#beyond that. fun design. i like him a lot if we can ignore a part of his design.

[skeletalheartattack]

More kazooieposting because why not. What's your favourite stage theme?

let's see... with kazooie, it's probably clankers cavern because i just really like clanker. he's so cool and i like hanging out with him.

with tooie, while i feel like it's everyones favourite, it's gotta be witchy world. it's just such a fun world overall that it's hard to pick anything else.

[ineffably-human]

We're going to scream about Nandermo all week, but right now I need to talk about Baron Afanas. Because the Baron's arc, so to speak, always felt like a big part of the series DNA for me - and oh fuck did this episode deliver on why.

I think we can agree: in the show, vampire society is fucked up, right?

Vampires on their own have plenty to deal with that can make them crazy. They have to live by killing. They lose everyone from their old lives. They have to find new reasons to keep going on, forever, so shit can get decadent really fast.

But holy shit, what that's turned into in vampire society? Where you actively put cruelty over mercy, and violence over solving your problems? Death cults and scam artists roam free, but if someone has depression the best thing to do is ignore them. Someone can get their mind wiped or be locked up for centuries, and that's just what you do to your species.

--

So: the Baron's arrival is the first conflict of the whole show. The joke is about an ancient powerful creature of pants-shitting terror, vs three lesser vampires who just want to live their lives and not get murdered for being too lazy to conquer humanity. There's a lot of talk about how to please him: do you keep to the old ways, or pick up some new traditions? Decorate with flayed skin, or with glitter? And the Baron says: who cares, you're all soft and useless. All that matters is getting more control over this world, until people are cattle and we have no reason to hide anymore.

But later he confesses: that shit stopped mattering ages ago. He's not even real nobility, he's literally impotent, and he talks about doing horrible things because he doesn't know what else to say. He's angry and half-crazy from boredom. And admitting that, owning those feelings, means suddenly he has three new friends and a whole new world of things to enjoy.

There's the Baron the rest of the vampire world knows, but for one night we see the ancient, unknowable terror was just a guy. Maybe he's always been just some guy.

That fun puts him in a vulnerable position, and he's killed by the most unwitting vampire slayer in fiction. But Baron Afanas is changed. He sucks dirt for a year and still comes out of it with a new lightness and joy to him. He saves the Sire, another ancient terrifying monster everyone was eager to kill or send away. They adopt the hellhound. They get cozy and give advice. They make popsicle stick houses and go on walks. They live.

And that seemed like the end of the story until last night - when the Baron suddenly felt like the butt of a joke everyone knew but him. Spurred on by someone else who feels lonely and ignored, the Baron felt vulnerable. And he snapped back to how he lived for centuries.

'What the hell are you all doing, enjoying yourselves? We're supposed to be unhappy. We're supposed to live centuries of unhappiness, bringing pain to everyone in our path, and we're definitely not supposed to cheer up our friend who's sad.'

--

Nobody liked the Baron before Guillermo killed him, not even other powerful vampires we meet; they saw the Baron as a crazy far beyond their own crazy. But this is also how vampire society values you. It's how they measure Nandor's worth when they think he's dead, too: how old and powerful you are, how much you've been able to conquer and kill.

Vampire pods are both cliquish and aren't expected to last in the first place. If someone dies, you literally paint them out of your lives and forget. Everything we see discourages feelings, sincerity, or even basic companionship. The only way to earn respect is to be cruel. The more cruel you are, the more powerful you are. The more powerful you are, the more feared you are - the lonelier you are, the crazier you are. It's practically designed to create the Baron, or worse.

But new vampires don't behave that way. And the vampires we follow in the show don't behave that way - because they have each other, because they've been encouraged to have each other, often by Guillermo. (Holy shit, Nadja saying maybe she'd be fine dying, and Nandor immediately asking if she's okay? Nothing changes in this house, except everything does. They're not going to almost lose one of their own ever again.)

