#and so never succeeds at anything
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ahb-writes · 1 month ago
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"What am I trying to express?"
(from Bamboo Blade, Ch. 13)
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markantonys · 1 year ago
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"This is some of the most fun work we’ve seen from the talented actor Dónal Finn all season; he gets that Mat is a depressive character, and so when Mat has moments of joy and elation — whether that’s simply reuniting with his friends or realizing he was born to be the leader of the most legendary assemblage of heroes ever known — he really makes them almost radiate inner sunlight. It’s just a pleasure to see Mat happy." –Vulture
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luck-of-the-drawings · 7 months ago
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[<==PREV PAGES] [NEXT PAGE==>(not out yet.wait a year.or maybe more.imagine.]
saw alot of comments on prev pages; saying 'i HATE that mean teacher! im gonna FIGHT HIM!!' & i LOVE the energy!! it WOULD be nice. to have that catharsis. but the story of young tidestrider is Not one of catharsis. it is a story of being so small and so special and sucking so bad.
#jrwi fanart#jrwi show#jrwi riptide#gillion tidestrider#GONNA START FORMATTING MY COMICS BETTER. W THE PROPER 'PREV' 'NEXT' LINKS#REALLY DIDNT EXPECT TO CONTINUE THIS SERIES BUT AAAUUUHH MY BRRAAAIN MY BRAIN IS SO IDEASSS. I HAVE 3 OTHER PAGES SKETCHED OUT#NO PROMISES ILL FINISH EM ANY TIME SOON OR EVER. MY WHIMS ARE THEIR OWN BEAST AND I ONLY DRAW ON MY WHIMS#THAT BEING SAID IF U COMMISSIONED ME ILL GEEETT TO YOUUU IM SORRYYYY. ART IS AN EMOTIONAL RELEASE FOR ME N BABY I HAVE EMOTIONS.#ESPECIALLY ABOUT GILLION TIDESTRIDER CHAMPION OF THE UNDERSEA HERO OF THE DEEP.for the desc here i put smth that i typed up in the tags of#another thing i made. i gotta make a proper Baby Gillion tag or smth. eventually.. eventually...I LOVE DRAWIN THIS LIL BABY GUY..#i also LOVE depicting the teachers as just being so fuckin mean. ofc theres variation in that. just like in all things.like the teacher her#idk if itll be mentioned but the octo lady is named Ms Octburn.an octopus pun based off the name of an actual councilor i had#when i was in elementary school i got bullied alot but teachers never did anything. i hated adults and didnt trust them.#but this councilor o mine was so genuinely sweet. i remember spending alot of time w her. she doesnt work there anymore.#but that one school adult that actually earns ur trust and is there for you when they can be.its SO important for a child i think#i hope she knows how much she helped me.youll see in the next page that ms octburn isnt perfect either.but she tries. they all try.somehow.#ALL these comics are gonna be inspired by somesorta experience o mine in the school system. school is so fucked up u ever thing abt that#AND GILLIOOOOONNN IN THE MOST FUCKED UP LITTLE SCHOOL OF ALL. MAINTAINED BY A CULT. CENTERED AROUND HIM. OUR CHOSEN ONE#I IMAGINE ALOT BANKS ON HIS SUCCESS. THIS IS THE WORLD. THE WHOLE WORLD. THE PROPHECY IS GOING TO COME TRUE N UR TELLIN ME#THAT ITS THIS LITTLE IDIOT THATS GONNA BE SAVING US? WHAT IF HE FAILS. IF HE CANT GET THIS RIGHT THEN HE WILL FAIL AND WE WILL DIE#WE NEED TO TRAIN HIM. WE NEED HIM TO LEARN. AND TO SUCCEED. OR ELSE WE'RE DEAD. WE'RE ALL FUCKING DEAD. I IMAGINE THAT MUST BE STRESSFUL#in other news i hope ppl actually giggle when they read these. they ARE intended to be comical. dark humor or whatever. like its also sad#this is intended to be a sad comic series. but a funny one too. does that make sense? god i hope so.saw some1 say they had flashbacks-#-reading this. like YES!! THE INTENDED EFFECT!! YOU GET ME!! i love seeing ppl get upset on this lil baby boys behalf. i LOVE seeing ppl-#-wail n weep n cry in the comments. i LOOOVE seeing ppl RELATE to baby gillion. and i love letting u all know that this wont be a happycomi#gillion gets his happiness arc in the actual show. this series is one of unfortunate events. teehehehe. do u guys remember that show#i keep listening to the lil songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events for inspiration. GOOD STUFF!!#anyway uuhh uhh thats all i got in my brain. for now. feed me ur comments give me ur input i NNEEEEEDD THHEEEMMMM
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jessicas-pi · 3 months ago
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Sabezra in a fantasy au for the ask game?
I have no idea if this was what you were looking for but it's what my brain invented, so ta-da!
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Mother had forbidden---Forbidden, actually with a capital F---Sabine from leaving the Seelie realm to look for trouble.
So the next time she got restless, she made sure she'd already found trouble before she left.
