#You can make fanon where everything goes right and the universe is saved

[leon-anna]

Here we have our dear commanders Fox and Thorn enjoying the perks of the job. They were out getting lunch and happened upon a few older ladies struggling to put their luggage in their speeder. Fox and Thorn took time out of their day to make sure that everything was put neatly inside the women's trunk. This earned them dessert at a nearby ice cream shop as a "thank you". Thorn is trying some Nectrose Freeze and Fox is indulging his addiction by eating highly caffeinated caf flavoured ice cream.

Aren't they cute 🥰🥺😍 Leon really captured their rain cloud(Fox)🌧️ and sunshine(Thorn)🌞 vibe!

[pocketramblr]

other main character meta- Ochako, pt 1

<part 2>

“Could you send me there?” you ask, while i blink, confused. “The world where someone else is the main character? not because i have any hypocritical biases against the one i got, just curious how the fandom meta changes.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” I nod, thinking, before tapping my wand against your forehead. “Let’s start with Ochako.”

"I'm going to warn you now- I will have to slightly adjust the plot like I did with Mirio, just to actually let her be the main character."

"Yeah, that checks out." You nod, thinking about certain arcs where the female fighting teams get no coverage while the dudes get four different backstory reveals and full fight focus.

"Very well."

The show begins with a brief narration by the girl of quirks and super hero fights- all flashy. Then it zooms out to show the destruction, and a small construction team moving in as Ochako explains that just as there are new careers in society for heroes, there's also a bigger market for construction companies, one of which her own family runs.

"I've always wanted to help them with it, and my quirk would be useful"- a tiny, adorable Ochako finally appears, making rocks in a park float- "but to get a work license like that is expensive and selective- you've got to make a lot of court appearances and convince them why is a good idea and won't destroy the economy. It's much easier to get a hero license."

Then she explains: "Of course, once you have a hero license, you can make a lot more money than just by helping the company. Especially if... Your family company isn't doing very well." A series of tired but loving parents are shown working all hours to make ends meet.

"I want to help them- my parents. They've done everything for me, and they deserve a break. So that's why I'm going to be a hero- their hero."

The training montage is quick, using her quirk during school in training, after school in secret, around the house. She saves up money too, and studies, aiming for a scholarship.

She applies and tests for many hero schools, and the exams all vary widely.

The first episode ends with her looking up at UA, her final one, the one she really hopes to get into.

"Oh, that's nice." You nod. "And we even get to know her parents' quirks here."

"Yep." I agree. "In general, there's a lot more of a look at the financial side. It's pretty interesting."

"And the fandom?"

"Well, certain people get praised for the bare minimum, but I'll admit having a female lead is super uncommon for shonen jump." It's an improvement, though it's up in the air how much of one it will be. "There's also, because we saw a lot more hero schools, a ton of "students at different school" fics, either because they were expelled or because of the danger UA gets into."

"I do kinda feel like this universe is lucky for that sort of world building." You nod.

"It's very cool to see the takes on the aus. But, I will say there's a cost for this world building- the AfO stuff reeeeally comes out of nowhere and tends to not be popular with fans."

The next episode starts, and Ochako helps a boy from falling. "Love interest alert!" The fans notice quickly when the cute boy blushes and doesn't manage to say much before she walks away.

"They caught on quick." You note.

"And they aren't wrong." Not that it's any real feat to be right.

The exam starts, and Ochako is off in a flash. You see a few glimpses of future classmates- Iida, Aoyama, Kirishima.

She does well, racking up villain points and rescue points, until she's a little too ambitious and falls into the rubble. Her nausea is well established by now, everyone knows she's at her limit.

She can't get up.

The green haired boy comes back and stops the zero pointer.

And breaks every bone in the process.

Ochako saves him in return, lifting up the rubble and stopping his fall.

And then vomits violently afterwards.

"You know, I think quirks suck, actually." The fandom tends to agree on this after that episode/chapter. "But it is interesting that there's such a price for the powers, balances it really well."

"Ha." You shake your head. "They caught onto that, quicker."

"Yep." I can't even say it's more highlighted here, it's the exact same way it was shown in our universe- down to the sparkling rainbow puke.

"Though..." You can't quite imagine that's the only thing the fandom is saying isn't actually that great.

"Ding ding ding." I nod. "Did our own main character get treated just like a damsel in distress? Sure, she saved him back, but that just meant she could have floated away on her own in that time, even if it made her sick. Better that than dead. Is it the sexism?" I shrug. "Most decide to wait and see a bit, and by the time they work together in the first battle exercise figure it's a pretty even split between them saving each other."

"So no sexism?" You get happy at that thought.

I cough. "Ah, no. Both in the show and the fandom. You wouldn't believe how many grown men complain about the lady mc, even as they keep watching."

"And have her body pillow."

"Please don't make me think about that." I cover my eyes, but don't deny that it's true. "Anyway, yeah. Get ready for a lot of people to point out that even though the main character is a girl, every single other girl is flat as cardboard so far and that she only has developed friends that are guys."

"Hey, they aren't flat-"

"In the first season? Yeah they are. Unless you meant, physically, in which case..."

"I didn't." You protest. "But I guess I can see your point, at the start."

"Right. Let's continue on."

Uraraka goes to Present Mic to offer her points. The man pats her on the head, and skyrockets to the position of fandom dad.

"It's all about Dadmic and then Dadzawa here," I explain. "The fans were very disappointed to learn Mic wasn't her homeroom teacher, but yeah... He got a huge head start before Dadzawa fics got going."

"Nice. And it's all fanon?"

"Yeah, it may be a good thing he's not actually in it much, or they might realize how much they just made up on their own."

Then she gets accepted in, on hero and rescue points- she's third place overall, and she gets the scholarship.

On the first day of school, she actually gets to know her love interest's name- Midoriya!

There's also the quirk assessment, which really leads to the "expelled to another school" au and the "fire Aizawa and replace him with better Mic" aus, the first of which lasts much longer in the fandom use, but the second one was just as passionate for a while.

Iida becomes the second friend, and gives her the "Infinity Girl" nickname- which actually is the fandom assumption of what her hero name will be for quite a while, a la 'ground zero'.

Then it's time for All Might's first appearance on screen, to much applause of the students, and the announcement that they get their costumes.

During the first battle exercise, there's a lot more lingering camera work in the changing rooms. Ochako gets to expand a lot more on how she didn't want her costume to be that tight. It's uncomfortable, especially when she thinks about wearing it in front of everyone.

"Oh, I forgot she didn't like it at first... Does she just, get used to it here?" It sounds horrible for the plot to just say 'get used to it' to the main character being sexualized by costume makers outside of her control, especially as a child.

"Not on my watch." I mumble, waving the wand. "Don't worry, she'll actually get more costume changes each time, like some other characters."

"Oh good."

Mineta, regrettably, still exists. You find the fandom manages to be even more violent in his removal.

The battle does even out the opinions on Midoriya, as well as lead to a boost in Iida's with his charming little attempt at thinking villainously.

And cements Bakugo as rather hated. No one has really liked him, when the first thing he did was blow up at Midoriya, then get revealed to have called him a cruel nickname all this time. And then specifically hunt him down because all he cares about it beating him up.

"Yeah he's not gonna get a lot of fans here huh."

"He sure never gets first place in the popularity poll." I agree. "Most consider him the subversion of the rival trope to show is just stupid and violent and in real life, people like that don't go anywhere."

"Most?"

I look away. "How dumb of a discourse do you think you could see today?"

"Oh please, show me." You lean in. "It's nice to not have to deal with it in my universe, so I don't care."

The discourse is such.

Bakugo is gay-coded for Midoriya, the violence is a result of him being shoved off for a girl's love interest when she should be single and independent, and the homophobic creator is vilifying all gay people by saying they are predatory to poor straight boys with refused.

"They............... What."

"If it makes you feel better, that's a very brief minority of the fandom. My favorite response to it was "he's not gay-coded, he's bully coded you sanctimonious sumph of a shmuck.""

"Oh good," you sigh. "I'm glad we don't have to deal with actual queerphobic tropes like that."

I stare at you.

"What?"

I sigh. "Nothing, put a pin in that until I bring up the predatory bi thing with Toga."

Your eyes widen, and you start to have some regrets.

"Anyway, we can talk shipping later. Time for more."

The 'exit sign Iida' gives him a boost in being shipped with Ochako, (as well as Yaoyorozu) and also the general idea that "Ochako has two hands."

That one hand can have a boyfriend with a lot of cash to spare for her and the other is also played with.

"I missed the main trio, like this." You smile as they walk off into the sunset after school.

"Yeah." I agree. "Anyway, time for some near death experiences."

The USJ marks the start of the gradual, gradual growth of Dadzawa fics. It also focuses far more on Ochako, Mina, Sero, and Iida having to think strategically to get around Kurogiri. It's only after Iida escapes that we cut back to a slightly abridged version of how Midoriya was doing, then the other kids, before help arrives.

He does still through his first non bone breaking punch though, which makes the audience happy.

All Might saves the day. Aizawa is battered afterwards. Many fans start out by saying they were disappointed, since this was supposed to be the first big fight, and the kids didn't do much. Many others say in response that's the point- we're looking at first years, they had to think and help each other, but in the end they had to rely on adults.

And then the sports festival is announced. They want to do well, because this is how they get work-week placements, which could become internship offers.

Ochako thinks about Hado Nejire, the only intern of a top ten hero, and senior at UA, along with a few others who are on the up and up. She's determined.

"Really? You're bringing in the big three early?" You ask, glancing at my wand.

It's not sparkling.

I cross my arms with a huff. "Look. Nejire is at this point the only intern in the top ten, she would have been recognizable to the students for that, even if they didn't recognize the big three (which really means that they aren't actually called the Big Three by everyone, or at least not a wide enough group for it to be as big a deal as it's treated. Anyway.) But she wasn't, even if she should have been the most famous of the bunch, considering the coverage the first years got in just their first night. That's because a certain someone doesn't actually think of his female characters much, but he has to in this universe, so."

"Ok, yeah, that's fair. So does that change the sports festival?"

"Not... Much." I admit.

“What?”

“Well, keep in mind in the first universe, our main character didn’t make it past the second round in the one-on-one’s. So she’s not exactly guaranteed a win here either.”

You have to nod, admitting that is true.

“And the conflict isn’t so much about having to live up to any predecessor or breaking down some people’s walls via breaking bones.” I tap my wand against my chin, thinking. “There really is two- one about Midoriya, and one about Ochako’s parents.”

“Oh?”

“One, there’s been the Uraraka’s not happy about how much danger Ochako’s been in. Its been hinted at in the phone calls, but really shows up when we get to see them at home before the SF for the first time since she moved for school. They aren’t sure if she can stay there herself, or if the right thing to do would be to pull her out and maybe try a smaller school.”

“I suppose that's fair, if they haven't been able to actually see her or her progress.”

“Right. The second one is- well. in this, Izuku’s win of the first round, and then breaking out of brainwashing, is more about really piling on how good his mind is- all that brain power. This adds more pressure when we see Ochako being offered a plan from him to beat Bakugo.”

“Oh that does sound neat.”

“Yep- but of course, she still refuses. It’s held up as a worse thing, strategically, initially- but then she comes up with a plan that Midoriya confirms in the stands is better than his, and proves to her parents that she’s smart and skilled enough to handle continuing at the school.”

You smile. “That is a cool arc to do, i guess, if very not traditional. But what about all the character setup and growth with Shinsou and Todoroki?”

“Oh, Shinsou’s largely gets delegated all the way later for the joint training arc, where Ochako’s team is directly against him. Todoroki...” I begin to giggle.

You wait for me to answer, getting more concerned the longer i laugh.

“Pocket?”

“Sorry, sorry, yeah. He actually tells her himself in this canon, a bit after stain. Oh! right, i forgot- the cheerleader incident.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. of course they need this merch opportunity! But yes, it happens. The... shall we say, non-body-pillow portion of the fandom, generally saw it as the end of any goodwill to Kaminari, who had previously been seen as a tertiary possible love interest, since he’d flirted with her on the first day. Flirt, but harmless, and unlikely to be important. Then there was that breach of trust and international embarrassment, and anyway he’s basically the second least likely in 1a to be shipped with her now.”

“Wow. So none of that changed?”

“Well, the setup wasn’t under narration from Todoroki about how his mother was bought for her body and how much that sucked and impacted her and the family while on screen we see multiple girls tricked into barring their bodies and its treated as a laugh instead?”

You stare at me. “I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”

“Neither am I.”

“So, the Todoroki reveal?”

“Right. So, first you need to know the Stain thing- the claims he has against ‘false’ heroes focusing on money is better spotlighted. After Stain’s arrest, Ochako hears a couple of sidekicks at Gunhead’s agency-”

“Wait!” you interrupt. “She still interned with Gunhead? Then what was the point of showing Nejire and Ryukyuu earlier?”

I try not to massage my forehead. “To build up to it. She only made it to the first of the final round, she couldn’t get an internship with a top tenner yet. She’s also got to learn how to disarm someone who fights with a knife. These things build up over more time, small steps.”

“Ah.” You’re satisfied, and let me continue.

“Right, so, Overhears a couple of them talking about Stain’s philosophy and ends up just feeling really bad about it for a bit, trying to figure out if she’s actually being selfish or a bad hero for, you know, wanting her family to not be crushed due to capitalism.”

“Poor girl.” You shake your head in sympathy, the freeze. “Oh. did not intend that pun.”

“It’s alright, i know what you mean. And yeah, she bottles it up for a bit, until the second day back at school. Then Iida reminds her that him bottling things up last week got several kids in mortal danger, and she begrudgingly admits that he has a point and tells them about what has been bugging her.”

“And they comfort her?”

“Well, Todoroki also offers to tell off Kaminari because at this point his mention of stain upset both her and iida, but yes, A lot of reassurances.”

You squint. “I feel like shippers.”

“You’re learning! Yes, Todoroki is just a bit behind Iida in terms of popularity shipping with her. and she does basically get shipped A Lot with each girl in her class too, like imagine double to triple the amount with each girl now, and for the minor guys- but yeah. There’s a lottttt of ships. This was basically called ‘todoroki’s introduction into ochako’s harem’ in the fandom.”

Shipping. fandom just can’t escape it.

“So, then she learns about Todoroki’s past? oh, and what about Hosu? Does she- and everyone else- actually think Endeavor saved the three??”

I snort. “Oh, no. Todoroki’s flat ‘yeah my father totally helped us, as you read on the official report’ basically tipped the fandom off that something else had. But nothing confirmed either, you know? Filling in the hosu gap is another trope in fics that is pretty common.”

“Neat.”

“Yep. But yeah Todoroki tells her his backstory a bit after his introduction into her ‘harem’ of friends. It’s really played up more to caution Ochako- its alright for her to want to help her family, and to work for money to do that. But Rei accepted the marriage offer for money for her family too, and it ended up breaking her. Ochako has to accept a balance- she can work to help her family, and its good, but there are some things she cannot morally do to help them, and other things that she shouldn’t do because she has to take care of her own health first.”

“Ohhhh.” You hadn’t quite expected that, but you sorta liked it, now that you thought about it.

I smile. “It is pretty neat, yeah.” I glance at my watch. “Look, i hate to cut you off, but this post is gonna end up thrice the length of Mirio’s and i think tumblr might stop me, so we’re gonna have to do a two-parter.”

“That’s fine.” You are gracious for what you’ve gotten so far, and do have questions that you’re excited to see answered for the rest of the series. “It’s been fun.”

“It has been.” I agree. “Lets take a break, but you can ask me any questions too, before I return for part two.”

<part 2>

[theres-an-impulstor-among-us]

for the writing requests, could I get some ZIT with the theme "Watcher" (the beings from Grians EVO series that everyone uses in fanon now)

oh boy it has been a long time since i watched evo asdfghjkl i hope i remembered stuff correctly

Requests are still open! Please read pinned post before requesting.

...

  Impulse is the first to discover it. While out chopping down some birch trees, he comes across an odd symbol set into the cliff. But what really catches his attention is the fact that the pattern is made of bedrock. He spends a few minutes inspecting it closely, trying to figure out how it could have gotten here, before he decides that he should tell someone about it. 

  And now, right here, is when Impulse makes a decision that he will forever look back on as the moment that changed everything. He will realise in the future that he should have gone to Xisuma first, should have shown the admin the bedrock symbol so that he can deal with it. But he doesn’t.

  He goes to his best friends, Zedaph and Tango. 

  Impulse will realise later that his second mistake is in not telling his friends exactly what the issue is straight away. Instead, he tells them he has to show them something weird and he takes them to the site.

  As soon as Zedaph lays eyes on the symbol, he freezes, his entire body starting to tremble. 

  By the time his friends notice, he has fainted. 

  “Zed?!” gasps Tango, as he and Impulse rush to his side.

  Thankfully, Zedaph wakes very quickly. Blinking, he presses a hand to his throbbing head, as Tango helps him sit up. “Oh gosh… I haven’t seen that symbol in centuries…”

  “What?” Impulse stares at his friend. “You know what this is?”

  Zedaph slowly nods. “It’s the symbol of the Watchers. Have you heard of them?”

  Impulse and Tango simultaneously shake their heads. 

  “They’re a race of beings millions of years old. Some legends say they were present at the creation of the universe as we know it. They have incredible cosmic power but generally they don’t like to intervene, hence their name: the Watchers. What they do is they observe, they watch, they wait. Eventually, they may start leaving these symbols around.” Zedaph indicates the pattern. “Like that one.”

  “What does it mean if a symbol appears?” Impulse asks, somewhat nervously. “Are they marking Hermitcraft for something?”

  “When they leave their symbol on a world, it usually means there’s someone or something of interest in it,” Zedaph responds. “Or...”

  In the ensuing pause, Tango and Impulse exchange a glance. “Or… what?” Tango says.

  Zedaph avoids the question. “We need to make sure we don’t go anywhere near that thing. The Watchers may seem placid but they can be angered, and when they are, their wrath is beyond explosive. They’ve already destroyed the former world of one of the Hermits here on the server.” 

  “What?!” his friends both yelp simultaneously. 

  “Who?” Tango demands.

  “It’s not my place to say. Just know that we have to make sure it never, ever happens again.”

  A long pause follows this. 

  Finally, Impulse speaks: “Earlier, you said there might be something or someone here to interest the Watchers, or… something else. What were you going to say?”

  Zedaph squeezes his eyes shut. “...or they’re warning another Watcher living here that they know where they are.”

  “Oh, Zed…” Tango’s face creases in a sad frown. “I’m so sorry…”

  “Zed, are you telling us you’re a Watcher?” Impulse asks quietly. 

  Zedaph takes a deep breath. “I’m not biologically a Watcher but I may as well be; I was found and adopted by them as a baby and they fed me more and more of their power as I grew up until I was practically one of them. Then some bad stuff happened and… well… REALLY long story short, I abandoned them and fled here. I thought they decided not to pursue me, but… maybe they just didn’t know where to find me all this time.”

  Zedaph looks so downtrodden that Tango reaches out to hug his best friend. “We won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

  To his surprise, Zedaph pushes him away. “No, you don’t understand. If the Watchers show up here to reclaim me, I have to go with them. I’ll have no other choice. If they don’t get what they want, they will destroy this world and kill everyone in it. I’ve already seen that happen to one world; I couldn’t handle it happening to you guys as well.” His voice cracks and he buries his face in his hands. “I can’t lose you. Either of you.” 

  Tango again tries to pull Zedaph into a hug, and this time, Zedaph lets him. Impulse joins him on his other side and they hold their friend close. 

  “I came here to make a fresh start but I didn’t expect to fall in love with Hermitcraft,” Zedaph whispers. “I didn’t expect to… to form such a strong bond with you two. If the Watchers return, I-I’ll lose you either way.”

  “We won’t let that happen,” Tango vows. “We’re Hermits, remember? Hermits can solve any problem that arises if they put their minds to it. We’ll find a way to save you from them, I promise.” 

  Zedaph sniffles. He really wishes he could believe that. 

  “C’mon, buddy,” Impulse says. “Let’s all go back to your base. We’ll consolidate all your knowledge on the Watchers and see if we can figure out an effective method of making sure they don’t come for you, or at least a way of stopping them if they do come.”

  “You can’t stop a race like the Watchers,” argues Zedaph.

  “How do you know if we don’t try?” Tango says. 

  “Because I AM a Watcher, Tango. I’ve tried figuring out a way to stop them thousands of times before.” 

  “But have you tried doing it with two extremely stubborn redstone geniuses who won’t take no for an answer?” Tango inquires.

  Zedaph blinks. “Well… no, but-.”

  “That settles it, then. C’mon.”

  Tango and Impulse both tug at Zedaph’s sleeves. Their determination imbues Zedaph with a tiny bit of hope. He’s never had anyone care about him this much before, so perhaps their insight will provide the last piece of the puzzle of how to escape the Watchers once and for all.

  So he lets his friends lead him away, but none of them notice what’s happening behind them. 

  The symbol is glowing purple.

[ayellowcurtain]

Would you mind giving a description of the type of character sander is pls? I can't get a handle on him. At times he was inconsistent in s3(this is partially bc of the writing and partially) bc he was trying to conceal parts of himself from Robbe and exaggerating his personality to impress Robbe. The source material was a huge crutch in parts of this storytelling, then sobbe lost some spark in parts of wtfockdown, fanon help fill the empty spaces and now the transmedia is evolving him too. Help?

I’m gonna try to help you, anon but I guess what I’m gonna say is basically my opinion and so it might differ from what’s canon or what other people think of him and also gonna link you to some prior posts I already made talking a little bit of him: 

- Sander’s similarities with Eliott about how sometimes they struggle to deal with emotions 

- Sander and his parents, his home life and his relationship with them 

- Why was Sander going back and forth with Britt 

Now onto your real answer: 

I think Sander, as a character, is a solid one. He as a human being in some universe is imperfect, has his flaws and maybe his bad judgment at times, of situations and of people. 

Is not because he’s a fictional character that he needs to be perfect, to always say and do the right thing. 

If WTFock did him (and Robbe) dirty was mainly because of their complete lack of understanding of what pacing is. I don’t think season 3 was that badly written. It does has some horrible pacing at times, yes (OHN being on a Monday can only be a joke!!!!). 

I don’t think he was purposefully exaggerating his personality. I’m sure the Sander we now know isn’t exactly as loud and out there as we saw during the supermarket clip, for example. But he was freaking out, and being obnoxious without meaning to.

To me, it felt like was mostly freaking out, not sure what to do with himself because the boy he saw once during a random night was there, all alone with him, accepting to go out to go grocery shopping. 

