#also. presumably that's what the hero system is for right

[hiddenramen]

like. i think the metahuman liberation army basically just wants quirks deregulated? which. honestly? i literally do not have enough information about the world to even begin to parse that. are people not allowed to use their quirks without licenses, or is the licensure stuff just for heroes specifically? i had assumed the latter, but do you have to get a permit to be able to use your quirk at all?

if so, i immediately have about ten million questions, but the first that pops to mind is: how would that even work for heteromorphs? like. at that point you literally just are your quirk. is tsuyu using her tongue to grab something technically illegal because it's a facet of her quirk? would hawks not be able to fly without his license? also, was bakugou technically illegally using his quirk when he'd fire off little sparks as a kid to show off?

and if that's not what they're talking about, and people can just use their quirks normally so long as they're not doing anything illegal with them (which is what i'd assumed), then what the hell is the MLA even for?

[stillness-in-green]

in an ideal world, how would you have written mha's endgame?

That’s not a question with a short answer, I’m afraid.  There’s a lot I’d do differently, in ways it’s hard to even sum up all of because a lot of what I’ve thought about revolves around things I’d want to do differently with the Heroes (and dating back much farther than the second war, at that) with the changes to the Villain side of things being, I don’t doubt, equally drastic but currently much more vague.  I’ll cover my biggest contention in a general way above the cut, but if you want some of my more specific ideas for how I’d approach changing things, look below the cut!

The most pressing problem is that the story built so many of its themes on a framework of Saving People and then let the endgame dissolve that central idea into an incoherent, mushy slurry of saved and unsaved, alive and dead, smiling and unsmiling, free and imprisoned.  For the story to work under its own established parameters, the kids have to truly save the Villains—not just their souls, but also their lives, and not just the ones the kids personally care about, but all of them.  Nothing less will fulfill the twofold promise the story made to its readers with great specificity: that The Greatest Heroes are those who save everyone and that this is the story of Deku/Class 1-A becoming The Greatest Heroes.

That’s not possible in the Hero System as it currently exists, which is my other big target for the thing that needed to change with the endgame: addressing the problems with the status quo.  Class 1-A has to confront the reality of their failing system and realize it needs drastic change, if it can be salvaged at all.  The kids cannot be hailed in the narration as the group who became, collectively, The Greatest Heroes if they inherit and uphold that selfsame failing system.  Regardless of how positively the story tries to spin things in its epilogue, if society doesn’t treat or conceptualize Villains any differently than it ever did,[1] then none of that society’s long-term problems have been solved.

1: And it doesn’t; the vast majority of the epilogue’s focus is on how the kids’ actions have reduced/are reducing the number of people who become Villains, with little to no focus on how their new-and-improved society deals with Villains themselves—either the already existing ones left over from the war or the future ones who still arise despite society’s best efforts.  An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but the pound of cure is still important to have—BNHA’s epilogue very pointedly lacks it.

Saving the Villains who are right in front of you, and making sure the people you can’t be there to help still get saved anyway are ideas that are inherently, inseparably connected.  You can’t do one without the other because each of them requires the other to stick. If individual Heroes don’t give a shit about helping those deemed Villains, then Hero Society will follow their lead, and if Hero Society doesn’t give a shit about helping those deemed Villains, then no help individual Heroes offer will be guaranteed once the Heroes have gone.

Toga is the clearest, sharpest example of the problem, in that no help Ochaco offers her means a thing if the larger system to which Toga is remanded doesn't support Ochaco in giving it. Horikoshi's inability to solve this conundrum is presumably why Toga had to die.  The short answer, then, to the question of how I would write the endgame is that whatever I’d come up with has to be a story in which Toga could be saved in the sense that Shimura Nana meant the word—a resolution that would see her both smiling and alive.

As to specifics?  Well, again, I don’t have the details ironed out because a lot of my ideas are unconnected “I didn’t like how canon utilized its set-up and characters; here’s an idea I like better” spitballing, but if you’re interested in what those ideas might be and how I’ve started lassoing them together, hit the jump.

So, I may have, on occasion, made reference to “the fix-it fic(s)” around here.  This is a pair of scenarios I call “Forward Different” and “Backward Different,” with the idea being that both would be canon divergent from the moment Heroes launch their attack in the first war, but the divergences would immediately go in very different directions based on changes to the underlying material.

Forward Different keeps everything established by canon up to that point as-is, but only what’s been explicitly established, so there could be some surprises with things like character motivations or secrets that had not yet been examined.  Backward Different, meanwhile, would have huge differences incorporated into the backstory, stuff that goes at least as far back as the training camp attack, that would not be made immediately apparent to the reader.[2]

2: The hypothetical reader, I should say, since I have no plans to ever write these out in full, my track record with longfic being as woeful as it is.  But I do want to hammer out the plotlines just to have them, share them, and maybe write some excerpts from them when the mood strikes.

I’m not going to share everything I’ve got in mind right now, but there are a few major points I can talk about, and some fun ideas here and there that I’m willing to share.

The single biggest difference between the two timelines is how they treat Deku, Shigaraki, and (to a lesser extent) AFO’s respective relationships to the One For All and All For One quirks.  Basically, I think it’s tremendously unfair that we see two almost totally incompatible versions of Vestige Fuckery in the story and it just so happens that the main character gets the version that makes everything easier for him while the Villain get stuck with the shitty version that make everything harder.[3]  The fix-it fic AU(s) are in large part about equalizing that balance.

3: And god knows I don’t buy that Deku gets the good version because he’s the good guy and he deserves it because Good Karma or whatever, while Shigaraki gets the bad version because he’s the bad guy and has Bad Karma.  You don’t give bad guys or good guys the fruit of the seeds they’ve sown two-thirds of the way into the story.  That stuff’s for the climax, goddamn.

The Backward Different timeline (the one that’s somewhat better developed at this point) is also called Splintered Wills.  In it, Deku and Shigaraki are both dealing with multiple vestiges that have minds and desires of their own who can choose to be helpful or to cause problems.  In effect, it’s giving Shigaraki access to the same potential benefits Canon!Deku enjoys while making Deku deal with the same potential downsides that Canon!AFO (who’s basically working with Deku’s version of the vestige mechanics; his vestiges just all hate his ass) has to deal with.

In Shigaraki’s case, that’s a huge step up from his canon situation, where he gets devoured by one (1) uber-powerful vestige and spends the vast majority of the last two arcs totally out of action.  Instead, he finds that his head is now full of quirk ghosts and, while many of them want no more to do with him than they did AFO (especially the vestiges of civilians and Heroes), plenty of others have no great love for Heroes or their status quo and thus are much more open to helping him.  Maybe they’re willing to hold back more hostile vestiges like AFO's; maybe they have memories or experiences that could be useful.

Shigaraki also pulls away a chunk of OFA the first time he and Deku fight post-surgery.  Specifically, he picks off All Might’s “vestige,” and All Might’s vestige, unspeaking though it is, and technically powerless, has lots of opinions on who he’s more inclined to help when given the choice between his career-long archenemy and his master’s grandchild.

Meanwhile, on Deku’s side of things, Deku’s newfound desire to save Shigaraki Tomura combined with Shigaraki Tomura stealing one of the eight spirits in One For All sends his headspace into a tailspin.  He spends much of the post-war arc with his powers on the fritz, as the OFA vestiges clash and argue and have mixed feelings (or very strong negative ones) about what he and they should do going forward.  He no longer benefits, as his canon self did, from OFA behaving as basically a unified collective; Yoichi can’t win Kudou and Bruce over for him with a sweet line or two.  Indeed, Yoichi doesn’t even want to because Yoichi is inclined to agree with them, though he’s not without sympathy—he never did stop wanting his brother to change, after all.

The other big factor influencing Backward Different/Splintered Wills is that the class size steadily shrank over the course of the backstory.  Aoyama was revealed as the traitor all the way back at the training camp.  Momo’s parents pulled her out of UA after the attack and enrolled her at Shiketsu instead.  At least one student will turn out to have Liberation Army ties that pull them away from the group.[4]

4: Probably Iida, but I’m not firmly decided yet.  MLA!Iida is very near and dear to my heart, though, so he’s definitely going to be in one of these timelines.

Several students aren’t allowed to do active Hero work because, without Aoyama to rally around during the license exam, they failed the first round, not even making the cut for the remedial course.  One transferred out of the Hero course for less dangerous work.  Maybe one gets critically injured during the first war.  Maybe some aren’t willing to buck the system enough to follow where Deku is going.  And so on.

The smaller class size serves two purposes, one character-based and one meta. First, starting big and winnowing down allows the story to actually write the students as distinct people rather than having them melt into an undifferentiated blob of Unified Niceness.  We shouldn’t have had a story with twenty kids who all, ultimately, react the same way to the crises they face!  If modern heroics has a problem with people who are just in it for the fame and money, or people who expected it to be relatively easy work due to the peace All Might established, then we should have seen that reflected in the class, too!

(That’s not to say no one who leaves or fails can ever show up again!  I have specific scenes in mind already for how Aoyama and Momo return to the story as allies, for example, and Shishikura plainly shows in the canon that failing the license exam in the first round doesn’t mean you can’t still find yourself doing Hero work anyway.  But the students’ paths should be ongoing threads that diverge and reconverge throughout the story, not a solid monochrome stripe that runs across the entire story-cloth like someone fell asleep at the sewing machine.)

Secondly, the smaller class size facilitates one of the major changes I have in mind for this timeline, which is that when the class confronts Deku post-first-war, they do it not with the intention of dragging him back to U.A., but of joining him in staying outside.  I have a ton of stuff I want them to see and interact with and be forced to acknowledge and reflect on, and that doesn’t happen if they just go back to school and wait for their next assignment.  Navigating all of that as a group trying to feel their way to a better future against the efforts of both jaded authority figures and Villains who’ve been burned one too many times to trust so easily is just simpler with a smaller, more focused, more strongly characterized group.

So, the Splintered Wills timeline, in summary, goes all-in on OFA being a repository of different people who are allowed to have different opinions and reactions to things, paralleling the dissolving of Team Hero’s united front; Deku & Friends have to struggle and clash, learn when to compromise and when to stand their ground, in order to build their way back up to unity, while Shigaraki is allowed the chance to continue coalition-building and consolidating resources under his own banner mentally in the same way he spent the entire series doing physically.  As Team Hero’s collective grasp on society collapses, Shigaraki’s grows stronger, reversing their positions such that Deku and company have to come back from the actual underdog position they fall into compared to BNHA, where they never 100% fall from the seat of power the way readers are encouraged to believe.

The Forward Different timeline is also called, for now, Creepy OFA.  It goes in the opposite direction by making Deku deal with the same kinds of problems Canon!Shigaraki has to deal with vis a vis being possessed of/by a quirk with a single domineering will of its own.  While Splintered Wills portrays OFA and AFO alike as being full of people, each with their own unique motivations and desires, this story underlines and reunderlines that quirk vestiges are ultimately biological impulses, not people.

OFA is an originally simple force that’s been compounded in complexity and appearance of rationality every time it’s been passed down, but is still ultimately just a quirk, mindless, unreasoning, imprinting its bearer with its own dictates and not caring a bit if the bearer likes or agrees with those dictates.  “OFA must be passed on,” “AFO must be destroyed,” “The bearer must be the Symbol of Peace,” and so on.

Making Deku and Shigaraki have to struggle against this loss of autonomy due to an out-of-control quirk vestige puts them on a similar level of challenge, the better to give them some common ground for understanding.  Whether they have to fight or help each other in the end, they’ll do it as free agents, people who have both had to figure out a way to throw off the weight of the lineages trying to mold them into  a desired shape. The help of their respective friends and allies—and maybe even some of their enemies?—will, of course, be immeasurable with this.

Some ideas I want to incorporate (or have already so started) into one or the other of these timelines include:

I want the PLF to do better no matter what timeline we’re in.  Currently my idea is that in one timeline, they had a well-placed mole somewhere whom Hawks and the HPSC didn’t sniff out, so the PLF knows the raids are coming and have laid traps for the attacking Heroes.  This could still go haywire, of course, ‘cause Heroes are very good at what they do, but it definitely won’t be a total blowout as it was in canon.  Then in the other timeline, the PLF don’t see the attack coming, but are given more license to act like the organized, effective threat they were initially portrayed as—they have sentries and security cameras posted, so while they only get a minute or two’s warning, it’s still better than absolutely nothing, and the outcome is way more chaotic and fraught for both sides, such that the country ends up dotted with PLF holdouts in situations that are part-siege and part-extended hostage negotiation. That gives an opportunity to show at least a partial version of what a PLF takeover might look like in practice, though it remains compromised by the ongoing conflict.    

