#This also includes one of my rough ideas of how she became evil before it became a concrete answer..

[kp-studios]

This popped out of my shower thoughts, but she must be redeemed.

[lovelytsunoda]

love is a losing game | cumulative authors notes

Welcome to the final chapter of ‘Love is a Losing Game”! Before I release the grand conclusion, I wanted to share the ideas and the inspiration behind a venture that made me feel like I was back in my Wattpad era.

When I first got the idea for this series, I had just finished watching the second season of Bosch: Legacy on Amazon Prime. I’ve loved cop shows since I was a kid and Bosch is as good as it gets. I also found myself drawn in to one character in particular: Detective Kevin Long, portrayed by former Days of our Lives actor Guy Wilson (who also recently subbed in for Jonathan Jackson on General Hospital). I admit, there was nothing redeemable about that character whatsoever, but his sad eyes and chest of tattoos captivated me. It got me thinking, since there was little background insight given to Kevin Long as a character, what if he wasn’t a bad guy at all? (Delusional, I know. He was so far past saving) What if he was desperate to protect the people that he loved? When I went back and started rewatching Bosch from the beginning, all the layers came together, and suddenly I had created so much lore going back to the very beginning, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I was gasping to write fanfiction. A full bodied series, something that I haven’t done since my Wattpad days. I had all these thoughts and plot points, and they were consuming me. But I knew that if I wrote it for Bosch, nobody would read it. I’d call it a dead fandom, but that implied there was a fandom to begin with outside of sub reddits. and then I had another idea.

What if I kept the storyline the same, but changed the fandom, drawing inspiration from Bosch but creating something bigger? And so Love Is A Losing Game was born. Kevin Long became Jake Seresin, and Titus Welliver's maverick devil-may care detective Harry Bosch became Pete Mitchell (same character different fonts! you can't go one episode without someone saying 'fucking bosch') Jerry Edgar became Tom Kazansky, and lawyer Honey Chandler became Penny Benjamin. I didn’t originally want to make Bradley the evil Don Ellis (who I once saw described as 'evil James Hetfield'), but I was running out of characters to sub, and something about the power cop duo of Jake and Bradley spoke to me (and Bradley and don have the same moustache). See my diagram below for who plays who:

Included but not pictures is Mickey Garcia as Detective Rondell Pierce, Javy Machado as Officer George Irving and Ron Kerner as Detective Santiago “Jimmy” Robertson.

(Early chapter readers may note that before proofreading, some chapters had errors where I had typed so quickly, my brain moving a mile a minute that I wouldn’t realize I’d typed in the names of the Bosch character I used for inspiration instead of the character it was supposed to be. I’d be embarrassed every time, but at the end of the day I only garnered like 20 readers and just hoped they wouldn’t notice)

Fun fact about Bosch! Honey Chandler is played by Mimi Rogers, who was married to Tom Cruise before he met Nicole Kidman! Other stars include the late Lance Reddick, Matthew Lillard, C Thomas Howell and Anthony Michael Hall. Maggie Q is also set to star as Renee Ballard in the new season, as well as a spinoff about Ballard as a character.

Jessica’s story is so meaningful to me because it’s about growing from your mistakes and paying it forward. She had rough teen years, which she’s carried with her for a long time. In the end, it’s realizing she can still be redeemed, she can still be loved for who she is that allows her to move on. I didn't want her story to be seen as another girl who married the wrong man. I wanted her story to be about how far we will go to protect the people that we love.

To end it all off, here are some fun facts about Jessie and Jake, or as they were originally in my head, Jessie and Kevin:

The first night that Jessie and Jake sleep together, they go to see an Oasis cover band called Cigarettes and Alcohol

Jessie and Jake were originally going to take the detectives exam together, but Jessie chickened out which resulted in Jake getting promoted to vice as a detective before Jessie tested

Jessie had a heart attack while working on the murder of a civil rights lawyer, caving under pressure from her past, her crazy boss and the high profile nature of the case

Jessie and Pete/Harry go to Vegas together to investigate the mob related murder of a porn director, and that's when she first starts to open up to him about her past (after he announces that he has the only copy of her juvenile file)

She cried the first time she had to interview a murder suspect (who later turned out to be an undercover FBI agent)

Jake/Kevin was on his college rowing team

At the beginning of what would have been season 4, Jessie and Jake go to see the Killers in concert, and Jake gets so drunk that Jessie drives the Charger home (Jake is a sleepy drunk, and spends most of the next day asleep as well)

Their honeymoon was a two week cruise in Alaska. Her favourite port was Anchorage

Their wedding song was Wonderwall by Oasis

Jessie doesn't necessarily let herself get pushed around, per say, by Pete but she wants to be where the action is after Vegas so when Pete says 'hey we're tracking a murder suspect to a deserted forest island, dress warm and come with me' she doesn't exactly say no

Jessie cried the first time that she had sex with Jake. She was so overwhelmed (in a good way!) at the care and love he handled her with because she didn't believe that anybody would ever love her enough to be gentle with her and cherish her

While in Vegas, Pete's ex-wife (who's a professional poker player) got Jessie tickets to see Velvet Revolver at the Bellagio. In the aftermath of that trip, everybody in the department thought she was sleeping with Pete, even though that was the furthest thing from the truth

Jessie's first concert was Bon Jovi when she was fourteen. Jake/Kevin's was Nickelback. Their first *real* concert together (so not the cover band) was Greta Van Fleet

Jake is a menace on the road. He breaks speed limits left right and center and if anybody questions/honks at him he just turns the mini siren in the Charger on and pretends he's responding to an urgent call (obviously for Jessie's sake that changed after their accident, and then again when Rosie was born)

Neither of them are very kinky people. Jake goes to work and solicits prostitutes most days, and generally feels pretty grody and nasty afterwards, especially with some of the things he's seen in the line of duty. The same goes for Jessica, who quite literally sees the worst of humanity. She considers Jake to be her safe place, and her favorite position is when Jake's chest is pressed against her back, he's gently kissing the side of her head, and his thrusts are slow and deep.

Call him 'Detective" and you will have Jake Seresin wrapped around your little finger. He will literally do anything you want

Jake thinks he's a handy man but isn't. It's better to hire professionals (or call Jessie's dad) when something needs doing

Jessie rarely ever takes her car in for service. Most smaller things she can do herself, and she finds doing the repairs soothing. She once replaced a broken headlight on a stakeout to keep herself busy

Jake/Kevin has two older sisters, Jessie is an eldest daughter

[salarta]

I think that some people, when they see me say Polaris/Lorna Dane is being held back due to nostalgia for sexism, think I'm being hyperbolic for effect. But no. I'm 100% serious.

Marvel has a history with sexism. Which, yes, you can expect from most such companies that have existed as long as Marvel. The Marvel of today appears to be trying to make strides, but when you really get down to it, that only happens with the very visible household name characters or big events they want to promote. Dig any deeper and you still find the sexism.

How often do female characters who aren't the already established big names like Jean Grey or Emma Frost or Storm or Rogue get much attention? How often do you hear about them getting much introspection into who they are, real consideration and reckoning with their history? Dazzler has a book only because she once had a book, so it plays to nostalgia for when she had a book.

This is as compared to when Lockjaw, a dog, got a mini series. A dog. Marvel decided to make a mini for a dog. Marvel also made a mini for Chamber. I could make a list (I actually have, buried somewhere among my Tumblr posts), but you get the point. If a woman isn't a major household name already, she doesn't get minis, solos, or oneshots. Those go to cis white men and dogs.

The case of Polaris specifically vexes me for two reasons. One, because I can see so much of how great she could be if treated with respect. Two, because she started out more feminist than her female peers at the time, got essentially destroyed for daring to break the mold, and she's still treated poorly because of it.

Lorna's existed since 1968. She was the second woman to join the X-Men. When she was introduced, the X-Men feared her. They dreaded what a threat she could be if she decided to follow in her father's footsteps and become their enemy. You know the Green Ranger from Power Rangers? She was the X-Men's Green Ranger decades before Power Rangers. Tempted toward evil, ultimately deciding to join the good guys, exhibiting an independent and rough edge.

But because it was the late 60s and early 70s, and she happened to be a woman, she quickly got shackled to Havok. And then, her fate got dragged down to being a damsel for him to rescue, or his girlfriend to support him in his civilian life. Desires written for Havok quickly became assigned as if Lorna implicitly wanted those things too, even if she never outright said "Yeah I wanna be a civilian" without ambiguity. Cause, y'know, she's a woman, and women do what men tell them to do.

I've said before that I very much think that if Polaris were created as a male character, she would be a household name today and one of the X-Men franchise's major characters. Just look at Exodus during the Krakoa era. He was created in 1993, and he got a seat on the Quiet Council while Lorna... disappeared until she got assigned to X-Factor for the billionth time as a supporting character, not even its leader, and repeatedly insulted (e.g. Lorna written confronting Siryn alone so Siryn could call her stupid in actual written dialogue while mind controlling her) with her important history completely ignored (e.g. mental breakdown from witnessing death during X of Swords as if she doesn't already have decades, including the Genoshan genocide, that she witnessed firsthand). It was only after she won the X-Men fan vote that anything actually good happened for her during the Krakoa era.

What we're dealing with now, of course, is obsession with nostalgia. We have the X-Men animated series trying to play off the 90s cartoon's popularity, and we have the comics trying to follow suit by reverting everything to 90s ideas.

And in true nostalgia-focused fashion, that means reverting Lorna back to her "status quo" from the 90s: Havok's supporting character girlfriend.

Nostalgia is insidious. I've said this many times. The main appeal of nostalgia is one of "Hey remember when things were like this, when you were younger and had a lot more hope and excitement? Yeah those were good times huh. Feel how you felt back then."

But in the pursuit for that nostalgia high, the actual bad elements are shrugged off or more often treated like part of the appeal. Like when you look back on the 90s, we didn't have gay marriage. Gay people could be criminalized under sodomy laws. We had police brutality toward Rodney King. The 90s were not some kind of blissful heaven on earth with no faults that we need to "return to."

And yet. Nostalgia for the 90s with comics takes the tack that except for a select few very glaring issues with the most well known characters, the 90s status quo was completely fine. No need to fix a thing. Act as if nothing happened since, or like developments since were mistakes.

Which is where Polaris comes in. Because the status quo for her in the 90s was "supporting character girlfriend for Havok on X-Factor."

Fans of that period will often defend that period for some good aspects. And let's be fair: nostalgia isn't 100% bad either. There's a reason it appeals. And yes, the 90s was an improvement for Lorna over treatment before then.

But time moves forward. It's not the 90s anymore. It's 2024. We should strive to do and be better. For Lorna, that means not pretending the 90s was her peak period and she can't be anything more or better than that.

She had progress after the 90s. She had her own major experience with Genosha and its genocide, and her working through it.

If you lived through a genocide, would you seriously just forget it ever happened to you? Cause Marvel seems to think you would. Marvel thinks not just your brain, but the entire universe, would forget you were ever there. It thinks that time period of your life would be just a bunch of TV static, a blank space on your resume.

Why?

Because it's inconvenient for 90s nostalgia.

90s nostalgia that says Lorna's place is in Havok's bed, giving him some pity sex as he makes tough manly decisions.

Fans of the 90s X-Factor leave out issues with Lorna's treatment during this period. Like how Sabretooth broke her jaw. Or how Wolfsbane was conditioned to have a bestial lust for Havok and see Lorna as a rival for his attention. It's not like there aren't some positive moments, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows and puppies that fans obsessed with 90s nostalgia make them out to be.

In the here and now, that nostalgia amounts to nostalgia for sexism. Because instead of letting Lorna be her own character, with her own drives and interests and history, that nostalgia insists her purpose is in being Havok's girlfriend. That nostalgia insists that even if Lorna has a rare moment or two for herself, all of it must funnel back into serving Havok's story and promoting him.

Just consider how many of the current X-Factor's covers focus on Polaris, mostly as variant covers, yet the stories are all about Havok and co struggling to deal with matters. Watching Havok's manpain at Lorna being abducted. Or watching his manpain at being in conflict with Lorna. Lorna isn't centered. She's just a tool for his stories.

The truth is, even those obsessed with nostalgia recognize Lorna deserves better than this. They just don't care beyond paying enough lip service to claim they're not sexist. Even as they promote stories that shove Lorna into sexist roles where she has no value in and of herself, only in what she can do for Havok.

Even sadder, to me, is how ingrained the sexism is even among X-Men comics fans. My experience thus far has been one where calling out the sexism for what it is results in dismissals, claims that it's no big deal. So what if Lorna's abducted by brand new random characters and she doesn't fight back even though we know she could mop the floor with them if written properly. Fits perfectly with the 90s nostalgia.

But then Pyro doesn't know fire won't work without oxygen and suddenly it's all hands on deck complaints. They care when a man is written poorly, but not when it happens to a woman that isn't Jean, Emma, Storm or one of the other household names.

Lorna being held back for decades makes it much easier to depict her in sexist ways, and for fans of 90s nostalgia to excuse the sexism.

My bottom line is I won't take claims of Marvel trying to be better about treatment of female characters seriously until it leads to better for Polaris. I've said this many, many times over the years. If they don't make things better for her, then they don't mean it. A real effort in this vein would inevitably lead to looking at Lorna's history, recognizing both who she was supposed to be and the sexism inherent in so much treatment of her afterward, and taking steps to rectify all the accumulated damage.

I'm going to say one more thing that's going to piss off a good number of people. There's sexism in the X-Men 97 cartoon too, fueled by the same nostalgia for sexism that's affecting the comics.

The X-Men 97 cartoon decided to go into the Genoshan genocide. It centered Rogue for that storyline. But Polaris? Nowhere to be seen. Not on Genosha at all. Not even in the background. Her only appearances were a couple references to her on X-Factor, and a "what if" sequence of her as a slave in the future.

It would not have been hard at all for the X-Men 97 cartoon to make even the tiniest reference to her experience of the Genoshan genocide. She could've been in the background while others talked. Instead of the "slave in the future" clip, she could've had a similar clip for having survived the genocide.

Not doing that was a choice. Nothing in storytelling says Rogue couldn't have her storyline if Lorna had hers respected in the cartoon. There are plenty of ways to respect that part of Lorna without cutting into plans.

Sexism isn't just explicit stuff. It's also omission, like when Black Widow was excluded from Avengers toys. It's also taking events relevant to one woman and giving it to another character, even if it's another woman.

Sexism includes treating women like they're interchangeable, and female characters like their stories can be taken from one and applied to another. The act of leaving out Polaris' entire storyline as a survivor, giving every ounce of its weight and depth to Rogue, is an act of sexism. Because plainly, Rogue and Polaris are not the same just because they're both women.

It's the same basic problem as when teams have all white men except for a single token woman, or a single token black guy. You're taking all the depth and complexity that is the human experience that aren't that of white men, then condensing it into a single character you frame as "representative" of that entire population.

It's the same problem as when a certain editor insisted Polaris couldn't be Magneto's daughter, with the unstated but clear implication that there could be only one daughter of Magneto. Even though that never stopped Marvel from having both Thor and Loki as Odin's sons, and never stopped Cyclops from having two brothers in Havok and Vulcan.

Or when people insist that Polaris is "redundant" or "just Magneto with boobs" because Magneto exists, yet they have no problem with multiple telepaths, or multiple characters with claws.

"We can't have too many characters that fit the same criteria" is typically an invention to justify the isms. It's extremely rare that a story cannot be modified to be more respectful to characters that also have a stake in its telling.

I get why people like their nostalgia. But that nostalgia does not justify sexism. When nostalgia comes loaded with sexism, that sexism is not a feature. It's a bug. You don't need to act like the time period where you felt all giddy and excited by superheroics requires that you treat Polaris reduced to Havok's bed warmer slash damsel in distress as a good thing. Same as how loving yourself some Nirvana doesn't require acting like what happened to Rodney King somehow adds to the charm.

You CAN like and keep the good parts while condemning and rectifying the bad.

Before someone says I'm trivializing anything, our fiction is a reflection of society. What we do in our fiction both is informed by our real world, and has a direct impact on it. Ask everyone who went into the sciences because Star Trek excited them with possibilities. Ask everyone who felt uplifted seeing representation in movies. Poor treatment of a character is of course not on par with police brutality, and it would be absurd and insulting to say they're equally bad. My point is that the same underlying issue applies. You wouldn't glorify police brutality as "part of the flavor of the times." You likewise shouldn't do it for sexism in fiction, especially when trying to "recapture" nostalgia in new content.

Nostalgia doesn't have to be a back door for sexism to sneak in.

[firelxdykatara]

I’m just really confused as to where this idea that Zuko is gaycoded came from. Like people are allowed to have that headcanon but I don’t understand where people are coming from when they try and claim that he was undisputedly gaycoded and trying to deny it is homophobic when he’s only ever shown romantic interest in women.

I made a pretty long post on the topic a while back, but the ultimate gist of it is this: there are a lot of elements of Zuko's status as an abuse victim and trauma survivor that resonate with queer folks. This is understandable and completely fine! However, there are some parts of the fandom who have taken that to the other extreme and will now insist that those elements are uniquely queer, and that they can only be read as some sort of veiled gay/coming out narrative, even though that doesn't make much sense since there is no part of Zuko's narrative which is unique to any sort of queer experience.

I think the problem really does stem from two things being conflated--Zuko's history of abuse and trauma, and trauma&abuse being something a lot of queer people have experienced. I suspect it goes something like 'I see a lot of myself in Zuko, and I was abused for being gay, therefore Zuko must be gay too in order to have had similar experiences.' This can then lead to feeling dismissed or invalidated when other people point out that those experiences are not unique to being queer--but on the flip side, abuse victims and trauma survivors whose abuse&trauma do not stem from queerness (even if they are queer themselves) can feel invalidated and dismissed by the implication that their trauma must be connected to their queerness or it isn't valid.

This is also where the 'people don't actually know what gay coded means' part comes in, and I realize now that I didn't actually get into what gay coding (and queer coding in general) actually means, since I was so hung up on pointing out how Zuko doesn't really fit the mold. (And the few elements that exist which could be said to count are because of the 'villains historically get queer coded bc Hays Code era' thing and mostly occur in Book 1, not because of how he acts as an abuse&trauma survivor.)

Under a cut because I kind of go on a tangent about gay/queer coding, but I swear I get back to the point eventually.

Queer coding (and it is notable that, with respect to Zuko, it is almost always framed as 'he couldn't possibly be attracted to girls', rather than 'he could be attracted to boys as well as girls' in these discussions, for... no real discernible reason, but I'll get into that in a bit) is the practice of giving characters 'stereotypically queer' traits and characteristics to 'slide them under the radar' in an era where having explicitly queer characters on screen was not allowed, unless they were evil or otherwise narratively punished for their queerness. (See: the extant history of villains being queer-coded, because if they were Evil then it was ok to make them 'look gay', since the story wasn't going to be rewarding their queerness and making audiences think it was in any way OK.) This is thanks to the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially and more popularly known as the Hays Code), which was a set of guidelines which movies coming out of any major studio had to adhere to in order to be slated for public release and lasted from the early 1930s until it was finally abandoned in the late 60s.

The Hays Code essentially existed to ensure that the content of major motion pictures would not 'lower the moral standards' of the viewing public. It didn't just have to do with queerness--cursing was heavily monitored, sex outside of marriage was not allowed to be seen as desirable or tittilating, miscegenation was not allowed (most specifically interracial relationships between black and white people), criminals had to be punished lest the audience think that it was ok to be gay and do crime, etc. Since same-sex relations fell under 'sexual perversion', they could not be shown unless the 'perversion' were punished in some way. (This is also the origin of the Bury Your Gays trope, another term that is widely misunderstood and misapplied today.) To get around this, queer coding became the practice by which movies and television could depict queer people but not really, and it also became customary to give villains this coding even more overtly, since they would get punished by the end of the film or series anyway and there was nothing to lose by making them flamboyant and racy/overly sexual/promiscuous.

Over time, this practice of making villains flamboyant, sexually aggressive, &etc became somewhat separated from its origins in queer coding, by which I mean that these traits and tropes became the go-to for villains even when the creator had no real intention of making them seem queer. This is how you generally get unintentional queer-coding--because these traits that have been given to villains for decades have roots in coding, but people tend to go right to them when it comes to creating their villains without considering where they came from.

Even after the Hays Code was abandoned, the sentiments and practices remained. Having queer characters who weren't punished by the narrative for being queer was exceptionally rare, and it really isn't until the last fifteen or so years that we've seen any pushback against that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is famous for being one of the first shows on primetime television to feature an explicitly gay relationship on-screen, and that relationship ended in one of the most painful instances of Bury Your Gays that I have ever personally witnessed. (Something that, fourteen years later, The 100 would visually and textually reference with Lexa's death. Getting hit by a bullet intended for someone else after a night of finally getting to be happy and have sex with her s/o? It wasn't remotely subtle. I don't even like Clexa, but that was incredibly rough to witness.)

However, bringing this back to Zuko, he really doesn't fit the criteria for queer coding for a number of reasons. First of all, no one behind the scenes (mostly a bunch of cishet men) was at all intending to include queer rep in the show. This wasn't a case where they were like 'well, we really wanted to make Zuko gay, but we couldn't get that past the censors, so here are a few winks and a nudge', because it just wasn't on their radar at all. Which makes sense--it wasn't on most radars in that era of children's programming. This isn't really an indictment, it's just a fact of the time--in the mid/late 00s, no one was really thinking about putting queer characters in children's cartoons. People were barely beginning to include them in more teen- and adult-oriented television and movies. It just wasn't something that a couple of straight men, who were creating a fantasy series aimed at young kids, were going to think about.

