#and cynicism is not any more intelligent just because it says the world is awful

[thegodofkhaosinkarnate]

Currently thinking about my character (who is technically just an au version of a public domain character but shh), who goes through the story being the designated Squishy Weak Human. A medic, a healer, constantly getting kidnapped by bad guys, being talked over and babied and patronized. "We need to protect you, you're fragile and weak, you're human- which means you can't protect yourself."

And imagining the exact scene where she finally loses it and uses ALL of her power at once. Decimating the space in a show of raw unfiltered power, screaming her lungs out as light and heat coalesce into horrid destruction. Everyone else watching in horror as she razes the earth and crushes buildings, clouds of dust exploding into debris. Destruction, fear, the most violent among them standing stock still in horror as he watches her great work unfold. And then it ends, and everyone stands up realizing that even though the space around them has been utterly destroyed, not a single person was hurt.

And the collective moment of "Oh. Oh, this was intentional. This was a choice."

Anyways all that to say I like characters who choose to be kind, gentle, and merciful. I like characters who are peaceful by choice, not nature, and who could revoke that choice at any point if they wanted to. They won't. But they could.

[patchun]

WBaWC Deep Dive: Part 2/2

In the game's preliminary description, ZUN describes it as "a shooting game that's darker than usual, full of animal elements, and just a bit aggressive."

Part 1 here.

Yachie Kicchou. Is this maybe the longest profile of any Touhou character? Yachie's profile gives us more information than anything else about the Animal Realm, so I'd highly recommend reading all of it before we continue. Scroll down and find her profile, then click "Expand." If you're on mobile, this will look pretty bad, so switch to the Desktop mode. While reading, keep this in mind: this profile seems to be just about the only instance of a perspective from a beast spirit. This isn't a neutral perspective, this isn't ZUN's perspective - this is the perspective of a beast spirit, though it doesn't seem to be Yachie's own perspective. I'll be giving my evidence of this later.

The Animal Realm, the ultimate survival-of-the-fittest world.

It's a world where the strong rule as they desire... or at least it was, until a few beasts that were just a little more clever and wily than others began to form organizations.

By now, a select handful of gigantic organizations dominate the world.

The thing about WBaWC is that it's very vague. ZUN does not come out and say "animal rights", he does not say "you should be a vegan", or anything like that. The only thing ZUN wants us to do, without a doubt, is to think about these things, in particular the power dynamic we currently have between humans and animals in the modern world. I mentioned previously the argument for humans to have moral rights because of sentience, and then because of intelligence - but there is another line of reasoning that is used frequently. "This is just the natural order. The survival of the fittest." Opponents of animal rights will say this. But ZUN makes it very clear here - this world no longer follows those rules at all. "It's a world where the strong rule as they desire... or at least, it was..."

Further in her profile, we learn that the beast spirits finally found peace when they gathered all the humans into one area like farm animals and made them into their slaves. So, ZUN begins the game by introducing three characters which cause us to question our notion of moral status, two of which (Urumi and Kutaka) are animals that humans mistreat on a massive scale today, and then, he flips it - puts humans on the other side - all to ask a simple question. "Do you like this? Are you happy with this?" When humans are the ones being dominated, are you satisfied?

Now, there are some really crucial lines here that indicate that this profile is not actually an accurate account, but rather, the situation as told by one of the lesser beast spirits.

Almost all of the animal spirits already have no chance of victory by themselves, and the only way to survive was to team up with one of these organizations and continue fighting as their slaves forever.

Even as everyone continues to fight to exhaustion, an organization can never be stopped.

Pre-Primate Spirit Garden. This is what indicates to me that this is not Yachie's direct perspective. This wouldn't be a beneficial narrative in order for her to maintain her status as a member of the ruling class.

The beast organizations' ruling classes created a shelter for the humans, so that they could continue to be used as ever-capable slaves without going extinct.

The shelter was called the Primate Spirit Garden.

Only when they looked over the Primate Spirit Garden, filled with humans who had no means of resisting, did each of the organizations forget about their conflict. The Primate Spirit Garden was a peaceful recreational facility for everyone in the Animal Realm.

The word here, "shelter" generally has a positive association, right? And look at the last sentence: a peaceful recreational facility for everyone in the Animal Realm? That doesn't sound right. Now, sure, this is interesting, but why am I bringing up that this profile is from the perspective of a beast spirit? What does that matter to our overall understanding of the situation? Well, because of this next line, also within Yachie's profile:

The human spirits intended to devote themselves to the divinity beyond the idols, but they actually came to worship the idols themselves.

As a result, it was only natural that these idols began to dominate the humans.

The idols took control of the Primate Spirit Garden, and the status of the human spirits plummeted to the bottom once again. In being dominated by idols, the Primate Spirit Garden became the most awful, out-of-control organization of all.

Because this, according to everything else I've read, is NOT an accurate description of what ended up happening. The word "dominate" here is particularly noteworthy - from the perspective of a beast spirit, who within this world only understand things from a lens of survival of the fittest, that is exactly what this situation appears as. The thing is, this is where the game's vagueness makes interpretation very difficult - but here's what we know. We know from Yachie's profile that the human spirits were miserable while being ruled by the beast spirits, so much so that they cursed their helpless existences and prayed to Keiki. And we also know this, from ZUN's SCoOW interview:

Q: What do the human spirits who summoned Keiki think of her?

A: The game doesn't mention even a word of that, after all. In that world, the human spirits are nothing more than "materials". Everyone's fighting to steal those materials from each other. Keiki doesn't think of them as anything but materials, either. The reason for that is because the humans in that world want to be that way. You could say they just wanted to become cogs in a better society.

These descriptions... don't really match up, right? You'd read Yachie's profile and assume that the situation got really out of control, that the humans were miserable. Even according to ZUN in the interview, it has gotten out of control to some extent, but... also according to ZUN, this is... what they wanted. So, all that to say, Yachie's profile is not an unbiased description. I thought that was pretty interesting, and it will be important to consider when we talk about the situation of the human spirits under Keiki.

But for now, let's go back to the beast spirit's story of what happened - humans were dominated by the idols and plummeted to the bottom once again.

Survival of the fittest - the law of the animal realm. It's what's natural. What's natural, according to the beast spirits, is good! There is actually a philosophical moral theory called "natural law", and it's kind of the basis for the survival of the fittest argument. But it's also usually used to argue against stuff like homosexuality, abortion, being trans, etc... so uh, I have yet to meet any actual philosophers who use that theory (though I'm sure they exist). In the end, natural law is kind of shaky - because you have to ask the question - if what is natural is what is good, then what exactly do we define as natural? For example, we can look at penguins and see homosexuality, does that mean that natural law can no longer be used to attack homosexuality? Vaccines aren't natural, right? Cars aren't natural, right? Modern technology isn't natural, right? So are these things morally bad? But that's the thing - those three things I said may not be """natural""" according to the general public, but how exactly are they not natural? Vaccines, cars, and modern technology, those things are all made from nature, one way or another. Homosexuality, even if it DIDN'T occur in "nature" occurs within humans for sure! And humans are natural! What we view as natural is fully dependent, more or less, on what we were taught to view as natural. At the end of the day, isn't everything natural? And this is where things get really funny, because in many instances, natural law has been used cynically to defend the status quo and oppression. People were taught that black people were lesser, so it was natural to have them serve us. They were taught homosexuals were unnatural, so keep believing in the church and giving us money. They were taught that animals are meant to be eaten, that's how it is in the wild, so factory farms are okay. These arguments tend not to say "the current power structure isn't natural, so we need to dismantle it" but almost always "the current way things are is the way things should stay." So when we look at Mayumi Joutouguu...

You may not like it,

But this is what peak performance looks like.

Unable to be harmed by anything spiritual, Mayumi and the other idols are invulnerable to the attacks of beast spirits, easily able to defend the humans from their attacks. In other words, in the Animal Realm... Mayumi Joutouguu IS THE FITTEST. Really let that sink in. The Animal Realm, where the strong rule over the weak. Mayumi Joutouguu is the peak of that strength - and yet?

"I shall liberate the human spirits (our prey)

from you accursed idols! Prepare yourself!

It's the law of the Animal Realm that the strong eat the weak!"

From Reimu(Wolf).

"The god of destruction who broke the laws of animal-kind!

Keiki Haniyasushin!"

And this is just two instances. On multiple occasions, Keiki is referred to as having somehow broken the natural law by the beast spirits. And I'm sure that's what the beast spirits believe, because, in Youmu's Otter ending:

"Youmu returns to the Primate Spirit Garden and finds Yachie and Keiki squaring off. Youmu is confused by this and asks if the two of them get along well. Yachie explains that there is no such thing as ‘getting along’ in the Animal Realm. Keiki is surprised by this, stating that she was willing to work with the beast spirits in the future. Yachie acknowledges Keiki as a worthy opponent, but she then states that Keiki must be removed in consideration for the struggle for resources. Keiki tells Youmu that the resources Yachie refers to are the human spirits. Youmu is disturbed by this. Yachie then points out that is another reason why Keiki doesn’t belong here. She states the animal spirits are resources too. In the Animal Realm, everyone is driven by selfishness. Yachie follows the natural order here. However, Keiki, who was summoned by the human spirits, had thought differently."

No longer is the natural law "survival of the fittest", but rather, "everyone is driven by selfishness." Natural law was only used as a justification for the power structures within the Animal Realm until the ruling class was displaced. This game, by and large, follows the narratives of the ruling classes, from the beast spirits to Keiki herself. In that way, the second half of the game is asking more questions about power than it is about animal ethics. It's likely that Yachie and the other beast spirit heads are the ones who present this narrative to the lesser beast spirits, who we have already established according to her profile earlier are miserable, "fighting to exhaustion as the slaves of the large organizations, which could not be stopped". Gives me some serious neoliberalism vibes, but because of the lack of structure in the Animal Realm, I don't think it would be easy to make a political comparison.

So yeah, it's really funny that Mayumi and Keiki aren't really breaking any rules. They're just the new fittest, and the beast spirit ruling class isn't happy with that.

Some side notes about Mayumi:

It's been predicted that the workforce of human and animal spirits will be gradually replaced by the more efficient haniwa, because they can be immediately repaired after they've been destroyed, they can't get sick, and they don't need any rest.

In the SCoOW interview, ZUN compares Mayumi and the idols to AI. He's kind of an old man about it, too, saying that the humans went from being slaves to the beast spirits to being slaves to technology. But if you recall, I mentioned labor when we talked about Eika, and I did so because, well... We don't really have any idea what kind of labor the human and beast spirits are doing, WBaWC is too vague, and doesn't give us much detail. But, ZUN presents this idea, and then describes the Primate Spirit Garden under Keiki as kind of an opposite extreme "dystopia". According to ZUN:

A real "civilization gone too far" situation, where it's becoming a dystopia in a really obvious way.

The way I see it, it's something where "they built objects to rule over the world with, and in the end came to be ruled by those objects." The same as AIs and the like.

But also remember earlier, where ZUN says that that's what the human spirits wanted. Here it's almost as if ZUN is kind of bringing up a WALL-E type situation, where humans will no longer have to work, and every need of theirs will be taken care of by their idols. A very old man thing to say, but what's funny is actually another line that was just a bit earlier in the interview about Mayumi and the haniwa.

Haniwa certainly are mysterious; you wonder why everyone was making them. Archaeology is quick to ascribe religious reasons to anything it doesn't understand, but if you think about it with today's moral values in mind, it might not seem that way. I've thought about things like that for a long time. Personally, I believe they made them just because they felt like it. That might not have been the initial reason, but the act of creation itself gradually became enjoyable, and they started making more variations. To fulfill their creative desires, you know?

Think about that for a second. ZUN has introduced a society with very little forced labor, and called it dystopian. But he has also just stated that he believes that the people who made haniwa worked on them because they wanted to. To be honest, I don't know if ZUN even realizes this.

Finally, Keiki Haniyasushin. Thanks for sticking with me so far. Taking a look at her profile, the main thing that stands out to me is this:

The idols she creates are excellent items that can gather faith, act as stand-ins, play with you, and decorate your home.

A very different description than what was given by the beast spirit, huh? Is this what Keiki thinks her idols are doing? Is it actually what her idols are doing, and the beast spirits simply see that as domination because they can't comprehend any other way? Or is this just a little joke? Or is it somehow all of these? WBaWC is too vague! I'm sorry, but I don't know! Without a human spirit perspective on this, we really just can't deduce that. All we know is that the human spirits for sure liked living under Keiki more than living under the beast spirits.

As for Keiki, I don't have all that much philosophical to say, but I did think these quotes from the Marisa endings were cool.

Marisa (Otter)

"Yachie then explains the story from the beast spirits’ perspective. Marisa thinks it would have been better if she was told this from the start. Yachie apologies, but she reasons that didn’t want to risk failure. According to her, if she revealed the plan to the humans, there would be a chance Keiki would hear about it. However, Marisa was unable to read Yachie’s true intentions from her words. It is suggested that Marisa just didn’t see Keiki as an evil god."

Marisa (Eagle)

To Marisa, Keiki didn’t seem like an evil god. She wonders why the beast spirits hated her so much.

While Reimu and Youmu viewed what they were doing as more like work, Marisa was just in it for the ride, and as a result, she had some interesting thoughts about Keiki when she reflected on what she had just done. Keiki is one of the few Touhou bosses to not recognize at all that she was doing something bad, because Keiki doesn't believe she was doing anything bad. It's mentioned multiple times that she planned to coexist with the beast spirits "so long as they started to respect human spirits". Which casts further doubt on the description of the haniwa in Yachie's profile, which almost made it sound like they were going around indiscriminately slaughtering beast spirits. Wouldn't that be unnecessary if they were invincible?

Keiki's relationship to human spirits could also be looked at as pet ownership, or more accurately, like animals at a zoo or preservation area, I think. Caring for their every need, protecting them from the cruel "survival of the fittest" world outside. I mean, I don't have a problem with pet ownership at all, but I do have a problem with people who own pets irresponsibly and don't try as hard as they can to meet their pets' needs. My cat is my son.

The last thing I'll say is this: Keiki is coming back. Probably in 17.5. This may not be news to those of you who have already looked into this, but let me inform you if not. Marisa (Wolf)'s Extra, after beating Saki:

Marisa: I got no idea what the politics of the Animal Realm are like...... But I can hardly imagine this family o'yours ruling it. There's no denyin' you guys are strong, but......

Saki: What is it?

Marisa: Keiki strikes me as the most dangerous person.

Somehow it seems like she can come at us with all her power again.

And in Reimu (Wolf)'s ending:

Afterward, Reimu learns that Keiki threw the Animal Realm into chaos through her idolatry. She had the feeling that not humans vs. beasts, not physical vs. spiritual, but a religious confrontation was approaching.

And in Youmu (Eagle)'s ending:

Later, Keiki Haniyasushin showed up on Earth. This wasn’t too surprising since Keiki was never a god of the Animal Realm in the first place. However, for some reason, it seemed eerily likely that the Animal Realm’s survival of fittest conflict would follow Keiki into the surface world.

And personally that makes me very excited. And we just got a game about markets?? Hm...

FINALLY. This game has heavy Buddhist themes, and I am no expert on Buddhism, but:

Saki Kurokoma, Prince Shoutoku's horse that was ridden around to spread Buddhism. I don't have much to say about this character, haha. But I figured you'd want to see her anyways, and it's my Buddhism segue.

As far as Buddhism goes, the "animal realm" is one of the realms of reincarnation. To go from the human realm to the animal realm is bad, it means you were probably a pretty selfish person. Which begs us to ask, what might these people have done in their past lives? Does that mean that they deserve the suffering in the unnaturally cruel Animal Realm of Touhou? And what does that say about the dynamic we have with animals in the modern world, the parallel to the Animal Realm? Well, in the (Buddhist) animal realm, according to some Buddhist teachings, you act only on instinct and only for selfish desire. This is because of the misconception that animals act only on instinct and for selfish desire, a theme that we've played with a bit in this exploration, and a theme that ZUN strictly opposes with the character of Kutaka. If you own any pets, you already know that this just isn't true. Just like with humans, animal behavior is complex, and to attribute it to pure instinct is accurate to a degree - but the thing is, you can do the exact same thing to human behavior (we're also animals). It's just another way of creating human exceptionalism, something this game is really challenging. Specifically, the Buddhist animal realm is not a place, though, it's just a cycle of reincarnation. It's not actually a hell, not even close, it just means you've been reincarnated AS an animal in the real world. And this isn't a negative thing inherently, but it is viewed as hellish because of how animals are treated, not only by humans, but also by other animals!

So, there's probably more to say here. When reading Yachie's profile you may say, "Everyone working to exhaustion as slaves to huge organizations owned by a select few? Wow, that sounds like corporate America!" and you'd be right, and there's probably something there, to be honest. But because the Animal Realm is extremely vague, it's difficult to make any connections like that.

I think there's probably deeper stuff to dive into. Like I said, I'm no expert on Buddhism, so someone who is may be able to find a meaning that I've missed here. But to conclude,

As ZUN said, if you look for something the game is trying to show you, you'll just find a world filled with satire and vague circumstances. But... if you look for what the game is trying to ask you... there's quite a lot.

What is the criteria for moral rights? Can we create a criteria that makes sense and only applies to humans?

What is our justification for our treatment of animals in the modern world?

How would you feel about it if that dynamic was reversed?

And well, we don't really get any answers. ZUN really just gives us two pieces of his personal view:

The survival of the fittest argument is bullshit.

Natural law is bullshit.

Our current relationship with farm animals is not healthy, and we need to create a more positive image for them outside of being just our tools for food.

Thanks for reading. Reblogs appreciated.

[chickpeatalia]

I heard "working class!Arthur" and I can't think of anything else yes please!!!

Anon, I know you didnt exactly ask for it, but now that you have put the words “working class!Arhur” into my ask box, you have practically opened pandoras box so I’m just gonna go ahead and talk about it anyway. *mwua*  First things first, I shall note that I am not in fact British, so I might not get a few things right. Second, what we’re gonna talk about today is a rather specific human AU that lives in my head.  Third, this ended up being....incredibly long, I’m sorry. The rest is under the cut!

So, why is working class Arthur splendid?

Obviously, there are many different version of how to do a human AU, and oftentimes fandom likes to go down the rich/royal/elite!Arthur route. Which, in fact, is super valid and oftentimes quite fun too. I like these versions too. However, I think oftentimes a working class background is favourable because 1) it makes more sense, to me, on a meta level  and 2) it has a certain charm to it.