That’s just an example but it’s the same behavior I see when he says they won after he shot Britt during the paintball scene, when he sings Bowie to Robbe while they see the girls walking away after the Noor x Robbe fight, or when he goes to Robbe’s place the next day and tries to kiss him. All this moments, to me, feel like a boy that doesn’t know what to do with himself, how to behave when he’s around someone he’s falling so deeply and hard for. 

We often see the Evens as these cool creatures, confident, sweet, chill. But we have to remember that’s just the first impression (and from their Isaks’ POV), and after they get to know each other, the Evens are often shy, insecure, kind of lone wolves to some degree. 

So what I thought could be seen as “inconsistent” of Sander was just him probably freaking out he was spending time with Robbe, the boy that the moon was shining on him and that Sander knew was the one. 

That’s why I assume putting “original” characters after two seasons feels a little bit like crutches (with their background stories) because if you think about it, we always know most of the characters in Skam since season 1, so even when they’re not main characters, we got to know them in the background at least, to get some information throughout the other seasons. 

We feel more connected to Robbe (and every Isak), and his background story because we’ve been hearing about it for two seasons. 

We know he has a messy house situation, we know his relationship with Jens is kinda platonic but also very brother like (with slaps, saying rude things to each other, etc), we know some people think he’s gay, we know he’s a caring friend because of the way he was with Jana during her season. All this information we got before his season. So when he was main, there was no need to build background around him because we already had most of these informations before. 

Sander is a complete stranger to us. And WTFock even gave us two episodes of just Robbe, to get to know him even more but also leaving less time for us to connect with Sander. So what we got of him was mostly WITH Robbe and ABOUT his feelings for Robbe. We know where he studies because Noor told this in ONE line.

The fandom often falls deeply in love with Even because of what we see through their lovers eyes and for how soft, caring, and representative he is (with being bipolar and pan) but I feel like we get more of who he is and his background in Sana’s season. We learn more about his past, his friends, his MI, his beliefs or curiosity about faith, etc. 

Even if we barely see him with the balloon squad, watching them we see the type of people Even (or Sander) would like to be surrounded with. 

I know people are not the biggest fans of Sobbe during WTFockdown, but I said this before, and I’ll say it again: I think I love them even more after. Even the cybersex part because I thought it was cute, the way Sander was saying he shouldn’t have pushed Robbe into doing it the past week, or how they look at each other and the things they say and how clearly they’re still trying to find the middle ground both of them are willing to experiment with. 

Anyway, I thought it was cute, and I thought it was necessary, with the conversations about the attack (WTFock made a horrible writing decision not letting this happen during the season, but at least they gave us something), about Robbe’s traumas that are still very much alive, about his mom and how well she’s doing most of the time, how Robbe is still trying to help her in any way he can. And also about boundaries, about Robbe, that same boy that was calling Sander the F word is now so out and proud, asking Milan about cybersex, talking to his friends about it (because he did tell the boys what they did or Aaron wouldn’t be trying to have cybersex with Amber and the boys wouldn’t be taking their clothes off for Sander’s bday). 

I think WTFock would use Sobbe for as much content as they can because they know that’s their golden couple. The Willems have a unique chemistry that’s out of this world, they’re both amazing actors and WTFock knows they’re solid, that the fandom will watch, engage in whatever these characters are involved in and that they boys will deliver every time, no matter how odd the circumstances are. The WTFock team knows they can give these boys a few lines and let they create a scene out of it and it’ll still be good content.  

After this long ass post I’ll have to tell you that Sander is:

Mostly private, reserved, some would say shy but I think he just saves himself the energy and the trouble so he only really engages with who he really wants. In this case, Robbe, and the people that are important to Robbe because, again, Robbe is the most important person. I really think (and hope) that when Sander keeps saying “it’s you and me, always”, he really means it. Like they’re one, a solid team that works so well together to tackle any and everything. 

A natural flirt. I mean, look at him, you know? And he doesn’t even have to try. And when he tries, it’s over for anyone else because he’ll be eating a marshmallow in that way he did with Britt, he’ll be kissing his girl like he wishes he could be kissing Robbe, he’ll be licking your ear, and dragging you out of a bar, purring please say at yours like no fucking other. 

He’s a full on artist. He loves any type of art, he loves talking about art, he loves doing art, painting, drawing, taking pictures, listening to music, thinking about all the intense colors. I’m sure he’s a very visual person in his brain too. If you ask him about how he’s feeling, it’ll be probably easier to draw what he fells than write. 

Again, nobody likes talking about this but Sander is a horny one. And he knows how to tease with the stepping back before Robbe can kiss him, he knows what to say, how to look at you with those shiny lips, wetting his lips with his tongue all the time, asking to have cybersex. And I’m also sure he’s really good at sex and enjoys it so very much. 

When you’re not Robbe, and when you’re not involved with Robbe, when Robbe doesn’t care about you, Sander can be hard like a brick. He’ll scream at you with no shame if you get under his skin because he really doesn’t care. He’s finally fully happy, with the guy he thinks is the one and he doesn’t want to spend a second of his energy with you so he won’t even try. 

I think he has a really small filter from what he thinks and what he says. Like when he says Robbe can bribe the teacher, or when firts with Robbe while Britt is taking a shower, or when he says they need to put some better music instead of making out with his boyfriend during the last episode. 

His “all the way or no way” line is basically words he lives by and he’s also a taurus, like myself, so he really means those words with any aspect of his life. 

He forgave Robbe so easily after the F word scene because 1) he’s a teenagers, he won’t be thinking as hard as the fandom did about it 2) again, it’s Robbe and he can get away with anything because Sander is completely gone for this boy that he won’t be able to stay mad even when he knows he should because he wants to be with Robbe, that’s it.

He and Robbe are very close, not only as boyfriends, I feel like right now, after everything that happened between Robbe and the boys and Sander with Britt (and probably the ballon squad) they’re very picky with trying to start new relationships, and they know they’re solid with each other, they have similar taste and opinions. Robbe softens Sander’s edges a little bit and Sander makes Robbe a little more confident in being himself, picking himself first. 

I hope this very long, ridiculous answer helps you a little bit, anon, don’t mind me getting carried away talking about characters I love :’D

[juniaships]

Actiontoongorlz's Top 8 Canon x OC Ships 💖💖

I've been looking at OTP/Couples memes for a while and decided that it's time for me to make my own! For an extra surprise I'm not putting Ben Tennyson x Jora Holiday on this list because I focus too much on them anyways & I want my other OCs & their loves to have the spotlight for a change. The timing couldn't be more perfect as we're close to Valentine's Day!!! If you don't support canon x oc or find my ships displeasing then move along because this is a Happy Place! 😁😁 Again these are couples that I consider my personal OTPs in regards to canon x oc. That and making more content with my ships in general! Be warned the text is long and contains spoilers for certain shows and such!!

Clarify: these are my own ocs so there's not going to be anyone else's oc/canon. I might have to save that for another post in the future! 💚 But yeah these are characters that I came up with :]

Alright I'm done ranting, let's get started!

1. Sonic x Lani: I never quite gave much thought into this pair as I should so I promise to do something with them in the future! I promise! What I appreciate about SonLani is that there's little drama, like everything is super chill because both parties are chill. It's not a big deal and they don't need grand gestures to show how much they care about each other. Unlike Preboot Archie with its carts full of poorly written romance and strangely OOC moments on Sonic's end, SonLani had a lot of time to grow, while keeping his established personality in check. They actually communicate with each other, and stick by each other thick and thin. Lani loves Sonic for who he is & has no plans on changing him. Likewise Sonic has someone he can rely on when things get tough; not to mention he can really be himself around her without going all "iLl sLOw dOWn fOr U." Plus the ship name I gave them is a huge nod to the games ^_^

2. Jason x Vanessa: A recent pair due to Vanessa being a new creation but I'm honestly in love with them right now. In-universe they are regarded as the prime example of 'Opposites Attract' in Odyssey. They didn't get along very well in Jason's first couple of months in town due to his hardheaded self and her aloof demeanor. But through events such as Blackgaard and Novacom they gradually learn to trust one another. They see each other in a different light, Vanessa realising that Jason is a lot more thoughtful than he lets on, and Jason discovering her hidden fun side and kindness. Vanessa provides challenges and a sense of normalcy Jason can enjoy away from spy business. Meanwhile Jason fulfills her thirst of adventure & simultaneous desire for a peaceful life as well as spirituality. They're a equals, regarding each other as such and not to mention the BANTER! Hard to believe a former nun can keep up with a secret agent both physically and trading barbs XD. There's also the Forbidden Love factor of Vanessa being the duaghter of Regis Blackgaard, Jason defending her because he KNOWS she is nothing like her old man. Their friendship and romance overcome so many obstacles. I can honestly say that if Vanessa was canon she'd be the type of person Jason would like to be with especially over Jillian Marshall *gags*

3. Kaysha Wallace x Leo Hamato: Now here's a ship that I want to get more into 😁😁 Honestly I love the idea of this pairing: the serious leadee x bubbly spirit! Kaysha is very perky yet understands Leo's feelings on shouldering so much responsibility (she being the oldest child in her family). She's very willing to support him because she doesn't want to see him get all weary from burden. Likewise Leo can be himself around her, and teach her to be more responsible. He doesn't doubt her potential and sees her as an equal even during those periods where she was not on par with the other ninja. Kaysha shows Leo it's okay to relax and let other people help him out and not shut everyone out. When Leo expresses his ability to give her a safe life she simply laughs it off; the way she sees it him simply there in her life is enough. The most interesting facet is their dynamic varies between shows, so you'd see different scenarios and reactions as well as similarities and differences in their romance subplot.

4. Artie x Rhodanthe: Another couple I seriously need to give more attention to, they're meant to be is the foil to Shrek and Fiona in several ways. Artie and Rho may come from different social classes but they're both searching for a purpose to prove their haters wrong. Artie lacked confidence while Rho was overconfident believing she didn't need help. Together Artie learns to stand up for not only for his kingdom and loved ones hut also for himself; Rho's pride gets tempered by Artie's kindness and willingness to compromise. Another thing I like is that Artie has someone who loves him for him not because he is attractive and of royal blood. Likewise Rho has someone who respects her in spite of her social standing & shares her beliefs in making life easier for the poor & outcasts. While both lacke the physical prowess of Shrek and Fiona they rely on each other's resourcefulness and strategic thinking to get by. Unlike Shrek and Fiona they don't get married at the end of their focus movie, resolving to figure out where to take their relationship next. They still have their own life goals and don't want to rush into a relationship which sends a pretty good message. However they have their disagreements - in fact they got a huge argument that became a plot point in Shrek Forever After - but through it all they rediscover the things that made them fall in true love with each other. I'm really loving the subplot I have planned where they forget their memories and slowly fall back in love again.

5. Finn x Alma: Surprise! Yes8 I have a Cars OC (that was originally a fanon Disney Princess) who is the niece of Tow Mater in my verse and she enters a relationship with Finn McMissile. The thing I love about this pair is that it allows Alma to use her skills to flourish, treating amd healing injured spies. She's also into travel and adventure so she can pretty much keep up with Finn. Likewise Finn realizes she is more than just a pretty face or a one-off fling but someone with the passion to face challenges head on; Finn seems to love a good challenge! But overall they'd make a nice pairing, Finn showing Alma the world and Alma showing Finn some of the more simpler things in life.

6. Alexander Paine & Qiu Jin: Well well well look at what the cat dragged in? If it isn't our first villain pairing? XD Just kidding only one half is a genuine villain. What makes this couple so unique in that their storyline goes way back to before the events of the show, he being a agent and she a mechanic. They loved each other deeply, even to the point of starting a family, but forced apart due to some troubling events. When they do get back together it's not so much a bittersweet reunion as Paine became a full villain and Qiu Jin had spent years in&out mental institution before being released There's visible pain & regret, Alexander desperately wanting a semblance of what they once had. He seeks power not just for himself for to heal her. But Jin refuses to go along with his schemes wanting nothing more than to move on and see their children. Jin is a huge Mortality Pet for him, but his own selfish desires for power is a major obstacle their love can't overcome. It's the more bittersweet of my pairings but an important one nonetheless.

7. Bruce Wayne x Nicola Holden: Ok the Brooding Guy/Gentle Girl trope is a mixed bag these days but I really like this trope in regards to Brucola. Like with Artie/Rho, Bruce and Nicola come from different social classes but has that same compassion and drive to help others. Nicola is someone Bruce can trust but at the same time she lets him know there are boundaries (aka don't use my weaknesses as a contingency plan). I also feel like Bruce needs a sort of normal love interest, while he has canon normal girlfriends most of them were pretty boring. At least with Nicola she has has a life outside being a love interest her own goals and motivations. She also loves Bruce for him, not because of his money and good looks. It's a generally healthy dynamic built on honesty & empathy. Another reason why I find this pair adorable is that it actually matches with the rest of the Trinity; you know, like how Superman is with a journalist and Wondy is with a soldier/agent. Nicola & Bruce having different ways of pursuing justice while still sharing similar moral codes. It helps that Nicola is actually a hero rather than an antihero/villain/straight villain (Bruce dating a villan would only make him look like a hypocrite). Nicola sees all facets of Bruce's life and makes the choice to stay; provides some much needed light not just in his life but also the rest of the Batfam. In turn Bruce has another connection to the normal world that is willing to be in his life and see him genuinely happy. They're mature adults who ground each other and build each other up.

8. Optimus Prime x Malina Lovelace: Okay is it just me or do I think TFA Optimus Prime needs more love? What's funny is that at first Malina didn't like the thought of being outshined by newcomers in her superhero career. Spending time with Optimus makes her realize that there's more to being a superhero than fame. Optimus doesn't look down on her, and is more than willing to work with her and appreciate her work. She becomes touched by his friendliness and aceepts him and the other Bots. At the same time Malina reminds Optimus that it's okay to make mistakes and move on, and that it's okay to cut toxic people out. I even wrote a noncanon ficlet where Malina calls out Sentinel and Blackarachnia for the way they treat Optimus. OptMalina is a romance built on respect despite the obvious differences. Not to mention they have each other's back, and they learn about each other each time. And just like with KayLeo and BatRose there's different continuities which means unique versions of the Optlina pair. The Bayverse *chortle* and Prime versions are a few I'd love to explore in the future!

Miscellaneous

- Chad Charming x Soraya Nedakh: Essentially snobby rich kid who learns to be self sufficient and see past appearances through a positive influence. Soraya helps Chad to understand that being royalty isn't just pretty clothes and parties but actually using that status to help others. And Chad actually has his views challenged: Soraya doesn't back down easily.

- Jetta x Zane: The concept of JettaZane (or A Touch Of Snow/IceMagic) is that the robot teaches the human what it's like to be human. Jetta started out as an extremely cold person and a loner, but her time with Zane - the literal ninja of ice - gradually melts her heart & she becomes more caring and accepting. So the robot programmed to be human helps the human raised to be a cold machine unlearn her toxic traits and reclaim her humanity. Also Pixane is kinda boring imo, like they're only together because they're both robots. Not very compelling if you ask me.

- Brian Crown x Kelly Arbol: The wellmeaning goofball and the beatnik poet are something I rarely see much of, but that pretty much sums up their ship. Brian may be a bit self centered but he has a heart of gold and through Kelly's influence he becomes more confident in being a worthy successor to his dad. Meanwhile Brian respects Kelly in and out costume and teaches her how to have fun. Not to mention Kelly interacts with someone outside her circle, which is a welcome change from the trope of only dating someone within your circle.

- Janus Lee x Lenora Rose: Another pair from the same show as Paine and Qiu Jin, there's not much to say on them other than it's one of the most tragic couples. Lenora died a long time ago due to circumstances beyond her & Mr. Lee's control and it's her death that was the catalyst to his gradual descent into evil. As the show goes on we see glimpses of their life together and realize that Lenora is more than the Ghost, she was someone with her own dreams and motivations. She and Janus were outcasts who found companionship in each other, and were able to build a life together using their hard-earned resources to help others. Even in the last few months of her life she didn't go down without a fight, wanting her legacy to be one of love and hope. It's her memory that may be the key to redeeming Mr. Lee in the future of A.T.O.M.

- Ben Florian x Paige: Again not much else to say but they're the antithesis of Mal x Ben. One thing that bothers me about Mal & Ben is that they are supposed to be equals when it's pretty darn obvious from the scenes they were not. With PaigeBen it's clear that they ARE equals who respect each other. Ben's agency isn't reduced to just love interest, he has someone he has good communication with and wants to see him succeed. Paige has someone who shares her interests and see her more than just that One American Newbie. They LEARN to work together without love potions involved. Plus we haven't had a commoner Disney Princess in a while so Paige fills in as someone who works her way into high status then uses that status to help others with Ben at her side.

That's enough of my Canon x OC OTPs! I hope to explore them more throughout the year :) I work hard to flesh out my OCs and their romantic storylines as if they're real 💚😌

I do have KayLeo week planned for Feb 14 to Feb 21 so don't be shocked when I start posting rottmnt stuff or art of Kaysha! Anyways these are my personal ships that I enjoy despite the lack of content I made of them, so hopefully I have the creative juices flowing to make more stuff! Final note I'm working on a platonic oc x canon meme to show that love doesn't have to be romantic. A

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Credit for Invader Zim goes to Jhonen Vasquez

Credit for Powerpuff Girls goes to Craig McCracken

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

I’m gonna wait a bit more, to talk about some feelings regarding PPG.

which has to do with some Positive and Negatives that has to do with the Fandom.

anyway I got this ship that pop into my head, had to draw a ship drawing of it....if they get married, that would make Dib and Gaz the new Big Siblings of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.

the chances of this ship getting more shippers is perhaps well, maybe small......I don’t know how many will like this ship.

also ever since finding out about Resident Evil Character

Lady Dimitrescu, I have seen or heard the word “Simp”

what does that mean anyway....?

she is a very tall lady, in theory I believe she could be a bit more taller than Slenderman himself.

speaking of height, I’m starting to think I’m not 5′5″ at all...

I mean once I thought I was 5′6″ but turns out I’m not.

so I asked my pendulum, asked it if I was 5′5″

it circled slow for No, asked if I am taller than 5′5″

still gives me a No.

asked if I’m 5′3″ and it gave a Yes.

even if it could explain how I notice how my shadow is,

it just seems so small even when I stand close to it, and check the height between myself and the shadow are about the same.

at least my shoes make me a bit taller.

  I guess my pendulum could be telling me the truth

about me being 5′3″......but it could be one of it’s pranks.

I’m listening to Addict right now,

the song was created by a fan called Silva Hound,

the song then ended up having it’s own official Hazbin Hotel Music Video.

 you can find the song on both Silva Hound’s channel,

as well as it’s Music Video over at Vivziepop’s channel.

and I DON’T mean the one that is called “Vivziepop Club.”

I’m still not pleased with that “club channel.”

I’m just gonna try to keep a eye out for the real episode 4

of Helluva Boss.

was playing the AU of AU FNAF game called

Five Nights of Flirting, finally got a Good Ending in them.

well the Romance ones, even if one of the characters didn’t really say they were but kind of implied it,

it is nice that they made them Ace.

well I’m Aceflux, well technically Aroaceflux.

I still find romance interesting and well do some shipping.

plus it is still possible for those who are Ace to get crushes

or fall in love, plus there are different forms of romance

that doesn’t always have to be well the intense version.

like a tender kiss on the forehead or on the cheek.

just hanging out and watching shows or movies

or reading comics or playing video games you love.

 anyway I had successfully got the Romance Endings

with Jeremy and Fritz. (in two different timelines, not at the same time.)

just need to try to get the others, and maybe I will get to a True Ending.

Purple Guy is perhaps gonna be difficult for me.

or as he is known as Vincent.

I like to think of him as the Canon Purpleman’s Son,

like the one who was always bullied by his older brother.

 I’m keeping the name I’m using, if I change it

it is most likely my progress from the Jeremy & Fritz’s timelines

will be lost. 

well the name I’m using is well, it is spelled a bit differently.

but I decided to go with “Alice”

but I decided to spell it with a ��y” instead of a “i”

that alternate way of spelling Alice is interesting,

plus they both will still sound the same.

if I have another Save, that is separate from that one.

I could always try to go with the default name “Doll”

I kind of want to think of the three versions of Doll,

being siblings, a Sister, Brother and Sibling.

it be nice if Undertale had such a option.

like you could pick to be either Female or Male

or Non-Binary/Genderfluid.

those are the three picks for Five Nights of Flirting.

 well when we do play Undertale,

whatever the Bio-Sex/Gender of the Player,

it can be projected upon Frisk.

so when I play Frisk and well control them throughout the game.

I can see them as Gyno-Agender.

it isn’t like “Agender” where it is just Non-Binary.

it is a Bigender Identity, being both Binary & Non-Binary.

think of it as being a fusion, think of the song Stronger Than You.

the original from Steven Universe, but the Undertale Parody is still awesome too.

I decided to make a new tumblr avatar,

that shows both my sexuality & gender identity.

the colors I picked is suppose to be for my Aroaceflux Identity,

while inside the heart will be for my gender identity.

so it is suppose to be a Sexuality/Gender Identity type avatar flag.

also I’m gonna try to look up the whole Simp, maybe look it up later and finally figure out what it means.

cause I have No clue.

also I want to say that, it can be possible for even someone who is Ace or Aceflux, to be a empath to “pheromones”.....

even if some might think that can’t be true, I believe it is.

the best thing to keep me from picking up THOSE kinds of energies from family or others that live where I live,

is to keep wearing my bracelets that has Black Obsidian and Selenite Agate.

I started getting gems, to help me.

I even keep them under my pillow.

 I even sleep with my bracelets on too, but only take them off

when I have to take a shower or bath.

but after that, I will put them back on...

it be nice if hospitals had two types of doctors,

ones that treats well the seizures that actually needs medicine in the form of pills.

and the other giving advice to just move to a place with less negative

energy from both human and supernatural.        

not all seizures will be the type that needs pills.

but try telling doctors that, hey if someone goes through withdrawal

don’t just put them back on the pill thinking they need it.

they NEVER needed them in the first place, they needed to get away from the town because it is that place that was causing the dang seizures in the first place.

I....went through withdrawal before, even if now I believe I never truly needed them, just needed to move far enough away from the negative energy......

I think it is possible, when I thought I was being touched

but no one was touching me....I think it might of been something else that I couldn’t see that was perhaps, really touching me.

like you being touched on your arm or back.

I wish doctors didn’t misdiagnose so much.

not all seizures are gonna be the same, and some spiritual doctors would be nice to see too.

