him up to be a big bad, but nope, he died like a wiener like he always does. i'd be less mad about this if we hadn't devoted such a big deal to his return and betrayal and yaddayadda. because you know what; those pages could've been used to develop the SabreSquad, or to delve into Vic's psyche better, or heck even give the Pit Gang or X-Force more to do (yes i'd've been hap[pier to have given more time to make the OTHER superfluous parts more important). but no, we have Victor's biggest regret in life show up to highlight his own shortfalls and vulnerabilities...to just get unceremoniously stabbed and dead yet again. he made no impact on anything, aside from a board wipe that could've been completed with those idiotic Stark Sentinels.

there is indeed no justice in this world

Logan's line could be impactful of we'd ACTUALLY took the time to point out the times he HAD CARED about people, and contrasted that against how his acre for them were their ultimate doom. we BRIEFLY touched that with Birdy, Holo, Bonnie, and heck even Graydon; he cared for each of them, and as a result they each died...and in the case of Graydon he sacrificed his own humanity to save him from hell only to see wiener boy not make something better of himself; with that second chance but just perpetuate the Creed curse of self hate taken out on the world enmass. seeing THAT should've been heart breaking. instead we get a dick measuring contest

but see that's the thing, this isn't about Victor's tortured psyche and his fall from grace, this is about "those with the powers make the rules" and "might makes right" and "unhinged animal vs the calm of man" or something, because of those lines up there, "You got no powers little man" "I don't need powers to put you down"

their powers are being animals; Victor has always embraced and not denied his nature, while Logan has always had to "fight the animalistic urges" and thus has made himself the pariah that all love. now he doesn't have that crutch; he has no powers, he is just man, while Victor has looked inward and rejected his own humanity to embrace nothing but the animalistic rage and power that brings. it is savagery vs civilized. but it's not done well, not at all...

good ra that was all before the opening text crawl X.x

last cast lineup, and Arkady is still absent despite being on screen, while Aurora and Northstar are still present despite not being in the book since part 2 or 3

no, nothing on the island works, where have you been

who are you to talk Mr OC, we still don't know you, none of us know you and none of you actually know Victor

i can't...i can't keep commentating on every little thing...

oh that's nice, a panel of Laura and Arkady fighting together to distract and calm me down (does he not have a ponytail?? is that one of my hair styles???)

we leave the B Teams to deal with the remainder of the Sentinels, so Victor and lure Logan away from them to go fight alone in the jungle. ok, fine, movement, logical progression for the stupid in progress. ok. we're in the Blob's tiki bar i think? fight scene, mysterious tunnel, mk......to the Council of Dumb's chambers. wtf. actually you know what, no, idc; the island is fallen into ruins, screw logical architecture. fine, Council chamber

he's mind melded with the Pit. i...fine. makes enough sense, eat Logan now please

he's not gonna stay down there though is he?

oh look another panel composed to distract and calm me down strategically placed (who's watching me????)

so yeah, Logan's gets eaten by the Pit and internal monologs about how Vic isn't playing fair by doing this now (baby >< )

the skewed panel borders are a very nice subtle unnerving detail; kuddos layout team

that aside, interesting that that's Zora/Silver Fox II

i am actually into this sequence...to bad it's cut far too short

i'll assume it's because of Tom they got pulled out, but where'd Laura's backup mask come from?

oh no it was the Cuckoo. that's dumb. you're dumb

X-Force all gangs up on Victor while eth Pit Gang sits back and smirks, and Cuckoo is going all holier and mightier than thou until Logan says "leave him to me"...

oh and he has his powers back because the Forge Armor had a Deus ex Machina in it to fix him. so once again, another highly built up plot point of super duper importance is just swept away pointlessly

splash page of pointlessness!

and another

sadly that's how the writers think about YOU Victor

so Logan cuts off Vic's hands, then move sin for the killing blow with the internal monolog being all "this is for my friends and family and all the people you ever hurt blahblahblah"

why is Graydon on the symbolic revenge reflection? he was a BAD GUY WHO WANTED TO MURDER YOU. i just...i can't, this is dumb

and he's dismembered. i'm not going to show that because i have used far too many images already and it's not even that intriguing. Logan is standing over a dismembered pile of Victor with a satisfied smirk while the B Teams stand behind him also smirking, and there's an angelic triumphant glow as if this is all super good and was super hard. all hail our infallible savior Wolverine >>

epilogue time; Cuckoo and sitting on a cliff with Quinthead (don't worry he gets better), the Pit Gang fly off into the sunset (don't worry Pya comes back), Logan stares into said sunset internal monologuing about how Krakoa was the best ever and he's learned to love again or something (i can't be bothered to care at this point) before looking to X-Force and taking up leadership of them for the umpteenth time.