Lets consider the meta level first: - despite stereotypes, Great Britain does not consist of aristocracy and royals alone. What are 600 arstocratic families to 60 million of the rest of the population? - the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain - factory work, steel mills, textile and most prominently, coal mines in the North of England were all operated by the workers. I feel like in Britain, social classes matter way more than on continental Europe, and also to me personally the working class seemed like a particularly important one, historically speaking. Okay, enough history for now, so lets get into the human AU: - Arthur, who grows up in a large family with four brothers (Alasdair & Dylan who are older. And Sean & Peter who are younger) - his parents had Alasdair very early on and you know how it is. With a baby on the way, you got to make the best out of it and take the first stable job you get. (Which was in Glasgow at the time). - but unforntunately high unemployment rates hit the country, especially the working class (thanks Maggie T</3) and what to do if you lose your job and no new work is to be found? Well, you just go and look somewhere else. In the Kirklands’ case, that somewhere else is Cardiff, Wales where Dylan is born. - So they end up sort of moving quite a lot, practically in every part of the UK, in hopes of finding stable jobs for a bit. - Eventually they settle in a suburb of Manchester, England at long last.

- And life goes on

- They recycle so much clothes between the brothers. A good 40% if not more of Arthur’s clothes used to be either Alasdair’s or Dylan’s. - In turn, Sean and Peter also get Arthur’s old school uniforms. Theyre not particularly nice after all these years, but look, they have five kids. They simply don’t have the money for new ones. ( “Says much about the efficiency of a system when it forces you to wear school uniforms in order to avoid social stigmatisation and yet makes you buy the uniforms yourself, as if richer people couldn’t afford the better ones anyway.” Arthur would say darkly) - lots and lots of second hand shopping. (this is where Arthur got is first leather jacket and Doc Martens from, and yes, this is also when his punk phase has started) - thus his outfits tend to look quite ...interesting. A various mix of old jumpers from the 90s, Dylan’s old plaid shirts and some band t-shirt he got for £5. - one year, he and his brothers were looking for a gift for their mum’s birthday. Arthur didn’t have any cash anymore (yes, it was after he bought the Doc Martens, sacrifies had to be made), so he suggested he tried to bake her a cake. Much cheeper than any other gift. Obviously his brothers mocked him for it (until they actually tried the cake and found out that it actually tasted quite good). Since then Arthur took up baking here and there, and his brothers while not encouraging, do not mock him anymore. They do hope he makes the lemon cake again for Ma’s next birthday though

- SCHOOL ho boy... so the thing is, Arthur is rather clever.

- Academically, he was above average. Acing it in subjects like English and History, being quite good in French (no, he does not bring this fact up often...or...at all), and getting decently by in the rest. Except that one time in PE when he got rowdy with the other boys during a football match (no, not our boy’s brightest moment). - He is intelligent, he even understands subject that he doesn’t particular like, like chemistry. He is quick-witted and sharp tongued and has a natural talent for words and writing. Even rather sophisticated articles and topics do not resent a challenge for him. - Naturally, Arthur toys with the thought of going to university and immediately wants to slap himself for that ridiculous idea. - The thing is, nobody in his family has gone to university so far. Like, he has no, absolute no frame of reference what it entails. - Being from a working class family and then going to university is a scary thing, man. - also, being £30,000 in dept by age 18 is a terror of its own kind - Eventually, he contemplates applying maybe perhaps for the local university and that information seeps through to Alasdair who found it to be a rather ridiculous endeavour. - “Look, you’re shitting your pants about this application one way or another, so why not just go immediately for the top universities instead. If you get rejected, well, at least you got rejected by one of the top universities in the world. But if you get accepted....” “Aw, are you saying you think I could get accepted by one of the best universities in the world?” “I’m not saying anything, you wee little shit. Don’t put words in my mouth. But......being the overachieving know-it-all that you are, you might have a chance.” - For as long as he lives, Arthur’s never gonna admit it but this conversation might have really been the most meaningful thing Alasdair has ever said to him. - And yes, he does apply and yes he does get accepted.

FURTHER HEADCANONS:

- he toned it down by now but the punk never died in him. lots of LGBT+ pins on his jackets too. - that being said, he hates it when people think punk is an aesthetic rather than a political stance (”You cannot be bloody punk and right wing. You just cannot!”) - genuinely likes the taste of beer. Or it might be that it was the cheepest alcoholic beverage he could manage to buy. Situation unclear. - is so prone to get into bar fights oh dear lord when he says “fight me”, he genuinely is 100% down to throw hands even if you beat him bloody - obviously, always votes Labour - will call you a cunt if you’re a Tory - unrelated to anything, but I think he’d wear earrings regularly and they’d be cute - also, has a tendency to dye his hair in crazy colours when he is under pressure - one last thing: oftentimes, Arthur strikes people as incredibly cynic or gloomy or ‘overly engaged in politics’, but growing up the way he grew up, facing so many hardships through the years of which many were directly caused by careless conservative politics...its just hard not to be cynic. My final words here are: this is most definitely not what you were looking for when you sent that ask, anon, but I seriously needed to get this out of my system. If anyone wants to ever talk about my favourite boy Arthur, my ask box is always open.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk<3

[shyneanon]

So I posted this earlier...

... And then I wrote it because of course I did.

My interpretation of MF Sans and Paps is based off of @improvidence318​, who I tagged so you have an instant link to his VA stuff because his audios are hilarious and his MF Sans voice is super sexy. Sorry for the notification, improvidence, I just want ppl to hear your stuff >~< His audios were the first introduction I had to MF Sans and his interpretation is my favorite. (Although the guy does need to learn to not corner women in dark alleys in an attempt to bed them.)

Anyway yeah I thought the power dynamic would be less off if Reader was involved with the mob too. So.

---

When you arrived at the party, you put a smile on your face. It was as much an accessory as the necklace you were wearing. You weren’t even quite sure what the party was for. A successful business endeavor between multiple crime families, you knew that, but your father never really liked to tell you the details of said endeavors.

Your parents didn’t force you to stay at their side, so you allowed yourself to wander and pay attention to… anything but the people here. The art on the walls, the decor… Anything but them. You knew your parents were bringing you along to these parties to find a potential husband, but you couldn’t bring yourself to go start a conversation with anyone. You didn’t want anything to do with them. You hated the criminal lifestyle-- you wanted to marry out of it, not into it. So when you realized there was a large terrace, you gladly ran out, to get away from the stifling air of false smiles, veiled threats and blatant lies.

The air outside was much fresher and crisper, and the terrace gave you a nice view of the city. This was so much better. You even felt a smile creep onto your face as you removed your gloves.

Sometimes, when you watched movies or read books about young women your age, you wondered if their freedom was exaggerated. Or if the goodness of the men they met was exaggerated. Probably, to an extent. After all, nothing that makes money is entirely honest. You’d learned that very early on. But you always wondered what it felt like to go to a gathering of friends and not feel the underlying tension that you always felt. In your world, everyone looked out for themselves. You knew the people at this party would gladly blow each other’s brains out if they knew they could gain something from it. Sure, they had their ethics and their deals and their values, but those could easily be bent and twisted to justify almost anything they did.

You envied those girls. They didn’t have the money your family had, but they had real friends. Real loved ones. Real men who really cared about them.

You didn’t think of yourself as a romantic, but you knew you would have to get married eventually. If only you could find someone who would actually love you, even in this hellhole.

The doors to the terrace were thrown open behind you, but you didn’t so much as start. You were accustomed to loud noises.

“Fuckin’ need a smoke, this party is a buncha bullshit.”

Ugh. Great. This had been your one place of refuge and now some drunken idiot had stumbled into it. You looked over to see who exactly had barged in on your retreat.

You blinked when you realized how large he was, and again when you realized he wasn’t human. His hands were lighting a cigar, and you could tell that they were nothing but bone. A monster. You’d met monsters before, so you weren’t afraid (at least, not for that reason), but you had never seen a skeleton before. He didn’t even seem to realize you were here, since he had headed for the other end of the terrace. You were much smaller than him, so you were sure his eyes had looked you over easily. If he had eyes. You couldn’t quite see his face, the brim of his hat was hiding it.

He was still grumbling to himself as he tucked his lighter back into his pocket and placed his cigar between two sets of extremely sharp teeth. From the way the moonlight glinted off one tooth, you could tell it was made of metal. Probably gold. He didn’t have eyes, per se, but he had little lights in his eye sockets that glowed a crimson color.

You realized that those lights were now looking directly at you.

“Oh, shit, how long’ve you been here for?” asked the stranger. He had an extremely deep voice that almost seemed to roll through the air, like thunder.

Well, he wasn’t saying anything mean, but if he was at this party he was no good, so you started to put on your gloves again. “Longer than you.”

For some reason, he chuckled. “Woulda been out here sooner if I knew this terrace was here. This party’s the worst, right?”

You had been turning to go, but you stopped. He wasn’t supposed to say that-- that the party wasn’t fun. That would be rude. But he hadn’t cared. Maybe he had an unrefined reason for thinking it was unpleasant. Maybe he just wanted more booze, or wished there were strippers here... but whatever it was, he hadn’t given you some garbage excuse for being out here with you.

You decided to test the waters. “It’s…  not fun.”

“Boy, you sure are polite about it.” He snorted (odd, considering he didn’t have lungs). “Everybody’s so goddamn fake ‘round here. Can’t have any real fun.” He smiled, raising a brow. “What’s yer name, dollface?”

You told him. You expected him to bring up your father, but he didn’t.

“Nice. Name’s Sans.”

Oh. You’d heard of him. “You have a brother,” you said, “right?”

“Yeah. Real buzzkill, though. He’s still inside, chattin’ people up.” His toothy grin widened. “Fancies himself a real ladykiller.”

“Literally or figuratively?” you asked with a small smile. Sans let out a laugh.

“Nah, figuratively. He’d never lay a hand on a lady. ‘N neither would I.”

They all say that.

“Unless… you want me to lay hands on ya.”

You blinked. His eyes were lidded. Did he not know who your father was? He could have him shot dead for talking to you like this. Then again, this man didn’t seem to have the highest IQ.

“You look real nice in that dress,” he said softly.

“Thanks,” you said curtly. You didn’t want to turn around and go back into the party-- you hated it there-- and you figured Sans wouldn’t let it escalate much further. He was a monster, not a human skeleton. He could still die if your father ordered it.

Wait, when had he gotten right in front of you?

“Y’know,” he said in his baritone voice, “nobody’s lookin’ for ya. Seems like we’ll be alone for a while.”

“Are you suggesting something?” you responded, trying to look unfazed. You were fazed, though. Most men were too scared to try anything like this on you. And for good reason. It could get them killed. And this man was just so… big. You had to crane your neck to meet his gaze.

“Maybe.”

He leaned close to you, and you frowned.

“Your breath smells like alcohol and cigar smoke,” you told him. Gross. Like you’d want to get intimate with him anyway, much less with his mouth smelling like that.

That didn’t deter him. “Yeah? Sorry about that.”

His head was practically in the crook of your neck now. He inhaled sharply.

“You smell good,” he growled, like a wolf smelling a helpless bunny.

You realized you were leaning against the railing of the terrace and that his hands were grabbing the railing on either side of you. This would absolutely horrify your parents.

Hmm.

It would horrify my parents.

Maybe… just to spite them…

You stepped a little closer to Sans, who immediately wrapped an arm around your waist. You resisted the slight urge to move away.

“Ah, dollface,” Sans purred. “You smell so good…. I could just eat ya….”

His sharp teeth started to trail along your neck. Was this a kiss? He didn’t have lips, so you weren’t sure.

“Maybe,” he said softly, “you an’ I could get away from this awful party… An’ I could show ya a good time elsewhere….”

He can’t be serious. You squinted. “Get away? We can’t just walk out the door.”

“Don’t have to,” he responded; he was so close your nose was brushing against his nasal bone. He smirked. “I can show ya how, if you want me to.”

You were curious… But unfortunately, you assumed that if you said yes,  he would also take that as a yes to the sex he was obviously proposing. And you definitely didn’t want that. How would you even…? No, you didn’t even want to know.

He pressed his teeth right against the corner of your mouth. Definitely a kiss. You felt annoyed when your face got hot.

“C’mon, doll.” He already sounded excited. “I can show ya all kinds of new things--”

“SANS! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?!”

He immediately backed away from you at the sound of the more shrill voice. You could feel that your face was on fire. Whoever it was probably thought you had been happily reciprocating….

You looked over to see a second skeleton, somehow taller than the first, but a lot thinner. He had some sort of scar across his left eye. Your cynicism returned (strange, it was like time-- and your brain-- had slowed down a few moments ago) and you had to wonder what sour business deal he’d gotten that mark from.

He was glowering at Sans. This had to be his brother. Papyrus was his name, right? Like the parchment the ancient Egyptians used to write on.

“Uh,” was all that came out of Sans’ mouth. So eloquent. You actually felt kind of ashamed you’d let someone with his low level of intelligence go as far as he had. And just to spite your parents? What were you, five?

“DO YOU KNOW WHOSE DAUGHTER SHE IS?”

Sans looked over at you. “I mean, no.” He grinned with those sharp teeth again. “I only care ‘bout who she calls Daddy.”

Your face got hot again... which embarrassed you… which only made your face hotter.

“THE POOR THING!” said Papyrus. “YOU’VE ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED HER!”

“That’s embarrassment yer lookin’ at, Paps, not fear.” His tone darkened a little. “We’ve both seen fear.”

Nobody said things like that either. Not at a gathering like this, and definitely not in front of women. You were pretty sure his disregard for the etiquette of this society was just due to sheer stupidity, but it was refreshing. As thick as he was, he was at least honest.

Well, not really. Just more honest than everyone else here. Surely he had some skeletons in his closet as well.

Hah… skeletons in his closet. You tried to fight back a smile. Unfortunately, it was noticed by both brothers.

Sans sounded amused. “Whatcha laughin’ at, babe?”

“Nothing,” you said, but since you couldn’t bite your lip your smile was fully visible.

“Like hell. What’s so funny?”

“SANS!” said Papyrus. “LANGUAGE!”

You said, “It might offend you.” The last thing you wanted to do was offend a mobster of any sort. Even if you were basically untouchable.

“S’long as you ain’t callin’ me fat, we’re good.” He winked. “I ain’t fat, I’m just big-boned.”

Your smile widened, much to your chagrin.

“SANS!”

“What? She likes it. Now tell me your joke, honey.”

You still weren’t sure if this was a good idea, but he’d asked. “I was just thinking that you both have some… skeletons in your closet.” With an embarrassed smile-- Sans’ grin was contagious-- you softly tapped your fingers against the air and said, “Ba-dum tsssss.”

Papyrus looked aghast, but Sans beamed and started to laugh.

“God, sweetheart, yer the only person at this party who’s any real fun.” He put his hand on your shoulder, though it was in a friendly manner. “Everybody else here has a stick up their ass!”

Papyrus didn’t even yell for him to shut up. It was too late, Sans’ voice had a way of reverberating throughout the room and everyone had heard. They were all staring at the three of you. Everything was quiet. You realized that even you were horrified; your hands were over your mouth. Or maybe it was secondhand embarrassment.

For some reason, Sans didn’t quit laughing, even when there was no way he couldn’t have noticed everyone else watching. In fact… Was he laughing harder now that people were staring? Papyrus looked like he wanted to murder his brother right there on the spot, but he did his best to save face.

“I… I APOLOGIZE FOR MY BROTHER’S BEHAVIOR, HE IS VERY, VERY DRUNK.”

Yeah, right. Sans wasn’t even wobbling on his feet, at most he was a bit tipsy.

Papyrus put his hand on your shoulder, the one Sans hadn’t touched. “I’M SORRY IF HE BOTHERED YOU AT ALL.”

Sans was horrible, and a complete moron, but… you liked him? For some reason. So you said, “Oh no, he didn’t. He was a gentleman.”

Papyrus obviously didn’t believe it, but he looked relieved that you had said so. “WELL, GOOD! AT LEAST HE WAS TREATING YOU WELL! HE IS ALWAYS… SO NICE TO LADIES.”

You bit your lip to keep from laughing at Papyrus’ exasperation.

You felt a hand on your arm-- a human one-- and your mother pulled you back away from the brothers.

“You’re sure he was nice to you?” she asked.

Well, you were already lying-- and it was kind of funny-- so you decided you may as well commit. “He was really nice to me. He told me I looked beautiful and he lent me his jacket so that I could keep warm.” You stopped yourself there, before you went too far and made him out to be Prince Charming himself. You glanced over and saw that Papyrus had a brow raised in confusion, while Sans had a brow raised in interest.

“I should hope he did.”

That was your father. Oh boy. Even Papyrus looked nervous. Sans seemed to recognize that you were saving his ass, because while you suspected he didn’t care, he looked like he did.

“You have a wonderful daughter, sir.” He beamed. “Smart ‘n funny.”

He was lucky he’d appealed to your father correctly. He always told you that you were smart, so anyone who said the same thing immediately gained at least some respect from him.

“Very,” was all your father said in response.

Papyrus stammered, “I… I SHOULD TAKE MY BROTHER HOME, BEFORE HIS VERY INEBRIATED STATE DOES ANYONE ANY MORE HARM.”

“Good idea,” said Sans. “After one last drink.”

“NO!”

Papyrus grabbed Sans by the back of his shirt, like a mother cat picking up its kitten, and started to drag him off. Sans gave you one last smile.

“Nice meetin’ ya, sweetheart. Hope I see ya again.”

You waved a little, trying to look as innocent as possible with your parents there. You bit the insides of your cheeks to keep from smiling too wide.

“His poor brother,” said your mother. Well, at least she didn’t hate both of them. “I can’t imagine having to take care of a grown man.” A smile. “Oh, wait. I already do that.”

Your father snorted. “Ha, ha.” He smiled at you. “Sorry about that, Princess. When we said we wanted you to meet men we did not mean him.”

A small pang of worry came over you. “You’re… not going to hurt him, right? He was nice to me.” You’d lied for a reason. Sans was an idiot, but he seemed like a pretty harmless idiot in the end. Or, harmless for a mobster, anyway.

Right?

“You mean it?” said your father.

“Yes, absolutely.” He hadn’t been mean. Just… very forward.

“Alright. I won’t hurt him, then.”

Your mother gestured further inside. “Come with us. We met a very nice young man who thought you sounded wonderful.”

Immediately, you felt your mood sour again. “Right.”

As they led you across the room, you found yourself already wishing that the brothers were still here.