I can’t help but be, concerned about staying in a room too long

if I start to pick up certain energies...

plus I’m gonna try to take a break from using my pendulum,

so gonna try not to use it too much.

but only use it once in a while.

also if it is possible that those from a distant future

are messing with timelines,

and that is why I remember a story I was told before

that has to do with someone in my family....

then well I can only hope the ones messing with timelines,

will stay in their own timeline, and stop breaking reality.

timelines can become more fragile the more you try to tamper with it.

plus it is possible those who try to tamper with it,

will get karma, so it is best for them to stop before the karma becomes really REALLY bad.

even if you do try to correct the changes that were made,

that would most likely cause problems too, but you should only fix it

if it truly 100% needs to be corrected back to how it was

before some human messed with it.

if that is true, that would be on my list.

I’m Semi-Misanthrope, I still like humanity but there are ugly parts of it that makes me disappointed.

so there are still good, even if there are the bad mixed in there too. 

Starlight Glimmer did the same thing, but what if she wasn’t the first?

what if Sunset was the original element of Harmony,

but Celestia changed the Pony version of her friends memories.

 but in theory, if Starlight made one more change in history

it would of most likely cause a break of all reality.

I think those timelines that were created, still exist

but are now Alternate Universes, still having existence.

but not being part of the Main Timeline.

or the Beta Main Timeline, while the Alpha Main Timeline

is the one where Sunset came from I think.

 I still love SVTFOE and MLPFIM,

but I just don’t like how they seem to blame the scapegoats

for what Discord, Moon Butterfly and Mina Loveberry started.

even if some fans aren’t fans of Steven Universe Future

(and that’s okay, not everyone has to like it.)

at least that show didn’t pull the same Broken Moral Compass.

the endings of those two shows were awesome,

like Luster Dawn seems like a really interesting and awesome character.

and the whole dimensions in SVTFOE, merging is awesome.

also I’m starting to wonder if Glossryck really did die

or if no longer being bond to SVTFOE’s Realm of Magic,

left him free to explore the Multiverse.

after noticing in the magic book of spells,

that had Glossryck’s to do list.

I believe in theory he is secretly alive,

even if it is off screen, and fans might need to figure it out.

 I also believe it wasn’t Toffee who corrupted Star’s Wand or the Realm of Magic, that was Star.

it is possible the Dark Magic was always in The Butterfly Family.

well Negative Emotion Magic.

Toffee was never in the wands, he was just speaking through from where he was in the Realm of Magic.

I can’t be the only one who is noticing the habit

where Heroes kind of pull a Anti-Hero move

and don’t even bother to punish the ones who started the problem in the first place.

once more I still love those shows,

I just am not a fan of the Broken Moral Compasses moments,

like Star deciding to place the blame on Magic for her problems,

but it isn’t magic that was to blame, it was her family misusing it.

or the whole Cozy, Chrysalis and Tirek being turned into a statue.

I’m not sure if Discord even got punished for bringing those three together or for everything else he’s done that leads up to it.            

 I wonder if it’s weird to kind of start to see

Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup

as Cozy, Chrysalis and Tirek’s Reincarnations.

like Buttercup being Chrysalis’s Reborn Self,

Blossom being Tirek’s Reborn Self

and lastly Bubbles being Cozy Glow Reborn Self.

of course that would be Fanon, and not canon.

anyway, once again this ship of Utonium x Membrane

might not get many shippers.

but I think that’s okay, I mean not everyone has to like this ship.

 and if my pendulum keeps giving me a Yes

about being 5′3″, I guess I will have to believe it.

but I would need to gather more proof.

I will believe it’s Yes answer about having Multiracial heritage.

but I’m not gonna try to date HUMANS.

not unless they aren’t some stuck up racist shisno.

once again, I’m Semi-Misanthrope, even if I still like humanity,

the disgusting part of it just really disgusts me, and the whole racism thing is only part of it.

plus thanks to my pendulum, I now believe that Jesus

was indeed Black.

and all through out history it had been censored.

once again even though I am a Ma-Acolyte, I can still believe in Jesus too....but now I believe he was in fact Black.

my pendulum gave me a Yes, when I asked if Jesus’s Mother was White, and a Yes for Jesus being Black.

 but you can’t try to force people to accept that, it is best to let them accept it by their own free will.

like I mention many times before, I do NOT like forced converting.

 even if my pendulum gave a Yes

when I asked if Jesus had a interracial heritage that he had inherited from his mother Mary (Not from Joseph.)

not many people will support that, but there will still be some that will support it and believe it is true.

plus I don’t know if I should tell my family about it,

I mean I did finally talk about the whole Asexuality...

but I know there was some form of misinterpreting.

even if some who are Ace are Gay, some will be either Bi, Pan or Hetero or even Omni.

Omni can have different forms of attraction.

but I want to try to wait a while to correct my family for misunderstanding Ace, I still love my family

but I know they can misunderstand things

worse than me at times, I think. 

  I think I should take it one step at a time,

when I’m ready I will correct them about their misunderstanding of Asexuality, as well as the whole needing to tell them that there has been lies told about a distant cousin.

I’m glad I never came out as Aroaceflux,

because if I did, I would most likely get the whole

passive aggressive treatment.

which means your family still loves you, they just can’t accept ya being that way......and it might be possible it could take most families time to fully accept.

plus the passive aggressive, is less bad, it is still bad,

but it wouldn’t be as bad as the aggressive.

it is the aggressive without the passive part. 

I will try to sign back on later, so I can check on some stuff on here.

but before I sign out, I’m gonna change my avatar.

then I’m going to “Wing-Town”

I asked my pendulum, and it seems my energy wings are hugging around me right now, so I will assume I’m already in Wing-Town.

it’s like Sweater-Town, but with Earth Angel Energy Wings instead.

plus I can’t see them, but I should make sure to not go out if there are those around who can see them.

not that I can go out right now anyway.

anyway I’m just gonna hurry up and change my avatar

then I will go lay down in bed while being in Wing-Town.

then later after I finish laying down in bed

(which it is likely I might fall asleep.)

I will go and eat some good.

hope some of you like this drawing of Membrane & Utonium.

so see ya later, stay safe and remember that there many types of ships, and not all of them are romance.

 go here to learn that there is more types of “ships”

  https://shipping.fandom.com/wiki/Shipping_Wiki

just go to the part that says Shipping.

I believe that because people might misinterpret.

for Friendships, it is best to use “I Bud It”

and for Found Families, it is best to use “I Fam It.”

not using “I ship it” keeps from any misunderstandings.

maybe after I take a nap I will watch Kids Next Door,

and maybe even Invader Zim too, as well as some other Cartoon shows

and maybe even a few movies too.

I’m a bit tired, so I’m gonna hurry up and change my tumblr avatar

and then go lay down for maybe a hour or a few.

PS:

maybe this ship will get a lot of fan art, or not...I’m not really sure.

once again see ya later and stay safe....

[exalok]

whaddup my dudes!!!

i am tired and wired and this means brain no writey but brain VERY focused on absolutely all the fic i have going on at once that aren’t prompts (prompts will be incoming, no worries dissociation anon)

and THAT means y’all get to hear about my many. many. MANY projects, or at least the ones that make my heart go pitter patter when i think of them

a few examples: demon!corvo and priest!daud with extra worldbuilding ; the naptime cuddles AU ; corvo doesn’t come to dunwall so jess and daud end up arranged-married for profit (more info..... under the readmore..... i’m gonna get rambly)

also feel free to ask questions, i love questions and they get me thinking even more in depth about the world and specific instances of characters and that is the entire POINT

LIKE OKAY SO MY BRAIN PRETTY MUCH CONTINUOUSLY THROWS IDEAS AT THE WALL AND ABOUT 95% OF THEM STICK BECAUSE I’M A HOARDING RAT BASTARD i love my ideas they are my precioussss

i might have about. 25 fic more or less active at the moment? which sounds like a reasonable number but those are the ones i have an actual plot for as well as the will to get them out into the world

let’s put aside the ones i have actually posted on tumblr or ao3 (teen!daud, domestic zombie apocalypse, bondageverse, knife!corvo) in favor of those you have either no or little idea exist. begin:

I MEAN OBVIOUSLY I MADE FANFIC OF MY OWN FANFIC or as i call it parallel/companion fic, because at some point in the past a prompter inspired me and i was deep in the prince!daud fic at the time and i thought what if high chaos. what if void monster corvo? what if horrifying yet human creature of the depths!!! what if EVERYTHING was TERRIBLE and daud killed corvo as a last ditch and vain attempt to get his people out of burrows’ clutches, and it all went to shit from there??? also they’re bound by marriage contract and the vagaries of magical intention and daud becomes corvo’s life battery, in essence, which you can imagine leads to a very unhealthy relationship i think it’s not spoilering much to tell you it does NOT end well, and i’ll be writing it as a sort of foil to low chaos prince!daud

i have quite a few high chaos fics actually. high chaos is depressing to play but the story outcomes are DELICIOUS and the degrading world and character motivations are a lot of fun to play around in

weirdly enough another one of these high chaos fics is the naptime cuddles AU!!! i won’t lie it’s the one i am currently on and i want to talk about it to everyone so bad constantly. in short, corvo doesn’t kill daud and the whalers because he’s trying to get out and currently too fucked up to fight, and when he doesn’t manage to save emily despite his best efforts he comes back to daud for some kind of symbolic execution. meanwhile thomas convinced daud to take a goddamn nap with him there because daud, despite his paranoia, does sleep better with people around, and this is entirely an excuse for semi-platonic daudthomascorvo cuddles in bed followed by whaler puppypiles when the gang catches on that this is a thing they can do now I LOVE PUPPYPILE WHALERS I LOVE NAPS I LOVE REDEMPTION THROUGH THE POWER OF RESTORATIVE SLEEP please i’m so tired and i can’t actually fall asleep next to people let me live my dream vicariously additionally: this will be my contribution to the absolutely wonderful whaler vineyard of old fanon

there is also what i feel should be a classic and ISN’T though a couple of fics were written around the concept and one in particular is /chef kiss, and the concept is: high chaos corvo meets low chaos corvo!!!!! i made it a threesome with daud because no one can stop me and i fucking LOVE the idea of daud ending up capable of telling them apart through tiny details even when high chaos corvo, bastard that he is, tries to impersonate low chaos corvo, who is a bastard in much more subtle ways and would probably be better at impersonating hc!c than the other way around but finds it distasteful; also i added intense body horror because that’s how i roll and there are eventual magical CONSEQUENCES to hc!c being in the low chaos world and regularly in contact with what is essentially his narrative double when he doesn’t belong there, probably ends in a tragically bittersweet way, i’m not completely clear on it yet though i do have ideas

and oh man......... the time travel corvo fic.... the one where high chaos corvo ends up in his own seven-year-old body........... fuck i hashed out so much of the general worldbuilding for that one and ended up going way too far and imagining a sequel like i always do where corvo learns how to walk universes and gathers people he cares about from places where he can actually save them from their eventual tragic futures and the dissolution of their timelines once the outsider is ousted from the void and a new void avatar is made and SHENANIGANS YO!!! SHENANIGANS AND CAMPING!!!! SELF-CROSSOVERS!!!!!!! I COULD HAVE HIM MEET HIMSELF IF HE HADN’T TRAVELED BACK I’M CRYING I HAVE SO MANY EMOTIONS

the one where corvo is a fae child is probably a lil bit high chaos though it isn’t determined yet, and he has all of these instincts with regards to possessing and exchange and deals, and assumptions as to how other people must work approximately the same, and he is so wrong. then there’s the really creepy bad touch possible sequel that i won’t get into unless someone specifically asks because it’s a lil bit much really

oh MAN oh SHIT speaking of bad touch there’s another dead dove do not eat one where i grabbed an entire handful of granny rags’ apparent fucking around with magical arrays and rune creation and general spellery and threw it at corvo post-interregnum and he sees “ghosts” and doesn’t understand what the FUCK is going on and things go really badly for him, and one ghost, soon the only ghost, is daud, and corvo doesn’t know if he’s real, if he’s seeing things, if he’s NOT seeing things but daud is some kind of void demon, if he is and also having psychotic breaks he doesn’t remember because he ends up with some hellish bruises, but the real daud is actually still out there just hiding out and corvo will eventually meet up with him and real daud will meet fake daud and even more shit will happen

god, the demon!corvo AU gets pretty fucked up as well if i remember right; corvo is both some dude with a wife and kid and the demon that inhabits him, jess is his wife and the demon that inhabits her (to be clear, separate characters but both based on either jess or corvo oh my GOD what if i switched the demons that would be amazing but no, calm down, maybe for a short what-if scenario that will inevitably turn into its own thing), daud is the overseer with the really good exorcism record trying to get the demons to fuck off except he thinks there’s only one of them and the other takes him by surprise; cue daud being hunted by that demon, furious that daud shattered his favorite pupil, and some revelations about what exactly lives inside the abbey and also under it

on a somewhat lighter note, the one where corvo never comes to dunwall (i think his mom gets sick and he doesn’t win the blade verbena at sixteen?) is also where jess keeps losing her royal protectors to assassination attempts because the first one was decent and died protecting her and the second one was decent and had an accident and people start believing there’s a curse on the position or a curse on her, and she’s like okay so how do i make sure i don’t die now that no one is willing to become my protector since it’s pretty much a death sentence, and she arranges a meeting with the best assassin in the city and suggests an alliance -- protection and some commission overview, all secret, versus funding and housing -- in the form of a marriage and daud ends up agreeing; then later duke abele visits and corvo is among his personal guard and he gets to meet the empress, and the assassin, and there are ot3 shenanigans

oh my GOD also the kids in karnaca AU. obviously. fuck you may have seen the (dis)armingly charmed notefic but this would be them meeting as actual kids, in karnaca, just tiny babies, daud recently kidnapped and corvo doing his best to make this cool older kid into his friend and also maybe hiding him from the people who want to train him to do Illegal Things, and there are dumb childish arguments and daud goes on the run to avoid capture and there is an exchange of letters that at one point stops and corvo is Devastated and there is a REUNION and they are ADORABLE but also INCREDIBLY STUPID, AS IS RIGHT AND CORRECT, and i don’t know what happens later but it gives me warm fuzzies okay

then i have a NUMBER of oneshots that are more or less plotted out, like the one where jess has a kind of groundhog day because Heart reasons but over months and starts out not quite remembering what happened in past attempts and OF COURSE it ends with royal ot3; and there’s the one where Daud becomes the Outsider and is very temporally confused and OF COURSE it ends with corvodaud who do you take me for (including Very Perplexing arguments where daud doesn’t know at what point in this relationship’s development he is and corvo is angry or very patient depending on where he accidentally time travels to, and i make some assumptions about the non-linearity of the void avatar’s existence); and there’s the one where corvo catches the plague and gets through kingsparrow to get emily out then to people he trusts, ie the curnows and sam beechworth, then crawls away to die, but daud finds him and sighs and rolls up his sleeves and sends whalers to the Tower and emily thinks the Tower is haunted then, when it becomes very clear the Tower is not, demands one of these assassins teach her how to stab a bitch; AND THERE’S THE ONE WHERE CORVO AND JESS ARE GHOSTS AND DAUD IS A REAL ESTATE AGENT AND THE WHALERS ARE THE KIDS HE TRIED TO HELP OUT AS A SOCIAL WORKER and yes it’s ot3 and yes he buys the ghost house and ends up being filmed by the whalers to do cooking videos and fancy knife tricks and asmr because his voice is insanely soothing when he’s not being ornery; oh fuck and there’s the one where i wrote an unrequited corvodaud prompt and my brain grabbed it, smelled it, and decided that corvo very reluctantly falling for daud was necessary to the health of my feelings, and there is at least one (1) sleeping beauty coma while corvo yells at the outsider about the Heart; also there’s the one where in D2 billie was evasive about the old guy living with her on her boat and em finds daud rather than sokolov in jindosh’s basement and they have long, emotional discussions; and for the character building hell of it one that would span the outsider’s beginnings and growth and how the void tries to welcome him in

okay........................ i think i’m done rambling now

i love fanfic y’all

[alteredphoenix]

Phoenix Down (Tentative Title)(BnHA/WoW X-Over)(Hawks-centric)(WIP)

Warning: Spoilers for the latest BnHA manga chapters and Shadowlands abound, but the latter is light and takes place prior to Legion (when the Machine of Death breaks), so no Sylvanas shenanigans here.

A/N: When I started reading BnHA, it was to see how the story unfolded after I dropped it fifteen chapters when it was around 100 or so. I took an interest in the Deku-Bakugou dynamics, and kept going.

Then I met Hawks, and now I’m only reading it for him. He’s the reason why I’m not spamming Warcraft GIFs at the moment.

OTOH, I caught up at the worst possible time with the short hiatus that happened after 277, and while the War Arc is interesting I really just want to see how it caps off and segues into the next arc’s developments. Which means I’ve no choice but to wait for Hawks - or “Birdman Jim” as I like to call him (”Chickenman Stan” is another) - to recover and probably die, without his wings.

So in the meantime, I wanted to write a fic to get my mind off things and with the concept of something that I, as a reader, would want to find interesting and want to read. So I started two, but I’m not a fan of writing fics where the arc is still ongoing and eventually debunks fanon interpretations and predictions so the first one I began - which would’ve involved Hawks surviving but with a newfound fear of fire (because fuck you, Dabi) - is currently shelved. I also don’t like shipping Hawks with Dabi or Endeavor or any of the League of Villains, so that left me with two options: do a Hawks/OC fic (I will admit I have somewhat warmed to the idea, so I have no right to knock on those stories anymore) or a crossover with WoW.

Naturally, I picked the WoW x-over fic where I yeet Keigo’s soul to the Shadowlands and deal with the fallout of the judgment the Kyrian Covenant passes onto him. Because he’s not angsty enough, so let’s make him angst even more!

-

And then, he wakens, to the toll of a bell fading in the distance.

And then, another, rising in crescendo, resonates in the air, soon falls away.

His vision is blurred beyond recognition. He can’t blink, can’t breathe.

“What’s going on? Where am I?” Keigo wants to say, but the words don’t come out. He looks around, but it’s pointless: everywhere he looks, it’s a sea of swirling, cotton ball blue in an even larger area of star-studded darkness that stretches away from him, into eternity. A bright dot on the horizon that steadily grows the deeper he—swims? flies?--toward it, like the opening intro of a pre-Advent movie.

Keigo looks down at himself, and the blue shifts with him. No hands, no feet, no wings, an amorphous mass.

He shouts. “What—What is this?! What happened to my—?!”

“You are dead, as are we all.”

He turns, as much as he can turn without a body, in the direction of the voice. Part of the mass drifts away from the river of souls and comes up beside him. Within those clouds there is a face—maybe man, maybe woman, maybe both. Staring at it is like watching an analog TV set trying to adjust the screen to stillness with no luck, leaving this person, or an amalgamation of sorts, to regard him with static snow and wavering CCTV scan lines.

“Dead?” Keigo echoes. “No...No, I can’t be. Tokoyami saved me. I remember”— the seismic rocking of the assault outside, the blood spurting from Bubaigawara’s neck as he stumbled out of the room, the smug smile on Dabi’s face as the weight of his secrets settled, Tokoyami vaulting over the railing—”He can fly. I trust him.”

“Yet here you are,” the soul tells him. “Your friend did the best he could. Perhaps you have, too.”

Would he have a mouth, Keigo would open it, and would he have one he would snap it shut and wince. Feel the sting in his heart at Bubaigawara’s smile, his laughter, his tears and the betrayal written in his bloodshot eyes, the power of his Quirk welling up around him as his doubles formed.

—You call yourself a hero?—

Keigo already knows the answer to that.

He’s quiet a long time before he speaks again. “I hope they stopped them,” he says, quiet. “I hope they won and survived.”

“Hope is all you can ask for.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “So. I guess this is it, huh? Looks like we’re on a one-way ticket to Heaven.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“We’re going to the Shadowlands.”

“...The Shadowlands?” Keigo muses. “Then I guess we’re going to Hell. Makes sense.” If only he could smile.

The blue cloud is silent. Then, a little timidly, maybe a little fearfully: “I hope not. I’ve heard the stories, from many different cultures. Of ancestral hunting grounds and a paradise bathed in light. I don’t know which one is true and which one is fantasy. But I hope it’s not the Hell I’ve heard the most.”

“Only one way to find out, right?”

“For better or worse, it’s our only recourse.”

The dot has gotten larger, brighter; he, his companion, and everyone among the mass would be rendered blind under different circumstances. Yet blind or not, there’s a warmth—or rather, more of a sensation of warmth—that reaches out to them with invisible hands, and with each soul a finger touches sends a knowing throughout their being.

His friend illuminates, a wink of light at their center that sets what appear to be electric sparks inside them. They sigh and seems to slow down, though they stay by his side at a pace that gives him the impression that they are gliding on a wind only they can feel. “Oh,” they croon. Then, with more emotion: “Oh. How...wonderful. Can you feel it, friend?”

Keigo feels nothing at first, only the emptiness of disembodiment. He wants to say that perhaps the Shadowlands is different for everyone. Perhaps his companion is a candidate for Heaven, a person of good deed and moral character. Perhaps that is why they feel good about their warmth, and this is how the thought circles back to him with sharp, visceral dread. I’ve already felt it before, he wants to tell them. I know where I’m bound for. I’m not a hero. This is what I deserve—

That’s when it touches him, and the universe falls away and spreads before him all at once. It is not the agony of Dabi’s blue fire that devours his wings to skeletal branches or the rough kicks that reduce them to smoking tinder. It is not the coy, cruel titillation of the wind on his face that Tokoyami soars through to deliver him to his death.

No. This warmth is...soft. Gentle. Like the breeze that blows through the cherry blossoms in that April bloom, after the winter frost has long since passed. Like the night, wings outspread and carrying him above Japan’s glittering high rises and traffic-jammed streets. The first taste of coffee that goes down his throat with sweet, sinful pleasure.

It is—

“What is this?” Keigo—Hawks—asks. Everything he sees, feels, hears come back to him, not in a rush but with the incremental trundling of a  subway car making that long, sleepy trip down the tunnel before it reemerges onto into the dark. It spreads over him, into him, fills him with the submersion of water without the discomfort of drowning. It is the wind beneath him, and nothing hurts. No flames to consume utterly and completely, no scars to ruin him forever, no war to damn him, no Commission to tell him to turn a blind eye—only the memory of those in the know of the sacrifice he paid in mud and blood would live on, beyond him.

All for the best.

“Peace,” his friend says. “It’s peace.”

“Oh,” he says, and thinks, So that’s what this is.

It is wonderful.