SO as a FINALE to this whole 10 part saga...it's about on par with the rest. overly graphic for the sake of unpleasantness, and sacrificing actual character depth to make Logan look like the best eva and Vic is the ultimate evil that needs to be put down foreva and eva. as a Finale to the Lavalle trilogy...it's terrible. it was completely mishandled, so many threads started and left loosely hanging. what little character depth it had was probably from Lavalle, but he should've touched it more. this was a story that we've done before; we didn't tread on any new ground. the biggest new thing was the over the top gratuitous gore fest and that is not appealing. being unpleasant for the sake of being unpleasant is not appealing.

and honestly, i'm sticking to my conspiracy theory that Arkady was supposed to not appear in this at all. the panels in this issue were less drawn in afterwards to me, BUT his contributions were very nil and his inclusion did not add anything.

uhg i have half this issue left for just bonus Logan celebration stuff...do i care enough to do it? ok, sure, summaries though

Mutants on the edge of town: well it looks 97ish. some soda shop jerk kid has a Sentinel in hid barn...i find it very sus that doesn't know/recognize it as a Sentinel, but whatever. Logan and Jubes check it out and it wakes up so fight. interesting that it could detect heterochromia and defines THAT as a mutation worth capturing, thought it went after X-genes. but it blows up, the end. it's a fine enough bonus story i guess.

Endless: ah Percy, still at it with the overlt dramatic internal monolpg that sounds super deep and important but is just not. however i give you, he's Logan your life is one giant circle because we must repeat reapeat repeat.

oh...ok i know i said no pics for these, but this...this i liek and approve. you actually acknowledge that Arkady has become a good boy and that Beast is terrible. i...ok i give you a point for this sequence, thank you.

other than that, it's kind of an even more abridged Life of, but also the goodbye letter i guess since this is Percy's last run with Logan (except it's not)

then there's his actual good bye letter. and then solicits for other wolverine to read until the new titles launches in Sept with some previews that look very similar to Origin...repeatrepeatrepeat

so once again, the easiest summery: Victor is dead-dead yet again (he was decapitated, so there's a chance it'll stick (but Savage wasn't decapitated...) ), Arkady isn't dead and still with X-Force, Daken is dead-dead, Laura 2 is not dead, Graydon is dead yet again, and Logan sucks. the end

now to wait for August with the anniversary special *dead*

[festivalofthe12]

just ahhhhhhh it's so INTERESTING when it comes to like Yuki and masking and external perceptions because like

He grows up thinking that his one value in life is being the Rat. It's what makes him useful to his parents, and what makes him Akito's golden child. That's all. Everything he has is conditional on that one specific thing.

And he internalises all of that. He has to act in ways befitting of the Rat, or his parents will reject him - just like he sees with Ayame. He does what Akito wants or Akito will get mad, and pleasing Akito is the best thing ever, right? Being close enough to feel Akito's love first-hand? To be special?

Of course he grows up to be cripplingly self-conscious. To be borderline obsessed with how other people expect him to act and how he can live up to those expectations. To bury any real feelings so deep down he doesn't even know how to admit them to himself, let alone express them outwardly. He has outlets - Kyou is a societally (and Sohma-ly!) acceptable subject of his anger. But he is his performance: underneath that, what is there?

And yet... what he gets from all this isn't even good. His parents suck and never really cared about him anyway. Akito, too, was far more harmful than helpful to him. And he doesn't like being who he acts like. He doesn't want the fangirls to coo over 'prince Yuki'.

He's trapped in this prison that feels like it's of his own making, because he's one acting like this, following this role, even long after it's stopped serving him. And he's in some ways aware of that. But he doesn't know how to stop.

Over and over, he internalises. He suffers in silence and tells himself he's not. He's stressed out all the time with the effort of keeping up the act and that leaves him irritable in the few situations he doesn't need to. He desperately wants to please people, but doesn't trust anybody.