[musicallisto]

1] Hiii! Congratulations on your milestone! To many many more followers! 🍨 May I get a male ship for HP (Golden Trio and Marauders era)? I'm a hetero girl, 28, proud Slytherin, INTJ-T, Type 1 Enneagram, Sun and Moon sign Virgo. I'll be receiving my PhD this Friday and I'd really love to work as an uni lecturer. Otherwise I'm absolutely clueless in romance and oblivious to flirting, I'm just really inexperienced in those things. I'm always kind and friendly but I prefer other people to start...

the conversation but I'm trying to be more outgoing. I hate my looks, I really do. I have a temper sometimes when I tend to say some bad things but it usually passes quickly over. Loyal. Sarcastic and chatty but mostly when I know you and am comfortable. Nerd. Metalhead. Bookworm who also likes movies, TV series, crosswords, colouring books, plush toys, stationery and long walks. Hate snakes, crowds, people telling me what to do and prying into my privacy, rom coms. I'm actually quite the cynic when it comes to true love, I don't believe much in it and have major trust issues. And this went too long, I'm sorry for spamming you with so much info. Have an awesome day! ^^

one vanilla milkshake, coming right away! I believe there are two people who have been eyeing you all night, though - word of bartender. could it be draco malfoy and james potter?

If you don’t believe in love and are a bit cynical about happily ever afters, then Draco is certainly not the one who’ll battle to change your mind.

It’s funny, actually, witnessing two souls who are so stubbornly set in their ways and convictions about how love is the biggest waste of time and only a source of heartbreak and pain, slowly grow closer to each other, fonder of each other.

You’re good friends with Draco, what with being two proud Slytherins who hide a biting intelligence and vulnerability under sarcastic airs, and you intended for things to remain that way as long as you stayed at Hogwarts. All you had to do was focus on your studies, go on a little escapade to Hogsmeade with your Slytherin friends, be surprised when Draco seems genuinely interested in the last movie you’ve seen but answer nonetheless, and watch in awe as Draco tries his hardest to comprehend how Muggle movies work...

Oh, no. This wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t part of the plan at all.

You know exactly what is happening; you are catching feelings, and you hate them all, down to the last one. You have no time to catch feelings, and especially not for Draco, the last person in the entire wizarding world who could ever reciprocate them.

Little do you know that Draco is also agonizing over the unwanted (and, so he believes, unrequited) love he’s starting to develop for you.

Then start a good two years of Idiots To Lovers(tm), with your relationship only continuing to deepen as friends because you can’t keep away from each other, but plenty of awkward moments because of your untold, mutual feelings, that neither of you want to act on from fear of being ridiculed.

Ah, those Slytherins and their pride.

Eventually, the secret comes out.

It’s a joint, parallel effort from both sides, really; you meet each other halfway. Right before the Death Eaters storm the school and the Battle of Hogwarts is officially underway, he pulls you aside and, in an angst-filled, otherwise pretty assured voice, he straight up tells you he likes you...

... exactly at the same time as you tell him you like him.

You gawk at each other, blink several times, in total confusion. It was the last thing either of you expected; and now that you very well may both die, turns out that you wasted two years of your life away, dancing around your feelings?

Yeah, Idiots to Lovers is right.

Draco is not big on physical contact, nor in big displays of affection - and neither are you, to be quite frank, especially because the context does not call for it.

But once the battle is over and you are both alive and well... you can expect a grand, bear hug from him.

James, contrary to Draco, is keen on showing you all the wonders of a life filled with love and soulmates and swoon-worthy declarations.

Which you loathe, obviously. But if the boy has a quality (and, truth be told, a fatal flaw as well), it’s that he doesn’t back down.

You are the most beautiful girl in his year, and, from what he’s heard, you’re also the most intelligent; you could probably be a professor at Hogwarts by now. He could almost forgive you for being a Slytherin.

And the thing with James is that, once he’s enamored with someone, he doesn’t let them go, in a sense that can be quite overbearing at first, but is genuinely his reaction at developing a crush. It’s not out of malice, or mischief, or to be a pain the ass, it’s just that he’s genuinely entangled in so many feelings that he doesn’t know how to sort out, and he’s paralyzed at the thought that you may find him lame or plainly ignore him. That’s why he’s so... exuberant, but you have to do a little bit of psychoanalysis before you understand all that about him.

In the meantime, you would be lying if you said you didn’t appreciate his compliments. Especially about your looks; he doesn’t know that you’re insecure, and could never comprehend it, because in his eyes you are astoundingly beautiful, and every little flaw that you may have only makes you more special in his eyes.

He’s taken the habit of calling you “beautiful”, “gorgeous”, or any other pet name of the sort whenever he sees you, both when he’s trying to charm you and when you’re already in a relationship.

“Good morning, beautiful!”

“What’re you up to, gorgeous?”

“Hey, where ya going, hot stuff?”

(Okay, that last one was suggested by Sirius, and James felt like a doofus saying that out loud, particularly because Professor McGonagall happened to be crossing the hallway at the exact same time and gave him one of her legendary death glares, but Sirius and you had an hour-long laugh after that, so it was worth it, in the end.)

James would absolutely come with you at any rock/metal concert you went to. Being a teenager in the 70′s, I imagine he would be very into music (are you KIDDING), and being a Halfblood, he’d probably know a lot about wizard and muggle bands. Besides, any excuse to go on a date with you, yell at the top of his lungs, and get absolutely smashed is welcome.

He’ll always there for you if you feel like crowdsurfing, always there to catch you and cheer you on as you float above the raging heads everywhere.

He’s there to catch you and cheer you on outside of concert venues, but that’s a quieter story; you’ll deal with it in the morning. For now, just enjoy the music and the vibrations.

800 follower sleepover

[senjuushi]

Hey, can you give me a introduction on the characters personalities? I really want to ask some stuff, but don't know the characters enouth. It doens't need to be long, just a small introduction! (:

OwO Absolutely!!! I’ve explained the characters in my writing Discord before, so I’ll just copypaste what I wrote there. The explanations are pretty long, but they’re detailed, so I like ‘em~

Long post below!

This is F. He's a flamboyant, eccentric sadomasochist, and deviant with a princess-type personality, who kind of never quits saying horrible, horrible things. He's very girly and over-the-top, and expresses a distinct crush on one of the other guns, who he refers to as "Onii-sama". 

He has MAJOR masochistic tendencies, like licking the barrel of his gun while it's still hot, but he shows sadistic tendencies too, such as treating his lowest-ranking soldiers horribly. It's very likely that these behaviors have been learned from others, though. One thing that I think is of note is that, despite his extremely sexual behavior and tendencies, he's not showing any more skin than his upper neck and a little bit of his wrists. 

He's an attention-seeker who struggles to stand out in the shadow of a remarkable older brother, and it's implied that he's pretty desperate to be loved. He values his appearance a lot, going out of his way to look good and be presentable, such as through doing his nails and wearing perfume. 

I think he's a very needy person who just wants people to look at him and care about him in any way, so he goes out of his way to stand out. There are a lot of implications that he's been through some pretty awful stuff, considering that his sadism and masochism are most likely learned.

. . . 

This is Belga. He's a loudmouthed idiot with a violent streak and a love of shooting everything in sight. Based on his face and calculated height, he's probably only like 13-15 physically, 16 at max. 

He's very childish and immature, is either ridiculously ignorant or pretty darn stupid, and has a horrifically foul mouth on him. He was described to me as a "laughing maniac". That said, he's got a major soft side, and cries easily at things like sad stories and his pet fish dying. The fish themselves are most likely a measure to control him by, with letting him gain an attachment just to threaten him with them. 

He's very manipulable and gullible, and gets called "birdbrain" by 89, a gun who shares the same superior as him. Overall, he's a childish moron who can probably only barely take care of himself.

. . . 

This is Mikhael. He's... kind of a mess. Outwardly, he seems like a calm, collected character who lives only for his music and his passions. When looked at closer, however, there are some very bad signs. 

First of all, he's blind. His eyes are bandaged over, which... does not imply good things. He also has what's almost definitely a brace on his leg, suggesting that he's kind of broken. Also worth noting is that in the art above, his gun is pointing at his head. 

Mikhael has a fixation on "beauty in destruction" which to me implies that he's trying very hard to cover for how broken he is. He does nothing but play his piano when taken to battle, basically leaving himself open to getting shot. I see him as an older, broken-down gun who's acutely aware of how horrible his situation is, as well as being passively suicidal. He won't do anything to kill himself, but if something happened, he certainly wouldn't complain. 

I think he's very sad, finding joy only in his music, and taking every chance to drown himself in it. Because of his physical flaws, I doubt the WE treats him very well. He's broken enough that he could be gotten rid of at any time, so he's struggling to make himself seem useful and good through his obsession with beauty in ruined things.

. . . 

This is Ninety. He's the "holy shit this is fucked up" one. Ninety is literally referred to as the WE's dog... and he acts like it. 

He's the youngest of the guns in terms of summoning order and has a mindset somewhere between a child and an animal. He can't speak, most likely trauma mute and connected to something like conversion disorder, is only barely literate, and communicates with a signboard. Do note that this boy is not wearing pants. 

He's sort of feral, going so far as to bite the soldiers under him when he doesn't get fed enough (they're probably starving him). He's known to be a "panic shooter", implying a nervous personality. Also worrying is that he has another mask under his gas mask. A lot of fans theorize that he has a slit mouth. 

All of that said, though, Ninety is surprisingly mature and probably a lot more intelligent than he acts. He comforts Belga when his fish die, and honestly, I think he's just acting the part of a stupid dog because it's been drilled into him enough. There's intelligence in there, he's just not allowed to show it. Also, he's tiny. My height calculations put him at somewhere in the 4' range.

. . . 

This is Ghost. His gun is an experimental weapon that was never actually released, and he's got issues because of that. He's a person with no presence who always goes ignored by those around him. His bullets are ridiculously expensive to produce, and thus, the only person who's ever given him a chance is Ashley, to whom he's ridiculous levels of grateful and loyal. 

He's got major abandonment issues and considers himself to be a difficult to deal with reject. He's very passive, cynical, and pessimistic. He has a very childish side, "cursing" people who upset or ignore him, and "blessing" the rare few who give him the time of day. He latches onto anyone who treats him kindly with an unrivaled sense of desperation. It's implied that he might be rather sickly, and he seems to have a poor physical presence. 

He feels like he's a failure who no one should waste their time on, and struggles a lot with believing that anyone could ever find him worth the effort to use or keep. He's always teetering on the fear of being abandoned and forgotten.

. . . 

This is 89. He's a dead-inside gamer otaku who's catchphrase is "Are you serious?" He's something of the straight man (in the sense of the comedy term) of the lot of them and is definitely the most "normal". 

On that subject, he wants to be normal very, very badly but doesn’t have a shadow of a chance thanks to his status as nothing but a gun and a weapon of the WE, so he forces himself to look down on everyone who does get a normal life. He’s so depressed and done with life that all he does is lock himself up in his room and play whatever violent fighting games he’s allowed as an escape from the misery that is his life. He's got a ridiculously obvious crush on Mikhael, and also very obviously just wants someone to love him. Belga calls him "virgin", and in return gets referred to as "birdbrain". 

89 is just tired and done and exhausted with life, and honestly, he probably doesn't get much attention. He slacks off from missions when he can (which he definitely gets in trouble for), and even his favorite foods are cheap things that sound like they've been shoved onto him out of sheer neglect. He's a little bit tsundere and a total softie inside. He's also my favorite of all of them.

. . . 

This is Eins. He's the powerhouse of the modern guns, and definitely the strongest person there. He's the highest-ranking of all of them, and his battle style/gun type is a sniper. 

He's a serious person who takes his job equally seriously and always produces exceptional results. He acts rather normal, and could probably pass for human if he tried. That said, he's also got major empathy issues, showing very little remorse for hurting people. He takes orders way too far to make sure he's gone far enough, in the sense that he'd kill 100 people if ordered to kill 1. He has his soft side, though, down to gardening, impressive cooking skills when it comes to the others, and considering many of the other moderns to be his "family". F has a crush on him, which he's totally oblivious to. 

Fal is his loyal right-hand man, and Ghost is ridiculously fond of him. He's merciless when it comes down to it, but probably just sees what he does as doing his job and not getting hurt. He definitely sees himself as nothing but a weapon and a tool.

. . . 

This is Fal. He's F's older brother, and most likely the reason why F is Like That. Fal is an insanely capable, efficient, skilled person– one who comes off as perfect in every way. His gun, the FN FAL, is known as "the right arm of the free world" and has been one of the most used firearms in history. 

Fal himself is a calm, collected sort who always seems poised. He's Eins's assistant and has a lot of responsibility, which he handles extremely well. He's polite, subservient, and soft-spoken, despite being very close to Eins in power and skill. He's well-spoken, eloquent, loyal, and basically embodies the perfect assistant. He's also very intelligent, and expresses a particular fondness for torture. He has a unique power in that he's able to manifest prehensile, thorned vines, which sets him apart from the others in strength and skill. 

He's basically the ideal modern gun, which gives F and everyone else a LOT to live up to. He does seem like a very stressed, worn-down person, though, and likely is almost crushed under the pressure of the expectations placed on him.

. . . 

This is Kirsch. He's a sadistic spoiled brat who's almost definitely been sexually abused. He's downright desperate for attention from Ashley, resenting Mauser (Ashley's personal weapon) viciously for taking that attention away. Creepily enough, he refers to Ashley as "Papa". 

He's sort of obsessed with being cute and attractive, emphasizing his charm and trying to play up how lovable he is. That said, he behaves like a spoiled child, down to throwing tantrums when he's angry. Kirsch is also a major sadist (a behavior which is definitely learned), and loves torturing people for the sheer fun of it. He's described as "sick in the head" by one of his superiors. Even so, he tries to paint himself as a harmless victim who can do no wrong, kissing up to and demanding attention from anyone he looks fondly upon. 

He's ridiculously immature, insanely clingy, and probably also has major abandonment issues. He acts like a love-starved child who acts out in order to get attention. There are also a few implications that he's been sexually abused, including his aggressively "touchy" behavior, personal-space invading sadism, attitude towards his superiors, and revealing outfit (short shorts and garter on his leg).

. . . 

This is Hokusai. He's an animated, wild-natured person with a major childish streak. He uses the pronoun "Boku-chan", which sounds straight out of the mouth of a kindergartener. 

He's something of a mad scientist who's associated with the science sector of the WE, and has honestly probably been the brunt of more than a few experiments. He has a massive fixation on the color blue that goes all the way to an obsession, and he's so dedicated to this that he keeps trying to dye his human self blue... which also keeps killing him. He's killed himself like this a bunch of times, but fortunately, Ashley can keep bringing him back somehow. He has a massive aversion to the color red too, straight to the point where he loses it if he sees his own blood. 

He has a number of visible scars (rare for anime art), including one across his throat and one on his wrist, implying that he's been through some shit. His behavior also says to me that he might have some form of brain damage, probably of the nature that impacts his decision making and sense of consequences. He's very reckless and has little regard for his own life. Despite this, he's also a cheerful, sunny person who never really seems to be down.

. . . 

This is Love1. He's... a mess. His gun is majorly defective, and known irl as one of the worst and most useless firearms in history. Reflecting this, L1's body is kind of a mess. His gun jams constantly, which gives him nosebleeds, he's implied to be physically fucked up in general, and in the game, his bigger attacks did damage to him too. 

Personality-wise, he acts like an utter idiot. He's loud and goofy, with a lot of presence and seemingly no dignity. He's cheerful, explosive, and trigger-happy, acting like he doesn't have a care in the world. However, his real personality is very different. L1 is a massively intelligent and strategic individual. While Fal specializes in physical torture, L1 is the psychological torture master. He knows how to absolutely break people. He has a little brother, Like2, and the two of them are both in the "defective" boat. L1 loves L2 dearly, no matter how rude the other is to him, and gushes over his "cute baby brother" constantly. 

On the dark note, L1's life is kind of hanging by a thread. He's worthless enough that he could be gotten rid of at any time, and with the whole world seeing him as a failure, he's definitely got some major issues. He could be replaced at any time, and he's definitely living in fear of when that day will come. Since his physical body is shot, it's also likely that he's constantly in a lot of pain. No one is really very nice to him either.

. . . 

This is Like2. He's an effeminate, bratty tsundere who wants to be spoiled and loved. He's in the same boat as L1 in that his gun is sort of useless, but he's still quite a bit better off. He definitely shares the same worries about being replaced, but instead of covering it up with a smile, he fixates on making himself pretty and strong. 

He's a bodybuilder who focuses a lot on strength training, and is surprisingly tough for his looks. He loves fine things and getting attention and spoiling, and is pretty much desperate for people to like him. Because of his status as a rejected, mocked weapon, he's frantic to make himself useful and avoid being disposed of. He values his personal security massively, can't stand any form of discomfort, and is willing to turn traitor as soon as his safety is on the line. He's an aggressive, abrasive tsundere who constantly berates his brother, calling him "worthless" and "soon to be replaced". 

That said, he loves L1 dearly underneath it all, and winds up as something of his brother's caretaker. He's a fragile person who's desperate to be cared for an accepted, no matter what he has to do to get it.

. . .

Last is Mauser. He's Ashley's personal assistant and weapon, and is honestly a thousand levels of worrying. Mauser is the first gun Ashley summoned, and despite his size and young appearance, his gun is the oldest model as well, being made in 1896. He teeters right on the verge of modern and antique. 

He's an obedient doll to Ashley who seems to lack any form of personality or will of his own. He's empty and emotionless, only capable of expressing his loyalty to his Master. This lack of personality could be attributed to being a faulty summon, but more likely, Ashley has broken him of anything that made him a person. He's blindly devoted, endlessly loyal, and doesn't really have anything to live for beyond Ashley. His character is worrying because something must have left him so broken, and the implications with what Ashley could have done to mess him up so badly aren't pretty. 

His personality is rather flat, but his interesting side comes in what made him the way he is. He'd have nothing to live for without Ashley.