The warmth prods him with quiet insistence.

Hawks welcomes it, embraces it, and flies.

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Fanon characterization of the Calypso twins between me and The Wild West Pyro: 

We both have the strong sinking feeling that the twins are slowly going to lose it as the game goes on, so here’s our collaborated analysis of the two:

I’ll be in non-cool text, while The Wild West Pyro will be in italics, for easier distinction between us. [There will be slight edits and changes for cohesion]

“It would be pretty interesting if we found out the Calypsos/the cult started out with 'good intentions'.”

“Hell, you can see the populism kicking in there.What did the writers say? Ah. "Your poor bandits! You're kicked around and nobody likes you, but we can give you a purpose in life! We can make you feel appreciated and loved!" [This is a reference to the Danny Homan interview] Something of that line.”

“oh yeah! the twins are also providing them with food and weaponry. i mean i can see why a bandit desperate for something better would follow them.”

“I'm guessing how this goes: The Twins start off by winning people over by talking about how they want Pandora to be finally at peace after endless war and giving the bandits a new life where they're treated like actual people. Then once they've got enough people, they say that the Raiders have to go, the corporations have to go, with the Vaults seized the universe will see no more war. Actually, I'm predicting rn that they have a very, very cult-like end goal in terms of IRL parallels.What if they choose to "cleanse" the universe with whatever power Tyreen possesses? And once everything standing in their way is gone, they can create this ideal utopian peaceful universe where there's no corporations and no more fighting. Meanwhile the Eridians are panicking because they know it's a doomed plan and the Vaults do not work like that.”

“[this is very much a] large scale Opportunity situation. literally reverse uno card as to what jack was attempting”

“Yep. Paradise for the common man bandit. OTL parallels to what usually sparks communist revolutions or popular revolutions in general. So yeah, Tyreen could very easily justify herself in that she genuinely wants to bring peace to the universe, with all means necessary. Of course, internally, the Twins just want to be gods and play at being them and hold onto their power as absolute rulers presiding over an eternally-grateful populace.”

“definitely sounds like two teenage cult leaders to me ngl. i could see them not being too secure in themselves (behind the vvv confident personas they put on) and constantly second guessing themselves and reassuring that they're doing this for everyone's own good even as things just keep getting worse and worse. could [have] a tie-in to whatever tragic backstory they might have”

“Yep and yep. And there's this internal fear that they don't know what being a god entails, if they'll lose sense of who they are or not... but put that aside. All for the greater good! I'm actually thinking about this. People note that the Twins are basically streamer critiques, which is a yes. But if you want to take them to serious universe-spanning villain territory, I think that they'll absorb the knowledge from Elpis at one point. And they start to become more detached and more frightening, and a lot more eloquent as they really start becoming gods in the BL sense. While still being narcissistic attention whores who actually like killing people off with their powers but pretend to act benevolent. Essentially, you have the Greek Gods except there's two Zeuses, one is a girl and they've both got all of Zeus's worst traits cranked up to eleven.”

“oh god are they gonna dick everything that moves? oh no... cover ava's eyes! joking aside, that sounds accurate. especially given the borderlands universe loves to tie in its greek mythology. also also i am glad someone else agrees the twins are going to elpis. i refuse to believe they'd destroy it/blow it up before going there for the info. that shit is valuable! especially if you want to convince people you're gods?? accurately predicting the future is insanely good for doing that! plus all the other cool shit you can do by knowing exactly what's going to happen.”

“It also makes the Twins much more dangerous if they can see every outcome...unfortunately, Lilith is very good at playing 4D Chess by now.”

“lilith, putting on her sunglasses and cracking her knuckles: it's time to show them what a real military organization can do. ellie is her hype woman with the drink and a towel. also also lilith is probably kicking herself for not being fast enough this time to punch the vault symbol into tyreen's face.”

“Honestly, I'd love Lilith to turn out to be this really crafty, really charismatic guerrilla warfare commander. Like an Innie leader but they're hypercompetent, not a terrorist and also have Keyes's sheer talent for analyzing battles and tactics and adapting accordingly. Lilith sitting up in Sanc-III being BL!Keyes except a lady and specializing in ground warfare would be sick.”

“yes. fucking. please. gearbox please give lily all the character development, your girl deserves it. im glad because it does seem like she's getting there when you crash land on Promethea. and even the way she handles herself on the bridge is very smooth and confident.”

“tfw you can see the future and, yet, the lady you robbed of her siren powers is outsmarting you 24/7, 365 days a year despite you being able to see the future. also you're trying to fight fate and desperate to change reality so that you can't lose like the future said you would. joke's on you, you cannot fight it.”

“There is no changing it. bonus points if ty only saw the very end, so she is utterly clueless on how the middle bits play out. so lilith is kicking her ass across elpis and she's like ‘this is NOT how i saw this going’.”

“I'd seriously imagine that life in BL corporate society really is like life in Rapture or Columbia. The upper class profits immensely and reaps all the best goods, but they refuse to do the dirty work themselves so they rely on this huge workforce who they constantly cheat, lie and exploit. The few achieve huge power and stuff at the expense of the many. Looking at the Twins in the parallels of how revolutions go, they'll basically go from recruiting the bandits to recruiting the huge lower class of every planet.  Looking at records from all the planets, we've got people being screwed over again and again, corruption and other nasties. The Twins claim that they want all corporations to go, to bring some form of unified government back to the galaxy. And it works- their army size quadruples overnight and goes from there. By the time we get to Promethea, the COV are already recruiting everyone dissatisfied with corporate life. If they successfully seize control of Maliwan like I predict, they'll be a force to be reckoned with. The Twins will use the masses to achieve some sort of theocratic revolution, [they] claim that it's all for everyone's good. But in reality, they want to be absolute rulers of the universe, gods worshipped and feared by all.”

“Oh yeah, the twins are definitely feeding (maybe literally) off the huge numbers of dissatisfied people across the universe- the mega corporations are evil, no doubt there are millions of people waiting for something better. tbh, if gaige wasn't booted from the main game, I could see a whole side story of her having started a revolution somewhere, and then joining up with the Crimson Raiders once her entire party just up and joined the CoV. And [I would] 100% bet the twins started a campaign against DAHL and Atlas and suddenly nearly every bandit on pandora joined up with them. (also Athena was sitting in a chair clutching at the armrests and janey was like "don't you fuckin dare, hon" and athena is like "but... Atlas...")”

[We talk more about Gaige’s anarchist revolution and trying to topple the mega corporations in a less cult-y fashion here]

“... Bonus points 2: The COV fire up the memories of Jack to rally everyone into opposing Hyperion and suddenly Athena is like "OK I'm not going, mobilize the army." And Janey is like ‘Here we go...’.”

[we joke around a little bit more about Athena and Janey here]

“I can imagine Rhys's internal conflict, knowing that he has to make the galaxy a better place but at the same time, maintain his corporate power and control because without it, he's doomed. Then again, Rhys is no stranger to doing shady stuff. I think a lot of the Twins's evil will be in how they treat their followers.There's all the smooth-talking and promises of the future. And then when you actually get there, you're brainwashed into being another unthinking, 100% loyal attack dog for them. And you follow everything they ask you to do for 100%, even if they use you for power experiments or cannon fodder. And the game will remind us that these people weren't all bandits - over the course of the story, the COV includes people like former corporate execs, entire families, people who were just trying to get by day to day. And now we as Vault Hunters have to kill all these ordinary people to save the universe. Tough choices, eh?“

“Oh geez, you know that's a really fair point. i know borderlands likes to push the 'morally gray' aspect of things, but holy shit that's dark. (not saying i don't love it though, i totally do lol) You’re probably 100% right that rhys is struggling internally. especially after being so closely tied up with hyperion and even fiona and sasha, seeing exactly what hyperion did to people not just on helios but the people trying to live their daily lives and survive on pandora. im sure he has a similar reasoning to himself as the twins: im doing this for the better of the people. i can help so many more people with this money and power. somewhat similar to handsome jack, but hopefully lorelei (if she's not evil) helps ground him and keep him from jumping into the middle-to-deep end.”

“I'm still betting that Rhys will remain on the good side, if a teensy bit unscrupulous. I mean, the whole thing about the Twins is that they're social commentary of livestreamers and influencers and the incredibly toxic influence they can have. There are countless aspects of that to explore. If streamers can mobilize their entire loyal fanbases to bully the crap outta some poor chump or buy things or let their fans believe that they know the streamer 100% as a person and not a persona, the Twins can convince people to go to war.”

“Oooh yeah, it's not hard to imagine they probably don't even need the brainwashing for a majority of their cult, just the select few who are either on the fence or against it, but are [still] 'available'. irl streamers can be seriously fuckin scary, man, im not surprised this is the route gearbox is going for. now, it would be severely fucked up if there was a scene where tyreen demands someone kill themselves on the spot and they do without hesitation. if you watch the moze gameplay there seems to be a hint of something like that going on over the radio/TVs, she mentions something about their sacrifice or something, then you hear a dude screaming/gurgling.”

“Everyone's thinking that Tyreen will be this laughable, entertaining villain. But I'm constantly seeing hints and estimating that she is going to be far, far more scarier than we give her credit for. For one, Jack was a presence largely relegated to audio. We only physically saw him in BL2 twice. The Twins run a cult, which itself is frightening already. And it looks like we'll be seeing them in person very often.”

“Oh yes, tyreen is fucking terrifying. i mean even that she can steal siren powers is already a huge "whoa what the fuck" in my book. that one line at the end of the HBC where she's like "you're my most loyal follower vault thief, you just don't know it yet"? fucking scary, how her voice drops and gets all serious for a split second and then the hologram just cuts out. i was like "wh- wait hang on-???" i definitely think she is putting up a persona and as the game goes on we're slowly going to watch her lose it. troy will probably grow a bit distant from her as well if he doesn't lose it, too. definitely think ty is going to try and kill him once he's of no use to her, because he's just been a pain in her side because she had to keep him alive as the brains of the operation. but once the operation is done... whoops. sorry pal. don't need you anymore. they're the main villains, i can't see her holding the bonds of family in high regard at all. she could totally write off his death as like ‘he sacrificed himself for the Great Vault, now we pray to him every day and sacrifice ourselves in his name’ or smth”

“She puts up this fun-loving persona as a streamer, but she then decides the Vault Hunters get to see her true self. It is not pretty. It makes Jack look like a kitten-cuddling fluffball, that's how bad the real Tyreen is. It makes Piston and Vasquez sound like friendly guys you'd take out for lunch after work. It makes Hector's goals look very reasonable and sane. Also, perhaps she kills him and we never see how she did it, which ups the scare factor. It's like Troy disappeared and we have no idea how she killed him and how long it took for him to die. We just find a lot of irreconcilable proof that Troy is dead now and we don't know how. That is the amount of horror I'm estimating.”

“Oh man I love this. That's so horrible (in a good way), I can 100% see it happening. Jack swore revenge for us killing the person he 'loved'. Tyreen herself kills the person she 'loved' and we start to realize holy shit this is the real deal. She can't even pretend to care like Jack pretended to care (he didn't actually care about Angel as a person, but he did say things to try and make Angel think he did, just putting that out there cuz I don't wanna sound like I support him lol). There's just a complete contrast between her and Jack during the final levels of the game. Jack stops joking around "you feel that, child killer?", he's dead serious and ready to kill vs Tyreen laughing or just being off the rails bubbly for her 'streamer persona' while looking utterly unhinged”

so yeah, the convo teetered off after this a bit, but the general gist is that Tyreen is going to go absolutely off-the-wall by the end of the main story. this is somewhat supported by the Danny Homan interview that states the twins are going to have their relationship warp and twist.Tyreen is going to start going crazy with all the powers she absorbs and realize once the plan is over she won’t need Troy’s expertise anymore, and Troy is going to get sick of being relegated to the side when he’s the one with the master plan. We both have the deep feelings the twins aren’t going to stay as charismatic as they are in the little bit of promo material we’ve gotten of them. which i get, because in a lot of the official trailers, Troy looks pissed. Tyreen is always super smug no matter what shot she’s in, but Troy... he looks very angry in some shots we get. even when Ty is holding his forearm in that one shot, he rips his arm out of her grip. For example: “How many IRL streamer "friends" get into ridiculous drama and feuds with each other? Answer: a lot. Could be mirroring that with the twins. A lot of people are saying that the new villains will never match up to Jack. This is our take, and we're proud of it, and very confident in Gearbox's new writing team. ”

EDIT: some edits made by The Wild West Pyro

[wolfenm-marveling]

There are three big reasons I have not and don’t want to see Endgame ....

For one, I wrote a lengthy article about that will run in June at Sequential Tart (I'll update this post with the link when it goes live *EDIT* Here it is: The Subject of Character Death, Revisited - http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=3362 ). The other two, I'll talk about here; they involve Steve and Bucky.

I know what you’re thinking: Wolfie, how can you form an opinion on a movie you haven't seen? Well, I do have mental health issues (undiagnosed and untreated because I have no insurance or job, yay), so when the film was released in China, I found someone to spoil me so that I might make an informed decision as to whether or not I could *handle* seeing it, given some worries I had (and especially since 3 hours without a bathroom break was not going to work for me or my companion). I determined from that convo that it would be a Very Bad Idea for me to see the film.

Even seeing the constant posts about it  -- especially ones that called it a  “beautiful” or “perfect” end, etc. -- was triggering anxiety and mental anguish / circular thoughts (admittedly in part because there were similarly “bad” things happening in other fandoms of mine -- it was too much at once). And I'm STILL having massive issues with circular thoughts about it.

This essay isn't meant to tell anyone they’re wrong about how they perceive / feel about the film, BUT, while I know I shouldn't care what other people think, the sitch still makes me feel how I feel: frankly, a bit disturbed that people are loving things that are making me so awful. I feel like I've stepped into some sort of Bizarro world -- like I'm somehow in the wrong universe. It’s very distressing. (I mean ... they call it mental *illness* for as reason, right?)

In this franchise where I once found such great joy, I now find little more than anguish. It’s actually been making me physically ill to see the posts -- or to look on my massive Marvel collection; I've had to box much of it away for now. Hopefully some day I can enjoy it again. (I can't exactly stop using my $60 Captain America backpack I begged for, for my birthday, though. :/)

I find that when my thoughts get like this (like I'm on a runaway train that keeps revisiting the same stations), the only thing that helps even a little is to sort out my thoughts on the page -- even if I’ve done it before, as I have with this in the comments section of friends posts. (You may have seen other people express similar thoughts, too.)  And really, I don't want to rain on my friend’s parades, so I figure I’ll post it in my own space, and then if people ask me my thoughts, I can just point them here. And hopefully this post will help others who are similarly struggling (I know there are at least a few).

As for the old chestnut “It’s just a story/ a fictional character”, well, for one thing, let me repeat: mentally ill here. If I could control how I feel, I wouldn’t BE mentally ill. But also, I'm a writer who feels writing is a sacred calling, so when I feel a story is badly told, I tend to take it personally. Yes, I know my opinion is not the be-all, end all -- if you think it’s a good story, yay for you. Me, I feel betrayed by this story in a way I have rarely felt before (the other biggest instance having happened the week before the film's release, so double-whammy, yay).

Warning: if you read any further, I assume you either saw Endgame or don’t care about Spoilers.

(*edited to add* If you need some solace too, check out @antiendgame to find other people who are upset.)

The first upsetting points for me were the Noble Deaths (and, in Loki’s case, lack of resurrection) -- I hate that trope with the fire of a thousand suns. But that’s what I wrote the article on (including how 2012 Loki’s escape doesn't make me feel any better), so no more on that here.

Now, let me preface the rest of this by saying no, I wasn’t expecting a romantic presentation of Stucky. And as hard as I ship them fanon-wise, I don’t actually hate Steggy -- I adore Peggy in her own right (and like the idea of them  being a threesome with Bucky).

What I DO hate is that Steve abandoned Bucky for her.

Aside from Steve’s moral compass, Bucky was the impetus behind pretty much *everything* Steve did in his trilogy. He found the missing soldiers because Bucky was amongst them. Bucky’s death broke him -- and finding him again in Winter Soldier seemed to give Steve, who was clearly depressed, new life. Despite Sam insisting Bucky was Gone, Steve wouldn't kill Bucky to save the world. And in Civil War, Steve fought other dear friends, and was willing to throw away his own freedom, to protect his best friend. So how the FUCK is them being *separated pretty much forevermore* a satisfactory end to that story???????

TL;DR, the Captain America movies were about the repeated separation and reunion of Steve and Bucky … and yet we barely got to SEE them together before Steve said sayonara to the man he’d been best friends with for over a for over a decade, to go be with a woman he’d known for about a year. 

A woman who’d already had a family without him.

Yeah, we can say her family still exists in the original timeline -- but I have seen soooo many different explanations of how the time sitch works out, it’s not even funny.

Really, that’s the third reason I don't want to see the movie: I HATE time paradox, and this movie sounds riddled with it. Also, as I understand it, the writers and the Russos are saying different things, with the Russos saying it’s a different timeline (which apparently Steve would be going *back* to after the shield pass, for some reason, and yeah, that bothered me, that he didnl't even give his best friend that momento, and sent their last onscreen moments together talking to SAM), and the writers saying no, the alternate timelines were only a thing when the Stones were in play. So yeah, Steve could spend the rest of his life with Bucky then ... but that means he also would have erased Peggy’s family (and maybe her work). Unless he was the man she married all along.

Either way, it would mean that Steve let Bucky suffer, and let HYDRA infiltrate SHIELD, neither being things I could see him doing.

And if it IS a branched-off timeline, I LOATHE that time theory, because it means NOTHING WE DO MATTERS. There’s always a version of us that’s our worst selves, and people who suffer because of it. That’s hella depressing. (Even if it would explain why I feel like I'm in the wrong world.)

At any rate, the ONLY end I really wanted was to see Steve and Bucky get to be together, no matter how -- “just friends” would have been fine. It was literally the thing I wanted most in the whole damn MCU franchise (aside from seeing Loki be redeemed and then fight alongside the Avengers. *sigh* At least I didn't have high hopes there ...). I would rather Steve had taken Bucky back in time WITH him, even if Steve still married Peggy; time paradox issues aside, I could have lived with that -- yes, even if it meant we didn’t get The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. (And honestly, how much am I supposed to look forward to that anyway, when Sam has been such an *inexplicably* uncompassionate asshole to Bucky in WS and CW? A guy who runs meetings for people with PTSD holds a grudge against a guy who was brutally mind-raped? It's like they made him OOC for the lolz!)

As for “Oh, but Bucky knew and he was okay with it!”

Uh, if he was okay with it, it's just because the writers *wrote* him that way for their own convenience, so they could do this ending. I have been besties with someone most of our lives. We broke up a few times, but we managed to keep finding our way back to each other. We don't live in the same state, so we rarely see each other, but at least we DO sometimes, and we write each other. If this person said they were going to go live somewhere with no way to communicate with me ever again, so they could be with someone they loved, of course I wouldn't want to say don't leave, because I'd want them to be happy, and wouldn't want to stand in the way … but that doesn't mean I'd be “okay”. in the slightest. And I wouldn't WANT other people I care about to go through such pain, much less think it beautiful to watch.

Plus, as I always say, this is fiction -- I don't need *that much* “reality” in my escapism. Temporary angst is my bread-and-butter -- it’s cathartic -- but I need a happy ending to be the payoff. To me, A TRULY happy ending for Steve -- and the one that would have been the best payoff for the narrative we’ve spent a decade watching -- would have been for him to not have to choose between the two people he loved most.

Edited 5/11/19 to add: For all those who are all “Oh, they’re just friends, they aren't gay”, I am more or less fine with sexual Stucky staying fanon; they still love each other platonically, are SOULMATES, ACCORDING TO THE SCREENWRITERS THEMSELVES (Christopher Markus and Steve McFeely), who wrote this as part of the intro to the graphic novel Captain America: White - “…Of course, this is still a rollicking adventure tale, and no adventure is complete without a love story. And yes, these books have one – the longest, most tortured one in Marvel history, in fact. We’re talking about Steve and Bucky, without smirking or innuendo or raised eyebrows. Platonic though the relationship may be, from the meet cute to the tragic separation, their bond has all the elements of a classic romance.  These two men love each other – as any pair of friends who faced exclusion, combat, inhumanity, and death would. Their bond stretches across half the twentieth century. The loss of it gnaws at Steve throughout the modern day, and it slices his heart in half when the Winter Soldier rears his tormented, homicidal head. Just as Jeph and Tim’s earlier Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, and Hulk: Gray all dealt with the major love interests in the heroes’ lives, so too does Captain America: White. Steve and Bucky are each others’ soulmate, if you will, because no one on Earth understands what either of them has been through as well as the other does. The book deals deftly with the strengths and weaknesses that relationship engenders. As the Red Skull himself says to Bucky, “The captain has a … ‘soft spot’ for you. A spot I intend to put a bullet through this very evening.” Soldiers fight for their country. They fight for themselves. They fight for each other. And sometimes they die for these things, too.  The ones who don’t carry the memory of the ones who did for the rest of their days. Steve Rogers is no different.”

So he's gonna leave his soulmate (no matter the nature of their love) behind forever? FUCK THAT NOISE. I am completely baffled ow two writers who see Steve and Bucky that way would go on to give them that ending.

And retouching the whole for Bucky “knows and is okay” thing, the Russos also said that Bucky is too damaged still to be Captain America. Uh, THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE THEY REALLY THINK HE’S OKAY.

[teacher-lavin]

Waking from History’s Nightmare: Baldwin & Joyce (Part Two)

The Threat

Two weeks after school ended for summer, I had told a group of much younger teachers, “The students I teach have saved me much more than I ever saved any of them.” The next evening, the phone rang late. Muffled crying, then: “Lavin, I don’t know what to do. My mom is threatening to kill me and then to commit suicide. What should I do?” It was Candela (name changed here, another short story with a moral....). Overwhelmed, I told her to call her older sister and ask her to meet us at Burger King. 

James Baldwin’s views of teaching and James Joyce’s deep encounter with language play both pertain to the tale. 

First Baldwin:

“The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions,” 

Baldwin delivered this claim in his Talk given in a  New York City library to a group of majority white educators (October 1963). He roots his discourse within the mind and heart of the student, particularly the African American student, wishing teachers to know the student’s psyche as:  her or their or his or The child’s internal struggle. Therefore, Baldwin poses the questions as if within an imaginary stream of consciousness resonating within in the student’s mind. He  postulates further,

“. . . [the student will] say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his identity” -- James Baldwin, Talk To Teachers (1963).