What few instances you can point to from the series where Zuko might be considered to exhibit coding largely happen in Book 1, when he was a villain, because the writers were drawing from typically villainous traits that had historically come from queer coding villains and had since passed into common usage as villainous traits. But they weren't done with any intention of making it seem like Zuko might be attracted to boys.

And, again, what people actually point to as 'evidence' of Zuko being queer-coded--his awkwardness on his date with Jin and his confrontation with Ozai being the big ones I can think of off the top of my head--are actually just... traits that come from his history of trauma and abuse.

As I said in that old post:

making [zuko’s confrontation of ozai] about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

And, regarding his date with Jin:

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

Zuko is socially awkward and maladjusted because he was abused by his father as a child and has trouble relating to people as a result. He was heavily traumatized and brutally physically injured as a teenager, and it took him years to begin to truly recover from the scars that left on his psyche (and it's highly likely, despite the strides he made in canon, that he has a long way to go, post series; it's such a pity that we never got any continuation comics >.>). He was not abused for being gay or queer--he was abused because his father believed he was weak, and part of Zuko's journey was realizing that his father's perception of strength was flawed at its core. That his entire nation had rotted from the inside out, and the regime needed to be changed in order for the world--including his people--to begin to heal.

That could be commingled with a coming out narrative, which is completely fine for headcanons (although I personally prefer not to, because, again, we have more than enough queer trauma already), but it simply doesn't exist in canon. Zuko was not abused or traumatized for being queer, and his confrontation with Ozai was not about him coming out or realizing any fundamental truth about himself--it was about realizing something fundamental about his father and his nation, and making the choice to leave them behind so that he could help the Avatar grow stronger and force things to change when he got back.

TL;DR: at the end of the day, none of the traits, scenes, or behavior Zuko exhibits which shippers tend to use to claim he was gay-coded are actually evidence of coding--they aren't uniquely queer experiences, as they stem from abuse that was not related in any way to his sexuality, and they are experiences that any kid who suffered similar abuse or trauma could recognize and resonate with. (Including straight kids, and queer kids who were abused for any reason other than their identity.) And, finally, Zuko can be queer without erasing or invalidating his canon attraction to girls, and it's endlessly frustrating that the 'Zuko is gay-coded' crowd refuses to acknowledge that.

[crimsonfluidessence]

Prompt 21: Feckless

Content Warning: Torture, Intense Psychological Warfare, Body Harm, Physical and Emotional Abuse It was just supposed to be getting his money back. That was all he wanted out of the woman. But oh, how quickly it had turned to seeing some of the purest forms of red Esredes was capable of seeing. Being pickpocketed in Ul'dah was to be expected to happen eventually- inconvenient that it occurred while he was trying to get supplies for his family, but just a detour to follow the woman into a more secluded space and request his money back. No big deal. He had his ability to cloak himself with an illusion, and so she didn't see him following her down past that door behind the Miner's guild and into an alley. He watched her begin to count his money with a smile on her face and a whisper of "Oh, yes." Just a common pickpocket. No need to escalate anything. "All right, little lady." He began, the illusion still disguising him, causing the woman to freeze and look around trying to locate his voice. Just to make it worse, he began pacing all around to make it more confusing as he spoke next. "Cute. Real cute little move you pulled back there, but I have places to be and so do you, no? Just give it back without trying anything and I'll leave. I'd rather not have anything unpleasant happen today now." "Who are you and what little move?" The woman hissed and tightened her hold on his gil pouch. "Don't play dumb with me, ma'am. Give me my gil back, please. Just toss it out in front of you." "This? Mine from the start," she retorted as she closed it up and put it away, then dashed past him and tried to run away. Esredes raised his hand up and fired a pink beam at the retreating woman's head without a second thought. The woman cursed sharply and she doubled back as her balance faltered, sliding a dagger out of her pocket to slash at the air. "What the hell are you?" With ease, Esredes moved behind her and rammed his sword handle into her upper back. She grunted and stumbled forward, then fell to the ground, the dagger clattering on the stone a good two feet away. She didn't get much time to struggle to get up before he knelt down and pinned her body under his legs, his sword arm securing her at the back as well. "For fuck's sake, Priya." The woman muttered under her breath as she found herself trapped. "Someone who wanted to mind his own fucking business and ask you nicely not to waste our time." Esredes finally answered her question as he retrieved the gil pouch from her pocket. The woman tried to fight back under his weight, but she was getting nowhere. She lashed a hand out to bat him away from her pocket, but Esredes lengthened his hand to form claws and slashed at it, and she tucked it back inside herself as he pushed down more with his sword. "You know, is it not a rule of thievery to fold it when you've bitten off more than you could chew? You'd do best to learn it." "As if you'd know," she spat out. "Leave me alone; it isn't like you'd need any of it!" "I was completely content to leave you alone before you pickpocketed me, thank you very much. And you don't know anything about me, little lady, so fuck off with that. You're not giving me any incentive to not report you right about now- what did you call yourself? Priya? Pretty name for a vicious little rat," Esredes remarked. "If you've eyes, this city doesn' do handouts." Esredes paused, her reply passing him over. Priya... why did the woman's name sound faintly familiar? Enough to bug him even through his tendency to forget names? It had to mean something, be from somewhere, but he didn't know a lot of people from Ul'dah... But someone he had interacted with a lot recently did, and... Esredes' eyes widened. Yes, it had been Elouan who mentioned that name to him during their most recent therapy session. The name of an ex of his who had beaten him for not making her enough money. Just a common pickpocket. Now she was also the woman who hurt his sunflower. "...Say, you must do this a lot, hm? Trying to get your way into money by any scummy means possible? Do you remember Elouan?" Priya froze at Elouan's name, but soon shifted into a smile that did not ease Esredes in the slightest. "Elouan? Dumber than a rock? What, isn't he dead?" "My gods," Esredes said. So it was true. This was the same woman and not a coincidence. The black heart in his chest pulsed hard, and dark, inky matter quickly spread through his insides. He moved his sword hand up and hit her on the side of the head with its handle. "I thought you were a simple thief, but no, you truly are a disgusting little parasite under there, aren't you? Shut the fuck up about handouts, I know what this city is, but you don't deserve them even if they existed. I show no sympathy towards an exploitative and manipulative abusive little monster like you. Oh, today is not going to be your day, little monster lady." He never did change his other hand back down- in its full display of rough and leathery skin she couldn't see, he wrapped it around her throat and pressed lightly. "Have you any idea how much you have to answer for?" Priya let out a soft noise and struggled much more aggressively now, clawing at the leathery hand with her own. "Hh--Answer? I'm answering to nothing. Call me what you want, I don't care. If you're calling me a monster, what're you?" With no eyes to find, she couldn't make eye contact, but she still shot quite the devilish look. "So he isn't dead, is he? Such a shame; I thought the 'yotes outside of Ul'Dah got him! It wasn't like he was worth much with the bets..." The inky matter only kept spreading. "He's worth far more than your pathetic, greedy little ass will ever be. But you wouldn't know anything about the worth of people because all they are to you is an ends for money, hmm?" He drew a line of blood across her throat. "I should fucking kill you. No one would be around to even notice your corpse or look for you, would they, hmm?" The woman laughed, even despite the pain. "You should? What's stopping--? No, who's stopping you? Elouan? That dumbass? Have you ever seen him come back from a loss down there? Do you know what it's like to not have any gil? Anything?" She spat at him and continued trying to fight, but his grip remained iron. "Shut the fuck up." Esredes ran his blade lightly across her forehead. She moved her hands to the ground and tried propelling herself up, but she couldn't even upset his balance. "To answer your question? Yes, I do. That's no fucking excuse to beat a man up who is willing to mutilate himself and risk his life for a woman who doesn't even consider him above maggots. He loved you because he didn't know better, didn't want to accept the evils of people, and you felt nothing." Her body tensed up and her eyes became even more hostile. "You don't have anything, no, a heart or any redeeming qualities included. You're a street rat who deserves to writhe in filth, because no part of you deserves even a single piece of gil! And to answer your other question?" He decided now was time to flicker back into existence before her eyes, his pupils compressed to slivers and sharp teeth grinning as he leaned in close to her face. "Well, if no one will find the body, I suppose nothing at all is stopping me, hm?" "He wasn't worth it. You're all talk and you still hesitate," she snickered at him. "You're still hesitating because of him, aren't you? Because you're just as weak. He wasn't fit to live long, y'know. Probably still isn't, too." "Oh, I'm not hesitating because I'm weak," Esredes smiled and pressed back hard against her struggle attempt with his sword and body, leaning even further in. "I'm hesitating because you're not getting off that easy after all you've done." He pressed harder on her throat and dug his thumb claw into it harder. "We're only getting started here. No one has made you answer for what you've done to him, and I am so glad we could meet for the occasion, unexpected as it is. Tell me, do you think you look good in red?" There was barely the shape of a creature below him by this point, just red. He ran his claws down her face, he ran his blade down both of her arms, he slapped her, all while taunting her about what a pathetic creature she was. "Get OFF," she soon shouted. "Oh, I'm sorry, you want me off?" His eyes widened for her. "Did you listen when Elouan asked you that, hmm?! Did you stop hitting him for things that were your fucking fault?!" She bit her lip and clenched her fists, shaking. "My fault? Who was the one that lost bets? Who was the one that just had to stop because it was 'too much'? Me? No; it was him!" There was venom in her words, and a lot of it. "One hit wasn't enough for him and you know that, don't you? You have to keep drilling it into his fuckin' head. He couldn't even find his way to the aetheryte even if he was fifteen fulms from the thing!" Esredes almost couldn't believe the things coming out of this rodent's mouth. "You're fucking disgusting. And wrong, on top of that." He hit her with his sword handle again. "No, your problem is that you're an impatient, selfish little aggressive piece of shit. If you actually had an ounce of patience and kindness that wasn't faked to all hell, you'd know the man can listen and learn quite fine if you explain it to him well enough. But you're not capable of that because you're not smart enough for such things and you don't actually bother to learn a thing about how people actually work. Maybe if you had the consideration outside of yourself for it, you wouldn't be stuck here pickpocketing people like a street rat, hm? People don't bend over for vicious worthless scheming selfish lowlives like yourself. You will never get anywhere in life. You cry so fucking much about how you have nothing, but in all your years of exploiting and robbing people, you still have absolutely nothing. I don't think you have anyone to blame but yourself at that point. You will die filthy, worthless, and alone, and no one is going to miss the dirt on the side of the street. Now, how many hits will it take for you to get it into your head, hm?" He punched her once. Twice. Three times. Four times. The last punch managed to make her wheeze, and she shut her eyes. "When is ever enough for you?!" "...enough," she said at last. "Enough!" His fist was raised for another blow, but he grinned at hearing the word out of her. "Ah. She did it. She is capable of having enough." He laughed for a solid few seconds. "For the first time in your life, something is enough. How does it feel, hm?" She wrinkled her nose, and tried to muster one last kick, but couldn't even. She said nothing, reaching up to try and pull his hand off her with trembling hands. Esredes took her hand and held it up by the wrist, staring at it. "Look at it. So weak, so small, so pathetic. If you'd held on to someone like Elouan and actually loved him, he'd protect you from something like this, you know. As is, you're not strong enough to protect or help yourself alone. And you never will be. You're a cold, vulnerable little lady in a harsh world, and your only response is to make it so your own existence has no justification for itself."

He wasn't done. He wasn't anywhere near done yet. He kept on going, tearing into her with more wounds. He even took his little pair of scissors he used to cut his emergency supply of gauze and cut away at her hair.  She kept helplessly trying to fight back, kept trying to scream at him to stop or go away. "I'm not going anywhere yet, little lady." He eventually said, grinning as he ran a clawed finger down her face. It was gentle enough not to draw blood, and she shivered under it. "Because I am your nightmare, I am the harbinger that comes for naughty little ladies who need to be a taught a lesson about the cruelty of their own heart." He then slapped her again, and continued cutting her hair. "You want to be a cruel and heartless beast to people who don't deserve it? Well, tell me, is it worth it? Is it worth it to sit here trapped in a reflection of your own cruelty and be content to bleed out in the darkness?" "Why should I talk about worth with you?" The venom and bite of her words had gone; she no longer had the energy for it, it seemed. It wasn’t long before she even started producing tears in her eyes. "Aww," Esredes said in a low, mocking voice. "Does the beast want to cry now? Cry like you made Elouan do countless times? It didn't mean a damn thing to you. Your tears are nothing to me." “I don’t care,” she said in a low and rough voice. "Don't care about you 'n what you say." "Then why are you crying?" "I'm not crying." Tears were treading down her cheeks. "Lady, look at your own goddamn face. You can't even hold it in. Is this too much for the poor little snake to handle, hmm? You're breaking this easily? And to think, Elouan survived multiple beatings from you, and you can't even handle this. Who's supposed to be the weak one again?" "Just shut up!" She croaked in a broken voice. "Shut up! This is pointless! Leave me alone. You've got what you wanted. You've gotten more than what you wanted already," even when she shut her eyes, the tears did not stop. "This is not enough." Venom dripped into his voice. "This is nothing to what you did to him. You can wish for it to stop all you want, but that never helped him, and it's not going to help you, either. Cry all you want, it only makes this all the sweeter. You get everything that you deserve." "He's just another pet of the sands, don't you see?“ The woman said through her shaky voice. "I thought I'd be better with more than what the trade offered. I couldn't start off without--without that." "And? And? That gives you free reign to crush his heart and body for not doing every little thing perfectly for you? When this man was willing to give you all of his love and torment himself far too much for you? You know, pickpocketing a man with a voice like mine? Fair enough, I know what city I walked into. But that? That as your excuse to be cruel in pursuit of money? No. No. Here, little lady. Answer me one little thing. Do you do all of this alone, in the true sense? Do you ever have a person to your name who isn't a tool you discard?" She finally opened her eyes again, staring at her hair on the ground. "Alone? Why'd I do it with anyone else? We're all just tools for anyone else to use--you either climb the ladder or get stuck in the lion's den. He was--he was too fuckin' much! His whining, his talking, his forgetfulness. All I wanted was gil for myself 'n business. Not the thing behind it." It wasn’t every day Esredes held true evil in his hands, trapped in his talons like a snake to an eagle. But hearing her twisted explanation only further caused his heart to rage in hatred. "Good. Fucking. Lord." He said. "People like you are the kind I despise the most. Your entire philosophy is so fucking stupid at its core, and all of you claim it's the most intelligent thing ever. I'll tell you a little story. I too have had absolutely nothing at multiple points in my life." On he went snipping her hair as he talked. "Do you know how you get away from having absolutely nothing? Yes, you have to have sharp skills of self reliance and the ability to climb out yourself, but you can only get so far on your own. You need, and I mean truly need, other people in order to truly build yourself up past a certain point. This is why types like you either never make it or end up dead eventually when someone else brings you down. You only make your own life harder by approaching people so selfishly without anything to add to it. People will see right through you, they'll tear you apart without sympathy or mercy, because you don't offer anything to last with people beyond the short term. If you don't blow everything in the short term with other people, and they aren't people like you, you get rewarded for being good to them. People are more willing to help you out of bad situations without you needing to do a thing because they remember when you were there for them, therefore becoming much more viable and sustainable than a one time deal you blow and suffer the consequences. You really think the world is going to bend to your greedy little will because you want money? No. It won't. It doesn't fucking care, and you know this. Lady, I don't know why I have to be the one telling you this with how smart you think you are, but here's a simple lesson on how people work. People talk. People complain. People forget things. People are not perfect little devices for you to drain gil out of, they are incomplete and flawed things trying their best. And people aren't very useful if you can't follow the basic law of economics and make a fair trade. You'd think growing up here, you'd understand this. Now, my point is, I was alone with nothing. And now? I have enough that you don't want to know the number of people who fear me, little lady. I didn't get this way by draining gil out of people like a vampire. I had to give something of myself, I had to sacrifice, I had to bleed for other people first, but people don't forget what you do for them, or to them. Each person you meet is a powerful weapon in their own right, a valuable resource beyond just money they make. And only a fool would discard such power. You're just a weak, stupid little thief who will never make it because you don't even understand what it takes to get out of your situation. You'll forever be in the den because you fall off the ladder every single time. There is a place to be vicious, there is a place to be kind. But you wouldn't know the difference if it held you down and punched you repeatedly in the face. I truly hope you never make it in life. The world doesn't need more people like you. Your kind can only drain the world of its resources and make it a worse place, all while declaring that the world is the evil one. Well have you ever fucking thought of being something that isn't so deserving of the world's evils? Because here you are now, bleeding out and crying, while Elouan is somewhere safe, having escaped, and is much happier because he's with people who appreciate his kindness for what it is. You have nothing for others to see. No one will ever lift you up off of here, because you'll never, ever deserve it." The woman laid there and absorbed his verbal blows, still too weak to fight back in any way. Tears still streamed down her face. "So what if I don't deserve it? I don't care. I don't care, I don't want to care, I just--" "You just what, lady? What is it? What is it you want to scream out right about now?" Priya gritted her teeth and out came a strangled cry. "--I don't want to be here. I don't want people around me or in m'life. I don't want anyone close to me! I don't want to be hurt like I've hurt them. I just want to be.  Be dead? Fuckin' fine, do it already!“ "Is that seriously all you want from life? To be alone with money?" "What else? Money can't hurt me like they could." "Wow." Esredes said. "Just wow. You know, popular sayings exist for a reason. People who are alone with money are some of the people most likely to drink themselves or take drugs into dying. I grew up in Ishgard. Everyone in the noble circle has money and guess what? We're all still fucking miserable and want to die, broken empty shells of people. People still treat you like trash and shit no matter how nice you look and how perfectly polite your tone is. You still die empty and unfulfilled and ultimately meaningless. ...But you know this in some capacity, don't you?" He leaned down close to her face again, and she shut her eyes. "Is it not just because you want this to stop that you keep trying to taunt me into ending you, hmm? Are you sick enough of festering in your own shallow existence that you want to just spare the world the burden of you?" “You already know the answer, don’t you? I’ve got nothin’ to my name or kin! Why keep me around if that’s all I have, aye?” "Exactly. There's no reason at all." He smiled. "If I gave you your dagger back, would you be able to do it, hmm?" Priya kept sniffling. She opened her eyes and they landed on her dagger, past the scraps of her hair. "It'd be the one good thing you ever do in your life." He continued on. "You'd finally give back to the world, as your corpse decays and the nutrients can be absorbed to go to things more deserving of them..." “Stop talking,” she mumbled yet again. But Esredes only grinned. "Just think about it. No more waking up in pursuit of your empty desires. No more pickpocketing and feeding on scraps. Just the sweet embrace of nothing washing over you, finally an end to all the suffering. You won't be weak anymore. You won't have to feed for more, and more, and more... you will finally have enough." “I said stop.” "You'll never make it. So why keep trying? You're not smart enough to make it, you're not clever enough. You don't have what it takes. All you'll ever do is prolong your own agony, stuck in the same cycle, over and over and over... is that really a worthwhile existence?" “Stop it! Stop talking! I’ve enough of this and, gods, just stop.” The woman managed to shout, but it so quickly became shaky, weak, and small once more. "You keep telling me to stop because you know I'm right. You just don't want to admit it." He took the final strands of her hair and positioned the scissors around them. "One moment, you're here, writhing in your own filth, and the next..." Snip. She hissed. "Release. Catharsis. Nothing." He held the hair out to her to look at. "See, you have a golden opportunity. No one cares about you. No one will notice if you die. You have no burdens tying you down to this earthy plane, you can release yourself like a balloon and fly. Wouldn't that be so wonderful, to see the sky...?" “I won’t see shite,” she retorted with certainty, stretching her arm to try and reach the dagger, only for Esredes to move it further away with a rock. "Alas," he said. "If you do it later, I won't stop you- but for right now, it's not time yet.” He threw the hair to scatter about the tunnel. “All this talk for not yet? Bullshite!” "You're not deserving of a quick death, dearest. No one with a heart as cold and empty as yours is." It would still be some time before he finally let her go. Tied up and unable to escape the tunnel with that pouch of opioids on her- a perfect trapped creature for the local authorities of Ul’dah to pick up. It was not enough. He couldn’t make it enough no matter how little he held back, and he knew it. Nothing would make up for what she did to his beloved Elouan. He would never completely understand the local parasites of the world that pretended to be human like her. Why were they all so content to live a destructive life focused only on themselves? Were they so wrapped up in themselves they couldn’t notice how boring they were, how little and shallow of an existence it was? They would go on, intimidating or charming those around them to feed their selfish empire- but at their core, they were weak nothings, and Esredes saw them for what they were. “Sorry, it was very crowded at the market today. I couldn’t get everything.” Esredes said to his parents later. “I’ll get it all in the morning before I leave. It should be much easier to navigate…” ——— @shieldbcund Priya, Elouan

[thewickedmerman]

The Trix - Dark Witches

It's time for The Trix's final form, the Dark Witch form (Well, that's what the fandom calls the form they get in season 6). For me, this is basically what helps level the playing field because of how, while they were still awesome in season 3, they were really treated like a joke in season 3. They kept getting easily beaten by the Winx Club (Not to mention that stupid episode where they got beat by the pixies and cute little animals), which just got worse when the girls got the Enchantix. So this is what their Disenchantix should've been because their actual Disenchantix was really lame and looked more like swimsuits. The Dark Witch forms are their best forms ever and I love having the powers between them and the Winx Club being more even because it keeps it fair and interesting. The Trix have joined Valtor but I have eliminated that dumb fighting over a guy thing, they don't let themselves be treated like minions, and they got these forms on their own and it's not taken away from them. It's permanent! I'm also including backstories for The Trix here, which I know my friend @bellatrixobsessed1 will LOVE.