He doesn't expect anyone to truly care about him, aside from what he Is or what expectations he's able to fulfil, because for years he begged for help and received none of it. He's long since stopped believing that things can really change for the better, even after he escapes to live with Shigure. Even at high school, he's still falling into the same patterns. The best he can hope for is that people are impressed with him and think he's really Special. The idea of people not thinking that way about him triggers that childhood anxiety of abandonment and worthlessness. But he also hates it.

He's so very, very lonely. He just wants to be like somebody else. To connect. But until Tohru, he never really properly got that. (Yes, Haru tried really hard, but he was still too tied up with the Juunishi and the Rat and the Cow to truly break through it all.) He literally never got to make friends and have healthy relationships modelled for him. The world, as far as he has experienced it, is transactional: he is Special, and thus he is kept.

Of course he's so distant and inscrutable and cold. Of course he acts 'like he's better than everyone else'. Of course he struggles to accept that Ayame really does sincerely care about him. (He sure didn't act like it for fifteen-odd years!!!!) He's been masking for so long he doesn't know where the pretending ends and where 'real Yuki' (whoever that even is) begins.

[barksenji]

I've finally finished them lmao.

Here they are! As promised, I'll give a little context regarding both of them.

For context, these two are One Piece OCs. Zeus is my OC, Isuka is my girlfriend's.

Zeus, born with a rare genetic disorder, user of the Itai-Itai No Mi, he mostly uses his fruit to dull out the pain, which leads to him overextending himself. Born in Wano, at 17 he escaped with his childhood friend, Isuka, and other people during the Fire Festival. His experiences shaped his beliefs, and now he's determined to make the world a better, more humane place.

Isuka's not the best at fighting, but she always carries rusty knives with her, since she can control tetanus. She's also constantly running a fever, so she gets incredibly cold.

Isuka's fruit is different from Doctor Q's fruit in the sense that she can control symptoms of a disease that's already in the system of the enemy. If she manages to contaminate the enemy, then she manages to control the symptoms of the disease she contaminated the enemy with. It's more of a symptom fruit than a disease fruit per se.

Zeus deals with most of the fighting, though he isn't that good at it either. He likes to keep his distance, lacing his arrows with chemical weapons such as urticants in hopes to deter the enemy. When things get serious, he recurs to his devil fruit, which allows him to redirect his own pain to a designated target. Thus, he can control his own pain levels and transfer pain between himself and others. Not the most pleasant, but it works.

His fruit is not yet awakened, In its awakened state, the Itai-Itai No Mi could gain the ability to manipulate pain on a broader scale, extending beyond physical sensations to include emotional and psychological aspects. This would allow him to influence the mental states and perceptions of others, but also to affect everyone's sensitivity to pain without limitation.

However, Isuka is a much better devil fruit user, mostly because Zeus isn't patient at all, and sees his devil fruit powers more as an analgesic than a weapon.

They're both doctors.

Some people mistake them as zombies.

Zeus is covered in scars, mainly because when using his devil fruit in battle he has to either self-inflict pain or purposefully receive attacks. How he isn't dead is beyond everyone. Probably because neither of them get into too much trouble. Some scars are there because, since most of the time he dulls his pain so much he can't feel ANY pain in the first place, he's at incredible risk for injury.

We want to relate them to the Kid Pirates in some way, but we'll have to develop their stories a bit more first. I'll update anything through this post anyways, lmao.

[figroth]

Flickers in the Dark

The orange lights flickered unexpectedly in the distance of the abyssal darkness.

Thania observed the first source of light she had encountered in years thoughtfully. What could the meaning of this be? Down in the Abyss there was no light. There was barely anything to be honest, but especially not light. She had learnt to sense her barren and bleak world through other means, so much so that she had almost forgotten what it was like to see. Could she believe her own sight after it'd fallen in such disuse?

Indeed the question of whether she could trust the vision was prevalent in her mind. Her many years of experience in the Abyss had taught her that trust was a sentiment one shouldn't afford to anything.