Baldwin assumed, I decided, that the child’s coming to terms with big questions is a process whose uncertainties demand companions, and that accompanying a child or a young adult who is asking these big existential questions is the teacher’s role. 

Rewind Three Months Earlier: The Library Excursion

“Candela” told me about three months earlier that she was taking the bus to the Jesuit university on the other side of town after school. She was seventeen that year. Her mother signed a permission slip. Our high school had no library. Candela had complex questions about our readings: James Joyce’s fiction, James Baldwin’s essays, Gloria Anzaldua and Frantz Fanon’s writings and Adrienne Rich’s A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far. I wanted her to experience a library as she restlessly interrogated how and what she would write.  

For that purpose, I had met Candela’s mom just the week before Candela’s library escapade at the end of her shift from midnight to 7:30 a.m. cleaning the elementary school two blocks away. Mrs. Cartagena (name changed), a small fiercely determined Cuban woman told me that she “was losing touch with her daughter” (my translation). She cried. She was exhausted.  I stayed until her tears allayed, and she said she hoped the library would broaden her daughter’s horizons.

Because I’d taught for decades at night as an adjunct professor in the Jesuit English department, I knew lots of librarians there and phoned ahead to set up Candela’s visit. The  University’s library is a weird mix: extensive collection of James Joyce criticism and Irish history, and a wonderful offering of contemporary poets from across the panoply of world cultures and languages. It goes deep.   

The morning after her visit to “Hawk Hill” (local term for the Jesuit tower looming  almost ivory over West Philadelphia), Candela had more questions than before her trip across town. “So, what is Poverty Awareness Week?” There were signs around campus advertising a week of awareness devoted to homelessness and world hunger. “I was in heaven with the books, taking them off the shelves, reading, then finding more and more and more?” She added excitedly, “Your friend, the librarian, showed me a book by Edwidge Danticat, signed by the author. Imagine that: Danticat actually must have held it in her hands. I felt like I went around the world, no lie, Mister.” 

Then, Candela paused and said, “Hey, if they really want Poverty Awareness, why don’t we just invite them over here?” She laughed an ironic laugh. 

The Threat, 

--Fast Forward Three Months, Burger King 

We met about thirty minutes after Candela’s tearful, frightened call, the three of us, Candela, her older sister (fictional name, Marisela) who had left her home twenty blocks away and her own three children with a neighbor (her husband was working nights) and me. We  replayed through tears their mother’s threats and her delirium. Marisela said that we must call 911, report the incident and the troubling words kill and suicide and that their mom would be detained, by the police and placed on meds. After about ten days she would be released. This had happened before. Marisela would sign the papers. 

Candela said that would be brutal, heartless and inhumane. Marisela countered that  there was no alternative. Then, Candela said that she couldn’t bear thinking of her mom confined in that cold, clinical environment where no one would understand her. Marisela said that there would be Spanish-speaking nurses and assistants.  Candela dissented, “But translation has to have nuance. It has to have sensitivity to the words and their meanings. It has to be dialogic.” Marisela looked perplexed. Candela explained, “I learned this all from James Joyce. Nobody gets mom’s meanings the way that I do.” Candela’s point came literally from our class. And, then, she cried and quoted her favorite line from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, “Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome?” And she added in her own words, “That’s so much more than Good Bye.” Candela  said that she needed to make sure her mom understood everything that had happened before she brokedown and everything that would follow from that point. Anything less, would be “a violation of the sadness of her story and of the sadness of her life.” Again, Marisela looked perplexed. A very shaky pause ensued, “Spontaneously, Marisela hugged Candela and repeated over and over, “Candy, I’m so proud of you, baby.” Together, they decided to call 911 and to be there with their mom and to accompany her and to do the translation whenever and wherever possible, in person, the two of them. 

If Baldwin’s distillation of the point of education brings teachers into a dynamic relation with the profoundly personal context within which students take risks and grow intellectually, his statement of the “paradox” of education, later in his essay, poses another problem of which we need to be aware. His terms inform the occasion, 

“The Paradox of education is precisely this -- that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated  ....  The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it -- at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change” - James Baldwin, Talk To Teachers (1963).

So much of what we do as students and teachers and family members and neighbors and co-workers is caught within the paradox that James Baldwin articulates as an admonition to “examine and try to change” society’s forms wherever our perceptions pose poignant questions and uncertainties. Candela and her sister, Marisela, revealed Baldwin’s wisdom to me as well as an assurance that bringing students literature in all of its complexity is crucial to acquainting them with complexity  so that they can distinguish what they want to believe and how they want to live. 

Candela came away with deep convictions about nuance and dialogic sensitivity to meaning. That’s where she felt and honored profound responsibilities to her mother. Isn’t that when words are most crucial, when we discern how they create meanings and, thus, relationships? It’s no surprise that Candela continued growing and  became an extraordinary leader in her community. That will be another story.

Our work, however, as students and teachers, is to keep that conversation alive with the integrity we learn from Baldwin responding  that “Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” James Baldwin, A Stranger in the Village, 1955.

[belzinone]

verses

This is a running list of all the verses I’ve written for bel. First are her fanon (canonical) verses, followed by modern, fantasy, crossover, other fandom verses, & lastly, her Wallflower verses (+ link to a more in-depth description of my concept). I’m more than happy to create a verse that is compatible with your muse, let it be giving her a new modern occupation or adapting her to your muse’s universe (if you’ll be patient with my learning ) However, I’ll be applying her to new universes selectively because I’m not a fan of everything nor do I always have the energy/patience to invest in it.

hello it’s mz. hyde . undetermined // verse

~FANON VERSES~

HELL IS FOR CHILDREN . underground child // verse

a bright, curious, cross-dressing child who goes by the name “bailey” & gets into more trouble than her mother & older brother can handle. in attempt to control her behavior, risa lets her stay with a trusted doctor in town (former colleague of her late father) & he starts teaching her basic medicine & biology (which quickly turns into epidemiology come the shiganshina outbreak). she proves gifted with the material, a trait she shared with her father.

BIRD IN THE CAGE . underground citizen // verse

past adolescence, a teenage bel selectively relents to the feminine gender role designated by her mother as the small Zinone family works towards building a large enough fortune to buy surface citizenship. she does her homemaking & continues to pursue her medical apprenticeship while at home & in the clinic, but occasionally dons drag to explore the rest of the city under her family’s nose. when her brother enlists in the scouting legion for a vast sum of money (to those in poverty), he takes the light behind her eyes with him.

SLAVE TO THE GRIND . shiganshina citizen // verse 

a languid young adult who maintains a modest medical practice as well as helps with her mother’s homemaking business. she makes the occasional secret trip to scout hq to volunteer her medical expertise, where she momentarily rediscovers her lust for life.

TWIN ROSES . garrison soldier // verse 

giving up on her dreams following the year 845 fall of wall maria, bel dons twin roses & secretly composes her plans for 3dmg modifications. she lives a quiet, uneventful yet peaceful life with her mother & squad members.

LA GUILLOTINA . sentenced to scout // verse

having lost the majority of her squad during the year 850 battle of trost & committed murder to defend her mother during the retreat, bel finds herself with a accolade she detests, but would decide her fate as she faces her sentence

& TO DEATH WE SAY ; NOT TODAY . medical officer // main verse 

bel settles into the scouting regiment & lives out her dream of saving lives on the front lines. this verse leads up to the uprising arc.

FAMILIAR TASTE OF POISON . war criminal // verse

the uprising arc. forced to face the demons of her mother’s past as well as her legion being marked a criminal organization, she is also forced to come to terms with taking lives rather than saving them.

GRACE PERIOD . scout redemption // verse

this verse spans the time between the resolution of the uprising arc to her amputation. the scouts experience renewed glory as they return the rightful heir to the throne & prepare to reclaim shiganshina.

LA TRAVIATA . retiree // verse 

soon before the return to shiganshina, bel loses her foot to the leader of the underground mafia & is forced to retire from her military service. she departs for the snowy mountains of the north to research titan spinal fluid.

alternatively, she’s crushed by a boulder during one of the preparatory expeditions & amputates her foot to save her life either single-handedly or with the help of another soldier, i.e. yours?

LA RESORTA . amputee // verse

bel hangs up her lab coat & returns to her soldiers, where she comes to rediscover is where her heart lies.

RED SWANSONG . postwar // verse

paradis is clear of titans & the world is free of war. bel retires her military service for good & continues to care for the remaining military veterans while mourning the fallen. she dreams of settling with a family at this time.

~fanon divergent verses~

FELINE TITAN . shifter // verse

bel reawakens with the memories of a former queen who once ruled humanity before Paradisian allocation. her 10 meter titan is skinless, spotted, & sports long claws. [aimless meta]

AS ABOVE SO BELOW . noble // verse

instead of being born in the underground to a poor homemaker, bel’s born in the sina capitol to a rich socialite. she nonetheless dreams of becoming a scout soldier & practicing medicine like her father.

~modern verses~

CODE BLACK . emergency responder // main verse

as used in los angeles county hospital, “an influx of patients so great, there aren’t enough resources to treat them.”

G. O. M. E. R. YOU P. I. T. A. nurse // verse

nurse slang for “get out of my emergency room, you pain in the ass”

LIONESS . mother // verse

bel becomes a mother, let it be via adoption or a fertility miracle.

SO CLOSE ; AND STILL SO FAR . medical tech // verse

bel leaves medical school & lands a less than satisfying job

GLORY AND GORE . clinical doctor // verse

a cutthroat doctor who rose to her status by playing the game of the social ladder.

PRETTY HUGE DICHOTOMY . medical student // verse

bel studying for her phd & finding a stark divide between clinical & the average life.

BETA EPSILON LAMBDA . undergraduate student // verse

although not part of a sorority, the lack of social life experienced by this iteration could very much use a pledge.

VAGABOND . homeless // verse

after dropping out of high school, bel leaves her family & takes to the streets, convinced that she is better off on her own. she makes a living through stealing, odd jobs, & street performing.

YOU LOVE ME FOR EVERYTHING YOU HATE ME FOR . escort // verse

bel engages in transactional sex to survive.

RED LIGHTS PAID SIGHTS . sex worker // verse

cam girl, stripper, exotic dancer, nude model: bel engages in all these things & more, finding comfort in sensual attention.

SICK INDIVIDUAL . high school student // verse

a rebellious young woman spends her days challenging authority inside & outside the classroom while maintaining grades reflective of her interests.

IF IT AIN’T BROKE; IMPROVE IT . mechanical engineer // verse

rather than pursue medicine, bel finds a rewarding career in her other passions.

IT’S SUPPOSED TO HURT . personal trainer // verse

bel makes a living out of training others to thrive.

BODY LANGUAGE . professional dancer // verse

she started out as a street dancer before making her way through club after club & finally landing a contract with mainstream talent. belly dancing, burlesque, & pole work are her go-to styles.

~fantasy verses~

ABERRANT APOTHECARY . witch // verse

a life witch or necromancer? this woman manipulates the energies of life to do her bidding.

SEIS SEIS SEIS . concubus // verse

unbound by position & generally unaffected by a thirst for intercourse, this nonbinary asexual demon finds thrills elsewhere.

DON’T FALL ASLEEP AT THE HELM . merfolk // verse

a rather terrifying as opposed to conventionally beautiful mermaid, bel passes her time defending her territory & rummaging through shipwrecks

conversely, she’s an obnoxiously colorful mermaid that makes an easy target for predators

HURT LIKE HELL WHEN I FELL . angel // verse

bel’s an angel much like those from cw’s supernatural sans the dryness

SINGED FEATHERS . caladrius // verse

this magical bird takes blight unto herself & flies into the sun like a phoenix, dispelling the plague & curing her benefactor. feathers naturally sprout from various parts of her body. she uses a cloaking spell to appear human, but she nonetheless sheds feathers.

~crossover verses~

ONE STEP CLOSER TO THE TRUE WORLD . the115project // crossover verse

Commander 115′s army lands in Paradis & brings a new battlefront to the island (original multiverse concept from the115project)

FELINE FAUNUS . rwby // crossover verse

the transition from Paradis to Remnant brings out cheetah-like characteristics similar to her titan form her aforementioned fanon divergent verse. human skin with full body markings, ears & a body-length tail with fur

~other fandom verses~

MITOTIC REGENERATION . naruto // verse

a failed student of a legendary shinobi & excommunicated from her clan, bel wanders the ninja world in search of a way to revive her fallen brother as a missing nin from tsukigakure. she specializes in poison art jutsu, is developing her own version of mitotic regeneration, & agnostically practices jashinism.

GOLD DUST WOMAN . rwby // verse

subject to the discrimination of being a faunus, bel finds herself a member of the White Fang but begins to question whether their endeavors are really what’s best for her kind. her semblence is life transfer & manipulation while her weapons are dual-wield blades similar to those from her snk verse.

I WANT TO BE CONNECTED . sarazanmai // verse

bel, a fresh Wallflower devotee, soon throws herself at the mercy of the otters to save her brother, a police officer who died on duty. as punishment, she’s made to keep an eye out for kappa activity but maintains a dual relationship with those duties alongside her obligations as a Wallflower agent. she keeps her loyalties to the otters blurred while seeking to protect the sara trio as an undercover school nurse.

FAIRY; WHERE ARE YOU GOING? . fairy tail // verse

bel’s a caster mage from the Wallflower dark guild & specializes in disease & organic link magic

GRAND DUCHESS . anastasia // verse

anastasia (1997 film) plot inspired

FACE DOWN IN THE DIRT . fruits basket // verse

her work as an international Wallflower brings her to the Sohma clan, a hotbed of mysterious cries of abuse from its most closely guarded family members. quickly recognizing the fragility of the job, bel takes a much lower profile during her investigation. she takes on whatever role she must to get to the bottom of the sohma family curse & support its victims.

HALF GOD; HALF DEVIL . bnha // verse

[fandom verse profile]

THE DEAD SHALL SPEAK . atlus trauma team // verse

inspired by dr. naomi kimishima. bel’s a medical examiner that can hear a victim’s last words upon interacting with their body.

DANCING ON GRAVESTONES . dnd // verse

tiefling, bard, necromancer, commander of life energy & tells stories through percussion & dance. she uses magic to mask her tiefling features in order to escape prejudice & avoid scaring away her audience.

-wallflower verses-

BAD GIRLS’ WORLD . wallflower // main verse

[about] this verse traverses all universes, from fandom to modern to fantasy as well. i use it to designate her criminality/gang affiliation & the belief system she was raised in. whether or not she remains loyal to her cult (as well as the severity of the cult itself) will vary greatly by thread.

LA MADONNA HYDRANGEA . wallflower madame // verse

bel reigns over the wallflowers as madame, presiding over an immense, international criminal underworld.

[the-gay-in-the-way]

“Why be Sad When you can be Even Sadder?”, Part one

So this is a fanfiction I accidentally wrote that revolves around a particular headcanon of mine based off of Thomas’s short, “My Remedy for the Blues!”.

The headcanon is this:

Virgil and Patton are the sides that really represent Thomas’s emotions, both good and bad. 

Patton represents a lot of the main ones, including sadness.

So sometimes, just like I’m sure many people do, he just feels the need to be sad for no apparent reason.

Since Virgil is also an “emotional” side, he understands this better than the others.

So he and Patton had gotten into the habit of meeting up in private sometimes and just... letting themselves be sad together.

They watch sad movies and eat ice cream and listen to sad music and talk about whatever just generally makes them sad.

And then they eventually say goodbye and part ways, feeling a lot better after letting all of their emotions out, until the next time they meet up to be sad again.

I honestly love this little headcanon a lot and I was really just gonna write all of that down really quickly and go to sleep cus it was midnight when I started making this post and I was actually pretty tired at that point so sleep sounded GREAT, but then I really started to get into detail with the little fanon universe I intended for the headcanon to take place in and then suddenly I was writing an entire fic that’s probably gonna need a second part for the actual headcanon bit and it’s already four in the morning now and I’m SO sleepy but I have to finish this now because I’ve committed at this point and stopping would now be considered blasphemy to literally everything I represent as a human being.

So here we are.

I present to you a headcanon and a fanfiction that I had absolutely no intention of writing but ended up writing anyways.

I hope you enjoy.

(Or just ignore the rest of this post and only read the headcanon)

(It’s your choice)

(Btw this fic is purely platonic)

(But it is specifically platonic Moxiety at the moment)

(That will change in the future if I decide to write more for this little universe but it is what it is right now)

(I just love platonic Moxiety a lot ok)

(I need to cherish and protecc my soft beans)

(I’m crying now)

(I’m so tired)

(Anyways, whatever, do what you want)

(I’m just gonna go now and suffer from sleep deprivation tomorrow)

Virgil appears one day as a surprise to the others when he just suddenly runs into the room while they’re watching Thomas on the tv and shouts at Thomas with his warped voice to make him stop when he almost walks in front of a moving car.

Patton is delighted by the new addition of a side that seems to have the ability to save Thomas from harm simply by shouting at him.

Logan and Roman, however, are not.

They are upset that there is a side that can control Thomas at will.

So they quickly learn to hate him and try to keep him away from themselves, each other, and Thomas.

Patton isn’t ok with that but Virgil leaves before he can say anything to defend him, and the others use that as extra evidence to argue against Patton on the matter.

So Anxiety becomes an outcast and Patton is incredibly sad about losing the opportunity to befriend the new kid.

Until, one day, he runs into him in the kitchen.

Or falls into him, as the case happened be.

Patton is tired and it’s late but he’s also thirsty so he finds himself in the kitchen drinking some water.

Once he’s finished with his drink he goes to leave the room but ends up tripping over air and falls onto something that is a lot softer, warmer, and higher up than the ground.

As it turns out, Virgil had been going around the house to make sure nothing was wrong with the others(he always does this. Every night he waits until everyone goes to bed and then walks over to each side’s bedroom to check and make sure that they are alright. Sometimes they’re not and whenever that happens he tries to leave out little treats or gifts and finds ways to make the sides day easier the next day to help them feel a little better(all without them noticing it’s him doing it, of course)) and had noticed that Patton’s door was open and the side was nowhere to be seen. So he’d focused for a second and just barely heard someone shuffling around in the kitchen downstairs and had gone to check on the moral side, just in case there was somethjng seriously wrong.

By the time he reached the kitchen, Patton was putting his empty glass into the sink to be cleaned the next morning and was walking towards the entrance where Virgil was silently standing.

Virgil had planned on simply waiting until Patton left and just quietly watching him from the shadows as he returned to his room, but then Patton tripped and he found himself reacting without thinking.

Patton looked up after his fall and was surprised to see the new side, who he still didn’t know the name of yet, looking down at him with wide eyes and holding him carefully against his chest.

Not knowing what else to do in this situation, Patton spoke.

“...hello.”

And Virgil found himself responding without even meaning to because, what else was he even supposed to do in this kind of situation?

“...hi.”

“You caught me...”

“Yeah...sorry?”

Patton’s face scrunched up.

“What?”

And suddenly Virgil could move and think again and his brain was rapidly devolving into a panic because, oh my god I just caught morality I am holding morality I am holding one of the sides he is in my arms what is going on what just happened oh my gOD IM STILL HOLDING HIM I HAVENT LET GO YET WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME HE PROBABLY HATES ME LIKE THE OTHERS I JUST GRABBED HIM LIKE IT WAS NOTHING LET HIM GO NOW!

So Virgil quickly let go of the moral side and tried to step back.

Except Patton was also holding Virgil around the waist.

So, while Virgil stepped back, Patton simply ended up being dragged forward alongside him.

There was a very quiet moment of silence as Virgil looked down at the side still attached to him with shock and Patton blinked a couple times in surprise as he found himself becoming a little more horizontal to the ground while he continued to look up at the one supporting him.

And then Patton started to lose his grip and slide down Virgil’s body and onto the ground and Virgil did the only thing he COULD do in that situation.

He picked up Morality.

He did his best to be careful and quick as he grabbed the side from under his armpits and pulled him up off the ground for a moment before carefully placing him onto his own two feet.

Patton was still loosely holding onto Virgil and blinking rapidly in surprise as he was placed down again.

And another moment of quiet occurred as Virgil looked at the hands holding onto his shirt, seemingly on reflex, and tried to figure out if he should simply try to break away from them and run or if he should ask Morality if he was ok.

In the end, he ignored his own fear and decided that making sure the other side was alright took priority.

As always.

“Um...”

Patton blinked, still simply dumbfounded by being picked up by the side that didn’t actually look like they had the strength to do such a thing so easily, and Virgil continued talking.

“Are you...ok, Morality?”

The moral side blinked a few more times in silence as Virgil waited with some concern slowly building in his chest.

Then it was like a switch had been flipped and suddenly Patton was alive again.

“OH!”

The shout startled Virgil so much he ended up pulling the other against his chest again in some sort of protective act of instinct and Patton let out a surprised squeak and a giggle before wrapping his own arms around the new side once again as well.

Virgil stared at him with surprise after darting his eyes around to check their surroundings for danger.

“Morality?”

Patton giggled a little more before settling again and sending Virgil a smile that made him kind of want to just curl up on the floor and cry a little.

“Sorry, kiddo. I was just surprised is all. I didn’t expect someone to catch me when I was falling earlier and I definitely wasn’t expecting you to pick me up either so I just couldn’t figure out what to do with myself for a minute there.”

“Oh, ok then.”

Virgil was now blinking at the cheerful side with some more surprise and confusion.

He had no idea what was even going on at this point.

It was at this point though that he realized he was still pretty much hugging the other side and he quickly released him once again.

And, thankfully, Patton let go as well.

“Thank you for that, by the way.”

Virgil scrunched his own face up, confused.

“What?”

Patton, if anything, only seemed to grin wider.

Virgil was pretty sure his soul was going to slowly leave his body if this kept up.

“For catching me. It probably would have hurt a lot if I’d actually fallen, so I really appreciate you being here to help me. So, thank you!”

Yup, his soul was now leaving his body and he was going to just collapse on the floor in front of the kitchen until someone finally came by to toss his corpse into the abyss where he belonged.

Maybe Morality would be so kind as to do it himself.

“Um...yeah. No problem. Don’t mention it. It wasn’t a big deal. I just didn’t really want you to fall and get hurt or anything...”

Virgil trailed off as he realized he was starting to ramble and Patton continued to smile at him.

There was a moment of very awkward silence.

Then Virgil remembered that the other sides actually hated him and he was supposed to be staying away from them not talking to them and touching them and being smiled at by them and he did what he probably should have done as soon as he put Morality down the first time.

“Well...bye.”

And the anxious side sunk into the floor and disappeared before Patton could even ask him his name.

“Oh...”