Icy

I was really excited to work on Icy's because of how I planned on giving her loose hair and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Her loose hair isn't the only change I made to her look, I added an ice necklace, a fur cape, and an ice crown with a diamond on it. Why? Because of how I wanted to make her look like a queen. I'm keeping her backstory that she gets in season 8 where she was a princess of a planet called Dyamond and it was destroyed by a witch, who also turned her younger sister Sapphire into a fox. However, what I would change is that I would have the witch really be Mandragora in disguised who was sent by the Ancestral Witches with the intention of sending either Icy or Sapphire (Who are descended from the head witch, Belladonna) down a dark path in order to form a new generation of the coven, steal The Dragon Fire, take over the magical universe, and free them from Obsidian. However, instead of Sapphire (Who was 10 at the time) being turned into a fox, I had her turned into a statue made out of a sapphire gem. The rest of Dyamond wasn't so lucky and died, while Icy, at the mere age of 13, was the sole survivor. She then decided to seek out vengeance against the witch who did this by becoming the most powerful witch in the universe. She planned to free Sapphire from her frozen state when she became powerful enough. However, as she continued on her path, she became more power hungry and bitter about how she was always good and kind but she still ended up suffering the fate of the life she knew being taken from her. She wanted to take over the universe as a queen to make up for the crown that was rightfully hers being taken from her. In my version of the last season, where The Trix team up with their Ancesters, she finds out about this being their plan and destroys them with the Winx Club. Redemption arc? Maybe.... I love how the backstory is similar to Bloom's because it adds something to their dynamic and shows how two people can react very different to the same tragedy.

Darcy

Darcy's form stayed the same but really it was perfect the way it is. However, I will be using this time to talk about her backstory that I gave her. She came a planet of illusions but her powers were rooted in darkness but not by choice. She was born with her powers being rooted in darkness and she was feared by others because of it. She didn't even have a family, so there was no one like her and it got lonely. She would used to love to read romance stories because it was her living out her own fantasy of being loved. This explains her seductive nature. She was tired of being feared and looked down upon, so she left her planet at the age of 13. She finally met Icy and Stormy, discovered that they were descendants of the Ancestral Witches, which is how Darcy figured out why she was so different from everyone from her planet. She hated that they were right about her and that she was always destined to be evil but decided that if that's all she was ever gonna be, that's what she would be and would do all she could to get the glory she's always dreamed of. But she did finally have a family and people who loved her, Icy and Stormy, who she considered to be her sisters. It's rough, I know but you get the idea and it's more than Iginio Straffi ever did! I got the idea for her backstory from this line from Jinx from Teen Titans. "I'm bad luck. Good was never an option for me."

Stormy

Just like Darcy's Dark Witch form, Stormy's remained the same, so I'm using this to talk about the backstory I gave her. I got some help with this from my girlfriend, @keeloves. Stormy was an orphan that was often overlooked and overshadowed by others because of how she was the only witch in the orphanage. This caused her to develop a horrible temper and an extreme hatred for fairies. She would play pranks to try to cover up her own insecurities but deep down was lonely and longed for friends and a family. As her powers developed, they were often unstable due to her being very powerful and unable to control them a lot of the time, along with her temper making things worse. When she was thirteen she accidentally destroyed the orphanage, which she felt bad about but was proclaimed as evil by everyone. She was kicked out and was going to be sent to an institution that would keep her from being able to use her powers, but she ran away before they had the chance. She eventually met Icy and Darcy, whom didn't fear her and could relate to her. The three became friends, discovered that they were descended from the Ancestral Witches, and considered each other sisters. Again, I know this is rough but it's more than Iginio Straffi ever did.

Credit for the bases goes to SelenaEde of DeviantArt

Credit for the background in the last image goes to SparxGuardian of DeviantArt

[musubiki]

Do you mind explaining coco and taffy's dynamic a bit? Why they like each other how they influence each other? I got on this coffy train like everyone else and plum forgot why HAHAHAHAHA

AAA OKAY YES I WILL EXPLAIN THIS BECAUSE THEY OCCUPY A GOOD 33.3% OF MY BRAIN BUT I NEVER TALK ABOUT THEM.,..

im gonna put it under a read more because SPOILERS GALORE for the webcomic, so if you wanna find this stuff out organically feel free to wait!! theres also some stuff in here thats a recent development regarding cocos personal goals that are very relevant to taffy, which is also spoilers, so dont click if you dont wanna know!!

anyway, on the surface personality levels, coco (as we all know) is a hardass, kinda dumb, ready to fight everything, super spunky, super rough, super badass cool chick, and taffy is the dark and brooding, emo but actually very troubled and very awkward around normal people, so the dynamic is badass chick/emo awkward bad guy

the reason taffy falls for coco (im leading with this because it happens chronologically) is that he is love-starved in every sense. he had no family/friends growing up, and since hes the only water mage, he was basically groomed by amanita into her personal kill-the-cat-witch machine, brought up believing the cat witch cursed his life and he has to kill her to save it. even then she was very distant, so the only other human interaction he has is at his night-shift job at the docks shoveling fish guts and scraping barnacles off ships to pay for food, where they basically treat him like the classic minimum wage/intern that everyone treats like shit (except for one guy, which ends up being limes grandfather). my mans has never know appropriate levels of kindness and warmth, and any time he did he treated it with skepticism and doubt.

when coco first meets him, theres a point where she shows him an act of kindness, and his brain doesnt know how to process it. between unfamiliarity and fear, there's a softness that develops for her that he has no idea how to control or suppress, so lowkey, it consumes him a bit. and heres a little tidbit of lore, but for magic users of any kind, the love they are capable of having is VERY strong, so the chances of any magic user (this applies to mochi and taffy) falling OUT of love is very unlikely. he’ll love her forever. he doesnt know how this happened, it just did.

from cocos end, there was no initial softness, and normally she ISNT the random act of kindness type. the circumstances of what she did for taffy that one time was very special. to begin, coco, at the beginning of the webtoon, is an orphan. her parents died about 2-3 years before the start of the story and since then, shes been under the care of her aunt and uncle. when she moves to wessport, she moves because she doesnt want to be a burden staying with them anymore, so she stays in her uncles old apartment so she can pay for her own food and bills, and they can worry about their kids (her twin cousins)

before her parents died, she had a really good relationship with them, BUT, she was still a delinquent kid. shed always skip class and/or be late, didn't do too well with grades, but still, her parents had a lot of love for her. anyway, a little while before they died, they made a little checklist for her to help her progress as she started to get closer to graduation. at first she was kinda “ehhh lame i dont wanna!!” but after they died, she found the list again, and decided to go through with it for them. among that list (but not all of it) was stuff like finding good friends, joining the student council, being kind to someone you dont like, and helping someone like her.

anyway, that one kind act to taffy checked off that point about “being kind to someone you dont like” and after interacting with taffy a few more times (including him saving her life despite kidnapping her), he also became the person she wanted to help. and throughout the story she feels bad about lowkey betraying mochi over it, but decides that if hes a hopeless case she’ll just kick his ass. except that the more interactions she has with him, the more she realizes, “oh shit, he really is lost. this guy isnt even that evil, he's just misled this is fucked up.”

and after a while she ends up caring about him a lot more than just something to check off her not-bucket list. anyway, they both just kinda help each other grow out of a lot of stuff, she helps him develop something other than that horrible abusive relationship he has with amanita, and accidentally, he helps her open up to both him and mochi (because i know in the story right now she seems really silly and cool and dumb, but on a deeper level she really.,..doesnt wanna love anyone. my girl got issues. i think she realizes its stupid but cant help that feeling of “i dont wanna care about anyone ever again because i dont wanna go through losing them”)

and at the end of it all when taffy comes around and realizes, FINALLY, that the cat witch never cursed him, it was amanita so she could manipulate him, coco is like that bridge to a better life that he needs. shes the one who FINALLY is soft and lets him know “its okay they dont bite, just hang out with me, we cool.”

UHHH ANYWAY THATS THEIR STORY BASICALLY...THERES A LOT MORE THAT GOES ON BUT THATS BASICALLY WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN THESE TWO!!!!!!!! 

[the-kazoo-kid]

The Two Types of Goblincore

I’ll begin by saying that I’m a Jewish archaeologist, and one of my main areas of study is the pogroms of Eastern Europe during the beginning of the 20th century. This affects the way I think of goblincore in two major ways:

Goblins were used as a negative caricature of Jews to tother them and incite negative feelings and violence among non-news

I have been accused of only wanting to be an archaeologist so that I can dig up and hoard shiny things

I spend a lot of my time looking at images like this one. It’s an antisemetic political cartoon from 1898. 

Look at the crown, the long, hooked nose, and most importantly the clawed, webbed hands. His hands envelope the world, symbolizing the perceived universal greed of the Jew.

This stereotype of the greedy Jew didn’t originate in the 19th century either. It goes all the way back to the Middle Ages when Jews in Europe were banned from occupations other than banking. 

So now let’s talk about goblins in popular culture. First and foremost in my mind are J.K Rowling’s goblins who are portrayed as greedy, hoarding and-- you guessed it-- in charge of the money and treasure.

There are even physical similarities between J.K. Rowling’s goblins and the political cartoon above. Note the hooked nose and the hands. 

I was about eight when I read the first Harry Potter book. I remember bringing it to a synagogue event where one of the adults remarked about how uncomfortable the goblins made them. Before I was allowed to watch the movie my mother sat me down and explained what was problematic with those goblins and why.

Next up: LOTR

He has the crown and the hands, although not the nose, and while he bares less direct resemblance to that cartoon, this is still an example of antisemitism. This is a placeholder character for a Jew that is disgusting, hoarding wealth, and a direct antagonist to the main characters. 

Everquest 2:

(I found another image where this character was specifically labeled The Goblin Banker but tumblr wouldn’t allow me to upload it for whatever reason.) This goblin is so other that it’s not even recognizable as a person, and in fact in the game they’re classed as a Mob Race. Yikes. Additionally, Wikipedia describes them as “attempting to - unsuccessfully - forge gold coins, and yet they have no intention spending any of this money, they simply wish to 'have' it.” This goes along with a lot of the greed aspect of goblins and their obsession with hoarding.

So what do we do?

First, I want to say that just because these pieces of media (or any others) have these problematic aspects doesn’t mean that you have to stop consuming and enjoying them. If we never read books or watched movies or played games that were problematic we would back ourselves into a corner where nothing was permitted.

The important thing is to educate yourself to the point where you can recognize the negative caricature/stereotype in something that you come across, and to not create any new media containing the stereotype. 

But what if you really like goblins?

The good news is that this is the first, older kind of goblincore, but it’s not the only one out there. There’s a new wave happening that emphasizes the positive things without including the negative ones. These next examples are technically called trolls in their respective universes, but they really get the vibe that I’m going for.

Boxtrolls:

See? Shiny treasure thing, delight, and no malice. Admittedly the trolls in this movie are some funny looking creatures, but they don’t come across as perpetuating the negative Jewish stereotype to me.

Frozen:

Cute little guys made of stone and moss. They live peacefully, and when they encounter the protagonists they have a nice musical number and then dispense some wise advice. No greed, no bad intentions. Good for them.

(Again, these examples are both technically trolls but I think the idea comes through, especially since they’re so far from the large, lumbering brutes that are trolls in say... Harry Potter or LOTR.)

Now I’m going to hand this conversation over to @goblinblogging who is a Jew working on reclaiming and reworking the idea of what a goblin is and what a goblin does.

-Reid

Now, I know learning that something you’re doing could be problematic is scary! I also know that a ton of people have abandoned goblincore just because they learned of these stereotypes. 

However, you don’t have to abandon something you love! What you need to do is educate yourself and learn about why these things are harmful and learn what you can do to make sure you aren’t doing something harmful yourself! 

Let's start off with how this stereotype came around (Or at least, one way it originated.) In the book Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts: Immigrant Folklore in the Western Mines, the author goes into detail about how European origins say the goblins of the mines were the ghosts of dead Jews, sentenced (in properly medieval anti-Jewish fashion) to perpetual restlessness for their supposed role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Which is where the “Goblins live in caves and mines” came from! 

So this explains that the ghosts of Jews became goblins because they were being punished for killing jesus. Already a pretty rough start! Now for common goblin appearances that are nothing but antisemitism in disguise. First, and most obvious, large, hooked, warted noses. I don’t really feel like I have to go into much detail about this one. Anyone who took history class in middle and high school should know about Hitler’s propaganda against jews and the depictions of their bulbous noses, often covered in warts. This caricature directly translates over to goblins having their predominant warted noses. Second, Let’s have a look at green skin. Hitler in particular loved to depict jews with green skin, or at the very least, in very green light so it turned their skin green. 

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Notice the green tint, the evil sneer, hooked nose, and pointed ears in this one! All very reminiscent of traits we commonly see in goblins. 

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 This last one is a movie poster “Suss the Jew” produced by Terra Film at the behest of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and considered one of the most antisemitic films of all time. Notice the green skin! 

 Next is horns and teeth. Hitler in particular would depict jews with devil’s horns hidden under their Kippah (also referred to in Yiddish as a yarmulke, or less frequently as a koppel.) He’d also just depict them outright as demons. 

Image source

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This one is Ukranian. Translated means “Satan has taken off his mask” Notice how “satan” has huge teeth and horns, red skin, with the star of David carved into his forehead. Also notice how his jewish mask has a large nose.

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This one is from Russia (1919), a caricature of Leon Trotsky, who was viewed as a symbol of Jewish Bolshevism. Notice the red skin and pointed ears. Also notice how he’s sitting above the people down below (who are sitting on skeletons and bones) symbolizing the Jew’s greed, which we’ll get into later.

And then there’s this one, where you can see (white) people inside of the Jew’s mouth, you can also see horrendously sharp teeth crushing them. Also pay attention to the large nose and pointed ears. I just remembered that I forgot to cover another very important anti-jewish facial feature, which is that many jews in propaganda have dark beady eyes and drooping eyelids. These are things you can see for yourself in the images above!

Next, we’re moving on to greed. This one in particular hits me close to home. I’ve heard the phrase “Jewing me out of my money” too many times to count. Or alternately, “Don’t be a Jew” when the other person doesn’t think that I’m giving them enough of what they want. (Could be money, could even be sweets. The first time I heard this phrase I was a little kid and I had a bag of skittles. I wanted to share with everyone but I still wanted to have enough for me to eat myself. I was passing out handfuls when my friend’s older brother (he was a teen) didn’t like how much I gave him. He said to me, “Come on, don’t be a Jew, give me some more skittles”. I didn’t understand and when I asked my mom what it meant later she was horrified.) Jews, and their caricatures, have almost always been viewed as greedy and power hungry. As @whalefromwales said above me, Jews in Europe used to be banned from any job besides banking. 

We also have images like this from WWII: 

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Anyone who has taken any class where the Holocaust was talked about should be able to recognize this image, The Eternal Jew. He has money in one hand, which is reached out to demand more - he’s also looking at the money, and a whip in his other hand. In his arm, he holds the whole country of Germany.

Image source

There is also this one. A jew, tinged with red, weighs a man’s life against a large pile of money. Notice also how he’s looking at the money - not the man. 

And this one should also be easy to recognize. It reads “The Jews - A People of Contagion!” A city burns in the background as a jewish man sits atop a pile of bones counting his money. Notice the bulbous, hooked, nose, black eyes with drooping eyelids, and large hands! Hitler depicted jews this way (and as goblins) in order to segregate us. “Us VS Them”. “We are the Good Human Beings and Jews are monsters!” in order to make it easy for him to begin committing the atrocities that he did! It never happened overnight, there were key stepping stones that built up to concentration camps. One of those was “Jews aren’t really people, so it’s okay that we’re doing this to them. We’re doing it to save us, the Good Christian Germans.”  

So what does all of this mean? Well, first and foremost, it means that you have to be careful how you depict your goblins. How? When drawing your goblinsonas or goblin ocs, stay away from drawing them with huge, hooked, and warted noses, don’t make their skin green or red (personally, I prefer grey skin for goblins.) If your goblin has sharp teeth, don’t make them huge and obvious. Because modern goblins are fair folk, it’s difficult to depict them without pointed ears, but try not to exaggerate the proportions.  

Behavior: Stop with the “greedy little goblin” thing. That DIRECTLY comes from jewish stereotypes. Your Goblins are allowed to collect shiny things they find, but don’t make them greedy about it! Have your goblin share what they collect, make it a community effort. Sharing the things you love is way better than being miserly anyhow, and sharing more represents what we as goblins should want in our community! Also, be careful with your goblins being terrors. Yes, there are usually evil beings in every single race (whether mythological or real) but just be really really careful. Hitler loved to depict jews eating the Good Germans(™) or terrorizing communities. So even if your goblin is an evil one, be really really careful and be sure to educate yourself first so you’re not just perpetuating the same tired shit that Hitler did.Collecting coins. 

Now, this has been a huge topic of discourse lately. Coins are shiney! I understand why people would want to collect them. Hell, I have some awesome 50 cent pieces and gold dollars in my collection. You just can't depict  yourself or your goblin character collecting only coins and being very greedy with them. That’s literally doing nothing but echoing the same propaganda that Hitler used against us. Collect them all you want, but if I see “Greedy little goblin hoarding coins all for themselves” I swear I’m gonna hit the fan. To clarify, you can absolutely show off you coin collection in the goblin tags, just be careful how you frame it. “I’m really interested in history, so I collect old coins because I think they’re neat” is waaaaaay different then “Horrible littel crecher is greedy for shiney monies” (That last quote is something I’ve SEEN in the tags, luckily op was just completely unaware of why that was so wrong and they removed the caption after they were educated.) 

 So please, enjoy being into goblincore. Enjoy the culture and the fantasy. Goblincore is about appreciating the things about us that may be depicted as “weird” or “ugly”. Goblincore is a safe haven for neurodivergent people (I’m Autistic!) and also Trans and other LGBTQIA+ people! It’s a culture for appreciating nature, collecting things that may not be seen as normal, and sharing these things with other people. It’s a culture where you shouldn’t be ashamed to be who you are or afraid to get dirty. Goblincore is a support network for the weirder folks where we strive to uplift one another. Goblincore is wonderful and I’ve been so impressed at how welcoming everyone is! Especially on tumblr! Before the discourse happened, I was sure that goblincore was one of the kindest communities on tumblr. However, I understand why the discourse happened, and goyim in the goblincore tag really did need to be educated, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave! So be sure to educate yourself and be aware of how your actions could negatively affect folks. Listen to other Jewish people and be mindful of what they say. Some Jews are very uncomfortable with goblincore, and for very good reason! And I do not claim to speak for all Jews with this post. 

I am trying to reclaim the word goblin for use by any person who wants the label. I no longer want these fantasy creatures associated with such a beautiful and vibrant culture of people. Goblins are very interesting as a fantasy race, but the negative stereotypes do nothing but hurt real life Jewish people. Which is why I’m hoping that folks will read this post and realize what behaviors and depictions of goblins are wrong and harmful. Also, tag your goblincore appropriately! Again, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with goblincore because of antisemitism that has happened in their past. I’ve been compared to a goblin many times! So keep your goblincore in just the goblincore tags. There are many overlaps between goblincore and other micro communities on tumblr (Such as crowcore, cottagecore, naturecore, and vulture culture) but be mindful of what you’re putting in those tags. Most vulture culture people hate us goblins cuz we put pictures of dirt or “I’m just a smol crecher” in their tags, and I don’t blame them! Vulture culture is only for the remains of dead animals, and dead animal remains should be the only things added to those tags. So fellow goblins, I’m going to end this post with a sincere thank you for reading, be mindful of your actions, and most of all, HAVE FUN with goblincore! 

Here is where you should be able to read Knockers, Knackers, and Ghosts for free if you want.

TLDR: This is what we, as Jewish people, mean when we say that goblins are based off of negative stereotypes of jews. This is also why some jews get really upset at goblincore, however, there are many ways to participate in goblincore without using harmful stereotypes! So please, use this post to educate yourself so you can both be good goblins and good Jewish allies.

- @goblinblogging

[melancholydreadfuldream]

intoxicate me now, with your lovin' now

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairing: 11th Doctor x Reader 

Summary: You hated the Doctor since you were kid. But how did it ended up with you married to John, the Doctor's human version? When the truth is revealed, how will you and the Doctor cope? 

Warning: ooc, angst, plot holes, dark!doctor, mention of child-abuse, mention of sex, obsessive behavior, mention of miscarriage, torture, death, etc. You have been warned.

More warning: English is not my first language so beware of the headache you will receive upon reading this.

        You stood by the window. It was raining heavily and thundering. Your hand absentmindedly play with the locket of your necklace as you stared outside. Your memories of that dreadful day returned. 

  Six years old you was screaming as you were ripped from your mother's embrace. Your mother cried and begged for mercy but none was given. You started crying too as you saw someone slapped your mother harshly as a bunch of rough men hit and kicked on your father. You bit the wrist of the person who held you from your parents which enraged the person as he turned his anger on you as well. He grabbed you from your hair and slapped you good.

  You didn't stop screaming as your parents were dragged away from you into a room and then after all the scream and yelling, six shots were heard from within the room and with that the screams stopped. You never saw your parents again. You were told they were executed by the people for their crime against the nation.

  They mentioned how grateful they are for the Doctor's interference, for liberating the people from the likes of your evil parents. You remembered meeting the man called the Doctor. He was a funny man with big ears. He played with you for a bit when he noticed how lonely you were before when he came to your family mansion as esteemed guest. He was nice to you.

  But now you found out he was the reason you lost your parents. You felt betrayed. As days passed and things got worst for you, your hatred of the alien being called the Doctor nurtured even more, especially when you heard in passing how the people celebrate his name. You learnt the Doctor was already gone though in his blue box. He left after he made sure the downfall of your parents who he deemed not worthy to be placed in high authority for the people and left them in the mercy of very angry mobs, uncaring of the fate of you. 