Once, she remembered, the harrowing cry of a woman echoing through the darkness. She had hurried to the aid of the distressed woman, hoping in the depths of her heart that she might finally have a companion in her empty journeys. At the end of her dash, however, she had met no person, but a bulbous mass of disparate parts. Her first tentative touches had felt a number of faces, distorted in unnatural asymmetrical shapes, undulating in and out as one with the breathing of the beast. As she stepped back, she could hear the unearthly shrieks of people rendered so inhuman in how real they sounded. She had barely escaped the claws that had then swooped in to catch her, and likely add her own face to the amalgamation.

No, there were two very fundamental lessons about living in the Abyss. The first was that despite the general emptiness, in the rare event of encountering something other than yourself, investigating was never worth the danger it put you in. Though Thania did not understand the purposes of the things she met and could never predict their actual nature beforehand, she knew they were never safe. From the pleasant aroma of a flower luring you into a plant that would entrap you and incorporate your living body to its growing vines; to a room of warmth and comfort inviting you to rest your sorrows away, only to sap away all your will and motivation by the time you woke up; everything in this world harboured a threat of some kind or other.

Yet, these orange flickers of light made Thania feel warm just by looking at them. She remembered a time when a flame of not too dissimilar hue would have kept her company through the night, shielding her from the cold of the outside world. She could imagine the small crowded home that surrounded such hearth. She yearned for its warmth. Could these lights possibly be houses of people? What else could create light? She had never seen the creatures of the Abyss do such a thing.

The second lesson of the Abyss was that the cold, lonely life it offered was not living at all when you didn't let even its rare encounters approach you.

"Do you reckon you'll find people over there?" Grinner suddenly appeared with a condescending chuckle.

She ignored him.

"It's almost inspiring how you still believe after all this time. Your optimism is why I like you, though", his mocking grin was perceptible even without having to see him.

Once upon a time, a naive young Thania had allowed herself to feel around his face and body. He had seemed roughly human-shaped, even if the texture wasn't quite right. But most noticeable had been the incredibly wide smile his face was contorted to. It was a smile she could hear in his very voice. That's why she had called him Grinner back then.

Of course, it had been entirely wrong to engage with him. She had once been glad to meet another person she could speak with. Nowadays, she wasn't sure if she should refer to him as a person at all. Her current theory had him be a demon haunting her in an attempt to confuse and mislead her, out of pure appreciation for her suffering. She still feared he might have yet worse intentions, however. Thus, she ignored him.

"Still not much for conversation, I see. You wound my feelings, dearie. In any case, be careful in your foolish little endeavour. We wouldn't want you to die, would we?" his last words were dipped with a pretend concern that induced an ominous feeling in her.

With his part said, she heard Grinner's essence dissolve back into nothingness. She was alone again. Perhaps she wouldn't be for long. Her tormentor didn't seem to think the flickers held anything good in them, and in truthfulness she agreed. But if the demon was right about one thing was that in the core of all her jadedness, she simply wanted to believe in the light again.

After all, although Thania always said she had been alone since the start, in reality she'd met other humans before. It had been mostly in the beginning, right after her home had been taken by the Abyss. She assumed they came from the same place, but she hadn't been able to confirm it, since she didn't recognise anyone she knew. Unfortunately, in most cases the humans were already dead or in irrecoverable states that didn't allow communication when she found them. Horrifying though these instances were, they were invaluable learning experiences that allowed her to survive all this time.

After a while, the humans stopped showing up. Thania was left to deal with the Abyss and its dangers by herself. What happened to her home, she never knew exactly. In her childhood she and her family had lived in a mining colony on a far-off moon of the solar system. It had not been an easy life, but it was all Thania had known and she had been happy. She knew that now at least. But then with no sign or warning, a fog of complete blackness had appeared and consumed the whole moon within it.

Where was she now and where was the moon gone now? She didn't know. Her current whereabouts, the thing she called the Abyss, didn't feel like she was on a planet or in space, or even in the fog that started it all. Sometimes the Abyss didn't even seem to have any corporeal form at all. It was just a Darkness, and she existed in it. Then, sometimes other Things would appear within it.

The fog had taken her entire home. But then, after the initial panic and mayhem, she was alone. She had met some people, but not nearly enough. Where had the rest of them gone? Where had the buildings and towns gone? Where had her family gone? Were they also somewhere in the Abyss to be found? Or had they perhaps been spared from the darkness and she could go back to them, if she only found an exit.