As part of treating the PLF better, both timelines will have characters revealed to have MLA ties.  As mentioned, MLA!Iida is for sure in one of them; my strongest concept for a second choice is Ochaco having to grapple with the government’s heavy-handedness getting her parents arrested when they barely know anything about what they got themselves into,[5] but really, it could be practically anyone, including parents or mentors.  All I require is that the kids have a reason, any reason, to care about the fates of the tens of thousands of people the government sent them out to mindlessly arrest. 5: This would be a scenario in which I just went with the makes-more-sense-as-canon-anyway idea that being a Hero is the only way to get a quirk-use license so Ochaco is pursuing Heroism because she can’t get permission to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.  She doesn’t wind up MLA herself, but her parents—trying to be supportive but not thrilled that their daughter decided to pursue such a dangerous career for that reason—get handed some dodgy pamphlets, after Uraraka moves out to attend U.A., about a group trying to get the laws changed to be more in-step with the universality of quirks and the principles of bodily autonomy and economic self-determination.    

I think the time between the first war and the last confrontation should be longer, introducing more new characters and developing many characters BNHA showed only in passing.  I have ideas like new heroic types (students or pros) who are brought in from other parts of the country because they have useful quirks for the raids, a heteromorph ex-Hero student who bails on his school when he realizes that the people handling its shelter operations are turning away heteromorphs, someone who catches Nagant’s backstory confession on video and has to decide what to do with the bombshell about black ops extralegal Hero assassins, a support/protest group consisting of people who’ve become jaded about Heroes after things they see on the day of the initial attacks (people like Can’t-Ya-See-kun, the medical staff who tried to defend their beloved Doctor Garaki, people who lost family to the mass arrests and so on), people from branches of the government that aren't specifically associated with law enforcement, etc. Seriously, I want a story that acknowledges that there are people who could possibly be relevant and important to events that we haven’t already met circa the first war because something like The Total Collapse of Society will naturally stir up activity all across the country!  Maybe people who the 1-A kids have never met before could bring valuable input to the table!!  Gosh!!!    

Changes to the traitor plotline.  I mentioned Aoyama being outed circa the training camp for one; I’d like to run with Traitor!Hagakure in the other.  I’m thinking she goes missing during the first war and the students are worried sick about her because no one’s sure what even happened.  Did she run away?  Was she hurt?  Was she killed?  Would anyone even know, if she stayed invisible even as—as a—as a dead body, Bakugou is the only one willing to actually say out loud.  She is, of course, not dead, but the class won’t find that out for a while.    

Changes to how Hawks and Endeavor’s partnership plays out.  I want Endeavor to die during the first war in one story, allowing the rest of the family space to navigate that plot without him even as it pushes Hawks off the deep end, leading to him going rogue such that he gets what was in canon the Lady Nagant fight.[6]  In the other story, Endeavor survives but tries to make better decisions about how to handle Touya, leading his and Hawks’ stellar partnership into rough waters when it comes out that Hawks very much just wants Touya dead. 6: And freeing Lady N to show up elsewhere in some totally different capacity.  There may be ample evidence that her fight was originally intended to be for Hawks, and in that version of the story she probably never existed at all, but I love her potential far too much to erase her completely, even in a timeline that reverts her plot back to Hawks.    

Gran Torino living and having a change of heart about saving Shigaraki in Splintered Wills, but dying and becoming a loss Deku has to weigh against his desire to save Shigaraki in Creepy OFA.  More named and important losses in general, actually, and more time for the characters to react to those losses, be it with grief or with mounting rage.  Students who lose teachers and mentors, Heroes who lose peers and sidekicks, Shishikura losing his father, the League losing Twice, civilians who are allowed to be justly angry about their losses without being drawn like unreasonable screeching harpies for it, and so on.    

The Lady Nagant fight cuing up the way it did in canon only to abruptly end when Deku just straight-up agrees to go with her willingly because finding AFO and Shigaraki is what he wants, so why would he turn his nose up at the opportunity?  This leads to him getting a lot of exposure to Alternate Perspectives via Lady N’s history, Overhaul’s shattered state, and whatever’s going on with the League in this scenario before he eventually escapes or gets rescued with neither him nor AFO/Shigaraki able to make concrete progress on saving Shigaraki/stealing OFA.    

Playing more with All Might’s mental connection to OFA.  In Splintered Wills, Shigaraki gets his vestige, which means he loses the connection to Deku/OFA completely and instead starts having horrible nightmares of rage and death and Decay.  I’m still making up my mind about how things go in Creepy OFA, but I like the idea of All Might having his own mind back after 30+ years of being under OFA’s influence, and having a front row seat for what that influence is starting to do to the teenager he so unthinkingly gave that power to (or, more accurately, gave to that power?).    

Ditching the stupid mech suit in one timeline and letting Toshinori Yagi find ways to be relevant and meaningful without it; alternately, letting him keep the mech suit only to run it square into the rogue AI teeth of the lone free-willed survivor of the U.A. robot uprising, the R2D2-looking PLF advisor in Toga’s chain of command.    

Consequences for Deku’s fucking arms. He developed a kick-based fighting style; he can damn well use it. Also handle his problem with losing his temper by making him fuck up something that can’t get unfucked by having an ally nearby to save him from the consequences of flying off the handle.    

More, and different, interactions between Stain and All Might.  More extended ones, for a start; I want Stain to rescue a heavily injured All Might from the car attack and for them to then spend days together while Toshinori recuperates enough to be moved.    

Better material for Kurogiri and Gigantomachia.  And plenty of other Villains too, really, not just the PLF.  I’d like the Tartarus escapees to be human beings suffering a variety of ills from their extended solitary confinement; I’d like the Shie Hassaikai to make another appearance; I’d like Mustard to be relevant again. Et cetera.    

Let stuff like the quirk erase bullets and quirk singularity have more significant airtime.    

Spinarakiya.  AHEM. My willingness to be self-indulgent about ships I know good and well would never be canon has yet to be determined.

And that's some ideas! I have lots of others, but I don't want to completely turn this ask reply into a dumping ground for the many (many) ideas I have for that dyad of stories. If you read all of these, know that I appreciate you deeply. And thanks for the ask, @friedeggpajamas!

[grandwitchbird]

So let’s talk about Veilguard as an intentional subversion of the heroic power fantasy in RPGs. This is messy because I’m still thinking about it.

Generally we’ve got two approaches to crafting subversive narratives: utilizing the conventions of genre and medium to subvert expectation, and/or writing from the margins and against hegemonic interests.

Note that the audience is presumed to be informed. There’s no sense in trying to subvert uninformed expectations.

Veilguard puts the power of writing from the margins at least partly in the player’s hands. Are you a former galley slave turned pirate? Are you a cursed warden doomed to die in a world that will pay lip service to ideals it doesn’t really believe in? Maybe you’re just trans in a world that only barely even has words for what that means. It’s a collaborative narrative after all. And you can be the hero if you want! The game does not take that from you. It’s just that there are consequences to your choices, and heroes don’t get to escape their stories.*

Relationships & Characters

The subversions are there at the micro level, in archetypes and arcs turned on their heads. The noir detective is a woman. The necromancer fears death. The big damn hero guy is happier and more fulfilled as a cat dad. Most importantly though, the player cannot solve these character’s problems. We can only stay beside them while they struggle. And we’re meant to struggle too. There’s no incentive to people please to game approval. Trying to game a romance system for kisses and content isn’t even possible here. Our only motivation can be genuine interest and investment in these characters as-written, something that has finally allowed BioWare to shake off the spectre of player-sexual gamified romance arcs.**

The Narrator

Varric’s (explicitly illusory) attempts to frame the story as a schlocky hero’s journey are constantly undermined. We already know he’s spinning stories because that’s what he’s done for 3 games now. His advice to go solve your team’s problems is canned and doesn’t really help for reasons that become painfully apparent later in the game. This Varric is just whatever perception-filtered memory Rook/Solas has of the real Varric. Varric’s absence as a character then haunts every corner of the story and calls every narrative frame into question: heroes of the Veilguard as a game mechanic, Neve as folk hero or criminal collaborator to the same ends, Rook only calling themselves a hero when playing storyteller themselves, even Rook’s moniker takes on a new shade after Solas pulls his castling maneuver and the illusion is broken.

Varric being an absent narrator pushing us along the hero’s journey allows that big reveal to free us even as it frees him from the role of narrator. It also challenges us because it gives us undeniable reasons to want personal revenge against Solas. The real Varric was just a guy who did his best and was often wrong. He made his choices and can rest now. But Solas made his choices too, even if the outcome wasn’t what he intended. And now we’re free to choose between their paths. We haven’t actually fixed anything because this world is much bigger than us. We can open doors, offer a shoulder, provide backup. We can trust and be trusted. We can make mistakes. We can punch a god and die a hero. But we don’t have to be the hero.

The Hero

Solas, the dreadwolf, god of lies (depending on the story) is of course the walking narrative key to all of this. It’s a retread of his own story we escape if we refuse to play the hero. But it should be noted that the heroic path is interesting in its own right! The dreadwolf rises also in us. Sacrifice the pawns, damn the consequences. It’s a story that’s tragic and brutal and unapologetic in its classic structure. We get caught by the story and become the very hero we’ve been fighting this whole time.

It’s just at least equally interesting that we don’t have to be the hero. And it’s deeply subversive that the path to freedom is gained at the cost of the power fantasy. We can be part of a team that is more than pawns in a game. Some other guy can kill a god, and that’s actually his win, not just a step on our path. Somebody else can die for the cause, and that’s their choice more than ours. Our romances are represented by flowers because they’re alive and growing and not just beats in a story. Even the tragic hero himself can change. And that’s only possible if we let go of the power fantasy completely. Rook stops being Rook at the end of that path. It’s why we’re not in the mural. We get to escape the story.

* We’re going to get into heroes and stories and why heroes can’t escape their stories next if I don’t run out of steam.

** Or just Shepherd-sexual in Mass Effect. I want to write more about romance separately because this is a whole thing.

[simplegeneral]

Besides monarchies, what other systems of government do you think would exist in WoF?

Ah, this one is interesting!

Sand Queendom, the Elective Monarchy For the longest time, instead of the Eye of Onyx, I imagined the SandWings as a Republic, or rather more fittingly, an Elective Monarchy, akin the HRE.

It made sense to me as nobles, which I would assume to be caravan traders (mostly often associated with a noble in the capital), since those are the influential dragons through the desert, moving the very economy of the state, would vote for someone among nobility to be the next queen.

I imagine Oasis was elected for her military prowess in the canonical skirmishes mentioned between the SandWings and SkyWings.

Once Oasis died, the nobles elected Burn as the new queen, which was her presumed heir, even if her leadership was not completely ensured, but the SandWing War of Succession showed the nobles they did indeed needed another militaristic ruler.

Rainforest Queendom, the Confederation of Tribes

I love the RainWing challenges, not only for its refreshing way of choosing queens, but that it MAKES SENSE, a rainforest tribe wouldn't care about "fancy talking" of politics, but rather on a individuals' skills on leading them in this peculiar and rather dangerous environment.

I see their system as the figurehead, which is Queen Grandeur, descendent of Anaconda and the legendary royal family of the RainWings, but there's a tribes' council above her, the other "queens" which form a confederation of several tribes (instead of one big location with their ENTIRE tribe) whom have different desires and are shown to be a rather fragile union.

Ice Queendom, Great Ice Dragon Save the Queen!

I imagine the Ice Queendom as a theocracy, with the IceWings being deeply religious in their cult of the Great Ice Dragon, a legendary animus and hero of their kind.

The Circles being chosen among the most hardworking, rightful and virtuous among them, though the system is of course flawed and causes conflict among the noble families.

The IceWing queens, ever since Diamond, have their status and holiness raised to 100, as well as the same pattern of thoughts from herself, which is caused by the crown of racism.

Although noticed in the beginning, the IceWing culture had been smashed and shaped around their deeply rooted hatred and prejudices for the outside world, only being even vaguely changed in the rule of Glacier, which have proved to be a rather strong minded, if too cautious, queen, resisting the crown's influence into opening the nation to the outside.