  You were suffering under the mercy of those people who have no pity for the daughter of the tyrant who had made their life miserable. You were beaten and made to work hard as a slave. You often cried and some of them would laughed at your tears, mocking your weakness. You wondered if they hate you so much, why didn't they just kill you along with your parents?

  John watched you from the doorway. He coughed up a bit to catch your attention.

  You shook the painful memories out of mind as you turned and gave him a small smile.

  He wrapped an arm around your waist pulling you close to him. "Are you alright?"

  "Just remembering some bad memories?"

  He look concerned. "About him again?"

  You nodded mutely.

  He kissed your forehead. "Someday the Doctor will pay for what he did to you, (yn), I promise." He said. "I hated seeing you in solemn mood like this."

  You forced a smile. "Sorry. I can't help it. Thunderstorm always made me think of that night."

  "Don't apologize for that." He said. 

  Your hand went to the locket on your necklace. You opened it and there was a damaged picture of your parents. "I was six years old when I last saw them...my parents. I don't even remember what they look like anymore. This locket is the only thing I have left of them." You said.

  "I'm so sorry." John said as he rubbed your back gently.

  7777

  John is your boyfriend. It was a recent thing. You worked together for two years now as the soldier for the church of Silence. You first met him when you were assigned to be his caretaker. You were told he was wounded in action and lost his memories. The church told him to take it easy and get some rest. 

  You weren't pleased to be a babysitter of some strange man but he eventually grew on you, especially since you found out you would have to work under his leadership. You never even heard of John before and yet the church acted as if he was some decorated warrior. You had no idea how he passed the test to be a soldier in the first place. John, at first, looked awkward with his leadership and everyone seemed to look down on him.

  John, despite being a soldier, didn't seem to like to use weapon all that much but he made up for it by being intelligence enough to warrant a position as a leader of some battalion. He led some very successful missions which earned him his team's respect including yours. Still, he was reprimanded by Colonel Manton to try to get used to use weapon as sometime the enemies can't be reasoned or tricked.

  The first time he actually used a gun turned out to save your life. You were taken hostage. He plead them to let you go but there were no reasoning with them. You told him to leave you behind but he refused. That was the first time you saw something cold and calculating in him as usually he was full of mercy. You blinked as he shot dead your host and bit of his blood got onto your face.

  John dropped his gun like a hot potato as the dark look on his face slowly vanished. He quickly checked you for injuries. "Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?"

  You could only stared at him in disbelief as he looked so different just now. You wondered if that was the real John. 

  Madam Kovarian and Colonel Manton look pleased with themselves as you and John gave your mission report to them face to face.

  7777

  John proposed to you when you both were taken hostage during a mission gone wrong. It was special mission, sanctioned by Madam Kovarian herself, something about a secret chamber in some alien ship with some complicated puzzle. John, predictably, excited to solve it at first until they were ambushed by some enemy faction. 

  The enemy also wanted whatever behind the chamber and started trapping John's men one by one under some deathly trap. If he chooses wrong, the person currently trapped will die a painful death. Unfortunately, John was unable to solve it in times.

  Believing he need a better incentive, they trapped you into position. You had no idea how they know who you are to John but they did. John became frantic when your life is on the line. You tried to be brave but you were honestly scared especially when the saw within the trap started going near your forehead. Your face is full of tears and sweats. You didn't want to die here. You haven't even gotten a revenge on the Doctor yet. You refused to die here. 

  "Calm down, John, It is okay, you can do it, I trust you." You said softly to him.

  John flinched as grabbed his own hair as he wrecked his brain to solve it.

  It was a close call but he did solve it. You were so relieved when the trap freed you from its deadly clutch. You fell on John's arms in relief as you hold on each other. It was then he blurted out the proposal.

  You laughed hysterically at him but you must be out of your mind when you actually accepted.

  "How touching..." The enemy leader mocked the both of you before raising his gun to shoot the both of you.

  It was then Colonel Manton and his army stormed the chamber so you and John were 'saved' once again.

   7777

  It was creepy but Madam Kovarian actually congratulate you and John on your marriage. Her eyes twinkled suspiciously. "I hope the both of you have a happy marriage always and forever." she said.

  You told John she made you felt uncomfortable and he admitted the same. You felt like there is some running joke and you and John were out of loop.

  Despite everything though, you and John have a happy and peaceful honeymoon. Madam Kovarian gave you and John some house in a military base. She said it was John's reward for solving the puzzle on the chamber. You were told in passing that the chamber contain a valuable alien weapon that the church could harness for a better weapon for the army.

  John looked torn when told of it. He still dislike weapon after all this time.

  7777

  John were called by Colonel Manton. Apparently the scientists of the church were unable to figure out the weapon. You were wondering why they kept calling John for it as if they believed him some alien expert.

  John were also confused by his sudden of alien knowledge in the presence of Madam Kovarian and Colonel Manton. He felt uneasy every time as if he was losing himself.

  John came home to you tired and weary. "I think we should left the army..." He whispered to you as he hugged you close.

  You were confused with his words.

  "They...forced me to figure out the weapon. At first, I couldn't figure it out and when I did, I realized that weapon is too dangerous to be used so I pretend not to know...but they...they threaten to transfer you to another unit, to that unit..."

  Your eyes widened. The unit he mentioned was the headless monk. You unconsciously touched your neck. You didn't want to lose your head, you are still attached to it after all. You couldn't believe that they had threaten John with your life. But, despite the revelation that apparently they thought of you expandable (of course it was a given you were merely a foot soldier within the church after all unlike John), you still don't want to leave the church as you believe they are the only one in position to destroy the Doctor. You heard they had a weapon against the Doctor but you never saw it.

  "I hated that they think you are expandable. You are not."

  You smiled at him fondly. "Only to you..." you whispered gratefully. You pulled him down to you and kissed him.

  He smiled toward the kiss. "Always...my sweet wife." he whispered back to you.

  7777

  You thought it was weird when Madam Kovarian suddenly gave you too much attention. She showed a great interest in your marriage to John. She played it as if your union with John is sacred. It was then she brought up about your parents.

  "I know what the Doctor did to you when you were a mere child." 

  You frowned. You were aware the church know your background. It was the reason of your recruitment in the first place. The church is the reason why you weren't still a street rat. They took you in, gave you education and training. You were grateful for the church.

  Madam Kovarian informed you the church has started a move against the Doctor.

  Your eyes widened in excitement as you wish to know more.

  She smiled chillingly at you. "I think you have what it takes to join the special division I created against the Doctor. But John must not know of it. I can tell he is very protective of you and joining this division is a very dangerous task."

  You nodded in agreement. "I won't tell him anything."

  "Good girl."

  7777

  The special division mentioned by Kovarian has files on the Doctor. It was there you learned more about that enemy of yours. He is a Time Lord. He can regenerated and has so far eleventh faces. But apparently, the files only have pictures of the Doctor up to his tenth incarnation.

  Your body trembled in fury as you recognized the ninth incarnation as the man who visited your parents that night. Your hands were shaking as you stared at the cold eyes of the Ninth Doctor picture. You found out the Doctor had made many enemies and had caused a lot of chaos wherever he go. He has companion to serve and aid him in his chaos-making. You glared at the list of the many names of his known companion. Some of them are still alive but some are either dead or lost in another dimension or some void. You found out about the blue box called Tardis, his time-travel ship.

  You got home to John distracted. He was concerned for you but you refused to tell him anything, instead you pulled him close and made love to him in order to stop him from asking questions.

  Afterwards, John gazed lovingly at you, caressing your hair gently as he whispered his love to you. You smiled as you cupped one of his cheeks.

  7777

  John went on a mission and has gone missing. You were frantic and demanded a rescue operation to save him. Colonel Manton told you that he was kidnapped by someone outside the mission.

  It was then you found out something fishy. Madam Kovarian and Colonel Manton look concerned over John's fate. They were worried the companion had got to him. 

  Your eyes widened. "What could the Doctor and his companion want from John?"

  They seemingly had forgotten that you were still in their presence. They mentioned Jack Harkness and you remembered the name was on the list of the Doctor's companion.

  Madam Kovarian and the colonel exchanged a grave look before turning to you.

  "There is something you should know. It's time."

  You felt like throwing up. 

  They told you that John is the Doctor.

  "But John is human with one heart. The Doctor had two hearts!" You yelled.

  "We had a device that rewrite his entire biology, turning him into a human and trapping his time lord consciousness somewhere else." The colonel replied. "We thought we could throw the companion off his scent by putting him in plain sight. Obviously, they figured it out though it does take him three years..."

  Your entire core was shaken. You had given your body and heart to your very enemy unknowingly. "How could you let me married him? You know I hate the Doctor!!"

  "...which put you in the best position to hurt him back. This is good, (yn)." Madam Kovarian said.

  Now you realized the running joke that you were out of the loop of. 

  "Did you plot everything to make John and I ended up together?"

  From the sickening smile on her face, you realized that both you and John has been manipulated.

  You felt sick as tears filled your eyes. You desperately tried to hold back your tears. "I love him."

  "And now you know the truth. Stop loving him." Madam Kovarian said carelessly as if there is an off switch for emotion within people. "Or will you forgive the Doctor's transgression to you?"

  You didn't reply instead you left.

  7777

  You were at the home you shared at John. You saw the pictures you took with him and you throw it all away on the floor in your confused rage. You made a mess of everything that reminded you of John which is pretty much everything. You took off your wedding ring and throw it to the fireplace, watching the ring burn within the fire as you cried your heart out.

  You didn't know how long you were laying on the floor as you were numb now.

  It was then you received a phone call...from John.

  "(yn)..."

  "John..." You whispered weakly. "Where were you?"

  "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, (yn)."

  "Where are you, John?"

  He told you to meet him in some place and to come alone. He said he need to come clean with you about something he recently discovered.

  You swallowed painfully as you realized the companion must have told him his real identity. You agreed to meet him. You changed your clothes and picked up your gun and hid it on your person.

  7777

  When he saw you, John look relieved as he made his way to hug you. You reluctantly hugged him back. He was not alone. There were three other people with him, Jack, Amy and Rory. They were the Doctor's companion. You recognized them from the pictures of companion on the Doctor File.

  "John..." You whispered to him.

  Jack confirmed that you did come alone so they believe you are not a threat.

  John was ambushed by Jack and when he came to, Jack, Amy and Rory were there. They told him something horrible that he is actually someone called the Doctor. His eyes widened in horror when they tell him that. He didn't want to believe them because he didn't remember being the Doctor. He is just a human. 

  But they have picture of himself as the Doctor and they also showed him a distress video of the Doctor telling the companion and presumably himself as he realized he was about to be brainwashed by Kovarian. The overwhelming evidence is too much for him. His heart goes to you, his beloved wife, who has a grudge against the Doctor. His heart hurts at the thought maybe you knew that he is the Doctor and has played him along but when he remembered how much you hated the Doctor, he doubted that you would be willingly sleep with the man who is responsible for your parents' demise much less married him.

  Jack had argued maybe you did it just so you could hurt him back. John couldn't accept it and he wanted to see you again against their wishes.

  Amy had told him that he...the Doctor has a wife, River Song. But he had no idea who even she is. The only person he love is you. He can't imagine marrying someone else. 

  John insisted of meeting you and refused to go anywhere with them unless you are with him too.

  John gazed at you with profound sorrow. "Oh, (yn), something terrible has happened. I..."

  "I know. They just told me." You whispered brokenly.

  John's eyes widened in panic and fear at your reaction.

  "You shouldn't have contacted me..." You said as tears filled your eyes.

  John took a few step back from you when you raised a gun at him. He looked heartbroken.

  Jack quickly pulled his gun toward you.

  John made a move to shield you from Jack much to your surprise. "Don't you dare..." He glared at Jack.

  Jack look annoyed.

  Amy was held back by Rory from approaching John. "Doctor!" she yelled at John.

  Both you and John flinched at the name. You and him kept staring at each other eyes.

  You slowly put down your gun with a broken expression. You can't hurt him, not when he is still John. "Go. They are about to come for you." You said.

  Jack's eyes widened as he made to grab John and pull him away from you.

  John reluctantly left you but his eyes never left you as he was dragged away from you.

  You broke eyes contact as you bend your knees to the ground, defeated.

  7777

  Madam Kovarian is displeased with you. "I'm so disappointed with you, (yn) (ln)."

  You were forced on your knees on the floor, your hands were bound. There were tears on your cheeks. "He is John." You whispered hoarsely.

  "John is not real."

  "I know. But he is not yet the Doctor. I wanted to hurt him when he has become the Doctor." You said.

  Madam Kovarian look intrigued. She smiled evilly. 

  7777

  Madam Kovarian transferred you to the Demon Run base where you will be trained further.

  The base got attacked by River Song who is trying to get to the orb containing the Doctor's time lord consciousness.

  You got in her way and she shot you but not fatally. She said John asked her not to hurt you. 

  "So, you have decided to side with Madam Kovarian. Too bad. John really cares for you. He is still in love with you." River said softly. "I am so jealous seeing the man with my husband's face talk about another woman so lovingly."

  You cursed yourself when you faltered at the mention of John and the woman, the Doctor's true wife, smiled predatory at you.

  "Regardless his feeling for you, if you make a move against the Doctor, I will kill you." River threatened you with a chilling smile. She grabbed the orbs and left, shooting dead everyone else that gets in her way out.

  You watched her leave in hollow. You clutched your injured arm. You smiled bitterly. John will be gone soon and in his place, the Doctor... You could finally get your revenge. You didn't know how to go about it but you are prepared to die to achieve your goal.

  7777

  The Doctor is torn. He still has lingering feeling for a certain (yn) (ln). He remembered everything he experienced as John and how much he loves you. 

  The Doctor is angry at the church for using his human version for their own sake. He remembered every missions. He remembered that they made him kill. He remembered how pleased Madam Kovarian and the colonel were for making the human Doctor do everything the real Doctor is against with. The killing, the weapons...

  He stood in front of the console. His eyes filled with rage as he wished to unleash the oncoming storm on the church.

  The only thing stopping him is you. His hearts goes for you. He felt guilty remembering what you told John of your parents and of how the Doctor had left the child you to rot.

  He also remembered killing men for your sake, to ensure your safety. He remembered how the colonel use you to threaten John. He is worried for your safety within the church. He feared the church would deemed you useless and kill you. His hearts ached at the thought of losing you.

  The Doctor has no idea how to fix you. Can you even forgive him? All he wanted right now is to keep you by his side, to keep you safe and to cherish you. He had married you and he could feel the vow he uttered as John weighed heavily on his hearts and mind.

  He watched River who was there on the Tardis with him currently, his wife, his true wife. She had saved him yet again. She brought his time lord consciousness back, freeing the Doctor from the clutch of the Silence. He owed her everything. And yet, here he is, hearts torn by another woman. How is that fair for her? He still loves River so so much but he also loves you too.

  7777

  "(yn)."

  "Don't you dare utter my name." You glared at the Doctor as you pointed your gun at him.

  You finally meet the Doctor in person. He has been secretly stalking you as you throw yourself into dangerous mission after mission for the church while waiting for your chance for revenge which Madam Kovarian had assured you that you will have it. You didn't expect that the Doctor would come to you himself much less to save you from danger.

  Instead of being grateful, you pulled a gun on him. But much to your frustration, the Doctor is able to disable you and your gun. He pinned you against the wall as he begged you to listen to him. You were so furious and refused to listen as you struggled against him.

  "I hate you! I wish you just go and die already! I will never forgive you!" You screamed at him. You hated yourself for losing your cool, for being weak against the Doctor.

  The Doctor recoiled from you. His expression looked hurt. He released you immediately and left after making sure you are no longer in danger.

  7777

  Madam Kovarian thought the Doctors' obsession with you is an advantage. She wanted to set a trap for him through you. 

  You agreed to it carelessly.  "He will come if I am in danger." You confirmed. The Doctor did somehow knew when you are in danger. You have no idea how. "Do it. If there is a slightest chance of killing him, take my life with him if you have to!"

  7777

  You have no idea that you were pregnant with John's child. You lost the unborn baby after nearly died within the trap set for the Doctor. You woke up on the Tardis med-bay.

  John, no, the Doctor looked upset with you, believing that you risked your life and his unborn child's life in negligent. But when he saw your pale face upon finding out you have miscarriage, he realized you really had no idea. But he had to wonder if you know, would you even keep the baby?

  You felt a grief of losing the baby but part of you is relieved, baby complicated matters, especially one that half-conceived by your enemy. 

  For someone that has just suffered medical emergencies, you felt fine. The Doctor must have give you some wonderful drug. 

  You demanded him to let you go, refusing to be under his care or owe a debt to him.

  "Are you going to run back to the church? To Madam Kovarian?" He spatted angrily at you. "They don't care about you. You are expandable to them."

  "So what? It isn't your problem!"

  "It is my problem! You are mine!" The Doctor roared.

  You were shocked. You glared at him in disgust. "I am not yours!"

  "Perhaps I should make you mine." The Doctor said darkly. "...since it seemed you don't care about your life."

  You froze under his gaze. Fear filled your heart at the thought being kept prisoner by the Doctor. "Don't you dare."

  "You wanted to kill me? Then do better. Live better. If you continues being incautious toward your own life, I will be forced to ensure that you will not be a threat to yourself."

  "Why do you care whether I live or not?!"

  "You know why..." The Doctor whispered brokenly.

  You were speechless. Madam Kovarian is right. You seemed to have a pull with the Doctor. Can you even use this to your advantage? Can you ruin him?

  "Do not think you can play mind games with me, (yn). Don't ever, ever think you are capable of that." He said suddenly with a dark look. "I care about you. I still loves you but if you try anything against me, you will lose and trust me, I always win."

  You recoiled from him with a flinch. "I hate you."

  "So you have said."

  "I will never stop hating you for what you did."

  "I know."

  "Stop trying to help me then."

  "I can't." He said desperately. "You were seared in my hearts. I can't just let you go. I go where you go even though I know it was a trap."

  You hitched a breath at his confession. He knew it was a trap and he still come for you? How stupid can he be?

  You didn't realize he had gotten so close to you. He cupped your face and kissed you. You relented into the kiss before you snapped out of your stupor. You pushed him away and slapped him. You sobbed as you turned to left the med-bay. You have no idea where you are within his Tardis but anywhere is better than being in the same room as him.

  You somehow ended up in some sort of storage room. You wished you could find your way out but you predictably got lost. You sat on the floor on the storage room, feeling unwell.

  In your dizziness, you noticed an old crib inside the storage room and the sound of baby cooing from it. You frowned as you made your way to the crib. Of course, there is no baby in it. You chuckled, wondering if you have lost your mind too. You did let your enemy kissed you.

  You walked out of the room and suddenly feeling like everything is spinning. Despite trying to walk slowly near the wall, you ended up losing your balance and blacked out.

  You distinctly felt someone caught you before you hit the floor. It was him. He look so concerned for you.

  7777

  You woke up in a hospital. They had just finished with miscarriage procedure. You had no recollection how you ended up in the hospital as the last thing you remembered was running away from the Doctor after he kissed you.

  You noticed something on the side table. It was a picture, a picture of your parents. You know it was from him, the Doctor, some twisted gift from him, you thought. Was it a taunt? Or was it a genuine gift for he knew that you have no clear picture of your deceased parents? You held the picture in your arms as you cried.

  7777

  You wanted revenge. That is still something that you wanted, right? You were torn. You can't deny that you still have feeling for him. But you also recognized his truth that you have nothing, no advantage to win against him. 

  You didn't come back to the church. You felt like you need a break. You need to sort out your thoughts. You wondered if you could let go of your grudge against the Doctor. But, even if you do, you refused to stay in his presence. That man is still a source of your grief after all.

  After the hospital allowed you to leave, you quickly used your vortex manipulator to leave so you can be on the run...from the Doctor and the church.

  Later, you found out the Doctor had faked your death so the church won't even be searching for you. 

  7777

  You tried to live a normal life. You tried to adjust to society again. You made sure to live in isolation as not to attract any attention.

  The Doctor and John still plagued your mind from time to time. You love John, not the Doctor. You love John, not him, never him. You have to stop loving John because he is not real. John is not real.

  Despite being careful to cover your track while hiding, the Doctor somehow found you again. 

  You were furious with him for not leaving you alone, for keep making stupid puppy eyes toward you. "I hate you. Do you hear me? I don't wish to see you ever again."

  "I know...but I just can't stay away from you." He said. "I don't want to... (yn), I just want to keep you safe."

  "I don't need or want your protection." You said coldly. 

  He looked miserable as he stared at you with those damn puppy eyes.

  You growled as you pulled him close and kissed him hard. He was eager for you as he can't stop touching you.

  You were harsh with him and he takes it all willingly. You must have lost your mind for doing this. You hated the man in front of you and yet here you are using his body for sex and he allowed it. In fact he seemed to yearn for you. He was gentle with you in contrast of your harshness.

  Once the deed is done, you felt disgusted at yourself as you recoiled from him. You dressed yourself as fast as you can before using your vortex manipulator to leave. It was a good thing you packed the essential in a bag for you need to run again.

  The Doctor watched you leave without words. His eyes looked sad.

  7777

  Of course, you could never outrun the Doctor. You wondered if he has done something to you, if he has put a tracking chip on your body or if he did something to your vortex manipulator. How did he always able to find you no matter where you go?

  After a while, your unexpected meeting with him which always started with arguments will often ended with hate sex at least on your part. Each time afterward, you will hated yourself more and despised him for making you weak. And then you will run. It will took him a while but he always find you. And the cycle is repeated.