Today, trouble looked like a grungy teenage boy, in ratty jeans and a faded orange sweatshirt, stomping through the woods. He seemed like the type she could mess with. Bored with life, discontent, easily fooled. Maybe she could even trick him into following her home for a while and see how he fared there.
(She'd ask him for his name, first, of course. She always did. It was an old trick, and rather overdone, but that was why she did it. If a human was stupid enough to ignore all the old stories and warnings and just tell her that right off the bat, she didn't feel bad about causing them further trouble. They earned it.)
She waited, unseen, until he had passed her by. Then, with a last glance over her shoulder to make sure no one of her mother's Court had noticed her, Sabine slipped through the dark mists that parted one world from the other.
"Hey, there!" Sabine called out at his back. He stopped in his tracks and turned around, looking at her in curiosity, but with far too little suspicion.
Sabine smiled.
This boy may not know what she was---not yet---but if Sabine had her way, he would find out.
Oh, he would find out.
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vigilskeep · 1 year ago
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i need to wynnepost. somebody has to
#its crazy how people will assume she is all the tropes she subverts and then ignore her#also how sympathy for circle mages’ indoctrination only lasts until they get old i guess and then fuck them#because its not as if they were ever a terrified child who’d never had anything better than a single templar’s mildest kindness and any kind#of home even if it was the tower#so an orphan kid who had no memory of anything but scurrying between farmsteads and hiding in barns#didnt want to leave. what a shock. you guys dont get the place comfort has in keeping circle mages complicit#so it’s violent and terrible and you never have privacy and your children get murdered and you’re always watched and hated#its also a warm bed and community and a chance to succeed#do you honestly think every kid from fucking THEDAS knows theres anything better out there#that doesnt make the circle good. it makes it horrific that they prey on vulnerable kids to teach them the world hates them#and only the circle is ‘safe’#i just think there should be some sympathy for those kids and what they grow up into#its easy for the player to walk in and say their character would hate the circle and never have listened to the templars#its easy for say an amell or even a surana with a family back home to not fear what they left behind#wynne genuinely thinks without the circle mages would all be murdered and she’ll fight and die protecting her fellow mages#from the right of annulment#yes its a flaw that she goes on to teach others the circle must be tolerated and that is precisely how the circle is perpetuated ove#over generations#but its amazing to me to just act like its her fault#well. this is more tags than i expected it to be
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bringbackgoth · 3 months ago
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o my god my baby boy is SO HANDSOME!!!!!!!!
I dropped him off to board with his handler for a week while our foster girl recovered from her spay surgery and so his handler has been blessing me with photo and video updates.
She sent me this pic, which DID have more pinks in it from her camera and I wanted to keep those pinks but when I went to edit it... I really like this photo.
The leash he was on has been edited out by me so don't worry yourself thinking he was off leash in a strange place. The person boarding him is one of the only people I would ever trust to drop him off for a full week.
Look at my little man and his sunset photo 😍��😍🥰😍 SO handsome, SO demure
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snootyfoxfashion · 1 year ago
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in a bit of shock atm. i applied for 3 different drama schools in australia and got into 2 of them and i have a callback to the 3rd. i truly didn't expect anything to come of this i can't even describe to you how much rejection i have faced. ive auditioned for every drama school in nz multiple times over the years and only ended up getting into one of the lower tier ones (which tbh. every drama school here has uniquely good things and major drawbacks so whatever. i loved my time there). but these Aus schools are all pretty prestigious. one is with one of the leading acting coaches in the world. i don't know what to do. i don't know if i can even go bc of visa reasons.
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freebooter4ever · 3 months ago
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another fun fact if your dad who you idolized as a kid is intentionally distant from you as an adult, and literally tells you that now that you are grown up he doesn't have to care about you or talk to you anymore, and has had a history of out of character letting you down for the past three years... dont call him when you are at a scary vulnerable point. it'll just make shit worse 😂
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opens-up-4-nobody · 2 months ago
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...
#bleh. i need half the country to pls stop being on fire. id like to go out and run pls. but its so smokey i can barely see the mountain#i live near :-/ also im just tired and frustrated. its incredible how quickly i vasilate between#things r going well. i should stay in my program and work with cyanos forever. to no no no im not cut out for this. i gotta leave. to yay#let me throw myself head first into consuming every second of my life with working. but only on the things that dont require me to think#which is y im not cut out for this and should be bannished to a world of only doing lab work and following instructions#also i have an screening interview monday for an R0DBT group. so i might b going to control freak classes#assuming i cant convince the lady that im not fit for thr class. which obviously i am bc im my therapist listed the ppl who r#usually put into r0dbt and i was like hm im a lot of those things. but also its 2hrs every week and thats a lot of time. and i feel like im#already on the path away from violently structuring my life specifically bc ive done so much damage#ugh. also i have ridiculously high self standards but i only do anything halfway bc i cant fail if i never try 100%.#so im like a fake control freak. or rather i cant even fully commit to being controlling. im lazy and i dont have the drive.#which almost makes it worse bc im stading at this threshold of control where it destroys me but never actually succeeds in being a perfect#thing. which is def a distorted way to think about it but there u go. ugh. im just tired and my arm hurts too much to draw bc#im older and older everyday. and i dont wanna read papers. i dont wanna grade or work on my presentation. i didn't want to spend 3.5 hrs#doing transfers this morning. and my mom's been dead for 6months and 3 days now. and i still dont kno where ill be a year from now#unrelated
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cringefaecompilation · 6 months ago
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ever think about how every single member of bell's hells has to deal with a second half to them that threatens to kill them or take over their entire body?
imogen has her connection to predathos. laudna has delilah. fearne has the shard of rau'shan. ashton has the shard of ka'mort. fcg had their care and culling protocols. orym has an archfey pact. chetney has his werewolf side.
so what's going to become of dorian?