The vampires in the heart of vampire culture never seem happy to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this.

--

The Baron doesn't become a tyrannical monster for long. Because he never actually was one - and because he spends two evenings and a fireball to the face, watching Nandor and Nadja fight for Guillermo. Watching them plead and cling and defy, seeing Guillermo's earnest feelings in spite of his bloodline and the mistakes he's made. Seeing Nandor's perfect trust, and then his grief, the way he insists that Guillermo was never 'just' anything. The Baron can't find real fulfillment in hurting someone (because that ship sailed ages ago). He can't deride them for caring, because he's cared for a long time now.

And when the Baron admits that's who he is, when he says it out loud, he only gains more in his life. He finds new depth in the happiness he'd felt for a while now, because he's admitted and allowed himself to be happy. And now he has the children he's always wanted. Living together, the Baron and the Sire are still ancient and powerful - and they're also family, finding real joy together in a world that was ready to dispose of them.

"I suppose with the right company, it can be beautiful, this eternal existence."

--

There's an inherent selfishness to being a vampire, taking from someone else in order to live. But there doesn't have to be inherent cruelty, or lack of love.

They're all ready to admit they care. The Staten vampires have all cared for Guillermo or each other in their own ways this season. And Guillermo doesn't lack for flaws, but loving his monster family has never been one of them. (When he and Nandor work their shit out, they're gonna be insufferable.)

Now they just have to let the Guide in. Because she's absolutely starved for love, and vampires get pretty fucked up when they're on their own.

[twst-hottest-takes]

I recently read your post about the Halloween event, and I realized that Jack Howl doesn't have many SSR cards. I tried to think of a reason why, like maybe he's hard to dress up for an SSR card, or his muscles are hard to draw. Though that doesn't seem to be a problem with his SR or R cards.

So I feel like the problem is the game just doesn't really know Jack, so they don't know what to do with him. Which to be honest I feel like they do for Deuce. To twst Jack only wants to work out. And Deuce is always just trying to be an honor student to twst.

To focus more on Jack for a bit, I completely forgot he was even in the Stitch event because of how little they paid attention to him. I wish they would do more with their characters.

Careful, Anon, you could be flying too close to the sun there.

Do you really want to know why?

WARNING: We are about to tread into waters that I am dangerously invested in, so forgive me, but you may get a response a lot longer than you might have been expecting. I love Jack Howl and I refuse to keep my mouth shut about the constant injustices done to this character. I can get as heated about Jack as I do about Vil, but for the opposite reasons. While Vil is an awful character that gets blatant favoritism, Jack is awesome and gets treated incredibly poorly. The current Culinary Crucible is proof enough of that, so expect to see a decently lengthed post about that by the end of the event.

You're correct that his body type doesn't affect how difficult or hard it is for art to be made of him, but it is one of the reasons why he's so ill favored by the developers and the fans. I guess I'll put a bit of disclaimer here--

WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY IS PURELY CONJECTURE AND ONLY AN EDUCATED GUESS AT BEST! (I have just convinced myself that it is fact at this point, so there's going to be a lot of conviction behind this next statements.)

Anon suggests that the game doesn't know what to do with Jack, AND THAT'S BECAUSE THEY DON'T! Jack is a placeholder of a character. Jack was invented because Yana wanted to make a buff wolf-guy to add to the animal-man dorm. Jack exists purely to act as the major assist character to the MC between Books 2 and 3 of the story. Jack is so much of an afterthought of a character that whatever Disney inspiration he was "twisted" from HAS NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED! I am willing to bet there isn't one! The best guess is that he's a reference to a HALF-WOLF from an era of LIVE ACTION book adaptations by Disney. I DESPISE THE WHITE FANG THEORY! There are a dozen wolves in animated Disney films and shorts throughout the studio's history, including a generic "BIG BAD WOLF" but we will never actually know.

