#acting like a coincidence is him being a hero when it actually indicates otherwise

[thekidsare-not-alright]

no for real though now. why are we joyously giving pete wentz credit for taking out panic (as long as my facts are straight, idk I feel outta the loop so maybe) when the way he "outted" the urie pregnancy was by having a picture of the uries w/ a baby bump.

does that not imply they're actively friends?? pete wentz friends with a terrible guy?? why are we applauding this

not to mention the "pete brought you into this world he can take you out" doesn't make sense since it was an accident

edit: there is also fob coming out with a new album right as it happens, which is notable but still kinda eh for this

[stellocchia]

Alright, now that I got some sleep, time for an overly long analysis on Tommy’s second prison visit!

I’m only talking about character in the rp from here on out, not the cc’s unless explicitly stating otherwise

-

First of all, a clarification is in order: was it Dream’s plan from the very start to get put in prison to end up in this situation? No. Does this mean he couldn’t have caused this to turn things in his favour? Also no.

Dream has proven before that he’s a rather flexible character (kinda has to be with a nemesis like Tommy), he’s been put multiple times in unexpected situations and managed to come out of top. We don’t know if he expected L’Manburg to be reborn after the 16th, and yet he managed to have the whole cabinet wrapped around his fingers. He didn’t expect Tommy to threaten him with Spirit, and yet he spun it around on him. We also know he didn’t expect Tommy to leave Logsteshire (he was talking about it with Punz, it’s the reason he went to check on him shortly after because he realized he may have stepped too far and broken Tommy out of his manipulation there) which offered him the opportunity to frame him for the community house disaster later on.

He is nothing if not resorceful.

Another thing we have to discuss when talking about the visit is the themes of their relationship:

- Dream’s possessiveness/obsession

- The whole Dream finding Tommy “fun”

- Their “game”

More under the cut

- For the first point, when I say “possessivness” I mean that Dream literally regards himself almost as Tommy’s owner. Don’t believe me? Let’s talk about how he treats Tommy’s canon life then!

Remember all the way back during exile? To keep Tommy in line Dream consistently threatened to take his last life, implying that he would have been fine with Tommy dying, yet, as soon as Tommy showed signs of wanting to take his own life, Dream bust out the line “it’s not your time to die yet”, 2 times in fact. Why? Well, Dream wants control in all things, not only that, but he clearly thinks he’s in the right in wanting it. Of course the life of his favourite toy is no exception. Also let’s not forget about the terrifying scene on top of the obsidian grid where, when Tommy said that their story would be over soon, Dream immediately took control again assuring him it would never be over.

There is also Tommy explicitly stating that Dream was “borderline his owner”, in case we needed an additional affirmation, in the stream where Mexican Dream made an appearance in exile. 

Also, I have to mention that during the first Prison visit Dream, when talking about what he missed, grouped Tommy together with “his stuff”... can’t get much clearer then that

- Dream’s describing Tommy as “Fun” has been a reoccurring creepy theme between them. But is it soley done out of manipulation or does Dream actually feel that way in his twisted world view? I’d say a bit of both to be honest. 

Clearly there is a level of gaslighting with it were he used to say it at the very start of Tommy’s exile to get him in the frame of mind of considering Dream his friend and trying to convince him that they always had fun together (trying to get him to switch his anger from being directed at Dream to being directed at his old friends), but that’s not all. 

Dream, in cutting all his known attachments, is left with only Tommy as an attachment, Jack is right on that one, which is the rason why his obsession seems so extreme. That said, it’s pretty obvious that he does sort of find his relationship with Tommy “fun”. It’s the reson why literally everyone else is a replaceable pawn, but Tommy isn’t. Don’t get me wrong here: he doesn’t see him as a human and, despite him “caring” in his twisted way, there is NOTHING healthy about their relationship. But it is still important to point out that Tommy is extremely important to Dream.

- Their game is something we’re all well aware of. They are regarded by so many people as the hero and the villain of the server, even though neither of them accepts their assigned role. That said they both view the other in the role assigned to them. Dream doesn’t see himself as a villain, but he does see Tommy as a hero and vice-versa. And, just like that, the stage for their “game” is set.

Only problem? Only one of them is playing the game. We know this from the season 2 finale: the reason Dream kept coming down and trusting Tommy was because he thought Tommy was as attached to their “game” as he was, but he was wrong. Tommy HAS other attachments, plenty of them, he’s not dependent on Dream and that’s also probably why Dream is so obsessed with him in the first place: everyone else is predictable, easy to use. They aren’t surprising, they aren’t “fun” (remember that? Remember Dream goning “Tubbo isn’t fun” when Tommy said he had as much value as himself? Because I sure do) they are boring pawns. 

You’d think he may think differently of someone like Techno but, despite him acknowledging his strenght, he has no reason to think he won’t be able to use him every time at the smallest promise of violence as it worked every time before. George and Sapnap? When’s the last time Dream showed them he cared in any way? He used them time and time again and then left them behind when the relationships required work on his side to mantain. He didn’t even speak to Sapnap during his visit! He regards Quackity as barely an annoyance (remember what history left on him in the Lost City of Mizu? Just a Fool). Punz and Sam were both people he paid, only means to an end. They ALL played his game and followed his rules, which is what made them predictable. It's what makes them so replaceable.

-

Now that the themes are established, let’s move on to the analysis of the visit itself!

First of all: big foreshadowing from Sam with the missing books (which Tommy admitted to not remembering the content of) and from Tommy saying how much he trusted and appreciated Sam. It doesn’t have much to do with the analysis, but we all pointed it out.

That said, what was Tommy’s objective with this visit? Closure. Tommy wanted to make their game finally stop for good, he wanted to reclaim the control over his life that he hasn’t had for a while now. Not over his literal last life nor over hid day to day life. Both used to be controlled by Dream. 

Dream “loosing” his clock is the first information we learn. But, remember during Bad’s visit when Bad convinced Sam to give Dream one last chance to get his clock back if he behaved? And then again with Sapnap? Dream wanted the clock to go, that’s why he kept burning it despite the warnings. Why? Could it be that he was planning to get someone to stay with him in there? Isolation affects you much harder when you’re not aware of the passage of time after all...

“That’s the Tommy I know!” from the start of the visit Dream is trying to re-establish their “bond” and get Tommy in the mindset of them being “friends” again. I mean, it’s not a coincidence that he’s never been this talkative or friendly in any of the visits from other people. 

Other point in favour of Dream having planned this long stay is the sheer number of potatoes he had stored. Also, may I add that he immediately started giving them to Tommy? He started before the tnt and explosions, before he should have known Tommy was gonna stay. He never did this before during any of the visits we’ve seen. Establishing his role as provider again like back in exile I see...

Dream also started immediately demanding for Tommy to visit him more, but Tommy does turn it down just as quickly by explaining that that would be the last visit (if Dream wasn’t planning to act this time, he changed his mind in this moment. He’s very adaptable remember? And his main accomplice was online...). Of course, Dream isn’t happy about it. 

We already established that Tommy is the only one he finds “fun” (as far as we know), having him stopping visitations entirely wouldn’t be good for Dream. There is also the fact that Tommy is deciding to move on on his own. It’s Tommy’s choice under Tommy’s complete control and Dream has already shown he’s not too kin on that being a thing.

“Anything you want to say to me now, you have to say to me now, because I’m not visiting you again” “Why?” I’m highlighting this piece of dialogue because I think it’s pretty indicative of Dream still being convinced that they’re both still playing the game. Sure, Tommy outplayed him for now, but the game is not over, is it? Tommy can’t just decide to drop him can he? They both have so much “fun” after all... 

Of course though, to Tommy the “why” should be obvious. Because of Dream he’s struggling with severe ptsd. He’s afraid of plains biomes, of lava, of heights to a certain degree, of black stone (both because of the Attachments vault and the Final Control Room on this one), of tnt, of small holes (big enough to drop your items in as he said), of giving up his stuff and of Dream acting Friendly. Dream hurt him a great deal to the point were he’s not managing to settle down even now, he’s still afraid. How can Dream not see how he hurt him? How can he not understand? In Tommy's mind it just doesn't make sense.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES (had to add this because it was just funny... why are there always bloopers with this 2?)

Potatoes again. Again the tnt had not started to go off yet. And Tommy eats them again immediately, of course. I can’t stress this enough, but this is done again to re-establish the dependency tommy had on Drem during exile. While he didn’t entirely depend on dream for food (he barely ate and he had Mushroom Henry), he used to be entirely dependent on him for protection, getting to the point where he would hardly defend himself from the mobs when they attacked him even when Dream wasn't around. Of course Dream can’t provide “safety” while he’s in prison, so he has to find something else.

“You had all this shit coming” “I did but... you know... maybe one day” “No! Have you seen this prison? It’s kind of the most secure thing ever” They are talking about two different things here. Dream is implying that, maybe, they’ll let him out in the future while Tommy, having already decided to move on and not worry about Dream anymore, is implying that the only way Dream is getting out is if he manages to escape, which he won’t. Quite different from the first visit were Tommy showed quite a bit of hesitance when asked if he would ever let Dream out.

“Unless you have extreme therapy” Tommy recognizing the importance of therapy I see! No, but, more importantly, this goes to show that Tommy is moving on from his exclusively vengful mindset he had at the start (which was more then understandable, btw). At the start of this visit he said he didn’t think that Dream deserved to die anymore and now he’s recognizing that he needs help, Tommy however also knows he’s not the one who should be helping him, he can’t. Still, he’s empathizing with him, because he can’t help doing so. Despite everything, Tommy always tends to see others as their own individuals, even when the same is often not true in reverse. 

“I mean exile wasn’t that bad... right? I mean, we hung out” again, tying it back to the themes in their relationship, this fits so well. Of course exile wasn’t that bad, right? After all: why would Tommy have needed anyone else when he had his Best Pal Dream? And here’s the thing: we can’t know how much of what Dream says is just manipulation and how much of it he believes, but Dream has shown enough signs of being dependent on Tommy as his only attachment that we can assume there is, at the very least, some level of truth in this. I mean, if you remember back when he blew up Logstedshire, he didn’t even wanna believe that Tommy was suicidal. Tommy told him directly, but was dismissed. Why? Not because Dream wasn’t extremely opposed to him taking his own life, he’d already shown that not to be the case. Perhaps because he actually didn’t think it was that bad? Maybe he didn't want to admit he pushed him too far? Did he actually view himself and Tommy to be Dream’s own twisted version of “friends”? It’s a possibility and it’s what this visit seems to imply. 

“When I’m around you I feel like my brain is conditioned to be your friend, but also when I have a knife I wanna just plunge it into your heart... you don’t make me a good person!” This seems to be a rather recurrent theme with Tommy and the mentor figures in his life. Wilbur trying to convince him (albeit not managing to) to just blow it all up and give in to his aggressive nature. Techno wanting to “bring him to the side of evil” and making him more violent in the process. Now we have confirmation that Dream himself makes him lash out more (though we could see this already when he was in exile in how he lashed out at Jack Manifold without the latter having done anything to deserve it). There is also the confusion to point out. While Tommy is trying to move on he’s clearly in no way “healed”, he’s still very much suffering from the consequences of Dream’s abuse and manipulation. He still doesn’t know exactly how to feel about him because, despite everything, he feels compelled not to hate him entirely. 

“You’re a bad guy” “Well I did bad things, but everyone thinks they’re right from their perspective” “That’s not true” I haven’t seen almost anyone talk about this exchange, but it’s such an important one! As we said, Tommy views Dream as a villain, Dream doesn’t (he admits to having done bad things, but not to being bad because of them). Dream also sees Tommy as a hero, but Tommy doesn’t (Tommy doesn’t even view himself as “the good guy” in his own story, which ties in to his big self worth problems). It’s an interesting dynamic to be sure. 

“Well I think I’m right. I did bad things, but I did them for good reasons” “What good reasons?” “I wanted to bring the server together you know? Make it a big happy family” This is the second time Dream brings up unity as his ultimate goal (the first being with Punz). Of course we know that the “unity” he wants it’s under his complete control. It’s not an objective that we can see as positive, but he does, or, at least, if he’s telling the truth about it, he may actually believe in it. Now, while this is the second time he brought up “unity” directly he did also strongly imply in the season 2 finale that that was his intention when explaining he was doing everything to get the server to “how it used to be”, back in the idealized past with no conflicts that never existed. Dream is deluded in the literal sense of the word, I would say it’s pretty probable there is at least some truth in his declared objective (truth in the form of him actually believing the bs he spews).

At this point Tommy is done. He’s drawing an end to the visit and Dream started getting more frantic. He started insisting on how he’s “changing” and insisting for Tommy to go visit him again. Ngl, I think this was probably to buy time for his accomplice (who is very possibly enderwalk!Ranboo) to get there. Because, if he let Tommy go, their game would truly be over, and Dream can’t stand that.

And cue the explosions! 

So: Dream managed to buy enough time and, by the prison's protocols, Tommy is now stuck with him up to 7 days. He can’t leave which means Dream gets another chance to force him into continuing their game. 