Sky Queendom, led by an Immortal Queen

I play around with the reincarnation beliefs of the SkyWings established in canon, every skywing queen has been thought to be a reincarnation of the first and only All-SkyWings Queen, Carmine, who established the personality cult.

According to their beliefs, the queens hatch and challenge each other in the endless natural pursuit to reach perfection, each heir that dies, the cycle continues, each time a queen dies, she ascends even stronger.

Scarlet was the latest reincarnation of Carmine, and thought to be the strongest since Carmine herself, being challenged 12 times and won all of them.

Overall, their government is equally theocratic, with their SkyWings abandoning their worship of the flame and the mountains' goddess to the cult of the immortal queen.

SkyWings society also works around weirdly with this concept, there's no fear of death among the SkyWings, for they believe they will come back in order to save the Immortal Queen once again, death does not end their duty.

Sea Queendom, Hatchplace of Capitalism

The Sea Queendom has been a notable nation in Pyrrhia. For a nation without breaths, the SeaWings sure display their strength in their innovations carried across the centuries.

Though the NightWings have known about gunpowder since Darkstalker's times, no tribe had paid much attention to the lost invention but the SeaWings, which have experimented in the first explosives and guns through the current age of Pyrrhia.

From ballistas to beehive explosives (anti-dragon warfare), they have proven to be a fierce people, determined to resist their supposed stronger neighbors.

Undersea, Queen Coral rules a near corporatist empire, which one of the inventions of Whirlpool, the water resistant ink, had kickstarted a propaganda machine through the printing press and the first systematic exploitation of resources for the mass consumption of the public, such as the pufferfish venom being widely used as a recreative drug.

Coral had realized that a happy people is a docile and peaceful people, and Blister would take her notes from it.

Coral had overall remained unbothered by the concerns and problems of the continent, but had taken the baffling decision to intervene in the SandWing Succession War in support of Blister, which had severely disrupted the peace of her subjects, causing the first sparks of discontent of how things were being ran.

Blister's openly racial and hateful beliefs on the SeaWings had not made her any favors, but Coral knows how to drug her people a bit more, so they can be content with the most fierce might of the SeaWings a bit more, as thousands died over the years.

Mud Queendom, Feudalism at its Finest

The importance of siblings have led to the Mud Queendom to have one of the most chaotic inheretance systems of Pyrrhia.

(recommend searching for the succession rights in the Kievan Rus, its quite interesting!)

Basically, all siblings inherent something from the queen or noble upon their death, which causes a complete feudal division of the queendom into small states led by overly militaristic warlords which constantly battle around with very little importance to the queen, which overall saw the disputes and decided the winner.

Might makes right in the Mud Queendom, and thus they are known for their military prowess, though very uncoordinated, which makes them feared in the wars they participate, with the greatest example being Queen Crane in Darkstalker's time, smashing the SeaWings in battle with so much brutality they would not make attempts to return to their coastal villages over Pyrrhia for the next 2000 years.

Through the SandWing Succession War, the Mud Queendom overall came together as it always did in times of war, though the warlords dictated more power than the queen herself, Queen Moorhen proved herself a more than capable administrator and no pushover, proving herself in fight numerous times, she ruled for nearly 200 years at the start of the conflict.

[energy-falcon]

OK, I need to toss this out here.

if the theory was right that the new year Tailstube was set up for the next game and Professor Victoria is going to be involved as an important character I think I got an idea what it might be like.

My feeling is that it’s going to be a sort of Sonic adventure, three with a similar style to sonic adventure one where each character has their own campaign with its own style of gameplay.

We know Prof Victoria is likely going to be a major character, and whether or not she is Maria’s sister or niece or is a robotnik, we can confirm at the very least that she is a historian, if not a full on archeologist based on the title of her book. Combining this with the ancients and the dangling plot threats from Frontiers about them I think the next game is going have something from the past being uncovered, w/ professor Tori being involved.

I also think the game is gonna have an element of travel similar to unleashed, because of the tailstube mentioning a road trip, knuckles and amy both also mentioning wanting to explore the world.

I think bare minimum playable characters are going to be the people who were front and center in this tailstube, as its the first bit of media directly addressing whats coming post-frontiers. As such, the likely playable characters are as follows:

Sonic

Tails

Knuckles

Amy

Rouge

Shadow

Sonic is obviously going to be in this game. Let’s not even joke. I think him and shadow are likely going to play similarly Because they roughed out a pretty decent style w/ frontiers, and refined it with shadow generations. Considering Shadows popularity and the amount of hype surrounding his character, and the fact they have a very good gameplay system for him already they can easily adapt to Sonic, its not that far of a stretch to say they’ll probably gonna make both of them playable. I’m expecting them to do some differences though shadow has chaos control and chaos snap and all his other abilities. Sonic is his usual tool kit maybe with some extra twists to help differentiate the two. (For example, Sonic has Spindash/Dropdash, rolling, & the bounce bracelet, Shadow has Timestop, Chaos Spear, and Stomp). As for their stories, presumably Eggman’s gonna uncover something from history w/ power, and attempt to harness it leading Sonic on his journey to stop him. Meanwhile, shadow is probably gonna be involved because of professor Victoria, either because she’s Maria’s sister, knew Maria’s father, or because She Worked for GUN (she got geralds journal to Commander Towers), which we know was crippled by eggman post forces, and had been slowly building itself back up.

Tails’ whole arc in frontiers was about regaining his confidence and proving himself as a hero, and he ended that game by saying that he wants to go on an adventure of his own. The Tailstube episode specifically ended with him saying he was gonna take it on a road trip, signalling he’s likely gonna have a solo journey. I’m crossing my fingers that we get a mix of on foot gameplay like adventure, one and the cyclone from adventure 2, instead of JUST the cyclone, because as much as I think it’s cool I liked on foot tails better, and it helps make tails more than just the Tech guy. They already had a pretty solid on foot tails. They just need to refine his kit a lot more and fix a couple things.

Amy is kind of tricky but again she had a really solid gameplay set up in frontiers, they just need to make more of her attacks use the hammer instead of the tarot cards, which was my only complaint. She said she was gonna hang out with her friends more in the tailstube so I’m guessing her campaign is about her going on a road trip to visit all her friends. I’m not sure if she’ll be playable because I’m not sure what her campaign would be like but I hope she is.

Knuckles and Rouge are both interesting and are similar to sonic and shadow, as they are both closely associated with the treasure hunt style of gameplay. Knux ends frontiers by planning to branch out from his island, explore the world and treasure hunt and mentions as much in the Tailstube, while Rouge tells tails she wants to expand her gem collection, interestingly with tails asking her about gems of historical value, which could tie into Professor Victoria, who is bare minimum a historian, if not an archeologist. The differences could be neat tho: knuckles is going on more classic treasure hunts to seek information about the ancient mysteries involved in the plot while Rouge’s levels are more like bank heists with some more puzzle elements. Could be some cool variety.

All in All, I don’t know if this is accurate, but I’ve had this in my head for like the past couple days and I just needed to get this out.

[brucewaynehater101]

Was afraid of sending this ask until I recalled the wise words of Junko Kaname

“If you find yourself at a dead end and there’s no other options left, doing something the wrong way might do the most good.��

Plus I'm anonymous. I've got nothing to fear

Platonic Omegaverse AU based on "Back and There Again" by wolfsrainrules and your fic "Words Unspoken" on ao3 —WAIT WAIT WAIT!!!

toss in "Three Robins walk into a tower" by Law_10 plus the fic where Tim gets Surgeoned wings

Also there's some unreliable narration later in this ask which evolved into a fic lol

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Setup; Tim gaslights and lies to himself about Batman's abusive treatment towards him until he's forced by Jack to stop being Robin

When Stephanie comes along, he helps by giving her notes and recordings from his time as Robin, making up for where Batman lacks in training her himself

This leads to Stephanie learning and calling out just how bad his tenure as Robin was, being more distant with the Batfamily + professional-ish w/ Bruce

They try to spend as little time possible with the Bats for their own sakes from them on because the other would worry for them

While Tim doesn't have as much time as Barbara, he does presume an Oracle-like role for Stephanie to help her out

Stephanie also becomes quick friends with the Teen Titans. She's got Tim's seal of approval

Janet Drake dies. Tim is grieving and now he's stuck with Jack so he copes Batman style on the computer—

ooh nooooo. deadpanning??? that's just how I grieve, officer. I can't believe someone would kill my daaaad! who could have done such a thing? Oh you already have him detained and you're even imprisoning him in a whole 'nother state that isn't a revolving door! Thank you officer! You're my hero

Tim set things up so Cluemaster and Jack were unknowingly in the same area and Cluemaster accidentally killed Jack

But nobody is gonna figure that out. It's not like he did the deed!

And who else could advocate for the villain being jailed for life after killing a millionaire away from the New Jersey State itself than the new star of a CEO for Drake Industries, Edward Drake? The fact he works remotely from home and is insanely reclusive is totally irrelevant!

In unrelated news? Tim and Steph have become best friends who flip flip between who they have sleepovers with

Whoop! Suddenly there's two Robins running around often at the same time and they are manaces! Menaces to society I tell you!

Together they train to become the best Robin duo there ever was!

Oh no, I made this a "it gets better before it gets worse before it gets better fic" FUCK ME

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Titans Tower isn't crack like Three Robins. In fact all the Robins are screaming and crying at each other

"You stole my name!"

"You stole it from Richard first, how about you apologize for taking away the very name his own parents gave him!"

"It's not just about Robin but my place in the family dammit!"

"Why would you not come back already! The family misses you! We aren't even daughter and son! We're just unpaid interns at best! We could never take your place. they think you're dead but the spot is open for you if you ever come back! We never replaced you! We're here until you return!"

"Batman's a crazy kid beater Tim!" Steph's right but even with a support system, abuse does a number on ya

Alas, Jason is not seeing reason and while he gets bruised up and does it back, the two Robins at least didn't get beat as much as Jason wanted. Small mercies

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

When Jason finally comes back into the fray, it's smoother than he expected. Weirdly enough, he hardly saw his Replacements in the Manor, but given he wants as little to do with them as possible? Small mercies

When Damian comes into the fray and tries to prove himself in the form of attacking both Robins? Proof that there's lots of cult deprogramming to do; but for Jason?

It's nice having demon brat around again. Dami understands what growing up in the League was like and the Replacements spend even less time around him when in the Manor. Any instances where they would usually be asked to interact face to face are done through voicemails or emails instead

Man, Tim must really be living up to Eddie Drake's image if he only sees him and Stephanie as Robins on the field now

Meh, for all he knows they're prancing around with the other bats

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

It's his 16th Birthday

Stephanie is first and only to know

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Whenever Red Robin laments getting Spoiler's image tarnished in the super scene for good when it just could have just been his alone, she hounds him for it

As she does when he looks back to his time of cloning, thinking about their mutual lack of spleens instead of the dead

it's progress

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

The Core Five of Young Justice sit together in silence. Typing together contingencies for when Batman enacts the third test and beyond

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

"Demon brat," says Todd, ruffling Damian's hair

"Dami," says Grayson, trapping him in arms

"Son," says Father, says Pennyworth

The Replacements Father owes life debts to say "Robin," and nothing else until the public is upon them. Then they say "Wayne"

"Damian" when it is professional and polite West etiquette 

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

It wouldn't be the first time a villain---Dynamics Master---came from another dimension

The second time they were fixated on biology

Or the third time their targets were Bats

Least of all a new permanent divide between Batman and his proteges came

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Jason hasn't let go since they got out

Neither the pups Replacements with each other

"Unhand me Todd!" Damian. His puppy fussed.

'Responsibility' Jason corrected himself. He kept him close to his chest

Didn't matter what Dami had to say. His scent betrayed him; distressed-puppy-scared-omega-help-please

Emoting through smell. Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if it was just him and Damian

Jason didn't even realize when he started purring and rubbing his wrist against Damian's hair. Probably another "Dynamic" thing the villain raved about

Something about not wanting to be stuck in a world full of people unlike theirs, since this was the norm in their own

Damian yipped—his hearted melted, good god these Dynamics can't pick if their truth serums for thought or straight up liars themselves—as he buried his nose in the kid's hair, inhaling the smell of puppy-pack-omega-here-safe-and—

His nose scrunched with distress refusing to part from Damian

That wasn't right, it wasn't parting from him either

In fact it's been a chore to not gaze at the PUPS! Replacements the other side of the room

Replacements who would have long since left the room without a goodbye since all their checkups and duties were done for the day

Replacements who's gazes flicked between them and each other

And wore bandages over their wrists and necks

'Scent-blockers' he recalls the villain saying

Jason bared his teeth at them for a warning to— to— he had a pact to protect

Red Robin and Spoiler jumped to their feet and ran out the room, forgoing closing the doors, not once letting the other's hand go

. . .

