#While doing research on the rogue of heart’s abilities I realized JUST HOW INSANE THEY COULD BE—

[rookonthehunt]

oh !

[imagine that 0-0 faced Rook sprite with his hands up cuz i can't find it on pinterest to insert here TwT]

I- If I were a rock I would not be able to help dear Vil with his work, so I suppose I will leave Monsieur Poisson Magique alone. I have plenty of other people to hunt anyway ♡

stares at Nepeta intently ♡♡♡

[She stares back.]

NEPETA: :33< :))

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Obscure Marvel fancast of the day: Rachel Shelly as Dr. Tania Belisnky aka Red Guardian aka Starlight!

Tania Belinsky was a brilliant neurosurgeon from Russia, written back when the USSR was still in power. She grew up a devoted patriot to her country, and though she found some of what the government did to be (in her own words) repulsive, she was still dedicated to the positive Communist ideals of unity and the individual serving the many. However, when her father was exiled to Siberia for being a dissident, Tania become a costumed vigilante who fought crime, but also protected other dissidents, in hopes to reform Soviet society from within. For this reason, she was considered an enemy of the state and a wanted criminal herself by the Russian government. As a vigilante, she called herself the Red Guardian, after a previous superhero, a man who had been Russia’s answer to Captain America during the 50s. She had no superpowers, fighting purely through athletic skill, hand to hand combat, and the use of a bladed belt buckle as a weapon. Tania came to US at the request of Dr. Stephen Strange. Strange did not know she was secretly a superhero; he merely wanted her help as a fellow neurosurgeon in performing a brain transplant. The operation was a success, but right afterwards, Strange was attacked by the supervillain Plantman. Tania revealed her secret identity as Red Guardian, and they defeated Plantman with the help of Power Man. After that, Tania stayed in the United States to serve as another member of the Defenders alongside Dr. Stranger, Power Man, Valkyrie, Nighthawk, the Hulk, and other heroes. Alas, she only had a few adventures with the Defenders before she received a call from Russia, threatening her loved ones if she did not return. She did as commanded, and when she returned home, the KGB was waiting for her. They informed her that they knew of her secret identity, but it was not the government that they were taking her to…but instead to the most powerful man in all of Russia, the feared being known only as “Codename: Sergei”. It was he who had ordered her return and orchestrated this kidnapping. Tania fought her captors, but a mind-calming cowl was placed on her head, so that she was in a subdued state when she was brought before this man–Sergei Krylov aka “The Presence”, a mad scientific Soviet genius who had caused a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster in the “Forbidden Zone” by using cobalt radiation that had transformed him into a superhuman being. He had been monitoring Tania and her activities, and while he considered her heroic ideals to be naive and misled, he had decided she was his ideal mate. Tania was forcibly subjected to the same radiation, and granted superhuman abilities as well—flight, super-strength, invulnerability, and the power to shoot blasts of pure nuclear radiation. However, these powers came at a terrible cost: her free will. Tania was now in mental thrall to the Presence, as little more than his zombie-like slave…though even in this state, she always begged him not to hurt others. However, the Presence was a supervillain (what a surprise) and when the pair inevitably came into conflict with Tania’s former teammates, the Defenders, Tania regained her free will when Presence was about to kill her friends. She rejected him, and when he called her the thing he loved most, she called out how his very words showed he just thought of her as a THING, and said that he didn’t really love her, he loved a fantasy he had of her, a zombie he had created. Basically, the Presence was a gross incel before a term was invented for it, and she called him out on it. His heart broken and ego deflated, the Presence departed. As for Tania, she was kept isolated at a Soviet research facility, til the Presence unleashed a giant radioactive amoeba on Russia. Tania was unleashed to do battle the amoeba and stop him. When she arrived on the scene, she realized he wasn’t the blame for the giant amoeba, but was fighting it himself…and failing with their combined powers, they destroyed it…and then Presence confessed his love to her and as if that weren’t bad enough, SHE STAYED WITH HIM! And, surprise, she was later shown to be under his mental control again later! which makes me think that his control never really left her in the first place, and that her getting away from him physically helped her stave it off, but when she got close to him again while fighting the amoeba, that re-activated it, and THAT’S why she agreed to stay with him once more. Anyway, Presence starts going mad with power…which just means he gets more egotistical and gross. he decided he should not just be content with ONE mind-controlled consort, but should have ALL the sexiest Soviet superheroines. So he sends the mind-controlled (yet still aware enough to cry) Tania (who now goes by Starlight instead of Red Guardian) to kidnap her fellow Russian heroines, Black Widow and Darkstar. Darkstar, by the way, is the long-lost daughter of the Presence. And he knows this at this point. And yet he still wants her in his little Soviet Harem. Seriously. It’s so gross. Starlight says that this shows how he isn’t mentally well, but his “symptoms” seem to be just being egotistical and thinking he’s entitled to a bunch of hot women being under his command including his own daughter, he doesn’t seem insane so