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martyrbat · 11 months ago
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driver's seat — dc holiday special (2017)
(ID in alt!)
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cuyberpunk · 9 months ago
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wonder-worker · 5 months ago
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"Hannes Kleineke cites Dean and Canons of Windsor MS XI.B.6, rot. 2, for evidence of a deathbed codicil by Edward IV concerning a dispute between the knights and canons of Windsor"
remember when I said that we don't know what Edward IV's deathbed codicils were as they haven't survived? that there is no reason to automatically assume they were relevant to his son's minority? that it's entirely possible that they weren't very important at all considering how dismissively Croyland spoke of them ("some codicils thereto", with no emphasis or elaboration whatsoever)? I LOVE being proven right <3
#edward iv#my post#to be clear it didn't actually matter what Edward wrote in his will as there were no legal or social requirements for it to be followed#this is mostly for the sake of the argument and also because it's a new piece of information I didn't know about before !#and also because that makes it all the more suspicious that Mancini claimed Richard was supposedly#'entitled [to the position of Protector] by law and his brother’s ordinance' when that is...absolutely not true#We don't know what Edward wanted in his will but even if he appointed Richard protector neither his queen nor his council were#in any obligation to give Richard the position. And there was certainly no law in England that stated that there HAD to be a protector#during a minority. The position was literally invented a mere generation earlier as a consolation price for Humphrey Duke of Gloucester.#Richard was not 'entitled' to anything#So it's incredibly suspect that Mancini - a foreigner who was mostly ignorant of English affairs - would claim such a thing#Combined with the fact that Croyland makes no mention of Edward appointing Richard Protector when talking about his death;#his last will or the council meeting afterwards#And the fact that John Russell's speech to Parliament aiming to reinforce Richard's Protectorship never once claims that the former King#wanted him to have the position despite giving a variety of other fanciful justifications for the same#I do tend to agree more-so with Rosemary Horrox who believes that Edward IV wanted his son to succeed him and be crowned immediately#(which is what *everyone* present in the council wanted as well)#and that the story of a thwarted protectorate was Ricardian propaganda aimed at vilifying Elizabeth Woodville#painting himself as the victim and her as the ambitious duplicitous aggressor#even if Edward HAD appointed Richard to the position the story of a denied protectorate would still be propagandic#because again: he was not entitled to the position.#even IF the council & EW decided against Edward IV's wishes and wanted to crown Edward V immediately they weren't doing anything wrong#The fact that the Woodvilles were framed as opportunistic and aggressive and out for themselves can only have been a Ricardian vilification#also Edward V himself wanted to be crowned immediately: we have a letter written by him where he specified he would have a coronation soon#but anyway (I have spent too long talking about this in the linked post I'm not going to repeat the same things here)#I do love that we have new evidence!!!! and that we know what one of Edward's codicils were!#I wish we knew the remaining :(
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demonbarberofbeepbeep · 6 months ago
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watched hamlet last night. real sweeney todd faildisaster energy on that final scene
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giftedpoison · 2 months ago
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I'm an assistant manager which is like crazy to me sometimes because i often still feel like a kid.
HOWEVER
I had a 16 year old cashier today, who I only just met today and she has only worked one other shift. And the register really makes her anxious because first job jitters and stress (and lets be honest our register systems are so old and not user friendly so fair).
And I was talking to her at the end of the night as I was counting money. And I asked how she felt (cause I kinda left her alone quite a bit, but we weren't that busy). And she told me she learned she was really bad with money and she still felt pretty shakey.
And I started with "you can't be that bad with money because your drawer is perfect, not under nor over"
And I could have left there but then I went "This is your first job right?" and she said yes. And I said "ya know when I first started working I used to bawl my eyes out before every shift. it gets better."
BUT I also like fumbled the delivery a little bit, so either she thinks I gave her an encouraging little anecdote about how the fear goes away eventually OR she thinks she got a really weird anecdote from her assistant manager she just met.
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What if the Tails Polycule managed to stop nine from enacting his plan at the end of the series and Nine joining the polycule.
Interesting...👀👀👀
Okay so, just to warn you before you begin reading, I have some things I need to unpack and talk about first before I can answer this question. With that, the post itself will probably be long, so I'm putting my answer/thoughts under the cut
So given that the au as it is doesn't stray too far from Sonic Prime canon, the "polycule" at that time would just Mangey and Sails (who wouldn't officially be together yet in the actual au) as Tails is where the rest of the og cast is.