The game doesn't do anything with Jack because THEY DON'T WANT TO! Jack has a narrow role and is left to the side as much as possible because no thought went into him, and there are so many other characters that the developers are okay with just ignoring him and trying to work around him so they can do their best with the characters that actually matter to the story instead of trying to actually develop him and give him any kind of depth. They don't want you to take Jack seriously, so they treat him as a joke whenever possible. They do the bare minimum to say they haven't completely forgotten about him, but don't even want to give him meaningful interactions with the MC despite being a part of the Freshman class that SHOULD BY ALL MEANS BE FORMING A FRIEND GROUP AROUND THEM!

Jack is intentionally designed to not be popular. He's not a fair-skinned-pretty-skinny-bishie-boy, so the core audience doesn't find him as attractive as most of the other characters. A big part of his personality even focuses on honing his strength, and the story goes out of its way to focus on that as much as possible despite him having other fun character traits. The developers don't care to let anyone see beyond that, so the superficial audience doesn't care if he doesn't actually have a character to explore or not. ANY AND ALL NEGLECT OF JACK HOWL IS 100% INTENTIONAL ON THE WRITERS' PARTS AND I AM CONSTANTLY FUMING OVER IT!

This is why I have been saying the JACK needs to have the dream card in the next Book 7 Story Update. Jack needs more time to shine. The parts of the story that he was a part of were short and poorly written. He needs to be given a chance to really be the center of attention again WITHOUT BEING MADE INTO A JOKE! But that is probably just wishful thinking. (The blog owner signs dramatically.)

Okay, that's my thesis on why Jack suffers so much as a character. It's not his fault, it's just that almost literally no one cares to do better by him all these years, and the game has gone to no efforts to prove otherwise. I am not done. Much like the essay on Vil, this is only the start, but you can expect to see more of it as soon as I have finished reading the Culinary Crucible Vignettes from this round. Until then. . .

Thank you for the ask!

(I am so sorry if this is more than you asked for, anon. I let myself get set off. I love Jack so much. I hate that he's just left in the dust all the time. Deuce is treated much better by comparison, so also apologies for not touching on that element of your ask!)

[nonclassyparty]

man with the plan (j.wy) - chapter 1.

Summary: "Don't forget Pretty, I'm serving life plus one. So if I get busted for attempted escape, I'll throw in a homicide in there as well with no problem, that’s like a parking ticket to me." When your brother ends up in jail for a murder he didn't commit, the only thing left for you to do is to find a way to break him out. But after a perfect plan is set in motion, you don't expect a romantic variable to get added into the equation.

Pairing: jung wooyoung x fem. reader, jeong yunho x reader (but if u squint)

Status: in progress

Word count: 6k

Warnings: blood, cursing, violence, men being well men!

Taglist: @tinyjuni @hazysan @atinytinaa @tenebrisirae @doggopepper @dazzlingstarrs @lavishloving @cherrypandora @silentcry329 @jeagerist-20 @myunvillage @manipulatedstars @bitteryu @maru-matt @bubbleteakittyy @joonsthethicc

A/N: hello everyone! welcome to the first chapter, before you start reading i just really wanted to say that some of the parts are kind of corny, i usually hate writing know-it-all characters finding it cringy most of the times so push through pleek lol as i said before in the prologue; this is inspired by prison break, a lot of the dialogue is taken from there as well as most of y/n's characterization so all credits go to them! i just wanted to write this bc i thought it would be a fun little thing and something that could include all of the members in more detail all while still remaining a wooyoung focused story! the story is set in 2005-ish btw! i hope you enjoy <3 -bree

my main masterlist // playlist // moodboard // ao3

prologue // masterlist // chapter 2

Chapter 1; I'm headed straight for the castle, they wanna make me their queen

It was weird to walk through the entrance designated for the employees instead of the visitors.