much as just disgusting to me. In any case, Starlight once again manages to snap out of his control, but “chooses” to return to him since she believes that her love can heal him. Yeah, I don’t think that’s really her choice. I think her “love” for him is just more mind-control. And if it’s not, it’s Stockholm Syndrome. And the tragic thing is, if she ditches him for real? She’s all alone. His radiating her didn’t just give her powers (which seem to have been simply to enable her to do his dirty work, like KIDNAPPING WOMEN) they also make her radioactive herself, so she can’t be around other people long or she’ll irradiate them, killing them or making them sick. He’s ensured that he’s the only person she can be around, it’s either him alone or total isolation. Just like a real abuser often isolates their victims through mundane means. Anyway, yet again she “chooses” to be with him after he is defeated by the Avengers in another villainous effort. Tania begs for his life to be spared and accompanies him into custody despite the fact she did nothing against the Avengers during their conflict, only looks sad. The exposition says that Thor shakes his head at her choice, but…as I’ve said, I don’t think it’s a choice. It’s either some degree of still-active enslavement, or the “choice” of any other abused victim when they “choose” to stay with their abuser. That’s what so many people don’t get about abuse—that victims usually “choose” to stay with them, because of how much the abusers warp their mind. And that’s just in real life, where super-powered mind-control doesn’t exist. Starlight and Presence are later released from custody to fight a greater supervillain threat, Kang the conqueror, and Presence plans to use their regained freedom to do more villainy, but Starlight talks him out of it. That’s usually what she does, try to persuade him not to be a supervillain or hurt innocents. So she’s not under totally robotic control, she can have free thought like that, she just…can’t leave or disobey him. In a way, that’s almost crueler than if she was just a robotic zombie, because it means she’s aware of what’s going on. No wonder she looks sad a lot, huh? But then again, her “persuading” Presence not to go rogue while fighting Kang…was by threatening to him that she would leave him if he did. And he agreed. So he at least does believe she can or would leave. Maybe his control waxes and wanes. Or maybe she really is choosing to be with him, so long as he doesn’t go too far in his evil, because she thinks she can change him or because, as mentioned, she can’t be around anyone else. Of course, HE can’t be around anyone else either, so does that give her one bit of leverage too. Abuse victims do sometimes have that, and it doesn’t invalidate their victimhood or make them “not really victims/not really abused”. Anyway, at some point offscreen, she grew able to control her radiation seepage, so that she was able to be around others again, and she left Presence. She became a superhero again, and joined the Winter Guard, the Russian superhero squad. Darkstar and Vanguard, the Presence’s long-estranged children, were on this squad…and Starlight started a romantic relationship with Vanguard. The son of the man who enslaved her and forced her to be his lover and servant. And as weird as that is…I get it, actually. Abuse victims often desire to go back to their abusers, and many do. Others have to fight themselves on it, even years after escaping. It’s quite possible, likely even, that Starlight still “needed” Presence, and thus getting with his son was a way of coping with that, a way to be with him without returning to him. So yeah it’s weird and squicky but it makes sense. As for Presence, he took up with a Dire Wraith sorceress named Fantasma (who was a former member of the Winter Guard herself) When the Winter Guard fought them, Fantasma was thrown into Limbo…and she dragged Starlight along with her. Neither has been seen since. My problem with Tania’s story isn’t the content itself. A story about a smart, powerful woman with her own interesting life who has everything taken from her because a man decided he owned her is a very realistic one, despite the fantastic trappings of this scenario, and it’s worth telling. But it needs to be handled with care and attention. This should be TANIA’S story. It should be ABOUT her. We should see her tragedy and triumph up close and personal. The writers should CARE and ask the readers to care too. But that’s not what happens. This cool lady joins the Defenders, has an interesting personality set up with an interesting personal conflict set up (her loyalty to her country vs her hate of its government) and then all of a sudden she just gets swept off the playing board and is kind of forgotten, popping up here and again over the next 20+ years to remind us that she belongs to this gross guy now and has limited to nil free will, escapes a few times but only temporarily, and the heroes she was friends with just all kind of ignore it. This isn’t like Bucky Barnes or Laura Kinney where the story of her trauma and enslavement is the focus, where she’s the main character, where careful attention is paid to her arc, where she HAS an arc. Tania doesn’t have an arc. Hell, when she finally gets her free will back and her radiation-seep under control, it’s completely offscreen! Her victory is never shown! She just shows up with the good guys again and we’re left to infer what happened, as if it’s some insignificant detail! And just as she’s done this—she gets tossed offscreen, forever. At least forever thus far. It’s just��so unfair. And I don’t mean on an in-universe level, where drama and conflict and unfairness should happen just like in the real world, and to keep the story moving. I mean it’s unfair in how it was handled on a meta level, and this character and her story deserved a fuck ton better.