To answer this ask, there are two things I need to tackle
Nine's plan at the end of Sonic Prime. What was that exactly?
How would the story of Sonic Prime need to change for there to be a focus on Mangey and Sails specifically "stopping" Nine? (As this au takes place post canon and is largely compliant with the og series before that point, more drastic divergences from canon are like a spin off concept for this au)
Starting with Nine's plan, I think there's an important distinction to make between "Nine's plan" and "how things became exacerbated by the war"
Nine's original plan as of Season 1 was to spend his time crafting the Grim into a home with Sonic. In episode 6 of that season, he expresses that he doesn't care about what's going on in the other shatterspaces like New Yoke. He says he wants to create a perfect world, but we see that he'd only ever wanted to exert control over the Grim (not New Yoke, not the whole shatterverse). Given that he never seeks out any other shards aside from the two he already had until after the chaos council captures him and a shard, and also given the speech he gave to Sonic in ep 6, Sonic was the last component to his plan. Had Sonic chosen to stay with him in Episode 6 in the Grim, the two (under his plan) would merely have used the two prism shards to shape the world into a home and live there alone together.
After being captured by the Chaos Council in Episode 6, Nine had to alter his plan. One of the main reasons he and Sonic had partnered up to gather the shards at this time was to keep them out of the hands of the Chaos Council. The Chaos Council having an ounce of shard energy and access to the whole shatterverse was a very dangerous prospect, and with all the ways they fucked up the shatterspaces and contributed to reality beginning to fall apart (after their portal stunt), the show shows us exactly what Sonic and Nine had to fear in regards to the Council having any shards (much less the completed prism). Now, as we can see from Nine's words during episode 7 to Sonic and during the season finale, he'd assumed that after getting all the shards, the two of them would return to the Grim to build their new world. I think it's safe to say Nine's plan by Season 2 was to gather all of the shards to keep them out of the Chaos Council's hands (and keep them from exerting control over the whole shatterverse), complete the prism so he could fix the damage to the shatterverse's reality, and then use prism energy so he and Sonic could continue the original plan of crafting their new world/home. The end goal is the same as the original plan, Nine is home and closed off from the rest of the shatterverse, and Sonic is there with him.
His plan changes again after the Season 2 finale. Remember that in that finale, Nine also feels as if it's Sonic who betrayed him. He thought Sonic was just using him as a replacement for Tails and just using him to get to the paradox prism, which he'd then use to try to bring back Green Hill and his original friends without any regard for how that would impact Nine's existence. For Nine this is a moment of finding out someone he cares deeply about wasn’t the kind of guy he thought he was, and perhaps never liked him exactly for who he was. The first thing Nine does after completing the prism is not to get ready to exert control over the shatterverse though. Instead, he builds himself a citadel to stay in with the prism, and he sets up a large force field immediately afterwards. The first thing he does is take the first step into turning the Grim into a home, and he puts up walls/sets up defenses so no one can intrude on it. The only thing that changes from his original plan is that he takes Sonic out of it. And his setting up of defenses immediately speaks to two things. The first is him literally walling himself off from anyone as a reaction to opening his heart up to one person (Sonic) only to get betrayed (from his pov), a physical representation of him closing his heart off again. The second is because he's not an idiot. He knows that even if he's the only one with a source of prism energy, Sonic could come after him and try to get the prism. After all, Sonic expressed that he and Shadow had their own plan for using it (one that could potentially result in his erasure). So immediately at the start of S3 after the S2 finale, Nine's plan is literally: "Secure my safety so no one can take the prism, create my home, fix the reality issues, live here alone."
His plan shifts again when the Grim starts to decay, to which he seems frustrated that this is happening, since he was sure the prism was completed (perhaps implying that he'd assumed the decay of reality would cease when the paradox prism was complete). A major shift in his plan has to occur here, as he can't have his home intact (much less keep his defenses up) if the entirety of reality shatters/collapses/what have you. And so Sonic re-enters the plan when Nine realizes how he can fix reality. Keep in mind, this is a moment where emotions are already high. The "betrayal" happened not too long ago, he doesn't feel great about Sonic, he was already afraid his world would be taken from him, and now he needs to fix reality as fast as possible so anything can continue to exist. So, here's his new plan by the end of episode 1 of season 3: capture sonic, drain Sonic's energy to fix reality and the Grim, use the paradox prism to keep up his force field, continue to use the prism to build his new world, be alone (aside from the robots he created as "friends"). At this point he is still not planning on exerting control over the shatterverse or messing with the other shatterspaces. He's sticking to his original plan and prioritizing his existence.
And then the plan from there undergoes impromptu changes as the situation in season 3 continues to worsen, which leads us into "how things became exacerbated by the war".