[hiccanna-tidbits]

Hiccanna 100 OTP Questions Meme--Part 1

So I saw this 100 Questions About Your OTP post, and I decided to do them for Hiccanna! And...I am never doing one of these memes again, because this took forever XD I decided to split it in two to avoid just creating a giant Monster Post. QUESTION SOURCE: https://the-moon-dust-writings.tumblr.com/post/159857601812/100-otp-questions 1. Who loves flower crowns more? Anna is highkey obsessed with them! Especially kinda lopsided weird ones with sunflowers and shit. Hiccup likes them a lot too but is too embarrassed to ever admit it 2. Who is the one who likes to cuddle? Probably Anna tbh, she’s extremely huggy and cuddly and basically always initiates the cuddle sessions. Hiccup is secretly super grateful for this because he’s actually touch-starved as all hell but absolutely is not aware of it like cmon do you think big tough Stoic hugged him a lot growing up??? Kinda doubt it tbh 3. Who has awful taste in music? Depends on who you ask XD Hiccup has exactly 2 Music Moods--Stuffy classical orchestal stuff with a bunch of fancy violin and flute and whatnot, and edgy underground alternative hipster nonsense from bands no one has ever heard of. Anna, meanwhile, is a simple woman, who listens almost exclusively to shitty, catchy-butvery-unoriginal Top 40 hits and belts along with them to the radio, much to Hiccup’s chagrin XD 4. Who is the meme lover? A N N A she is a memelord supreme 5. How did their second date go? An...oddly specific question XD But I’ll take a stab at it. I imagine on their first date they went to see some high fantasy epic movie with fancy CGI (they’d both be HELLA into that--Anna for the magic and epic romances and Hiccup for the interesting magical creatures) and then gushed about it for hours afterwards, so their second date might be something a bit more lowkey where they’d just talk and hang out. I feel like they both probably are coffee addicts, so...a coffee shop date, maybe? And Anna gets some kinda chocolate pastry, of course! 6. How many children do they want/have? Tbh unpopular opinion probably, but I actually don’t think Hiccup and Anna would necessarily want kids??? They’re definitely the kind of couple who would love exploring the world and taking spontaneous adventures together, and you can do a lot less of that when kids are typing you down. Not to mention I think the full-time responsibility of having a kid would be pretty exhausting to Anna in particular, as someone who identifies with her a lot and has never wanted kids because even thinking about it makes me tired XD I mean sure, Anna has a nurturing side that comes out with Elsa sometimes, but she doesn’t have to use that ALL THE TIME (since Elsa is a grown-ass adult usually capable of sound judgement) like she would with a kid. But ALL THAT SAID if they DID end up having kids I don’t think they’d go too crazy with it, probably just 1. Or 2 at the VERY most. 7. Who hides the weapons? You mean like...in an AU where they’re infiltrating an enemy fortress or something? Probably Anna, since she’s the more innocent and harmless-looking of the two XD 8. Who is the better dancer? They both can’t dance for SHIT it’s absolutely cringeworthy but probably Anna at the end of the day because she probably spent a lot of time practicing in those empty ballrooms 9. Do/Did they have a theme wedding? They’d probably want to have some kind of a magic high fantasy theme, since they’d both be hella into that--and then it ends up morphing into “Dragons and Princesses” XD Anna ends up getting over-the-top fancy princess dresses for all of her bridesmaids and Hiccup has the time of his damn life making basically everything in the buffet dragon-themed. The cake is like half dark green or black scale-patterned and half fancy-patterned spring green tiers. It’s quite the event of the decade! 10. What do their parents think of them dating? Valka absolutely ADORES Anna and thinks she’s perfect for her son--the perfect blend of cheerful and compassionate when she needs to encourage him, but also badass and tough-spirited to protect him when she needs to. Stoic doesn’t really like Anna at first--he’s under the (mistaken) impression that she’s a wimp and finds her bubbliness kind of grating and annoying, and generally worries that dating her will just make Hiccup even more of a wimp. He’d rather him date a no-nonsense tough-as-nails asskicker like Astrid in hopes it would toughen him up. However, once Stoic sees Anna do something like punch someone out with no hesitation when they pick on her and Hiccup, Stoic comes around to Anna VERY quickly XD I feel like Agnar and Iduna would just be happy to see their daughter dating a sweet, dorky guy who loves her with all of her being and appreciates her for who she is. As long as he treats her well and makes her feel loved (which he most certainly would because he’s a precious cinnamon roll), he gets their stamp of approval. And hey, anything is an improvement over Hans XD 11. Are they a super sappy couple? Nah. I imagine they do a lot of PDA and probably hold hands or kiss in public a lot, but they’re not like...overly gooey in how they talk to each other, if that makes any sense. If anything, their flirting is painfully awkward, even AFTER they get together XD So much so that when they try to hit on each other in front of their friends their friends are like “oh my god STOP this is too much secondhand cringe for me to bear” 12. How did they get together? I like to imagine they’re friends for a long while but both of them fully 100% believe that the other is ridiculously out of their league and they’re irreparably trapped in the friendzone and one day they’re hanging out with their friends and awkwardly flirting with each other (but of couRse the other person isn’t FLIRTING they’re just being NICE they both figure) and finally Jack just shouts “oh my god will you two just fuck already???” and after a few minutes of utter mortification they just have the world’s most awkward love confession XD Anna finally relents and asks Hiccup on a date, and of course he says yes! 13. Who asked the other to get married? I can honestly imagine either of them asking but probably Hiccup. And he’s SO nervous about it that he starts straight stuttering the first few times he tries to ask and has to stop and change the subject XD He probably gets it finally after like...the 5th time. 14. Who stays up too late and makes stupid jokes? A N N A 100% I headcanon that she has pretty bad insomnia (that’s why she has such a hard time waking up and is so tired in the morning!) so she stays up to the wee hours of the morning with her brain spinning with incredibly weird thoughts and her sense of humor becomes nigh indecipherable after 3 am. 15. Who is the nerd? Hiccup obviously is this even a question??? He spends all day collecting dragon facts and lore and building weird scientific contraptions to help crippled dragons fly WHAT A NERD  16. Who knows the most obscure facts? Hiccup again, he knows so many dragon factoids and random scientific shit that Anna sometimes wonders how he manages to fit anything else in there 17. Who makes the other a flower crown? Anna! She makes ones for both herself and Hiccup and Hiccup begrudgingly wears his but secretly thinks it’s pretty and likes it because it reminds him of his dorky gf :3 18. Who likes to read? Both! I mean Hiccup obviously does because, as established above, he is a nerd, but Anna has canonically read every book in the Arendelle castle library, some twice, so she doesn’t NOT like to read. Hiccup probably reads more, though, between the two of them--Anna often doesn’t really have the attention span for it. 19. Who bothers the other person while the other person reads? ANNA she loves to constantly hang over Hiccup’s shoulder when he reads and drape herself all over him like a needy cat like “PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEE” and Hiccup just lets out a defeated sigh and starts playing with her hair while reading and hopes this will be enough to appease the little gremlin It usually is 20. Who tutors the other? Hiccup tutors Anna, but she HATES having to ask and is actually pretty insecure about school just generally not coming as naturally to her as it does to Hiccup, so he’s always super patient and understanding with her and tries his very best to never get annoyed or frustrated if she doesn’t catch onto something right away. He doesn’t want her to ever feel stupid because he imagines it feels the same to her as when people call him weak and useless. Slowly but surely, he’s saving Anna’s grades--and building her confidence! 21. Do they have similar taste in movies? Hell yeah! They love that high fantasy shit. I also like to think Hiccup manages to get Anna into some sci-fi and Anna manages to get Hiccup into romcoms (ONLY the good ones, he insists, as he would not be caught dead watching a shitty romcom!) 22. How do their personalities compliment each other? I mean the most obvious one here is that Hiccup’s general pessimism and cynicism compliment Anna’s optimism and cheerfulness really nicely. He would be able to keep her grounded and get her to be more realistic about things, while she would encourage him to see the positive side of bad situations and be more hopeful about things in general. Also I love the contrast of Hiccup’s intelligence and more quiet, snarky nature with Anna’s rather boisterous personality and general naivitey (sp?) and energy. They’re like a downplayed version of the “the grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one” trope and I think that’s beautiful. Also, they’d both be great at soothing the other’s isecurities--Anna would be Hiccup’s biggest cheerleader and would believe in him like no one else did, and would stop at nothing to pull him out of it when he started spiraling into self-loathing and thinking he’s a fuck-up. Hiccup, meanwhile, would be so smitten with Anna and would think that it’s the most obvious thing in the world that she’s an amazing human being in her own rite and never has to feel like the “spare” princess living in her sister’s shadow. And saying this without a shadow of a doubt, like it’s common knowledge, is often exactly what Anna needs to hear to feel a little better about herself. 23. How do they tell everyone that they are going to be having a kid/adopting a child soon? I...honestly don’t think they’d be that extra about it??? In fact, they’d be the sort of couple who would be so UN-extra about it that it would do a full 180 and be hilarious. Like they’d be casually brunching with friends and Hiccup would just casually be like “oh by the way, Anna’s 3 months pregnant” or “oh, by the way, we just signed some adoption papers and we’re picking our new kid up on Saturday” and all of their friends would be like “wait WHAT” and Hiccup would be like “Anyways what were you saying about the newest episode of Alien Space Shooters 3000?” XD  24. Who has better fashion sense? Hiccup, probably. I mean, Astrid caught him making OUTFITS! The horror! The dude is also way more effeminate and, uh...clothing-conscientious than he realizes XD Anna has decent fashion sense, but I imagine that’s like 90% because Elsa spices up/makes her outfits since Elsa’s really more of the fashionista XD 25. Who will punch someone out if they are rude to their partner? Try bullying Hiccup when Anna’s around. I dare you. You’re gonna get a fistful of Anna Rage and a very angry redhead screaming “THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO MY BOYFRIEND I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU” Look this woman punched a man off a boat and knocked a wolf half a mile away with a guitar thing she absolutely takes no shits and she can and will fuck you up if you so much as lay a finger on her precious dork Hiccup thinks this is really hot btw 26. What songs do they sing together in the vehicle? For whatever reason the first songs that come to mind are “Africa” by Toto and “Don’t Stop Believin” by Journey. ALSO “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus since they both are, in fact, teenage dirtbags XD It also like perfectly describes the story of a modern AU where Hiccup the Loser is secretly pining for Anna the Nice Popular Girl who is dating Hans the Douchebag but that’s neither here nor there 27. What other couple would your otp get along with? Jackunzel, Jackunzel, Jackunzel!!! Jack and Hiccup would definitely be bros, even if they are not above mercilessly roasting and/or trolling one another XD And Anna and Rapunzel would be BEST FRIENDS if they ever met and I will DIE on this hill, I legit don’t think Anna would Vibe with any other princess as hard as she vibes with Punzel. They could be ADHD disasters together XD 28. Who likes to prank the other? Anna actually turns out to be quite the closet gadfly and has a secret side that LOVES pranks and generally trolling Hiccup, much to everyone’s surprise and Hiccup’s mild dismay. It’s always pretty innocent and subtle pranks, like switching books on his bookshelf or hiding his various possessions in weird places in the house, but Anna absolutely LIVES for that long, defeated sigh he lets out when he realizes he’s Been Had. 29. Who is the one who loves to take pictures? Anna takes pictures of EVERYTHING on her phone--scenery, flowers, cute animals they come across, weird buildings, pretty fountains, Hiccup when he’s not looking, EVERYTHING XD She also bombs all her social media accounts with selfies of her and Hiccup and captions gloating about how great he is and how you WISH your boyfriend was this cool and rad and Hiccup is both embarrassed and flattered by this. 30. How would they react if they found out they were soul mates? Anna, who probably never stopped fully being a sucker for fairy tale True Love stories and all that shit, would fangirl for hours and hours. Hiccup would just go, “Oh, neat!” and go back to whatever project he was currently working on XD I mean his logic is mainly that regardless of whether it’s “magically destined” or not, he’s gonna date Anna anyway, so it really doesn’t make a scrap of difference to him whether she’s dubbed by some Mystical Higher Power as his soulmate lol  31. Where would they live? Well...SOMEWHERE in Scandinavia, since that’s canonically where both Berk and Arendelle are XD I kinda like the idea of them spending part of the year in Berk and part in Arendelle...maybe spring and summer in Berk, and fall and winter in Arendelle? I imagine spring and summer are when there’s the most interesting dragon activity in Berk, and winter’s probably pretty festive and colorful in Arendelle, if OFA is anything to go by. And the fall color is pretty too, going by Frozen 2. Seems like a good compromise, since I doubt either of them would want to permanently move away from their homes. 32. What type of dragon would they own, if they could have one? Given the shipping this question is HILARIOUSLY ironic Well it just so happens they would have a type of dragon called a Night Fury and name him Toothless XD Anna would probably have a dragon of her own too--I conversed with someone on fanfic.net and did some research into all the HTTYD dragons, and I think the one I like her most with is a sand wraith, since they live on the beach and Anna certainly seems to like the beach, if her throwaway comment complaining Elsa doesn’t have “tropical” powers is anything to go by XD 33. If they were both vampires, what type of vampires would they be? First of all, fuck you for making me google “Types of Vampires” and then getting me aggravated because like nowhere on the internet is there a straightforward list of vampire "species” that isn’t like 5 miles long or just a meme XD Welp, I couldn’t really find a list of vampire species that wouldn’t take forever to look over, so I wrote a summary for a vampire fanfic instead Anna turns first. I imagine probably Hans turns her--tricks her into falling in love with him without knowing he’s a vampire, and then biting her when she’s off-guard to basically try to make her into a spooky sex slave or something. Anna starts seeing Hiccup in secret (who she knew before--he’s still human at this point), and eventually he asks her to turn him so that he can be with her without her outliving him and also so that they can team up and fight Hans together. Anna has a lot of reservations about turning him, but finally agrees. They end up kicking Hans out of his spooky vampire castle and taking it for themselves XD Anna eventually makes the best of being a vampire, and has a blast wearing all manor of fancy dresses and throwing extravagant balls. She’s pretty bummed about never getting to gorge herself on garlic bread again, though :( Hiccup doesn’t much like it, especially since a lot of animals are scared of him now and he doesn’t Vibe with nature quite like he used to D: Nonetheless, he decides to use the immortality to do some pretty neat projects and work on his contraptions and inventions and whatnot. I imagine they eventually devolve into kind of a vigilante duo, and make a point of only hunting down and feeding on bad people who are actively hurting or abusing other people or animals. A pretty good incentive to not like...do violent crime in this AU is those creepy old wives’ tales people tell their kids like “don’t be an asshole when you grow up, or the Haddock vampires will get you!” 34. What would they dress up as, for Halloween? Well Hiccup would be some sort of dragon, obviously! Anna I have no idea...but I kinda like the idea of her just dressing up as a generic fairy tale princess and then going around with Hiccup like “oh no, this dragon kidnapped me!” Both their friends and various trick-or-treaters get a kick out of the whole bit. 35. Can they name each other’s favourite food? But of course! Anna’s is chocolate, krumkake, and sandwiches, and Hiccup’s is crabcakes (yes, all this is actually canon! I do my research for fanfiction thank you very much lol). And you can bet they surprise each other by buying one another’s favorite foods all the time! 36. Do they have pet names for one another? In my fanfic I always have Hiccup come up with SO MANY for Anna, like in my Fire!Anna AU fanfic alone I have Fire Hazard, Firecracker, and probably a few others I can’t remember One headcanon I really like is that whenever Anna is especially ready to attempt to kick the ass of something she really should NOT fight (such as a giant snowman), Hiccup physically has to hold her back and goes “Whoa, slow down there, tiger” and this happens so frequently that eventually it gets shortened to just calling her Tiger XD And hey, with the orange hair and the feistiness, it still fits! As for Anna, she usually just calls Hiccup Dragon Boy or Nerd XD 37. How do they cheer each other up? I imagine Hiccup probably tries to distract Anna from whatever’s bothering her by making her laugh and talking in dumb accents or imitating his dad XD Anna would probably try to help Hiccup stay optimistic about a bad situation and try to point out the positives, but more in an encouraging way than like...an obnoxious, condescending “oh, it could be worse, count your blessings!” kind of way. And Anna has so much peppy energy about it that it actually does sometimes manage to pierce Hiccup’s cynicism and make him feel a bit better, if only for a little while before he starts once again imagining everything that could possibly go wrong XD 38. Do they show a lot of PDA? Eeeeeyup XD They looooove holding hands in public, and enjoy kissing dramatically in front of the sunset and such. I mean I imagine they don’t have hardcore makeout sessions in public or feel each other up sexually, if only because they don’t want to make people THAT uncomfortable. 39. How old were they when they got together? Depends on the AU you’re using and where in both their respective timelines they meet, but I imagine them meeting either as kids or in their early teens, and then taking so damn long to spit out how they feel that they don’t actually start dating until their late teens or early 20s. 40. Who is the one that would bring the puppy home? If it’s a puppy? Probably Anna. If it’s a kitten or a weird, injured reptile? Deeeefinitely Hiccup. 41. Can they do yoga couple’s poses? They most certainly CANNOT. I like to think Elsa and Honeymaren tried to teach them one time and have a yoga double date (because of COURSE Elsa would suggest that) and it ended with Anna and Hiccup butchering every last pose, repeatedly falling on their asses, and generally having a bad time. Poor Elsa and Honeymaren had to work hard to keep from just losing their shit laughing. 42. What is their song? I mean...I don’t know what their like...OFFICIAL song is, but the songs “West End Kids” by the New Politics and “Paper Rings” by Taylor Swift have always had Big Hiccanna Energy to me. 43. What does their room look like? It’s divided pretty neatly in two. Hiccup’s side has a near-spotless floor, a desk with a perfectly-organized bookshelf and a very chic desk lamp, several movie posters and a hanging whiteboard with miscellaneous invention designs and reminders about random stuff written on it. Anna’s side looks like Hurricane Katrina just swept through, this time with a personal vendetta against snack wrappers. 44. Who would be the one to kill zombies while the other keeps them grounded? Anna would absolutely be the sort to just fuckin tear through hoards of zombies screeching battle cries and knocking them all upside the head with a crowbar, or just straight plowing down an entire hoard with some freaking machine gun she stumbled on and taught herself how to use because she wanted to be badass XD Meanwhile Hiccup is absolutely grateful for the protection because Anna can fuck up a LOT of zombies at once, but he also has to keep the girl from going TOO crazy and accidentally putting her impulsive dumbass in grave peril XD 45. Who makes the other breakfast in bed? Hiccup, for sure. He’s used to being up pretty early because I imagine you get the most dragon-flying and exploring in if you wake up early, and he knows food is basically the only thing that will make Anna not hate getting up, so he makes her breakfast in bed as often as he can to make waking up suck less. And sure enough, after a while Anna starts to hate the morning just a liiiiittle bit less XD 46. Who loves kids more? Anna! Given how fun-loving and energetic she is, she probably loves hanging out with and being around kids. Hiccup likes kids fine, but he often feels kinda awkward and weird around them (I mean...more so than usual XD) because he isn’t sure how to interact with them. When they’re around kids, Hiccup usually follows Anna’s lead on how to talk to them. 47. Do either of them have a crazy ex? Well Anna’s ex attempted to use her to infiltrate and take over a kingdom and then tried to murder her sister so I mean 48. What are their favourite colours? Going by their canon color schemes, I’m guessing Anna’s would probably be like spring green and magenta, and Hiccup’s would be a more dark, foresty green and red. 49. Who likes to cook? Hiccup. Anna can’t cook for shit because she generally doesn’t have the patience for it and would just as soon live off of freezer food if she could because it’s less trouble XD Hiccup is good at making/building things, which actually translates to him being a pretty good chef. He makes Anna food a lot and she absolutely ADORES his cooking. 50. Who is the forgetful one? Anna. Gotta love that ADHD babeyyyy! (I mean I’m practically irl Anna and I am NOTORIOUSLY forgetful so it’s gotta be her XD)

[the-desolated-quill]

If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own - Watchmen (TV Series) blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own feels like a tale of two episodes. One has well written characters, emotive storytelling and exciting possibilities, whereas the other contains ham-fisted, painfully obvious subtext and annoyingly long infodumps told to the audience with all the grace and subtlety of a brick to the face. 