Quite a few people pointed it out, but, from this point onwards, Dream gets much more assertive and controlling in his demeanor. He drops the whole “insecure” act that he had going on in his enunciation and general behaviour and goes back to being like the old Dream (you would almost think that all that talk about “having changed” was just absolute bs, though he keeps insisting on it throughout) 

Tommy’s behaviour also changes. He gets much more paniked (no doubt a combination of way too many of his triggers being present at once) and pliant. He starts calling out for Sam and asking to be let out but, of course, that doesn’t happen as Sam has to take care of the security breach first and foremost. 

Dream starts immediately harping on Tommy being stuck there (probably to increase his panic, as he's easier to influence when he's distressed), first pointing out how “Sam can’t hear him” and then that the tnt must indicate a “security problem” (which he then explains he knows the consequences of because he wrote the book). By now he’s dropped his meek act entirely and he’s showing to be much more smug and self assured (a big contrast with Tommy having a very obvious panic attack). As we already said: he got what he wanted, he basically won already. All he needs to do now is get Tommy back to how he used to be in exile (”when they had fun” in Dream’s words...). 

At this point there is only one question left to be answered: Why did he do all of this? How does this benefits dream?

Clearly this didn’t help him to get out. The security may actually increase because of it. Right? Well...

“I mean... if you want a way to get out, let’s get out together! We can work it out, we can-” “Fuck off” “Then there is no way out” I’m going out on a limb here and saying that, perhaps, Dream may know a way to get out provided 2 people cooperate on it. Tommy wouldn’t help him yet, but, who knows what he may do after spending way too much time locked in a small room, with a lava fall on the side and Dream to top off the list of his worst nightmares... 

“Are you trying to get out?” “I’m not trying to get out, I’m not trying to get out!” a bit of a contradiction here, considering he proposed getting out together like 2 minutes before (coupled with his insistence on “one day...”)... however “I’m not trying to get out (yet)” may be a way to interpret his words more truthfully. If he just needed an accomplice to get out, he would have probably used Ranboo, but there is something else he wants as well... 

(btw, potatoes AGAIN multiple times, especially every time Tommy is particularly distressed, and Dream also brings up Tommy being on his last canon life again in the context of this being “just like exile”... man do be trying hard with those parallels...)

You see, he already told us that he still sees his objective as good. He still wants control. He still wants his game to go on. And there is one person he elected to be the key to everything...

“I’m telling you you’re stuck in here for a little while with me, were we can bond, we can talk, just like old times, right? You know... just like exile” “Tommy this is the best thing that’s happened to me since I got in this prison, because now we can be company, we can stay together!” “Fine, fine, you’re done with me in a couple days, when you get out of here” “Tommy it’s not that bad! We can- we have lot’s of time to bond” Ngl... something tells me his other objective is very obvious... and we talked about it to death by now. But, in case it wasn't clear to someone, he wants to get back what (or who in his case) he considers to be his most cherished possession (again, do NOT interpret this as a "good" thing. It isn't. Dream literally treats Tommy as his toy, it isn't healthy and I've seen way too many people in chat trying to imply otherwise and calling it "cute". It's not cute, it's abuse)

“Tommy you’re stuck in here with me wether you like it or not, ok?! Wether you like it or not you’re in here with me for a WHILE, we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna have lot’s of fun” I just wanted to point out again how much Dream’s demeanor changed from the start now that he’s back in control. He’s not asking Tommy to talk to him, he’s not giving him a choice in it. Tommy already said how he doesn’t wanna talk and “get to know him better”, but that doesn’t matter. He has no power anymore. He doesn’t have the power to leave NOR the power to ignore Dream, as much as he wants to. Also, after this, Dream seriously ramps up the whole “We’re gonna have so much fun!” shtick...

And you want to know the saddest part of the ending? Tommy is already cracking (honestly, not surprising. He’s been through WAY too much by now...) 

He started asking Dream for confirmation of whether all of this was “serious” (just like he needed to ask if things were real back in exile... or generally Dream’s opinion on everything). He also asked for more potatoes in a dejected tone (I know it may not seem that serious, but, as I said, it is just another way to create the dependency that Dream wants), showing a beginning of acceptance for Dream’s role as provider once again. Together with the very obvious “I can’t do this” and the black screen right after it creates a very worrying picture.

In conclusion: Dream is already dependant on Tommy, but the opposite not being true was a big part of his downfall. So, before he can get out, he has to work on getting Tommy back to exile!Tommy only this time he’ll be even more careful not to do some dumb mistake probably... 

-

As anxious as I am to see how this will develop I do also think it’s one of the most interesting outcomes they could have had!

Also can we please take a moment to appreciate how WELL cc!Dream anc cc!Tommy manage to handle this incredibly serious scenes? Like, they bounce off of each other perfectly and, as someone who’s done theater themselves, I cannot commend them for managing to do so well in IMPROV enough!

They are honestly so great! Let’s get some serious love and appreciation for them to close on a positive note!

Also @mysweatymakerstudentworld

[noobsomeexagerjunk]

we wake with the intent to find enlightenment

Eret was what any sensible Minecraft server would call a "player of games," descending from the first slayers of the Dragon that dreamed hard enough to achieve the highest level. He was the epitome of what the voices whispered in their little poem.

Well, he was supposed to be.

In a sudden new development of powers, Eret converses and looks back on conversations to finally figure himself out, to finally wake up.

(read on AO3)

chapter 1: and all those sparkles in my eyes still remain

When you talk with enough people, you are forced to think.

When you think hard enough, you are forced to change.

Eret did not mean to trim away (or make disappear, based on his witness) all the leaves from the trees in his castle garden with a flick of his hand, but he just did.

He neared one bald trunk and touched the branches. It was odd how clean the cut was.

He reckoned that something about his person changed that caused the phenomenon to happen.

That kind of change had not happened since he was still growing up when he was as young as the few children on the server, most of whom he loved fervently.

The first time he knew he was different from the other children, human or otherwise, was the white of his eyes, which were aglow perpetually and unnatural enough to make people, who didn’t have the family eyes, unnerved around him. At some point, people began to flee at the sight of him.

Perhaps it’s the legend that one relative of his that he had made for himself— yeah, that’s right.

That said relative had remarkable power and chose to make himself a nightmare amongst servers, which was a feat no one in his immediate family, with their own powers, chose to do. None of them had that kind of audacity.

Neither did he, who then just decided to chop down the naked trees, planting new ones in their place.

The mystery of the kin who had Eret’s blood could make monsters, villains, but also heroes, leaders, gods even! They’re the epitome of dreaming, of what man should be in the sandboxes that Minecraft offered. Eret, by blood, descended from those who lived fully through uncovering the hidden truths from that so-called poem, the poem a server would whisper to those who, when the dragon of that server’s End is slain, actually save the End in question.

Eret’s power gave him a particular knowledge when he first stepped into the Dream SMP, a knowledge that framed him as an alien god trapped in the fragile clay that was the average Dream SMP mortal. It’s knowledge of the End but knowing the art of respect (and in that knowledge, not breaking the rules concerning its restriction).

Despite all that, Eret was left still trying to figure whatever the fuck he was. She was? They were?

Eret was, as far as he knew, something .

Wilbur said he was a traitor.

Dream said he was a king.

Everyone else said he was a puppet.

He made himself a historian.

He was something. Some...things?

Eret knew that he and he alone dictated his identity. He did not know whether he was happy with what he gathered, with what he made, with what he was.

Blinking back into reality, Eret dropped his enchanted netherite axe, leaves now restored. He hadn’t even begun cutting down the trunks!

“Okay, this is getting weird,” He remarked, picking up his axe and placing it back in his inventory.

He then walked back into the quarters of his castle, heading into that hidden boudoir where he did his more private and intimate matters concerning his person.

Armor off, then after some consideration, robe off as well.

In his regality and decoration, Eret always felt most like himself wearing gray shirts and blue jeans. It was bland, (as one drunk Wilbur Soot once whispered to him playfully, during one of those nights before everything went wrong,) but it was comfortable.

The mirror of the boudoir was massive, reaching the room’s high ceilings, making Eret’s figure so small from within the room’s walls.

Eret picked up his crown from off his head and took a good look at it. The marks of enchantment on the golden material resembled blood splatter, the pretty, intricately-carved jewels covered in beautifully contrasting impurities.

Now, the SMP’s other known leaders, or at least those most fascinated by its powers? They were intriguing to Eret, many of them possessing skills he wished he himself had. In their crafts and games, it was odd how Eret never could hold his own against them.

Eret’s craft was a museum. Unlike symphonies, it had the right to remain forever unfinished. It depended on housing so many stories—there were too many stories left unsalvageable.

Eret’s game was the game of Jacks. As bad as he was at the game, it was the game he can’t help but choose to play. The ball is bouncy just as his crown is heavy, the bones in hands as little as the friends he actually had.

The (let’s be real here,) crown of thorns—the Crown which was currently in Eret’s possession—both allured and terrified, like a bomb waiting to be used, waiting to blow up.

Bombs made Eret remember a conversation with Tubbo and Captain Puffy on a visit to Snowchester.

“Independent?” Eret picked up the Declaration of Independence on the podium, reading the haphazard handwriting of the founder of Snowchester.

“Have you come to contest it, your majesty?” Tubbo approached from behind him with a snarking tone; pulling with him on a lead was a bay horse that Puffy was riding on.

“Well, no, as nothing of any harm is,” The nukes, ”um, well-“

“Yes, we are peaceful, aren’t we?” Tubbo maintained his tone.

“Besides the nukes, Tubbo?” Puffy interjected.

“It’s a deterrent!” The teen repeated, “Like I said earlier, Eret. I’ve got them decommissioned and we don’t want any trouble.”

“Yeah, I can see how you’d come to that kind of protection,” Eret remembered Doomsday, “though I would request—actually no, recommend you communicate with me if you are going to use them at any point.”

“For what?”

“The help would be needed. You never know.” Eret was reminded of an equally alien red. Tubbo had mentioned seeing some growths on his land during their earlier conversation.

“I never do know, don’t I?”

Eret chuckled lightly, “Well, Tub-”

Tubbo suddenly smacked the ewe off the horse, much to her dismay.

“Tubbo! That hurt!”

“Thank you for getting off my horse,” Tubbo said, absurdly and frankly.

“Are you alright, Puffy?” Eret quickly went to pick her up, only for Puffy to be standing when he was at a reasonable distance from her.

“I’m good, I’m good.”

Puffy was quite a character. Her request of resignation was something he happily allowed, as her disillusionment with the server certainly coincided with his. He made no public spectacle of it (though to be fair, he never made a spectacle of his knight table, to begin with,) but had a meal with Puffy for it.

This was the price of an unannounced excursion. You leave for a month to make sense of all the chaos you’ve had to endure healthily only to come back to an even worse Dream SMP.

You have come back negligent. Wasn’t the break supposed to make you a better ruler?

Eret remembered welcoming Puffy when she first arrived, disheveled and a bit of a klutz, though nonetheless friendly.

Of course, who wouldn’t be a mess joining the Greater SMP, most especially after a historical act of political terrorism?

Eret quickly repressed the thought of Wilbur, though the dead fellow’s charisma seemed to leak out of Puffy’s excitability. She acted much like him, much like he was before Eret had hurt him: quick to founding family, being a shoulder to cry on, quick to burn when necessary, being a paragon of hope against tyranny and towards peace.

Captain Puffy had long wooly locks, brown and highlighted with a prismatic shade of white. She hid her eyes behind glasses like his, enigmatic like himself, surely? This ewe walked into the server with a friendly, warm wool onesie of many colors, reflected in her horns and hooves.

Eret’s shock was reasonable when she came to their little arranged meal together in a brand new costume.

She looked so much like Wilbur, as attractive as him, even. This was the man who had the ambition to fight tyranny through a division Eret thought at the time as dangerous.

The reminder can no longer be avoided.

In some way, Eret felt he was correct about the effect of L’Manburg, of it being a further cause of division in a server that didn’t need to create factions but to simply negotiate with words—to coexist and be passive and not be so Goddamn stubborn.

Dream and Wilbur, in their disagreements, agreed they were both unbelievably stubborn. Too mortal, too measly, two mere men...Eret found it awful how they fashioned themselves as immovable objects. He, for one, belonged to a race of men far more powerful than that of the two, and yet they had the audacity! What are simple server owners and the children of angels to dreamers? To the descendants of those who had taken the universe’s whims to heart? To the same brood that begotten the nightmare known as Herobrine?

Eret was something, but that something was not Herobrine, that’s for sure.

Wilbur could only handle so much. L’Manburg could only handle so much.

The stains of betrayal still prod and cry at Eret before his very eyes.

Nevermind. Eret wasn’t as sure, now that he thought harder about it.

He huffed to himself. He was being fickle.

Captain Puffy was quite fickle. She bent and broke like him, if her resignation as a knight was of any indication. She mothers a god but is so ever mortal and yet is so humble. People and happiness mattered to her, and that was why Eret loved her.

The tricorn hat and the long coat, worn out by what seemed to be the waters of storms instead of the fires of war, were an ashen color, black like obsidian, and were punctuated with gold pads, embroidery, and buttons.

She wore glasses like his, in that through certain angles, semi-hid eyes of enchanted prismarine. As we know, Eret’s glasses hid a blinding, mythical pair of whites.

“That’s quite the look there,” Eret remarked at the sight of her, almost tempted to blush.