First, Shadow throws Sonic out of the Grim, so Nine takes the first step to extend his plan outside the Grim (Which, again, he hadn’t done since the s2 finale and hadn’t planned to do). Keeping himself in the safety of his defenses, he sends Alpha Grim Birdie and the Grim Birdies to retrieve Sonic. At this time it's worth mentioning that no one knows what Nine's actual plans are (the ones he's had the whole series), despite Nine telling them to Sonic's face in Episode 6 of the series, and Sonic won't figure out his plans until the series finale. So although Sonic spends season 3 not having given up on Nine's ability to change his mind, pretty much everyone is under the assumption that Nine is in it for the power to bend the shatterverse to his will (despite signs the audience can see that this is not the case). This is why Sonic himself refuses to give his energy to Nine, because he cannot trust blindly (or without a deal) that Nine will choose to preserve the other shatterspaces and won't put people in danger for his goals.
So, when Sonic escapes to New Yoke to get help, Nine has to extend his plan from the void (where there is no one else to bother with but Sonic) to New Yoke. Part of his goal is to drain Sonic's energy to restabilize the shattervserse, so naturally he extends his gaze there for the purpose of getting Sonic specifically. It's also telling here that when Nine first makes use of his giant floating head, he uses it to talk to Sonic alone and directly. When Sonic asks if Nine was causing all the destruction, Nine takes a shot at Sonic, saying that Sonic’s concern for the shatterspaces is odd considering he only seems to care about his own home. Then, he clarifies that the breaking down of the shatterspaces had already begun due to all that the chaos council had done. Essentially, everything was already breaking down, so he was merely sapping what energy he needed from the other shatterspaces to keep the Grim from collapsing (which, while the action proves he doesn't really care about others, it's worth mentioning that it shows off just how he's prioritizing his well-being and his literal home in the face of losing his entire existence, and also isn't a conscious choice to hurt people so much as a potential result. Which...still would happen without his interferance). So, Sonic expresses "You'll have to catch me first"
Of course, with Sonic choosing to run, Nine decides to flex his power. He doesn't give Sonic ultimatums, nor does the camera focus on people Sonic cares about so Nine can strategically offer up their lives in a deal/put them in danger. Up to this point in Episode 2, the only non robot entities we've seen in New Yoke are Sonic and Nine, so Nine specifically talks up his power and makes a show of it (messing with gravity) specifically so he can convince Sonic to surrender to him (to convince Sonic that he's too poweful to oppose, so he should give up soon). Nine is quite literally acting to mess with the other shatterspaces the bare minimum he feels like he needs to to keep his home intact and to capture Sonic for his plan.
But then, Nine's show of power happens to put an innocent bystander in visible danger.
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(Yes. Nine makes this EXACT face in s3 e2 when he realizes that an innocent was caught during that show of power. He is surprised, here. Like he didn't expect it or didn't realize his deed would have hurt someone. And it is worth noting that while Nine is pretty much always fine keeping to himself and not bothering with other people's problems as long as he keeps himself isolated, he does have a reaction when he can see his actions potentially put a person in danger)
So, Nine realizes has to shift his plan (since he's accidentally involved others he can see), and Sonic saves that innocent. This is where Nine consciously decides to involve other people in his plan, and he only does this for a couple main reasons. The first is that he's already put someone in danger (and while trying to build up how powerful he is image wise he can't afford to look like he can't handle the power or that he did something accidentally) and knows that Sonic will try to save innocent people in front of him. The second is specifically because he can trust that Sonic is fast enough to save anyone here. Essentially, Nine's plan here is quite literally to either tire Sonic out or put enough people in danger that it convinces Sonic to give himself up for their sake. He is resting on the fact that Sonic will save them all, and the moment that he can't is the moment Sonic gives himself over. He does not have to deal with the moral dilemma of possibly harming an innocent person, because under this plan no innocents can possibly meet their doom. It is still all about getting Sonic by involving the outside world to the bare minimum to achieve this.
And this new plan fails to force Sonic to give up for the sake of the innocents because the other variants show up to help, meaning that Nine has to shift his plan once again. His hold over the prism energy also fails for a moment. So this does stop him from messing with gravity during this portion, but I should mention that once he regains control over the prism energy again, he never again tries that exact same stunt (messing with gravity and putting people in danger). Nine sends the Grim Birdies into New Yoke after Sonic specifically (to bring him back alive). Sonic flees into the city so as to not put others in danger, and, as commanded, the Grim Birdies go after Sonic specifically. They (and Nine by extension) do not go out of their way to attack or pursue anyone who is not Sonic.
But of course chasing Sonic down with Grim Birdies isn't working. He just keeps running and getting back up, so Nine flexes his power once more (with the intent on forcing Sonic to surrender). Nine commands Alpha Grim Birdie to go for the Yoke. Which, despite still not having commanded it to attack/seek anything other than Sonic, it is a clear signal from Nine. "Surrender, or everyone else is put in danger. Can you really save them all?" It does not matter if Nine is bluffing or not. But, Nine is still doing the bare minimum. After all, despite the threat, the moment Sonic reaches the Yoke, the Grim Birdies surround him (and target only him) once more. Nine employs more language, trying to make Sonic feel powerless and alone so he'll give in. He still is not involving others outside of Sonic if he isn't required to. Heck, the Grim Birdies still haven't even attacked anyone other than Sonic, despite the fact that other people have entered Nine's view.