For some reason, he and Damian's scents felt worse than ever before

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Brown and Drake don't say his name anymore

that is if he ever sees them at all outside of Robin

They don't appear in high society either. Father said they made a scene about faking responsibilities, injuries, and sickness to get out of dealing with elites forever

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

"That villain really did a number on you, didn't he Dami?" 

"I remain unshaken!" Damian announced, wrapping fresh scent-blockers around his wrists

When the Manor's doors opened to reveal Jason—wearing blockers himself—Damian was already running towards him, not locking back at Dick until he spoke again

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Another alien invasion—one needing all hands on deck—done with. All that was left

And barking a warning at the Replacements to not get up in his personal space

"Man, not even their teammates want them," he swore he caught a rookie hero say off-handedly, "and they're still allowed in Young Justice?"

But practically everyone was here catching their bearings, so in case he misheard it

"Hey, hey! I heard you talking about Spoiler and Red, right?"

The rookie turned to him, "You mean the nutcases?"

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

'Ever-constant despair' Cassandra had to say about the pups Replacements when Jason's hand started hovering over his phone

Alfred had commented on a trend from before the villain where they barely appreciated their meals without the other with them, otherwise they deigned for quick, efficient meals

afterwards it became impossible to get them to eat anything at all without the other with them

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

For the first time, Jason felt unfulfilled from Dick's octopus hugs. He was slowly and painfully spenting less time cuddling Damian now and he still didn't feel as hollow.

He grumbled in a way that came with being an 'Omega' and Dick didn't vocalize back. He didn't smell anything but chemicals from Richard— everyone actually

Jason felt hollow

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Once when Jason met up with Damian after the kid changed his blockers

He whiffed Misery

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

It was during a drug bust that things really went downhill. That Jason realized he couldn't do this anymore

It was the usual. Drop in. Stop the operation. Pack things up; just with the added downside of his stronger sense of smell making drugs stink like never before—even through his helmet

Spoiler—who came in on a short notice—seemed to have the same problems, coughing like there was no tomorrow.

He could almost swear to hearing keens of all things in between her fit as she shook violently in a way he hardly saw her do

Unmasking wouldn't be an option until the Cave, so she seemed to settle for placing a hand on the bandages on her throat

He placed a hand, on a crate for support. The drugs smelled awful, sure, but to render him dizzy? It was strong, but not that much

It was then that she noticed the blood on her hand which came from blood splattered on the bandages earlier

"Shit— do you mind if I swap out my blockers quick Red Hood?" She wiped down her glove for as much blood she could

"I'm not your boss Replacement."

She scrambled to grasp for her pockets and used her now less-bloodied glove to unwrap the bloodied bandages

'Great' he wanted to spit out 'I can smell you through my helmet and your costumes.'

Instead he got hammered with the puppy-alpha scent of pup-in-danger-not-safe-omega-hates-me-help-save-me

Jason wasn't even sure he could keep himself still, but he did it. It didn't matter if his brain was rewired or scent glands got grafted onto him, he was the master of his own body—!

He can't do this anymore, he can't—

nobody one else for sure

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Jason was going insane

He entered the cave to see Batman on the Batcomputer, but that wasn't what he was focused on, unwilling as it was

Stephanie might as well be clinging to Tim's shoulders for life, looking at the screen of the laptop he typed on

The two had forgone their blockers, forcing their scents to mix and mingle in the air, drowning the place in together-alone-pups-alpha-omega-miserable-together as he picked up bits of a discussion between about about 'dynamics' and a 'syringe' together

Tearing through his skull however was their frequent keens of miserable-pack-hates-us-we're-not-safe-here

Unseen by them was Damian, stiff if not for the movement of breathing and the gazes of oh god that was longing

Jason used all of his willpower to not tear off either of their blockers and he took Damian's hand

Try as he might, he couldn't resist keening in response to his pups. His response making the others stop barely made him feel better

Jason was going insane

He has to put an end to this

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

With even Barbara having to go offworld, Batman entrusted Tim with keeping charge of Gotham

After Batman left, he couldn't be faster in delegating some of the job to Jason, shakey as his limbs were

The back of Jason's brain tingles with deja vu seeing the sorry sight that is Timothy

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

A hospital in Gotham admitted a new patient

Days later, word hit the streets that Joker was good as dead, a vegetable for life, if only for the bare minimum brain activity and heartbeats keeping him going

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

'For once,' Jason thought as he stocked up his chosen safehouse to hunker down in, 'The Bat was right but too late in not entrusting me with unclipped wings'

He would do anything to make Gotham more peaceful than it's ever been for this string of months. Even pull every favor he had to get it done

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

"Pack everything you want to keep more than anything in your suitcase pup. nothing for keeping face, we're going to be alone"

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

"Steph! Red Hood betrayed us, it was a false alarm. Alert the on-world Bats and—!" Scent withdrawal was a nasty, nasty thing if a hug and an older omega's scent was all it took to knock the pup out

Omega-protector-here-you're-safe-now-pup wafted through the air yet unable to purge the misery-alone-unsafe clinging to them both

Jason would rectify that soon

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Stephanie had been on her wits end and her mind frayed alongside Tim's in ways everyone and thing else would envy

Today that thread of sanity snapped. She had no pack—she can't trust anyone—Tim needs her!

The Drake Manor acquired a broken window, which the super-computer stored in it's secret bunker promptly noted for repair. no girl or boy would see it for a time

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Deep in the Batcave, Cassandra gazed at the syringe full of fluid

A syringe which would be innocuous if not for it being locked in a suitcase that needed a mix of Tim and Steph's Dynamic vocals and pheromones to activate

Something achieved only after intense trial and error, prediction of randomly timed password lockouts, and guesswork on what clips of the two making sufficient audio were Dynamic vocals, and which of their items retained enough pheromones to trick the technology it was fresh from their wrists

Included with the syringe were documents of its nature

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Danger!-unsafe-unwanted-pack-where-are-you-please-don't-kill-me flooded the room after Tim caught sight of Damian and Jason

The omega chuffed, pack-omega-here-pup-you're-pack

An omega-puppy's keen, i-don't-get-it-confused-you-hate-me

A puppy's yip, omega-is-safe-protector-pack-scared-unsafe?

"You're safe pup," Jason crooned, combing his fingers through the teen's hair, "You belong to my pack and so will Stephanie, nobody, not even we'll hurt you."

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

All the desperation in the world couldn't get Stephanie to escape a Red Hood who'd spent the last months studying their battle tactics endlessly

And even more months packless meant a new pup in the roster led to him purging the air of anything but his scent of precious-pups-you're-my-pack-i-love-you

Tucking his new pup in the nest, he did a round of checking on the safehouse's security, then his nest, making sure the pack was sleeping comfortably. He scented them again for good measure

Exhaustion wore on his bones. Wrapping his arms around Stephanie as Tim did Damian

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Something was coming, Jason shot up, longlearned in trusting his gut, and as the only grown pack member? It fell onto him to protect them all

He froze at the approaching scent of a beta-pup, another pup, but how?

He heard the mechanisms of the front door unlocking and locking again, and waited for what was coming

The scent drew his gaze to Cassandra's eyes, Cassandra who was waffing lonely-packless-beta-pup-i-want-my-pack-confused

No matter, Jason made room in the nest for a fourth pup, and chuffed for her to come in

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Jason has maybe a year left of three of his pups being pups according to their Dynamics until they're full-fledged adults

All those months before they stewed in misery because he let their pride and societal expectations trump it all

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

"The syringe" is all Cassandra has to say about her sudden dynamic

As Tim confesses, those three Young Justice members had wanted to do something about Stephanie and him withering away

The solution? Reverse engineer their own biology to craft a more autonomous means of gaining a dynamic

Jason huffs that he and Dami weren't their first pick

That being said, he isn't saying no to three more pups

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Word rapidly spreads that the Batman's baby birds were spirited away by Red Hood

Even quicker is their meta status of the same vein

Asking strangers "Would you rather get caught doing child-involved crimes by Red Hood, or laying a scratch on his pups?" becomes a viral sensation much like Man vs. Bear

Rogues throw their hands up once Wonder Girl, Superboy, and Impulse join the fray of Red Hood's adoptees

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

When the Bats return back to Earth, they find those who stayed have not only cut contact with the rest of the world outside of Gotham and Young Justice, but have dragged Young Justice to join in on pushing their new isolationist policities to their absolute limits

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

When Batman discovers photos of the Joker's mauled and unrecognizable body have gone viral on Twitter, he's dissapointed at his own surprise as how easy finding the details were

All he had to worry was verification, which was simple enough

When the hospital's data shows that it was done with claws and teeth, unrecognizable pheromones matching just one boy he knows

Jason grins at him, omega canines on display

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

Is it Batman's business if his pups hand over a syringe and their favorite hoodies to a precious little light down two parents to Joker Gas?

Jason thinks not

. • ° · ☽ 【×】 ☾ · ° • .

I accidentally made a fic

How did this happen? Oh well then

Extra Notes

This was just meant to be a Jason & Damian & Damian thing but then Stephanie and Young Justice and Cass snuck into the nest

And this transforming into a fanfic that was semi-jason-centric wasn't on my bingo but lol

Also rip if you dunno wtf the omegaverse is lmao

Even if Joker is out of the game, Jason couldn't prevent his inventions from getting out there and being reverse engineered and being distributed, hence how Duke's parents still took the L

Now a little Jason think piece

In Canon, he's arguably just as guilty as Bruce for Joker's crimes and victims after he doesn't kill him then and there

Arguably because he cares more about Bruce than the victims and collateral of Joker's deeds

Jason in a position where more than ever, he sees family and community as his world, to the point it's need to live on a psychological level? Threats cannot be allowed to exist

Or at least be able to do anything meaningful for as long as they still live

Joker is at the top of that list. And if Jason can come back from the dead? So could he. What to do?

You only need a beating heart & brain activity to live, and Batman won't let him his long time nemesis die, even as a mercy

I'd present more questions and ideas that didn't get into the final product and do another round of editting but my computers gonna die now lol

Go crazy, go stupid about my ask everybody

Alright! I do in fact know what the omegaverse is. I don't particularly like it for a variety of reasons, but some of the concepts are cool. If I wanted to have similar enough dynamics, I typically read shifter AUs. They have the pack bonding, the scent shit, the different instincts, etc. without the stuff I don't particularly like (depending on how it's written, ofc).

The stuff I loved about this fic/AU:

Fixed Tim and Steph's dynamic in a way I didn't know I needed. Fuck yes to them supporting each other through their Robin years instead of being pitted against each other.

Steph and YJ bonding

Steph and Tim continuing to support each other even through the BruceQuest

Steph and Tim bonding over how fucked up Bruce was to them during their Robin years

The hc/au that Tim becomes an Oracle-like support to Steph's Robin

The hc (kind of canon-ish) that Jason and Damian met in the League

Jason adopting everyone including Cass and YJ and Duke

I am curious about Dick and where he is in all of this. Also, it wasn't quite clear to me who was affected by the omegaverse stuff. Everyone who was adopted by Jason was, but is there anyone else besides that villain?

Two notes you made at the end that were impactful:

Jason is complicit in Joker's murders after he doesn't kill the Joker

I think that is dependent on Jason's characterization. If, how it's often portrayed in canon/media, he cares more about Bruce's actions/reactions than justice, then this is true. On the other hand, Jason may be unable to kill the Joker due to a vicious concoction of trauma, fear, Bruce, and circumstances. It would be understandable (and a great angst/conflict point) if Joker is the only person Jason is unable to kill. He wants to, by everything he is does he want to, but he can't. If anyone wants me to expand, send an ask.

"Batman won't let his long time nemesis die, even as a mercy"

This is the type of Dark Bruce I want to see. My gods, I would kill to see a fic where Bruce views murder as a mercy, too permanent, and too forgiving. This Bruce wants to force villains, rogues, heroes, civilians, etc. to work for their redemption. If they die, how are they going to make amends? What good is atonement if the only one to witness it is God and the dead? What good is forgiveness given by those unaffected?