But that wouldn’t keep him down too long, Patton decided as he held up a fist with a determined expression on his face.

The new side was a lot nicer than the other two seemed to think, as Patton had been quite sure to be the case since he seemed to be here to protect Thomas to begin with, and he was now determined to make up for not giving him a proper welcome before by befriending him now.

So Patton got to work.

He kept an eye out for the side, watching his door whenever he had the chance and trying to keep an eye out for a flash of black or purple anywhere.(I like the idea that Virgil started off with a simple long sleeve purple shirt and black jeans when he became a side and the hoodie was something he decided to wear later.)

He even tried to spend more time in the common area at night in the hopes of catching him.

And he knew that he’d been there at some point.

Because, sometimes, he’d fall asleep waiting and would later end up waking up tucked into his own bed.

And when he’d asked the others how they’d slept that night, they never said anything about waking up, finding him, and taking him to bed.

So the new side was definitely coming out at night but Patton still couldn’t find him and the other simply refused to come out when he called and talk to him.

It took two weeks before Patton finally came up with an idea he thought would work in getting the side to finally speak to him again.

He came down that night and waited for a while, as he always did.

And then he got up from his spot on the couch, hopped up onto the banister, and let himself fall.

There was a terrifying second or two where he thought that maybe he had miscalculated and the new side wasn’t around to catch him tonight and he would end up falling flat on his back and cracking his skull open or something, but then there was a blur of black and purple in the corner of his eye and he was suddenly resting in a set of very gentle arms that held him close to a chest that had a VERY fast heartbeat.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Virgil had almost just died.

If his soul hadn’t left last time, then it definitely did just now.

He’d been so confused when the moral side had gotten up and climbed onto the banister but he had never, not even once, thought that he would just fall off of it like that.

He’d been all the way in the kitchen one second and right beside the stairs in the next and his heart was pounding so hard from the adrenaline pulsing in his veins that he was pretty sure he was about to pass out from fear alone.

This wasn’t fair.

Why did he have to be the one to do this?

Why couldn’t he be like the others and just go to sleep at night?

And suddenly Morality was laughing and Virgil really just wanted to cry and go to bed because this was all just SO unfair.

“You caught me!”

Patton threw his arms around the other side’s neck and couldn’t help the delighted laughter that fell out of him in that moment.

He’d finally found him again!

The other side sighed and gave Patton the smallest of squeezes.

“Yeah...but why were you falling in the first place? What were you doing standing on the banister like that?”

Virgil wasn’t sure what explanation he was expecting the other to give, but it was not what he ended up receiving.

“I was trying to get your attention again.”

Morality seemed slightly embarrassed but mostly just obstinate as he stared Virgil down.

The new side blinked.

“What?”

Patton looked away.

The embarrassment was really starting to take over at this point and it was getting a little bit more difficult to insist, even in his own mind, that this had been the best course of action.

“Well, I wanted to talk to you. But whenever I tried to find you, you weren’t around and I couldn’t get you to come out. So I thought that, maybe, you’d catch me again if I fell. So I figured I should fall from the banister to make sure that you saw me falling and had time to react.”

By the end of the explanation, Patton couldn’t actually look at the other side anymore and was instead staring down at his purple-clad chest.

For a moment, there was silence and Patton was pretty sure that the new side was gonna think he was an idiot now, but then something miraculous happened.

Virgil’s chest started to shake, then his shoulders, then his arms, and then he couldn’t contain it anymore and laughter bloomed through the common room like a boom of thunder in a storm.

Patton looked up in shock and would later tell anyone who listened that this was the moment when he had promised himself that he would do whatever it took to protect his strange dark son for the rest of his days because Virgil’s face was lit up with the biggest grin and his eyes were squeezed shut as he laughed a full belly laughing guffaw that shook his entire body, and Patton by extension, and filled the room with one of the nicest and purest sounds Patton had ever had the joy of hearing.

He was pretty sure he had stars in his eyes as he watched the new side laugh until he couldn’t take it anymore and fell surprisingly gently, probably for Patton’s sake, onto his knees on the floor.

The laughter continued and Patton remained in the side’s shaking arms as he ended up doubling over and laughing into Patton’s shoulder.

Not that he minded.

If anything, he was delighted.

This was amazing.

Not only had he gotten the other side’s attention at last, he had also made him laugh so hard he didn’t even seem capable of controlling himself anymore.

But, eventually, the laughter faded off and the other side finally calmed down.

Virgil hadn’t really meant for any of that to happen and was reluctant to take his face away from where it was hidden against Morality’s shoulder.

So, for a moment, a just let himself take a second to really calm down and catch his breath again as the moral side remained perfectly still against him.

But he had to face everything eventually, so he finally took his head away from the side’s shoulder and only glanced at him for a moment before looking away with a blush quickly seeping over his face and ears.

“Sorry about that...”

Patton had to blink back into reality again before quickly speaking.

“Oh no! It’s fine! It was pretty funny and you have a really nice laugh so I don’t mind.”

Patton hadn’t really meant to say that last part, but it was true so that was fine.

Virgil blushed a little bit more and had to fight against the instinct in him that simply screamed to run away now that Morality was safe again.

Because the side had done all of this to talk to him again and if he left now there was a very high possibility that this would keep happening until Morality finally had the conversation he’d wanted to have in the first place.

“Right, well...anyways, what did you want to talk about, Morality?”

Patton twitched, apparently the new side had an impressive pair of big purple puppy eyes(this fanon Virgil has purple eyes, deal with it) and it was a struggle not to just let himself squeal and pull the side back against his shoulder again.

“Oh. Right. Yeah, that. Oh! Yeah, I wanted to ask what your name was!”

Morality wiggled a little in Virgil’s arms and he would have put the side down if he wasn’t worried about him not letting go again like last time.

“Oh, it’s, um...Anxiety”

The cheerful side blinked and looked into empty space for a moment before a look of realization came across his face.

“Oh, yeah! I remember Logan mentioning that word before. It’s like being scared and nervous about things, right?”

Patton felt it when the other side twitched a bit in what seemed like an aborted sort of flinch before he responded with his head down.

“Yeah, basically.”

The words, “kicked puppy”, repeatedly cycled through the moral side’s brain like a sad little siren.

Roman and Logan were in so much trouble, Patton decided then.

Because it seemed like the new side thought that he was a bad thing.

It probably really got to him when the others immediately got angry at him upon his arrival.

And having the title of Anxiety, which Patton remembered Logan calling an illness at one point, definitely wouldn’t have helped him feel better about himself.

But that wasn’t important right now.

Right now, Patton had a new friend to help feel better about themselves.

“So you keep Thomas safe from all of the bad things?”

Anxiety’s head shot up so fast his neck cracked and Patton could almost feel the whiplash second hand.

“what?”

His voice was small and breathless and it kind of made Patton want to cry, but he stayed strong and continued on with as cheerful a voice as he’d been using the entire time.

“You protect Thomas. You make him nervous and scared of the things he should avoid and can even make him directly avoid them. You’re like his knight in shining armor or something!”

And Patton was pretty proud of himself for a moment.

He was pretty sure that he’d actually said the right thing this time and Anxiety was gonna feel a bit better about himself and maybe be more willing to spend time with Patton now and they would be friends and it would be great!

But then he was met with a sight that made his heart feel like it was falling to pieces.

Tears, tainted black by the dark smudges Patton hadn’t even noticed under the other side’s eyes, fell silently from Anxiety’s wide purple eyes.

And Virgil was trying so hard to figure out what was happening, again.

He didn’t understand.

Morality was being nice to him he gave him a compliment multiple compliments he was smiling and had jumped off of a banister just to talk to him who did that what was this why was he doING THIS WHY DID HE SAY SUCH NICE THINGS WHY WAS HE ALWAYS SMILING HE HATES HIM THEY ALL DO HE’S ANXIETY HE’S BAD HE HURTS THOMAS NO MATTER HOW MUCH HE JUST WANTS TO KEEP HIM SAFE AND NOW MORALITY KNOWS WHAT HE IS AND WHAT HE DOES BUT HE SAID ITS GOOD HE THINKS HE’S GOOD AND HE CALLED HIM THOMAS’ KNIGHT LIKE HE WAS ACTUALLY DOING WHAT HE TRIED SO HARD TO DO AND THERE WAS SO MUCH AND TOO MUCH AND IT’S SO WEIRD AND STRANGE AND HE JUST. CAN’T. DEAL. ANYMORE.

And suddenly Anxiety is gone and Patton finds himself sitting on the floor beside the stairs.

Alone.

And that’s the end of the first chapter.

*flairs out tired jazz hands*

Ta-da.

Man, this took a turn near the end that I feel makes sense and is necessary but it was very much not my intent.

Then again, this entire thing was not my intent but it happened anyways so I should really just accept that I have absolutely no control over what is going on in my life at this point and try to be happy about whatever ends up happening.

So most of this was fluff but we ended up with something vaguely resembling angst at the very end.

Don’t worry tho, I’ll eventually do the second part and we’ll see how all of this eventually gets sorted out.

...probably.

Anyways, I hope whoever reads this actually likes it a little and doesn’t find this to be a waste of time and space because that’s just my entire life in a nutshell and I could kind of do with at least a little bit of gratification for the things that I spend my time doing.

*sighs in asexual*

It is four in the morning and I’m dying a little every second.

Anyways, I’ll just leave now and maybe sleep before I have to do things in the morning.

Later, I guess.

*falls onto floor and kind of just sighs in resignation as a cat comes over and sits on my back*

great...

Here’s a link that leads to the next part of the CAP Series.

A Bed of Links:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Cerillen

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerillen/pseuds/Cerillen

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPz4p5XdoRESDKZeMDnWXFQ

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/cerillen

Discord: https://discord.gg/FsUhc5f

[jungnoir]

wait, I love voltron too I wanna hear your rant LOL 》🌙💫

you… you’re gonna regret that LOL i’m so sorry abt this

i’m super obsessed with allura and keith so they’re who i’m gonna talk abt rn but i have something to say abt all of the paladins and i’ll save u that pain to read thru

but listen keith’s character has been so muddled due to fanon getting mixed in with canon to the point where some ppl literally talk about him like they haven’t watched the same show that i have. he gets reduced to a clingy pining mess that is physically incapable of existing for himself except to validate ships or be used as a comfort to other characters. at this point, it almost feels like no one really realizes how much keith is suffering? his pain is watered down due to the whole “keith’s an emo who has never had a strong relationship with anyone ever” idea and it ruins the canon version of him i love so much

like keith has a tough exterior and his solo vlog proved this. he’s scared of letting ppl in because of the loss of his mother and father and shiro has been in his life the longest so he trusts him the most but you know with these last few seasons, I’ve really seen him start to open up to allura a bit too? as well as the other paladins?? it’s hard for keith to get attached to a solid “family” because he hasn’t had one for a long time and he’s always ready for ppl to leave

can you believe keith is so considerate that he’s so torn between finding his family, finding out where he came from and keeping to his duty as a voltron paladin? remember in season one when pidge tried to leave voltron to find her dad and brother and keith scolded her for putting the entire universe at risk for two people? imagine how conflicted he felt, after finding out abt his galra blood, and knowing that now he wanted to do the exact thing pidge wanted to but knowing he had duties and an obligation as a paladin to help voltron. keith hates the idea of being the “new leader” of voltron because he is so scared to have so many ppl depend on him after years of relying on himself only. keith is not a wounded lovesick puppy. keith is a lone wolf, but when he finds his pack he’s loyal to the bone. you see that in how much he trusts shiro

and u bet if i bring up keith i’m bringing up his dynamic with allura because it has been demonized so much that it literally boils my blood

ppl say that allura is a bitch and that the way she reacted to finding out keith was galra was evil and while i can understand that ppl were upset with how she isolated keith after finding out (i too was upset, but not at her. rather at their situation and the misunderstandings there), ppl don’t seem to see how human this is for her to do??? this whole time leading up to this realization, she’s been able to comfortably pair galra + evil. after having her family, friends, and whole planet destroyed at the hands of the galra she has Every Right to hate them. in her mind, at this time, pairing galra + evil was fine because all the galra she knew had the same agenda as zarkon. then galra + evil got a new pairing: keith

like i said, she lost Everything. the only things she has left from her home is the castle ship and coran. she’s a teenager who was forced to sleep by her father in the midst of a war torn planet and woke up 10,000 years later to four teenagers and shiro telling her that all that was gone. that she didn’t even have a chance to save them. these five are all she has now, these five that are just as scared of what they’ve found themselves in the middle of. she has to put her fears away, ignore the teenager inside her that wants to cry and scream and disappear because she has to be a princess now. she has to be refined and diplomatic and she has to be seamless because the paladins trust her, and if they even get a feeling that she’s as scared as they are then all hopes of reviving voltron will be lost. no matter how awkward, allura has formed a bond with each paladin in some way

so you can imagine how shocking it was for her to find out the very thing she’d been hating for so long was in the blood of one of the people she’d grown close to in her time of distress. she explodes

allura was harsh and angry but she never got a chance to be so before and now here she is, scared for the paladins, scared for the unknown, scared for what this means for voltron and the rest of the world. she saw honerva go to the other side, who is to say that keith wouldn’t do the same? zarkon was prob like an uncle to allura as a baby. someone she saw often, someone who was around her from the moment she was brought into the world and now this person was a monster. how was she supposed to be so sure keith wouldn’t let his blood get to him?

but she also does something. she realizes she’s wrong. and she makes herself vulnerable. allura, the diplomatic princess of a planet taken from her, making herself vulnerable to keith and embracing him in a time of inner turmoil for the both of them. she set aside her hatred of the galra and broke the idea that all galra were the same, chose to ignore her faulty generalization to comfort the paladin she had become close to in such little time. and keith recognized that

you can see how keith values allura’s opinions, and also values her enough to see when her rationalization goes awry and when she gets so caught up in emotions that she is blinded. he offers her advice and his personal feelings about a situation so softly like he isn’t angry at her for what she’s feeling, but maybe she could see it from a different perspective. he becomes levelheaded with her

really this is just a rant abt how keith and allura are so much more than the popular fanon view and that allura has shown so much of herself in every episode and so has keith. their development is amazing and i love that keith has really started to grow and form strong relationships with the paladins and allura + coran. keith and allura needed a family and now they have one

[blueincandescence]

A Non-Toxic Reading of TLJ

http://scavengersholocron.com/category/home/why-the-last-jedi-isnt-just-bad-its-toxic/

This article — “Why The Last Jedi isn’t just Bad: It’s Toxic” — is going around tumblr as the best compilation of TLJ’s faults. I read it eagerly, hoping to understand what I missed. It’s a very thoughtful read and it made me think a lot about my assumptions. 

I still feel that there is a valid non-toxic reading of TLJ, because the arguments are predicated on two beliefs that I simply don’t share.

1) Kylo Ren is portrayed as sympathetic.

I never felt that. Fuck Kylo Ren. He gets a deeper backstory. Luke isn’t perfect. It’s more complicated. Blah, blah. In the end, he isn’t redeemed; his redemption is shown to be a lost cause.

From the article:

In other words, there’s nothing relatable when you think about a wealthy white male growing up sure of his place in the world and deciding to leave it all behind to join a fascist organization.

Exactly! That’s what the movie shows.

So the argument is that Johnson says that Kylo “is relatable because of his angst.” And, yeah, that piece may be somewhat relatable to some people. I find it insufferable and I’ve been rolling my eyes at this trash character from day one. But he’s a perfect example of millennial fascism. Kylo Ren is the living embodiment of, “Cool story, bro. It’s still murder.”

But wait, wouldn’t that mean that Rey’s entire role in the movie basically focused on developing Kylo Ren as a character? It does, and you wouldn’t be wrong to think that way.

I was pretty checked out during the Rey/Ren scenes and was really hoping they would go nowhere. Which they did! Rey does the Luke Skywalker thing of trying to save the villain but the villain doesn’t want to be saved because he is the worst so she leaves him to his fate. Subverted!

The Kylo Ren I watched on screen is not sympathetic. He’s pathetic. Will that stop shippers from glorifying him? No, but Rey rejects Kylo’s millennial fascism our-version-of-Nazisim-is-different-we’ll-be-benevolent-violent-dictators bullshit outright, so they’re still stuck in la la land.

2) That characters have to be perfect for us to love them.

They don’t! Heroes are fallible! NO ONE IS PERFECT. We all have lessons to learn. The good guys in this movie learn their lessons and become more admirable. The bad guys (spoiler! Kylo Ren) do not learn their lesson and doom themselves. 

Finn:

Again, from the article:

Until The Last Jedi where Finn is again painted as selfish and cowardly, and the film does not shy away from this fact.

Here’s some meta I wrote about Finn’s arc in TLJ. Finn’s arc isn’t that he’s a coward who becomes brave. It’s that he’s mistrustful of causes. Why on earth should he put his life on the line for the Resistance? Finn sees the world as morally gray. He tries to leave in TFA because he wants to live and, after all the terrible things he’s been through, he deserves it. His arc is about coming to terms with his identity as “rebel scum.”

Not to mention, it’s Rose who ultimately has to teach Finn about the seedy belly of Canto Bight and how it operates: through slave labor. Another character shouldn’t have to explain to Finn, of all characters, the tortures and ills of slavery. After all, that’s the only life Finn’s known, taken as his family and raised in a life of servitude as a Stormtrooper to the First Order.

Rose doesn’t teach Finn about the horrors of slavery. She prompts him to see it under the glitz and glamour of a freedom he’s never gotten to enjoy. The instant Finn realizes that slavery and torture are behind Canto Bright he rejects the whole place. Precisely because he doesn’t need to be taught that. His experience of slavery is much more stark and, well, fascist than Rose’s. But he never tries to deny that they’re equally bad. 

Finn is tempted by the gray side. But Benecio’s character snaps him out of that funk right quick. He takes his place as a leader of the Resistance. Destiny doesn’t tell him he has to be. No one passes on the mantle. He figures out what his morality is and makes a stand. That’s heroic!

Poe:

Painting him as a cocky flyboy with a chip on his shoulder just doesn’t work when it goes against everything we’ve been told about his character. The “lesson” Poe was supposed to learn was one he already knew.

What do we learn about Poe in TFA? He’s the best and he has the ear of General Leia. The rest is fanon and outside texts that a fraction of the audience have read. Poe is reckless in the way that action movies reward all male heroes for being. 

I didn’t feel less sympathetic toward Poe because of this. The whole plot is predicated on the idea that the audience will be on Poe’s side and mistrust Holdo. Poe is the character we care about, so it’s a surprise to learn that he can be wrong. In that way, “the action-oriented hero saves the day” trope is deconstructed.

Is it done well? Eh. The Holdo plot was contrived. There needed to be a better reason to keep the info secret — some stuff about spies or whatever, fine. Make an effort. But Holdo’s mistake makes us more sympathetic to Poe, even though he’s wrong his heart was in the right place. 

That’s precisely why he is rewarded in the end with command of the entire Resistance from General Leia herself. He’s learned that the best strategy for the Resistance is not the one that does the most damage to the First Order — the Resistance protects its people whenever humanly possible.

This is the feminist (in the philosophical sense; not the guy vs. girl bullshit) identity of the resistance that sets it apart from the masculine military-industrial complex the film abhors: Life is sacred. But, as we learn through Finn’s arc, choosing to put your life on the line is a heroic act. And thus we have balance. Finn and Poe make some mistakes along the way, but they end up exactly where they should be: The Leaders of the Resistance.

Rose:

Despite Kelly Marie Tran’s boundless enthusiasm for her role, Rose Tico is ultimately underwhelming as a character. Despite mourning the death of her sister, her ultimate presence in the film seemed to be reduced to a girl with a bad crush on Finn.

No!!!!!! Rose is fabulous. Rose stands up for herself at all times. Rose goes from hero worship to taser in ten seconds flat. And yes tasering a black man is in horrible taste given the world we live in. What standing up to Finn demonstrates about her character is that she’s representative of Ride or Die Resistance. She knows the world and its horrors. She mourns her sister but she’s proud as hell. She understands she’s only a tech but when she has expertise in something she doesn’t let the two most famous men in the Resistance talk over her.

Her crush on Finn is active. When Finn disappoints her, her conception of him changes. When Finn amazes her, her feelings take root. She does something about her crush. She saves his life. She kisses him. Rey is no longer the center of Finn’s universe. His capacity care grows and he grows, too. He still feels for Rey, sure, but Rose Tico is amazing and he knows it and the audience knows it.

...

All that said.

I will acknowledge that it is entirely possible I’m giving the movie too much credit. Maybe I'm willfully interpreting things not as they were meant, but as I would like them to be.

But isn’t that how fiction works?

I’m not saying TLJ is a perfect film or I wouldn’t have wanted less Kylo (please, lord, give me less Kylo). I would never say that other people’s interpretation of the film’s racism and misogyny is wrong. I’m going to continue to read articles on this topic and educate myself and try to grow in my understanding.

But is it wrong to celebrate the message I left the theater with if I can point to concrete moments and ways I read it as progressive? Is it wrong for me to love these characters and see the best in their arcs?