[lilaetleloup]

Karma and Corona

If there is one force I have experimented, again and again, it's this mirror effect that our planet Earth has on our emotions, and most notably, on these two powerful and rather negative emotions that are anger and fear. And this force is as powerful as gravity, only less visible.

It's no coincidence, then, if two of the five Reiki principles are about them: - today, please, if you can, try not to be scared - today, please, if you can, try not to be angry And these, by the way, are the two principles I have the hardest time to comply with : to control one's emotions is no easy task. I've discovered when I was around twenty years old that I have this ability to canalize a powerful energy: this is a gift I finally tried to work with these last few years. And this has multiplied the impact of my emotions and forced me to face its consequences with a dazzling rapidity. The first times, as I am a good rational French girl, I thought it was coincidence. But as the response was more and more automatic, the mathematics science touched its limits. For example - an example among thousands - as I have vertigo, I won't advise to take a cable-car with me: it systematically stops on the ride. Pure happiness. And its the same effect for anger: it generates other anger and leads to confrontation. Sometimes, for me, it’s quick, it's a cupboard's door which gives me a hit and a hint And has me calm down. This is what I call the mirror effect, when it concerns emotions. That some religions may include in karma. To me, karma is only about actions. Karma answers to actions. It is an educational force - Earth is a planet school - that has us face the responsibility of what we do. Again and again. Until we understand. And when the coronavirus has shown its tentacles, I couldn't not see karma's touch. First as is appeared via an open market where all sorts of animals, more or less alive, more or less well treated, where in display for human consummation. And I'd imagine that cruelty against animals is not seen with equanimity by the universe. More to the point, karma is a neutral force: bad attracts bad, it's like a boomerang. The aviary or porcine flu and other crisis of the mad cow should alert us on this fact but - hey ! - humanity as a whole is more stubborn in its ways than a five years old kid. And less prone to learn. Then, this precise virus has appeared in China, country which has brought back an intensive use of concentration camps for its Muslim citizens. And uses them as organs reservoirs for other citizens, deemed more deserving. I try not to think too much of this, it has me fall on my knees. But I find it difficult to believe it's a coincidence when a virus is attacking the body of people whose government is committing crimes against humanity in the name of their superior right to health. As it's logical to think that the universe also doesn't favour cruelty against others. There are so many layers of karma in what's happening right now that I quite forgot to mention this one: capitalism gone rogue. It's been some decades now, that man is intensely abusing the planet and his fellow-men for the more and more exclusive wealth of some. With the talent and genius enabled by research and education for some fifty years, we should have found now, and maybe we have, some greener alternatives to the use of petrol.