Let’s start with the positives. At the beginning of the episode, we’re introduced to the character of Lady Trieu, played by Hong Chau, who buys a farmhouse from an Oklahoma couple by offering them a genetically engineered baby. I love this scene so much. It’s by far the most tightly written and engaging scene so far this series, and serves as a perfect introduction to a genuinely interesting character.

Lady Trieu is a Vietnamese born trillionaire industrialist who absorbed Adrian Veidt’s company after his disappearance and seems to take heavy inspiration from him, even going so far as to have a gold statue of him in her complex. It’s unclear whether she knows about his involvement with the squid (how could she possibly know?), but she clearly shares his vision of making the world better. 

Or... does she?

That’s precisely what I love about this character. Trieu is clearly the secret mastermind behind whatever is going on here (more on that later) and it would have been easy to just simply have her be a carbon copy of Veidt, but she isn’t. There’s a subtle, but clear distinction between the two. In my review of Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, I talked about the paradox of a liberal capitalist and how it’s often not enough for Ozymandias to simply save the world. He needs to be seen to be saving the world. He wants something with spectacle in order to appeal to his own vanity. This is true of Trieu as well, except, despite all his flaws, Ozymandias clearly at least wanted to help people, albeit in an incredibly flashy way for his own aggrandisement. Trieu doesn’t even want that. She just wants the attention and the good will. 

The opening scene is a perfect illustration of this. Giving that married couple their own DIY baby was one thing, but all the crap with the hourglass and the silly monologue and everything, there was no need for any of that. And lets not forget, she didn’t give this couple a baby out of the goodness of her heart. She did it solely because she wanted their land so she could claim a fallen object from space. The same is true of this Millennium Clock she’s building. I’m pretty sure its purpose isn’t just to tell the time, but that’s not the point. It’s described by her daughter as not the Eighth Wonder of the World, but rather as the First Wonder of the New World. Plus, of course, she is a trillionaire. If she just handed out even a small portion of her vast wealth, it would make a huge difference, but then there would be nothing in it for her. Nothing to gain. Unlike Veidt, Trieu is a character driven by pure cynicism. She has no interest in saving the world, but rather the attention and adoration of the world around her. She wants the world and the people around her to rely on her to save them. Basically if Ozymandias is an altruist tempered with narcissism, then Lady Trieu is a narcissist tempered with altruism. It’s a beautifully realised character and one I’m most excited to see more of in the episodes to come.

I also like the connection she has with Angela. Both were born and raised in Vietnam, except Trieu’s mother was a native to Vietnam before the US invaded and absorbed the country, turning it into the fifty first state. This puts Angela in an interesting position. Being an African American, her family obviously has history of being the victims of colonial oppression, but in this alternate history where Vietnam is part of America, Angela is also now in the role as one of the colonial oppressors. A settler in a country stolen and plundered from the natives. It’s an interesting position for her character to be in and I’m very curious to see where the show takes this.

After taking a backseat in the previous episode, Angela mercifully gets to take the lead again this time around and she’s great. With the FBI breathing down her neck, Angela continues to get to the bottom of the mystery involving her grandfather, the murder of Judd Crawford, and the Seventh Kavalry, and I really like where this is taking her character. She privately confides in Wade about what she has learned, even asking him to hide Judd’s Klan robe. This is the kind of character stuff I wanted to see in the previous episode during the funeral. How do you react to the knowledge that one of your closest friends was a hateful bigot? And from the looks of things, it seems as though Angela is doing her level best to protect Judd’s memory, at least until she gets to the bottom of what the fuck is going on here. I love this because it feels totally believable.There’s still a part of her that doesn’t want to accept Judd’s racist ties to white supremacy and clinging onto the idea that he might be misunderstood or that there’s something else going on underneath. This is an excellent internal conflict that has so far been handled exceptionally well. You don’t think less of Angela for not wanting to accept the truth because it’s totally understandable and believable.

Also I just want to briefly talk about what we learn about Wade, aka Looking Glass, in this episode. The man’s a doomsday prepper, living in a bunker in his back garden, preparing for another squid attack. I LOVE this so much. It makes total sense in the context of Watchmen and, like with Lady Trieu, it serves as a really nice inversion of an existing character. Like Rorschach, Looking Glass is a paranoid conspiracy nut, but unlike Rorschach, there’s actually some truth and logic behind his paranoia. Again, it’s a subtle distinction, but it’s enough to allow the character to go off in his own direction.

Here’s the thing. The bits I like about this episode, I really like. Unfortunately the bits I don’t like, I really don’t like.

Let’s begin with Laurie. What is she even doing here? Not only is she so utterly divorced from the character in the graphic novel, she doesn’t even contribute anything meaningful to the plot, other than to bicker constantly with Angela (which, considering this is the first time in Watchmen that we’ve had two female characters together interacting with each other, it feels immensely disappointing that this is the best the writers can come up with) or to spout gratuitous fanwank and pop psychology. The pop psychology in particular irritates me because it simply doesn’t gel with the tone and themes of Watchmen. I’m really hoping all that stuff about trauma and wearing a mask to hide the pain doesn’t in fact apply to Sister Night, otherwise I’m going to be extremely annoyed. Not only is that cliched beyond belief, it also stands directly against the whole point of Watchmen as a concept. Alan Moore’s intent was to scrutinise the reasons behind why someone would put a costume on and fight crime. Some just want the attention, others want to compensate for their own inadequacies, and some just want to live out their own violent, hedonistic fantasies. Only Rorschach fits the trauma model proposed by Laurie, and even then it’s not really accurate. Rorschach uses his trauma more as an excuse than a motivation. Watchmen serves as a deconstruction and criticism of superhero archetypes, so to potentially give Sister Night an obligatory tragic backstory would feel like a grave disservice to the source material.

The pop psychology also represents another problem this episode has. It seems to spend an awful lot of time telling its audience about its themes and commentaries rather than just showing them. One of the things I loved so much about the second episode was that it respected the audience’s intelligence. The connections it was making between the police and mob psychology, the superhero genre and its roots in US propaganda, and the KKK and the moral absolutism of most comic book heroes were apparent in the episode’s visual language and symbolism. It didn’t try to highlight them in fifty foot high neon lettering, instead trusting the audience to make the connections themselves. Here, however, completely the opposite. At numerous points, it feels as though the episode is sitting me down like a naughty school child and straight up telling me the plot, rather than trust that I’m a grown man who is perfectly capable of following this by himself, I pinky promise.

Take the whole subplot with Adrian Veidt for example. By watching the previous episodes, you can deduce that he’s trapped in a prison of his own making and is trying to escape (although admittedly it turns out that the clones aren’t in fact his creations, which is a pity because I think that’s less interesting, but still). Awesome idea. Love it. But showrunner Damon Lindelof is clearly worried that the idiots sitting at the back of the class didn’t get this, so Adrian spends his limited screen time here just explaining his subplot to the audience. It’s really annoying.

Or what about the Millennium Clock? The Seventh Cavalry are clearly in league with Trieu for some unknown reason, and in their video message to the police in the first episode, they say ‘tick, tock’ a lot, which is clearly a reference to the Clock. All a bit goofy, granted, but do you know what’s even goofier? Will getting up out of his wheelchair, staring dramatically into camera and saying ‘tick, tock’ for no fucking reason whatsoever other than to spell out the connection for the slow people in the audience who didn’t make the link. Dude, I promise you, we are following this. It was just pointless. But not nearly as pointless as...

Good God, do I hate Lube Man!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against there being humour in Watchmen. The original graphic novel had moments of dark humour, but there’s a time and a place. It just feels weird and kooky just for the sake of being weird and kooky. And again, it serves as a less than subtle reminder to the audience of the themes of the show. The police are abusing their powers and letting smaller crimes fall by the wayside, but rather than let that come up naturally in the story, we get a random excerpt from the Silver Slider here. All I can say is Lube Man had better play a vital role in the episodes to come, otherwise I’ll be pissed.

See, when Good Lindelof is writing the scripts, I’m enjoying this show immensely. When Bad Lindelof takes a turn at the keyboard, however, that’s when I start to get worried. 

[sepulcrorum]

JUDE LAW, FIFTY, ARCHBISHOP DE MEDICI. ❝ ⤚⟶ EUROPE, 1458. thanks is given by the DUCHY OF FLORENCE, ARCHBISHOP GIANCARLO DI GIAN GASTONE DE’ MEDICI, from FLORENCE. they are at best CHARMING, and at their worst IMPIOUS. whilst abroad, their ambition is to REAP EVER MORE GREATER LUXURIES FOR HIMSELF. HE seems to remind everyone of JUDE LAW & DESIRES BOTH HERETICAL AND UNHOLY : THE SONG OF SOLOMON SPILLING FORTH FROM ONE’S LIPS WHILST IN THE THROES OF PASSION ; INTELLECTUALISM SOUGHT FOR HEDONISM’S SAKE : ANTIQUATED TEXTS SMUGGLED FROM THE CRUMBLING REMNANTS OF ANCIENT ROMAN VILLAS AND DISPLAYED TO EXPECTED LOOKS OF AWE ; & HOLINESS FOUND, HOLINESS LOST, HOLINESS REVERED : A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT SHINING THROUGH HIGH-VAULTED ARCHES. ❞

introduction

Provide a blurb introducing your character generally. This should include an overview of strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, and set backs.

It has been once said by the Lord: be ye like children, for ye to enter the Kingdom of God. Capricious, selfish, absorbed only by thoughts of himself, petty, and whimsical, the Archbishop de’ Medici does not assume the dignity of his station as a member of the Church but he does assume all the qualities of a child in him, and that makes him saved by default.

His theology is quaint, bordering on unorthodox, and it’s almost tempting to call him out for heresies but he knows too much about Scripture and can run circles around any fellow servant of Christ, much more the ordinary layman. He’s either mystical or absolutely canonical: at a certain point in theology, everything becomes one and the same. Give him time, and he can justify anything—the cruellest of acts as well as the most compassionate acts of goodwill and charity—with verses pulled from the Holy Book and the most seraphic smile on his face, almost as if his lips are intoning a blessing. He’s a Devil’s advocate in perhaps more ways than one, the destruction of Rome entire as one itinerant preacher once called him, and yet he luxuriates on wealth on top of the social pyramid, secure in his position and backed by the splendorous wealth made available by his family’s support.

Yet despite all this, despite possessing all the qualities of a man who could be—intelligent, charming, sociable, and ambitious—Giancarlo ended up being the man who isn’t, by some strange (perhaps cruel) twist of fate. With his dubious origins erasing any hope for a cardinalate, much less a chance for the Throne of St. Peter, he languishes in his role as a mere archbishop. As the years pass, he has turned bitter, cruel, recalcitrant—for what does a child do when they are given what they want?

They throw a tantrum.

What are some potential plotlines you are interested in pursuing?

I’ve inserted the little nuggets of the plotlines I plan to pursue on the blurb but to expand on it:

First is I am definitely very interested in making him a Cardinal and that is very much a thing he also wants for himself, even as much as he denies it and says he never wanted it anyway. It’s a way for him to rationalise the fact that, strictly speaking, his life didn’t go the way he wanted it to go, and so he subsists on the lie that his life (as it is right now) was what he always wanted—but ultimately, I do think that he’s still on the lookout for any opportunity to finally have the red robes of a cardinal.

Second is the state of Florence and of Italy as a whole. The blemish of the riots on the Florentines’ reputation is something that must be rectified—not even because someone died (after all, very many people die everyday) but because it sends the message that they are unable to control their own people. The Church as an institution that does much works of charity can be used to pacify the rebellious masses and perhaps turn them into the better angels that they haven’t been before. Meanwhile, Italy as a whole concerns him because they are still, ultimately, disparate nation-states with differing goals and ambitions. In a world filled with empires and hegemons, Giancarlo realises that the Italian peoples must unite—far better that it be headed, of course, by the Church or by Florence, but unity itself is non-negotiable. If the Italians do not want to be swallowed up by their neighbours, they must pool together their resources and make a stand for their existence.

Thirdly is the option of interfaith dialogue. Giancarlo is by no means perfect, but I do imagine he’s a touch more tolerant than most holy men are. He’s less a crusader and more of a diplomat, far too disillusioned to really believe in any cause of holy war. Entrenched in cynicism—usually a character flaw—he’s cognisant enough of the fact that humans are going to be shitty one way or another, and religion has almost no bearing on whether one is a good person or not. As such, I do think he has a lot of plotting potential for those characters following a different faith, and it’s fun to see how that might all play out.

three bullet-points.

Giancarlo di Gian Gastone de’ Medici is born a stain of shame. Birthed by a servant-girl and the man from whom his name marks out as his progenitor, he is kept by his father as a spare heir—only to be tossed away when a legitimate one finally comes. In this act, his father has taught him the harsh realities of life: one minute, you can have everything in front of you; the next, it all comes crashing down with nothing to show for it. He is left with no security save that which his father carved out for him: mastery of an abbey at twelve years of age and, from there, the religious life. There was nothing else for him. There is nothing else to him.

Giancarlo takes to the intellectual and monastic life quite quickly. His learning under humanist tutors in the household of his father has enabled him to take quickly to reading dense texts that speak of grand contexts. It helps that he is good with languages, and that he is friendly to everyone he meets. How bright his career would be, some would say, before adding: if only he wasn’t illegitimate. And so that stain of shame that adorned the Medici family history now mars his own future: he was always going to be a mistake, and the world will never let him forget it.

He is, by all accounts, a very disenchanted man who works himself through a façade of mustered charm gathered from who-knows-where with his mind an utter repository of Scripture and theological concepts. He can quote from Papal Bulls enacted centuries ago as easily as if they had been dictated to him just that moment; yet he always says it so drily that you’d think he’s mocking the words he’s citing. He’s in the habit of mentioning what kind of sins one is doing but always concludes it with a small note of how God is a forgiving God. He delights in the company of the wicked and the infamous; truly good people disgust him. He thinks God is present more in ugliness than any kind of beauty exemplified in art and song, and that He is dirt-covered, bloody and bruised, made with mulch and rot and diseased flesh. His God is filthy; it is only natural. We all fashion God into the form that would accept us the most.

character sheet.

FULL NAME :  giancarlo di gian gastone de’ medici TITLES :  

commander of badia fiorentina ( from 1420 - 1428 )

commander and rector of badia fiorentina ( from 1428 onwards )

metropolitan archbishop of florence ( from 1446 onwards  )

master of the sacred apostolic palace ( from 1450 onwards )

BIRTHPLACE :  florence, italian peninsula

AGE : fifty, b. 10 november 1407

LANGUAGES : fluent — italian ( tuscan ), french, ancient greek, latin, arabic, spanish, german, bavarian ; conversational — english, portuguese ; learning — ottoman turkish, farsi / persian

DYNASTY / HOUSE: house de’ medici

MOTHER & FATHER : unnamed servant girl & gian gastone de’ medici

SPOUSE : none

ISSUE : none

SIBLINGS : giovanni, lucrezia, and girolamo ( half-siblings )

OTHER : lorenzo de’ medici ( tbd )

ZODIAC : scorpio sun / sagittarius moon / scorpio rising

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION : roman catholicism

ORIENTATION : bisexual biromantic ( with a medium to high preference for his own gender )

PERSONALITY TYPE : estj-a / choleric-sanguine / enneagram tbd / slytherin

VICES : everything

VIRTUES : knowledge can be and is a virtue but not with giancarlo, babyyyyy

FACECLAIM : jude law

HEIGHT : 6′1″ or 1.85m

RECOGNISABLE FEATURES : kindly-seeming blue eyes that speaks to unfathomable depths — look too closely, and you just might find yourself falling in them; an ever-present smile that can turn earnest or mocking depending on the conversation; a smug demeanour that you can’t help but feel that he thinks he knows better than you

REPUTATION IN PORTUGAL :  a famed master theologian but also a widely known libertine, giancarlo both attracts and repulses the whole of christendom with his easy smiles, his kindly-looking blue eyes, and the power of the storied lineage that has produced him. for all those who’ve had the chance to coalesce in rome—or perhaps even the italian peninsula—his name will revoke memories of scandalised whispers erupting from people huddled in corners as soon as they see him make entry into a room. portugal as of yet is a new frontier, not for reasons of lack of opportunity but due to lack of interest. after all, why stray from that eternal city whose glory is sung in ancient ballads and whose place in the world is the envy of millions? now that he is here, however, he is more than eager to make his mark.

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

i sought whom my soul loves — were giancarlo any other man, they could have been together, a couple enjoined in the warm embrace of love and unity; yet, alas, the Church has bound giancarlo to herself, and he is a weak and foolish man who cannot find himself able to stand up to anybody. ever since then, their meetings have been few and far between—but no less precious to giancarlo, no less treasured, no less sought for.  :::  (  open to anyone, preferably female but any gender can technically work !  )

a young deer on the mountains of Bether — arcadian idyll had been the theme of their shared years, wild and wandering, when responsibility had been a far off concept that seemed as foreign as greying hair and the yoke of adulthood. they frolicked in sun-kissed green-topped hills and ran as carefree as the wind. now they are old, both with their respective offices, and there is nothing else to them save nostalgia over lost innocence—if they had innocence at all.  :::  ( open to anyone of the same age range as giancarlo !  )

beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun —  a look at them and they’re like fourteen again, dumbstruck and awed, ashamed of his own lowly station and the stain of his origins—yet now they are old, and they have significantly more resources available to them now than they had before. giancarlo has always loved what he has thought is lacking within himself; he has always sought the true, the good, and the beautiful. he deludes himself into thinking he’s found it in god, but he is about to discover he’s wrong.  :::  ( open to anyone !  )  

with my royal people’s chariots — people have the propensity to think that giancarlo’s last name and relative wealth and status makes him the gatekeeper to the pope’s favour. he does not think himself as holding the keys to anything, but he lets other people do—mainly because it affords him the simulation of power the likes of which he only imagined as a child. of course, there is no real backing to the promises he says he’ll fulfil for them, but it is a merry show nonetheless and a piece of theatre that giancarlo’s keen to continue in lisboa.  :::  ( open to anyone who’s looking to curry favour with the pope !  )  

you who dwell in the gardens — there are many blooms in the garden of God’s creation and it is not a stretch to say giancarlo is absolutely besotted with the idea of experiencing all of them. this meet in lisbon might prove to be a more fortuitous moot than the one in florence, and he is always keen to start dialogue with any and all those who would like to exchange knowledge for knowledge’s sake, even those that the rest of christendom would not welcome.  :::  ( open to non-christian characters !  )  

the shadows flee away — giancarlo isn’t known for moderation and temperance; he has always been one driven to excess, and he has never toned down his appetites for the sake of any cause or person. he is a flit of a thing, a butterfly eager to sap the nectar out of any willing flower before moving to the next, willing to spill honey-laced words out of cherubic lips if that is what it took to mark one as his next conquest. in this, he has doubtless transgressed against many, and there are some whose memories run long and whose desire for correction would cover even those who are consecrated to God.  :::  ( open to anyone !  )   

[thoughtsfrommareincognitum]

24 hours to go.