Those questions bothered her whenever she tried to sleep. But they were also what kept her hope alive. What kept her moving after a long series of disappointments.

There was of course something else that motivated her. That inner hunger she always felt that could never be quenched in the bare landscape of the Abyss. An agonising unrelenting hunger that plagued her always. It tormented her, but it kept her alive. It drove her to take risks she wouldn't have otherwise, every time a step closer to death. And yet when she made it out alive, she had what the hunger demanded of her. Perhaps without it she would have given up long ago.

Her belly now again rumbled. She didn't get to eat often. Whatever waited for her at the end of this trip, this was an unmistakable chance to alleviate that hard knot in her stomach.

She looked down at herself, a motion more symbolic than anything else. If she did find people, though, would they be able to accept her as she was now? A wandering creature, twisted by the instincts of survival and the corruption of the dark, who can only think of consuming whatever she can find to satiate her hunger... Was she perhaps also a monster of the Abyss now?

Her clothes were long gone, torn and frayed through time and wear. They wouldn't fit her grown body anyway. Instead now she wore a veil of shadows, fashioned like a cloak. Although no prying eyes could pierce the darkness that enveloped all and no clothing could shield from the coldness permeating everything in the Abyss, she still somehow felt safer or more comfortable with something on rather than otherwise. Perhaps it was an artifact of a life in a more reasonable world.

Would such appearance scare a fellow human? The transformations the Dark had forced upon her. Could they ever be accepted by people? If she ever re-surfaced to the real world, would she be welcome? Would she be able to live there? Or would she be so far gone, the warmth would burn her?

In the Abyss, there was no night and day. The only differentiation of time for Thania was the cycle of necessary movement replaced by the loss of all willingness to think and experience. Then, she would sleep, surrendering herself to the same void that surrounded her from all sides. Once again now, stopped in her tracks by her maddening thoughts, she found a hole to crawl in and lied down hoping the oblivion would claim her and erase all worries.

She had no dreams.

She awakened to the call of her hunger. Though sleep in the Abyss rarely offered enough rest to be considered fulfilling, Thania had at least shed some of her exhaustion, allowing to build up her mental fortitude once again.

The orange lights were still there. Whatever lay there, human, monstrous or otherwise, she would have to face it in the end no matter the outcome. That wouldn't change.

She made her way towards them once again. Although the Abyss had no definite shape or form, it did sometimes assume a particular, more corporeal state. Often Thania found her feet walking upon what felt like hard rocky terrain. Other times, it was as if she was in a murky bog, her legs submerging themselves into invisible mud and water. And yet other times, even more structure appeared in her way, like stony trees, pillars made of tar and even rivers of ambiguous substances defying the notion of gravity and flowing in any direction they saw fit.

This time the darkness melted into a liquid form and Thania found herself having to swim through a lake. It was not her favourite state. The touch of the water, if it could even be called that, made her yet colder. She pushed on despite it. The faster she swam, the sooner she'd be out of the lake.

Whilst at first, her head remained above the surface, letting buoyancy keep her afloat, suddenly all the enveloping darkness was liquid, pressing from all sides. In a panic, she tried to swim upwards, but no end to the water appeared. She'd closed her mouth as soon as the change occurred, so nothing had gotten in, but as a result she hadn't gotten a good breath in. She didn't have long.

Taking a moment to calm herself, she stopped and looked at her target, the only visible thing in so long. The Abyss was playing tricks on her, but the lights were surely there and approaching. She could try go back, but it wasn't certain the Abyss would change back. The lights were true and material, though, no matter what the Dark shaped itself into. That was her only hope.

She dove straight for the orange dots, now blurring through the pain-induced tears. She didn't even know if oxygen existed in the Abyss, yet her lungs longed for it nonetheless. They begged her to open her mouth, ignorant that what lay outside was not air. They pressure built up far quicker than she had hoped. She couldn't stand this. She was getting closer, but her instincts fought her.

She opened her mouth.

The darkness flowed quickly into her mouth and down her neck, filling her up inside with the most dreadful stuffy solidified sense of drowning. It reached the capacity of her lungs and then overflowed, spreading to her entire being. A single scream escaped, short in duration, muffled, and eventually swallowed by the void.

The next instant that she could be certain she was conscious, Thania was on solid ground -solid enough at least- with no sign of the lake that had been drowning her, for how long she couldn't tell.