And for all this time, scientists and ecologists have warned us about the peril we are in whereas manipulators of this planet, far from holding their frenetic greed back, have seem, on the contrary, to be accelerating their grasp on power and money, on a last bid to enjoy it all before their commune activity forces them to isolate in some bunker in New-Zealand. The coronavirus, when forcing this now inhumane economy to take a break, when imposing the world leaders to realize that the people who make it work are more important than insane profits... is having each country face its own responsibilities. And each country is facing the consequences of this pandemic with an intensity enhanced by this karmic factor: if it has favoured man above the economy or the other way around.  The economy must serve the people. And both, people and economy are in danger when they don't respect the planet.

How can one be so stupid as to saw the branch he's sitting on ? As to sabotage the boat we are all passengers of . There is the manipulator for you, not looking further than his nose, his next power shoot and his ego. "You, you, you, you are the most important", his ego whispers. To him, the rest can very well sink. And the powerful manipulators of this planet, who don't put the climate change as a top priority, still running like hamsters in their avidity wheel, are enabling the Poles to melt. And some see it as an opportunity to drill !

And thus accelerate the process... So if you enjoy right now the thrill of isolation and overall panic, just imagine the happiness we will share when meaner virus will be freed from the permafrost. If all this wasn't enough, also, it's been a while, nine years to be precise, that I feel the world energies taking a plunge on the negative side. That I feel fear and anger taking hold of more and more people. Fear is making us weaker, has us take the wrong decisions and attracts what it's most scared about. Invaded by fear, more and more people have made the choice to retract in the past, behind a wall or borders, rejecting others, choosing hate.

And the coronavirus, with its rapid expansion has had in fact many governments close their borders. And cities, And houses. Some people have also closed or revealed their hearts, whose selfishness can be  - in the absence of irrational panic – measured when counting their stock of rolling papers. "How do you feel, now? asks Karma. How do you feel when you are being given what you asked? When you are all imprisoned in your own boundaries? That anybody and your neighbour can be the one with the virus?" Because, unless you accept a radical and insupportable loss of freedom, this crisis has shown that borders won't ever be enough with a plague. Not to speak of the ridicule of a wall... The virus doesn't care about where you've been born or the colour of your skin. I was talking about his with my son, thinking that "racism" isn't even an adequate term. That we should talk about "colourism". Because this prejudice doesn't go farther than the superficial epidermis, when we all belong to the same race. And this is also a reminder of this virus. We are all passengers of the same planet, all interconnected. For the better, and also sometimes, for the worse. There is also a last karmic factor I felt I couldn't not evaluate, and it's the age one. Because as we all pile years, some of us get wiser, and some of us, looking behind, may find they haven't had the life they dreamed of and get bitter. Or, looking ahead, could legitimately encompass the diminishing number of years they have and get scared. Nobody can say he's completely spared from this and I should know, as when I touched forty, I had to fight not to get drowned in regrets, facing many disillusions, having it hard not to buy a ghastly red convertible. It's this double bitterness and fear factor that can incite some seniors to vote for people who sing like mermaids about a glorious past or allow them to focus this anger on another. The one who has taken what should, they think, have been theirs. The other one, the foreigner, the immigrant. An anger and a scare of this amplitude, as expressed recently, can't be without consequences. And I see the mirror effect of it in the deadly focus the virus has on the elderly. Who, now, have to depend on everyone's solidarity. And it may not be a coincidence, thus, if the two governments, put in place by anger and fear, on a promise of withdrawal behind one's borders or one's past, are the one who seem to put their citizens the most at risk. England's prime minister having talked a long time about herd's immunity. And some in the USA government seemingly ready to sacrifice its seniors in the name of the all powerful economy.  So many layers... Because as each of us has an individual karma, we all have a familial one and also a karma related to the country and another one to the planet. And the group karma is without any nuances. It hits without caring about each one’s responsibility, terrible and terribly unjust This horrible virus is here to teach us collectively. Will we still wish to imprison ourselves in our little bubbles or will we prefer freedom? To travel, live and love? Will we really go on hating others for their differences? Or will we be happy to be able to count on them in times of crisis? On the young on the people working in hospitals, on police officers, people working in supermarkets,... all others? Shall we be better at respecting animals and the planet? Will we continue, when it’s passed, to serve an all powerful and destructive economy for the benefit of some greedy and manipulative people? As a first step, we shall try, collectively, to refrain from being dominated by fear, anger or hate. And from acting on these emotions. If not, we'll all share the same karma.