Surely we must be dreaming. Can the election really be tomorrow? I write with full awareness of how absurd it is to try to say anything about what is about to happen. In less than 48 hours, anything I write here will look either obvious or stupid. The closer the election gets, the harder it is to imagine what the world will look like the day after Tuesday. Donald Trump's presence in politics is like a distorting mirror at a carnival; he makes it impossible to see reality for what it is. Once a garishly strange anomaly in our politics, he has made it nearly impossible to imagine our politics without him. 

Half the people I know don't believe the polls. They believe, without wanting to, that Trump will somehow pull off the impossible and land a second four years in the White House. They worry, not unreasonably, that Trump's loyal goons will simply steal the election for him. They rightly dread the outcome if any disputed results wind up before the Supreme Court, now dominated by right-wing fanatics. Perhaps the most crushing possible outcome is the one nobody even wants to think about: The polls turn out to be horribly wrong and Trump simply wins, without any need to cheat. 

I don't think this will happen. I dread the thought of enduring Tuesday night as much as anyone, but I dread it in the sense that you might feel your stomach lurch walking through a dark, deserted house at midnight, even when you don't believe that there are any phantoms waiting to jump you. I think that Joe Biden will win. I think he will take the country in a different direction, one that will eventually make the last four years seem like an evil dream. If a Biden presidency is currently unimaginable, it is because Trump has made the normal world of American politics, good and bad, seem as remote as the Russia of the Czars. 

Trump's total dominance over every aspect of our public life—wherever you look, there he is—has made it harder to perceive that his political hopes are becoming more diminished every day. FiveThirtyEight now reckons that Trump has a 10 percent chance of winning the election; on the eve of the 2016 election, they gave him a 28.6 percent chance of winning. The difference here is more drastic than it might look at first glance. Last time, Trump had better than a 1 in 4 chance of winning; now, he has a 1 in 10 chance of winning. This is "roughly the same as the odds that it’s raining in downtown Los Angeles," the site charmingly notes. To put it more bluntly, if the polls turn out to be exactly as wrong as they were last time, Biden would still win the election. 

We shouldn't forget that Trump's victory in 2016, as shocking as it was, was always less inexplicable than we wanted to believe. Remembering this makes it easier to understand the difference between then and now. In the summer of 2016, Trump pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton in the polls. In 2020, Trump has never, even once, pulled ahead of Joe Biden. Clinton's candidacy was fatally damaged in the final two weeks of the race by FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress, which caused several key states to flip to Trump. With 48 hours to go until Tuesday, no comparable scandal has appeared to beset Biden. Trump in 2016 was a political unknown with a blank record; Trump in 2020 is a sickeningly familiar quantity whose latest year in office has consisted of one national emergency after another, all of them handled with singular incompetence. People hate him as they have hated no other president in my lifetime. The only people I know who genuinely hate Joe Biden are left-wingers who plan to vote for him anyway. 

But the most important thing is this: As false as they were, Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton worked. People believed them. The attacks on Biden haven't worked. No reasonable person believes that Biden is "senile." And nothing will ever persuade any intelligent person that Biden, a man with a 46-year career of moderate politics, is a bloodthirsty socialist who has spent half a century dreaming of the day when he can abolish private property and send his enemies to the gulag. Even Trump's nickname for Biden, "Sleepy Joe," is one of the weakest in his arsenal. Has anyone in the last 200,000 years ever disliked another person for being “sleepy”? 

A number of observers have insisted that we shouldn't believe the polls, that many people will simply lie to pollsters about whether or not they plan to vote for Trump. In my experience, Trump supporters are more outspoken about their love of their candidate than any other supporters of any candidate I have ever encountered. If any candidate gets the benefit of anyone’s secret support, I suspect it will be Biden, whom much of the political left regards as beneath contempt, just as they despised Clinton, Kerry, Gore, and—though some of them wouldn't admit it—Obama before him. This phenomenon ought to be familiar to anyone who has lived through more than one election. We are always hearing how this year's candidate is the worst one we've had since the candidate we had four years ago, who was even more awful than the previous one, who was a real comedown from the guy who ran before him, who wasn't any good to begin with. 

As Robert Kennedy once lamented to a reporter in private, there are a disturbing number of liberals who would rather lose than win, as long as they can lose with their ideals intact. So let us never forget the single most important thing to know about politics in this country: the point of elections is to win. Without political power, we cannot accomplish anything. When Republicans get a candidate they don't really like, they grit their teeth and vote for them anyway. For once, we should emulate them. 

If Biden wins, he will take office in a country that is broken in every sense of the word. The damage runs far deeper than a ruined economy or a pandemic with no end in sight. Most Americans no longer trust their government; if a vaccine were magically developed tomorrow, one in every three people would refuse to take it. Most Americans no longer trust the press, the courts, or any other political institution. Worst of all, we distrust each other—a situation that leaves us vulnerable to the mercies of the first clever demagogue who hits upon the right formula for setting us at each other's throats. In 2016, it was Donald Trump; next time, it might be someone worse. 

With lack of trust comes cynicism, and with cynicism comes indifference. Why pay attention to something you can’t do anything about? I know people who refuse to discuss what they call "politics" at all. None of my business, they say. Doesn’t make any sense. Too controversial. I listen to these conversations with something close to despair. If politics is none of our business, then our rulers really do rule us with impunity, and the most we can hope for from our government is to be left alone. If this is the case, then democracy is nothing but a pleasant fantasy that we use to ease the burden of living in an authoritarian state. If the public no longer cares about having a democracy, then we will not have a democracy for long. 

I can imagine scenarios where we climb our way out of this morass, where we restore some semblance of public spirit to this deeply damaged country. But all of those scenarios rest on the disappearance of Donald Trump from our public life. So let us wait and see. 

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

2099 Alpha #1 Thoughts

This was a confusing set of teaser trailers.

This is partially a post covering the issue and a rant about the entire premise of the series.

Throughout this comic book (and F4 2099) one prevailing question kept crossing my mind.

 “Who is this even for?”

 It was a question that became louder when I looked at both the cover and the blurb at the back explaining how this project came to be about.

 Matthew Rosenberg, author of the most controversial and derided X-Men run in recent memory (so you know that bodes well), pointed out that 2019 was both the 80th anniversary of Marvel comics (even though most people would argue Marvel truly started in 1961 with F4 #1) and also 80 years away from the real life year 2099.

 The idea was dismissed but then Nick Spencer decided he liked it and after one thing led to another this event was born.

 This event being a ‘reimagining’ of the 2099 universe but with ‘a similar methodology’ to the original 1992 line (that is to say avoiding the ‘common traps’ of descendants of known characters*), with a mind towards how the future was perceived in 2019 vs. 1992.

 Right off the bat there are inherent problems with that entire premise.

 First of all the original 2099 line presented a version of the future that if anything is MORE relevant now than it was in 1992.

 Futurism in any era is never just one thing, but the futurism of 2019 is generally speaking understandably cynical and nihilistic. It’s a world which foresees a future where there isn’t even an illusion of freedom, where the gap between rich and poor has grown even wider than it already is with little-no feasible way to close it, where corporations run the show (more openly than they already do) and where environmental disaster is ravaging mankind if not having already wiped it out. This is to say nothing of a world where artificial intelligence and mechanisation will probably compromise a lot of people’s employment opportunities, and pose direct physical and mental dangers to human lives.

 That is the general ethos of how a lot of people and a lot of fiction reflects the future NOWDAYS. And that’s what the 2099 was doing in 1992! Not only was the line set in the future it was literally ahead of it’s time as the world we live in if anything has grown to reflect it more and more.

  Secondly when you are approaching the notion of making a futuristic version of Spider-Man and the Punisher in the year 2099 and applying the same ‘methodology’ as the LAST time someone tried to make a futuristic version of Spider-Man and the Punisher in the year 2099 the results at best are not going to be that different, rendering the exercise pointless. In fact in all likelihood you are going to be worse or at least derivative. Even if you are not the fact that the 2099 line resonated with people enough for it to continually pop up every so often for nearly 30 years means that your new take is unlikely to hold up to people’s nostalgia.

 And make no mistake, this is a project that exists for nostalgia. It doesn’t exist just for the sake of exploring a possible future for the Marvel universe, otherwise why revive a popular and famous Marvel brand to do it?

 And therein lies my fundamental question.

 If this project exists because people are already invested in 2099 then why reboot it and thus mitigate their emotional investment?

 Nostalgic 2099 fans don’t simply want to see any iteration of these characters. They want something at least mostly in line with the original 1992 iteration, which is why when Spidey 2099 was scheduled for a spin-off in 2014 the fandom spoke with one voice, they wanted Peter David back. And whilst the iteration of Miguel and 2099 as a whole he presented was not identical to the 1992 version(s) it was at least a helluva lot closer than 2009’s Timestorm (a pathetic attempt to essentially do Ultimate 2099) and wound up being more successful as a result.

 This is literally the exact mistake the Nu52 made in that it erased the iterations of the DC characters and DC universe people knew and loved and replaced it with new versions (‘coincidentally’ closer to the versions the DC higher ups knew and loved as kids). It alienated readers to the point where DC Rebirth practically reverse rebooted the Nu52, rendering the characters much closer to their pre-Nu52 counterparts, and in Superman’s case having the pre-Nu52 Superman literally replace his successor.

 With the 2099 event though the attempt at rebooting is even more wrongheaded considering that this isn’t even a lasting universe that might in theory develop new readers over time. It’s a string of connected one shots associated with a Spider-Man story arc. If there is any aftermath to this event at all it will be fairly minimal and at most follow Miguel O’Hara.

 And that brings up the other end of this event’s problems. This holds little appeal to (the already miniscule number of) potential newer fans.

 Consider how this event started. You are a newer fan reading Spencer’s ASM run. You pick up issue #25 and randomly this other Spider-Man looking guy you maybe recognize from some video games and the post-credits scene from Into the Spider-Verse shows up, looking half dead.

 For less than 20 pages across 3 issues you follow him stumbling about spouting nonsense before he delivers some weird line about possible futures (that you’ll only understand if you already know about the 2099 lines) and then he blows up.

 Okay, at best you get the idea. He is a Spider-Man from the future and the present day has erased his future, that’s bad.

 Then you pick this up and you maybe figure out that this Miguel character in this comic book is in fact the same guy, or a VERSION of the same guy you met back in ASM. That’s confusing. It’s confusing because you need to deduce that this issue is the newly rewritten timeline, making your investment in the preceding ASM issues kinda pointless. It might also be confusing because time travel stories tend to be confusing unless written with a lot of clarity.

 But say you just picked THIS up, maybe because you recognized Spidey 2099 on the cover (and god forbid you picked it up due to recognizing the classic 2099 characters).

 Spencer in this comic book doesn’t write a story. He writes a series of teaser vignettes strung together by the Watcher and Doom spouting a load of cryptic nonsense.

 Nothing is explained, nothing is clearly conveyed, the world building is quite frankly awful, you merely get an impression  of this future, you are not actually organically introduced to much of anything. In comparison the first few issues of Spider-Man 2099 already gave you a great idea of what this world of the future was like.

 It’s not just that the presentation is bad and thus likely to alienate newer readers (I was lost with it and I’m familiar with the older 2099 stuff to a degree) but it’s also frankly inferior to the 1992 rendition of the future.

 Perhaps the 1992 Marvel line wasn’t the single most original vision of the future ever conceived, but it at least combined older ideas together and presented a consistent vision. Perhaps the microcosm of the 1992’s vision of the future was the notion of the ravaged ruins of old New York being the foundations upon which new super sky scrapers were built, the rich literally living above the poor.

 But this issue never brings that up, it doesn’t bring up the narrative and literal foundations of the world this takes place in. My personal impression was that this 2099 doesn’t even incorporate such an idea.  It’s a microcosm of how off the rails this reboot is.

 Everything feels downright generic sans the city of traffic and the colony of Thor/Asgardian worshippers.

 Even those are derivative though. Transverse City rips off (a much better executed) idea from a 2007 episode of Doctor Who ‘Gridlock’ which is regarded as something of a modern classic by fans.  And the Thor worshippers was something that came directly from the original 1992 2099 line, but weirdly is being used to tease...Conan the Barbarian???????? Conan hasn’t got anything to do with Thor besides coming from a warrior background. It might as well be Silver Samurai!

 Perhaps the best microcosm of this issue’s failings at world building and presentation, can be found in the opening scene.

 In the scene Thor’s hammer is frequently relocated and seems to be maybe or maybe not moving on it’s own volition. That isn’t to say the story is building in mystery as to whether or not it is moving on it’s own. It’s just that poorly conveyed to the audience. I honestly have little idea what was happening in that scene sans the authorities going to war with Thor’s worshippers.

 The scene also contains a microcosm of this book being for nobody. In said scene a police officer gets their face revealed and is referred to as ‘Jake’. If you didn’t already realize it, this is Jake Gallows, Punisher 2099. He does nothing else in the course of the issue beyond get injured fight and tell his friend a confusing police story. Then the issue ends teasing him as Punisher 2099.

 Like I said nostalgic 2099 fans will be turned off by this on principle because it’s not the character you know and love (his costume will also be different too) but if you are a newer reader...what are you even supposed to make of this? He’s just a random cop, it might as well have been his cop buddy who was the Punisher. It was at best a lame first impression.

And that’s true of virtually EVERY character teased in this comic exempting maybe Ghost Rider 2099.

He at least got a little more personality, you got a little more insight into how he operates, but only as a normal guy not as anything associated with the classic Ghost Rider or the 2099 counterpart you know and love.

Miguel’s background was confusing as he seems to already have his powers but is chummy with his dickhead boss/Dad/archnemesis Tyler Stone and the brief flashbacks to his origin are both different to the original 2099 line and nonsensical.

Conan didn’t even appear to my recollection but he’s still teased.

And the F4 tease was laughable as it didn’t even feature the F4 but rather HERBIE and a newly imagined take on Venture, effectively the first super villain of the 2099 line.

When this event was announced I was sad that Peter David was uninvolved.

But now I see why.

They didn’t want him involved and this is frankly an insult to his and the other 2099 creators’ works.

Don’t read this.

*Gotta love that subtle shade thrown out at the MC2 universe, a universe which lasted longer than the original 2099 line and you know....was way better than this reimagining has been so far. Why does modern Marvel punch down on Spider-Girl.

[homestuck-session-analysis]

How would a session with a seer of space, witch of light, sylph of rage, rouge of breath, heir of hope, and a mage of void go?

Thanks you for sending this ask, because not only is it 50% Modfic (a 5 year old aspect-swap fansession between the past mods of the blog which you can read here then read subsequent chapters through the sidebar), but it also has the Sylph of Rage, which is the first time it was requested on this blog!  Here it is:

Seer of Space

Personality: Seers are exceedingly intelligent, bright, and calculating.  They are the people who seem to be wise beyond their years, though they are often afflicted with hubris.  As a Space player, they would come off as a dispassionate observer with an uncanny awareness of things happening around them, as well as someone with a phenomenal artistic and creative sense.  They very much are the tortured artist, and I can envision them struggling with creative block.

Abilities: The Seer of Space would get visions of other locations.

Session Contribution: This player basically knows everything that’s happening at any given time.  The Space player’s quest calls them to breed the Genesis Frog, and knowing where it is will definitely be a big advantage!Witch of Light

Personality: Witches tend to find themselves in societies or situations where they are dissatisfied, which makes them strong revolutionaries and visionaries.  Their rebellious nature causes them to change their aspect in ways inconceivable to others.  As a Light player, this personality manifests as a scientist or a philosopher, someone who works toward the expansion of knowledge.  They may also be a philanthropist or a charity worker, helping the less fortunate succeed!  Witches are only satisfied when their vision is realized, which is not always possible.

Abilities:  The Witch of Light would be able to manipulate people’s knowledge and fortune, though they tend to inform, rather than learn.

Session Contribution:  This player can be very helpful when your session is missing observation classes, and can only serve to augment when it isn’t!Sylph of Rage

Personality: Sylphs are people who have a great sense of someone’s potential, and they tend to be driven to help in any way possible.  This can make them seem to be incredibly nosy and a little annoying, but they have nothing but good intentions.  As a Rage player, they are proficient in making people feel better about themselves by getting them pissed off at others.  For example, if someone just got out of an abusive relationship and feels bad about it, the Sylph would help them realize that their ex was abusive and hurt them, allowing them to get over it easier and redirect their energy toward hating them.  Their biggest weakness is that they can’t seem to grasp when something is a lost cause.  

Abilities: The Sylph of Rage has a grating way of bringing about happiness through anger, and this will likely manifest as healing powers triggered by pissing people off.

Session Contribution: Healer~ though they might hurt your loyalty stat.  I can also see them as a great fighter.Rogue of Breath

Personality: Rogues are very selfless people, as they share a worldview with Robin Hood.  Their strong sense of justice and equality makes them easy to talk to, as they are very respectful.  They are also very spunky and ready to do what’s right!  As a Breath player, they would be very inspiring, calling for justice and motivating others to join their cause.  Sometimes, the Rogue puts themself into danger to right a wrong, so make sure they understand that it’s okay that life isn’t always fair.

Abilities: Allocating Breath means that the Rogue would be able to transfer their enemies’ energy and momentum (not the physics kind) to their allies.

Session Contribution: If there’s a plan, the Rogue will be a great person to unify everyone to complete that plan.Heir of Hope

Personality: Heirs tend to come off as very dumb, but a more accurate term would be happy-go-lucky.  They are very much a representation of “ignorance is bliss,” for they tend to grow up very sheltered and secure, especially under by aspect.  As a Hope player, this player would be so optimistic that they would have no concept of danger or distrust.  That makes them one of the most powerful Heirs possible.  Heirs tend to struggle with change, as they tend to get comfortable with where they are.

Abilities: If they don’t believe they can die, then they won’t die.  Heirs manipulate the world based on their instinct, and as a Hope player, they are able to manipulate the world based on what they believe it is or should be.

Session Contribution: There is only one Heir that surpases this one in survivability, and it is the Heir of Light.  They are extremely powerful and will be one of your biggest assets.Mage of Void

Personality: Mages tend to be very intelligent and bright, but also tend to be jaded and cynical.  However, they gain their knowledge through experiences, often painful ones.  As a Void player, this person is likely often forgotten or neglected in some way, or often harmed because they’re accidentally left in the dark, allowing them to learn how to properly use their Void powers!