  7777

  The Doctor has been acting unlike himself ever since meeting you. He was convinced that John's love for you was strong that it still latched on the Doctors' hearts and mind. 

  He knew you hated him. He knew he should stay away from you. But somehow he always find his way to you. He knew you were using him for meaningless sex and he knew what he did to you, making you hated yourself more. But he was addicted to you as he was sure you felt the same of him. He knew he was not good for you and vice versa. And yet he can't bring himself to stop yearning for you.

  He felt bad for River on the account of his feeling for you. 

  River shook her head sadly. She had investigated your background so she knew your reasoning for hating the Doctor. Knowing the Doctor well, River knew her husband would blame himself, would be riddled with guilt. And what a guilt he must have feel toward you. 

  "Go to her then, Doctor. Do what you need to do. Ease your guilt. Love her if you must. Make her yours for however long you can have her. I will always be here for you." 

  River has longer lifespan than most human due to her time lord genetic unlike you who are only human. She know the Doctor would only have a few years with you, maybe less, considering how toxic their relationship is. By the end of that, she know the Doctor would come back to her. She is not insecure of the Doctor's feeling for her. She is his true wife after all.

  "But, Doctor, you have to be careful with her. You can't let your guard down around her. She can't be trusted." River warned him.

  Having gotten his wife's consent, the Doctor pursued any semblance of relationship with you.

   7777

  Madam Kovarian had found out that you are alive and that you have become a fuck-buddy of the Doctor.

  You cringed at her insults.

  The church has captured you and you were under their mercy.

  "It seemed the Doctor still has soft spot for you. Good." Madam Kovarian smiled chillingly at you. "But he really does gets under your skin, does he not? You have become pathetic under his influence. Where is that fierce hatred for the Doctor? What would your parents think of you if they see you now?"

  You couldn't reply. You were ashamed. Tears filled your eyes.

  You were bound to some medical chair. Some weird headpiece were forced on you.

  "Wipe her." Madam Kovarian instructed her scientists. "Made sure you only left the hatred."

  Your eyes widened in confusion and fear.

  "Don't worry, dearie, I'm only doing you a favour, to get rid of that pesky feeling you felt for John and thus the Doctor. After all, you will only need your hatred for him." She said in sickening sweetness. "After this, you can focused more on getting your sweet revenge against the Doctor. It would be easy to plot against him with some wriggle room since he has such fondness for you. He wouldn't dream to hurt you which make you the best weapon against him."

  You didn't know what to think of her plan. You did realized she really is doing you a favour by getting rid your unwanted feeling for the Doctor. But...do you still want to hurt him?

  It is no longer matter as they started the wiping process and it was painful. You screamed and screamed and screamed for what felt like hours.

  When the torture finally is over, you woke up no longer feeling anything but hatred for the being called the Doctor.

  7777

  The Doctor had found out that you were taken by the church. He knew coming to the location of where you are supposed to be would ended up being another trap. 

  You smiled a chillingly sweet smile at the Doctor after you fired the shot at his stomach after he 'rescued' you.

  The Doctor stared at you in disbelief. He clutched his injury with one hand, face turning pale.

  Madam Kovarian and her faithful colonel stood by your side with a pleased smile on her face.

  "What have you done to her?" The Doctor asked Madam Kovarian.

  "I fixed her. Got rid of that pesky feeling that has been holding her back from fulfilling her desire to kill you." She said proudly.

  You glanced at the Doctor with disdain at the reminder that you were married to him and had sleep with him.

  While Madam Kovarian bragged about being able to trick the Doctor again, the base were suddenly under attacks. The smile slide off her face.

  The Doctor chuckled. "You really don't think that I came alone, do you?"

  They could hear exchanged rapid fire shots from the distant.

  "A-ah, that would be my River coming to the rescue." He said with a grin. "She insisted to come with me."

  Madam Kovarian stared at him flatly. "You brought your wife to rescue your mistress?"

  You glared at the woman for implying that you were the mistress.

  "well, what can I say? She knew you would be here, Madam Kovarian, and she so loves to ruin your day." The Doctor cheerfully said.

  You frowned, noticing that he was no longer in pain from his injury. It was then you realized the Doctor is actually a hard hologram which meant he fakes the injury.

  Madam Kovarian is quick to set escape with her minion upon realizing. But you remained there, staring at the Doctor hatefully.

  The Doctor stared at you solemnly before the hologram blip out of existence, leaving you on your own in the middle of destruction of the base.

  You started to make your way out but you couldn't figure out the way to safety. You wondered if you will die here. 

  Then you saw it the blue box. The Doctor standing just outside the Tardis, raising his hand to you, offering salvation.

  "Come with me, (yn)!"

  But you took one look at him and only uttered one word. "No." You stubbornly refused to be saved by him. You would rather save yourself. And if you can't, you would rather be dead rather than take his hands. 

  You took a few step back away from him much to his displeasure and somewhat heartbroken look. He opened his mouth to say something but you turned and ran from him.

  7777

  You were able to escape. It was a close call but you did it. You were covered with dust from head to toes. Your hair is a mess and you were very dehydrated but you survived with a few injuries.

  But, waiting for you is River Song. She glanced at you grimly.

  "You shot him. Even if it was just a hologram, you shot him. He is weak for you and I know you will take advantage of that. I can't let that happen." She said as she raised her gun and shot you on the chest.

  River knew the Doctor is willing to risk himself for you and next time he might not be lucky especially now that you no longer have feeling for the Doctor. She won't let him risk his life, not for you.

  You gasped in pain as you stared at her in disbelief.

  "I did warned you that if you made a move against him, I will kill you." She said with a shrug and a cold smile.

  You fell on your knees, clutching your injuries.

  River turned around to leave, knowing the deed is done. You are as good as dead. The Doctor will be safe...from you.

  You laid on the ground amidst the ruin of the base as slowly the pain is gone and you welcomed the darkness.

   A/N: Okay, no one probably care to know this but I have the song 'toxic' cover by Rumer Willis on my mind and on a loop on my playlist while writing this. 

Originally this was supposed to be a 10th doctor x reader, an alternate version of my other fic 'shattered and hollow' but I ended up writing for 11th doctor instead because River is in it and she belongs to 11th doctor so...

[imagineddworld]

Truth or dare

Pairing : George Weasley x Reader

Summary: You are a year younger than the twins and had fallen for one of them. This secret laid safe with Ginny and Hermione, but to your regret they use this information against you during a game of truth or dare

Word count: 2,9 k (2930)

)It was odd for you to be found at one of the weekly girl nights Ginny had planned. Ginny, Hermione, Lavender and Parvati all sat in their lamest pajamas chatting about typical girl sleepover stuff. Even Luna was there, who you’d managed to sneak in with a nifty spell Ginny had learned from the twins. Even if it was fun, you weren’t quite fond of Lavender and Parvati. But you decided to join them for the sake of Ginny , Hermione and Luna. The girls talked, ate sweets and played the same old games as always, which you started to grow bored of. So you had decided to introduce them to an old fashioned muggle game of Truth or Dare. Hermione immediately lit up at the mentioning, agreeing with you. Both of you knew the game, because of being muggle born. The others were a bit hesitant seen that they never heard of the game before. 

But as they got the hang of it, and the questions started to get more risky and they started to choose for dare more often, you realized your mistake. You really had suggested playing a secret spilling game with Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger. The same girls who knew everything about you, including your massive crush on George. Hermione had found out rather quick, being her intelligent self. She supported it, finding it a very adorable match. But telling Ginny was more stressful. It was her brother. That would be weird for her. Even if you were only one year younger than the twins, and two years older than her; it still would be very awkward for her. 

You had befriended the twins as soon as you came to Hogwarts. But you weren’t per se the closest. You had a teasing bond with them, always laughing and joking with one another. The three of you seemed to communicate through sarcastic and sassy comments. You had been to the Burrow a few times, immediately befriended Ginny. She was quite mature for her age. Besides in a house full of boys, it was nice to have another girl there to relax with. The boys could be rough and wild, so having alone time with her at one of your sleepovers was relieving. So when she finally went to Hogwarts you were more than excited. Your bond grew even stronger and closer. But attending to Hogwarts and seeing you every day, confirmed her speculations. She always had noticed the special bond George and you had. It was similar to the bond you had with Fred, but with way more tension and snarky comments. So she decided to ask you about it. You couldn’t do much besides admitting to her, praying she wouldn’t have your head. But to your surprise she reacted positiver than you had expected. Reasoning even more why you were close friends with her. It was a year ago that Ginny found out, and two for Hermione. It was about time they used that type of information against you. Surely after you had offered to play truth or dare. 

Ginny hummed excitedly, spinning the empty soda bottle. As the girls all watched in anticipation, the bottle slowly came to a stop, ending up pointing towards Lavender. One way or another she always managed to switch the topic of her question to Ron. And gosh, could she talk. Everyone in the room was annoyed with her at this point, besides from Luna. As always being her cheery bubbly self. That’s why you liked her as a friend, she always had this positive energy radiating from her, literally lighting up any room. And now she had the same effect on you. As the room was filled with annoyed expressions and silent sighs, she sat listening with some sort of interest while softly chewing on her candies. “Okay, I think it’s clear. You like him. Let’s move on now”, Hermione harshly interrupted her, to your relieve. Finally someone who had the guts to shut her up. ���Yes, please. Thank you”, you mumbled, locking eyes with Hermione for a moment. Lavender shot both of you a mean glare, before the game went on. You took a sip of your half full glass of soda, not really paying much attention to the spinning bottle. You were absently humming a quiet tune, letting your mind wander about unimportant problems. 

“Brilliant”, Ginny cackled, a grin slowly lifter her freckled cheeks. This alarming you the bottle had choose to land on you. You didn’t even need to look at it, to know. As your eyes scanned over the group, you saw enthusiast faces. Once your gaze reached the heads of Ginny and Hermione, they had wicked expression of pure evil plastered on their faces. Meaning no good could follow. “Fuck”, you mumbled under your breath, watching the duo lock eyes overly excited. Your heart stopped at the sight. They seemed to be communicating through their minds, both sharing the same evil idea. You already could guess it. And in moments like this, you really hated those two clever girls. 

As Ginny returned her gaze on you, you saw a glint of pure trouble shining brightly in her brown orbs. A glint you were all too familiar with, seeing in the twins eyes. A sparkle you enjoyed to see in Georges warm eyes, but now seeing the same evil excitement in his sister’s eyes, made you regret your whole existence. “What will it be, Y/n?”, Parvati asked, smiling bright, “Truth?” Everyone knew fully well , you were going to choose dare. As if you ever could resist a good dare. Even if it was much to your annoyance, you would still do it. “Or dare?”, Ginny continued, eyes filled with evil mischief. Hermione sharing the same expression. At this point, you should just accept your fate. Either way, this would turn out in no good. You covered your face with your hands, groaning annoyingly. “Come on”, Ginny huffed, growing impatient. You sighed slightly defeated: “Dare”. 

As soon as that word left your mouth, a certain darkness could be seen in their eyes. “Anyone who knows something?”, Lavender asked with a mixture of excitement and annoyance. You two couldn’t really stand one an other, but made it work for the sake of your friends. “I’m sure Ginny has a really interesting dare planned”, Luna replied innocently, tucking her hands into her sleeves of her comfy looking night dress. “Go on. Tell me already”, you huffed annoyed, but your hidden anxiety started to show through. You rapidly tapped your foot onto the ground, hands shaking a little bit. Your heart was nearly beating out of your chest. You could feel your veins start to fill with panic and restlessness. You refused to meet her eyes, suddenly being very interested in the hem of your shirt.  “I dare you to tell my brother that he is cute”. Your head shot up at her words, but your clouded mind had found a loophole. You froze a little in place, thinking of your plan. “Okay, good”, you said a tad bit too enthusiast for their likings. “Hold on”, Hermione said, as you were about to stand up. “To be more specific, tell George he is cute”. You narrowed your eyes at her, groaning at the statement. Of course she knew your plan, you always tried to find little loopholes. “Oh”, Ginny suddenly spoke up, as if a genius idea sparked her interest again, “You also can’t tell him why you are telling him that”. These girls were going to be the death of you. “Ugh, fine”, you said as you fully stood up, rubbing some dust off your clothes. You stomped over to the door with the girls following close behind. You stopped before opening the door, looking one last time to the proud girls next to you. “I see that evilness runs in the family”, you said snarky, while looking Ginny in the eyes, before you glanced over at her equally excited companion. “And Hermione must be your long lost sister”. All girls giggled at your annoyed statement. But the giggles didn’t last long as they started to push you closer towards the door, all of them growing impatient. 

Your trembling hands softly tried to open the door without making too much noise. You left it open just enough so the girls could subtly look through it. You quickly scanned the room, hoping you would find it empty. To your disappointment, George was sat in the common room. But what made it worse was that he sat there with Fred, Ron, Harry, Neville and some couple more of his friends that you didn’t knew too well. You felt your stomach sink, feeling incredibly nauseous all of sudden. You glanced back at the door behind you, only half a meter or so away from where you stood. “Do I really-”, you started hopefully, but got cut off immediately. “Yes”, they whisper-yelled far too quickly and too excited for your liking. 

You turned back, taking a couple of deep breathes. You hoped they would calm you down, but no luck. So you started to move further into the common room, full of dread and anxiety. It wasn’t until you got closer to the group, that you realized why Ron and some other boys were giving you strange looks. You suddenly became aware of how you looked. Your hair in two messy french braids, an oversized band t-shirt covering you up to mid-thigh. Your shorts just showing their little pop of colour underneath the dark grey material. Your feet covered in fluffy sock, who reached mid calves. Your outfit wasn’t too bad, but seen the situation, you could’ve tried to look a bit more presentable. 

“You alright there, Y/n?”, Fred asked, turning around in his chair. His tone was mocking, but decided not to act on the opportunity to tease you. Which was odd for him. It might have come because he once or twice had accidentally made a snarky comment at the wrong time, being the last push for you to have a breakdown. Within a few seconds George faced you too, a shit-eating grin laying perfectly on his face. “Don’t you look lovely”, he snorted, dark eyes full of mirth. You glared at him. As you squinted your eyes and scrunched up your nose, you made an annoyed, mocking face at him. Clearly showing him your annoyance. “Oh yeah. And you look cute as always”, you said sarcastically. For some reason, your emotions always decided to out themselves through sarcasm. It became your second nature. You didn’t know how else to communicate with him. He made you so nervous, but all those nerves seemed to get replaced with sarcasm as soon as he opens his snarky mouth.

He raised his eyebrow at your statement, the shit-eating grin on his face seeming to grow. “What did you came for? Wanted to say something?”, he teased, looking attentively at you. That was until he noticed a familiar redhead at the small opening of the girl’s dorm door, a smug expression plastered on her face. Only for a second his eyebrows knotted together, trying to puzzle together why you were actually here. But it all clicked, when he saw her disappear as soon as she had appeared. His eyes twinkled with an evil mischief. He loved a good dare, so why not mess a bit with it. 

You stood a few more meters away from him, not sure what to do. You technically had told him he was cute. Ginny never had specified the tone you should say it in. But you weren’t quite sure if she would accept that.  “I’m getting the impression she wants to say something, aren’t you Fred?”, he said, leaning against the back of his chair to look smugly at his twin brother. “I do get that feeling, yeah”, he replied as mischievous as George. What else would you have expected. They are the Weasley twins after all, them going without teasing is like a person going without breathing. 

During their little chat, you had spotted one of your books laying on the table, that stood in the middle of their group. This had given you a good escaping plan. Even if it would annoy Ginny, you had completed the dare. Just in your own sarcastic way. You stepped forward again, locking eyes with George while you spoke. “Well actually, I came to get my book. But thanks to you I get to go with my book and a ‘heartfelt’ compliment”, you sassed while growing more annoyed again. It seemed the more nervous and anxious you got, the more it sparked your annoyance. As it seemed to be a way for you to cope with any emotions. Not the greatest way to approach this, but better than fainting due to the stress and panic you felt.  By the time you had finished your sentence, you stood next to him. During your small walk, you had kept your eyes locked with his. You tried your best to hide your anxiety, by looking extra annoyed. Something he found very amusing. He adored how worked up you could get, surely when he was the cause for it.  

For you to get to your book, you needed to slightly lean into him. You could feel your heart racing at an abnormal fast rate. A lump slowly started to block your throat, making your mouth as dry as a dessert. You tried your best to keep your hands steady, while gripping onto the book. “Always so aggressive, aren’t you love”, he asked overly amused once you stood back up. You held the book close to your chest with one of your hand. The other absently played with the hem of your shirt. “Always so annoying, aren’t you ‘love’”, you replied back, mocking the nickname he had given you. But if you were honest, that name made you melt. It was short and simple, but also sweet and adoring. You had to try not to become beet red, which seen his cocky reaction, you had failed at. He looked a little too amused and proud, to not have noticed the heat rushing to your face. You let out a shaky breath, deciding the humiliation was over. You had been through worse humiliations, seen that the twins often pulled pranks on you. But the constant snickering of the younger boys, made you want to sink through the floor. 

As you were turning away from them, you felt a hand pull you back. It was George’s. His soft hand easily wrapped around your whole wrist, giving you no room for escaping. He gently held onto it, careful not to hurt you. His hand slowly slid down a bit, making one half holding yours, while the other half still held kindly onto your wrist. You looked back, slightly in shock by the sudden touch. Immediately a warm sensation could be felt, due to his soft skin touching yours. This didn’t helped your beating heart, that felt like exploding any moment. You were sure George could feel it hammering against his fingers.

An annoyingly amused smile twitched at the corners of his lips, while his eyes watched you intensely. He suddenly pulled you a bit closer, nearly making you trip onto him. As a natural reflex, he placed his other hand onto your waist, helping you steady yourself. His face was now closer than ever. So close so that you could feel his warm breath fan onto your cheek. You needed to fight against the shiver that wanted to crawl painfully slow over your spine. “Does this situation has to do anything with my sister hiding around the corner over there?”, he whispered in your ear, so no one else could hear him. “I don’t know what you’re on about’, you answered, the slight shake in your voice betraying you. “Of course you don’t”, he mused, as he pulled his face back ever so slightly. This motion making his cheek brush briefly against yours. The ever so light touch, made your breathing halt abruptly. You just looked at him with a mixed flustered and shocked expression. Meanwhile his eyes scanned your face cautiously, as if he was looking for something. He held onto your wrist and waist a bit too long, to not make any of his friends suspicious. 

As he released his soft grip on you, you couldn’t help but miss the warmth of his touch. It had felt comforting, all the while it made your anxiety levels go off the chard. “Okay”, you mouthed soundlessly, before moving again. You quickly tried to make your way back, before you would faint from the absurdly rapid beating of your heart. But halfway up the stairs, you heard him yell at you. “Oi!” This made you trip over your feet, just catching yourself in time so you wouldn’t stumble down the staircase. He smiled brightly, watching your clumsiness, while shaking his head lightly. You turned your head towards him, preparing for another snarky comment to be thrown at you. “I think you’re pretty cute too”, he smiled, winking proudly at your flustered face. Of course the redhead had caught up to why you truly were there and saw the underlaying meaning of your snarky comments. He just decided to take the piss out of it, having his little fun. 

As soon as you made it back through the door, the girls attacked you like vultures for details. You had to admit this dare maybe wasn’t so bad after all. 

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

Daenerys Targaryen & Varda Elentári

This post is more for my own pleasure than anything, as someone who loves both Dany and Varda. It basically sums up the similarities and/or parallels that I see between the two characters. Anyone else who has anything to add is free to do so.

[Source]

[Source]

Known as the Queen of the Stars and the Star-Kindler, among other titles, Varda is the queen of all of Arda, a planet of the universe Eä created by Eru, the Creator and All-Father, which the Valar and many of the Ainur inhabit. She is the wife of Manwë and considered one of the most powerful beings in the entirety of the Tolkien universe. Varda is intensely beloved by the elves especially due to the fact that she created the stars. It’s said that she’s so beautiful that she can’t be described in words, and that the light of Eru shines from her face.

Not much is known about Varda personally, as the direct appearances that she makes in Tolkien’s works are few. Off the top of my head, I can only recall her being mentioned in person in The Unfinished Tales and The Silmarillion. In all other instances, she is only prayed to, but one can get a pretty good understanding of just how revered she is.

The following is a Sindarin poem directed to Varda, A Elbereth Gilthoniel, by the elves, which they were heard by Frodo saying as they departed to the Undying lands.

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear! O Queen beyond the Western Seas!  O Light to us that wander here  Amid the world of woven trees! 

Gilthoniel! O Elbereth! Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath! Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee In a far land beyond the Sea. 

O stars that in the Sunless Year With shining hand by her were sawn, In windy fields now bright and clear We see your silver blossom blown! 

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel! We still remember, we who dwell In this far land beneath the trees, Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

—The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring

With a basic idea of who Varda is, let’s get into the similarities between the two. Some of these are likely just a coincidence, but I find it fun to explore anyway. 

Beautiful

This one is the shallowest, and the easiest to draw comparisons when it comes to the two characters. Varda is said to be unbelievably beautiful:

With Manwë dwells Varda, Lady of the Stars, who knows all the regions of Eä. Too great is her beauty to be declared in the words of Men or of Elves; for the light of Ilúvatar lives still in her face.

—The Silmarillion, Valaquenta

Dany, too, is extremely beautiful, described as some to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

Her silver shied as the merchant prince Xaro Xhoan Daxos rode up to her; the horses could not abide the close presence of camels, she had found. "If you see here anything that you would desire, O most beautiful of women, you have only to speak and it is yours," Xaro called down from his ornate horned saddle. 