I'm not saying this is an okay or decent mindset (hence why it's Dark Bruce). I'm just saying it would be cool to explore a Bruce who refuses to kill for entirely different reasons. Instead of it being too far, him being worried about never stopping, or him not agreeing morally, I would fuck with a fic where he doesn't kill so he can make people pay for as long as he wants.

[woodchipp]

1) "Kel would probably feel betrayed that his friend lied to him about the suicide of his other friend, but he has no right to feel that since he's also done bad things!" I don't think you understand how callous this sounds

2) None of the bad things Kel did are comparable to KILLING A PERSON AND LYING ABOUT IT. BE SO FUCKING FOR REAL RIGHT NOW

3) "we see during the Omori fight that Sunny is afraid of hurting his friends more than he already did" well, let's take a look at the excerpt of Omori's speech this is likely referring to, then, shall we?

"...and when they see the truth, they'll hate you as much as you hate yourself. If they know the truth, you'll never be able to regain their trust."

Sunny doesn't give a shit about whether he'd hurt his friends with his confession or not. He's only concerned about the possibility that they would hate him for killing Mari.

4) "and when Kel finally tried opening up to Hero" Kel was trying to help him, not vent to him. He specifically mentions he told Hero how much everyone misses him, how concerned everyone is and how much Mari wouldn't want to see him like this, the last of which is (presumably) what set him off.

Play the game.

5) "has realized the importance of maintaining relationships" would you be willing to maintain a relationship with someone who had no trouble lying to you about their lack of involvement in someone else's death?

1)

"She nearly kills Basil on accident in a direct parallel way to Sunny, which would contribute to her understanding what Sunny went through."

Or she would hate Sunny even more because at least she had the balls to try and own up to what she did immediately. It rang hollow and she picked the worst possible time to apologize to Basil, but she did make an effort to change right upon recognizing how much of an asshole she was. Sunny's immediate response to his crime, on the other hand, was to stay cooped up in his house for 4 years because he's a coward who'd rather let everyone believe he's innocent than be honest with the people he loves.

("But he couldn't even remember the truth!" Yeah, because he's been consciously suppressing it via Omori each time it surfaced.)

2)

"She would understand the isolation that Sunny felt and the inability to open up to others about what happened."

No, that's not how it works. She wouldn't be able to relate to Sunny's isolation precisely because she had the Hooligans as a support system (however eccentric they might've been), and her inability to open up to anyone about Mari's suicide is not comparable to Sunny's choice not to admit he's a murderer. Be so fucking for real right now.

1) Again, this entire argument hinges on the misconception Kel was venting to Hero. He was trying to motivate the latter. Play the game.

2) "But while he was able to tell Kel he was sorry, Sunny never had that chance and I think Hero would understand that." Or he'd be too busy struggling to process the fact Mari's brother - and someone he considered a close friend - was perfectly willing to lie to him about her death to think about that. But I guess the "they're traumatized children" defense applies only to the murderer and his accomplice :)

3) "Hero also abandoned everyone in the same way Sunny did and he vowed to not make that mistake again." Hero shut down because he was in genuine pain. Sunny chose not to tell anyone because he was a coward. Be so fucking for real right now.

4) "To assume that he would walk that back and abandon Sunny when Sunny needs him the most" Note that Hero's feelings are not accounted for. Sunny needs him the most, and that's all that matters. Hero is only allowed to be The Dad.

5) "I believe he would empathize with Sunny for not being able to confront Mari’s death until everyone came back together." That's not how it works. Hero wasn't able to accept the fact Mari killed herself. Sunny didn't want to face the fact he killed her. Be so fucking for real right now.

1) "I think Basil is the most likely person to forgive Sunny on account of the sheer amount of guilt that he feels" That isn't forgiveness. That is feeling like you're not allowed to be angry.

2)

"the love he has for Sunny and the love he has for his friends and their memories together would allow for him to understand why Sunny did the things he did."

What is there to understand? What is there to understand when your best friend kills someone you saw as a close friend, then defaces your most precious belonging and leaves you to deal with the cover-up's aftermath by yourself, then comes out three days before he's due to leave the town, then walks out on you in the middle of your mental breakdown as you beg him to stay and then decides to ruin all your efforts to keep him safe when you aren't even awake?

Basil's "love for his friends and their memories together" wouldn't matter. He may still love his friends, but they sure won't love him after what he did anymore. Things will never go back to the way they were before.

Oh, but Sunny smiled at him in the secret ending, so everything's going to be just peachy, right? :)

"I'm sorry, please forgive me" man I fucking love victim-blaming

[x7mafiadetective7x]

analysis and excitement time!! tottmnt style! spoilers for the new trailer and me picking it apart 😋 ☆

i’m not exactly trying to figure everything out, even though i have theories and lots of analysis in my noggin about the who, why, what, when, and where (especially in regards to their location when seperated.)

i’m mostly just going to cover: what the turtles are going through, what’s going on with the krang/Cynthia Utrom/Bishop, and any easter eggs or potential characters we see.

let’s start off with Bishop! cuz oh my god, if they’re going to be the first opponent the turtles face, i can’t imagine the lead up to shredder.

im used to Bishop being a super climactic, build-up to the big bad thing that’s going to happen kinda character, so i’m kind of surprised to see them being used first. especially as an immediate villain!

the FIRST thing that catches my eye is the robot-cams on the turtles, presumably when they’re separated, and the big screen telling Bishop to ‘RETURN TO BASE’ — i have theories about their tie to Cynthia Utrom, but we know Bishop was a rebellious character against the utrom/krang throughout other gens so i don’t think it’s telling them to return to Utrom— unless they’ve freshly gone rogue to try to stop Cynthia’s plans (hence why they wanna get rid of mutants.)

the robots Bishop uses remind me heavily of ROTTMNT.. especially that one on the left! we see more being possibly made to the right, and that kind of clues me into it being a factory of sorts.

we also see them take over the city moments after their reveal!

the turtles look like they’re all back together and donned in robot parts. Raph is wearing a faux wrestler’s padding, Leo in some sort of samurai get-up, Donnie in a cyborg cosplay, and i’m not entirely sure what Mikey’s trying to look like, other than ‘i’m gonna beat your ass.’

this kind of reminds me of Shredder! maybe it’s just the metal, sharper weapons, and the way Raph’s holding his dual sai..

i don’t think we get enough turtles in armor at all. in 2012 we barely got to see their noir armor when fighting the shredder, and imo it was super hardcore!! so i’m happy to find that they’ve added this to TOTTMNT.

time to analyze what is happening to our fave terrapins!!

what we know: they’ve all been transported to different locations/dimensions, they’ve been separated, and know that they can find each other.

let’s start with mikey’s situation, since we’re introduced to it from the beginning of the trailer via voice-over.

my idea is that he’s been transported somewhere in the future, and he’s with some scientist that knows them all by name— and gimmick. he tried to recreate a mutant, and that’s why we see a Pigeon Pete look alike.

besides that, he rags on Mikey for not having a ‘thing’ like his brothers while following him around. (people r always underestimating him — even in-show.. cannot catch a break i swear) i’m not sure if this rando has a destination, but it looks like Mikey does!!

we also see Raph with the purple dragons, and a MOTORCYCLE!! i MISSED motorcycle Raph so bad.

He is also shown in a barn with two other characters in a seperate trailer, but I have no idea who those guys could be.

Raph seems less concerned with finding each brother unlike Donnie.

Donnie opens up with a ‘I have to find my brothers, I have to save them!’ which is SUPER. cool TO ME. we got such little protective Donnie in other gens and i’m super excited to see his stress level rise in TOTTMNT.

it looks like he’s forced to un-hack what Bishop’s done to New York’s devices (unsure if this is all devices, or just all important systems like train stations and billboards/adverts.)

ALL while there’s robots after him. UGH. i can’t wait to write major angst about this kid.

unfortunately, for me at least, we see the least of Leonardo.

what we DO see of him is mostly combat, and quips. i’m super humored by the failed confidence which is a super different from most Leo’s!! (2012 Leo hero-quipping because he wants to be one, Rise Leo passing the charisma check 24/7, and 2003 Leo not really giving af as much so he just sounds dorky and cool whenever.) he looks like he’s fighting multiple robots in different areas, unlike Donnie who we only see in a train station, and Raph we see fighting multiple things (people and robots.)

i hope he gets to have as many badass moments as Donnie and Raph seem to have, because i’m afraid of him turning into ‘generic leader personality’ SO BAD. i dont think he will, but i’m not ready for him to be pushed aside during fights like how Mikey and Donnie was in 2012 at first, just so he can be the main star in relationship issues and stuff.. BUT i do think we will get a huge chunk of ‘i can’t do this without my brothers’ angst!!

we also get a glimpse of April and Leo interaction which i was the MOST scared of!! it looks like it takes place in a different episode than the Bishop one, along with the trailer where they’re all in halloween costumes (or party costumes???)

i cannot wait for this little party mix up. it’s super teenagery sounding and i always wanted more teenage, slice of life-ish (i don’t think we will ever get a filler without some slicing and dicing) episodes in tmnt!!

anyways. thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far! tottmnt seems a bit more childish than past gens but i’m sorta excited for it!! august 9th here we come ^_^

[sapphic-agent]

There's one thing I wanna ask Hori about the narrative that I'm surprised isn't talked about more.

Why weren't any of the characters allowed to question their society and heroes function as a whole?

Because when kids start off with hating heroes (Kota and those brats from the second movie), they're treated to be in the wrong and has to see how great heroes can be.

Which given the context that this is a society that turns a blind eye to it's corruption and how the minority suffers, it just comes across as putting rose tinted glasses on them to keep them away from the truly bad stuff.

Like, I get it with Kota, because his hatred of heroes stems from watching his parents die and believing they chose work over him, and that this hatred could grow into a problem later to where he might end up as a villain.

But at the same time, how come this didn't let Izuku to think about the society that shunned and berated him for being born different from everyone? How come no one else stop and think that this society is on the path to collapsing on itself if nothing is done?

In a story like this, characters should be allowed to question things around them and wonder if there's anything they can do make it more bearable for others, to seek out the change they wanna see so others wouldn't have to suffer like they did.

Kota is a great example, but I raise you Stain and the LOV.

Stain made sense. He went about it in entirely the wrong way, but he was right about false heroes and how much of a problem they were. But he's a murderous psychopath so we're supposed to take his words as out of touch rambling because he attacked Ingenium who was one of the good heroes.

(We're also given no proof. He says heroes are corrupt but we aren't shown why he thinks that and we don't see it beyond Endeavor. Even more reason not to take what he's saying seriously)

Hori could have really sold this by making Tensei perhaps not so virtuous. Maybe he had or started with good intentions but ended up contributing to toxic hero society in some way and Iida was blind to it because he was the big brother he admired. That would have made Tenya's character development hit harder in my opinion. Having Tensei confess this to Tenya would have made the Stain arc even better.

Which brings us to the LOV.

I feel like Hori forgot that Dabi and Toga also joined the LOV because of Stain, not just Spinner. They, on some level, absorbed his words and wanted what he did even if they were also fueled by other motives.

That's why a lot of Dabi's later character doesn't make a whole lot of sense. For those who knew he was Touya, it was implied that he was abused similarly to Shoto and was angry at Endeavor's treatment of his children. And then was inspired by Stain to call out his father as a false hero and take down the system that (indirectly) destroyed his family.

But no, he wants to kill Shoto, doesn't give a shit about Rei or Fuyumi, and almost got Natsu (the brother he was close to and presumably cared about) killed. And all to get back at Endeavor and make him suffer. Dabi's motives were a major let down and it reduces him to a one-dimensional villain, one who only wants to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. There's no hint of the influence Stain apparently had on him.

Toga is the same. She, presumably, admired Stain because of the similarities in their quirks. It's implied she joined the LOV to be with people like her (which is why she- as Camie- asks Izuku what kind of hero he wants to be, she's trying to see if he's one of those people). Who were outcasts and wanted to be able to do what they wanted with no persecution from others. She wanted to be free, even if she had a warped perception about what that meant. But over time, Horikoshi made her a creepy, predatory yandere type (seriously, what the fuck was the point of having her grope Uraraka??) with no depth to her actions.

Both Dabi and Toga never mention Stain or his ideals again. They're just psychopaths who need to be stopped. It dehumanizes them and uses mental illness for further antagonize them.