Abilities: The Mage of Void gains knowledge of secrets and mysteries for their own benefit, so I believe they would be a master manipulator, using secrets to pull strings, or perhaps a true magician, using hidden, forbidden knowledge to wield black magic.

Session Contribution: This Mage is a wild card, so if you can manage it, try to make their learning experiences pleasant.  Otherwise, they can really mess your shit up.  Overall, this player is rather offensively focused for an observation class.

Interpersonal Dynamics

Holy Fuck if you want your team to survive please for the love of God keep your Sylph as far away from your Mage as possible.  The Sylph will only accelerate your Mage’s going rogue.

The Witch would be very helpful to your Mage and Seer, but furthermore I can see the Witch and Mage being very close.

The Heir is all for the Rogue’s antics.

The Sylph and the Seer may be able to scratch each other’s back.  Sylph motivates the Seer, Seer helps the Sylph find people who need help.  This also applies to Rogue and Seer, in almost the exact same way.

The Rogue and the Sylph can’t stand each other.

Session Overview

Leader: Rogue of Breath, hands down.

Offense: Rogue and Mage at the least, possibly also Sylph.  Not immensely strong, but still pretty good.

Survival: You have a healer, but they could be a bit of an arsonist in a metaphor where fire represents distrust and tension between players.

Foresight: Your Seer knows all (in the present) and your Mage knows everything else (in the present), but your lack of Time player hurts your ability to see things (in the future).

Loyalty: Sylph hurts this, but the Rogue can bring everyone back together.

Breeding: The Seer of Space is pretty good at breeding, since they’ll know where the necessary frogs will be.  When it comes to helping, I’d say the Witch would be the most useful.  Maybe the Mage, too.

Overall: Either this will go great or awful.  Just keep your team cohesion up and support each other!

]>>Maso

[milfymissy]

Capricorn Moon & Aquarius Moon

Here’s the thing: Capricorn and Aquarius, both ruled by Saturn.

They can either get along like wildfire or drift apart if one, or both, neglects the other. Each will need to learn of the other and see if they’re willing to fulfill each other’s needs. This also depends on their charts. If they have other aspects and other compatible planets, all the better.

Capricorn’s natural love to learn will get along greatly with Aquarius Moons intellect, knowledge, & wisdom- as Capricorn always strives to better and know more in general, Aquarius can offer that, insight and new info. The problem comes when neither is willing to compromise.

Capricorn offers stability and grounding to restless Aquarius- and Aqua will greatly appreciate their care. Know that Aquarius loves praise, compliments. After all, they do show amazing qualities that demand such actions. If Capricorn allows themselves, they can admire and see these beautiful qualities Aqua has. Aquarius then, once appreciated will not mind and will be more than happy to notice and praise Capricorn’s authority, strength, and other qualities. Capricorn does love a good pat on the back, if he doesn’t, just like Aqua he can feel disrespected. Capricorn’s hardworking and strong nature obviously deserves this as well. If both make effort to notice the positive things of another, show & communicate appreciation, both will be able to relax and blossom. Let’s only hope this pair both see it.

This can be a VERY good match despite being opposite elements. After all, they do come from the same ruler; Saturn. Most times, Capricorn Moon with Aquarius Moon is a match between two people who may emotionally tend to be miles apart (depends how this aspects to the rest of their planets). Capricorn Moon cherishes tradition and they enjoy doing what they know, and they often stick to their routine (this can be detrimental or good depending on what their mindset is. Same goes for Aqua). Aquarius Moon longs to break free from tradition and values change. Capricorn Moon is conservative while Aquarius Moon is unconventional. Both may tend to be unaware of their own emotional needs, and they need to be more in touch with their feelings. If both have achieved this, the relationship will be great. If one, or worse, both, are detached from their feelings and one can’t seem to make it work- this relationship will wither rapidly. At best, Aquarius Moon brightens the day of Capricorn Moon, and Capricorn Moon sets boundaries, and helps ground Aquarius Moon. At worst, they may not have these traits and quietly drift apart, not even knowing what is happening before they are both miles apart.

At best, Cap is in awe and values Aquas intelligence, radical problem solving and innovative thinking, while Aqua is in awe and values Caps strong, hard working nature, and ambition. (When combined together can be amazing.) Capricorn Moon and Aquarius Moon have a good chance of having a successful relationship. This chance increases if both partners are willing to be more sincere and considerate of the other. They often have different dreams and desires, but if they are both willing to make it work, it can be done- and clashing these two worlds can make a paradise with differences that need each other. “Ying-Yang” you can say.

Capricorn Moon is serious and may be rather cynical, negative, and pessimistic. This can cause them to lead very lonely lives. They don't show their emotions and would rather not show any vulnerability either.

Aquarius Moon is exuberant, optimistic and sociable. However, they intellectualize their feelings and depending on the chart, can be unaware of their own emotional needs, let alone those of their partner.

They both want to succeed, though they have different goals. Capricorn wants to attain advancement and security, while Aquarius wants to change the world. Capricorn enjoys a traditional relationship, unfortunately may sometimes be resistant to change. Aquarius resists the traditional and wants to try new things, unfortunately may sometimes be unwilling.

Both partners may feel inhibited when together if they don’t work things out clearly. They will have to put effort to overcome these differences. Both partners may have difficulties when it comes to letting their emotions out. This can lead to a lot of resentment or hurt feelings because the other just doesn't understand what is wrong. When they do make this relationship work, it can be pretty good, however. If they feel inclined to work at it, they can complement each other nicely.

[astreetcarnamedwynn]

bnha rewatch: episode 5

I’m taking advantage of my last bit of summer free time to go hard on the BNHA rewatch. If you’d like to read the previous analysis, either check out the ‘bnha rewatch’ tag on this post, or you can read them on AO3 (my account link is at the top of my Tumblr).

For episode five, I focus on how Aizawa completes the Adult Version of the All Might dichotomy (along with Present Mic; Bakugou and Midoriya complete the Kid Version), and how the last big hero requirement comes fully to the fore (power, heart, and head).

“What I Can Do for Now”

If Bakugou and Midoriya are at the opposite ends of the All Might Spectrum: Kid’s Version (win to save and save to win), then Present Mic and Eraserhead are their adult counterparts. Not in the same way, of course. Their dichotomy isn’t winning and saving. Instead, it’s the spotlight and the shadow, or how heroism should be conducted in society.

Previous episodes have touched on this theme. Right from the start, you have Mt. Lady catering to the spotlight (or the camera flashes in this case). Both Toshinori and Midoriya comment on how heroes focus on doing what they can to capture the spotlight in order to sustain their careers. We see Toshinori doing this when he plays the consummate ALL MIGHT after saving Midoriya from the sludge villain. Mic’s introduction ramps up and then subverts this idea. UA uses him to perform a clever hidden assessment of the true nature of these applicants, to see how many of them truly have a selfless, heroic nature.

Part of Midoriya’s arc since he first meets All Might is to have the Wizard of Oz-esque curtain pulled back on the hero world and to learn the truth about what it really means to be a hero. He’s the ultimate fanboy at the start, dazzled by everything heroic. And then the curtain vanishes in a puff of smoke, and Midoriya meets Toshinori, he sees the awful consequences of heroism, both physically in Toshinori’s horrific scar but also mentally/emotionally in how cynical and beaten down Toshinori has become.

Eraserhead (or Aizawa as he will subsequently be referred) takes this schooling to the next level. I LOVE his two introductions. In the first, as other UA faculty discusses the results of the exam, he’s lurking in the background, a silent shadow. He’s defined by dark colors- black and grey- the opposite of the dazzlingly colorful Mic and All Might. In his second introduction, he’s so unassuming that Midoriya, Uraraka, and Iida don’t even know he’s there until he finally speaks. He proclaims his dislike for ceremony, and All Might explains how he hates the media, how he hates the spotlight, for interfering in heroism: he “judges celebrity heroes like All Might.” And Aizawa repeatedly takes Class 1-A to task for not taking heroism seriously, first by chastising Uraraka for focusing on making friends rather than on studying, and then by chastising Mina and Sero for viewing the quirk assessment test as a fun game. To Aizawa, heroing is serious business, not flashy entertainment.

And what is needed for a hero to conduct the serious business of heroism? Power, but not just power. In a callback to the start of episode one and Midoriya’s statement about all men not being created equal, Aizawa tells Class 1-A, “The country’s still trying to pretend we’re all created equal by not allowing those with the most power excel. It’s not rational. One day the Ministry of Education will learn.” With this kind of statement, it seems like Aizawa thinks power is what is most important to being a hero, yet his beef with Midoriya disproves this idea. He’s not salty about Midoriya because he lacks power. He’s salty about Midoriya because Midoriya has power, but he can’t control it or use it effectively. Power without control is brute destruction. Aizawa says as much to Midoriya in this episode: despite all his power, Midoriya would be a liability on the battlefield because he can’t use it for any sustained, meaningful purpose. “With your power,” Aizawa says, “there’s no way you can become a hero.”

I LOVE THIS.

How great is this parallel to the first few episodes? All Midoriya heard his entire life is, “Without any power, there’s no way you can become a hero.” And now he has power, but it’s not enough. You need more to become a hero. The first four episodes explore how a selfless, helpful heart is needed. It’s Midoriya trying to save Bakugou that impresses Toshinori. It’s Midoriya trying to save Uraraka that impresses both Iida and the judges. In this episode, it’s the other aspect of Midoriya that takes center stage and shows why he does have what it takes to become a hero: his sharp mind.

Aizawa talks about how heroes need to be able to use their quirks creatively. They need to be smart and adaptable because, as he bluntly says, “life isn’t fair.” They need to be prepared for the worst that life has to offer. The two 1-A students that either state or show their sharp mind and quirk adaptability in this episode (aside from Midoriya) are Bakugou and Uraraka. Bakugou outright declares that his quirk has the most uses out of anyone’s (even though he likely doesn’t even know what all his classmates, particularly Momo and Todoroki, can do). But he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak. An explosion quirk seems like it would only be good for destruction, yet Bakugou uses it to increase his speed and height while running and jumping, and he uses it like the triggered explosion of a gun to propel the testing ball away from him (without blowing up the ball). Uraraka isn’t as boasty, but she shows how her quirk can be used for more than just battle. She lightens her clothes and shoes and does well in the race, and of course, she defeats everyone in the ball throw with her power.

Aizawa said that this assessment is of their quirks, but it’s really of the students’ intelligence. How many different ways can they find to use their quirks in non-combat, non-destructive situations? When all it seems like Midoriya can do is destroy himself when using his quirk, Aizawa is dismissive. And yet that’s not all there is to Midoriya. We saw that in episode two. Midoriya had absolutely no power with which to fight the sludge villain. As he runs to save Bakugou, he uses his sharp mind. He strategizes. His heroic fanboying becomes something substantial as he turns his knowledge into an actionable plan, and it works. He gives Bakugou a chance to breathe, to keep living, long enough for All Might to come. Midoriya demonstrates that same sharp mind here as well. He can’t use his quirk in his entire arm or he’ll break it and he won’t be able to continue at UA, so he’ll “do what he can,” pour the power through one finger, and win. Aizawa’s manic grin when Midoriya turns to him, broken but still standing, is a thing of terrifying beauty.

You need power to be a hero, but you also need heart and a cool head, which is why eventually Horikoshi will elevate Todoroki to the position of tritagonist (third main character). Though Bakugou, Midoriya, and Todoroki possess all of these aspects to varying degrees, they each represent one more than the others at the start: Bakugou → power, Midoriya → heart, and Todoroki → intelligence.

[hamliet]

Procrastination = ([TGCF + Scum Villain] + [MBTI + Enneagram])

Brought to you by procrastination on an actual meta and a crack fanfic I wanna write. and a semi-functioning brain after a Week TM personally and professionally. 

I covered MDZS’s character personality types for the MBTI here and for the Enneagram here, and so now I really wanted to do both of these for the characters from Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System and TGCF. Except the thing is I have only read through 114 of TGCF (bless the translators) and there are still about 15 chapters left of Scum Villain, so because I feel like in an MXTX novel anything can happen to change my view of the characters and what they truly want (which is vital to the Enneagram), I’m only going to go with Enneagram for the main characters, but MBTI for everyone. 

For the MBT introI: The Myers-Briggs Personality type is older than the Enneagram, and consists of sixteen types based on four different pairs of personality traits: Introversion vs. Extroversion; Sensing vs. Intuition, Feeling vs. Thinking, and Perceiving vs. Judging. To be clear, none of these categories are black and white–for example, all Feelers are capable of using logic, and Thinkers have feelings and care about people–but it’s a cool way of understanding personalities.

For the Ennagream intro: The Enneagram classifies people based on their motivations and their fears into nine basic “types,” and each type also comes with a “wing” to an adjacent type (in other words, someone who is Type 1 can have a 2 wing or a 9 wing, etc.) Each type also has “arrows” meant to depict that as they grow, they grow in the direction of another type, and as they grow more stressed, they disintegrate towards yet another type. There are also “levels” of health within each type (Basic descriptions are taken from the Enneagram Institute.) 

Scum Villain

Shen QingQiu (Shen Yuan)-->INTJ, “The Architect” 

With a natural thirst for knowledge that shows itself early in life, Architects are often given the title of “bookworm” as children... Architects enjoy sharing what they know as well, confident in their mastery of their chosen subjects, but they prefer to design and execute a brilliant plan within their field rather than share opinions on “uninteresting” distractions like gossip... Architects are simultaneously the most starry-eyed idealists and the bitterest of cynics, a seemingly impossible conflict. But this is because Architect personalities tend to believe that with effort, intelligence and consideration, nothing is impossible, while at the same time they believe that people are too lazy, short-sighted or self-serving to actually achieve those fantastic results.

This sounds an awful lot like how SQQ judges everyone in the story. 

For the Enneagram, I’d say he’s a Type 5, “The Investigator.”

Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable

Basic Desire: To be capable and competent

Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.

Specifically I’d say he’s a 5 with a 6 wing, “The Problem Solver.” A 6′s core desire is for safety and support. 

Luo BingHe-->ESFJ “The Consul”

Consuls love to be of service, enjoying any role that allows them to participate in a meaningful way, so long as they know that they are valued and appreciated. This is especially apparent at home, and Consuls make loyal and devoted partners and parents. Consul personalities respect hierarchy, and do their best to position themselves with some authority, at home and at work, which allows them to keep things clear, stable and organized for everyone.

For the Ennagream, I’d say he’s a Type 3, “The Achiever.” 

Basic Fear: Of being worthless

Basic Desire: To feel valuable and worthwhile

Key Motivations: Want to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves from others, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.

I think he’s also more likely a 3w4, “The Professional.” A 4 is motivated to find themselves and their significance in the world, and can be... moody.

Liu QingGe-->ISTJ “The Logistician”

Logistician personalities are no-nonsense, and when they’ve made a decision, they will relay the facts necessary to achieve their goal, expecting others to grasp the situation immediately and take action. Logisticians have little tolerance for indecisiveness, but lose patience even more quickly if their chosen course is challenged with impractical theories.

Ning YingYing-->ENFP, The Campaigner 

The Campaigner personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike types in the Explorer Role group, Campaigners are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. 

Ming Fan-->ESTJ, “The Executive” 

they expect their reliability and work ethic to be reciprocated – people with this personality type meet their promises, and if partners or subordinates jeopardize them through incompetence or laziness, or worse still, dishonesty, they do not hesitate to show their wrath. 

Shang QingHua-->ISFP, “The Adventurer” 

Hilariously this is the same type I think Nie HuaiSang is, and I think Shang is pretty likely an HuaiSang prototype. 

Adventurers live in a colorful, sensual world, inspired by connections with people and ideas. These personalities take joy in reinterpreting these connections, reinventing and experimenting with both themselves and new perspectives.

Zu ZhiLang-->ISFJ, “The Defender”

The challenge for Defenders is ensuring that what they do is noticed. They have a tendency to underplay their accomplishments, and while their kindness is often respected, more cynical and selfish people are likely to take advantage of Defenders’ dedication and humbleness by pushing work onto them and then taking the credit. Defenders need to know when to say no and stand up for themselves if they are to maintain their confidence and enthusiasm.

While the story isn’t finished translation-wise, I feel like Snake Boy is likely an Enneagram 6, “The Loyalist,” but we shall see. 

TGCF/Heaven Official’s Blessing

Xie Lian–>INFJ, “The Advocate”

it is most important for Advocates to remember to take care of themselves. The passion of their convictions is perfectly capable of carrying them past their breaking point and if their zeal gets out of hand, they can find themselves exhausted, unhealthy and stressed...

To Advocates, the world is a place full of inequity – but it doesn’t have to be.

For the Enneagram, he is a 2, “The Helper.”  

Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved

Basic Desire: To feel loved

Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.

He’s likely a 2w3, “The Host.” 

Hua Cheng–>ISFJ, “The Defender.” 

Though sensitive, Defenders have excellent analytical abilities; though reserved, they have well-developed people skills and robust social relationships; and though they are generally a conservative type, Defenders are often receptive to change and new ideas. As with so many things, people with the Defender personality type are more than the sum of their parts, and it is the way they use these strengths that defines who they are.

For the Enneagram, I think he’s an 8, “The Challenger,” and specifically an 8w9, “The Bear.” 

Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others

Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life and destiny)

Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to prove their strength and resist weakness, to be important in their world, to dominate the environment, and to stay in control of their situation.

A 9′s basic fear is of loss and separation, and their internal desires is for peace of mind.

Shi Qing Xuan–> ENFP, “The Campaigner.”

My fave baby. 

they are perfectly capable of switching from a passionate, driven idealist in the workplace to that imaginative and enthusiastic free spirit on the dance floor, often with a suddenness that can surprise even their closest friends. Being in the mix also gives them a chance to connect emotionally with others, giving them cherished insight into what motivates their friends and colleagues. They believe that everyone should take the time to recognize and express their feelings, and their empathy and sociability make that a natural conversation topic.

Qi Rong–>ESFP, “The Entertainer” 

Entertainers love the spotlight, and all the world’s a stage... they love putting on a show for their friends too, chatting with a unique and earthy wit, soaking up attention and making every outing feel a bit like a party. Utterly social, Entertainers enjoy the simplest things, and there’s no greater joy for them than just having fun with a good group of friends.

Mu Qing–>ISTJ, “The Logistician”

people with the Logistician personality type often prefer to work alone, or at least have their authority clearly established by hierarchy, where they can set and achieve their goals without debate or worry over other’s reliability.