[kittyrossa]

sometimes, fandom plays a game of telephone: fanon characterizations become so widespread that canon characterizations get lost in the chaos. this only increases when there are half-year gaps between new seasons, as that allows a lot of time for fanon to overshadow canon.

canon!keith is super overshadowed by fanon!keith. i’m going to clarify that, because i know some people may misread it as “yet another keith stan who can’t handle fandom talking about keith’s flaws.” that’s not what’s happening here. there is a difference between “let’s talk about keith’s flaws as they actually are in canon!” and “let’s act like fanon interpretations are 100% canon.”

keith is, without a doubt, one of the more guarded characters, which means he’s bound to be misinterpreted not only by fandom, but by the other characters! and that results in people taking those misinterpretations as fact instead of trying to unpack keith on their own. this skyrocketed after S2, because people had expected the galra!keith reveal to involve every character’s reaction. and when that didn’t happen, people were disappointed, because that’s what they’d been most looking forward to from the storyline.

and that’s fine! i’m not saying you can’t still want to see those reactions. but again, when there’s so much interest in How People Interpret Keith, there’s less interest in Interpreting Actual Keith.

since S2, fanon has watered keith down to a hotheaded emo who:

doesn’t care about being a team

doesn’t care about his teammates

only cares about himself and maybe shiro and is only ever out for himself and maybe shiro, ironically painting keith as the unfeeling monster all of that fanon galra!keith stuff argued against

it’s — frustrating. so if you’re up for it, i want to delve into keith’s canon characterizations in S1 and S2, and why S2 is literally about how much he cares for others + wants to connect to them and protect them! keith’s flaw is that he doesn’t always communicate that in ways that everyone understands, and that’s 100% something he’s going to have to work on. but S2 does show him willing to put in that work, even if there’s still more work to be done. and if you’re interpreting him from the baseline that he doesn’t care at all, you’re already missing half of his development.

i’m taking a detour back to S1 because some of the anti-S2!keith sentiment is like “S1!keith would never, i don’t know S2!keith, i only know S1!keith” when S1 actually sets up everything that S2!keith is and then has S2 challenge him on it, strengthen it, and hone it. in other words, it’s a basic character arc.

keith is Super Serious about being a paladin of voltron and has been from day one!

in the first ever episode, the team argues about whether they should stay and face sendak, or leave via wormhole. hunk and lance are on Team We’re Leaving and pidge and keith are on Team We’re Staying; pidge, specifically, says that the galra will capture more prisoners if they don’t stop them, and the audience and the characters eventually learn that she’s thinking of her own imprisoned family. keith does not have a comparable personal motive, which is made very clear when pidge shifts to Team I’m Leaving (to Find My Family) a few episodes later:

keith: you can’t leave!

pidge: you can’t tell me what to do!

keith: if you leave — we can’t form voltron. and that means we can’t defend the universe against zarkon. you’re not the only one with a family! all these arusians have families, everyone in the universe has families … you’re putting the lives of two people over the lives of everyone else in the entire galaxy —

shiro: keith! that’s not how a team works. people have to want to be a part of it, they can’t be forced.

shiro understands that this isn’t keith being an unfeeling monster: it’s keith wanting his teammates to be equally determined about their mission, and therefore not wanting the team to break apart. when pidge later realizes that she sees team voltron as a potential new family — that she wants to work together and “stop zarkon for all of our families” — keith smiles and says, genuinely, “good to have you back on the team.” hunk simultaneously realizes that he no longer wants to leave; that he wants to return to the balmera and save shay and her people. the fact that hunk and pidge need these personal motives to fully embody the mission doesn’t make them less noble than keith, nor does it make keith heartless. it just means that keith doesn’t need to literally see/bond with zarkon’s victims to be motivated to do the right thing. you can absolutely argue that shiro’s trauma gives keith that extra edge — extra determination to seek justice for what’s been done to someone so important to him — but keith is still motivated by the greater good itself.

(if you’re sitting there thinking “lmao but buddy, that’s probably going to change when shiro goes missing” — i am very aware of that risk, and it will be discussed in this post + my keith and shiro post! but for keith’s priorities to be tested, they have to start from a different place to begin with, right? and that’s what this scene with pidge sets up: that to begin with, keith is able to prioritize the greater good over personal motives and feelings. we’ll see what happens when he’s in pidge’s position!)

i know i just said it, but since this is where fanon loses its grasp on him, i feel like i REALLY need to stress that being motivated by the greater good does not make keith heartless. keith can prioritize the greater good and STILL care about people. in fact, he’s pretty openly into bonding with them, whether they’re teammates or the allies they meet along the way (and these are just S1 examples):

a good place to start is the red lion itself! red may not be a “person”, but the lions are sentient magical beings that form connections with their paladins that cannot be explained by science alone. keith is the last paladin to find his lion, and he’s anxious about it enough to ask the others for guidance, and they all chime in, even lance. keith is also obviously anxious when shiro tells keith to go on ahead — “by myself?” — further underlining that keith isn’t as Lone Wolf as he may superficially appear. as his frustration grows, he relies on shiro’s “patience yields focus” to calm himself down and zone in on red, and once he gets there, he’s all smiles. “it’s me, keith! open up.” red doesn’t, not immediately, so cue the frustration again: “it’s me — keiiiiith, your — I AM YOUR PALADIN!” this is one of those blatant examples of how keith may not exactly be the smoothest talker — he’s what most would consider socially awkward — but his intent is very much to bond; to work as a team. “I’M BONDING WITH YOU! come on, we’re connected!” you even see him try to knock like lance did to open up blue’s barrier, revealing how much keith watches people and absorbs their methods. he’s an adaptable learner and fighter, passionate and relentless, and this is what gets red to finally open up.

“it’s been an honor flying with you, boys!” — despite only having a close relationship with shiro, keith says this to all of them when it looks like they’re on the brink of death. when the mission ends up a success, he’s thrilled: “heck yeah we did!” to shiro’s “we did it!” keith is not at all hesitant to embrace teamwork. he’s committed to it during the bonding/training exercises — he’s only distracted by a) shiro freezing up in front of the gladiator, keith running to shield and protect him; and b) lance’s rivalry-fueled goading. he tries to stay level-headed and keep lance focused on what’s important (working together): “just concentrate on keeping me safe” + “you’re not listening”; but keith totally caves when lance challenges him during the nosedive exercise, speeding up to match lance and beat him — which may not necessarily be “bonding” in the sense of them now being best friends forever with matching friendship bracelets, but it does show keith’s capability to lose his grip on being Super Serious to give into something fairly light and ridiculous.

this extends into the food fight, keith literally taking a stand against allura and thanking lance for backing him up. he and pidge also work together to toss the first batch of food goo — “go loose, pidge!” — and they delightedly cackle throughout. he’s again super smiley when allura points out that they’ve finally worked together as one — “hey! she’s right!” — and when lance says he doesn’t actually hate keith right now. keith rides that wave, smiling as he tells lance that he’s going to be “lights out” as soon as his head hits the pillow, and he fondly teases hunk (“g-forces mess with your head a little bit?”) after hunk rambles about how connected he feels they all are. and though he’s surprised when hunk pulls him into a side-hug, keith doesn’t remotely flinch or lean away from it. he just smiles wider! he’s happy!

keith is still Super Serious about the mission, though. unlike the others, he isn’t instantly swayed by how cute and small klaizap is — “i’m not taking any chances” — and he’s confused when allura says that the paladins are going to visit the arusian village, because isn’t their mission “to get off this planet and fight zarkon”? but allura elaborates that part of their mission is “to spread peace and diplomacy”, and it’s clear that keith isn’t as intuitively comfortable with this as he is with flying and fighting. allura/hunk/lance let the arusians flock to them and hug them, but keith walks away. nevertheless! he accepts a hug when an arusian leaps at him, even if he admits this is uncharacteristic for him: “i don’t usually hug strangers, but — man, you are cuddly.” he softens afterwards, quietly enjoying the village and only breaking away when he sees that pidge and shiro are in trouble.

the castle party is quite the Social Event for keith! he talks to his arusian cuddle buddy, and he hangs out with hunk and lance, trying out the team cheer + joining hunk in poking and prodding at lance when he faints from the nasty space nectar. keith later spits out the same nectar in hunk’s face, but hunk rolls with it, making keith and the arusians laugh. it’s all really fun and therefore really sad that this is the same night hunk/lance/pidge all express wanting to leave!

when the galra invade, keith is the first person to volunteer to help the arusian village: the “weakness” of “valuing the lives of others” that sendak had counted on. keith is also worried when lance is wounded, and despite blowing up at her earlier, keith works to help pidge take back the castle. he’s glad when she chooses to stay and be a team, as shiro had said it should be done, and smiles supportively when she reveals that she’s a girl, joining the others in lessening her nerves.

he’s also glad when he goes to make sure lance is okay and lance says that they are a good team — glad to the extent that keith is the most impatient for lance to get out of the healing pod, and then pretty bummed when lance acts like their Bonding Moment didn’t happen. “i cradled you in my arms!” this doesn’t make him suddenly turn on lance, though; he has no objections to saving the blue lion from rolo and nyma, and he gives back lance’s teasing as good as he gets it: “what’s that? i, uh … you’re cutting out, i can’t — i can’t hear you.”

speaking of rolo and nyma! keith is more immediately willing to trust them than he’d been willing to trust klaizap, which sort of sucks for him, because rolo and nyma actually do have a hidden agenda. he sticks with shiro and allura as they talk to rolo, and when rolo says that there isn’t much galra resistance, keith attempts to assure him with “well, we’re gonna change all that!” he even leans against rolo’s ship as rolo “works”, not antisocial in the slightest. so, understandably, he’s pouty when rolo and nyma’s true natures are revealed, and is the one to repeatedly tell hunk “okay, we get it!” before the rest of the team joins in. this has really been a day of Bonding Betrayal for keith, huh?

he’s also betrayed when shiro participates in the laser gun sound effects, but keith still offers hunk a tiny finger gun even as he tells hunk to calm down. shiro points out that hunk is just excited because it’s his first rescue mission, and shiro and keith share a smile that makes you wonder if they’re reminiscing about something in their past — or, maybe they’re just hyped that everyone else is hyped! either way, it’s a cute moment that tells us keith doesn’t mind how enthusiastic the others are even if he tries to be the Only Sane Man.

he’s teamed up with lance for the balmera mission, but isn’t bitter when lance has a better strategy than he does: he smiles, and then smiles again when he and lance come up with the same strategy later on. keith definitely wants to be “a good team” with lance — with all of them, but it’s a different kind of noteworthy with lance because of lance instigating their rivalry. keith would have reason to not particularly care about cooperating with him, but cooperate he does!

the remaining S1 eps are too action-packed to offer much downtime bonding, but when allura has to let go of hologram!alfor, keith is the only one not looking at her: his eyes are closed and his arms are crossed, as if trying to repress emotion; he seems sympathetic to her pain. this is similar to when pidge reveals that commander holt is her dad: keith doesn’t say anything, but his face is sympathetic. considering what we later learn of keith’s own dad, it’s possible that these are subtle signs of empathy.

i’m going to talk about keith’s objections to the Rescue Allura Mission further down, but this is the more appropriate section to point out that keith still shows how much he cares: he’s the first to notice that shiro comes back without her, and even though the others shut down his objections to the mission, he doesn’t sulk in a corner. he still involves himself in the planning, and the only reason he tells the others “you guys get the princess without me” is because shiro also needs saving. his awareness of how risky the mission is doesn’t stop him from taking risks once they’re in the thick of it — from looking out for his team.

you get the idea! i didn’t give too many shiro examples, both because i have a separate shiro post and because i wanted to prove that the fanon version of keith — “hotheaded emo who isolates himself from people who aren’t shiro” — does not exist. if S1!keith does isolate or differentiate himself, it’s almost always because (you guessed it) he’s focused on the overall mission. this doesn’t mean he Hates People + doesn’t want to bond with them, it means that he’s charged by a unique drive, just as they all are.

keith’s drive can manifest in fairly straightforward things like using his free time to train alone, or to go on a self-appointed druid sidequest. or to, you know, FIGHT ZARKON ONE-ON-ONE BECAUSE HE THINKS IT WILL END THE GALRA EMPIRE! but his drive also sometimes manifests in chiding his teammates, especially lance. because lance wants to one-up keith, lance takes keith criticizing his footing as “i did something cool and you can’t handle it” when keith’s actual concern is “your kick ruined our balance. we fell.” this is pretty emblematic of how keith doesn’t relate to lance’s drive for fame/adoration/being the best, literally telling him “it’s not about the glory, lance — it’s about freeing prisoners from zarkon.”

i know it’s tempting to look at keith’s aesthetic (fingerless gloves, cropped jacket, crossed arms, The Pout) and simplify him to a mysterious Bad Boy archetype (doesn’t care about following the rules + breaks off to defy them); but i think that we as a nation need to face the fact that KEITH IS ACTUALLY A BIG NERD who is very serious about staying on track and whose “off-track” moments are still doing things that (he hopes) will help the track of their mission. and don’t forget that he’ll be the one to tell the others to get back on track, to the point of getting straight-up mocked for it, but that’s jumping ahead to S2.

so, maybe you’re wondering: if S1!keith is Super Serious about their mission, then why the hell does this happen:

keith: or maybe we shouldn’t go on this mission at all. think about it: we’ll be delivering the universe’s only hope to the universe’s biggest enemy.

hunk: keith, that’s cold even for you. what if it was one of us? what if it was me? you wouldn’t leave me, would you? would you?

keith: i’m not saying i like the idea! i’m just thinking like a paladin.

lance: no, you’re thinking of yourself because you’re too scared to do what’s right!

maybe you’re with hunk and lance; maybe you think this makes keith cold and cowardly. as pidge says, everyone is upset because they lost allura, and emotions are running high, even shiro’s (especially shiro’s, because he feels personally responsible). but keith is striving to stay logical and rational. he isn’t saying “i don’t care if we leave allura to die!” — he’s saying that if they go to central command with voltron, they’re not going to be able to save allura or the universe if they’re overpowered. allura agrees with him and zarkon counts on it, because they know what team voltron doesn’t: that zarkon is connected to the black lion and therefore has the power to overtake voltron. keith doesn’t discover these specifics until he fights zarkon directly, but again, keith doesn’t need nitty-gritty details to be wary of a plan that could lead to the destruction of their mission and therefore the universe as a whole. it’s the exact opposite of not caring about saving lives; it’s wanting to ensure that personal feelings and personal motives don’t prevent that life-saving from happening.

and then S2 is like, “hey, let’s make keith PUT HIS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS.”

S2 & the reveal of keith’s personal motives

remember “if S1!keith does isolate or differentiate himself, it’s almost always because (you guessed it) he’s focused on the overall mission”? this gets MUCH more complicated for S2!keith, because personal feelings — personal motives — are rapidly emerging, and they scare the quiznak out of him.

shiro: is that a hologram?

kolivan: his suit has the ability to create a virtual mindscape, reflecting its wearer’s greatest hopes and fears. and, at this moment, your friend desperately wants to see you.

a recap of keith’s virtual mindscape:

hologram!shiro helps keith up from where he’s fallen, exhausted and in pain from fighting the trials of marmora. he praises keith’s endurance, but says it’s ultimately time to get out of there — that keith should just give up his knife. keith insists that he can’t, because it’s the only thing that ties him to his past and to who he is, to which hologram!shiro says coolly, “you know exactly who you are: a paladin of voltron. we’re all the family you need.” keith affirms that shiro is family to him, but he still has to do this, and now hologram!shiro gets mad. “just give up the knife, keith! you’re only thinking of yourself, as usual!” keith pauses, eyes wide, but gathers himself and says he’s made his choice; and hologram!shiro snaps that this means keith has chosen to be alone. he walks away, and keith runs after him, yelling for shiro to wait —

— and then the scene transforms into keith’s desert shack, where his dad is waiting for him. unlike hologram!shiro, hologram!dad is all about keith and the knife. “you’re home, son. so many years have passed. i have so much to tell you. don’t you want to catch up?” (“of course i do,” says keith, soft and vulnerable.) “your mother gave [the knife] to me.” (“mom?” asks keith, soft and vulnerable.) keith is clearly invested — “you gotta tell me, dad! i have to know!” — but he is also clearly invested in the galra attack that is happening outside, the red lion waiting for him. hologram!dad tells him to ignore it, that keith’s mom will be there soon — if keith doesn’t wait for her, if keith walks out that door, he’ll never find out who he is. but keith can’t take standing there as the world crumbles, and though it’s obviously making him crumble, he says goodbye to his dad and walks out that door.

THE HOPES: having family; connecting to family; feeling that he belongs with a family and knowing exactly how he belongs, whether it’s found family (shiro; team voltron) or biological family (his dad; his mom)

THE FEARS: losing family; but that wanting family — that hoping for it, that pursuing it, that expressing that he wants it — makes him selfish and will distract him from being a paladin of voltron + the greater good of saving the universe

this is Heavy Stuff, so i’m Heavily Confused when people say “S2 wastes a lot of time on keith only for us not to discover anything new — we all guessed galra!keith and it just ended up being anticlimactic because we didn’t see every last character react to galra!keith.”

i again wonder if the problem is that post-S1 fanon built up expectations for the main conflict to be keith openly despairing that team voltron would see him as a purple monster, and then team voltron soothing keith that team voltron is still his family.

but S2 canon is telling us that outside of a virtual mindscape, keith is still scared to express that he wants family! he absolutely wants it, but keith wants family so badly — fears losing family so badly — that those personal feelings/motives have enough power to make him lose focus. and he can’t do that, which means it’s frustrating for him to watch others do that. this all expands on the drive you saw in S1!keith. S2 confirms that he hasn’t had a traditional upbringing; that unlike pidge/hunk/lance/coran/allura, he can’t comfortably open up about how much he misses his family and wants to go back to them, because he doesn’t have that solid frame of reference! if “so many years have passed” since keith last saw his dad, then keith lost his family before voltron and before kerberos. the closest tangible presence is shiro, who he’s lost before, and who is now talking like keith will lose him again! (spoiler alert, he will!)

let’s rewind, because i jumped into the marmora trials without talking about the important S2 bits leading up to the marmora trials. important S2 bits that people see as keith being out of character — as in, the writers forgetting who keith is? — instead of keith within the universe acting uncharacteristically because (it bears repeating) keith is scared that a) he’s going to lose found family (shiro), and b) the truth of his biological family will destroy his part in their mission. and this makes him act in ways that S1!keith didn’t, because he didn’t yet have those personal feelings/motives gnawing at him. does that make sense?

generally, keith doesn’t hesitate to follow shiro’s leadership: sometimes he even does it with a prompt “yes, sir!” as he flies off. but in S2, whenever shiro suggests that keith take over as leader, keith responds with the opposite of ease: “stop talking like that; why are we even talking about this? nothing is going to happen to you.” this isn’t about keith worrying that he doesn’t have the skillset; this is about keith fearing that keith + leadership = losing shiro. this is keith putting shiro over the mission. he also hesitates when shiro wants to find ulaz, even though shiro says the risk is worth it if they can find new allies: “shiro, are you sure you can trust this? i mean, after all the galra have done to you, they — they took your arm.” keith remains worried even after seeing ulaz’s blade and knowing that he has the same symbol on his own knife (and therefore knowing that he has a key to his past): “you know i trust you, shiro. but this doesn’t feel right.”

A SIDEBAR ABOUT KEITH & SHIRO

keith wanting to protect shiro isn’t news! S1 has several hints, but S2 fleshes them out further. there’s still backstory to uncover: how did they meet, and how did shiro change keith’s life for the better? and are the fan theories accurate — did keith get kicked out of the garrison because he started acting out after the kerberos mission “failed due to pilot error”?

backstory gaps aside, we’re still given enough to understand that keith sees shiro as a great source of safety and balance, which i write about in more detail here. in S1, though, keith doesn’t let his personal feelings for shiro overpower the mission: he doesn’t even know that he’s going to find shiro when he follows the energy in the desert, so he isn’t solely motivated by shiro, either (even if finding him is an obvious emotional relief). the one time he slips in S1, it’s when he doesn’t want to find red without shiro, but he still goes through with it! and that’s the thing — S2 may instill the fear that something could happen to shiro, making keith hesitant to say “yes, absolutely, i’ll do it!” when shiro talks about his hypothetical departure. but when the hypothetical becomes reality — shiro in danger — keith has proven time and time again that in the heat of that moment, he won’t at all hesitate to go after shiro. he’ll even fly the black lion to do it — so maybe that motive will push him to fly black when shiro truly does disappear!

it isn’t until keith gets irrefutable proof of ulaz’s loyalty that he’s willing to trust the blade of marmora, and he apologizes to shiro for doubting ulaz. and this is where keith subtly starts having personal motives concerning himself (i.e. not just shiro), even though the other characters don’t know it. but keith knows that he somehow has a connection to the blade, and now that he’s convinced they aren’t evil or manipulating shiro, he wants to chase that connection. he defends ulaz against allura and throws out that they should “meet up with the rest of ulaz’s group, finish what we started”; it’s shiro who has to remind him that they can’t go until they find out how zarkon is tracking them, otherwise they’ll risk losing the blade as allies. remember how S1!keith would normally point out something logical and rational like this? oops.

keith continues to chase answers, even asking coran about the galra coming to earth; this is the first time keith has ever brought up earth, and it’s to figure out his history, not to reminisce about it as the others have done. he gets cut off by pidge detecting the olkari’s sporse code, and he sits apart from the group as she rambles, looking angry — this isn’t his default “crossed arms but still listening” pose, he’s impatient and frustrated about being torn away from his own “research”, so he basically snaps at pidge to get to the point.

i don’t mean to paint S2!keith as constantly on edge, because he isn’t! he has a blast during the spore fight; he seems quite at peace in the olkari’s forest; he’s right there with lance in wanting to go swimming; and he and lance actually have a lot of nice teamwork during these eps, both in the elevator and outside of the elevator.

a particularly sweet keith moment is how deeply he’s affected by “we’re all made up of the same cosmic dust”: “so, that means — we’re all related. this ship, those stars, the olkari … even the galra.” it’s similar to hunk’s “we’re totally connected: no secrets, no barriers, no nothing!” + keith’s teasing “g-forces mess with your head a little bit?”, so hunk gets him back this time — “i think keith just blew his own mind!” — but we, the audience, again know what the characters don’t: that keith is not only trying to make peace with maybe being galra, but trying to soften the others into the idea — into not seeing him any differently, because he’ll still be connected to them. they’ll all still be made up of the same cosmic dust. guys. :(

but the squishy feelings can’t last forever! reality ensues: zarkon is tracking them without mercy, and keith wants to face him — “enough running!” — but shiro and allura say it’s too dangerous; and sure enough, when they do face him, zarkon again tries to overpower shiro’s mind and take the black lion. allura is convinced this is her fault — that zarkon is tracking them through her — but keith says it’s him, because zarkon must have imprinted on him when they fought, or something. the lies! he even lies to shiro, though shiro approaches him privately and kindly to ask if anything is wrong, since keith seems anxious; but keith brushes him off and says he just needs sleep. and this is where S2!keith has perhaps his biggest departure from S1!keith:

HE MAKES PLANS TO LEAVE TEAM VOLTRON. this is everything he once exploded at pidge for considering! to be fair, keith isn’t leaving to find his family; but he is worried that having galra family is how team voltron is being tracked, and he’s prepared to remove himself from the team if that’s the case. it’s understandable that this fear is on his mind, with the nightmare he just had: the red lion attacking him; a military galra uniform replacing the paladin armor; and zarkon — who in reality told keith that he fights like a galra soldier! — threatening that he can find keith anywhere. in the pod, keith asks allura if they even can go back if they’re the ones being tracked — except who would pilot the castle or create wormholes? — and though keith had been the one to remind pidge that her leaving would mean not being able to form voltron, it’s allura who has to remind keith that he’s a paladin and is needed to form voltron. yikes.