She greedily breathed in and out, partly to calm herself, but also to make up for all the breaths she just skipped. The essence that had invaded her seemed to be gone and any lingering taste was probably her imagination. However, she didn't trust that it wasn't hiding somewhere within her with some insidious purpose. The fear of that would be something more to worry about in her lone moments of sleep, but in the moment she couldn't do anything about it, so she tried to repress it.

She felt around her body, from her limbs to her chest to her belly, to make sure everything was still in place, then she got up. The lights were closer than ever, fairly bigger than before and easier to distinguish. Without any other landmarks, it was hard to estimate distances, but she felt she was almost there.

As she continued on her way, the ground started to turn uphill. Eventually, after some searching she found a swirling path that appeared to climb up a hill or mountain. The lights proved to be higher than her current level, so the path seemed to be a promising way of reaching them.

As she went around the hill, the flickers came in and out of sight, as if something was hiding them, but now Thania could see they weren't quite round, but had a more elongated squarish shape. The excitement caused by this almost made her turn around and run away, for fear of the disappointment being wrong would cause.

"Don't do this to me now", she inadvertently mumbled to herself in a croaky voice.

The remaining climb was some of the hardest exercise she'd gotten in a long time. Other than running away from dangers, the empty Abyss didn't often offer much physical challenge. Now, the clear path up the hill seemed to stop and instead the way up was through steep jagged cliffs. Yet, the lights were just above, tantalisingly close and yet out of reach. Thania put in her all, making her way up, blindly searching for stable footing.

She was faintly reminded of climbing a much less steep slope in the dark during the exploration of an abandoned mine, back home. Was she with her friends then, venturing into dangerous passages out of curiosity despite warning; or had her father brought her there to familiarise her with the mines that she might also have worked in some day? She couldn't remember. Her memories of her old life seemed so far now, so faded. Lost almost, as if taken by the all-consuming Darkness.

A sharp feeling grasped her gut. Her memories of the old world were one of the few things she had, one of her precious treasures. Without realising it, it had escaped like sand in her hands. Was forgetfulness and nothingness all that awaited her? If she had lost what once was, could she perhaps ever make memories to replace the ones that were gone? A warm life with warm people. Could she possibly ever have something so nice?

A monstrosity of many eyes and enormous size stared at her and seemed to almost silently reply "No". Archs of almost human size, emitting orange light, with a cross separating them in four parts dotted the gooey flesh of the monster. By all accounts they should have been windows. And yet they were just another trick of the Abyss meant to deceive her. The window-shaped eyes of the vaguely spherical mass of overlapping disproportionately small arms turned to look at her. A maw covering about half of the creature opened in anticipation, revealing its inner dark depths. The two chicken-like legs supporting its weight dubiously, slowly started to move towards her.

Thania wasn't sure if this was worse than the creatures she imagined when she couldn't see the horrors of the Abyss visually. It didn't matter in this moment, however, as instead of a fearful scream, hoarse laughter escaped her mouth. Of course. What else did she expect? She felt horrible, yet she could only laugh.

But something else stirred within her at the same time. Looking down, below her cloak, in the light of the beast's eyes, she could for the first time see the gem that had embedded itself in her stomach. It opened up to reveal the mouth she knew was there, demanding flesh to quench its hunger.

Many might have wondered, had they heard Thania's tale, how she managed to survive this long in the Abyss, escaping its touch and its horrible traps. The simple answer is she didn't. Since the very beginning, the taint of the Abyss had accompanied her.

When the fog came, unimaginable beasts had emerged from it. Some had been satisfied hunting for food. Others had simply killed, seemingly for its own sake. Some few had committed unthinkable horrors on the unfortunate victims of her home. As for Thania, before she could escape one of the small ones had bitten her leg. What happened next was always a blur, but the creature had managed to enter her body and somehow merge with it. She could still feel it inside her, attached to her heart, its tendrils reaching within her, sapping any warmth she could produce.

Its thirst for life, its search for sustenance had always followed her. It was what had made her eat the the detached claw of a face-stealing monster. What had convinced her to accept the fruit of a tree growing out of a man. It was what gave her power and what had helped her survive.

It was what would have her fight the many-eyed monstrosity charging at her right now. And the survivor's hunger will be sated.

If only for a moment.