“Yeah,” Puffy failed to hide her hesitance, “I, um, thought I needed a wardrobe change.”

“You didn’t have to dress up for this, you know?”

“I know, I know,” Puffy put a lock behind her ear, “This is just—how do I put this? Um, a necessity.”

He was about to jokingly question whether she was going to war, but then stopped himself in realization.

“I see. Come,” He gestured to her to follow him towards the table and food he set up before her arrival.

[aion-rsa]

Resident Evil Village: Why Ethan Winters is the Worst RE Protagonist

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This article contains RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE spoilers.

I walked away from Resident Evil Village with mixed feelings about the whole thing, but the one aspect of the long-awaited sequel I had no mixed feelings about was leading man Ethan Winters and his status as the absolute worst.

While there have been other unlikable Resident Evil protagonists, Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village‘s Ethan Winters is on another level. Unlike other RE heroes that were hindered by a combination of bad voice acting, bad writing, and questionable lore, Ethan Winters’ brings all of those unfortunate elements to the table and adds a couple of “qualities” that puts him cleanly in contention for the “honor” of being not just the worst protagonist in RE history but in all major video games.

Before you call that harsh, consider just a few of the many ways that Ethan Winters is the most insufferable part of two otherwise good games.

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Ethan Winters is a Terrible Husband

This is honestly a bit lower on the list of Ethan Winters’ character sins, but it has to be pointed out that Ethan Winters comes across as a pretty bad partner.

First off, there’s a world in which Ethan doesn’t even save Mia in Resident Evil 7 and instead chooses to give the serum to Zoe Baker: a girl he’s known for about a couple of hours. In that same ending, Mia still sacrifices herself for Ethan despite the fact that Ethan didn’t save her. Capcom wisely decided to abandon that ending pretty much entirely, but it’s telling that the writers created a character who could conceivably leave his wife to die when he’s able to easily save her.

Mind you, the version of Ethan we see in Village who did decide to save Mia is only slightly better than the one who abandoned her. The biggest problem here is actually the revelation that Mia is really Mother Miranda and seemingly has been for at least a little while. This use of the body switch trope always makes partners look bad (how do you not notice the supposed love of your life has been replaced?), but it takes a very dark turn in this instance when Mia is shot by Blue Umbrella operatives and Ethan barely reacts to his wife’s brutal murder.

Yes, it turns out it was actually Mother Miranda that was shot, but before Ethan knows that, he is seemingly able to process much of his grief with an “Oh God!” and an exasperated “Why?” After that, Ethan barely even talks about Mia. Sure, his daughter was just kidnapped, but this guy can’t shed a tear or do anything to indicate that he needs more than a minute to process this whole thing? Even if it was Mother Miranda who scolds Ethan in one of the game’s early cutscenes for not caring enough about their relationship, I’m starting to think she was right. No wonder she has to keep so much wine around the house.

Ethan Winters’ Quips Could Make an ’80s Action Hero Shake Their Head in Shame

I feel like I could spend several articles talking about Ethan’s awful one-liners and quips, but there’s one specific moment I have to talk about that really highlights the extent of this problem.

There’s a scene in the back half of Village that sees Ethan sneak through a mine in search of a flask containing part of his daughter. Against all odds, Ethan is able to retrieve the flask without drawing the attention of the creature guarding it, Moreau. However, Ethan (who, it must be said again, is the absolute worst) cannot resist taunting Moreau instead of just walking away. He then stays a little while longer to make fun of Moreau seemingly because he’s the first of the house leaders who he feels he is able to bully.

Ethan, why are you like this? Why would you possibly alert this thing to your presence when you’ve just been gifted an easy way out, and why would you exploit what appears to be a moment of weakness for this creature just to get a couple of insults and bad jokes in? For that matter, why do you constantly feel the need to chime in with some kind of quip or line that seemingly confirms you’re just good-looking enough to have never been told that you’re not funny?

It’s great that Moreau uses this moment to tell Ethan “You’re stupid! You talk too much,” but the fact that the game’s writers were seemingly aware of this problem makes it all the more baffling that they chose to have their games star this very stupid man who does, in fact, talk way too much in the moments he shouldn’t be talking at all.

Ethan Winters Has Never Been the Everyman He is Supposed to Be

When I first started playing Resident Evil 7, I gave the game the benefit of the doubt regarding some of Ethan Winters’ character and personality flaws. After all, he was supposed to be the player surrogate and something of an everyman who is just as confused by this situation as we are.

However, if Ethan really was ever supposed to be an everyman, he’s a pretty bad one. It’s easy enough to buy into the idea that Ethan is just some poor guy in a bad situation at first, but between his terrible quips, world-class bad decision making, and apparent inability to form a believable human connection with the few actual humans in his life, Ethan is less of an everyman and more of the random dorm roommate you got stuck with in college. The best thing you can say about him is that you’ve both got to find a way to get through this together.

Throughout Resident Evil, we also watch as Ethan alternates between struggling to understand things that we as the player have already figured out and not caring about obviously impressive moments. There are essentially vampires and other nearly mythological creatures in every corner of Resident Evil Village, and Ethan hardly ever conveys even a moment of surprise in response to anything he sees. There’s even a scene towards the end of the game when Ethan falls into an underground area only to find that Chris is already there and has apparently built a homemade tank. Does Ethan ask for an explanation about any of this or express any notable interest in these incredible coincidences/circumstances? No, he does not. It’s like the “cool guys don’t look at explosions” trope, but the explosions are the plot and the cool guy is Ethan Winters.

Seemingly realizing that Ethan wasn’t working as an everyman, Capcom decided to turn him into more of an action hero in Resident Evil Village. Unfortunately for everyone, that only made things worse…

Ethan Winters’ Powers Somehow Make Him an Even More Boring Character

Let’s get right into it: it doesn’t make any sense that Ethan Winters is able to defeat most of the threats he faces in Resident Evil Village, and the game’s attempts at making those moments make sense only make the character worse.

While Village tells us that Chris trained Ethan and Mia to some degree after the events of Resident Evil 7, there’s no amount of training you could possibly receive that would explain why the bullets from a shotgun you found in a shed are able to topple impossible creatures. Granted, that’s more of a game design problem than it is a personal issue with Ethan, but at some point, the fact that Ethan goes from “barely defending himself” to “defeating an entire village of monstrosities” with very little believable or enjoyable explanation between those moments ultimately becomes yet another reason to not like him.

Village later tries to explain Ethan’s regenerative abilities and impossible durability with a variation of the “dead the whole time” storytelling cliche, but that just makes matters worse. While “dead guy” is a pretty apt description of Ethan’s warmth as a human being, Ethan being just south of unkillable doesn’t make him any more interesting: it makes him a s****y Wolverine who hopes his powers will make up for his lack of personality. In reality, it just makes it more upsetting that it’s so hard to get rid of Ethan Winters.

Ethan Winters’ evolution from bewildered average guy to monster slayer could have been interesting. Just look at Gordon Freeman from Half-Life or the character Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from Buffy and Angel. Instead, the more we got to know Ethan, the more we wish we didn’t. It’s rare to have a protagonist that so effectively drags down the considerable quality of everything around him, but that’s just the kind of guy that Ethan is.

The post Resident Evil Village: Why Ethan Winters is the Worst RE Protagonist appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[eclecticanalyst]

Studying “A Study in Emerald”: Fourth Post

Part 5: The Skin and the Pit

We return to “Emerald’s” main trajectory of mirroring A Study in Scarlet’s plot beats with the detective, the narrator, and Lestrade lying in wait for the culprit(s) at Baker Street. In the original story, Holmes does intend to capture the murderer by having him come to Baker Street under false pretenses, but the police presence there is a coincidence. Here, the police have been deliberately called for. We finally learn what counts for high treason in this world—challenging the Old Ones (of whom the assorted royals like the prince are the descendants), which from our perspective is a decidedly good thing, thereby causing us to side with the so-called criminals and against the so-called heroes of this story.

While the three men wait, the detective summarizes his findings and conclusions about the case, which are references to Holmes’s own deductions in A Study in Scarlet—his determination of one of the culprits’ height by assuming he wrote on the wall at his (the culprit’s) eye level and the other’s height by his stride, his identification of the smoking substance of choice for (one of) the murderer(s), as well as his observation that the culprit and the victim walked into the room together (in this case, of course, there was a third person already in the room). We also get the true significance of “Rache” here. In the original story, the culprit writes “Rache” merely to confuse the police, being inspired by a previous crime in which “Rache” was written above the victim and the newspapers subsequently speculated the German word to be an indication of insidious secret societies (specifically, ones that supported socialism) at work. “Rache” is apparently also a word used to refer to a hunting dog, and that is the significance in the “Emerald” version of this story. The “rache” revelation also serves as yet another example of how well-crafted and intricate the Holmes tributes are in this story. While the word was written on the wall on a whim in A Study in Scarlet, revenge really was the motivation for the man to kill his two victims—so Holmes’s initial factoid about the literal German translation of the word was actually quite apropos. In “Emerald,” although Holmes’s self-identification with a creature on the hunt is the reason he writes the word on the wall, the fact that he is a Restorationist means that a secret society trying to upend the established socioeconomic structure is actually at play here—exactly like those feared to be at the root of the original “rache” crime in Scarlet.

Just as in the original story, Wiggins enters the Baker Street apartment to announce the presence of the culprit(s), but instead of bringing the murderer(s) himself, he has only a note from the man. Apparently in this world Wiggins and the others who would have formed the Baker Street Irregulars are free agents, not associated with the detective of Baker Street. There is the possibility that they are under Holmes’s employ and hiding it, but if Wiggins really is being truthful then he just happened to be a convenient messenger.

We haven’t had a blatant Moriarty reference yet in this story—the previous hints have been more subtle and/or require more analysis—but here we finally have our “Emerald” detective incontrovertibly linked to the canon Napoleon of crime with the note’s mention that the detective was the author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid. This particular reference comes from The Valley of Fear, which was written several years after “The Final Problem” but ostensibly takes place before it...which causes problems for the canon in an odd way that I won’t get into. Amusingly, in canon The Dynamics of an Asteroid is so analytically sound that “no man in the scientific press [was] capable of criticising it,” but in this story it is apparently not quite as perfect—Rache points out that there were some theoretical anomalies, furthering the theme that things in this world aren’t as they are supposed to be, that everything is just a little bit off. The “theoretical anomalies” could also be because Old Ones propaganda has warped scientific theory and therefore Moriarty doesn’t have as precise a grasp of physics as he would otherwise, as seen by his dismissal of the mass-energy-light relationship posed by Holmes. By noticing the detective’s imperfections in his astrodynamics paper, Rache/Holmes shows that despite being the criminal in this world, he still has a slight edge over Moriarty in terms of abilities. In canon, Moriarty makes some unspecified minor mistake in his operations that allows Holmes to finally take down his organization, and Holmes later just barely manages to escape Moriarty’s fate of death-by-cliff-fall via special martial arts. Holmes being just a hair more capable than Moriarty is present in “Emerald” as well—Holmes can match Moriarty’s deductions (correctly concluding that Moran is ex-military late from Afghanistan) and also one-ups him by giving him some pointers as to where he erred (didn’t do his research for the “theater agent” part he was playing, didn’t pay enough attention to the cabbie). And, of course, in canon Holmes succeeds in the “capture the culprit at Baker Street” gambit, while Moriarty in “Emerald” does not.

Speaking of cabbies, we have a reference to Moriarty’s debut story “The Final Problem” with Rache pointing out that one should not take the first cab that comes along when attempting to escape someone—Holmes instructs Watson not to take the first or second cab when he sets out to join him on their Moriarty-evading trip to the continent. A suspect cabbie is also the crux of A Study in Scarlet.

The pieces continue to fall into place as the note goes on—Rache confirms that his doctor friend wrote the plays at the theater, and says he “has some crowd-pleasing skills.” Our narrator told us he was not a very good writer from the jump—“not a literary man,” in his exact words, and yet another hint that he was not who we thought he was—but Watson, of course, is quite a capable writer, and the fact that his writing is popular among everyday citizens is acknowledged in the canon (often by Holmes complaining about how he writes for the masses instead of just recording the cases as scientific treatises). Watson is later identified by the police as a former military surgeon, although they are not quite certain of his first name—a gag that is a reference to the fact that Watson gives his first name as “John” in A Study in Scarlet but his wife refers to him as “James” in “The Man with the Twisted Lip.” Rache apparently wrote under the pseudonym of “Sigerson” when corresponding with Moriarty about asteroids, the very same pseudonym canon Holmes used in his travels post-Reichenbach.

The bit where Moriarty speculates where Rache is, reasoning that “If our positions were reversed, it is what I would do” is doubly significant. First, it’s a reference to how Holmes discusses Moriarty’s probable actions in “The Final Problem”—especially when he and Watson are attempting to escape Moriarty by train and Holmes correctly assumes that Moriarty will do what Holmes would do in his place, and acts accordingly to avoid Moriarty catching them. Secondly, of course, Holmes and Moriarty’s traditional positions as detective and criminal are literally reversed in this pastiche.