—A Clash of Kings, Daenerys II

The most beautiful woman in the world, thought Quentyn. My bride-to-be, if the gods are good. Sometimes at night he lay awake imagining her face and form, and wondering why such a woman would ever want to marry him, of all the princes in the world. I am Dorne, he told himself. She will want Dorne.

—A Dance with Dragons, The Merchant’s Man

Granted, many times, people are trying to flatter Daenerys when calling her that. Nevertheless, Valyrians are known for their otherworldly beauty, and Dany is also undoubtedly beautiful. 

Good judges of character

I can confidently say that Varda is also probably quite a good judge of character. Before any of the other Ainur, she was able to see the darkness of Melkor, a Satan-like figure in the Tolkien mythos who was once the most powerful Vala but rebelled against Eru out of pride and became Morgoth. Thus, Varda distrusted Melkor, rejected an offer that he made to her, and Melkor was said to see her as his greatest rival. 

Out of the deeps of Eä she came to the aid of Manwë; for Melkor she knew from before the making of the Music and rejected him, and he hated her, and feared her more than all others whom Eru made.

—The Silmarillion, Valaquenta

This is pretty impressive, considering that it’s possible that at the time referenced, when Varda “knew” Melkor, even Melkor didn’t know that he was heading down a path of evil. Yet Varda could see the darkness inside him. Besides, Melkor is said to be very good at deception, so the fact that Varda could see through this is a testament to her skill in gauging other people. 

Dany is also a good judge of character. At just thirteen, she’s able to see through much of Illyrio’s flattery and lies when her significantly older brother Viserys was unable to:

"They are your people, and they love you well," Magister Illyrio said amiably. "In holdfasts all across the realm, men lift secret toasts to your health while women sew dragon banners and hide them against the day of your return from across the water." He gave a massive shrug. "Or so my agents tell me."

Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across the narrow sea, but she mistrusted Illyrio's sweet words as she mistrusted everything about Illyrio. Her brother was nodding eagerly, however. "I shall kill the Usurper myself," he promised, who had never killed anyone, "as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And Lannister too, the Kingslayer, for what he did to my father."

—A Game of Thrones, Daenerys I

She’s also aware that people are much more treacherous than depicted in the books she reads:

"I'm cold," Dany lied. "Bring me the book I was reading last night." She wanted to lose herself in the words, in other times and other places. The fat leather-bound volume was full of songs and stories from the Seven Kingdoms. Children's stories, if truth be told; too simple and fanciful to be true history. All the heroes were tall and handsome, and you could tell the traitors by their shifty eyes. Yet she loved them all the same. Last night she had been reading of the three princesses in the red tower, locked away by the king for the crime of being beautiful.

—A Storm of Swords, Daenerys VI

Opposition to evil

Significantly, Varda’s realm of power is the light:

With Manwë dwells Varda, Lady of the Stars, who knows all the regions of Eä. Too great is her beauty to be declared in the words of Men or of Elves; for the light of Ilúvatar lives still in her face. In light is her power and her joy.

—The Silmarillion, Valaquenta

Other titles for Varda, besides Queen of the Stars, include Snow-White, Lady of the Stars, and Star-Kindler. There’s an obvious association with light here, especially because stars are the most beloved form of light by the elves, not to mention the earliest sources of light in Arda. 

Melkor, meanwhile, being the overarching villain of the entire Tolkien universe, is associated heavily with darkness. 

Last of all is set the name of Melkor, He who arises in Might. But that name he has forfeited; and the Noldor, who among the Elves suffered most from his malice, will not utter it, and they name him Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World.

—The Silmarillion, Valaquenta

Other titles for Melkor include The Black Foe, The Corrupter, The Marrer, The First Dark Lord, and Lord of the Dark. It’s pretty glaringly obvious how strongly Tolkien meant for us to picture him as being the embodiment of darkness. 

This places the quite literally brilliant Varda in direct opposition with him in terms of their elements. In other words, she is heavily associated with and symbolizes something that is the very antithesis of everything the main evil of Tolkien’s works is associated with. 

Just like Varda is heavily associated with light, Dany is heavily associated with fire. It is the element of her house, but beyond that, it’s a personal element for her.

They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany's head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. "Ours is the house of the dragon," he would say. "The fire is in our blood."

—A Game of Thrones, Daenerys I

No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

—A Game of Thrones, Daenerys X

Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. "Mother!" they cried. "Mother, mother!" They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them...

—A Clash of Kings, Daenerys IV

Especially in the above quote, Daenerys is the embodiment of the fire, as acknowledged when she gives “herself” to the slaves that need “the fire”. In addition, fire as life is an ongoing theme in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It’s shown above in the quote by “the fire, the life”. And the force in direct opposition to the fire is the ice, the cold, the death, which also stands for the undead, who are the main antagonists of the series. 

The real enemy is the cold.

—A Game of Thrones, Prologue

Similarly to how Varda, light, symbolically stands in opposition to Melkor, darkness, Daenerys stands in opposition to the Others, death, thanks to her association with fire, life. Their positions as important, central figures of goodness and hope are expressed through their association to certain elements which contrasts them directly with the elements that the great evils of their respective series are associated with. 

[backtothestart02]

Fallen Star - 13/? | westallen fanfiction

A/N: It’s on the verge of getting so juicy near the end here. I hope you enjoy!

*Many thanks to @valeriemperez for beta’ing.

Tagging @itzvickilou @barryslightningrod

...

Chapter 13 -

Barry woke up from a four-hour “power” nap sometime in the early afternoon. It wasn’t a pleasant wake-up call, because it was accompanied with the grizzly voice often emanating from his pseudo father, Joe West.

“Bear! Open this door right now!”

Barry grumbled and tumbled out of bed, then summoned the little willpower he had left to speed to the door and let him inside.

Joe saw the look of him, hair in all directions, a blue tee, boxers and tall, white socks with squinty eyes and put the situation together. He relaxed and walked through the door, shutting it behind him. He paused to hug him.

“Thank goodness you’re all right.”

“I – Of course, I’m all right. What did you-”

Joe moved into the kitchen, where he started inspecting the contents of the refrigerator.

“When I didn’t see you come in today, I asked Singh what was up, and he said you had called in sick.”

Barry’s brows furrowed. “Yeah. And?”

Joe lifted his head from the fridge and looked across the way to him.

“You never call in sick. You’re incapable of being sick ever since you got your speed. I knew something had to be up.”

Barry thought about that.

“Well, technically, I can still get sick. My body just fights it off really fa-”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Joe brushed it off and inspected the dishwasher. Barry followed him and closed the refrigerator on his way. He started to close the appliance before Joe seemed to be finished with it.

“Can I help you find something, Joe?”

“What?” He spun around. “Um, no, I just… BARRY, CAN YOU HEAR ME IN THERE?” He yelled at his face.

Barry plugged his ears and shook his head.

“I’m right here, Joe. No need to shout.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to test this somehow.”

Barry’s eyes widened. “Test what?”

“What’s your favorite color?” He interrogated, folding his arms across his chest.

“Red,” Barry said instantly.

“Hmm. Quick. Maybe…too quick.”

Barry looked at him incredulously.

“Joe, what the hell is going on? What are you-”

“Who’s the love of your life?” he demanded.

Barry’s lips parted, then his shoulders slumped, and his face fell. He didn’t know what was up with the elder West, but the last thing he wanted was to talk about Iris right now.

“You know who, Joe,” he said softly, resigned, as he moved past him and sat on the couch, propping his legs on the coffee table in front of him.

“You really are Barry,” Joe said. Barry didn’t bother with an incredulous look this time. There had obviously been some sort of misunderstanding but bringing up Iris reminded him of what had happened that morning, and that made him sadder than ever.

“Who did you think I was, Joe?” he asked, pressing his fingers to his wrinkled forehead, a headache suddenly brewing.

Joe shrugged and sat beside him.

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone had ‘called in sick’ only to really have been abducted, and the kidnapper was pretending to be them so nothing would seem amiss.”

Barry turned to look at him.

“And that was your first conclusion when I didn’t come in today?”

He nodded.

“What about Iris?”

“Oh, I haven’t talked to her today.” He turned suddenly towards him. “Why? Do you think she’s in trouble?” he asked hastily.

Barry shook his head. “Not what I meant, and no. She was only too eager to get rid of me this morning and hurry off to work. She said it was to let Linda in, who was at CCPN at an ungodly hour, but I highly doubt that would’ve caused such enthusiasm in her.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Iris was here?”

Oh.

“Uh…yeah…about that…”

“Are you back together?” he asked, hopefully.

I wish.

“No.”

“Oh.” Now Joe’s shoulders slumped.

“Trust me, I would not look so…depressed if that were the case. I would actually be smiling.”

“Well, why are you depressed?” Barry gave him a look. “Besides the obvious.” He paused, then hedged, “Why did Iris come over this morning?”

Barry sighed loudly. “She wanted me to walk her to work.”

His brows furrowed. “Walk her to work,” he repeated.

Barry nodded. “And visit her at lunch and come to STAR Labs later… She almost convinced me not to call in.”

Joe started to relax. “It sounds like she’s making an effort, trying to meet you halfway. Maybe she wants to-”

“Be friends. She said it herself.”

Joe softened. “Friends is better than nothing. Friends can turn into something more if you let it. It happened once between you two. It can happen again.”

“No, I know. She had me convinced. I actually got…happy.”

“Then what happened?”

“What happened is she got a call from Linda about letting her in the building, plus suddenly being busy after work became more important than rebooting our friendship.”

“Oh, son, I… Maybe Linda really was locked out at CCPN?”

Barry shrugged. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But her being too busy to come to STAR Labs after work two minutes after she’d told me she wanted us to go together, for the first time since we broke up?”

“You think she’s up to something dangerous?”

“I didn’t get that impression, but I suppose it’s possible.”

“Then why aren’t you more worried? Why didn’t you call me if-”

“Because I think it’s more possible that Linda talked her out of trying to be my friend again.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I just know that Linda is the only one who has come to Iris’ defense in the past months. She’s stuck by her, even though she knew she was recklessly running into these dangerous situations. Whether she approved of them or not is beside the point, because Iris trusts her implicitly. She’d probably do whatever she said, including cutting me out of her life.”

Joe sighed. “I think you and Iris are doing that well enough on your own. And you’re not giving Iris enough credit. She does what she wants to do, especially if she feels strongly about it. Not even Linda could sway her if what she wanted was to try to be friends with you again.”

“So basically, I’m screwed because I’m not a top priority for her.”

Joe didn’t know what to say to that, so he wrapped his arm around Barry and pulled him close.

“How about we do popcorn and a movie?”

“What- Here?”

Joe nodded.

“It’s two in the afternoon, Joe. Aren’t you still on duty?”

“Nah.” He kicked his shoes off. “I called in sick.”

Barry’s lips twitched and then spread into a full-on grin till he laughed.

And that, Joe decided, was his accomplishment.

…

Iris couldn’t stop gushing.

“You have no idea what this means to me, Lin. You honestly have no idea.”

Linda laughed and helped her friend with her shoulder bag.

“I think I do, given this is the fiftieth time you told me probably.”

Iris rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop smiling.

“A lead this big…my God.” She pulled her long locks out from the collar of her jacket and buttoned up. “Like, super big. Like I’ll never be able to repay you big.”

“I think a lifetime supply of coffee should do it.”

Iris laughed. “You’re on.” Linda laughed. “Seriously,” she said, and they smiled at each other.

Linda liked seeing Iris like this. So happy, so pumped about a story. The only time she’d seen her happier was when she first started dating Barry, and that made her feel guilty.

As soon as Iris explained herself on the phone early that morning, she knew Barry was about to become collateral damage. The whole thing could’ve been avoided if she hadn’t given Iris that pep talk on how to fight for her man just a couple minutes before the lead was emailed to her. As a fellow journalist though, she knew what it was like to get a good lead. It was thrilling; exciting. It got your blood pumping. The result of a good lead usually was a well-written story, and those sometimes changed lives. This one definitely would change Iris’. She was so excited for her friend.

But then there was Barry. Barry was so much a part of Iris in a way that he’d never been for her. Sure, she’d had a few weeks of dating the Flash, and they’d been great. She’d really liked him, and she knew he’d liked her too. But the connection – the love – between Barry and Iris surpassed anything she could’ve felt for him, no matter how long they dated. And Barry would never be able to choose her first. It would always be Iris.

She didn’t hold that against him, though. He’d done right and broke things off before acting on his feelings. And the way he’d helped her out with her evil doppelgänger last year? Plus, being the Flash? Nothing like being able to say you made out with the scarlet speedster superhero of Central City. Too bad she couldn’t write about that…if anyone cared to listen.

The rough part about the whole situation was that she was Team Iris, but she also liked and respected Barry and his alter ego. Her genuine appreciation for him hadn’t been tarnished when they broke up. And if anything, it had only increased when she learned he was the Flash. Was it fair for her to dismiss him like that when her first suggestion might’ve brought Iris and Barry back together and then they’d both be happy?

Linda looked at Iris and wondered if she should confide her fears and worries. There was no need. In the quiet moments – of which there hadn’t been many – there’d been a hesitancy in Iris’ gaze that told her loud and clear she regretted leaving Barry high and dry. Linda had heard him from his end of the line. He’d sounded so hopeful, and she’d just…

“Is there anything I’m forgetting?”

Linda blinked, pulling herself from her thoughts.

“Um, phone?”

“Check.”

“Recorder?”

“Check.”

“Notepad and pen?”

“Check.”

“Gun and bulletproof vest?”

There was a slight lilt to Linda’s voice, but she was only half-joking.

Iris rolled her eyes.

“No and no, Lin. Honestly?”

Linda shrugged. “A girl can dream.”

“You’re starting to sound like my dad and Barry.”

“I just want you to be safe, girl. I need you around.”

“I know. And I will be. I have a taser and pepper spray. That’s all the safety I need.”

Linda forced a smile. “Go get ‘em, girl.”

Iris smiled brilliantly and turned to leave. “Thanks!”

Linda watched her leave, all fire and spirit, and thought not for the first time, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.

…

It was late afternoon when Flash got his first summons to a crime in central city. Bank heist. Easy.

He took care of the two robbers and handled an almost car crash on his way back to STAR Labs. By the time he’d returned he was just about on cloud nine. Being the Flash did that to him, saving lives, using his speed.

“Nice job, my man,” Cisco said, wrapping his arm around him in a side hug. “Especially when you literally redirected traffic to prevent a car crash, saving I don’t know how many lives. At least three, Caitlin?” He asked, looking over at her across the way.

“At least three,” she said, grinning.

“We are mighty proud of you, ol’ buddy ol’ pal,” HR chuckled, coming into the room.

Cisco’s brows furrowed. “You weren’t even here for it.”

“Oh, but I knew,” he said, taking on the demeanor of an old wiseman. “I woke up from my nap and said to myself, Barry did it again!” He chuckled.

“I said that,” Cisco corrected. “You just overheard me.”

HR shrugged. “Potato, potahto.”

Barry shook his head and smiled. He looked over to the other side of the room where Joe, Iris, and Wally would usually be. Joe had been called in unexpectedly and Wally was visiting Jesse on Earth 2 again after the two days they’d been separated. Iris was…busy.

His smile faltered, and Cisco caught it immediately.

“No, no, no!” He stalked over to him.

Caitlin’s eyes widened at the volume of his voice. HR giggled with glee, but it was muffled by the coffee cup he seemed to forever be holding to his lips.

“You’re not going to think about it.” He pushed his finger against his best friend’s chest. “We’re not going to think about it.” He gestured wildly to the people behind him. “And I’m sure there will be other crimes to take your mind off-”

“Iris telling me she’d be here and then ditching me two seconds later?”

HR winced. “Ohh, boy, that’s a bummer. That is a bummer.”

Cisco and Caitlin glared.

“Go back to sleep, HR!” Cisco ordered.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he said, drinking more of his coffee as he went back down the hall. “Call me if you need me!”

“We won’t!” Cisco yelled back, his feathers fully ruffled by the filter-less Wells doppelgänger number three.

“Hey, Cisco, it’s okay. I don’t want you to…worry about me. I mean, worse things have happened than Iris not being at STAR Labs while I’m preventing routine crimes, right?”

“He’s right,” Caitlin added. “Remember that time metas got loose and were running rampant all over the city? Or the singularity that almost swallowed the city whole?”

Ronnie saved us from that, Barry thought to himself but decided not to bring up. The last thing Caitlin needed was to be reminded of her late husband dying a hero’s death when she’d never wanted him to be one.

A siren suddenly went off, saving them from another depressing comment and alerting them to a breaking and entering on the outskirts of the city simultaneously.

“Where is it?” Barry asked, walking over to the monitor.

“Out.” Cisco’s eyes widened. “Waaay out. Geez, I thought that building was abandoned. But if it’s got an alarm, I bet it has security cameras too. What is it used for…”

“Just tell me where, Cisco, and I’ll bring the guy in!”

“Or girl!” Caitlin added.

“Or girl,” Barry allowed. “Cisco?”

“Right. The outskirts. There’s a big field past the edge of the city near the lake, then about a dozen gray warehouses. The third one to your left just got broken into.”

“Thanks.”

A flash of red and yellow, and he was gone.

“You said there were security cameras?” Caitlin asked when Barry was gone.

“I said there might be,” Cisco said. “You don’t have a place that looks abandoned in the middle of nowhere but conveniently has an alarm system and yet there are no cameras.”

Caitlin didn’t need convincing.

“Well, if there are cameras, can you tap into them? It might show us who our culprit is and who Barry needs to look for if they’re not conveniently standing by the alarm that just went off.”

Cisco snapped his fingers.

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

Within minutes, Cisco had hacked into the cameras and was scanning the last ten minutes from multiple monitors to see who might’ve attempted breaking in. He stopped the feed when he spotted who it was.

“Oh, my God. Are you seeing this?”

Caitlin couldn’t speak, only nodded.

“Barry,” Cisco spoke into the com. “Barry, are you there?”

But Barry wasn’t answering.

“Should we tell him?” Cisco asked. “Or tell Joe?”

Caitlin was still silent. “I…”

And at the scene of the crime, Barry wasn’t responding because he’d found the culprit. He was in disbelief, but there she stood across from him, frozen in her steps. They stared at each other, neither daring to move. Honestly, he didn’t know what he’d do if she tried to make a run for it. Would he stop her? Would he let her go?

His mind was a blank slate, then a mass of memories and curving cursive lines going every which way. He couldn’t think. He could hardly breathe.

Only one word slipped past his lips.

“Iris?”

...

*Also posted on AO3 and FFnet.

[invertedfate]

Random Ask Dump - Anniversary Edition (50+ REALLY OLD ASKS!)

Going through OLD AND CRUSTY ASKS to try and chip away at the inbox. HERE WE GOOOO...

That’s an interesting idea, and I could run it by Cake, but I think it would honestly be a LOT to track from a programming perspective. Especially ‘cause killing Sans is gonna result in a “bad ending,” so to speak.

An attempt was made by Undyne to have all three hang out at the same time. Papyrus was SUPER EAGER. ...but one thing led to another and there were many messy explosions of chemicals and lots of smoke. Alphys had to step in before things got out of hand. It was all very daunting for her. Pap and Undyne are VERY LOUD, VERY AMBITIOUS PEOPLE.

I actually have some ideas of some side comics I may do at some point! :o It’s just that right now there’s a lot going on.

I need to poke Carni about that at some point. He’s just been very busy with other projects!

Clearly he’s standing on the “out to lunch” sign.

I wanna say that it’s very possible in theory. :o It probably affects them differently since monsters’ emotional state affects their magic and their physical state.

I do like little easter eggs like that, though I’m not sure where I’d fit it in atm just ‘cause I already showed Pap’s room, haha.

I made the chase theme for Mad Dummy as well as Mad Mew Mew’s battle theme. @pinewsun​ made the battle theme for Mad Dummy, and @thomasthepencil​ made the Season Dude battle theme and MD’s overworld theme. :o

That’s a really fascinating conundrum! You’re absolutely right- if IF was a standalone game, then from a writing standpoint, having more subtle implications would make sense! The reason I chose a different approach for IF is because it’s set after Flowey’s already known to be evil and I like to give different POVs rather than stick to just Frisk’s.

That’s an interesting thing, actually- both fights lean heavily on the fourth wall. Both are treated as climaxes for their given routes. It’s funny because Asriel’s fight is a lot more straightforward and less meta by comparison.

I agree! The thing with Papyrus is that he’s extremely powerful- he just doesn’t want to kill. But it’s a deliberate choice not to kill- he’s able to force his attacks to do next to no damage. He’s also pretty darn crafty, as he made the Gauntlet himself. It really is just a case of Undyne’s personal biases and concern for him.

That was a deliberate choice. :O Papyrus is very influential toward Frisk. He is best skeleboi.

Papybot loves you, anon! He just wants to feed you WHOLESOME SPAGHETTI!!!

It is possible to whistle through teeth. ...alternatively, magic. As for the music, Undertale implies that the music is heard! Maybe it’s just... a thing that exists in this world. Or it’s just meant to be a silly meta joke. I try to keep it somewhat ambiguous other than occasional nods to it. Chara’s pants are lighter because I just... felt like it, I guess? Haha. I wanted their feet and pants to stand out more from each other, so they have khaki pants. As for the Undyne fight being animated, well, this ask is old by now, but Sparks was the one who was down for it.

Well, the teaser’s been out for a long time now, but that’s the idea! It’s also why this has been in production for so long. The Determinator has some really over the top attacks (that weren’t even shown in the teaser), and Sparks animated in Photoshop. That’s how hardcore he is.

Shhhhh. Don’t give me ideas. I’m already slacking on Tem Village. :P

Sometimes I do have slumps and burnouts (see Antipode’s lengthy hiatus), but breaks lead to me being refreshed and coming back with even more enthusiasm than before!