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Well, here’s another little-known Marvel woman whose agency was taken from her and the writers forgot, and that I have thus gotten obsessed with. I wrote a short thing about her HERE, this is just a longer and more detailed summary of the same. But before I get started... For the record, my issue isn’t that a character has his or her agency taken, period. Those are valuable stories, and reflect real life (albeit often through a fantastic lens/metaphor) and people need that. But my issue is that while major characters like Jean Grey, Jubilee, Wolverine, Laura Kinney, and Bucky Barnes get their loss of agency to be their own story, their own arc, all about them...characters like, say, Haven, or Starlight here, don’t get that. They don’t get to be the star in these stories, they don’t get to be the spotlight in a tale of coping with and rising above this loss agency and taking it back...or even of being tragic victims who lost, like Madelyne Pryor at least got to be during Inferno. She’s the villain, but it’s very much ABOUT her. It’s when characters get their agency taken and then tossed aside, treated as unimportant by the story and writers, that bothers me. On a meta level, they’re minor characters and not the main characters and that’s why it happens story-wise, but in-universe, how are they any different from the lead characters that we’re asked to care for and root for when they have this happen to them? It bothers me, especially since it’s so often female characters in particular who seem to suffer this. Anyway.

This is Dr. Tania Belinsky, aka Red Guardian, aka Starlight. She‘s a brilliant neurosurgeon from Russia, written back when the USSR was still in power. She grew up a devoted patriot to her country, and though she found some of what the government did to be (in her own words) repulsive, she was still dedicated to the positive Communist ideals of unity and the individual serving the many. However, when her father was exiled to Siberia for being a dissident, Tania become a costumed vigilante who fought crime, but also protected other dissidents, in hopes to reform Soviet society from within. For this reason, she was considered an enemy of the state and a wanted criminal herself by the Russian government. As a vigilante, she called herself the Red Guardian, after a previous superhero, a man who had been Russia’s answer to Captain America during the 50s. She had no superpowers, fighting purely through athletic skill, hand to hand combat, and the use of a bladed belt buckle as a weapon. Tania came to US at the request of Dr. Stephen Strange. Strange did not know she was secretly a superhero; he merely wanted her help as a fellow neurosurgeon in performing a brain transplant. The operation was a success, but right afterwards, Strange was attacked by the supervillain Plantman. Tania revealed her secret identity as Red Guardian, and they defeated Plantman with the help of Power Man. After that, Tania stayed in the United States to serve as another member of the Defenders alongside Dr. Stranger, Power Man, Valkyrie, Nighthawk, the Hulk, and other heroes. Alas, she only had a few adventures with the Defenders before she received a call from Russia, threatening her loved ones if she did not return. She did as commanded, and when she returned home, the KGB was waiting for her. They informed her that they knew of her secret identity, but it was not the government that they were taking her to...but instead to the most powerful man in all of Russia, the feared being known only as “Codename: Sergei”. It was he who had ordered her return and orchestrated this kidnapping. Tania fought her captors, but a mind-calming cowl was placed on her head, so that she was in a subdued state when she was brought before this man--Sergei Krylov aka “The Presence”, a mad scientific Soviet genius who had caused a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster in the “Forbidden Zone” by using cobalt radiation that had transformed him into a superhuman being. He had been monitoring Tania and her activities, and while he considered her heroic ideals to be naive and misled, he had decided she was his ideal mate. Tania was forcibly subjected to the same radiation, and granted superhuman abilities as well---flight, super-strength, invulnerability, and the power to shoot blasts of pure nuclear radiation. However, these powers came at a terrible cost: her free will. Tania was now in mental thrall to