Your boss, Mrs. Ahn, was walking in front of you while Minho was following closely behind, looking over his shoulder like somebody was about to run across the empty yard, jump over the wired fence and shank him. He was always a little bit of a wimp.

It was barely past seven in the morning, the prisoners weren't allowed to be out of their cells yet so the empty yard covered in fog had a deeply eerie feeling to it. Just as the ride inside the hills where the compound was set. 

Trees, fog and silence all around.

"I hope they have good security around here." Minho mutters to you, hands stuffed inside the pockets of his coat as you neared the door to the building.

"Relax, Minho," You chuckle, as you slide through the door he holds open for you, "You'll be here for an hour tops."

"I'm saying for your sake, Y/N. I've still to see any women working in here." His voice is scolding and all you can do is chuckle again.

The inside of the building where the infirmary is conjoined with the warden's chambers and staff offices is a huge difference to the chilling October air and your cheeks immediately turn pink as they embrace the much needed warmth. 

You observe the yet unfamiliar halls that were empty as it was still early in the morning. Mrs. Ahn insisted that you left the office earlier than necessary, afraid that Minho would get lost somewhere between the hills and the deep forest that surrounded the compound.

"Oh, see." You nudge Minho, staring in the direction of the infirmary halls where a middle aged woman was walking around with a clipboard. You grin at him in triumph. "A woman."

You ignore the set of curious eyes from the same halls that you know follow behind you.

-

"Why you'd want to work here is beyond me." Mrs. Ahn comments with her arms crossed as she stares through the window, lips pursued as she observes the yard that was now filled out by the inmates, doing whatever they do in their free time.

"Someone has to do it." You look up at her from your place behind the desk with a small smile. Minho was outside, near the construction site negotiating with the workers that were supposed to drive over the materials in an hour.

"Y/N, you know very well what I mean." She harps at you, "With your qualifications and capabilities, something like this...supervising a construction site? In a prison no less? It's something JJ with half of his degree could do." She huffs when you just stubbornly stare at her without a word, "It's below you. Let's not even mention how potentially dangerous it could be, these people are animals."

You sigh, eyes falling to the blueprints of the new construction, what they're going to call the 'C-building' of the compound.

"You should be going to Tokyo with me. Working on skyscrapers and million dollar deals, not wasting time here."

"It's only a couple of months." You quietly muse, swallowing down your true thoughts, "I won't miss out on too much."

She stays quiet and for a long second, you start thinking she finally dropped it.

"I know it's because of your...." Mrs. Ahn starts trails off, voice laced in sympathy. When the thing with Jongho happened, she advised you to not exactly scream the fact that he's your brother from the rooftops. "But Y/N, you won't be able to talk to him any more than you could during visitations. What do you plan on gaining from this? I know he's your only family, I know how much he means to you but...if anything, aren't you only making it worse for yourself?"

"I don't plan on gaining anything from it." You chuckle softly, leaning back in your chair in defeat as you stare at her. "I'd just like to, I don't know, see what he's doing over the day? When he's in the yard, that is. I'm aware of the circumstances but this opportunity appeared and I just couldn't let it pass me up."

The double meaning to the words was a little inside joke that only you were in on so far.

She quiets down again, returning her attention to the view from the window.

"Supervising a construction site is a shitty job, just so you know. Especially as a woman. The construction workers won't be much better than the damn inmates, acting like they haven't seen a woman in years." She glances at you from the corner of her eyes, "They won't take you seriously, they'll try to intimidate you."

You grin at her, "I can handle them."

Her mouth perks up at the corners as she looks at you. "I know you can."

The little moment is interrupted by Minho walking into the room and observing it in obvious disdain.

The office you've been given is not bigger than a storage room, located on the third floor with nothing more than a bookshelf, desk and an old worn out chair. It's stuffy and the walls are old, probably collecting mold in the corners. 

Much different that your modern and spacious office back in Seoul.