Despite usurpers having taken their place of first meeting, their residence, their occupation (in the case of one of them), and their police friends, Holmes and Watson are still the heroes we know them to be. They may be on the wrong side of the law, but we see how they are working to rid the world of evil just as they do in their original incarnations (albeit in a more brutal fashion), as Rache describes just what the Prince of Bohemia had in mind before he was killed, and how the rest of the royals are much the same—which is why he and his doctor friend are dedicated to putting an end to their rule.

Meanwhile, Moran (who does not quite reveal his name at the end, and is interestingly only a major here, not a colonel), having written up an account of this case, plans to tuck it and Rache’s note away in a strongbox at the bank, much as canon Watson keeps his papers in a dispatch-box in the bank of Cox and Co. He also seems to have a sort of sixth sense regarding the intertwined fates of his friend and Rache, intoning that “it will not be over until one of them has killed the other”—evoking our knowledge as readers of the fall at Reichenbach.

You might notice that Moran resolves that no one else will see the papers until “long after anyone now living is dead.” As this story is formatted as pages from a newspaper, we can assume that Moran’s prediction of events in Russia bringing on worldwide catastrophe came to fruition, which is why this tale can now be published. June 28, 1914, the specific date of the newspaper, is the date of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination—the event which sparked the outbreak of World War I. We can only imagine how World War I plays out in this Lovecraftian world. The reference to World War I is one last nod to the Holmes canon as well—although ACD continued publishing Holmes stories well after WWI, the events of those stories take place before the war. Chronologically within their universe, Holmes and Watson have their last canon adventure in 1914, just as war is breaking out. So just as the beginning of this story matched the very first story of Holmes and Watson, the (implied) ending of this story corresponds with their epilogue.

[nobodyfamousposts]

This Story Deserves a Better Class of Villain

Can I take a moment to indulge in some salt—or at least pretend that I don’t otherwise do so on a daily basis—and note just how horrible Gabriel is as Hawk Moth and the overall set up of the show in general?

And I don’t mean horrible as in him being a monster—we all know he is. I mean horrible as in him being an idiot. I know I’ve called him as such before, but I think I haven’t quite fully explained just WHY.

By all counts, the entire premise of the show shouldn’t even work. We are shown in Origins that Gabriel has found out about the Miraculous (later revealed to be because his wife is in a coma directly because of one), has found Nooroo and the Butterfly Miraculous, has discovered that combining two very specific Miraculous will grant him ANY wish, and at that point decides for an as of that time unknown reason that he wants those two Miraculous and is willing to use the one at his disposal to obtain them.

So what does he do?

Does he create an akuma that can just locate Miraculous? No.

Does he create an akuma who can translate the magic book he has? No.

Does he create an akuma that can accomplish his wish for him without the need for the Miraculous? No.

What DOES he do then?

He immediately chooses to declare himself a supervillain and starts attacking Paris with the clear expectation that the two specific items he is after are 1) somewhere in the city and 2) will show themselves in order to stop him.

And what does he have to base this expectation on?

NOTHING.

This is a problem for multiple reasons.

First off, since Gabriel has no idea where the Miraculous are, that means he has no indication that any Miraculous would just happen to be in the same city as himself, much less the specific two he needs. He doesn’t know about Fu either, or that there would be ANY Guardian. So the fact that Fu just HAPPENED to be in Paris at the time and thus in a position to act against him is mere coincidence—or rather contrived convenience, because we wouldn’t have a story if he wasn’t.

Second, he’s making a major assumption that whoever has the other Miraculous knows about it. Given that the Miraculous look like normal items, they could very well be on display in a museum or antiques kept in a lockbox somewhere. He has no way of knowing!

Third, he’s assuming that if someone does have the Miraculous and is aware of what they have, that they would in any way be willing to reveal themselves and fight him. He even comes out and states as such—“what attracts super heroes better than a super villain?” This would require that whomsoever has the items in question not only knows about them but that they WOULD use them to be superheroes or that they would use them specifically against him if he presents himself as the opponent. He even comes right out and declares himself as an intentional supervillain specifically for this purpose. What if the people who had the Miraculous didn’t care?

Fourth, he’s assuming that if anyone DOES come forward to stop him, it’s actually going to be someone with any Miraculous at all. This is a world where superheroes are noted to already exist. That means that someone like say Majestica or some other random hero with a NON-Miraculous-based backstory and powers could show up and kick his ass. Given Alya and her fixation with heroes as well as Damocles and his Owl-themed Batman-esque repertoire, it’s fully possible that someone would have jumped from the woodwork to challenge him and they quite possibly would have been completely normal.

Fifth, he’s clearly expecting that if any of the Miraculous ARE to be used against him, it will be both of the specific two he’s after and not, oh I don’t know, ANY of the fifteen others we now know exist. There are specifically Miraculous that can make shields to protect people and paralyze the akumas—either of which would be notably more conducive to a much quicker fight. Not to mention we know of at least one Miraculous now that can specifically travel through TIME (which could be used to go back to before Gabriel sends out the first akuma and promptly take him out then and there before any of this can happen).

What it comes down to is that Gabriel’s plan can only work due to a number of conveniences that all just HAPPEN to be the case. That doesn’t speak of Gabriel’s efficiency or ability as a villain, that speaks of the narrative causality and Fu’s own foolishness for playing into Gabriel’s hands like this and putting himself and the rest of the Miraculous at risk.

If Fu was hanging out somewhere in another country, Miraculous Ladybug wouldn’t even be happening. In fact, to prevent the issues of the series, all Fu would have had to do was just…NOT respond to Hawk Moth’s appearance at all.

Arguably, this could be a matter of Fu trying to retrieve the lost Miraculous, which is all well and good except that his first inclination is to just hand off BOTH of the most powerful Miraculous to teenagers without telling them ANYTHING about what they’re doing or why.

That said, let’s focus again on Hawk Moth.

So okay, his plan worked by sheer luck, and not only are the EXACT TWO MIRACULOUS he needs suddenly present but they’re being used to fight him by teenagers who are new to their powers and new to being superheroes, and thus either prone to making mistakes or overlooking some of the major potential pitfalls of superheroing.

So what does he decide to do?

Does he make an akuma to track them down in their civilian lives so he can grab the Miraculous when they’re unprepared? No.

Does he create an akuma who can just brainwash all of Paris at once so the heroes will hand over their Miraculous? No.

Does he create an akuma and set up a situation to draw them into a direct trap? No.

Does he create an akuma that is sneaky—one that nobody actually realizes is an akuma so it can get the drop on the heroes? No.

Does he in any way look into investigating these heroes or try to figure out who they are so he’ll have that advantage? Hah hah, NO.

Instead, he pulls a Rita Repulsa and just sends out an akuma every so often ONE AT A TIME to draw the heroes out, have a fight, get defeated, and monologue while throwing in a pun before he calls it a day.

The big problem is that all of his akumas are loud, showy, and above all—OBVIOUS. Anyone who sees the akuma is immediately going to run. When the akuma appears, people are immediately going to send out warning and call for the heroes. And thus the heroes are generally going to KNOW that Hawk Moth is attacking and go in prepared for battle. For a guy who is the head of a company and a world renown fashion designer, he knows NOTHING about subtlety.

It’s the same thing every time. Someone feels an emotion he can take advantage of, he sends out an akuma to turn them into a monster, they wreck shit with no real purpose other than what the akuma themselves want or just to get the heroes’ attention, and then the heroes come out and save the day. That’s it. With few exceptions (by which I mean like…MAYBE two), that is every episode up until the Heroes Day two parter, which is quite possibly the first attack he fully plans for, goes all out on, and very nearly wins because of it.

It may be the nature of his particular powers in that he has to take advantage of situations made available to him, but even then, he isn’t taking full advantage and there’s no reason for it. On two occasions now, he’s been able to akumatize Miraculous users, first in Queen Wasp and then on Heroes Day—something he clearly planned for in the latter. On both occasions, he had them completely under his control. But rather than have them go and hand over their Miraculous to him to increase his own arsenal before their otherwise inevitable defeat at the duo’s hands, he just has them act like any other akuma and wreck havoc.

His weirdly convoluted style of planning becomes evident particularly in Collector, where it was officially revealed that yes, fan theories and TV tropes was actually right in that Gabriel Agreste is Hawk Moth.

In Collector, his Miraculous book was lost and while he KNOWS it was because Adrien took it, he ASSUMES that somehow his enemies have it, ASSUMES that they will somehow know the book is his, ASSUMES that they will suspect him because of it, and proceeds to akumatize himself to try to trick them into thinking he’s not actually Hawk Moth.

And what evidence does he have for all this? What is there that supports this overly complicated plan to counter this possible suspicion from his enemies?

Again, none.

Even if he DID somehow manage to look into things to see what happened to the book, the most he would find is that Lila stole it and then threw it away. Nobody saw Ladybug grab it from the trash or run off with it. He has absolutely NO reason to believe Ladybug or Chat could have gotten ahold of the book or especially that they would track it to him. No reason except for sheer paranoia.

The fact that he happens to be correct doesn’t make any sense. If anything it’s another example of the situation being contrived for the sake of him rather than him actually planning for the situation.

Even worse is that at the end of that day, it’s a pig-tailed schoolgirl reminiscent of a certain pig-tailed superhero who just HAPPENS to show up with the book and return it. For all his paranoia about the heroes, does he even suspect that this girl might be one of the very heroes he’s fighting against?

Hahaha, of course not!

All in all, it’s another indicator of bad writing when the plot is turning on itself to justify Gabriel’s canyon-sized leaps in logic. Gabriel as a villain has the appearance that he is SUPPOSED to be an intelligent and dangerous mastermind who is always just one step ahead of the heroes. But instead, he’s a monologuing recluse who appears overly paranoid at the strangest of times and needs a matter of plot convenience to prove he’s justified in doing so.

The fact that his plans even work for however long they generally do speaks less of his ability and more of the desperation of the writers to make him seem like a real threat rather than the sheer fluke he actually is.

[spiderman-homecomeme]

Day One - Hidden Connections

AN: You guys!!! Spideychelle week is finally here!! Ahhhh I’m so excited to see what everyone else as written and to share my stuff! Here is my contribution to day one! It’s a little short and quick, and there’s a fair amount of non-romantic stuff in it, but I just thought this idea was really funny and had to write it down! A huge thank you to @spideychelleweek for putting this together! 

Prompt: Secret Relationship AU/College AU

Pls enjoy some 2.4k of humor, fluff, and a dash of angst.

.

.

“To whom it may concern,”

“Dear Sir or Madam,”

“Dear Mr. Bugle,”

“Hello,

I hope your day is going well.

My name is Peter Parker, and I happened to film the altercation between the criminal known as Rhino and the heroes Luke Cage and Spider-Man on the intersection of 42nd Street and 11th Avenue. I have some screencaps of it attached, if you are interested in the video for a blog post, let me know. I am willing to sell said footage for a discounted quick-sale price.

Sincerely,

Yours Truly,

Love,

Thanks,

Peter Parker

--

Releasing a puff of air through his lips, Peter hits send.

The clickable ad he’d seen while scrolling through Facebook said: SEND VIDEOS OF SPIDER-MAN. $1 PER SECOND*. It was only after he’d clicked did he notice the fine print: Spider-Man must be within the frame for the whole second, otherwise the dollar is void.

But that doesn’t matter. Peter has a full five minutes that Dronie had so graciously recorded for him of Luke Cage and him kicking Rhino’s ass.

And he really needs the money.

MJ’s birthday is four days away, a day which also coincides with his rent being due, so in other words: he’s essentially broke. While he does have money in his bank account, he only has enough for one of those things, not both, and he can’t really afford to be evicted at this point. He knows MJ won’t leave him if he doesn’t get her anything…

But she at least deserves something nice.

This video should net him roughly $300; he can take her out to a nice dinner, maybe buy her something actually decent for a change. Not another scarf.

And who knows? She might not even want to go out to a fancy restaurant, seeing as she’s turned down every offer he’s given to take her out in the six months they’ve been dating. Every date night, it’s either been take-out, a quick slice, or some kind of fast food. Not that he’s complaining about hanging out with his girlfriend; every minute spent with her was more than enough. And he’d be a liar if he said it wasn’t a little easier on the wallet.

But there was still that seed of doubt. Why did she never want to leave Queens? Why was it always such a rush to get back home? Why hadn’t she introduced him to her parents? The intrusive, relentless thought that her being embarrassed of him might have been a factor whispered darkly in the back of his mind. He knows he can be immature at times, both with his sense of humor and overall behavior, so, albeit shamefully, he could understand where she was coming from.

Maybe a nice present accompanied by a fancy dinner could help to prove that he can act like a grown-up.

Maybe.

--

The next morning, while happily munching on a bowl of Hulk O’s, he’s genuinely surprised to see a reply in his notification bar from none other than J. Jonah Jameson himself.

“I want to see that video. Will talk about your payment after I have it analyzed by my team.

Your appointment is today at 9am. Don't be late.

J.J. Jameson

Editor for the Daily Bugle Heralding Your Daily News │Tel [212] 555-7109│Fax [877] 555-0971

Sent from my iPhone.”

Peter only allows himself a moment to be put off by the the informality of Jameson’s response, brows crinkled as he turns to check the time.

8:30 AM.

He drops his spoon into the bowl, milk and soggy cereal splashing.

Well, shit.