A SIDEBAR ABOUT KEITH & ALLURA

this can be a hard dynamic to analyze, because until now, they haven’t had much one-on-one interaction; but i’d argue that their characters have a lot of parallels. if keith and shiro are Team Patience Yields Focus, then keith and allura are Team Action Over Caution. make no mistake, they can be cautious if they think something will hurt the team as a whole — remember that they both saw the risk in bringing voltron to central command, even if it meant rescuing allura. but as this pod plan proves, they don’t mind acting on their own. when it comes to putting themselves in danger — acting individually for the greater good of the team — then they’ll put Action Over Caution and throw themselves into the line of fire. so, says allura: “i’m not going to stop you. i’m going to join you.”

the one time they work together in S1, it’s because they’ve both been tricked into thinking the arusians are in trouble, and though they end up barred from the castle, they still do what they can to help pidge on the inside; and as soon as they can get back in, they only allow themselves a brief second of happiness before getting serious and running into battle, with a plan of action already formed. plus, we’ve seen that they’ll put aside their own personal feelings for the greater good: they both leave behind the holograms of their dads, as much as they miss them and want them to be a presence, because the choice is between that and people being in danger. and of course, allura sacrificed herself to save shiro and the team; and keith fought zarkon to save shiro and the team. shiro is often a calming balance to their fire, which is why he tells them that their running off puts the team in more danger — that the team is always stronger together.

however, it’s worth noting that allura isn’t prepared to leave team voltron permanently: unlike keith, she doesn’t bring along all of her belongings. she has every intention of returning. allura, though she’s lost her family, is still motivated by them, and often mentions her dad in speeches about continuing his mission. she doesn’t feel a need to completely divorce her drive from personal feelings/motives, even if it’s painful for her. you can see this in how she talks in the pod: allura is very open about the trauma zarkon has wrought, saying she knows too well how quickly galra can turn. but keith does everything he can to sound impersonal; to sound objective, like a diplomat. like he has no personal motives behind “it means something to me! it means some of [the galra] are actually willing to help! and we could use all the help we can get!” they’re coming at this from extremely different family histories (one grew up knowing who they were and what their purpose was; one did not), and therefore coming from extremely different perspectives, even if both perspectives are about losing family and wanting family. neither of them are wrong for the way they feel, but they’re not going to reach closure overnight. and yet they still work together to survive the sudden explosion into zero gravity, so! it’s a tense situation, but they’re still teammates, and they’re still bonded by their devotion to the overall team.

phew, okay, so that happens! as does finding out that zarkon is tracking them through the black lion, which means keith can go back to researching the history of his knife, and he does just that at the space mall (instead of looking for teludav lenses, their assigned mission). and then finally comes the time to go to the blade’s headquarters, which holds keith’s entire focus. he increasingly loses patience with lance/hunk/pidge for going off-topic, and lance goes from mocking him to “okay, jeez, calm down.” listen to the difference between S1!keith and S2!keith in arguing that they have no other option, that this is their mission and they can’t turn back: the difference is that S2!keith has a strong personal motive. shiro is again tuned into keith’s behavior being out of the ordinary — “you kind of blew up at everybody back there” — but he still understands that keith’s devotion is to the team, even if his communication of that needs fine-tuning via self-control and self-discipline. and he still wants keith to accompany him to the headquarters, which lance doesn’t take very well!

A SIDEBAR ABOUT KEITH & LANCE

or, more accurately, “a sidebar about how lance sees keith”? i’m going to be blunt: i think a good bulk of fandom misinterpreting keith comes from lance being the fandom favorite + seeing keith through lance’s eyes. and that makes sense, because lance canonically has a biased viewpoint of keith, but that’s the keyword: biased. he isn’t always right!

which doesn’t mean he’s always wrong. they have the building blocks of a fire/water dynamic — there’s even a visual metaphor when their lions first reveal their elemental powers: keith’s fire almost hurts the balmera, but lance’s ice stops it. this extends to some of their personal interactions. lance is another balancing character who will point out when keith is running too “hot”, potentially putting others at risk — like when keith almost attacks without considering the balmera, or when keith’s druid sidequest could blow their cover. and in a shiro-esque move, lance says “we’ve got to stick together! what are you doing?” when keith says he’s going to do “whatever he can” to stop zarkon by himself.

this all shows great potential on lance’s part, but unfortunately, it’s still just potential. for the majority of the time, he doesn’t balance keith out because he’s too busy losing his own cool when it comes to keith!

lance: so, any thoughts on who’s gonna join you on this little mission? i’m thinking things might get a little hot, so you’re gonna want someone who can stay cool.

shiro: you’re right. keith, you’re coming with me.

lance: keith’s a hothead! he’s probably going to shoot first and ask questions later! and they’re not gonna be able to answer his questions because they’ll be dead!

from lance’s perspective, he’s been in keith’s shadow since the garrison: “i hope i don’t need to remind you that the only reason you’re here is that the best pilot in your class had a discipline issue and flunked out.” so while it’s understandable that he has this blind spot, it doesn’t make it any less of a blind spot that prevents him from seeing keith as a fully realized person with his own personal feelings and motives. this definitely needs to be a two-way street — if keith isn’t opening up, we can’t ask lance to magically read keith’s mind — but someone being reserved doesn’t normally stop lance from trying.

lance can be a perceptive People Person: for example, he realizes that iverson bringing up the kerberos mission always sets pidge off, and he tells pidge that they’re going to have to bond and share secrets if they want to be a good team. but he has yet to extend a similar hand to keith (at least, not a hand that he doesn’t yank back), because to lance, keith represents someone he wants to either Be or Beat.

and that results in provoking keith and projecting onto keith, because he assumes keith feels the same way; that keith wants what lance wants, and is always going to get it. when we first meet keith as a character, it’s through lance assuming “that guy is always trying to one-up me!” and that they have an epic mutual rivalry that plagues keith as much as it plagues lance. but it doesn’t! yes, keith will at times rise to it, defend himself, or even instigate it, and he isn’t shy to point out when lance doesn’t have the right focus or is acting recklessly (“just concentrate on keeping me safe” + “it’s not about the glory” + imbalancing power kicks); but he isn’t actually out to make lance feel inferior or to steal everything lance wants.

other examples of lance projecting onto keith:

lance assumes that keith talking to coran about the blue lion means that keith wants to pilot the blue lion (reality: keith wants to know if the blue lion has a link to his galra family, and lance is the one who acted like he was going to be given the red lion as well as the blue lion!)

lance assumes that keith and allura run off together because they’re “sitting in a tree” (reality: they’re trying to see if zarkon is tracking them, but lance wants to “sit in a tree” with allura! in S1, nyma plays lance’s paranoia like a fiddle: when lance seems like he won’t take her out in his lion, nyma muses that maybe keith will, and lance instantly trips over himself to get them flying. never mind that we’re never shown keith interacting with anyone but rolo from that team; nyma is savvy enough to, at some point in talking with lance, pick up on his keith problem. it’s that obvious!)

sometimes he just full-out assumes the worst of keith, like keith doesn’t care enough about the mission and therefore he’s going to kill everyone on sight, or keith is too scared to do what’s right and therefore doesn’t want to go to central command to save his own skin. all wrong assumptions, and all indicative of how much he misinterprets keith.

to give lance credit, sometimes he almost fondly thinks of hotheaded!keith, like when he laughs about the time keith was ready to fight tiny little klaizap (“he was their bravest warrior!”). none of the above means lance hates keith/doesn’t care about him. his voice + expressions are very worried when it looks like keith is getting hurt at the blade’s headquarters, and he privately gushes about keith doing cool things like flying through asteroid fields and black holes (which has added sweetness when you realize this comes after finding out that keith is galra and that he would’ve had new ammo to badmouth him). this, on top of several moments of working together mid-battle, absolutely implies that they’re going to get better and that lance will eventually lose his keith blind spot; and keith, in return, will realize that lance isn’t all about fun and games/girls/glory/wanting to be cool — that he’s a caring person with a big heart.

right now, i’d compare it to the harry potter versus ron weasley trope: character A has lost their family and desperately wants family, while character B has always had family, but still envies character A because they have glory and are never seen as second (or seventh) best. and i do think that lance will one day be a great friend to keith, once he understands how much keith Doesn’t Have Everything; that keith wants family and/or needs support (don’t click this if you don’t want S3 spoilers). but they’re not at that place in S2, even if they’re working towards it, which is why it isn’t lance that you see in the virtual mindscape, even if you hear his words (“you’re thinking of yourself!”): lance isn’t on shiro’s level of understanding keith/reaching out to keith, and lance is still himself in a mindscape where he sees keith being chosen for something as one-upping him, when that has never been keith’s driving force, least of all during the marmora mission.

so, yes, lance is wrong when he assumes that keith is so hotheaded that he’s going to kill everyone when they get to the blade’s headquarters (even if he’s basing this on keith’s king lubos bluff, which was more about a) keith’s horror that lubos was such a horrible leader that he’d turn his back on his own people, and b) keith not thinking the galra would be so evil as to actually not care if keith went through with the bluff, but anyway). keith doesn’t take action against the blade until they do so against him, and even then, he refuses to leave and is willing to do whatever it takes to earn their trust and knowledge!

so, as i broke down 10,000 years ago, keith goes through the virtual mindscape that makes him confront his hopes and fears, which are — well, i’ll just copy and paste them again:

THE HOPES: having family; connecting to family; feeling that he belongs with a family and knowing exactly how he belongs, whether it’s found family (shiro; team voltron) or biological family (his dad; his mom)

THE FEARS: losing family; but that wanting family — that hoping for it, that pursuing it, that expressing that he wants it — makes him selfish and will distract him from being a paladin of voltron + the greater good of saving the universe

shiro is the opposite of hologram!shiro: he barges in there right along with the red lion, ready to attack the blade if they continue to harm keith and “mess with his mind”. but only keith is able to stop the chaos with a firm:

keith: wait! just take the knife! it doesn’t matter where i come from. i know who i am. we all need to work together to defeat zarkon. if that means i give up this knife, fine. take it.

he awakens the blade, confirming that he has galra blood in his veins, and from here, there’s a slight turning point. it’s not that all of keith’s worries have vanished, but the part that made him so desperate — the uncertainty — has been somewhat cleared. he still doesn’t know all of the details of his past, but he’s setting that aside to focus on the mission; to prove that being galra doesn’t make him any less devoted to the mission.

he’s visibly and audibly struggling. when he and hunk fly to the weblum, keith tries to cling to routine — “everyone has a job to do and this is ours” — but when hunk starts firing questions about keith being galra and explains why, exactly, allura is so shaken by it, keith changes the subject: “let’s just watch the video coran uploaded and stay on task.” this isn’t purely because he wants to focus on the mission, but because he wants to avoid expressing how emotional this is all making him. how inhuman it makes him feel: “i’m not an alien.” when they see the dead planets, he looks and sounds almost guilty; he’s galra, and it’s likely that galra are responsible for killing those planets.

keith has always been devoted to the mission, but now, he’s pushing himself to really show what he’s capable of, because he wants his teammates to feel that nothing about him has changed — that he wants to help them, not hurt them. over the course of this mini-arc, you especially see him do this with:

hunk: keith and hunk may not clash as much as keith and lance, but the yellow lion is described as “caring and kind … its pilot is one who puts the needs of others above his own … as the leg of voltron, you will lift the team up and hold them together”; meanwhile, the red lion is “temperamental and the most difficult to master … you’ll have to earn its respect.” remember that a lion’s quintessence is mirrored in its paladin: hunk, like yellow, is an openly caring person who is also very open about his own emotions, lacking much of a brain-to-mouth filter; but keith, like red, does not open up easily. keith is very physically expressive, but rarely verbally expressive when it comes to the depths of what he’s feeling, and there’s perhaps no clearer example than his responses to hunk’s attempts at Galra Talk. hunk isn’t going to sugarcoat that he finds the galra reveal to be Too New and Too Weird, a pretty difficult approach for keith, who doesn’t want to talk about it at all. “can you just lay off?”

so it’s a rocky start for keith and hunk — especially when you consider that hunk already sees keith as a “cold” person — but keith finds his feet once they get into the belly of the beast. maybe he’s thinking of what shiro told him before the marmora mission: “you’ll have to control your emotions if you’re going to lead this group someday … i know what you’re capable of, if you can learn some self-discipline … if you’re going to be a leader, you’ve got to get your head on straight.” keith doesn’t transform his entire personality to do this, or go too out of his comfort zone (translation: he isn’t suddenly opening up about his galra angst), but he does try to combine a mix of his own philosophy with hunk’s. keith says coran’s instructions seem “simple enough” while hunk says they seem “under-explained” — so keith, in how he tries to lead hunk, combines simplicity and clarity. he sees that hunk is freaked out by the weblum, and just as hunk doesn’t sugarcoat galra!keith being Weird, keith isn’t going to sugarcoat that their surroundings are disgusting: but “we’re gonna need that big brain of yours if we want to make it through. will you be all right? i gotta be able to count on you.” he is by no means flawless at this (“i said, will you be all right?”) but he continues to try to calm hunk down, even casually opting for humor, prompting hunk’s shock, ongoing laughter, and the famous “wow. galra!keith is way funnier than regular!keith.”

like keith later says, he “didn’t just turn galra!” — he’s always been this person, Super Serious about the mission and working as a team, but he’s aware that he hasn’t always been communicative about that in a way that everyone finds warm and inviting. so during the weblum mission, he doesn’t just try to be simple and clear in instructing hunk (“you’ve gotta find a way out of the circulatory system — meet me in the third stomach; let’s get what we came for and get out; what do we gotta do to get that scaultrite gland to goop?”), but also in encouraging hunk: “by the way … you really came through in the clutch back there. without you, the mission would have been a failure.” hunk is obviously appreciative of keith trying to be “a better human”, so this holds potential for keith to gradually feel more comfortable in being open about himself in addition to how much he wants his teammates to feel they can be comfortable with him.

weblum!galra: they may not be on team voltron, but keith accepts them as an ally once weblum!galra proves that they’re willing to be a team (keith thinks weblum!galra is aiming their gun at him, but instead, weblum!galra shoots the Evil Bacteria; “i guess you can keep your weapon,” says keith, surprised). this is a very interesting dynamic, because weblum!galra is faceless and voiceless, which means keith can judge everything based on their actions — exactly what he’s hoping people will do for him. but at the same time, he others himself from weblum!galra (even beyond that first meeting when keith sees their galra crest and takes their gun, accusing them with a flat “you’re galra” even though he’s galra, too). he’s slightly hesitant to tell hunk that weblum!galra is, well, galra, and then makes a face when hunk jokes that all galra must know each other.

but after hunk asks if they should rescue a galra soldier, keith reorients his focus: “we’re paladins of voltron. we can’t leave people to die even if they are galra.” his voice betrays him — he’s emotional — so this is another example of keith not speaking totally objectively. it doesn’t matter if someone left alone and in need of saving is galra; that doesn’t mean team voltron can dehumanize them. he’s not 100% talking about weblum!galra, nor is it only weblum!galra that he’s worried about being abandoned. so uh, needless to say — after working alongside this person and having each other’s backs, keith is pretty damn upset when weblum!galra betrays him. “you’re just like the rest of them,” he says, doing exactly what he hopes allura and the others won’t do: he lumps all galra together. keith has very much not yet made peace with being part-galra. even so, he still says weblum!galra can’t be too big of a threat — it doesn’t matter what they do with the scaultrite, because “whatever the galra are planning won’t matter after we defeat zarkon.” his mission mindset remains “destroying zarkon means destroying everything underneath him.” (it’s almost like keith doesn’t know that this is only S2 and that the empire has a prince who may even be connected to weblum!galra, but hey, moving on.)

allura: with allura, keith is at odds — he does a mix of staying quiet and speaking up. when he does speak up, it isn’t to talk the talk, but action-oriented “let me walk the walk and prove my loyalty”: i’m here, what can i do, how can i help, how is your side of the mission going? hunk even reminds allura that keith is doing his part, but allura cannot fully trust it until this crucial scene:

kolivan: we’ve not yet heard from thace. he was supposed to contact us two vargas ago.

antok: he could’ve been captured.

kolivan: or killed. we need to abort this mission immediately.

allura: abort? no! we cannot back away now!

antok: the blade of marmora does not take chances. it’s how we’ve survived for so long.

allura: it’s held you back. your caution is the reason zarkon is still in power!

kolivan: we would rather wait than jeopardize everything. besides, it’s too late to get someone else on the inside.

keith: i’ll do it.

allura: what?

keith: i’ll sneak onto zarkon’s ship. i’m galra, so i’ll be able to interact with their technology. pidge, you can rig up one of those pods with a cloaking device, right?

pidge: well, yeah.

kolivan: going onto zarkon’s ship is a suicide mission. i would never command someone so inexperienced to go on a mission so dangerous.

keith: no one’s commanding me. i’m doing it.

i wrote that all out because it has Poignant Parallels to when allura first speaks to hologram!alfor:

allura: i don’t know if we should run to preserve what we have, or stay and risk everything. i want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone. i know what you would do.

hologram!alfor: i scattered the lions to keep them out of zarkon’s hands. you urged me to keep them and fight, but, for the greater good of protecting the universe, i chose to hide them.

allura: i think i understand.

hologram!alfor: no, daughter, you were right. i made a terrible mistake, one that cost the universe countless lives. forming voltron is the only way to stop zarkon. you must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.

it’s therefore not surprising that keith showing such a determined display of Action Over Caution resonates with allura: it’s exactly what she would do. and keith isn’t just risking his life for a mini-mission — this is essentially the Final Boss Fight that will end in defeating zarkon. to us, the audience and not the characters fighting this war, allura may seem like she does a quick turnaround — but it’s quick because it’s the quickness of keith rising up and refusing to give up that makes allura realize that they have the same drive.

she doesn’t have to go to the extent that she does: approach keith, explain why she’s been so hesitant and scared, and hug him and assure him that she sees him as part of her new family, so please come back. but she does, as both leader and head of that new family who would’ve had every right to not want to risk another galra teammate turning traitor, making her relive her trauma. this is why it’s her reaction to galra!keith that is so focused on; this entire galra!keith arc — for both allura and keith, who are Intensely Invested in the success of their mission — is about what they’re willing to do for the greater good of their mission. keith still isn’t pouring out his own emotions — he’s not at that comfort level yet — but he can absolutely respond with a firm nod and an “i will”, vowing to do his part and to come back and continue to do his part.

allura: i just wanted to say: the galra, they’ve done terrible things. destroyed entire civilizations. they took my family. but, in time, i’ve grown to consider you and the paladins my family. so, when i learned you were galra … i didn’t know what to think. i wanted to hate you.

keith: allura, it’s —

allura cuts him off before he can finish, so we can only guess what keith would have said. was this his attempt at verbally communicating his own perspective of losing and wanting family, or was this his attempt at verbally communicating that he understands allura’s perspective? whatever it was, allura thinks keith’s actions speak for themselves: “you’ve proven it’s not what’s in your blood; it’s who you are that counts.” and because this is something that’s said before battle — where keith could very well die — it’s understandable if this shifts in the future: if allura needs keith to verbally communicate in addition to communicating via actions. but for right now, the actions are enough for her.

i’m sure this will carry into S3, not just in terms of keith still confronting the fact that he’s galra, but in terms of allura being an altean who now has galra allies and altean enemies — haggar and probably prince lotor. it’s a mess! how this war began was obviously not cut-and-dry (one group versus another group with zero overlap), which means allies and enemies aren’t going to be cut-and-dry. all they can do is hope that the trust they’re placing in people they never thought they’d work with is earned. that it’ll further their mission, not destroy it.

keith gets a taste of this when he meets thace:

like ulaz, thace is willing to improvise and act quickly — and ultimately sacrifice himself for the greater good. “paladin, this is where my journey ends. but as a member of voltron, you have a bigger mission. you must understand that.” their time together is brief, but after fighting the druids and shutting down zarkon’s ship, it’s more than enough for keith to tell thace, with emotion, “it was an honor to meet you.” (just like “it’s been an honor flying with you, boys!”) unlike with weblum!galra, keith is able to feel that he’s successfully teamed up with an honorable galra. (and kolivan and antok are learning, too; they go with allura to fight haggar, finally putting Action Over Caution.)

after allura gets hurt, it takes a We Can’t Give Up speech from shiro to get all of the paladins moving again: “i’m all in,” says keith, grinning. and when shiro gets hurt, keith steps up and leads the others (even though this is something he fears!) and the others follow him without hesitation: “something’s wrong with shiro — guys, we can’t let zarkon get the black lion!” you can seriously see why the red lion and keith share the same quintessence: it may not be easy for them to open up, but when they have a goal, they’re all in, and when they have someone they want to protect, they’re all in.

it’s very heartbreaking, then, but very fitting, to see them win the battle but lose shiro — to see keith run breathlessly towards shiro’s lion and call shiro’s name. for added heartbreak, remember this pre-battle conversation:

shiro: you realize, once we defeat zarkon — the universe won’t need voltron anymore.

lance: we can return to earth.

pidge: i can look for my family.

keith: i guess i could look for mine.

keith still doesn’t have pidge’s strong and sure conviction about looking for his biological family — not because he doesn’t care about them, but because his headspace is still in his #1 mission: defeating zarkon and defending the universe. what happens after that; where does he even begin to look for his biological family? he’ll have time to figure that out, because now the worst has happened and he’s also lost shiro, his found family. team voltron still has work to do.

beyond S1 & S2

i doubt keith’s arc is over, at all; i think it’s just begun, and that keith will continue to be challenged and will continue to grow. in S3, keith is going to fully experience what pidge has experienced: someone he loves is missing, but keith still has this mission of being defender of the universe — possibly, even, the temporary leader! — and he’s going to have to be decisive about team voltron’s goals: saving countless people and planets, or saving shiro — one person over everyone else in the entire galaxy. can they manage a balance of both? can keith manage a balance between what he sees as selfish (personal feelings/motives) and what he sees as selfless (the greater good)? can keith open up to the rest of the team, furthering his bonds with them, or will he put up a wall?

will his relationship with shiro be used against him by antagonists? what about keith’s willingness to work with galra who display signs of allyship — will a galra take advantage of that, only to betray him? will keith think he’s doing something for the greater good, only to have it come back to bite him, hurting not just him, but everyone he cares about (his potential new family)?

WHOMST KNOWS, but to bring this to a close:

tl;dr

this is not a post saying “keith has done nothing wrong, ever, in his life.” but it is a post saying that, quite often, this fandom cares more about how other characters interpret keith than about paying attention to keith as he actually is! which ignites a cycle of paying more attention to how fandom interprets keith instead of to who keith actually is! so, if you think your perspective on keith has been muddled (“Careless Action Boy Who Could Not Care Less About People”), please rewatch S1 and S2, because everything you need is there.