Spinner is the only one who still attempts to embody Stain's ideals. But of course, he never gets any focus. He's a "coward" who never stands up the the LOV (except when he stopped Magne from killing Izuku) even though he feels guilty about what they do. So most of the time, he isn't portrayed in a way that makes us stop and think. It's all too easy for the audience to dismiss or forget about him.

Anyone who (rightfully) questions or criticizes or openly despises the corrupt society in this universe is portrayed in a negative light. Even if what they're saying is technically right, we throw it away because they're doing something bad.

Really, there's only one character who's the exception. I'm, of course, talking about Lady Nagant.

Listen, me and Hori got beef all day everyday. BUT Nagant is one of the most exceptional characters I've ever seen in anime.

What I love about her is that she's someone who genuinely started out with good intentions and wanted to do the right thing but was torn down by society. It destroyed her from the inside out. The actions she took aren't even that extreme, they make sense considering everything she went through. Her problems with society aren't inane or hypocritical ramblings, she's 100% correct in her assessments because she was an unwilling participant in the corruption.

The problem with Nagant, however, is that she's with us for such a short amount of time that we don't get to take a deep dive here. We don't get to dissect why, exactly, society is so corrupt or find a solution to it.

It sucks because Hori was SO CLOSE to hitting the mark with Nagant. I think introducing her- or someone similar to her (missed opportunity with Hawks)- a lot sooner would have really improved the story

[weepylucifer]

people are?? saying good things about my cody characterization on ao3?? aaaaaa 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

and the thing is basically i've decided to just TAKE the popular fanon where cody basically exists to take care of obi-wan and decided to riff on it like, if there was a person who primarily existed to take care of others, how would he feel about it? why would he live this way? what if he snapped one day and decided enough is enough he's going to put himself first for once, only to then discover he barely knows how to do that? what if he immediately dove into a relationship with the next fixer-upper project person (darth fucking maul, he of the 3645637829 mental illnesses) just because that's what feels familiar to him in a world unmoored, but was aware of it the whole way down?

i mean, even folks who decide he has to have more going on than obi-wan usually just add a second character trait where he's always taking care of his brothers. which is already BETTER than just "the brown guy exists to serve his white love interest" but it still makes cody the guy who only is there to support others and has very little inner life except for "the competent and helpful guy/brain cell holder" (he's kinda feminine coded that way lmfao)

it reminds me of that one tweet where this lady went to another woman's funeral and realized with horror that all the eulogies were only about how this woman always did things for others and put her own needs second, and nothing about her character, whether she was funny or smart or what. that's how people like fanon!obi-wan or the fanon command batch would speak at cody's funeral fr

and then i thought about politics and diplomacy bc i love that shit, and how cody exists in such a weird in-between-space as a clone, barely considered a person, but one of the most powerful clones. and i was inspired by the star wars propaganda art book where it's shown how clone wars propaganda by the republic centered the clones so much (bc for several reasons it couldn't be the jedi) and how that sparked not only support for clones but also inadvertently shone an increasing spotlight on how weird and bad the clones' situation was; these men being grown extra fast, knowing nothing but war, more and more being churned out and thrown into the meat grinder to prolong palpatine's war. i was thinking cody would presumably have been a poster boy, would have a public persona as a clone you can recognize (his distinctive armor and scar), as a dutiful war hero, with his straight-edge, sparkling clean personality. he'd presumably have to talk to propagandists and press, attend galas to drum up war bond sales and bolster the GAR's public image. his life would have to be a tightrope walk, always carefully saying the right things to the right people to juggle the needs of his men, obi-wan, clones in general, and keeping the senate happy and paying lip-service to some idea of loyalty to the republic. and like obi-wan is the negotiator bc that's just his specialization as a jedi, cody would have to be a negotiator out of need, and he'd be trapped doing this, bc he can't resign from the army and fuck off, this is the life he's locked into. he's the slightly more powerful slave negotiating with the overseers on behalf of all the other slaves, who look to him to... not even lead them to freedom, just to make their situation more bearable

in practice this would look like making sure the third systems army is well-supplied, gets r&r sometimes, and casualties are kept as low as possible. it would look like constantly bothering a disaffected senate and pleading with a public who's starting to get tired of clones for sufficient budget, sufficient gear, actual healthcare for the wounded instead of just decommissioning, etc. and then order 66 happens, and it's revealed to cody that the clones (or jedi) as people were never the priority. that all along, while he was running himself ragged to run this army efficiently, it was all happening for the benefit of one man who actively gets off on their suffering. who wouldn't snap?

[quidfree]

hear me out…. todobaku as villains???

im going to disappoint you anon bc i am not a like... dark & twisted fantasy villain au person. as per quidfree canon what keeps me going is good characterisation and so you will find no undercut tattoo-laden bad boys here.

if you want my two cents on what todobaku villain au would most likely look like though it's under the cut

todoroki:

this one is easy right? touya exists. shouto already has his villain backstory: his dad is a bigshot hero uplifted by society and also an abusive bastard in private. his motivations in hero-oriented society are obvious.

i think shouto probably distinguishes himself from touya in a number of ways, one of which being style of villainy. touya was a lot more unstable emotionally (?tied to his quirk self-harm stuff) and undiscerning in his resentment (see: woman hater) even before he ran away. i think shouto would be a more classic anti-hero type villain, less quick to cause chaos and death to unrelated civilians or high schoolers. they would have an uneasy relationship if and when shouto figured out who dabi was- i think he would retain his empathy for his siblings and mother, but he would disagree with touya’s choices.

i see him as a loner villain, not likely to join the league. early UA shouto appeared to have literally never spoken to another person in ten years, so if he around that age veered off the expected path and went MIA, i think the whole ice prince thing would solidify pretty definitely. and that’s the kind of personality he’d have too- icy, controlled superiority over a core of red-hot rage. no quips here. though some dramatics. he hides it but shouto always has flair.

shouto is a practical guy first and foremost. i think he’d just wear something similar to his plumber fit. maybe something akin to a balaklava to mask his identity, but maybe not, if he wants to make his father aware of his actions. i do think touya-style he might go for a hairdye, but in his case it’d probably be bleach, as a sort of obvious reclaiming of rei’s heritage and rejection of enji’s.

overall as villains go if we are keeping to a world close to canon shouto is probably one of the more morally upright people you will encounter. very scary motherfucker but pretty targeted enemies, so unless you’re involved in maintaining the hero justice system at some pivotal level you’re probably safe. if you are though? rip i guess. prepare to have your home frozen, your limbs stuck to the ground, and an icepick summarily driven through your skull by a teenager.

bakugou

katsuki is tough because for him it very much depends on setting, and at a basic level when you’re looking at. katsuki fundamentally is not a fuck the system guy- he’s a guy the system loves, and he’s interested in winning it, not destroying it, at least until character development kicks his ass. so really if you want to go early canon for both of them, villain bakugou is just hero bakugou. a katsuki from the start of bnha left to continue on his presumed arc uninterrupted, no deku or kidnapping or war to force him to question himself. arrogant and cruel and uncaring of what heroism is meant to be about. saving big numbers, sure, or at least defeating big ones, but when your defeats involve death or as good as, hard to draw the line.

similarly, in a universe where for some reason heroes have lost their relevance and villains reign, teen katsuki would have very easily risen in that direction, with similar traits.

who would his targets be? whoever’s in his way, pretty much. even in a more anti-hero slant, villain’s goons would not be safe. and anyone who tried to recruit / hire / ally him would inevitably face some kind of betrayal bc katsuki simply got sick of orders and believes he can handle the fall-out.

in terms of looks, katsuki is more style conscious than shouto is, but as lord explosion murder doesn’t necessarily look very heroic i think he wouldn’t look that different. maybe more of the black and winter-suit vibes.

for as insufferable as he would be, he would also be horrifying, yes. i mean, the guy is a starter kit terrorist. even if he was in tantrum ego mode he could level a street. collateral would be nasty if katsuki didn’t care to contain himself.

todobaku villain interaction ???

if we’re going with the above sort of setting? would not stand each other. for bakugou it’s obvious stuff (think sports fest and general canon), but todoroki genuinely would not tolerate villain bakugou at all, given the obvious alarm bells of similarity to endeavor. it’s not his focus but if bakugou died he would not be displeased.

as in any universe they could be begrudgingly forced into cooperation and then be privately disgusted by how well they worked together after the initial predictable faux pas. all of their other villain colleagues are like “can’t we just call that guy in for an assist again” and theyre like *breathing exercises* no.

they are both despite appearances and villainy-amplified dramatics fairly pragmatic so theyd probably not actively seek to cross each other unless they seemed to be getting in the way of their respective goals. they can recognise that this would be getting into it w an unnecessarily big distraction/threat. but i can imagine the “keep out of this” warnings would be fairly inventive. todoroki negligently thwarts one of bakugou’s plots and bakugou turns his entire hideout to rubble. a bunch of todoroki’s contacts are collateral during one of bakugou’s attacks and bakugou wakes up to find all of his security died of hypothermia overnight. lest we forget they both have petty streaks.

hero x villain interaction would be. very funny and very bad. hero todoroki would be So Tired of villain bakugou bc of how frustrating it is that hes actually hard to stop and villain bakugou in turn would resent him immensely. hero bakugou dealing w villain todoroki? that would be (psychologically bizarre) fun. i think for some reason that would be the closest we get to a bakugou w ‘doodling hearts against their own volition’ crush energy. but theyd get along a lot better than the reverse, mainly bc hero bakugou is like a decent person and villain todoroki respects moral integrity. in both duos in a lighter setting the villain of the two might start getting a mild kick out of messing w the hero despite their focus on other things just bc 1) it gives villain todoroki the mildest of entertainment to look forward to every blue moon given he doesn’t necessarily wish bakugou any active harm 2) villain bakugou feels he’s owed some todoroki suffering considering how annoying he personally finds him.

that’s my two cents on it anyways. idk what everyone else has in mind!

[centralcitylibrary]

A World Without Sonic the Hedgehog

This document talks about the following entries:

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

SegaSonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog CD

Knuckles' Chaotix

Sonic Adventure

Sonic Adventure 2

Sonic Heroes

Shadow the Hedgehog

Sonic Prime

The beginning of a videogame is important.

You need to make a good impression so as to encourage those just trying the game (or just trying it at an associate’s place) to commit to a purchase.

But you also need to teach those same players how to play the game, a hurdle that’s extra tough when accounting for those who have never picked up a controller before.

Older games usually had to dedicate their entire first levels into being subtle tutorials, teaching everything important without halting the flow of the game (it helps that back then it was normalised to print the game’s control scheme in a small booklet that came with the game).

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 was no different, if you passed the game to someone who had never played videogames before ever, you’re most likely going to see one thing first of all.

The player learns how to move left or right, and then walks straight into the first robot (a Motobug) and die.

That’s fine, obviously, that’s why the Motobug is even there in the first place, with rings just prior, so the player learns how to jump before they can continue with the game and see what it has to offer for them.

But I can’t help but wonder…

What if that was Sonic’s fate?

We may never truly know, but here's what I think would happen, in...

A World Without Sonic the Hedgehog

Era 0: the… Where’s the Timeline?

Wait, what?

Ah, right. With no Sonic, Shadow and Silver would never travel back in time to stop Mephiles and Iblis from escaping, creating the fiery post-apocalypse followed by the complete erasure of time itself as Solaris forms and destroys all.

But then Sonic never would’ve died against the Motobug to begin with, since that future never even comes to be, so how would we be able to say this happens for sure when the cause and effect are only possible due to a stable time loop of unknown origin?

Let’s… for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume this is in a timeline where 06 was already undone, shall we? We want to actually have a timeline, afterall.

Era 1: Classic Games

Our inciting incident, Sonic learns what’s happening on South Island, the animals being trapped and turned into robots by his long-time nemesis, Eggman, and runs off to help… directly into that first Motobug.

Eggman’s bounty system, which he had in place long enough that civilian trains he secretly made before this time period were using them, would mean that motobug would get any one “wish” it desired granted, within Dr. Eggman’s realistic capabilities. Likely nothing would come of this, but it is possible that it requests to, like, become Eggman’s strongest robot or something.

Eggman gets his hands on the 6 Chaos Emeralds hiding out amongst the island (given he achieves this even when Sonic stops him, as evidenced by the bad ending of Sonic 1), and from there gains the power needed to take over the world.