He stuffs whatever clothes he can find into a backpack before roughly yanking his suit on; he flings himself out of his fifth story window, cereal bowl abandoned on the kitchen counter. Phone in hand, following along on Google Maps, he wonders how super heroes were able to find their way around big cities before GPS.

The next thirty minutes fly by in a blur, and Peter honestly doesn’t know how he’s able to put enough brain cells together to find a place to change into his civilian “interview” clothes. It’s a wonder he made it there in one piece.

The lobby doesn’t have any kind of directory, or any indication of where J. Jonah Jameson is supposed to be. In fact, Peter isn’t even sure where he’s supposed to meet the guy, unable to recall if there’d been anything like that in the email.

He gingerly approaches the front desk, ducking his head down slightly as he offers a smile to the receptionist. “Uhm, hello! I’m here to see Mr. Jameson?”

The woman gives him the the quick once over, visibly unimpressed. “You got a delivery, kid?”

“Uh, n-no.” Peter shifts awkwardly, smile fading. “He, uh, he sent me an email. To meet him at nine? Today? Right… Right now?”

“Hold on,” she says, her voice monotone, turning to the phone on the desk and dialing a four digit number with freshly manicured nails.

Peter starts to say, “Thanks,” but is cut off by the woman holding a finger up.

“Hey Ted, I’ve got a kid down here. Says he’s supposed to meet with Jameson. Do you know anything about it?”

She listens for a moment, nodding. “Okay, thanks.”

Click.

“Okay, kid, go over to that elevator. 17th floor. Someone will meet you.”

Peter smiles again, throwing a quick, but polite, “Thank you,” over his shoulder as he moves.

He’s met by who he assumes to be Ted, a slight middle-aged man with tired eyes. “Peter Parker?” He asks.

Peter nods.

“Alright, follow me.”

Peter isn’t taken directly to the office at first, only being seated in the waiting area just outside.

For thirty minutes.

9 AM, he said. Don’t be late, he said.

The door to the office is ajar, the sound of Jameson yelling at and berating some poor unfortunate soul over the phone almost as loud as the clacking of Ted’s typing on his keyboard.

“I don’t care what that weasel said, I want it done right this time! And if you had done what I’d told you to, we wouldn’t be having this conversation!” There’s a pause as Jameson presumably listens to the person on the other line begging for mercy. “Fine. Go with the lilac. It’ll clash with your comforter, you’ll see. Don’t come crying to me when you have to buy a whole new bed set.”

Another beat of just Ted’s typing passes.

“Okay. Love you, Mom. Buh-bye.” Jameson hangs up, before yelling out the door. “HOFFMAN!”

“Yes, sir?” Ted answers quickly.

“MY 9:00 IS LATE. IT’S 9:30!”

“No, sir, he’s here sir. He’s been here since 9.”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME? I COULD’VE HAVE ENDED THIS CONVERSATION SOONER. MAKE A NOTE OF THAT, HOFFMAN.”

“Yes, sir. Will do, sir.”

“NEXT TIME, INTERRUPT MY PHONE CALL. STICK YOUR HEAD IN HERE. GIVE ME A SIGNAL.” He sighs. “Okay. Send him in.”

Ted looks over. “You can go on in. Good luck.”

Peter falters for a moment, wondering if he’s really willing to go through with this.

No. He is. MJ was more than worth it.

He says a quick, “Thank you,” before walking in to the lion’s den.

Jameson sits at his desk, looking up briefly, chewing on an unlit cigar. “Well, quit your dawdling, get in here.”

Peter picks up the pace.

The man glares at him for an uncomfortable few moments, sizing him up, before extending his hand. “You got the video?” He asks, skipping introductions entirely.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah.” Peter swallows, handing him the drive.

Jameson hums. “I was expecting someone… More… professional.”

It’s then that Peter realizes he’d left his apartment without even combing his hair or brushing his teeth. He hadn’t even bothered put on deodorant or to change out of his The Mighty Thorgi t-shirt. He’s wearing a pair of the day before yesterday’s and yesterday’s jeans, and to make matters worse, he’s wearing two different shoes; one grey converse and one blue.

“You homeless or something? Because there’s a soup kitchen around here.” Jameson spends the next few moments trying to plug in the USB to his computer, flipping it over and over. “Damn thing. HOFFMAN!”

Ted practically sprints in. “Yes, sir?”

Peter tries to speak. “I can do it if you—”

“—Don’t patronize me, kid,” Jameson snaps. “Hoffman. Plug this in.”

Peter watches in silence as Jameson’s expression never changes as the video plays out on his computer. Peter knows what’s on the video, he knows it by heart, in fact. He fought in it. When the video ends, Jameson leans back, his blank expression now seems thoughtful.

“I’m gonna give it to you straight kid,” He says. “It’s a good video. Now I can send this down to my lab nerds. They can calculate the exact amount of time that Spider-Man’s in a full frame. I’m guessing it’s gonna be around $120 to $150. But, that’s if we give you credit, of course. If you wanna sign the rights of this video over to us, we’re looking at, say, $350 upfront. You won’t be credited, though.”

To Peter, that actually sounds pretty good; he gets a good amount of money, more than he thought, and his name won’t be tied to his alter-ego. It’s a win-win. “Oh, yeah! That sounds great!”

Jameson’s smile is shark-like. “Great. HOFFMAN! GET ME CONTRACT A27!”

“Do you mean A63, sir?” Ted asks from the door, contract already in hand, placing it on the desk.

“Yes, yes of course. A63.” Jameson shakes his head. “Can’t get decent help around here,” he mutters.

Peter signs where Ted indicates. Jameson signs the last page and hands back the contract.

“I’ll be back with your copy,” Hoffman says as he exits the room.

Jameson then opens his drawer, retrieving a thick check book and grabbing a pen. “Parker Peterson, right?”

“No, no. Just… Peter… Parker.”

As Jameson writes the check, Peter takes the time to take in the office around him, his eyes drawn immediately to the portrait on the desk. His stomach drops as he realizes who it is.

No doubt about it.

That’s a picture of his girlfriend.

Why is there a picture of MJ… on Jameson’s desk?

“Pretty, isn’t she?”

Jameson’s voice startles Peter, and he looks over, the older man glaring right into him. “Huh?” Peter asks.

“She’s pretty, right? It’s okay. You can say she’s pretty. Beautiful even.”

Peter nods, voice soft. “Yeah. Really beautiful.” And he means it, more than anything, nervous as he is; MJ is the most beautiful person he’s ever known.

With the flick of his wrist, Jameson deliberately flips the portrait away from Peter.

In the amount of time Peter’s been in the office, Jameson has had two volumes: Loud and VERY LOUD. There seems to be a third setting, however. In a hushed, threatening tone, Jameson seethes. “Listen here, kid. I don’t need no smelly, grubby, unemployed jackass drooling all over my daughter.”

Wait, what?!

Fuck.

“I don’t know what thoughts were going through your sick little mind, but that’s my little girl, and I will be damned if she fuels your pervy little spank bank! Do I make myself clear?”

Oh, if only he knew...

Even though Peter could easily take down the older man, he still finds himself shrinking back slightly.

He nods profusely. “Yes, sir, of course sir.”

“Good.” Jameson roughly shoves the check at Peter. “Now get the hell out of my office.”

Peter doesn’t need to be told twice as he dashes through the door, nearly running past Hoffman who expertly passes him the contract copy.

“Have a nice day!” Hoffman calls as Peter disappears down the hallway.

--

Omw, the text read from MJ.

Luckily, Peter had already planned for arrival; the apartment’s clean, the floors vacuumed, Febreez has been sprayed. Conditions were perfect. All he needed to do now was sit and wait, mindlessly tapping his fingers against his thigh, the events from earlier replaying in his head on some kind of torturous loop.

The sound of the key turning the lock fifteen minutes later had his pulse quickening. She was here. “I brought Chinese!” She called as she set the bags down on the dining room table.

Peter cuts right to the chase, barely lasting a second. “So. I met your dad today.”

MJ nearly drops the lo mein, her eyes blown wide. “Oh my God.”

Peter shrugs.

“I am so. So. Sorry.”

He tilts his head a fraction, brows wrinkling in confusion. “Why?”

“I don’t know how he find out,” She says, almost to herself. “I tried to keep this— us— hidden from him. He chases away any guy who comes close to me; friend, colleague… One time a teacher said I was a remarkable student and he— It doesn’t matter. I’ve tried explaining this hetero-normative, misogynistic bullshit to him, but it just goes right over his head. He’s always had this… toxic paternity complex. Like, I know that he loves me, I guess, but that’s no excuse.” She folds her arms across her chest, glancing away, her eyes welling in frustration. “And I just didn’t want him to scare you away.”

Peter puts his hands on her arms. “Woahwoahwoahwoah. Hey. It’s okay.” She looks up at him. “He doesn’t know about us. I just went to the Bugle today to sell a video of Spider-Man… and I saw your picture on his desk.”

Relief washes over her, and she puts a hand on her chest. “Oh, thank God.”

“Nothing to worry about.” Peter grins, before growing confused again, expression crinkling. “I thought your last name was Jones?”

“It is.”

“Then…?”

“So’s my Mom’s,” she elaborates. “They just never got married. Or stayed together, really.”

“Ah, gotcha,” Peter nods.

A comfortable silence fills the room, the food on the table surely getting colder by the minute. But MJ finds that her curiosity is growing too strong. She has to know.

“What did he say?”

Peter snorts, face scrunching as he scratches the back of his neck. “A lot. He totally freaked out when I said you were pretty.”

“He yelled at you for saying I was pretty?”

“Well… It wasn’t really yelling. Just angry whispering. And...” Peter turns bashful. “I said you were beautiful.”

A small smile cracks MJ’s expression, and she looks back down at their now intertwined hands. “Gross.”

“I know.” He cups her cheek, thumb caressing the soft skin there as he stares deeply into her eyes. He leans in, placing a loving, lingering kiss against her lips. As he pulls away, they both sigh. “Just so you know…” He starts, voice barely above a whisper.

Her eyes gaze adoringly into his; she’s not even trying to hide how mushy she feels at this moment.

“You’re always the star of my spank bank.”

“Wait, What?”

[chemicalmagecraft]

The Gamer Hero, Deku Chapter 8

A/N: Sorry if I got this out late or something, but I realized that I kept worrying about getting at least some writing out per day and that was actually causing me a bit of stress, so now I've decided to try not to worry about it and hope everything works out fine.

xoxoxo

I trembled with anticipation as I looked at the school from outside the gates. "Can you believe it, Kacchan?" I asked. "We're going to Yuuei! And we're in the same class!"

"Fuck yeah we are!" Kacchan pumped his fist in the air. "Fucking Yuuei!"

"This is our first step as heroes!" I exclaimed. "Wait, wouldn't our first step as heroes been-"

"First step as heroes, fuck yeah!" Kacchan agreed.

"It's so manly!" a male voice I'd never heard before said. I looked over to see a boy with spiky red hair and a wide, shark-toothed grin and a girl with pink hair and skin, horns, and very... distinctive eyes, both in school uniforms.

"Are you guys starting the hero course today too?" the pink girl asked. Is it rude to refer to her as 'the pink girl?' I looked up at their titles so I wouldn't have to call them by nicknames.

We Will Rock You

LV 26

Kirishima Eijiro

Alien Blood

LV 24

Ashido Mina

"Yeah," I said with a smile. "We're going to be in class 1-A. What about you guys?"

"Us too!" Kirishima said. "Let's walk to our homeroom together!"

As we walked to our homeroom class at Yuuei oh my gosh oh my gosh, Ashido said, "Hey, what are your guys' names? I'm Ashido Mina by the way!"

"Kirishima Eijiro!" Kirishima added.

"My name is Midoriya Izuku," I answered. "It's nice to meet you."

"You're looking at the future number one hero, Bakugou Katsuki!" Kacchan boasted. "And I guess Deku here will manage to make number one for a few years before I make my triumphant return," he added.

I gasped. "Kacchan, that's one of the nicest things you've ever said to me!"

"Hey, I just told you my name's Ashido Mina, not Bakugou Katsuki!" Ashido interjected with a laugh. When Kacchan looked at her with a confused expression. "Just kidding! So what about your Quirks? If you don't mind me asking, anyway. Mine's Acid! I can make this corrosive stuff from my skin that doesn't burn my skin, plus it makes my skin pink for some reason."

"Maybe the altered pigment is a side effect of whatever makes you resistant to your acid?" I theorized. Ashido gave me a carefree shrug.

"Mine is Hardening!" Kirishima offered, pointing to himself. "I can turn my skin all hard and kinda rocky at will, and yes, I've heard all of the jokes."

"Explosion," Kacchan said with a grin. "I sweat what's basically nitroglycerin from my palms and can ignite it at will. I'm also resistant to impacts and fire, which is how I haven't gone deaf or blown my fucking arms off yet."

"So manly!" Kirishima cheered. "I haven't even seen it in action and I can already tell it's super cool-looking, unlike mine!"

"I'm sure yours is perfectly fine, Kirishima," I assured him.

He chuckled a bit. "Sure, but it's not as flashy as some other Quirks."

"Yeah, well my Quirk doesn't even hold a candle to the potential bulshittery that is Deku's, but that doesn't mean mine sucks," Kacchan roughly interjected.

"What is your Quirk anyway, Midoriya?" Ashido asked.