"Well, it's definitely something..." Minho trails off, glancing at you and you have to let out a laugh at his obvious attempt to not offend you. Even Mrs. Ahn chuckles.

"Are you done out there?" She asks him and he nods quickly, collecting his briefcase from the chair in front of your desk that he left it on.

"All done. The materials arrived, half of the workers are here and the other half is arriving in the afternoon. Something about a limited amount of workers being allowed during yard time." Minho explains, fixing the scarf around his neck before sighing.

"We should get going then." Mrs. Ahn says, looking at you with the same scolding look again and all you do is give her a small tight-lipped smile.

"I'll walk you guys out." You pitch in, standing up to pull your coat on.

The halls are already more lively than when you walked in this morning, two officers are conversing by the door and they nod at you three in passing. You give them a smile.

The air is still cold outside, only it's not as quiet this time around. Yells and curses from the basketball court echo through the area from one side along with the construction workers moving the beams off of the trucks from the other.

Minho turns to you and with another sigh, throws his arms around you. You let out a giggle in his embrace as he mutters, "Please, for the love of God, be careful in here."

"You're so dramatic." You say as you pull away, taking a step back. "I'll be fine. Keep my office warm while I'm gone."

"Of course." He nods. 

You give Mrs. Ahn a small wave and she only nods in response before you watching them both walk away through the tall gate that swiftly shuts behind them.

Now, you're on your own.

On instinct, your head immediately turns to the yard not even forty meters away from the building your office is in. A tall, steel wire surrounds the enormous grass surface, small basketball court is set near the middle of one wall that the wire makes, benches are spread across the yard generously, most of them occupied.

You hear someone whistle at you but you pay them no attention, mind set on finding a specific someone. 

Your brother isn't in there, you wonder where the fuck is he but for right now, Jongho isn't the one you're looking for.

Most of the convicts in the yard are separated into small groups, gangs, and the blue uniforms aren't a help to making a distinction between them by any means. 

Until you spot a certain messy black and white head of hair sitting on the highest bench with six other men surrounding him like a kingpin.

You sniffle, nose starting to run from the cold before turning around and heading to the construction site on the opposite end of the compound, far away from the yard or the A and B buildings where the original prison cells were located.

"Good morning." You greet the group of men, shuffling around the site with tools and materials. You get a couple of murmurs of greetings in return.

You glance at the two guards sticking near the site, in case something happens, that's what the warden said as you've been told.

That's how the morning passes, they work and you do what you're supposed to; you supervise.

Mrs. Ahn was right, these men don't take you seriously. They snicker at every suggestion you make, ogle at you when they think you aren't looking and get way too close when they need to speak to you.

 You could use it to your advantage, play the pretty ditz skipping around the site on the daily. Would surely make your job easier.

It's just that if there's one thing you hate more than your brother getting falsely accused of murder and you having to devise a detailed plan on breaking him out of prison; it's people underestimating you.

"Can someone hand me that trowel over there?!" A guy crouching a few feet away from you shouts over his shoulder, your lips quirk up as you quickly jump to your feet. Finally! 

"Here." You hand him the trowel and he glances at you before taking it. You cock your head. "Is everything okay?"

"This whole thing is about to tip over, I need to stabilize it." He speaks loudly, smacking on some more mortar to the brick.

"Maybe if you listened to me when I told you-"

"How about you let me do my job, sweetheart?" He scoffs and another guy a couple of feet away snickers.

You pursue your lips, swallowing down the annoyance before shrugging. 

"Fine, when it starts caving in because it's not attached to the foundation properly and inevitably causes problems for the water and heat isolation which in turn can cause a serious line of health issues, you and your buddy over there can laugh in court over it since you'll be listed as one of the people responsible for it." You lean closer to him, "Because I'll remember your fucking name, Mr. Kim Seojoon."

He stiffens, looking over his shoulder again to meet your gaze. His eyes shoot up to something behind your shoulder before he looks back to you and then towards the very obviously shit job he's done in the past three hours he's been here.