And what happens when the chaos council enters the arena? The Grim Birdies all pause, and they look just as surprised at this turn of events as Sonic does. They don't go to immediately attack the council either. In fact, their first moves upon being blasted at by Dr. Done It are to defend themsleves, and it's a long period before they decide to fight the council. But, again, only because the council are fighting them. They're defending themselves so they can go back to retrieving Sonic. They aren't going out of their way to fight innocents. And while Dr. Deep so confidently states that New Yoke city will fall apart if they don’t stop Nine, it's still worth mentioning just how much Nine has avoided messing with anyone outside of Sonic, how he's still only been drawing as much power from the other shatterspaces required to keep his home from falling apart, and that everything is already falling apart without Nine's interference because of the Chaos Council.
And Nine's only interference here is to again use his words to try to convince Sonic to give up, that it's not worth him continuing to try to stop him. We know later in the series that Nine could have made a multitude of grim robots to overwhelm Sonic and everyone else, but he's still doing the bare minimum with 3 grim birdies. He doesn't even give commands to the birds to do anything other than what they're already doing, which is defending themselves so they can fulfill the command to go after Sonic.
And then, Nine loses control of the prism, visibly loses control over his image, and beholds the decay of his home once more as his protective wall flickers in and out of existence. His Grim Birdies are down, the situation is getting worse, and Sonic is in the middle of a large building. So, Nine shifts his plan once more, starting to get more desperate. He puts on a great image. For the first time, he purposely appears for the whole shatterspace to see, bringing dark storm clouds with him to bolster his image. And he strikes the Yoke with one great blast of lighting. But then, after the council makes it clear that they'll all be in great great danger if Nine strikes them with another blast (the building collapsing), Nine chooses instead to make a speech. Though we can see the storm clouds produce lighting (which pointedly doesn't strike anything in particular) he doesn't finish the job. He specifically announces that nothing will stop him from getting to Sonic, and he sends the repaired Grim Birdies after the Yoke (presumably to retrieve Sonic and only retrieve him). In fact, pointedly, despite having all the time in the world to charge up a devastating lighting strike, Nine waits with gritted teeth for his Birdies to infiltrate the Yoke to get Sonic, and he only releases another lightning strike (which isn't presented as a huge moment like before) upon the force field with intent to make an opening. He continues to only focus on Sonic, only put people as in danger (but not actually harmed) as needed to get to Sonic, and presents himself as a powerful being to intimidate everyone into giving up. And Nine desperately tries to take down that force field.
So, Nine is forced to switch plans again after the barrier is put up and it's clear that he can't pierce it. Now, the end of Episode 2 seems to imply that Nine's plan is to put the citizens of No Place in jeapoardy so Sonic will leave his precious dome to come save them, but this is not exactly the case. Nine does not actually intend on putting the No Place gang in danger and forcing Sonic to come to the decaying No Place to save them. As No Place and the Grim are decaying (again showing us why Nine would grow more desperate, towards the beginning of Season 3 Episode 3, he asks the Grim Birdies to bring the pirates in No Place to him. This scene presents it as Nine finally becoming desperate enough to outright use people as an ultimatum but as prisoners. He was never intending on attacking them in No Place to draw Sonic in. In other words, Nine's new plan to draw Sonic to him was to save the No Place citizens, bring them alive to the Grim, and for Nine to force Sonic to come to him to get them. Nine explicitly was going to save the pirates and use them just as much as needed to get Sonic.
And what does Nine do when Sonic and the others go to No Place while Nine is already intending on capturing the pirates alive?
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He calls them fools. This was not the preferred turn of events I would say.
Of course, Sonic being there in No Place forces Nine to change his plans again. This is the first time during the whole season Nine has explicitly directed his Grim Birdies to attack innocents rather than either to attack Sonic or to make Sonic afraid that they would attack innocents. Nine was planning on saving them before, but now that his previous plans are dashed (and everything is rapidly decaying everywhere), he truly shows that he's willing to do anything to get to Sonic or to get Sonic to surrender.
Although, of course, once the pirates are "safely" inside the Kracken and Sonic is outside, the Grim Birdies go back to prime directive 1 of trying to get Sonic.
In any case, with desperation rising, Nine laser focuses in on getting Sonic no matter the cost. He literally announces that he won't let Sonic escape no matter what, because he needs him to "finish the Grim". Despite the fact that he's opened up his plans to purposesly put people in danger if it means getting Sonic (no matter the cost), he is still only focused on fixing reality and finishing his world. His plans may be shifting, but his original plan to finish the Grim still remains. As tensions rise, he still is only interacting with the other shatterspaces and messing with other people as needed to get Sonic specifically, and has not announced any plan to take the whole shatterverse for himself. Also, as we can see with the scene where Sonic almost falls off the Kracken, the Grim Birdies still take any chance they can (where Sonic is alone or vulnerable) to take him away rather than attack anyone else.