I chuckled and rubbed the back of my head. "I-it's a little hard to explain..."

"It's called The Gamer and it lets him do RPG stuff, like upgrading his stats and leveling up," Kacchan explained.

"Yeah, that's about it," I said. "I can also get various skills and then level them up and I have an inventory that I can put things in and take them out later."

"Which is pretty bullshit, how it works," Kacchan added. "He can shove fucking anything in there, even if he can't even carry it."

"That's awesome!" Ashido said.

I smiled. "Thanks!" I stopped in front of the massive door for class 1-A

"Why's it so big?" Kirishima asked.

"It's probably just in case there's someone with a Mutant Quirk that makes them really big," I explained. I opened the door to see that only about half the class was there. I was glad that Kacchan insisted we come early, because I felt like I would've been almost late otherwise. Instead, only about half the class was there and Kacchan and I just calmly walked over to some empty desks and took our seats. The first thing that Kacchan did after sitting down was to immediately put his feet up on the desk, which made me sigh. "Our new teacher might not be as okay with you doing that as our last teacher, Kacchan."

He just glared at me. "And you mumble a lot, Deku. Ya sure the teach'll like that?"

"Fair enough," I mumbled and pulled out my Skill Grimoir to wait for the teacher.

"You!" A familiar voice yelled after a while. I looked up from my book to see that one uptight guy from the exams, Iida. "Don't put your feet on the desk! It is disrespectful!" I sighed.

"Well how 'bout you shut the fuck up, teacher's pet," Kacchan growled. There it was...

I shut my book. "Kacchan, please don't get in a fight on the first day. Iida, please don't rile Kacchan up, he doesn't like it when people order him around like that."

"Well he should get used to being ordered around, because this is a school and the teacher will have to order you around." I slumped my head. That did not sound like it'd go over well.

Kacchan glared at Iida. "Deku wasn't talking about teachers, dipshit. I hate it when I feel like people who don't have any reason to boss me around are looking down on me and shit, asshat."

Iida blinked, then bowed at a ninety-degree angle. "I apologize for my insensitivity, though I... would prefer that you do not use words like that in a school environment."

Kacchan sighed and put his feet on the ground in a calm manner that I was not at all expecting. "Don't be an as- a jerk about asking and we won't have an issue, alright? And for what it's worth, I'm sorry 'bout getting that angry so soon." He looked away and started blushing slightly. "I've started to notice that my anger issues are really bad and not at all what a hero should act like, so I'm trying to get better with that."

Iida smiled widely at that. "I accept your apology. It is very admirable that you accept your flaws and are working to better yourself! I am sure that you will make a fine hero when we graduate!"

Kacchan chuckled and gave him a grin. "You're actually pretty alright, man."

As Iida got to his seat, I heard the door open and a familiar voice said, "Oh, hey, Midoriya!" I looked over to see Uraraka waving at me. "We're in the same class! What a coincidence, huh?"

"O-oh, hey, Uraraka!" I waved back. "I hope that we'll get to be friends over the course of our education!"

"If being friends is all you want to do here then you should leave now," a voice said from the doorway. I just barely managed to see a bit of what looked like a yellow sleeping bag from the doorway. The person inside the sleeping bag got up and discarded his bag before saying, "It took you five seconds to quiet down." The man with dark hair and clothes walked into the room and glowered at all of us as Uraraka got to a seat. "My name is Aizawa Shōta," he said, then took a sip from some sort of juice pouch. "I'll be your homeroom teacher for the next three years, assuming you stay in Yuuei."

"That name sounds familiar..." I muttered to myself. It was obvious from the facts that I couldn't see his level and title and his being a teacher at Yuuei that he was a pro hero, but I couldn't remember who he was.

"Your gym uniforms are in my desk," he told us. "Put them on and come outside."

xoxoxo

"You guys are going to run a Quirk assessment exam," he told us when we all went outside.

"But what about orientation?" Uraraka asked.

Aizawa-sensei shook his head. "Teachers in the hero course have a lot more leeway than traditional schools. None of you have ever used your Quirks in physical exams because of stupid laws that were put in place. Here, however, you have no restrictions." He tossed a ball to Kacchan. "Bakugou, you were the top scorer in the entrance exam. What was your best score with the softball throw?"

"I forget exactly, but I think it was like sixty-seven meters. That about right, Deku?"

"Sixty-seven point nine," I corrected.

"Use your Quirk," Aizawa-sensei told him. Kacchan grinned and went to the circle. "You can do anything you want, just stay in the circle." Kacchan threw the ball as hard as possible with what looked like a shaped charge explosion. The ball shot off like a rocket and landed far enough away that I was willing to bet Kacchan had broken a kilometer. Though when Aizawa-sensei turned his phone to us, I saw that Kacchan was just barely short.

"That was awesome!" someone said, with everyone joining in the cheer.

"Do you think this is a game?" our teacher asked harshly. "This is serious. Every single one of you are here to be pro heroes. If any of you are here for fun, you won't be soon. At the end of this physical exam, whoever has the lowest score will be expelled."

I'm proud to say that, for the first time, the whole class united together all to scream "WHAT!?"

"You can't expel someone on the first day!" Uraraka said.

"I can and I will," Aizawa-sensei scowled. "Don't like it? Don't be last. Pro heroes have to be ready for natural disasters and other horrible occurrences, so this should be nothing. First is the fifty meter dash. Asui and Iida go first." Iida naturally got a good score on account of his speed-boosting Quirk which, now that I had a good look at it, appeared to be engines inside his calves, which reminded me of the Turbo Hero, Ingenium. Considering his last name, was he a relative? The other girl, Asui, was able to get a decent score with her Quirk, which if I knew my Mutant Quirk naming conventions right, was probably called either Frog or Toad. If the slight glisten on her skin that I saw with my Hawkeye-boosted sight was any indication, it was probably Frog.

The rest of our classmates' runs were just as interesting. While some of them just couldn't or didn't use their Quirks for the dash, like the one girl whose Quirk seemed to be that she was permanently invisible, most of our classmates used their Quirks in really creative ways. For example, Uraraka made her clothes lighter and that one hot French boy from the entrance exam (Aoyama, I think his title said) used his laser-based Quirk for propulsion. 

Somehow. 

Soon enough, it was Kacchan's and my turn to run. Kacchan and I grinned at each other as we activated our Elemental Auras and I used a Speed Up. While I only ran, the buffs I had combined with my nearly sixty DEX meant that that gave me an S-rank score. Of course, Kacchan scored less than a second ahead of me thanks to his combination of Fire Aura and what looked like fire jets coming from the palms of his hands, as opposed to continuous explosions. I'd seen him trying to do that before, but it seemed like that was the first time he actually managed it.

After that, we had the grip strength test. I didn't get the best score, but I didn't get the worst either, so it wasn't a total loss. In the next test, the standing long jump, I managed to combine Air Aura with another air magic skill I'd made called Glide to get one of the higher distances. With the repeated side steps, I managed to another point of DEX mid-test, bringing me up to sixty. It wasn't much help, but I'd like to think it was what let me get the second-highest score, behind the short, grape-haired boy, Mineta.

I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie

LV 16

Mineta Minoru

He used his... sticky, yet bouncy hair ball Quirk... to bounce himself fast enough to get a ridiculously high score. I was impressed by his creativity, though that was immediately brought down by how much of a creep he was being toward the girls in our class... I do agree that almost everyone in our class was unfairly attractive, but he really shouldn't have been making those comments about the girls...

In the ball throw, I was amazed more by the fact that Aizawa-sensei's scoring app had an infinity symbol programmed into it than the fact that Uraraka managed to get it. Without gravity, the force she threw it with was certainly enough to get it into space, or, as the invisible girl, Hagakure, put it, "yeeted that ball into the sun!"

Achtung, Baby!

LV 20

Hagakure Tōru

I still wasn't sure how she could see if the light passed through her eyes... I asked her, but she wasn't any help at all.

Where was I? Oh, right, the ball toss. Eventually, it was my turn to throw the ball. I looked down at it, then looked across the ball toss field. I hadn't used One For All at all so far in the exam, but I decided I should probably use it at least once and I didn't see myself having any other opportunities to use it, at least not usefully. Air Aura and Speed Up alone would be enough for the distance run and the other ones... I doubted I could think of any way to actually use All Might's Quirk, or even my own powers for that matter, in them. 

The earth-colored glow of Earth Aura engulfed my body, concentrated on my arm more than the rest of my body, and I carefully drew out the power of All For One so that it didn't affect any more of my body than necessary. Apparently I'd managed to bring the amount of One For All I used down to ninety-five percent, which actually really helped. I cocked back my arm as the glow of One For All mixed with my Earth Aura, and infused air mana into the ball in an attempt to make it fly farther. "LIMIT BREAK!" I shouted, then threw the ball as hard as I could. "BALL TOSS!" A blast of displaced air unbalanced me for a moment as the ball shot through the air like a cannon ball. I winced at the pain and saw that my HP took a bit of a hit, but was encouraged by the amazed reactions of my classmates. It was hard to believe that I was practically Quirkless a year ago... I shoved down the pain and turned my Healing Hands on myself as Aizawa showed us my score.

"Are you okay, Midoriya?" Aizawa-sensei asked me. "It's hard to believe that you can use such a powerful... 'attack' without any sort of backlash." He then looked down at my hands. "Also your hand is glowing."

"O-oh, ah, that... that just means I'm totally fine!" I lied.

Kacchan scoffed and I felt some minor impending doom. "Deku's lying, that's his healing spell."

Aizawa-sensei gave me an odd glare, then his eyes started to glow red, which I could only assume was his Quirk. It appeared as if the gravity around his head was somehow disrupted and I got a system message warning me that All For One was disabled. "Oh, you're Eraser Head, the Erasure Hero," I finally realized when I saw his trademark goggles. "I always thought your Quirk was really interesting." I then noticed that my mana was still working fine and only All For One was disabled, which was interesting.

"Just testing," he said, then blinked to deactivate his Quirk. "Report to the nurse's office when we're done here, Midoriya."

I gulped, then shook my head. "N-no, I can still go, my Quirk makes me really durable and Healing Hands takes care of the rest."

"It's because of your healing abilities that I want you to report to the nurse's office," he clarified. "Assuming you can use it on others, at least. Yuuei offers a special program for people with any kind of healing power that could eventually lead to you becoming a licensed Quirk healer, and I want you to talk to Recovery Girl about it, even if you end up not taking it."

"Right," I said.

"Hey, how'd your 'healing spell' thing stay on if Aizawa-sensei's Quirk disables other Quirks?" Kirishima asked.

I gulped. "A-ah, uhh, well, you see..." I didn't know if Aizawa-sensei knew about my magic or not, and if he did, whether or not he was okay with me telling the rest of the class... I looked at Aizawa-sensei for any sort of confirmation and he nodded. "I think it's that his Quirk only stops the Quirk Factor from working properly, so it didn't affect my Healing Hands, which is more of a spell..."

"What?"

"You can tell them more," Aizawa-sensei told me.

"Literal magic," Kacchan offered. "Deku here somehow managed to bumble his way into discovering actual, literal magic using his Quirk without realizing it, then I figured it out from his constant muttering, and now some government officials or something know about it. Don't worry, you guys won't get dragged off by some shady suits just for knowing, but they'd prefer it if how to use it doesn't get into the general public just yet. We are allowed to teach you guys, though." He looked at a classmate of ours with a raven head, Tokoyami, who looked like he was trembling with excitement. "Are you vibrating, Bird Face?"

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

LV 22

Tokoyami Fumikage

"No," he somehow calmly denied, despite still vibrating. "How might one such as I learn to harness such power as that?"

Kacchan shrugged. "I don't know how you in particular would do it, but I figured out how to take the energy that I feel when I use my Quirk and use it for other shit. That stuff's called mana, and you use it to do magic. Don't know how you guys with Mutant Quirks work, so good luck with that. It's possible to make mana a particular element by concentrating on it, but I don't know if you can do that without an 'affinity' for it."

"I was planning on having them tell you that later, but it came up, so now you know. You're welcome to try using it for the last tests, but I doubt you'll figure it out," Aizawa-sensei said.

True to Aizawa-sensei's words, the rest of the exams were mostly uneventful, though Tokoyami and Hagakure managed to do something with dark and light magic in the long-distance run, which I thought was strange because I couldn't make any light or dark elemental affinity with Nature Affinity. Maybe they're just more esoteric or something. At the end of the physical exams, Aizawa-sensei pulled up a holoscreen with what appeared to be our rankings on it. "I ranked you from best to worst, not going to go over the rankings." Mineta screamed when he saw his name at the bottom, causing Aizawa to sigh. "Relax, Mineta. I was lying about expelling the lowest scorer. I'm not even allowed to do that anymore."

"Anymore?" about half the class asked.

"And even if I could and was going to, your performance in the repeated side steps combined with your... below-average height... making it more difficult for you to do some of the exams would have made me reconsider."

"It was to make sure we did our best, right?" a tall, black-haired girl who I definitely saw pulling something out of her body said.