As for the supporting cast:

Mighty and Ray probably still get captured, and may or may not escape from Eggman Island. Presumably they do, given the game can be beaten solo or with a team of two as-is. They’re likely Eggman’s biggest obstacles going forward, just by virtue of Eggman’s rapid expansion.

With Eggman in charge, the fate of the world would likely have a resemblance to the Bad Futures of Sonic CD, the world in Sonic Forces, and New Yoke City in Sonic Prime.

But what about the 7th Chaos Emerald? We see at the end of Sonic Origin’s Sonic 1 that the 7th joined up with the other 6 when flying to South Island, but with them never making the trip where was it in the first place? Would it fly off somewhere? And if not to Westside Island, then to where?

It’s not a stretch to say Eggman will eventually be able to find it, especially since Tails is able to make an emerald radar by the time 3&K come around, and Eggman develops his own emerald radar by Sonic Adventure 2.

Amy Rose, whether due to some unconfirmed burgeoning clairvoyance or just fortune telling being an accurate method of telling the future in this continuity, would not get the same warning of a hero saving her on Little Planet, and as such would have no reason to go. Now, would Eggman grab the Time Stones?

Maybe.

But also maybe not. If he thinks the Chaos Emeralds are that much better he might just decide there’s no point, like when he left the Master Emerald behind because he was so impressed with the Phantom Ruby.

Given the Chaos Emeralds are also capable of time travel, it’s really a moot point in the grand scheme of things.

Tails, without Sonic to save him from bullies, would likely go on to develop vaguely similar to Nine from Sonic Prime (given that his mindset was born as a direct result of never being saved from bullies). Now that's not to say that he'll wind up exactly the same, the whole point of the Shatterverse is that they're different versions of the same cast, afterall.

Knuckles… would remain on his floating island, defending the Master Emerald from Eggman. At least until Newtrogic High Zone appears out of the ocean suddenly, then he’ll investigate that. Knuckles’ Chaotix is most likely the game that’s closest to playing out how it’s presented, with the only difference being that there’s no Metal Sonic and Eggman had plenty of time to prepare an emerald powered army, but conversely caught off-guard by so many people able to fight him all at once.

But beyond that, there's not much involvement Knuckles would have - afterall, Eggman's main benefit is the Chaos Emeralds, but the Master Emerald is capable of neutralising the Chaos Emeralds, and it's unlikely Eggman wants to push his luck unless he finds a good enough opening.

Say...

You remember that big dragon in Sonic Superstars, right? The one that just gets freed from no discernible cause? Yeah that probably still happens, causes problems too. But like, I don’t even know what it’s doing in the main timeline, there’s no way I can predict what it’ll do in this timeline. Just going to ignore it, pretend Eggman captures it somehow (like he planned to).

Era 2: the Adventure Games

Sonic Adventure… just wouldn’t happen. There’s no reason for it when Eggman’s already taking over the world with minimal resistance. As a result, Chaos and Tikal never get freed from the Master Emerald.

Big, given that he lives in a jungle, likely wouldn’t be bothered by Eggman’s takeover until it starts tearing apart his home. Gamma, if he exists, would never find reason to question his existence (and those birds will likely stay trapped).

Sonic Shuffle… might happen? It’s hard to say, but it’s within the realm of possibility. Nothing about Amy or Knuckles are fundamentally different that would lead them to decline, Big would probably still show up (if Gamma’s presence is given an in-universe explanation then it’s likely Big’s presence is within the realm of canon too).

And since the power of dreams can bring people back within Maginaryworld, and Sonic is already a world famous celebrity, it’s entirely plausible that he’d be present to help out, though I doubt he could just go back to Earth (given Gamma never went back either). Uh… Eggman ironically wouldn’t be present, not because he wouldn’t want to get the Precioustone, but because he wouldn’t be able to follow Sonic due to his death (not that I really understand how he managed to achieve that in the first place...). Tails is the only real outlier here, and likely wouldn’t end up in Maginaryworld.

Sonic Adventure 2 doesn’t happen… except for Knuckles and Rouge clashing. Unlike before, their fight over the Master Emerald would likely happen right away, given Eggman would not happen to be in the area.

Cream and Vanilla would get kidnapped for unspecified reasons, and then after that… Heroes wouldn’t happen, as there’s no Metal Sonic.

And already things aren’t looking great, are they? Eggman’s taken over the world, Tails has become a cynical, self-centered hermit, most of the cast are either fighting against Eggman’s emerald-boosted forces or just trying to protect themselves, and the nature and beauty of the planet is slowly getting torn apart.

Yeah, well, now the Black Arms arrive. Strong enough to overpower both GUN and the Eggman Empire, in a timeline where only one of those exist now, and who have the motivation to awaken Shadow – someone who wants revenge on humanity – and is as powerful as SA2 Sonic would’ve been, without a Sonic to necessitate Eggman making bigger and stronger robots, they'll be more than a match for Eggman.

And Eggman has all 7 Chaos Emeralds gathered together. This is the fate of humanity without Sonic, kept aboard the Black Comet as food for the rest of their lives. Even if Shadow tried to stop Black Doom (due to wanting to outright destroy the planet), he’ll just end up getting mind controlled due to his genetic relation with Black Doom.

Some miscellaneous events that would not be effect by this:

Blaze’s universe would be rather peaceful, with no Eggman Nega from the future to cause problems. But also Blaze would forever be in the mindset of being cursed to be alone and needing to do things by herself.

Erazor Djinn would not be able to find the 7 World Rings without someone not native to his world to collect them (assuming his book world doesn't get destroyed upon the physical book's destruction).

Merlina’s spell to summon “a hero from another world” either wouldn’t work or would bring in… someone else. So she’d either die from King Arthur or there would be too many unknown variables to even try and predict what will happen (again assuming the world's existence isn't reliant on the physical book).

The Wisps never get captured en masse? Yay?

Time Eater chilling in the void.

Dodon Pa will have to find his racers elsewhere.

All in all, it’s quite a good thing that the future of Sonic’s world wasn’t dependent on the very first time you played a Sonic the Hedgehog game, because that first run would have almost certainly ended in an apocalypse.

[yusuke-of-valla]

OK one of those characters on the book 9 poster HAS to be Frigg and I'm betting it's probably the woman standing next to (presumably) Odin/Alfaðor. I do wonder who those people standing next to Baldr are though? There's two of them I think.

This is earlier than I thought Asgarður would be, I'm wondering if book 10 (wow. That's. A year away. Wow.) will be Ragnarok, then? Cause I kinda doubt what Loki's been doing in the background with actually matter much this book even if she is showing up- and I'm even starting to question if she'll end up actually being an antagonist in the end, but there's no way she and Thor won't be involved in that somehow. At the same time, though... they kinda killed off Surtr? The cause of Ragnarok? I guess Muspell's probably their replacement for him mythology-wise... then again I could be overthinking this because this game has never been 100% accurate to Norse Mythology

Yeah I think they can figure out a way to do Ragnarok but I also feel that the EOS type deal.

Fire Emblem Heroes is like how tv shows needed to be in the early 2000s. You needed to know your start and your end but you had an ever-expanding middle to fill in if you got renewed (rip Lost idk how you expected that to work my dudes)

So like I fully believe they've had the finale prepped they're just saving it

I didn't notice there were two people behind Baldr but it does appear to be one person and then a shorter person with the same kind of halo as Baldr, make of that what you will

My guess is they're related to Rune somehow, at least I'm betting the short one is Also a child and this related to Rune.

(Also FUCKING TRAGIC Baldr has a wife but she's Nanna)

I wonder if they're Rindr and Vali? Rindr had Vali with Odin and then Vali killed Hodr for killing Baldr

Alternatively the feather combined with the other lady at Odin's side makes me think these could ALSO be Huginn and Munnin but that's a stretch.

I think Loki tricks Hodr into killing Baldr though, that seems a... very Loki thing to do, plus with all the Justice system ass stuff a frame job is about right. But even then I'd be shocked if we got more complicated than that.

Well ok. Rune being a part of Odin somehow seems right because that also seems to fit Odin's vibes and how FEH would structure a twist, but other than that

Given Freyja's lack of connection to Folkvangr and Njordr's lack of connection to Noatun, I'd be SHOCKED if Baldr had anything to do with Breidblik beyond like generally Breidablik being related to Asgard

Though yeah I expect Frigg to make an appearance and be royally pissed with Baldr bites it, and I think that secretary looking lady is as good a bet as any

[lepartidelamort]

Well, Iran Definitely Hit Israel. So What Now?

This is the greatest thing that has ever happened.

You’re the man now, dog.

Mere hours after I posted a long piece pontificating about the situation in the Middle East, which included a segment bullying the Iranians over their reluctance to act against Israel, word came down that the Iranians were preparing a large strike on The Satan. The attack came shortly after the announcement.

I’m told that the Ayatollah made the decision after reading my piece, telling a government meeting, “Anglin is right, you guys are acting like fags – launch the missiles. Allah wills it.”

The show did not disappoint. In fact, it is the best thing that has ever happened, at least since the Holocaust.

Watching the Jews screaming as missiles lit up the skies over Tel Aviv and rained down on Jew locations, I could not remember feeling this level of childlike glee since… well, since I was a child.

I made a playlist and just kept watching the bombing supercut over and over, while calling in a champagne drop, Helldivers style.

I invited out the neighbors to drink and dance. The corks were popping across the room, mimicking the bombs over Jewland, with the playlist including ABBA, Starship, and Belinda Carlisle.

It was like the third act peak scene in a John Hughes movie.

I was as happy as these guys:

Regardless of what happens after this, the joy that I felt watching those bombs rain down will last forever. It is a moment of triumph seared into the fabric of eternity. No one can ever take that away from us.

Of course, what I would like to see is a lot more of what we all saw last night. I don’t want the party to ever end.

What Happened?

Bringing a printed copy of my article to the president and other government officials, the Ayatollah personally ordered the strikes, with the government stating that the attack was in response to the murder of Nasrallah, Haniyeh, and others. Clearly, dedicating the strikes to fallen heroes was symbolic, and the reality is that Iran was finally following through on the promise they made to defend Lebanon.

Though I’m joking about my bullying article being the impetus for the attack (although no one can prove that isn’t true), it is true that Ayatollah Khamenei himself, who is 85 years old, had to go in and order the strike personally because the political government of Iran is filled with fags and Mossad spies.

Titled “Operation True Promise 2,” which I’m sure sounds cooler in Persian, Iran used hundreds of ballistic missiles, including hypersonic Fattah missiles. Iran announced that this was merely the “first wave,” and did not elaborate. Let’s hope that’s true. I could watch videos of missiles raining down on Israel for the next 40 years and die a happy man.

Perhaps suspiciously, the Israeli defense systems did not appear to do very much. You have maximalist claims from both sides, so it’s difficult to determine the truth, but Iran claims that at least 80% of the missiles were not intercepted. Part of this might be the inability of Israel’s defense systems to stop ballistic missiles. The much-touted “Iron Dome” is actually only to protect from short and medium range missiles launched from Palestine and Lebanon (which it doesn’t do very well), with the US-made “David’s Sling” and Archer systems designed to stop much faster, long-range missiles. Those systems have not been tested, other than partially (but not really) during the April strike by Iran, which used much slower-moving missiles and drones and was telegraphed early and many of the missiles were shot down by US air forces.

This attack was not announced in advance, and Western state media announced it only hours before, presumably based on satellite indicators. It’s also been suggested that Iran may have called Russia to tell them of the coming strike, and that this call was perhaps intercepted. Regardless, the United States and Israel must have been aware that there was a significant chance of an Iranian strike, and you’d think they’d have been prepared for it.

Though I have little idea about the technology at play, it seems likely that the Jews allowed more missiles through than would have otherwise gotten through, as Israel’s entire PR strategy is whining about what victims they are, and the scenes of missiles raining down on them help with that narrative, especially for Fatmerican boomers who are seemingly unaware of the scale of the slaughter Jews have perpetrated in Palestine and Lebanon.

Furthermore, Bibi is using the classic strategy of “bad people are trying to kill you” as his primary mode of governance, domestically. It’s logical that the Israeli government would want as many missiles to hit as possible. It doesn’t actually matter what is destroyed, given that the American taxpayer is footing the bill regardless.