Oh, there are a lot of these throughout the comic. For instance...

Flowey appears in a few background shots in the Ruins!

When Sans says “or maybe...” he looks at the empty flower pot. This was one of the earliest bits of foreshadowing about who created Flowey, and nobody noticed it at the time!

The MTT vending machines initially look like this but have helpful items.

And then they look like this, with an angry face and pose- Mad Dummy has possessed them!

As of Part 38, it’s been revealed that he did first meet Asgore as “Santa.” As for whether or not he knows the truth, time will tell. :o

Oh, these are excellent suggestions for calls! I’ll try to keep these in mind.

So, I believe Glyde uses the Mysterious Door motif. Jerry uses the motif in its battle theme- I believe it’s a mix of original motif and Wrong Number song?

Sans is a master of power napping. He probably gets a decent amount of sleep, though.

There are a lot of ways to interpret Pap’s lack of sleep! In IF, he can get by without it, but he also has a lot of reasons to avoid sleeping. Some reasons include productivity but also due to a looooot of heavy baggage. More on that later.

I think sleep can definitely make monsters healthier. Rest = better mental health as well as physical health, and with how important mental and emotional help is for monsters, that’s very important!

They just really like socks. Socks are warm. Socks are slinky. And googly eyes are the best. So they took on the form of a really eccentric sock puppet and sock collector. Scandalous.

It also has Alphys’ motif, as the two are the leaders of the royal guard!

I would say the lack of Asgore as an influence has left Undyne slightly less grounded? Like, she had Toriel and Gerson in her life, but her relationship with Toriel is... definitely not quite as close? Like, Toriel by that point kept people at an arm’s length due to losing multiple children (including one from old age). So, while they were on friendly terms until the aftermath of the DT experiments and the tapes’ release, it was more like mutual respect and a sorta professional relationship with Undyne admiring Toriel and wanting to spare her from more heartache.

That is a really interesting idea. While that didn’t happen, I do need to maybe revisit the grumpy dog at some point or another. He’s still a lil’ salty.

I think in terms of layout it won’t change much, but there will be new/different content for sure. :O

Mad Dummy’s base design is mostly original, but she has a wig + headband from DIO from Jojo Part 3! Fun fact: While MTT has Kamina shades, Papyrus’ goggles are loosely based on Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in terms of color. :O

So basically, when Asriel defeated Frisk, he had the power over the timeline to reset it as he pleased- in theory. However, that power was overwhelming for him, and due his lack of understanding OF said power and one last ditch attempt at resisting from Chara, things went wrong.

There is a track that takes some inspiration from Rage Awakened. It’s not released, and it’s not exact, but it won’t be released for a WHILE. Like until the part comes out.

I think it’s just the fact that tacos are so random. Like, my biggest beef in that regard was that OG Underswap had a lot of arbitrary replacements for things in UT and not all of them made sense. Like, if Sans was to make a foreign food, ramen would’ve made more sense due to Alphys being weeb trash, haha.

Okay, so the rough timeline iiiis... Falling: - Cyan - Green - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow Dying: - Cyan - Orange - Blue - Purple - Yellow - Green

You know, it’s funny because this ask is super old, but that’s basically sorta what happened. :O It became a beach-themed resort.

Never forget MTT fangirl Temmie’s pool escapades.

I think Forgespring for me because I had to make the tileset myself (it took a few months, I think?), but Aquarius was definitely in the works for a while. But once I had the tileset from Fours, the rooms were very easy to design!

That woulda been pretty rad! Maybe I can find another spot for it one day, haha.

I think for Dohj, I’d have to check with Fours, but I’m certainly not opposed at some point? Right now, the following chars can take questions: - Frisk - Papyrus - Sans - Undyne - Alphys - Napstablook - Mettaton - Asgore - Chara - Flowey

Cyan appears in Part 45! :O No answer about orange for now, tho.

I do have vague ideas for Tem village. I just haven’t had time to go back and do it.

Stay tuned and you may find out! :O

Hmmmm... I had a lot of fun with MTT SPIRAL and the Determinator, tbh. They were both very time consuming, but I love how they came out! Also, buff Jerry.

Turnabout Storm. :)

It’s a really awesome fan crossover that works way better than it should. :P

None taken! We know that with headcanons, everyone is gonna have their own interpretations. These are just the voices we liked for Fireglobe Production, but everyone has their right to their favored interpretations!

Yeah, Knight Knight is one of the coolest CORE mercs in the original game. It was fun to repurpose them for Inverted Fate as royal guards. :o It made room for unique encounters in the CORE in the form of them robots- as Undyne would rather use machines than other monsters to do her work.

Personally, I see it as an Asriel motif, but I also acknowledge that at one point it WAS gonna be an Asgore motif. Toby has a habit of just using whatever music works for a scene (see sans. at the snail farm.)

I do have a few ideas, though I won’t say for what yet. :o

He’s likely made blueprints for that train. :P

It probably would just have different flavor text/progression!

So basically, I treat the starting motif for BAaTH/Power of NEO is just a “true hero” motif.

MTT is definitely major in IF! As for whether or not he’ll have a hangout, time will tell. There’s definitely more to resolve with him, though.

I’m gonna remake at least a few of the older tracks, including Regret. My goal is just to bring the OST to a similar standard of quality.

So, animated parts coming up: Part 47, Part 49, Part 50. There may be some other parts, but we’re gonna wanna scale things back for a little bit for the sake of all our sanities.

I go with both. ;)

Honestly, probably fairly similar to the bully fight in the Ruins- which is why I ultimately decided not to do one. Both fill similar archetypes, though I think if I did do a battle, I woulda still had Flowey interrupt at the end and scare them off.

It’s a very emotional scene. Far more tragic than her geno death, IMO.

Well, the main goal in that regard is the remasters (Part 9 is in progress). Otherwise, I do think these hiatuses are good for working ahead. I’ve still gotta do more work, though, because my buffer this time around is a lot smaller from the trial-hiatus buffer. Alas!

Honestly, the website is the best thing to happen to IF. It’s allowed us to do so much with the comic’s presentation that would be impossible with imgur. NORIX IS THE BEST...

[witchygalaxys]

Another Isekai story idea

Alright! I love coming up with ideas and sharing them.... So here is another one!

So! Its another isekai story idea where some one is reborn as the villianous. But in this story nothing is as it seems. This is an updated version of one of the other story ideas I've had. Im going to delete that one and keep this one here.

It starts off with a girl who died in our world. A girl who has been beaten and betrayed more times then she can count. She is chased onto the roof of a building by her long time stalker. For context her stalker is a very high profile person. Some one that people believed could do no wrong. When ever she went some where for help no one believed she was in danger and would refuse to help her.

When they are on the roof the girl.... let's name her.... Fiona! Fiona is backed up against the ledge. Her stalker has her at gun point and goes on a rant about how they belong together and blah blah blah. Fiona begins to agree with him and he walks up to her to hug her. When they embrace Fiona grabs onto him tightly and throws them both off the side of the building. Both killed on impact.

When Fiona wakes up she is hovering in darkness watching the world talk about her death. The news calling her the crazed stalker. Her grave being desecrated by his fans and people who knew him.

Rage filled her heart and tears filled her eyes. Saying... "even though I'm the one who killed him.... he still wins...."

A voice came out from the darkness. Whispering in her ear "every story has its hidden secrets." A monster appeared infront of her so terrifying and hideous the only thing that would come to ones mind when seeing it is that its the devil.

The devil circles her saying how its a shame how she died and that even in death that she gets no peace. He offers to give her a 2nd chance in return for a price.

Fiona listens to him and asks for details.

The devil asks her if she has read the book "A diamond in the rough." Fiona says yes and that it was her favorite book. Because the villianous gets what she had coming and the main character gets to be happy and becomes queen, that she felt a connection to the main character. And that Fiona had always hoped that's how her story would end

The devil sighs saying how that book is full of lies. That Fiona has more in common with the villianous then she had thought.

In a flash they are suddenly hovering above a torture room. Below them is the villianous Ophelia Solaris. She is bruised all over and her legs are clearly broken. Her small silk night dress ripped and covered in dirt. Her eye swollen shut. Her wrists are chained to the wall. Fiona and the devil watch as the heroine Dia Cresent walked in with a cloak around her.

You could clearly see the rage in Ophelias one good eye. Dia who was sweet and shy in the story grabbed Ophelia by the hair and lifted her head up. Smiling with such pleasure. The entire time she mumbled. "Mine, mine mine mine. You are finally mine! No one else can have you now! Even if you escaped no one would take you! You can never leave me now!" It became clear that Dia was a hard core sadist and even though she had a harem of men and even married the prince. She only had one love. Ophelia the villianous.

Fiona asks the devil why he is showing her this. And how he is showing her this. These are characters from a book so it can't be real. But it was indeed real. The devil explained that the story in the book is not just a story. Its an entirely different world. A world that he watches over and that he had created centuries ago. God has his world and the devil has his own. (This isn't your basic Christian story or anything.) The devil explains that there are special people that are able to see into other worlds. That the author of the story was one of those people. But the author only saw the surface level. That Dia was able to fools those she didn't even know were watching.

A while later Dia left Ophelias jail cell. Ophelia began to cry and scream. Praying for vengeance and freedom.

The devil looks at Fiona and says "this will be your price." He explains how he listens to the prayers of the people. And he heard Ophelias cries and saw how she was wronged and vowed to help her by taking her soul and letting it be reborn into some one new. But he needs a new soul to give her vengeance and she can not be reborn until she is avenged. He tells Fiona that he will put her into Ophelias body back when she was 12 years old. (She is 26 now.) And that it is up to her to get vengance for Ophelia as Ophelia.

Fiona asks what she would get in return for doing this. The devil says "You will also get the vengance you have been craving for." The devil says that God has been interfering in his world and had helped Dia get to where she is today. And while the devil has pulled Fiona out for a chance to live in his world. God has taken her stalker and had him be reborn in this world as well. To be one of his faithful servants. God has created churches to be against the devil even though it is his world. The church has killed many innocent creatures in the name of the lord and wishes for this to end.

The devil tells Fiona. "You are not simply another deal I plan on making. I am having you become my champion." The devil then shows the secrets about Ophilia that have been hidden. That Ophilia had a natural gift for magic and was very powerful. But due to Dia's influence she was never able to practice her skill and hone it. Dia was not a simple human eaither. She was a mage. (I love this idea of Mages being a different species than humans. If you read any of my other story ideas you might see it a lot in them. Mages are beings of pure magic. Humans can only use a certain amount of magic before they need to recharge. While mages are magic so they never need to recharge. The magic in them also stops them from aging when they reach the age of 23. While humans need to take extra steps in doing magic. Mages just need to wave their hand and its done. Although the strength of there magic is like a Muscle. It needs to be trained to get stronger.)

Ophelia is a mage on her dead mothers side. When her mother died her father a duke took her in. But due to Ophelia being the product of an affair she is shunned by her new family. Her step mother abuses her when ever she gets the chance. Her older half brother despises her. Her father does not seem to care for her. But her younger half brother by 3 years loves and adores her.

The family shunned Ophelia and sent her to live on a very large but broken estate surrounded by monster filled woods. This estate was given to her at the age of 7 for her to manage. Saying how it will show her how to overcome adversity. The mansion was falling apart and her servants were almost all spies and abused her as well. Eventually Ophelia learned to get angry and would beat those who bullied her. Only to have word of it get out. Ophelia was then set to marry the prince of the kingdom. Ophelia was madly in love with the prince but the prince didn't care for her and only cared for Dia.

Ophelia tried to avoid Dia out of fear of doing something foolish. But no matter where she seemed to go Dia was there. Simple accidents made it look like Ophelia was bullying Dia and she would be punished. Dia had a harem of men around her. Including Ophelias older brother and the prince. They constantly were making sure the world knew what kind of person Ophelia was. Even if they were all lies. The only reason the prince wants to marry Ophelia is to have the support and resources that Ophelias family possess. Even thou Ophelia gets disowned the father agrees to give her back her title if she is to marry royalty.

The devil shows Fiona all of the secrets of Ophelias life. That when Ophelia was finally set to be killed only 2 people tried to save her. Her younger brother Leo. And Dias younger twin sister Opal. Those are the only two people who would stand up for poor Ophelia. Even when Ophelia was cruel to them.

Fiona watched Ophelias true life and felt for her. She then looked to the devil and agreed to his price. The devil smiled and said that is not all. He says that Ophelia being a mage will make it so she will not age. But she can be killed. And if Fiona is killed before she can get vengeance on not just her Stalker but on Dia, Fiona will be pulled into hell to suffer for eternity. And even if she doesn't die she will never age and live for as long as she isn't killed which in itself can be a burden. That and if she commits suicide she will be going to hell. But Fiona does gets 3 wishes for her new life as Ophelia. It can be anything from having a legendary wepoun to having a special ability. Fiona thinks it over for a moment and then agrees to the devils terms.

The devil asks her "what are your wishes."

Fiona says the ability to be the best fighter in the world. To be an unbeatable fighter and be a master in every fighting style.

Her 2nd wish is to be a brilliant strategist. To have the knowledge and class to take down an enemy with out even needing to hold a wepoun.

Her 3rd wish....... she asked to hold off on. That she would make her wish when the time is right.

After that Fiona wakes up in a very sick 12 year old Ophelia. Laying in bed with a high fever. All alone.

So thats my idea that I had in the middle of the night! I really like this idea. Even though Ophelia is now OP. She won't be able to walk up to Dia and simply kill her. Dia would die and be known as the innoccent angel that was killed by the evil Ophelia. Dia's sick nature needs to be shown to the world. So when she does die the world will say "good riddance." And even though Ophelia can fight like a master, her body is still just the body of a 12 year old girl who has no stamina. So she needs to work on not just her body but her magic as well. Ophelia already has so many enemies and she is only 12. The church, the prince, her own family, Dia, and her stalker from her past life. She has no idea who her Stalker was reborn as. For all she knows he is a newborn baby now or an old man.

[kprciffdw]

Kim Possible: The Extremely Secret Files-Part 2

Back at the shuttle bay, they had a chance to stand around to take a look at Dr. Possible's shuttle. Ratchet: "Wow, I have to admit, that is one impressive looking ship." Kim: "Yeah, my dad built that, actually. Although, I'm quite surprised that both this and the space station were able to arrive here at such great speed; nothing that anyone back home has ever built came close to anything that phenomenal. Even my dad was surprised by that." Ratchet: "Hm…perhaps we can look into that while we work on it. The only problem at the moment is where to start." Kim: "I'm already on it."

Kim pulled out her Kimmunicator. Kim: "Wade, you there?" Wade: "Hey, Kim, how's the mission going?" Kim: "Um…we're kind of in a snag at the moment. We found the space station, but we nearly fell into another one of Drakken and Shego's deathtraps." Wade: "Yikes! That must have been rough." Kim: "Yeah, it was, thought we would never make it out of there alive. Fortunately, we were saved by someone who lives out here in the middle of space. Here, let me introduce you to him."

Kim held the Kimmunicator in front of Ratchet. Kim: "Wade, this is Ratchet. Ratchet, this is Wade, a 10 year old super genius who works with us on all of our missions." Ratchet: "Um…hello…Wade, it's…good to…meet you…" Wade: "Oh, my gosh! It that…an alien!? A real live alien!? I can't believe it! It's an actual alien! This is so much better than last week's episode of Space Passage and that was the best episode yet!" Ratchet: "Uh…is he OK?" Kim: "I…wouldn't worry about it too much." Ron: "Hey, Wade? You think that's cool? Check this out!"

Ron then held the Kimmunicator in front of Clank. Ron: "There's an actual robot!" Clank: "I beg your pardon, young man?" Wade: "Whoa! No way! A real live robot! And it talks!" Ron: "Yeah! And possibly so much more!" Clank: "I do not feel comfortable right now." Kim: "Guys, focus! We need to get started on how we're going to modify my dad's space shuttle." Ratchet: "Kim's right, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. We really don't have any time to mess around."

Kim looked towards Ratchet in a somewhat surprised manner. Ratchet looked back at her in as he seemed confused. Ratchet: "Uh, Kim? Are you OK?" Kim: "Huh? Oh! Yes…I'm…I'm fine. Let's figure out what we need to do."

Kim walked off, Ratchet continued to keep his eyes on her as she walked off, a small grin appeared on his face. Kim: "Wade, can you analyze the shuttle? Ratchet is planning on doing some modifications to it." Wade: "What kind of modifications does he have in mind?" Kim: "Um…well…he was thinking about some weaponry and I would guess a few other things, too." Wade: "I'll need to look into a lot of the alien technology. That might help with how we're planning to do this." Kim: "That would make sense, actually. Ratchet, you wouldn't mind if we look into a lot of this technology, would you?" Ratchet: "Not at all. What's mine is yours. Help yourself to whatever you need." Kim: "Sounds great. We're good to go, Wade. I…wouldn't be surprised if you were looking forward to…doing something like this." Wade: "Are you kidding me!? This is like a life long dream of mine! I can't tell you how much I have been itching to look into alien technology! I'll get on it right away." Kim: "Thanks, Wade. Let us know when you have finished sorting through all of this."

She placed the Kimmunicator on a nearby crate. Ratchet: "Well…um…sounds as though your…Wade is…very eager to help us out." Kim: "Yeah, to say the least. So…since there isn't anything we can do about the shuttle at the moment, perhaps we can use this time to…get to know each other?" Ratchet: "You know what? That doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. It may help a little with supporting each other through all of this."

Soon enough, Kim and Ron sat down with Ratchet and Clank and spent some time talking with them. Ratchet, within a large amount of time, told them about everything that he and Clank had been through. Ratchet: "So, anyway, after we defeated Drek and saved the entire galaxy, we have been pretty busy with a lot of the festivities. There were parades, press conferences, fancy dress balls." Clank: "And the wiener roast at Al's." Ratchet: "Oh! Yeah, that. And then things started to slow down a bit. After that was…uh…um…" Clank: "There was that Grand Opening at Groovy Lube." Kim: "Groovy Lube?" Ratchet: "It's a dance club…type…place. Don't ask about the name. I thought that was last week or so." Clank: "It was actually 6 months ago." Kim: "Hm, sounds like you guys have been through a lot." Ratchet: "You could say that. Just recently, we had an interview with a show called "Behind the Hero". Told them all of that stuff that we just mentioned to you guys. Seconds later, we were transported here where we spoke with some old geezer who goes by the name of Abercrombie Fizzwidget, who this the CEO of…"

Just then, Ratchet was interrupted by Ron trying to hold back his snickering. Kim looked at him in an annoyed manner, Ratchet and Clank did the same but in a concerned manner. Ratchet: "Uh, is he OK?" Kim: "Don't worry about it, he tends to get like this." Ratchet: "Um, OK…as I was saying, Mr. Fizzwidget, who is the CEO of Megacorp told us that…"

He was interrupted again by Ron snickering. Ratchet this time looked at him in an annoyed manner. Ron stopped after noticing that he was being stared at by both Ratchet and Kim. Ron: "Sorry, it's just Fizzwidget sounds like a funny name, that's all." Ratchet: "Yeah, that's great. So anyway, Mr. Fizzwidget told us about…"

Ron snickered yet again, which was really getting on Ratchet's nerve. Ratchet: "Will you stop doing that already!?" Kim: "Ron, seriously!" Ron: "Sorry, KP, I can't help it." Kim: "Perhaps you should go speak with Wade and check on how he's doing." Ron: "Copy that, KP, maybe he has found something interesting by now."

Ron got up and walked off. Ratchet: "Hopefully, that will be the last of any interruptions for the time being. Now then, Mr. Fizzwidget told us about a secret biological experiment that was stolen from the company by some masked thief and I was asked to get it back." Kim: "And you agreed to take on the mission." Ratchet: "Well, I did, Clank was offered a job as the head accountant of Megacorp, which included a sweet penthouse at a metropolis on another planet."

Ron rushed back over. Ron: "A sweet penthouse? Sounds like an awesome deal! Way to go, Clank!" Clank: "Thank you, Ron, and you are right, it is a great deal. Perhaps you would like to come see it for yourself sometime." Ron: "Would I ever?" Kim: "Ron, we're still on a mission of our own, remember?" Ron: "Oh, right, KP, get back Dr. P's space station, then check out the sweet penthouse on that other planet. Got it!"

Ron rushed off again. Ratchet: "Is he always this out of focus?" Kim: "You have no idea." Ratchet: "So…that's what we have been through. But enough about us, tell me about yourself. I'd like to know about you and the kind of life you have." Kim: "OK, well, first off, I'm still in high school and so is Ron. I'm the head cheerleader at Middleton High, our mascot is the Middleton Mad dogs. I pretty much live an ordinary life as a high school student, but I also live a double life as a teen crime fighter." Clank: "Really? I did not expect that." Ratchet: "Hm…an ordinary high school cheerleader living an extraordinary double life as a teen crime fighter. Sounds fascinating." Kim: "Yeah, you could say that." Clank: "So, Ms. Possible, what sort of things do you do during your double life?" Kim: "Well, I travel all over my home planet, fighting all sorts of criminals and evil masterminds, dealing with other kinds of worldly problems, save the world over and over again. Basic stuff like that." Clank: "Basic stuff? You mean you see this as standard?" Kim: "Pretty much. No big." Ratchet: "And I'm guessing that this is one of your missions, right?" Kim: "Yes, that's right. Although, I've never been to another galaxy before. In fact, going all the way out here isn't seen as something that's possible, yet." Clank: "Possible? You mean your kind is not capable interstellar travel?" Kim: "No, not yet, but we may be someday."