Pure Imagination

LV 25

Yaoyorozu Momo

"Sure, let's go with that," Aizawa-sensei said in a way that made me feel like that was an afterthought. "Pick up a syllabus in the classroom. And I want to see you two, Midoriya and Bakugou. Just wanna get a good idea of what you can do."

xoxoxo

Kacchan and I walked out of the building when we were done. Aizawa-sensei just wanted us to write down what we could generally do that wasn't on our Quirk files, then asked me to teach him Hawkeye to see if it did anything with his Quirk. "We just finished our first day as students of Yuuei," I said. Ping. "Huh?"

"What's up, Deku?" Kacchan asked.

"I just got a title for surviving the first day of Yuuei," I explained, then checked it out. "Yuuei Student. It gives me ten percent extra HP and MP. Looks useful."

"Damn. Guess that means we're officially Yuuei students, eh Deku?"

"Hello, Bakugou and Midoriya," Iida said as he walked up to us. "I must admit I was quite surprised with your revelations, though I suppose I understand the reason why this hasn't been made public knowledge quit yet."

"Actually, it's not technically a secret, it's just that it's being researched more before any information about it becomes officially published," I told him. "So don't worry too much if you tell someone. In fact, I'm pretty sure the press conference is going to be sometime this month."

"It's so cool, though!" Uraraka said as she ran up. "I'm actually hoping that gravity's an element, because that would be awesome. Guess I'm gonna be meditating tonight!"

"Good luck!" I said. "I think there might be more complex elements than the ones I can use, so gravity might be possible. It'd probably be really cool to have gravity magic, plus there are a lot of possible uses for it."

We chatted for a while before parting ways. I even managed to teach Iida and Uraraka a few basic spells before they left.

xoxoxo

I decided to upgrade my mental stats after school. I really wanted to know what happened if I got either WIS or INT to one hundred. Not to mention, Meditation was almost to level one hundred, which felt like it was important. My skill with Meditation was up to a point where I could do it while walking and maintaining Elemental Aura and skills like it, though I still zoned out while doing it so it wasn't practical to use. 

I still paced around in my room while meditating in the hope that that would slowly level up one of my physical stats. Plus, whenever I banged my toes on something it didn't hurt because of my Physical Endurance and contributed to leveling it. Eventually, I heard a ping and felt myself realize a new thing about my Meditation, an aspect of the energy flow I hadn't considered before.

A skill has been created through special action! The skill 'Enlightenment' has been created through Meditation reaching MAX level!

I grinned. Just like with Summon Basic Elemental and Summon Lesser Elemental, it looked like at least some of my skills could be upgraded if I maxed them out, though it seemed like anything aside from Summon Elemental would work more along the lines of giving me a new skill than upgrading an existing skill.

Enlightenment (Passive) LV1 EXP 0.00%

The goal of many great minds is to gain the power of enlightenment. This skill represents the nascent power of enlightenment, granting abilities beyonf one's wildest dreams.

Allows STR, VIT, DEX, and INT to be trained as with WIS by Meditation.

Grants more uses at higher skill level.

Unlike with Summon Basic Elemental, which leveled up rather fast even at higher levels, this skill felt like more than just a step up. Sure, it was just an upgrade to Meditation at the moment, which was literally what Summon Lesser Elemental was, but it literally stated that it'd grant me more abilities at a higher level. I tested it out to see how it works and noted that I could only train one attribute at a time, which I would have been disappointed with if not for the fact that it was still a ludicrous ability.

All in all, I felt pretty optimistic about my budding career as a hero.

xoxoxo

A/N: Don't know if you've noticed this yet, but I've decided by now to have any titles that don't have some basis in canon (i.e. hero titles) to be references to something. By the way, I have two things I'd appreciate input on:

1) If you've ever even looked in the general direction of my other fanfic, you might have reason to suspect that I don't think too highly of Mineta. If you do indeed think that, you'd be correct. Therefore, I have decided to write him out unless someone can convince me not to.

2) The reason why I have yet to give Midoriya a fire elemental is, simply put, I can't think of a fire-type Pokémon that I'd like to give him. So I'm outsourcing. Could you guys please do that for me?

And none of you can tell me that Aizawa's Quirk doesn't mess with gravity because that's definitely how he uses his capture tool (and by the way the reason why The Gamer was still working despite Aizawa using Erasure is that it's a Mutant Quirk).

[parkerpup]

Hero 29 Rant & Theory

Alright so with Blizzcon coming up I wanted to get my two cents out there about who I think the next hero is, largely because I don't believe many people are considering any other candidates other than the Junkertown Queen. Who exactly am I talking about? This guy.

So in the early days of Overwatch I saw this guy pop up in the cinematic trailer among various other heroes. I always remembered him because I liked his design in that he seemed cyborg-esque like Genji but a bit messier. While he never became a hero I always kept him in the back of my mind hoping he would become a hero one day to little avail.

At least UNTIL recently, more specifically Overwatch Retribution.

That's right! I think this guy is supposed to be Antonio. I think Antonio is the next hero. But before I can explain why, first we gotta address the obvious. Could that cyborg really be Antonio? Well lets look at what we know.

We know that for a while Antonio was a member of Talon who specialized in smuggling weapons, on top of being responsible for the bombings at several Overwatch bases. To do this he sent people with robotic appendages that could store bombs yet still appear human/normal. Which by the way is an INCREDIBLY similar concept to the man in the first image. So it would stand to reason that if Antonio was behind the bombings and this was one of his goons, he would have access to this kind of technology. We could argue that this woman's cybernetics could come from another source (Doomfist or Overwatch) but Doomfist was more about prosthetics that functioned normally and Overwatch was struggling to put Genji back together with all of their technology. 

So this feels unique to this girl and to an extent Antonio. So it wouldn't be too farfetched to say that Antonio would have abilities similar to this since his goon is capable of it. I mean if you're gonna make tech like that why wouldn't you use it as well? It's like how Symmetra can control light energy, therefore her boss Sanjay should be able to as well because he's her boss and they both work for Vishkar.

But then we actually look at Antonio and find some similarities to him and the cyborg guy. Both are big, stocky dudes, each with a large triangle nose and similar hair (although one being a bit messier). They may even have the same shoes (yes I've gone that deep don't judge me).

Besides the similarities we see here there's still a lot of things weird about the guy. He has copper wires on his head which could indicate some kind of cybernetic enhancement, and through some digging it looks like he may have a metal plate on the back of his neck? If these two were the same guy that could be where the tubes would connect to the back of the head but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

Also note the metal plating on the cyborg guy. He has a cybernetic eye as well as a metal jaw and metal plating on his chest. This is peculiar if you consider the fact that Antonio was shot point blank in the face with a shotgun. So these metal plates would coincide with the injuries Antonio would've had when shot.

Now at this point you may have noticed we're kinda dancing around the main issue, being that Antonio supposedly died in the Retribution event. While it's true we never actually see his body, this isn't exactly an uncommon scenario in the Overwatch universe. I mean let's be honest how many characters were supposed to be dead but came back? Solider 76, Reaper, Genji, Ana and literally anybody Mercy rezs in-game.

Jokes aside, we've seen this happen before. A character 'dies' only for them to come back with a new identity and new powers, revealing they faked their death and boom you have a new hero to play as. While it's true a shotgun to the face is pretty brutal on top a few stories fall, keep in mind Ana was sniped in the face and Genji survived with a quarter left of his body after fighting Hanzo (WHOS AN ARCHER LIKE HOWD THAT EVEN HAPPEN) and STILL survived. Basically, this wouldn't be the craziest story and it's been made pretty clear that death in the Overwatch world doesn't necessarily count out the character.

From another perspective, it would actually make sense gameplay-wise why Antonio would be added.

He has a unique, solid bodytype compared to the other characters, which game devs strive for so you don't get confused as to who is who in a fight. It's just part of good character design. Next we've yet to have anybody from Rialto join the game. Doing this would provide a character from a unique location that bonuses as a map which Blizzard is VERY much about. It's about their whole concept of making Overwatch feel inclusive. To add to that, we also haven't had a male character in quite some time (unless you count the hamster). Granted there's nothing really wrong with that! As a female myself I think it's amazing to have so many strong female characters in a game and I know that representation is very important to some people. I'm merely just stating a fact.

Also note that, judging by Antonio's build, he could be a new tank or damage character if he joined. Maybe some kind of hybrid in between like how Brigitte is a support/tank hybrid. This is a character type people have been wanting for a while and honestly it would just be nice to get another tank since we have so many damage characters.

Also take note that the cyborg guy mentioned before has some yellow tubes that connect to the back of his head. Now applying game logic could imply that if Antonio (assuming it's him) was in game he would have some kind of self-healing ability. This is because video games kinda color code things specifically so you know what's what and what you're doing. The color yellow in Overwatch always refers to healing where as purple refers to being anti'ed or being hurt more. This would be perfect for an aggressive tank character like Roadhog, or even damage characters like Bastion and Soldier 76.

To add the nail in the coffin, you also have to think about how Blizzard operates and how the characters are made.

Any character that's added to the game is completely different from the others. They all have their own unique themes, functions and looks. Blizzard tries to be very diverse with their characters as is needed for good character design and for good gameplay. Here's an example to illustrate what I'm talking about.

Both Dva and Hammond are mech characters. Yet despite falling in the same wheelhouse, both look and function completely different. They move, talk, and act differently and don't look the least bit similar. This goes for the omnic characters as well. If Blizzard adds an omnic character, they're not just gonna add an omnic that looks like Zenyatta but can actually stand. Instead they add a centaur robot with horns, a machine gun, mini gravitons and a shield aka Orisa. This is an important fact because this distinctly limits the options of potential heroes.

Sanjay's powers would likely be too similar to Symmetra even if he was a tank (same light energy theme).

Maximillion is very cool and does seem slightly possible but his differences aren't drastic enough from Zenyatta to be considered a sure in for a hero.

And as much as I would love to see another member from the mecha squad be added into the game I think they'd just be too similar to Dva. Yes their mechs would likely have different abilities but that's not quite enough. They need to be completely and entirely different, like Hammond different. Otherwise they'd just be considered "Dva, but they can do this instead of this." (which is a shame they seem really cool).

This distinctly drops the candidates to what are in my opinion three different characters: Antonio, the Junkertown Queen, or some other character we've completely forgotten about (a Moira situation basically).

To tell you the truth, I really do think the queen could be a playable character at some point. She's highly requested and passes all the other checkpoints despite being another character from Junkertown. But let me ask you this: what would shock people more at Blizzcon? The queen or somebody else?

Think back to the reveals of Moira and Brigitte, one being a highly requested character and the other completely unheard of. Now lore-wise Brigitte didn't really offer much. We kinda already new her story through comics and other characters, so the main satisfaction was in her being added in general. Now consider Moira, who COMPLETELY blindsided us, revealed new lore about how Gabriel became Reaper, gave more insight into Blackwatch and drove the fandom wild.

Now imagine if those spots had been switched, if Brigitte was revealed before Moira. Almost seems predictable doesn't it? A hero everybody had been asking for, while only offering a little bit of lore if any. Doesn't seem as exciting does it?

That's why I don't think the Junkertown Queen is hero 29. It's too predictable and it wouldn't offer a whole lot to the lore. While someone like Antonio, who has basically been forgotten on the account of him being 'dead' would SHOCK everyone, and could possibly add more lore to Talon or some new evil organization he could've been working on inbewteen Retribution and now. Even if it's not Antonio, whoever is the next hero is going to be a blindsider like Moira.

At the end of the day, it just comes down to facts. The fact that this concept of human-esque cybernetics has been around since THE VERY BEGINNING, and that said concept character looks like a guy ASSOCIATED WITH SAID TECHNOLOGY, just blows my mind and I'm just putting this out there so that people can see it too. If it's wrong that's fine, I just feel like people are missing this and I wanted people to consider this too.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk :)

[trinuviel]

Winterfell’s Daughter. On Sansa Stark (part 2)

This is the second part of my analysis of the character of Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones. Part 1 can be found here.

THE ROMANTIC ILLUSION UNDERMINED

Sansa approaches her betrothal with Joffrey as a fantasy come true – she is now the heroine in a “romance”, just like in the stories she loves so much. However, this illusion is quickly undermined by Joffrey himself when he gets into a conflict with Arya on the road back to King’s Landing.

This is the first time that Sansa gets to witness Joffrey’s sadistic nature. It all starts so well. Sansa is out walking in the camp. 

She meets the creepy Illyn Payne and is frightened, then the Hound whom she also finds intimidating. At this point Joffrey inserts himself into the conversation and “saves” Sansa from the scary men.

He employs the conventions of Courtly Love; flatteringly calling her his lady and caressing her face. They go walking and he plies her with wine as if it is a grand gesture. Sansa is essentially living out her little fairy tale. Then they come across Arya and Mycha (the butcher’s boy) playing at swords. Because he’s a sadistic little shit, Joffrey seizes the moment to torment Mycha, knowing that he can get away with it because he’s the Crown Prince and Mycha is lowborn. It is, however, worth noting that once again Joffrey employs the conventions of Chivalric Romance, casting himself as Arya’s “rescuer” like he did with Sansa’s encounter with Illyn Payn and the Hound.

Joffrey: That’s my lady’s sister you were hitting. Do you know that?