Nine would be forced to change his plan once more after Sonic and the rest escape from No Place, but it's actually Sonic who calls Nine to appear in New Yoke again. No Grim Birdies flying around, no storm clouds and lightning, no smiles and the maintaining of a huge powerful image. When Nine appears to Sonic, it's just Nine's giant head appearing where he can look Sonic eye to eye, and he accepts every condition Sonic throws at him without question. Because in the end, all he wants is to get Sonic and to live safely in his new home. He allows Sonic to come to him, in the safety of his dome, face to face (very very vulnerable for Nine at this moment), and he no longer focuses on the other shatterspaces or trying to purposely put other people in danger. To Nine in this moment, his plan has finally succeeded. He has Sonic, so he no longer has to concern himself with anything other than stabilizing the shatterverse and finishing his home.
Although he does stalls for time despite them pointedly being close to running out of it, trying to speak to Sonic more even after Sonic suggests they get this over with and Nine drain him.
In fact, Nine makes this explicitly clear. Once Sonic takes a second to ask how he knows he can trust Nine will keep his promise, Nine says he'll have the power to restore everything with Sonic’s energy, and that as long as everyone else leaves him alone, everyone else can have their "silly lives in their silly spaces". He has no reason, as long as they don't intrude on his home, to attack them or endanger their existences.
But then everyone else quite literally intrudes on Nine's space. They breach his protective walls in a moment of great vulnerability (emotional and literal) for Nine, and he begins to visibly start panicking.
And the situation gets exponentially worse from here. The fact that existence is collapsing and the Grim is tearing apart (with it eventually being all that's left of the shatterverse), added with the fact that both parties know there's very little time before everyone loses and existence as they know it is gone, tensions just grow worse and worse.
The war at the end of Sonic Prime is not a war about beating the bad guy to restore reality. It's a war about who gets to preserve their existence.
Sonic aside, the variants don't trust Nine. They have reason to fear that if Nine drains Sonic's energy, he'll use his power to retaliate against them all after fixing reality. I'm sure their best case scenario is that Nine torments them with the prism energy, and their worst case scenario is that Nine erases them, leaving only himself and the Grim in the entire shatterverse.
Likewise, Nine has no reason to trust them either. We can visibly see as tensions get worse over the war, just how willing multiple characters are to wail on Nine the moment they get a chance, who want to destroy him, who would enjoy a chance to torture him or "make him pay". And to Nine, on top of everything in existence rapidly collapsing, the entire war is happening in his safe space, behind the walls he tried to put up to keep everyone out, becoming smaller and smaller. As he becomes more and more cornered, how can Nine trust losing the war means his existence will be preserved either? At best, after restoring the shatterverse completely, the variants will likely imprison him and keep him from ever having the chance to really live again, much less in the home he desired from the beginning. At worst, they'll torture him to take out their anger (retributive justice) and/or erase his existence.
The ending of Sonic Prime does not present Nine's plan at its most pure, nor does it show his true colors. It presents a large portion of the cast at their worst, at their most angry or frustrated or afraid, with Nine and Sonic specifically being at their most exhausted. At some point it becomes a no holds barred battle to live, forgetting anything else but the desperation to survive.
And if Sonic hadn't intervened at the series finale, existence would have collapsed before anyone could have won. After all, by then, the only "existence" there was even was just a small patch of the Grim that contained the citadel and just a bit outside it. Sonic himself bids everyone to recognize it.
So, with all that being said, what's the tldr? What are the common threads? What is Nine's plan?
Nine's plan always involved creating a home for himself in The Grim, away from everyone else. Even as his plan changes and shifts, that he wants to live and to control only the Grim while everyone else lives as they are (leaving him alone) is a constant. The other common thread is that he only opens up his plans and lightens up on his morals in his desperation. At his most clear in the head, he doesn't like to put others in danger or to mess with other shatterspaces without reason. And multiple other characters are willing to give into their worst emotions and be just as desperate as Nine is when their very existence is at stake.
I think it's clear that in an au where Mangey and Sails wanted to stop Nine and save him, they wouldn't be wanting to stop his actual plan. Just like Sonic, if any of them knew his actual plan, they would take a different approach. They wouldn't want Nine to lose his home, and they'd want Nine to be able to have one for himself.
And this leads me to the second point I set out to tackle.
How would the story of Sonic Prime need to change for there to be a focus on Mangey and Sails specifically "stopping" Nine?
Okay, so for starters, the two would need to care about Nine. While Mangey and Sails aren't initially antagonistic towards Nine when they first see him in Prime S2, the fact that they don't really interact with him before S3 occurs is a big catalyst as to why there aren't mutual positive feelings to start out with. If they were neutral to him before, it's understandable why they'd dislike him during the events of S3.
For them to care about Nine, they'll most likely need to spend some time with him. We've seen with the other variants (especially the Roses), that prolonged contact with each other and the ability to interact in a more positive manner gives them the chance to care about each other, even if they had bad first impressions to start out with. Given that Sails and Mangey don't go outside of their shatterspaces before S3 and don't really meet each other, the best way to do this would have to have Nine meet them.
Perhaps the simplest way I'd achieve this within canon would be by making Nine have some misadventures in the shatterspaces, preferably after he leaves New Yoke for the first time. The idea is that instead of coming across the Grim first, he at least hits Boscage Maze and No Place before reaching it. Here, for some reason or another, Nine would be stuck for a period of time before he can exit the shatterspace, and would end up interacting with Mangey and Sails in particular on this journey. No matter the first impressions, the prolonged contact and chance to get to know and care about each other would serve to get Mangey and Sails to baseline see Nine as an acquaintance or friend.