the Presence, as little more than his zombie-like slave...though even in this state, she always begged him not to hurt others. However, the Presence was a supervillain (what a surprise) and when the pair inevitably came into conflict with Tania’s former teammates, the Defenders, Tania regained her free will when Presence was about to kill her friends. She rejected him, and when he called her the thing he loved most, she called out how his very words showed he just thought of her as a THING, and said that he didn’t really love her, he loved a fantasy he had of her, a zombie he had created. Basically, the Presence was a gross incel before a term was invented for it, and she called him out on it. His heart broken and ego deflated, the Presence departed. As for Tania, she was kept isolated at a Soviet research facility, til the Presence unleashed a giant radioactive amoeba on Russia. Tania was unleashed to do battle the amoeba and stop him. When she arrived on the scene, she realized he wasn’t the blame for the giant amoeba, but was fighting it himself...and failing with their combined powers, they destroyed it...and then Presence confessed his love to her and as if that weren’t bad enough, SHE STAYED WITH HIM! And, surprise, she was later shown to be under his mental control again later! which makes me think that his control never really left her in the first place, and that her getting away from him physically helped her stave it off, but when she got close to him again while fighting the amoeba, that re-activated it, and THAT’S why she agreed to stay with him once more. Anyway, Presence starts going mad with power...which just means he gets more egotistical and gross. he decided he should not just be content with ONE mind-controlled consort, but should have ALL the sexiest Soviet superheroines. So he sends the mind-controlled (yet still aware enough to cry) Tania (who now goes by Starlight instead of Red Guardian) to kidnap her fellow Russian heroines, Black Widow and Darkstar. Darkstar, by the way, is the long-lost daughter of the Presence. And he knows this at this point. And yet he still wants her in his little Soviet Harem. Seriously. It’s so gross. Starlight says that this shows how he isn’t mentally well, but his “symptoms” seem to be just being egotistical and thinking he’s entitled to a bunch of hot women being under his command including his own daughter, he doesn’t seem insane so much as just disgusting to me. In any case, Starlight once again manages to snap out of his control, but “chooses” to return to him since she believes that her love can heal him. Yeah, I don’t think that’s really her choice. I think her “love” for him is just more mind-control. And if it’s not, it’s Stockholm Syndrome. And the tragic thing is, if she ditches him for real? She’s all alone. His radiating her didn’t just give her powers (which seem to have been simply to enable her to do his dirty work, like KIDNAPPING WOMEN) they also make her radioactive herself, so she can’t be around other people long or she’ll irradiate them, killing them or making them sick. He’s ensured that he’s the only person she can be around, it’s either him alone or total isolation. Just like a real abuser often isolates their victims through mundane means. Anyway, yet again she “chooses” to be with him after he is defeated by the Avengers in another villainous effort. Tania begs for his life to be spared and accompanies him into custody despite the fact she did nothing against the Avengers during their conflict, only looks sad. The exposition says that Thor shakes his head at her choice, but...as I’ve said, I don’t think it’s a choice. It’s either some degree of still-active enslavement, or the “choice” of any other abused victim when they “choose” to stay with their abuser. That’s what so many people don’t get about abuse---that victims usually “choose” to stay with them, because of how much the abusers warp their mind. And that’s just in real life, where super-powered mind-control doesn’t exist. Starlight and Presence are later released from custody to fight a greater supervillain threat, Kang the conqueror, and Presence plans to use their regained freedom to do more villainy, but Starlight talks him out of it. That’s usually what she does, try to persuade him not to be a supervillain or hurt innocents. So she’s not under totally robotic control, she can have free thought like that, she just...can’t leave or disobey him. In a way, that’s almost crueler than if she was