There are wide-ranging claims about what the missile strikes did or did not do. Some Middle Eastern sources are claiming missiles hit – or even destroyed – a Mossad base, destroyed oil fields, destroyed airfields, destroyed billions of dollars’ worth of American fighter jets, and so on. The Jews are of course minimizing the damage. There’s no way to know. Based on the videos we all watched of missiles raining down – not being shot out of the air, but hitting inside of Jewish cities – something was surely destroyed.

The official story right now is that only one person died, a Palestinian. This seems unlikely. The Jews do have extensive bunkers that the Americans paid for throughout Tel Aviv and other cities, but in the videos, you can see people on the streets and cars driving around, so not everyone was in the bunkers.

American Reaction

I made the executive decision as the attacks were happening last night to not write any kind of serious commentary on it, given that I have a right to celebrate on such an evening, instead posting a couple of pornographic throwaway joke articles that included videos of the strikes and mocked American Republicans screaming about the innocence of the Jews.

Frankly, it is actual insanity to have sat and watched these Jews slaughter innocent people for an entire year and then start screaming about the victimization of the innocent chosenites as soon as they get a single drop of their own medicine. But this is indeed what every American politician is doing, with the Republicans of course being more bellicose in their rhetoric.

All of these people should be in prison forever. It is simply beyond the pale that a foreign country has this kind of stranglehold on our government. There is no other situation ever in history where a more powerful country was dominated by a lesser country. There is no reason for it, other than blackmail, bribery, personal threats, and other fundamentally Jewish methods of influence.

The replies to all of these tweets by government officials were encouraging, however.

The American people, at least younger people, are not buying what these government people are selling. That doesn’t actually mean anything, because America is a democracy, meaning the masses of people have no ability to influence the behavior of the government. However, the illusion is falling, and the people are seeing that America doesn’t even have a “government” in the traditional sense, but is instead a nation under a Jewish military occupation, with the cops as a standing army serving a foreign power, ready to cage or kill anyone who stands up against the Jews.

Lindsey Graham, a chief Trump surrogate, is of course calling for America to declare war on Iran and start a massive bombing campaign. That probably will not happen this afternoon (although it could), but it will eventually.

Trump himself, covered in Jewish semen, issued a statement calling for more Jews to ejaculate on his face (I’m sorry/not really that bukkake metaphors are the only thing I can come up with when addressing these kinds of statements).

Although no one actually understands the American electoral system, which is a black box, it now seems overwhelmingly likely that the Mossad will rig the election for Trump and Americans will head back into the Middle East with even greater fervor than they did after 9/11. Israel wants more than bombings, which wouldn’t actually end the threat any more than the bombing of Gaza stopped Hamas rockets. Jews want some kind of actual physical invasion of Iran, and you need healthy young white men to do something like that. Trump is going to be a whole lot better at marshaling these men than that Indian whore what’s her name.

In the shorter term, Israel will no doubt continue the bombing campaigns across the Middle East, and they may do their own significant bombing of Iran. Though the attacks last night were glorious, they mean little in the greater scheme of things. Iran has a limited number of ballistic missiles, whereas Israel has infinite resources, paid for by fat, gay American retards.

Iran’s only real chance at victory is in being able to sustain a US bombing campaign and physical invasion of their country in the long term, in the way the Taliban did, and drain the empire of its resources and morale while Russia and China act in their own spheres.

This is winner takes all. The US/Jews win or Russia, China, and Iran win. There is also a situation where both lose, maybe, but if the US empire falls, we’d have to call that a win for the other side, regardless of how they come out on the other side.

Both Russia and China should be on the phone with the Ayatollah right now asking him what he needs, because the focal point of this global war by the Jews has been decided. Iran is the first major front, following the proxy war in the Ukraine, in this bid for total global domination by the Jews and their American fuck-hogs. The more bogged down the US is in the Middle East, the more room Russia and China have to act, the fewer resources the US has, the quicker this satanic beast is drained and left a rotting husk on the graveyard of history.

Iran Should Bomb India as Well, Perhaps Even Make It the Focal Point

Reading Twitter last night during the attacks, the overwhelming majority of the tweets were from Indians, who are completely obsessed with the Jews. I don’t know why Indians are obsessed with the Jews, beyond the obvious (they also view themselves as at war with Islam), and I do not care to understand it. It means nothing to me what Indians think, and I’m not convinced that “think” is even a word we should associate with this despicable race of mutant fiends.

I suppose no one should be surprised that a race that specializes in scamming the elderly out of their personal savings also idolizes the Jews. The Jews scam the whole world, and the Indians want to learn those skills.

This is a meme that an Indian made and posted without irony last night:

That sums up thousands of tweets I saw.

It is absolutely absurd that one has to wade through an infinite swamp of Indian Jew-sucking while scanning breaking news on Twitter. They get included in the feed because they post in English, but Twitter needs to add an option to simply block all Indian accounts. There is not one single white person who is going to miss anything by not seeing the opinions of Indians. Although these are apparently real accounts, it is effectively spam. I do want to see what Jews are saying, I want to see what Jew-lover American politicians are saying, so I’m in no way against all pro-Jew content being on the feed, but I would say that 98% of pro-Jewish content on Twitter is from India, and it is all benign and repulsive.

India is unlikely to be a threat to the world at large, as they have no skills, abilities, or intelligence, and the Chinese will likely deal with them at some point. Their colonization forces in white countries will be forced to flee as soon as the Jews who imported them are dislodged from power. They’re not going to go to war on the streets. They are, however, a clear threat to the internet, and they’ve basically already ruined it.

If Elon Musk will not act to protect people from these Indian shit-spammers, Iran should consider a mass-bombing campaign against their country.

In this infographic, you can clearly see that Iran has that capacity:

There must be consequences for all those tweets these Indians posted.

Do I View Moslems in the Way Liberals View Ukrainians?

I stand accused of viewing Moslems as fighting a proxy war against the Jews on my own behalf in the same way that Fatmerican tranny scum views the Ukraine as fighting in the interests of gay sex.

Having considered this allegation, I believe it is more or less accurate. The difference is, I am not callously encouraging hundred of thousands of people to die for no benefit of their own in order to hurt my enemies.

There has been no explanation as to how this war in the Ukraine benefits Ukrainians. It is simply vaguely asserted that in a general sense, fighting an invasion of your country is naturally a good thing, but no specifics are given. When you consider the fact that the country has been decimated, half the population has fled, and virtually the entirety of the country has been auctioned off to American Jews, it is undeniable that the Ukraine would have been much better off to have avoided this war.

Conversely, the Arab and Moslem population of the Middle East:

Could not have avoided this war

Can win this war

Will benefit immensely from winning this war

So, although the general idea is similar, as I am not principally concerned with what is best for the people of the Middle East, and do primarily support them because they are fighting the Jews, I am not actively, knowingly harming the population of the Middle East, and in fact, the more support they have in their struggle from people in the West, the more advantageous their position.

Get Ready for Whatever Happens Next

There is no reason not to take a victory lap after seeing those missiles fall on Israel. Everyone should feel great about this.

However, I want to stress again that it doesn’t really mean very much in the scheme of things. Sadly, it means much, much less than the Israeli decapitation of the leadership of Hezbollah. I’m certain that the various cartoonish propagandists of multipolarism and whatever other buzzwords they advocate for will be claiming that these attacks mean that Iran could simply destroy Israel whenever they wanted, but that is obviously not true.

Just as the day before the attack by Iran, Israel remains in a very good position, and it’s arguable that their position is actually better now that they can whine about these missiles. Jews are always in top form while crying out in pain as they strike you.

The missiles were sublime. Better than sex or cocaine or enchiladas. But what has changed? Morale and really nothing else. The situation remains the same.

This is going to be a long slog that is going to last years, and it is going to significantly affect your life. The idea of a military draft in the United States seems extreme, but it’s certainly not out of the question.

In the end, we win. God wins.

But in the medium term, keep your expectations realistic, and don’t get too down if the fighters against the Jews suffer more setbacks in the near future.

Settle in.

This party is just getting started.

Andrew Anglin

[taylortruther]

The problem in the US have is the bipartisan system period. There’s no third, fourth etc. party, not even a middle ground between the Democratic and the Republican Party.

If only two options are available the discussion is always going to be about black and white, or in this case the ‘villain’ and the ‘hero’. There is no nuance. And that’s how you create a progressively more polarized society, with only two extremes being compared.

But real life is different. For example a person could be the most staunch pro-choice individual on Earth (so you would presume they are democrats) but maybe they want a way harder approach on immigration (so they would be leaning more with the republicans).

There is no central party between the two that can represent a bit of both, or even a third etc. party that could offer different prospectives.

And if there’s no choice available apart the two extremes… of course people are going to adapt their views and behaviour: because what they really want is not represented by anybody in the Government (I’m generalizing but you get the gist). So if their voice is not heard they’re going to use violence, and that’s how you get January 6th.

Trump here is not the problem, but rather the symptom of a phenomenon that’s been at work for decades.

I would also underline how fucked up is the fact that the President can choose members of the supreme court who ANALYSE THE CONSTITUTION FOR THE BETTERMENT OF AMERICAN CITIZENS. The member should be completely separated by the party elected each 4 years, they shouldn’t even proclaim a side but just di their work.

Again, Trump is not the problem. Because I already know that after him there’s going to be another (maybe democrat who knows) that’s going to use the insidious mechanisms of the American constitution for themselves. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution and the regulations at work to protect the Government, its functions and the American citizens.

agree that a huge issue here is that we have no legitimate alternate parties. the left gets pulled further right and we end up expecting centrists to be radical

[thetalentedmrwulf]

Abstracting Money in PF2E

Percolating something in my brain about Pathfinder 2e to abstract money / treasure. I like big damn hero / big damn villain stories, and if we're going to spend a session shopping, I'd prefer if it was because we had to find merchants that had what we needed and gossip about rumors than balance a ledger.

Prototype in my head is as follows -

Pathfinder 2e attaches Levels to most things - settlements, items, et al. Item levels give DMs a decent idea where in the power scale something is, settlement level indicates power level acquirable in that place, generally speaking. Items tagged Uncommon or Rare are harder yet to find even than that and may even be questing foci.

Further, because the game has proficiency equal your level + a bonus equal to how proficient you are (Trained +2, Expert +4, Master +6, Legendary +8), it also has pretty standardized difficulty rolls. The correct difficulty for a Level 10 problem is easy to chart or calculate, whichever you prefer, with stock modifiers for tweaking up or down if its relatively easy or hard in that instance.

So.... just use Level and a money stat to get what you need. First, we abstract money. Make the stat "Coin" (just because stealing from Blades in the Dark is fun.) Quantity of Coin for a task should map right to the Encounter builder - Trivial gives a Meager Reward, Low gives a Modest Reward, Moderate gives a Major Reward, Severe gives an Excellent Reward, Extreme gives an Epic Reward. This isn't an exact science like the encounter builder is; this should be based on the priority a person requesting a problem be solved views it as. Use the already existing "Make a Request" action to haggle over money or request tangible assistance since it already uses the built-in disposition system. Keep in mind, each party member gets one of these when completed. Then, for social, exploration, or combat encounters as relevant, hand out smaller Rewards from 1-3 as the quest progresses.

Now, when you need to buy an item, use the default level difficulty chart / math for any item you need. If the item is more than 4 levels lower than your level, presume you can purchase as many as are reasonably available. Then, as long as you have any "Reward" in hand, you can roll to buy something, adding the bonus of the Reward your risking. Each level of Reward gives you a +1, +2, +4, +6, or +8 depending on the level. Get a Critical Success, you get the Item for a great deal, you can buy a second Item of equal value and the Reward goes down a level. Get a regular success, and it's the same as a Critical, buy you only successfully purchase one item. Get a failure, and you purchase the item, but your Reward goes down by two. If you can't decrease this Reward by two, you owe the merchant a favor in return. If you Critically Fail, the item is harder to come by than you imagined and you're going to have to pull some strings to get it at all, potentially taking a job or quest. On getting the result, I think the player can always choose to walk away from getting the item if the price is too steep.

If you really want to lean into the idea of Uncommon, Rare, and say, Legendary items of certain levels being tough to acquire, make it so services or items rendered REQUIRE a certain level of Reward to make the roll. The important part of this system is you NEVER fail to acquire the item. It's just more expensive than you intended or more roundabout.

Feats that already modify getting a better price can be retrofit or new ones can be created that let you also add Cha, Int or Wis, or use a Skill in place of the Reward to haggle a better deal. I also think this could tie into Crafting nicely with the system that already exists.

That's all for now!