Ratchet seemed to be intrigued by Kim's story. Ratchet: "So, Kim, as a crime fighter, you must attract all kinds of danger. Sounds like my kind of lifestyle. You must be some kind of hero on your home planet." Kim: "Yes, that's exactly right." Ratchet: "Me, too! I've been seen as a hero throughout the entire galaxy. I have also done a lot of traveling, but to more than just one planet in actuality." Kim: "So, you've traveled to multiple planets? Hm, we haven't even started traveling to neighboring planets in our star system." Clank: "Traveling from one planet to another is a way of life here. This must seem like something that is new to you, Ms. Possible." Kim: "Yes…it is…very new." Ratchet: "Sounds kind of…primitive, but that doesn't mean you aren't fascinating or anything like that." Kim: "Thanks…" Ratchet: "So, anyway…back to the subject involving you. I'd like to know more about this double life of yours. How long have you been doing this?" Kim: "Oh, I would say a few years now; a little after I started high school." Ratchet: "So, how did all of this start?" Kim: "Well, it was right after my cheerleading tryouts, I was called out to…"

Kim went on to tell them about the story of her first mission. As she continued on, Ratchet became more and more fascinated by her. Clank took notice of his fixation towards her, which sort of concerned him. Kim: "So, after that one mission, my double life as an international crime fighter took flight and my reputation skyrocketed into fame." Ratchet: "Wow, that…is amazing. You're really something special, aren't you?" Clank: "Hm…the nature of your lifestyle sounds very complex. How are you with balancing these 2 separate lifestyles of yours?" Kim: "Well, dealing with high school is no easy feat; I manage the best I can, but crime fighting? That's easy. So not the drama." Ratchet: "So, you think high school is difficult but crime fighting is easy? You really are something else." Kim: "Please, it really is no big. Really. I can do anything." Ratchet: "Yes you can."

Ron walked back over. Ron: "Um, by the way, Ratchet, I've been wanting to ask you this. What species are you? I can't seem to figure out if you're some kind of strange…pointy… eared…tiger or cat person with a lion's tail or if you're some just other type of animal that we have never seen before. So what are you anyway?" Ratchet: "I'm a Lombax."

Ron stared at him with a blank look on his face. Ratchet: "An alien species?"

Ron continued staring at him. Ratchet: "One you've obviously never heard of before?" Ron: "Yeah…I'm trying to determine if you're a part lion, part tiger or some other cat thing or perhaps some other kind of other cat creature…person or something like that. Kim, can you help me out here?" Kim: "Let's just file him under "undocumented alien species" and leave it at that." Ron: "Works for me." Ratchet: "(groan) Fair enough."

Shortly afterwards, Kim did some more talking with Ratchet and Clank. She talked about her and Ron being friends since preschool, Ron's misadventures at Camp Wannaweep, Ron getting his pet naked mole rat Rufus. She eventually went on to talk about Wade, the 10 year old super genius who helps out Kim and Ron on their missions as well as brief them on their missions. Ratchet: "So, Kim, how did you and Ron meet Wade?" Kim: "Oh, well, that's an interesting story, it all started when…" Wade: "Kim, come in, are you there?" Kim: "Oh!"

She got up and walked over to the Kimmunicator. Kim: "Hey, Wade, did you finish up with analyzing all of the alien technology?" Wade: "Absolutely! I have also been looking into integrating all of this into your dad's space shuttle. While I was able to do that, I came across a very startling discovery." Kim: "What kind of discovery?" Wade: "It's something unbelievable! Your dad's space shuttle is partially made from alien technology." Kim: "What? Really? Do you know exactly from where?" Wade: "This is where it gets interesting. I'm picking up multiple traces of technology that originates from the galaxy that you're in now as well as a few others. And it's not just the space shuttle that I'm picking up these traces from, but also the space station." Kim: "No way! The Impossible Space Station of the Future? Did dad know about this?" Wade: "I don't know, I didn't share these findings with him, yet, but judging by how surprised he was by the speed of both of them, I would think he didn't." Kim: "Hm…very odd…" Wade: "But thankfully, from these findings, it should be a cinch to integrate a lot of the equipment that Ratchet planned on having installed." Ratchet: "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get started on suiting up this space shuttle with even more non-Earthly equipment." Kim: "Yes, let's do it. Drakken and Shego won't know what hit them."

Eventually, Kim and Ron worked with Ratchet and Clank on the modifications to the space shuttle. Ratchet: "OK, we should have everything we need to suit up this Earth vessel." Kim: "Yeah, I would think so, too. At least…hm…" Ron: "Well, yeah, sure. We have this thingy, do-hicky for that front part, then there's this thinga-ma-bob for the…that thing, and there's the what-chu-ma-call-it for the uh…what-chu-ma-call-it and then there's this strange thingy…for…the…thingy…I think…"

Ron looked towards Ratchet with a nervous grin on his face, Ratchet stared back at Ron in an annoyed manner. Ratchet: "Why don't you just leave the technical stuff to me, Clank and Wade? You just deal with…screwing in all of the loose ends." Ron: "Um…OK…"

Ron walked off. Clank: "An unusual young man, isn't he?" Ratchet: "Does this guy go on all of your missions with you, Kim?" Kim: "Um…almost…" Ron: "Hey, KP, check this out, I think I found something cool! Oh, no…oh, no! AAAAHHHH! KP! THIS THING IS TRYING TO KILL ME!"

Ratchet placed his hand on his forehead, greatly irritated, Kim was embarrassed. Ron: "AH! RATCHET! DO SOMETHING!"

At that time, they could hear the sound of something tearing. Ron: "Ah! Oh, no! Not the pants!" Kim: "Not again."

Ratchet went over to handle what was happening. Everything eventually quieted down. Ratchet then dragged Ron back alongside everyone else. He then let go of Ron and glared at him, Ron just chuckled nervously. Ratchet: "Don't touch anything! The last thing we need is something getting wrecked!"

Ratchet walked off as Ron watched him. Ratchet returned beside Kim and Clank. Ratchet: "Let's just get started on this before any other mishaps occur."

Everyone else agreed and walked off. Ron, noticing his pants, snatched them back, then was spooked by something and ran off screaming.

[majingojira]

Batman Real-Time Aging Timeline

One of my fun hobbies is, well, a crossover universe where things age in real-time.  I’ve been working on a timeline involving masked vigilantism, and Batman is, of course, central to it.   Presented below is part of that rough timeline.  Things are still in flux, but understand that the primary sources for this are a few select crossover stories (IE: Batman & Captain America, Batman & Tarzan: Claws of the Catwoman, Batman vs Predator, Batgirl & Ghost, etc), and stories that involve real-time aging for the Bat-Family (IE: John Byrne’s Generations -- though even that is a bit weird).  And Pulps.  Lots and Lotas of Pulps.  Also, things are taken with a “Imagine trying to figure out what happened at Pearl Harbor when all you have to go on are the movies made from it” and most comics fall under the Michael Bay version.  

I’ll focus on dates of birth, mantel adoptions, marriages, retirements and the like, but I’ll also mention fun crossovers that occur along the way. Not all of them, but some.   So, brace yourself for weird.  But I did my best to include EVERYONE.  

1917 - Bruce Wayne born. 

1928 - Dick Grayson born. 

1929 - The Shadow saves the Waynes and their son from a mugger.  (Batman #259 - “The Night of the Shadow”) However, he only delays the inevitable as the Waynes are gunned down in front of the young Bruce who swears to never let that happen to anyone else. 

1930 - James Gordon, in an effort to clean up Gotham, takes to some mild vigilantism himself as “The Whisperer.” He does so for only a year before finding it too taxing.  Also: 

1931 - Barbara Gordon born. 

1937 - Bruce Wayne adopts the mantle of “Batman” to prey on the superstitions and cowardice of the criminal lot. 

1939-1945 - World War II

1939 - Batman/Tarzan: Claws of the Cat-Woman - Batman and Tarzan team up on an adventure.  A Wayne founded expedition to Africa was corrupted by Finnegan Dent (an uncle to DA Harvey Dent) and they looted ... Wakanda.  It’s Wakanda.  Sure, they don’t call it that, but Wakanda is already in the crossover universe, and how many bast-worshiping Egyptian civilizations exist in Africa?  One is enough.  Also, The Cat-Woman is a princess priestess of Bast stealing back the looted artifacts and uses a black leopard themed outfit for her escapades.  So, yeah, Catwoman is The Black Panther.  And she’s a dark-skinned African Woman named Khefretari.  The adventure concludes with her having to not use the mantle and ascend to kingship with the death of her father, but it is not the end of their story as she still has artifacts to return...

Batman and Superman meet for the first time. 

The Justice Society forms. As a social club for vigilantes and superhumans to unwind in.  They mostly share stories and shoot the breeze, but occasionally teamed up for larger missions, especially when America entered WWII. But it’s primary purpose is networking and recovery. 

1940 - Dick Grayson’s family is murdered in front of him.  Bruce Wayne adopts the boy and Dick soon joins Batman on his adventures as Robin the Boy Wonder.  

The Masked Vigilante Boom of the 1940s begins in earnest, with many people taking to vigilantism to battle crime. Black Canary and Green Arrow get their start among many others. 

1941 - Detective Comics #63 - Batman battles the master thief Raffles. 

1945 - Batman Meets Captain America - The Joker may be evil, but he’s at least not a Nazi! He ends up in a gulag for his troubles. He doesn’t find it very funny. 

1948 - The House of Un-American Activities starts to target Costumed Vigilantes.  The Justice Society disbanded in response.  Diana Trevor, Wonder Woman, starts working from inside the system to counter McArthy and J. Edgar Hoover.  Subtly and openly, be it the Holiday Girls (secretaries make excellent spies) or secretly abetting other superhumans. Still, most costumed vigilantes retire at this point.  As for the rest... Some are apprehended, others sign up with the government, and others still are killed in FBI Raids.  

As Superheroes are under fire from the government, several class-action lawsuits also hound more public figures of superheroes, and only a few survive with their reputations and resources intact. 

1949 - Dick Grayson goes to College (and later, law school).  

Khefretari/Selina Kyle finishes her mission and abdicates her role as Black Panther.  With the aid of Diana Trevor, she explains her situation to the UN world court.  In the end, she still serves some time for what she did (Colonizers gonna Colonize), but she is effectively let off with a slap on the wrist.  She did this to help mend the rift between herself and Bruce Wayne.  Doing so, however, removed her from the line of royal succession. Her brother, T’Chaka, father of T’Challa, becomes the next Black Panther.  Khefretari’s timing, however, could have been better, for you see ... 

1950 - Bruce Wayne marries Julie Madison.  

Bruce Wayne jr. born. 

Dick Grayson takes over as Batman II primarily with Bruce focusing a bit more on Family life.  However, he cannot leave it fully alone. 

Kathy Kane and Bette Kane attempt to help out their cousin Bruce on various cases, as Bat-Woman I and Bat-Girl I.  

1953 - Batman #253 - Batman and the Shadow meet as crime fighters for the first time. 

Kathy Kane and Bette Kane retire as Bat-Woman and Bat-Girl.  

1954 - Batman #259 - Batman and the Shadow meet again. 

Barbara Gordon is off to a party, and her own “Batgirl” costume gives her a minor edge when she stops a crime in progress. Thrilled with the idea, she begins to operate as Batgirl II.  Eventually getting Dick and Bruce to agree.  Because she will not take ‘no’ from either of them. 

Sandra Wu-San a.k.a. “Lady Shiva” is born. 

1955 - Julie Madison and Bruce Wayne divorce. Even married, even with family, Bruce is a might obsessive with this vow of vengeance.  

At this time, Bruce Wayne begins matching his wits against a man the comics report to be “Ra’s Al Ghul”, the Demon’s Head. He is also known as The Devil Doctor, Fu Manchu.  

Khefretari/Selina Kyle is now a free woman. 

1957 - Bruce Wayne marries Khefretari/Selina Kyle.  Helena Wayne born.

1958 - Batman: The Brave and the Bold “Trials of the Demon!” - Batman is summoned back to the 1890s by Jason Blood for help escaping being blamed for occult crimes.  Jason is subdued, but Holmes and Watson are there to help Batman adjust and rescue Jason Blood/The Demon Etrigan from the forces of hell itself. 

1959 - DC Comics: The New Frontier - The Centre attacks. 

Diana Trevor works out a government organization to better employ multi-mystery-man operations in the future with her at the head and thus limiting access to their identities or technologies by the other branches.  This is often called “The Justice League” or “The Avengers” among other things.  The laws about costumed vigilantism are changed somewhat.  The short of it is, Good Samaritan Laws apply now to people in masks, but vigilantism is still illegal.  Most Superheroes work either for government agencies or are deputized by such, work as private investigators, or bail bondsmen.  Some still act independently of that, but again, Good Samaritan laws apply. This is why the “No Killing” rule became so common in superhero stories at this time.  

1960 - Dick Grayson marries Barbara Gordon. They have a son, James Grayson.  

1961 - Birth of Jason Todd. 

1964 - Dick and Barbara Grayson’s second son, Dick Grayson Jr, is born. 

1966 - Batman/The Green Hornet - “A Piece of the Action”/“Batman’s Satisfaction”

1971 - The New Scooby-Doo Movies “The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair” - Batman and Robin meet Mysteries Inc. 

1973 - Barbara Grayson christens Helena Wayne as the new Batgirl (Batgirl III). Barbara Grayson refines the “Oracle Database”

1974 - Dick Grayson is critically injured on a case and retires as Batman.  Bruce Wayne Jr. becomes Batman III. 

Detective Comics #446 “Slaughter in Silver” - The new Batman crosses paths with The Shadow. 

1975 - Jason Todd is taken in by Bruce Wayne jr. 

1975-1984 - The “Biomega” War. 

1977 - Khefretari is nearly killed after suffering blackmail. Helena is incensed by this and becomes the Huntress to reflect her darker outlook. 

Batman Family #18 “A Choice of Destinies” - Helena Wayne joins the Lawfirm her family runs: Cranston, Grayson, and Wayne.  Founded by Bruce Wayne (Batman), Dick Grayson (Batrman II) and Lamont Cranston (The Shadow). 

1978 - Stephanie Brown born. 

1979 - Jason Todd starts college, Dick Grayson Jr. steps up to become Robin IV while he’s away.  Jason is ... a little annoyed at this, but doesn’t speak up about it. 

Tim Drake is born to Jack and Angela Drake.

Formation of The “New” Teen Titans, the prior group being a publicity op and little else.  The members are gathered by Raven, a sorceress daughter of an extremely powerful demonic entity (The First? Nyarlathotep?).  They include a Founder alien living on earth known as Garfield Logan or “Beast Boy”, Dick Grayson Jr. as first Robin IV and then Nightwing I, Kori’ander a.k.a. Starfire (a Vigori of Oden’Tall), Victor Stone a.k.a. “Cyborg” (a more severe cyberization given to a high school senior after a terrible accident than that of Steven Austin), and the amazonian handmaiden to the royal family known as Troia or Donna Troy/Wonder Girl. They are ‘supervised’ by Wally West a.k.a. The Flash III.  

1980 - Barbara Gordon survives an assassination attempt, but is left paralyzed from the waist down.  

The Oracle Database becomes the Oracle Network.

James Gordon sr. is tortured and nearly killed by the same assassins. 

Helena Wayne marries Santo Bertinelli, a young man born into a Mafia family who turned on them out of a sense of justice.  Helena Bertinelli Jr. born. 

Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk: The Monster and the Madman 

1981 - Fu Manchu/Ra’s Al Ghul meets his final end. Several groups spawn from the dissolving of his group, and others expand their bases of operations with the power vacuum established.  These include the Atlas Foundation, The Hand/The Foot, the League of Assassins, and the League of Shadows. Bruce Wayne and Khefretari fake their deaths to lead one of those splinter groups (after a Lazarus dip) in secret and try and turn the network towards good.  

Bruce Wayne Jr., Batman III, forms a covert band of metahumans dubbed “The Outsiders,” consisting of himself, chemical shifter Rex Mason (Metamorpho),  Geokinetic Brion Markov (Geo-Force), martial artist and enchanted weapon wielder Tatsu Yamashiro (Katana), atomic mutant Gabrielle Doe (Halo), Psychokinetic Emilia Briggs (Looker), and Electrical Mutant Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning).  others join or leave over time, the team operates for a few years before disbanding. 

1982 - Jason Todd is killed in action.  Talia Al Ghul/The Daughter of the Demon, steals his body and revives it to begin twisting him into a weapon against the Wayne family that helped kill her father and leave Si-Fan in tatters.  Dick Grayson Jr. becomes Nightwing I. 

1983 - Cassandra Cain was born to “Lady Shiva” and David Cain. 

1984 - Carrie Kelly becomes Robin V to Bruce Wayne Jr.’s Batman III.

Spider-man and Batman: Disordered Minds

1985 - Batman and Spider-Man

1986 -  Detective Comics #572 “The Doomsday Book”  - Batman III (Bruce Wayne Jr.) and Robin V (Carrie Kelly) join Ralph Dibney (The Elongated Man) and aged private eye Slam Bradley on a case that takes them to London to prevent the assassination of Queen Elizabeth by Edgar Moriarity.  Mary Jane Watson-Parker is on the scene, herself a descendant of Doctor John Watson (and Red Sonja of Hyrkania), just in time for all to me the 132-year-old Sherlock Holmes as he helps ensure Edgar’s capture. Peter Parker, also on the scene as himself, learns that he is also a descendant of the Moriarity’s. Holmes gives the couple his blessing.

1987 - Dick Grayson Jr marries Kori’ander/Kory Anders/Starfire of Oden’tal.

1988 - Mar’i Grayson of Earth/Mary Grayson is born. 

1989 - Helena Bertinelli Sr. retires as Huntress.  

1990 - Harley Quinn first appears as the Joker’s go-to henchwoman. 

1993 - Damian Wayne born to Bruce Wayne Sr. and Khefretari.

Dr. Pamela Isley makes a bargain with the fae realms and becomes a creature of fairy similar to a Dryad. She is known only as Poison Ivy. 

1994 - Carrie Kelly becomes the “heroic” Catwoman in part to counter all the “Pretenders to the Throne” as it were (and to stop the Helenas from killing them outright for the insult). She also starts operating heavily within the Oracle Network, being groomed by Barbara to be her replacement. 

1995 - Tim Drake becomes Robin VI.  Stephanie Brown becomes The Spoiler.

Poison Ivy takes in Harley Quinn and helps her recover from the abuse the Joker heaped upon her or at least tries. She is kept as a ward of the fairies and has an extended life span as a result. It still takes her over a decade to get over “Mr. Jay.”

1996 - Carrie Kelly takes over the Oracle Network's primary leadership role. 

1998 - Helena Bertinelli Jr. takes up her mother’s mantle as Huntress.  

2000 - No Man’s Land begins. Cassandra Cain becomes Batgirl III.

2004 - Bruce Wayne Jr. starts working in an armored “Beyond” Batsuit. Tim Drake changed his costumed and started to be called “Red Robin” to his annoyance.  Jason Todd Attacks.  Cassandra Cain manages to annoy the editors of DC Comics.  

2005-2015 - The Biomega Menace trickles through with various attacks until it comes to a head in 2015 when it revives the Centre.  The beast is destroyed, ending the Biomega threat...for now. (Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire, Pacific Rim)

2005 - Bruce Wayne Sr. and Selena Wayne recruit Cassandra Cain among others for “Batman Inc” to help them take down the other Si-fan factions, in particular, the League of Shadows which followed Cassandra’s mother, Lady Shiva (who could care less about it, but her uncontrollable force-of-nature like movements were throwing everything into chaos).  Cassandra adopts the identity of “Hei Bianfu” (Black Bat) or just “Batman of Hong Kong.” 

Damian Wayne is sent to live with the rest of the “Bat-family” to hopefully temper the bad influences still remaining around his parents that had seeped into the boy’s development. 

Kate Kane becomes Batwoman II. 

Stephanie Brown becomes Batgirl V.  

2010 - Tim Drake starts taking over as Batman IV.  

Cassandra Cain becomes Nightwing III.

2011 - Tim Drake weds Stephanie Brown.  Cassandra Cain lives with them.  Their relationship is the stuff of tabloid platinum.  

2013 - Luke Fox joins the American Batman inc. as Batwing II. 

2014 - Duke Thomas starts leading the Robin gang, to Damian’s irritation.  Of the group, Terry McGinnis, Harper Row, Riko Sheridan, and Isabella Oritz, along with Duke, do eventually meet Damian’s exacting standards.  Eventually.    

2015 - Duke Thomas becomes The Signal. 

Night of the Monster Men: Gotham is threatened by a fierce attack from Biomega under the control of a man invoking the name of Hugo Strange.  4 of the monsters are unleashed, several of them also carry a variant of the Insania Virus in their blood and viscera.  When people are exposed to it, it drives them to high aggression or even transforming them into hideous beasts.  A cure is quickly deduced, and Hugo captured.  The Bat-family during this crisis consists of Timothy Drake (Batman IV), Cassandra Cain (Batwoman III), Stephanie Brown (Nightwing IV), Sin Lance (Orphan--visiting from the Arrow family), Tiffany Fox (Spoiler II), Duke Thomas (The Signal), and a being referred to as “Clayface” (Identity currently unknown). 

2020 - Damian Wayne takes over as the primary Batman, but also dons the Nightwing attire because he likes it.  Terry McGinnis and Duke Thomas share roles as “Batwing” or “Batman Beyond.”  Cassandra Cain is known as simply The Batt. Stephanie Brown as Nightwing IV, with Tiffany Fox as Batgirl V. Harper Row mostly operates behind the scenes, but has the identity of “Bluebird” to help when it's needed.  Tim Drake is fully entrenched as part of the Oracle network.  Riko Sheridan and Isabella Oritz share duties as Robins.