Logisticians have sharp, fact-based minds, and prefer autonomy and self-sufficiency to reliance on someone or something. Dependency on others is often seen by Logisticians as a weakness, and their passion for duty, dependability and impeccable personal integrity forbid falling into such a trap.

Fen Xing–>ESFJ, “The Consul” 

Consuls love to be of service, enjoying any role that allows them to participate in a meaningful way, so long as they know that they are valued and appreciated. 

[cosmosfated]

While getting things lined up on call, I came to the conclusion that Fleur could have turned out almost the same way as he is right now, while also running the possibility of ending up drastically different. There are specific events in his life both on this blog and on other sites that I’ve made “loose canon” and actual canon for him. They have built his entire personality and life thus far but they weren’t, in a way, necessary.

Events, in order:

The “agreement” explaining his abnormal “bad luck”*,

his original introduction / experience with the eldritch truth,

getting killed / set free by Sans // The TRUE RESET,

meeting Blair Black, Katie, and G*,

reaching the Surface (and the subsequent deals that followed),

meeting the family (specifically Whisper, Humerus, Lost, and Regina),

being freed from his keeper under what was essentially technicality*,

leaning more into his monstrous side / “reawakening” his madness,

and coming into contact with old faces from his home timeline.

which I realize is nine events but I had to include one other one, even if its overarching influence on him is... questionable at best.

───────────────

I need to make one thing very clear: Phoenix (celestialshifter) is a crucial part of Fleur’s development but I exclude her on the premise of I would have spoken to Nixxie far sooner than I would have spoken to Nini or Dez if left to my own devices and wasn’t yanked into the chaos by Nini herself. Therefore, Phoenix knowing Fleur and influencing him as she has would have been inevitable by proxy of understanding my own mind. How they influenced each other, that’s different.

─────────────

I’m going to continue this under the cut because oh boy, there’s a lot to cover and tackle. It’s not going to be pretty, either. Warning for a lot of dark themes and quite a bit of information for things Fleur has not spoken about but that I have known for quite some time. (His backstory is already exceptionally messed up, but decidedly there’s a warning for extra tidbits that have been hinted at but not explored, as it held no relevance to the thread or conversation.)

Now.

Going event by event, let’s start at the top.

───────────────

High Mages Annabeth and Samuel Jackson, one representing the trait of Integrity Self-Will and Bravery Audacity. They bring into existence a young girl, who they name Alexandra Maribel Lilly Jackson, bearing a soul of Kindness. Even at the time of her birth, she had been shown to be a favorite of the gods. Specifically the gods of innocence, hope, and justice. She had been blessed by the gods to be able to weather any unnatural force that came her way, but she had also been “blessed” with a terrible cynicism of the world. She would be an adult for longer than she would be a child. However, the gods had promised to give her a place to rest when her time came. 

And then they bring into existence another young girl, who they name Celine Vivian Jackson. Upon her birth, there is more power present. There is something bigger present. The gods, anybody could recognize the presence of the gods. But very few in that era would recognize the presence of the gods’ antithesis. Very few would recognize the eldritch gods and their watchers lurking just out of sight. At this point, the two parents had realized something both terrifying and power-hunger-inducing for the both of them. Their youngest had attracted the attention of the bigger cosmic entities, the ones that could end the world in a moment if they got bored enough, or could make anybody their plaything. But in the same vein, they wanted to keep her. As leverage, as a chip in the game, as a card in the deck to play whenever they felt like it.

As a result, a deal was made.

In return for letting them keep the child, the child will be kind, loyal, trusting, and obedient. The child would heed their commands and would view them as their entire world. Despite the child’s elder sister insisting otherwise, the child’s view of them would not change for as long as it is alive and with them. The child would be their perfect heir, smart and talented and beautiful.

However. When the time comes, as a response to allowing the gods to bless their firstborn instead of allowing them a chance to look at her- therefore rendering it impossible for them to get close to the girl blessed by many powerful beings, that child belongs to them. That child will leave them both empty and broken, hollow shells of the people they believe themselves to be, a product of their own pride and greed. That child will do the last thing they expect as a result of what they will inevitably become.

Without much thought into the details of the deal, the two Mages agree to this. Their newborn grows up kind, loyal, trusting, and obedient. They notice something strange right away as soon as the child turns three years old. They’re using magic. They knew, as a result of the reason why they were outcast from their underground/hidden magic circle (which was affiliating themselves with eldritch gods, considered not only taboo but absolute insanity by almost every still living Mage), that their magic could not be passed down to their kids. After all, their eldest never showed magic.

Of course, they brushed it off. They had no idea that the same child they were promised would be obedient and loyal would be the same child that smile at them as they sold the child off to their master’s watcher. Knowing full and well that the child was the one who would be the one to be the mastermind behind their untimely deaths at the hands of their own pride and greed.

A young girl, blessed by the gods with the ability to know justice through her kindness but cursed with fury and cynicism for what she knows. And a young child, blessed by something darker with the ability to not only use magic but to tap into their already gifted ability of harnessing the cosmos itself for whatever they so wished.

One blessed. One cursed.

One with extraordinary fortune. One with extraordinary misfortune.

One who dies of jealousy and greed, but remains out of desire for justice. One who dies of kindness and hope, but remains out of desire for revenge.

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Okay. Still with me? Now that you have the exposition and the first event down, let me explain why you needed to know this.

Maribel and Fleur are the yin and yang of their first life. 

Maribel is blessed by the gods because of her strong soul of Kindness, which infuriates the “master” that her parents serve (an Eldritch master, who didn’t take kindly to one of its subsequent belongings being torn from out underneath it). She is given so many blessings, but is given the “curse” of rage and cynicism. Therefore she represents yang, as it has the connotations of fire (which is a word often associated with her via other muses that know her, calling her personality fiery or feisty or flaring) as well as relating to Heaven and light. On top of that, she defines her trait of Kindness being “flexible” and an “easily misconstrued and abused” concept within their old world.

Fleur is “blessed” by the eldritch master his parents serve with kindness, loyalty, and a slew of other things to reflect his sister’s blessings. However, when it comes to his abilities, the eldritch master doesn’t have to do much. All it truly has to do is tilt its head at what was already there and step back to allow it to develop on its own. The intelligence, that was already there. The potential, that was already there. The magic, the power, everything. He had it from the very beginning. That’s why he was so desired that it alerted not just the gods to his existence but also the eldritch keepers lurking in the dark constantly. He represents yin, tying to his fondness for the ocean and nature itself, as well as being a generally calm person until you give him a reason to get back at you.

However, there is deliberately no mention of the soul, because his soul does not belong to him. Not yet, at least. His soul has already been laid claim to, which is something only the serving entity is aware of. Dismissing it as something to discuss with the others, this entity gives that deal as a loophole. The closing statement is its way of saying, “this child will be your undoing as retribution for allowing the gods to take what is rightfully mine”. Because now, this entity, this eldritch keeper, is aware of the fact that this child, this newborn child who caught its attention from universes away with how powerful it was at their birth, already has their “threads” in another’s custody. However. That does not mean it can’t have it for a little while before finding who has the “rights” to this powerful thing that a Human just gave birth to.

If this had never happened to Fleur, would his life be any different?

Yes. Massively different, but not in the way that you’d think.

As I said, he already possessed the ability and intelligence/potential of intelligence to do everything that the eldritch keeper said he’d do. There was no need to set that up, because Fleur had, by that point, already started to piece together just how awful his parents truly were. He would leave them empty and broken. Without their children, without their business, without their lives. All while smiling at them when they gave him away to an eldritch possessed child kidnapper to cart him away to “The Village”. (The Village is something he’s spoken about before, a facility simply named that, of which tries to convince themselves that the Devil is inside each kid brought to the facility and that if they remain tame for their entire lives underneath them, they didn’t have the Devil inside them; however, if they lashed out and fought against them, they had the Devil inside them, labeling them a demon, a mistake, a cursed homunculus. Really fucked up huh? I actually based this off of a comic I saw and a book I read.)

However, he would have died, without that deal. That was his intention, after all, to rid the world entirely of anything tainted by them and that establishment. So determined was he, that even his soul agreed that the only way to continue was to stop. To stop his own heart. His desire to persist beyond death would have kept him around by sheer force of wanting revenge and retribution for people who do this to kids. The deal assured his “rebirth” as the puppeted soul of the Underground, becoming their angel from above. Becoming CHARA, the First Fallen Child. Their Prince. 

But we have to take a step back for a moment.

The second event. His introduction and experience with the eldritch “ley-lines” in their home timeline. This isn’t just a random thing plopped into the lore, it’s something repeated again and again and again between various characters and event mentions. Talks of constant fighting, of losing people outside of fights, of fights being darker and more horrendous thanks to all the lights being snuffed out too soon. Referencing not staying out too late, of not being able to retrieve people in the dark, as they can’t tell the difference between the dark and the shadows when it’s nighttime. Speaking of having lost more than they could bear, but they could still continue onwards because, well, what choice do they have? They couldn’t let them die in vain.

However, Fleur’s deal with the eldritch might have lingered from his birth, but there was one major reason why he knew to call for a specific type of entity. Some time ago, Maribel and Fleur had a brief but uncomfortable discussion about “that lady down the street” and Fleur saying that he “understands she didn’t like her”. That lady down the street had been a puppet meant to keep an eye on Fleur’s growth and watching if he would approach the lady. Maribel, due to her blessings from the gods, intrinsically loathed the lady down the street. She felt like something was burning in her soul and spreading ice through her body every time the lady down the street spoke to them. She warned Fleur never to go near her, going so far as to outright call her the local lunatic. (That word being one never used after a certain point in time due to people with Mad Mage / High LOVE Syndrome being treated properly and lunatic already being a not great word to use to begin with.)

However, upon noticing Fleur would still try to see her and listen to her ramblings, she decided simply to join her then-sister in listening to the local loon with her stories that would give normal kids nightmares. Fleur and Maribel both had experiences with nightmarish situations and terrible occurrences happening to people, to them. They weren’t fazed. (It was still illegal to do this - it’s a universal law that children under the age of 10 as well as those over 10 that have said they don’t want to know about the truth about the dark legally can’t be told anything about it - and Lafayette would’ve pitched one hell of a damn fit if they had known.)

If Fleur hadn’t been told about this, certainly he could have had a different round of Keepers along the way. He wouldn’t know who or what to call for when he decided mid fall that he didn’t want to die. He would just cry out for something to save him. That would have opened him up to who knows how many terrible things. So was the lady down the street necessary? No, perhaps not, but she did alter the course to make it much better than it would have been without her. Maribel still loathes her though and with good reason.

Now, skipping way waaaayyyy far ahead to centuries, millennia. Past the curses, past the void, past the Depths, past the countless Resets and past the war. Past it all. And we land squarely at when he was killed by Sans to release his timeline from Glitch City.

That’s the biggest change.

(I’m going to try and summarize from here on out because WHOA this is 3k words already! I didn’t intend on this guys, my bad!)

If Sans hadn’t have agreed to the offered terms, there would have still been the possibility of it happening anyway. How? Well, he was just a circumstantial piece of the puzzle that happened to fit. The right time. The right place. The right power. Conveniently given just when they both thought hope was lost.

However, they could have been yanked back into the void, rather than the Depths. The Depths was reserved for Fleur, after all, and his only demand was that Sunshine (aka FRISK) remained oblivious to this part of the Void under any circumstance. This is something they did off and on in order to get time away from the lingering effects of their Keeper, which they hadn’t made a complete deal with yet. That would come later.

This event could have made Fleur end up exactly where he was when he met the family, or he could have only met a couple of them via the Void or the Depths. How it WOULD have gone? Who knows. I’m just speculating. 

Then he met Blair Black, G, and Katie (all around the same time). Technically he met Blair back when he was still controlling the “human” form formerly known as “FRISK” at the time but most of his relationship developed with Blair post TRUE RESET. 

Fleur, highly intent on being better than he was raised, trained, and “bred” to be for his entire life, intent on being someone more than just a killer, an overglorified Hunter in some burned history books, ended up trying to learn how people of “normal” universes act. Talking like them, dressing like them, learning what they know, understanding what they do (or trying to). MIMICKING them, but not being a part of them. His whole “life” was a grand show in a living theater, with actors galore not even knowing that they’re on strings like puppets. So he tried to learn how they act. Blair and G were opposites; Blair acted awful and made no outright intentions of saying that he would stay too long but he truly cared, while G acted kind and made every intention known that he wanted Fleur to stay with him but he simply wanted company rather than a family. He understood G more than he understood Blair... and that’s because he’s used to that type of treatment.

Katie, well she was different. Katie was sweet and kind and surely a bit sassy... but she was true. She was honest. She kept approaching him and kept being around him and kept him as sane as he possibly could. She made him believe that... maybe he could truly be better. Maybe, just maybe he could be more than he is. Maybe, just maybe it wasn’t all just a lofty dream of a killer wracked with guilt. She was his light. She is his light.

If he had never met any of them, or he had met them any later than he did, things would be different for him. His darker side and bloodier ambitions would have been more outright. He would have attacked anyone who aimed to get close to him. He would have desired to get revenge for anything and everything that looked like someone or something that had tried to kill him or someone he loved. He would have become the true definition of a monster and this time he would have enjoyed it.

The Surface and meeting the family are a two for one deal but have two very different impacts. The Surface came with The Second War (not very creative, he admits), as well as the deal made to forget it. If he hadn’t gotten to the Surface, he would have been stuck repeating endless loops of his failure to stop the eldritch puppeteers from playing hacky sack with those he once called friends. He would have been stuck believing he could change things, stuck in a body that isn’t his and gave him panic attacks just to be in control of, stuck being someone he isn’t and never would be, just stuck. 

But with the family? The family revolutionized EVERYTHING for him. He felt like he could have a happy life. He felt like he could finally take a moment to breathe, even relax in due time. He actually felt like he could be himself. After so long of being made to be everything that he wasn’t, after so long of being forced to do things that made him sick to his stomach to do (though he did them to survive), he could finally have a chance to be himself. It was so bizarre that he, for a long time, believed that it couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be. It had to be a TRICK. It had to be a LIE. But it wasn’t. They weren’t. 

Without either of these situations, he wouldn’t be the same person he is today. He would be colder. More resistant to the very thing he’s supposed to represent and one of the things he tends to make good on the will of. Without reaching the Surface, he’d be scared of everyone around him, unwilling to get close because they’d all just disappear one day, and if not they’d be turned to dust and blood. After all, everyone he knows is just dust and blood. That’s what they’ll be and that’s what they were and that’s what they’ll always end up living as. Walking, talking, breathing dust and blood. Why get close?

Being freed from his Keeper on a basis of technicality is something that I find amusing. The technicality of it was simply that the deal was made during a moment of desperation. It’s considered frowned upon to do this, though it certainly isn’t taboo among those of that “group” designation (in a way). The warning to let him go or face consequences of him being told of the violation of several fine print details was met with the appropriate response... but what if it had gone different? What if he had found out? What if he had remembered his strength and broke his chains himself due to how flimsy they really were when not tensed to restrain him? What if it had been different for him? If he had known, if he was told, if anything like that were to have come to pass... he’d be more vicious. More violently hateful and cynical. Not only had the world of the light scorned him with the taste of lies and jealousy, but the world of the dark abused his hope by tainting it with the taste of deception and desperation. He would have set the world ablaze.

One has to wonder if that would be a good or bad thing. To be Apocalypse walking... what power that would be.

And then there’s his madness. His madness from the get go has been something that has made him struggle with his perception of the world around him. His deal caused his mind to fracture somewhat, but not entirely. Only enough for him to grasp the situation he had gotten himself into. And compared to the life he would eventually lead, a small fracture in his mind was nothing. His madness is something that is not important to his development as a person, but it did make him more keen to try and figure out how the world works and how the world would respond to certain stimuli and interactions from various entities. It made him more curious, more willing to take a risk if it meant that no one else would get harmed for it.

It made him more willing to take the big risks and take the consequences so no one else would have to. It reminds me of a certain warlock, actually...

But we can’t forget how he started leaning more into being a Monster, a Monstrosity. Without that, he would have insisted on being Human. He would have insisted that no, he can’t be a Monster, he was a Human at birth and he was a Human for the lot of it... he could be a Monster. He couldn’t acknowledge the fact that his previous timeline called him a Monstrosity. He didn’t know what they meant. All those markings and all those runes that showed up on him, those were a result of the hunts. Those weren’t because he wasn’t Human. What do you mean normal Humans can’t withstand things like he did? Sure they can! There has to be records of that happening, there must be. It wasn’t something he liked hearing, but he accepted it over time. He came to understand that that’s another reason why he prefers to not be seen as Human. It never FELT RIGHT. But without that realization, that acceptance he received upon this new path, he’d be more confused and dysphoric. Uncertain as to why he, again, doesn’t feel like he’s in the right body even though he BUILT this body. He made the base and trained it as he wanted it. This, he made this to his standards. Without the realization of being a Monstrosity, and a “magic eater”, he’d be in a panicked daze most of the time, unsure of who or what he is.

And lastly... seeing old and familiar faces from “True Home”. Those gave him a reason to keep fighting for something normal. His heart was in the right place, as always, but he didn’t know what to do. He did the only thing he thought would work, as it had worked before, and when it failed him he panicked. The world crashed around him. Seeing the old faces from “True Home”, it made him settle. It made him realize that he wasn’t alone or simply going completely bonkers and not just being mad from high LV. Those were real. Those memories were real. They happened. Without them around he would start to forget where he came from. He would start to believe that he truly does belong in a mental ward or in the asylum. After all, what strange and elaborate DELUSIONS he’s experiencing. He must be sick.

Without all of this, there’s an equal chance that he’d end up ALMOST the same or COMPLETELY different. His parents weren’t the only people who could have damned him to an eternity or three of darkness and stolen innocence, they just so happened to get power hungry (because Hoo Boy they had ENEMIES that didn’t give a fuck who suffered as an act of revenge, let alone kids). That lady down the street wasn’t the only person who could have (illegally) taught him of the darker things that lurk in the shadows, and the magics that could bring them to you, she just so happened to the be one who had been there for ages and opportunity struck before she ran out of use for the ones keeping her alive for the most part. Lost wasn’t the only person who could have done what he did for Fleur, he was just the first person who tried, failed, then tried again. Regina wasn’t the only person could have gotten him to be calm around mother figures, she was just the first person who didn’t enforce the supposed “rule” of “mother knows best” on him when he viewed her as a mother figure (as well as taking time to understand his issues on the subject). His family wasn’t the only group of people who could have done what they did for him. All of those events, all of those moments, they aren’t exclusive to the person who started it. Anybody can do anything, that goes for causing something to be better and causing something to be worse.

Idk I just REALLY love how this analysis turned out, because it made me highly amused as to how everything went down. Anyway, I love my dumbass child, enjoy him with me.