But the real hurdle is Nine caring about them. Even if the two can interact with Nine in such a way where they like him to any extent, this doesn't guarantee that Nine will like them enough to deeply care about or trust them.
So, how do you make Nine care for someone's well-being in specific? Well, there really is only one example we can look to. While there are people that Nine are neutral to, and plenty of people he doesn't like as well, he's a pretty closed off guy. The only person that he's ever let into his heart is...
Sonic.
And Sonic is also the only person, even up til the series finale, who was willing to believe in Nine in any capacity, and who advocated for Nine to be able to live the life he wants alone.
So here's what it comes down to. Let's say that Mangey and Sails have spent enough time with Nine that they like him a lot and wouldn't easily believe that he's just some evil fox. Let's say Nine lets them into his heart.
Well, for Nine to be able to care that much about them, here's the main thing that have to change. Bonding moments would have to occur that would allow Nine to be willing to let them into his heart and willing to believe in them (as he did Sonic). And honestly, if this did happen before the ending of Season 1, I'd almost guarantee you that Nine would also ask the two of them to join them in the Grim as he did with Sonic. Nine wants to be alone in his new home save the only people he likes and trusts not to hurt him. But again keeping in mind that Sonic is the only person, even through to Season 3, who Nine can be vulnerable around, they would have to be on the same level of care he has for Sonic. He would have to be able to be vulnerable around them as well.
So, in the interest of not delving too deep into it, this is the concensus. For Mangey and Sails not simply just want to stop Nine's perceived plan to exert control over the shatterverse (not his actual plan to save his home for himself), but also want to save Nine, they have to interact with Nine more and grow to care about and trust him. For them to succeed in stopping the fighting, convince both parties to stop fighting, and save Nine from a terrible fate, they either need to replace Sonic's role, or to share Sonic's role in relation to Nine. While there's a chance of the variants listening to Mangey and Sails, especially if they put themselves physically in the way as Sonic did in the last episode and mandate it, Nine would not also listen to them the same as he eventually does for Sonic if he doesn't hold them in his heart the same/a similar way as he does Sonic.
So, finally, the original question. Apologies for taking so long to get here.
"What if the Tails polycule managed to stop Nine from enacting his plan at the end of the series and Nine joining the polycule."
Well, sadly I must admit that there aren't many options. Even if they managed to convince everyone (Nine and all the variants) to play nice early on, there are only two options going forward until everyone is able to replicate intershatterspace travel again.
Mangey and Sails choose to stay with Nine in the Grim (unlikely. Even if they care deeply for Nine, just as Sonic they already have homes and friends that they wouldn't just want to leave)
Mangey, Sails, and Nine bittersweetly part ways, each returning to their own shatterspace home of choice. (More likely. Again, like with Sonic, Nine wouldn't be able to expect them to leave their homes and friends to live in an empty world with just Nine)
In the end, no matter what, when the paradox prism is completed, reality restored, and the shatterspaces rebuilt, without shard energy, no one will be able to move between shatterspaces for a time.
Not all is lost though. If the three of them really did manage to build a polycule by then and Nine had spent sufficient time working on such a thing, I'd say that in such an au Nine could potentially craft communication devices that would allow them to talk or send messages despite being worlds apart. So, while bittersweet, in an au such as this, at least the three would be able to converse with each other despite being separated for a time.
And then, given this au of an au would inevitably go a similar route as the actual au, they would be able to meet again someday! I'm sure that in this au of an au it would be very heartfelt
#sonic the hedgehog#sonic prime#tailscest#saininegy#nine the fox#sails the fox#mangey the fox#sails sonic prime#mangey sonic prime#nine sonic prime#prime polycule#prime polycule au#anon interview#sonic prime season 3#sonic prime season 3 spoilers#essay time#First I just wanted to thank anon for the ask!! I do apologize that it got so long and it took so long‚ but I was excited to get it and#happy to answer🥰💖#Second a bit of a tldr#The gist of the post is that Nine's actual goals were always building a home for himself in the Grim and not concerning with the other#shatterspaces. Season 3 at large speaks of the lack of trust between Nine and the variants and presents the characters at their more#desperate moments. Nine in particular never wanted to take over and everyone got worse in the end as the war and the collapse of the#shatterspaces put their very existences at stake. For Mangey and Sails to be able to succeed at convincing Nine to play nice with everyone#just long enough to fix the shatterverse so everyone can go to their respective homes‚ canon would have to change in a way that allows#Mangey and Sails to share or take Sonic's role in relation to Nine. Finally‚ since it's an au of an au‚ though the three would have the sam#bittersweet end as Sonic and Nine‚ they at least could get to contact each other until they eventually can meet in person again#And finally‚ if anyone has any other questions regarding the prime polycule‚ hypotheticals‚ or anything else they wish to ask‚ feel free to#to shoot me another ask!😊#i just be ramblin
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