Language like this is probably figures in the songs and stories that Sansa loves so much, where the knight/hero intervenes to defend a helpless maid. Joffrey, of course, doesn’t care about Arya – he just wants to do some bullying. This is where the whole situation turns into a twisted version of the narrative pattern that Joffrey is trying to appropriate. As the situation plays out, Joffrey isn’t the knight – he’s the villain. Mycha is the helpless person and Arya intervenes as the knightly rescuer.

This incident is not one of Sansa’s finest moments. She stands passively in the background as Joffrey hurts Mycha and as he argues with Arya. When Arya attacks Joffrey, Sansa starts yelling:

Sansa: No, no, stop it, both of you. You’re spoiling it. You’re spoiling everything!

Interestingly enough, Sansa berates both Arya and Joffrey. They are spoiling her lovely little fantasy. After Arya has left Joffrey cowering on the ground, Sansa quickly reverts to the script of Courtly Love and both laments Joffrey’s injuries and offers to get help - probably because she has no idea of to react otherwise:

Sansa: My prince, my poor prince, look at what they did to you.

She fusses over him like a lady would fuss over her wounded knight in one of her stories. Joffrey, however, doesn’t revert back to script but instead hisses at her not to touch him. He’s angry and humiliated and lashes out at her. This is probably the reason why Joffrey comes to hate Sansa so much. She witnessed his cowardice and weakness – and he never forgives her for it.

The conflict between the children is followed by a confrontation before King Robert. Arya is dragged in front of the king to where Cersei offers up a complete fabrication about how Joffrey was attacked unprovoked by Arya and Mycha. It devolves into a “he said, she said” scenario and Robert is visibly frustrated. He wants this resolved.

Robert: Where’s your other daughter, Ned?

Ned: In bed, asleep.

Cersei: She’s not. Sansa, come here, darling.

Then Sansa comes before Robert. There’s an important detail here that it is easy to overlook: Sansa is escorted into the presence of the king by a Lannister guard in full armour! [video, timestamp: 1:49]

Let’s ponder this for a moment. While Ned was out searching for Arya, Cersei had Sansa isolated and put under armed guard! That must have been quite an intimidating experience for Sansa and I don’t think that it is far-fetched that Sansa may have been pressured to present Cersei’s version of events. It is quite clear that Cersei expects Sansa to confirm Joffrey’s story. It isn’t stated outright but there is a subtext at play that indicates that Cersei has put pressure on Sansa when she was isolated and vulnerable.

This is another of Sansa’s less than stellar moments. However, I also think that she is often judged more harshly than she deserves. She is put in quite a bind. Cersei wants her to lie to the king – the same king who tells her that it is a great crime to lie to a king.

Robert: Now child, tell me what happened. Tell it all and tell it true. It is a great crime to lie to a king.

Sansa does lie to Robert but she doesn’t tell the lie that Cersei has been pushing. She doesn’t want to incriminate Arya but neither does she want to take sides against the boy she’ll be bound to for the rest of her life. So she tells another lie: that she doesn’t remember – and alienates both of them in the process.

The whole situation is a mess and neither Sansa nor Arya are equipped to handle this – and Ned is utterly useless. Neither Sansa nor Arya is to blame why this situation ends in such a nasty way. They are children who are completely unequipped to handle a pair of vicious persons who are acting in bad faith. The people to blame are the adults – primarily Cersei and Robert. Interestingly enough, this scenario is a notable deviation from the book, probably because Ned really does not acquits himself very well in the book. It is Ned who calls Sansa before the king. He knows the truth (because Sansa told him everything) but puts his daughter in a difficult situation where he expects her to testify against the boy who she’s to marry. He throws his eldest daughter to the lions without giving her any kind of support. The show, however, rewrites the incident to gloss over Ned’s failure as a parent.

Did Sansa do wrong here? Yes and no. It was wrong of her not to support her sister but, on the other hand, Arya did in fact commit a crime by attacking a member of the royal family. The punishment for this is very harsh. Sansa’s lie keeps the conflict at the “he said, she said” level and the only reason why Lady was killed was because Cersei was vindictive and Robert didn’t want to fight with her anymore. Sansa is generally judged very hard by the audience and that isn’t quite fair because the feudal world of Westeros doesn’t operate in the same way as our modern, democratic world. Yes, Sansa acted cowardly but her actions also prevented the situation from escalating if she had told the truth. Sansa is put between a rock and a hard place – and she was always going to be the loser in this scenario. If she had taken sides, she’d either betrayed Arya by confirming Joffrey’s lie or she’d have incriminated her sister, which could have had severe consequences for Arya. Then there’s the fact that she’s betrothed to Joffrey and a woman publically going against her betrothed/husband was not done. Ned actually explains this to Arya later (ep03).

The real tragedy is Mycha’s death – and the sad part is that he was already dead when Arya and Sansa was dragged before King Robert. Even if Sansa had told the truth, Mycha would still have been dead because the common born almost always loose when the rich and powerful clash - that is one of the overriding themes of the books.

DEATH OF A DIREWOLF

Lady’s death can be seen as a narrative punishment for Sansa lying about the incident at the Trident but that is, imo, a simplistic way to approach this. Lady dies because Cersei is a petty, vindictive woman and because Robert doesn’t want to argue anymore. Even Ned doesn’t press the issue beyond saying: “Is this your command, Your Grace?” In Sansa’s eyes, his lack of defense for Lady can certainly be construed as him failing her as a parent – the fact that he himself kills Lady can not be easy to Sansa to accept (Ned might think he’s doing the wolf a mercy but in his daughter’s eyes, he’ll always be the one that killed her beloved pet. I doubt Sansa can distinguish between the two in her anguish. Dead is dead and it was her father who wielded the blade). Lady is just another innocent victim in all this.

Within the fandom there’s been a lot of theories about what Lady’s death signifies – if it even signifies anything special at all. Many readers take her death to be a foreshadowing of Sansa dying, probably because the direwolves’ dead mother (killed by a stag) can be interpreted as a death omen for Ned: killed by a “Baratheon” king whose sigil is a stag. However, when reading a text symbolically, context is key and I’d like to advance another interpretation. Let’s have a look at what the text says about Ned killing Lady:

He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter’s wails echoing in his ears, and found the direwolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. “Lady”, he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur. Shortly, Jory brought him Ice. (A Game of Thrones, Eddard III) 

Trust and the betrayal of trust is such a huge part of Sansa’s narrative arc, so I think that it is no coincidence that Lady is described as the most trusting of the wolves. If we read the text metaphorically, then Ned’s killing of Lady can be interpreted as the first blow against Sansa’s innocent and trusting nature. Thus, Ned kills a little bit of Sansa’s trust in him when he executes Lady, which is just so incredibly sad. I’ve always thought that her going to Cersei, begging to be allowed to stay in King’s Landing (thus unwittingly betraying her father’s plan) wasn’t just a matter of Sansa being a selfish, spoiled child, but also that she no longer completely trusted that her father had her best interests in mind. I know it is easy to say that his hand was forced - and it was - but for a child it is difficult to see past the hand that wielded the blade. However, that one rebellious action on Sansa’s part actually lead to an even greater betrayal of her trust by Cersei. 

Interestingly enough, the show makes a direct connection between Lady’s death and Bran waking up from his long coma through the editing. In the books, the chapter where Bran wakes up (after a tense vision/dream sequence where he’s close to crashing into spires of ice and thus dying) follows the chapter where Ned kills Lady. In the show, Lady’s death is closely intercut with the scene where Bran wakes up – not just once but several times. [Video, timestamp: 5:00]

Thus Lady’s death whimper (off-screen) is immediately followed by Bran opening his eyes, which is the last shot of the episode. What does this mean? Well, it strongly suggests that Lady’s death pays for Bran’s life! It is her death that releases him from his coma.

[howtohero]

Bad Press

[Due to the potentially embarrassing topics we are going to be discussing in this post we have elected to not use any actual examples of superhero bad press. Any and all situations or names that appear in this post are entirely fictional and any resemblance to real superheroes or events is entirely coincidental.]

(Seriously it’s a coincidence.)

(Write that down.)

Ask anybody on the street where they were when the story of MatHan’s hilarious and tragic banana-truck scandal broke and they’ll be able to tell you exactly where they were and usually what they were wearing. (For those of you who don’t know, since this is entirely fictional of course, in late 2009 ManHat {MatHan} right right right, MatHan {do you think people are going to think that’s pronounced like Nathan?} Nah I’m sure it’s fine. Anyway, MatHan was pretty sure that one of his various hat-shaped trucks, which he’d disguised to look like a giant banana for undercover work, could safely get across a frozen river in pursuit of the... Lambunctious Led Right Lunner, but he was wrong and the truck fell into the water and he had to get scooped out with a crane and then pictures of the mysterious and terrifying MatHan with smushed bananas all over his face and draped in a pink fuzzy blanket showed up in all the newspapers. Good {completely made up} times.) Instances of such international notoriety usually set off a flashbulb in a person’s mind. Their brain kicks into overdrive as soon as it understands that a monumentally important moment in history is occurring and it tries to record everything about everything about it. As you can probably understand, this was not great for MatHan’s image. (If he were to exist and have an image, you get it.) That was nearly the end of his career, but it didn’t have to be. Stick with us, and we’ll show you how to survive even the baddest of bad press stories. 

The press is everywhere. They’re very sneaky. There’s a man who lives in a bush outside our office that has published like eight or nine stories about us and not one of them has been very flattering. (Highlights include {and remember none of these are real} “Sachary Zchechter gets into wrestling match with squirrel over ‘really cool looking acorn’”, “Garenthetical Puy, stripped of his ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ title after it is revealed that he stuffed the ballot box”, “Lour Awyer: Biggest Nerd in Three Known Universes? Studies Indicate Yes” and “Tow Ho Tero is clearly supporting known megalomaniac Boctor Drainwave.”) So it is almost impossible for superheroes to avoid being caught in compromising or embarrassing situations. But that doesn’t mean those embarrassing situations need to ruin your career and haunt you for the rest of your life. 75% of the time you can blame bad press on any number of sci-fi trickery. “Oh that wasn’t me that was my embarrassing clone.” Or, “Oh yes, that one was actually me... but I was brainwashed!” Or “Ah yes I see you’ve found a video of the time I was invaded by a body-snatcher!” But be warned, these solutions are not without risk. It takes only a moderately clever reporter to then twist the story into “Buffoon superhero manages to get themselves cloned/brainwashed/body snatched, what a loser” which is also not great! 

The real key to surviving bad press is the ability to spin. And no we’re not talking about Cyclone Dreidel, who has the literal ability to spin at fantastic speeds. (Which reminds of me the {totally made up} news story from a couple of years back about Dyclone Creidel cheating to win a latke eating competition. He was actually using real clones in that one.) The spin we’re talking about is the ability to take a negative news story and twist it so that it actually paints you in a good light. A successful spin has two major benefits: 1. It turns bad press into good press. 2. It really enrages the superazzi reporter that tried to make you look bad in the first place. 

Let’s take a look back at the MatHan example from our intro. If MatHan (had existed and) contacted us for some quality spin on the banana blunder, we would’ve had him put out a press release announcing that whilst chasing the Rambunctious- (Lambunctious) Oh right, it’s hard to keep track. Whilst chasing the Lambunctious Led Right Lunner he noticed a much more important crime occurring beneath the ice of the frozen Hatsburg Harbor. He made the call that the Lambunctious Led Right Lunner is like barely a criminal and decided to foil the underwater crime instead, despite not being adequately prepared to it. Now the story is that MatHan bravely risked his own life to save a mermaid from a mugging or an Atlantean ambassador from an angry anglerfish. Mathan is a hero, the ridiculing reporter becomes a ridiculed reporter and everyone is better off for it. 

As you can see from this example, the pervasiveness of the Weird Factor in a superhero world means that almost any gaffe, goof, or gooberiffic moment can be spun into an act of heroism. Caught picking your nose on camera? Foiling an attack from a legion of nose parasites before it could spread to anybody else. Tripped and fell at an award ceremony and then tumbled off the stage and became rolled up in the red carpet like some kind of bumbling burrito? You were actually tackling an invisible assassin that was trying to kill the mayor and the only way to make sure they were secured was to bind them up against you. Otherwise they’d be able to slip away without anybody being the wiser. Accidentally knocked down all of the fossil displays at the Museum of Natural History resulting in a lifetime ban? That’s on you Professor Paleontologist (it’s not our fault he has an alliterative name) you’re actually just an embarrassment.

If lying isn’t your thing (then you really might want to find another line of work) there are a few other options available to you. You can embrace the goof and learn to laugh at yourself. Doing this shows a great level of maturity,so it’s not often that men and women who run around in brightly colored tights living out their childhood power fantasies do this, but feel free to engage in some of that. It might even make you more likable and really our goal with all of this is to win over the public so it’s actually a very valuable tactic. You could also detonate a wide-range memory bomb and erase the incident from the public’s memory. Though this method usually always creates at least one or two supervillains and also is not so ethically sound. 

It should be noted that all of these tactics are only to be used when the story about you is merely embarrassing. If a story breaks that details actual shady or bad things that you or your team are doing then I cannot condone using these tricks to try to paint yourselves in a better light. If you do a bad thing you’ve gotta own up to it. That’s what being a hero is all about. So sorry Professor Paleontologist, you’re never going back to the Museum of Natural History again! Criminal scum.