just a robotic zombie, because it means she’s aware of what’s going on. No wonder she looks sad a lot, huh? But then again, her “persuading” Presence not to go rogue while fighting Kang...was by threatening to him that she would leave him if he did. And he agreed. So he at least does believe she can or would leave. Maybe his control waxes and wanes. Or maybe she really is choosing to be with him, so long as he doesn’t go too far in his evil, because she thinks she can change him or because, as mentioned, she can’t be around anyone else. Of course, HE can’t be around anyone else either, so does that give her one bit of leverage too. Abuse victims do sometimes have that, and it doesn’t invalidate their victimhood or make them “not really victims/not really abused”. Anyway, at some point offscreen, she grew able to control her radiation seepage, so that she was able to be around others again, and she left Presence. She became a superhero again, and joined the Winter Guard, the Russian superhero squad. Darkstar and Vanguard, the Presence’s long-estranged children, were on this squad...and Starlight started a romantic relationship with Vanguard. The son of the man who enslaved her and forced her to be his lover and servant. And as weird as that is...I get it, actually. Abuse victims often desire to go back to their abusers, and many do. Others have to fight themselves on it, even years after escaping. It’s quite possible, likely even, that Starlight still “needed” Presence, and thus getting with his son was a way of coping with that, a way to be with him without returning to him. So yeah it’s weird and squicky but it makes sense. As for Presence, he took up with a Dire Wraith sorceress named Fantasma (who was a former member of the Winter Guard herself, and pretty interesting/sympathetic in her own right, I want to give her a post of her own too later) When the Winter Guard fought them, Fantasma was thrown into Limbo...and she dragged Starlight along with her. Neither has been seen since. My problem with Tania’s story isn’t the content itself. A story about a smart, powerful woman with her own interesting life who has everything taken from her because a man decided he owned her is a very realistic one, despite the fantastic trappings of this scenario, and it’s worth telling. But it needs to be handled with care and attention. This should be TANIA’S story. It should be ABOUT her. We should see her tragedy and triumph up close and personal. The writers should CARE and ask the readers to care too. But that’s not what happens. This cool lady joins the Defenders, has an interesting personality set up with an interesting personal conflict set up (her loyalty to her country vs her hate of its government) and then all of a sudden she just gets swept off the playing board and is kind of forgotten, popping up here and again over the next 20+ years to remind us that she belongs to this gross guy now and has limited to nil free will, escapes a few times but only temporarily, and the heroes she was friends with just all kind of ignore it. This isn’t like Bucky Barnes or Laura Kinney where the story of her trauma and enslavement is the focus, where she’s the main character, where careful attention is paid to her arc, where she HAS an arc. Tania doesn’t have an arc. Hell, when she finally gets her free will back and her radiation-seep under control, it’s completely offscreen! Her victory is never shown! She just shows up with the good guys again and we’re left to infer what happened, as if it’s some insignificant detail! And just as she’s done this---she gets tossed offscreen, forever. At least forever thus far. It’s just...so unfair. And I don’t mean on an in-universe level, where drama and conflict and unfairness should happen just like in the real world, and to keep the story moving. I mean it’s unfair in how it was handled on a meta level, and this character and her story deserved a fuck ton better.

[nepeta-and-co]

NEPETA: :33< “red f33lings” generally means bothe matespritship and moirallegience! Matespritship specifically would be “scarlet”, and moirallegience would be “pale”!

NEPETA: :33< as for his other quadrants, i don’t know yet!

[Nepeta’s smile strains at the comment Rook made under his breath.]

NEPETA: :))< i would advise against that, furriend!

NEPETA: I am not above transferring your soul into a rock and eating your abandoned body if you do not respect his privacy.

stares at Nepeta intently ♡♡♡

[She stares back.]

NEPETA: :33< :))