"Tear it down and start again." You spit out before straightening out.

When he notices that you're not moving from your spot of hovering over his shoulders, Kim Seojoon, starts tearing down whatever mess he managed to slap up. You hum in content before turning around on your heels to walk away.

"You'll have to forgive my boys." A voice stops you in your tracks and you turn your head to the left to come face to face to a man that looks to be in his mid-fifties, seemingly the oldest one out of the bunch and by the blueprints stacked in his arms, the boss around here. "They're not used to taking orders from anyone that looks quite like you or is as young as you. They probably expected a drunkard to be supervising in a place like this."

You shrug, "Well, unfortunately for them, they got me."

He laughs, mustache stretching over his top lip. "I'll make sure he fixes it."

"Thank you, Mr...?"

"Cho Hayoon, miss." He holds out a rough hand to you and you gracefully accept it.

"I'm Y/N." You say with a small smile before dropping his hand. "I'll leave you to your work then, Mr. Cho."

He gives you a nod in return and you attempt to move away before something glistening in the ground makes you stop in your tracks.

"What's this?" You mutter, kneeling down and curling your hand around the piece of tin stuck in the ground hard enough until it breaks through the skin of your palm and you jerk your hand away with a yelp. "Shit!"

"Are you okay?" You look up to see one of the officers walk closer towards you.

"Yeah, I, uh, I cut myself on this piece of trash." You spit out staring down the tin stuck into the ground as you show him the gash on your palm where blood already started trickling down.

He looks down at it before turning his attention to you, "You should probably get that checked out at the infirmary." Your heart skips a beat. "Wouldn't want you to bleed out, huh?"

You bite your lip, "You're sure I'm allowed to use it? Isn't it just for prisoners?"

He smiles at you, looking a good ten years your senior, "Of course, you're allowed to use it."

You look towards the entrance of the building where you know the infirmary is before hesitating. He notices it, smile growing bigger. Nothing like a guy that loves playing hero.

"You scared to go alone? There's no inmates there at this time of day."

"I just, uh, would you mind taking me there? I'm not sure I even know where the infirmary is. Wouldn't want to get lost, y'know?" You ask, lips quirking up gently as you look up at him.

He smiled so big someone else would've thought you ripped open your shirt and showed him your tits.

"Of course, this way." He motions in the direction of the infirmary before you both start walking.

You hold back a smirk.

Everyone loves a damsel in distress.

-

"Doc, I got a patient for you!" The officer, Eunwoo is his name (you learned that because he made sure to slip it in a few times in the one minute walk to the infirmary), calls out knocking on the door of the small infirmary.

"Send him in!" A voice is heard from the other side and the guard chuckles sparing you another overly friendly glance before pulling the door open. 

"It's actually a her." The officer, Eunchae-whatever the fuck, comments as he walks in with you following.

The doctor looks confused doing a quick glance before it turns in a double glance when he spots you by the door.

Your blood is simmering below your skin as you take him in. 

A good four inches taller than you, dressed in scrubs and a white coat with a stethoscope hanging under the collar of it. It's him. The most important key to a ticket out of here with your brother's name labeled on it.

"What happened?" His voice is raspier than you would've imagined as he motions for you to sit on the chair next to his desk.

The officer opens his mouth but you're quicker, showing him your bloody hand, "Accident at the construction site." 

You tell him quietly, voice almost shy.

He glances at your face before nodding taking your hand into his hold as he removes the tissues you've clumsily wrapped around the wound.

His hands are warm, slightly calloused but nice looking. Long fingers with neatly trimmed nails. And there was always something attractive about a man with visible veins running up his hands. Hm!

"Uh, miss," The guard coughs but neither you nor the handsome doctor seem to pay much attention to him. "You want me to stay with yo-"

"No." You interrupt without even a second glance at him, eyes not moving from the doctor's concentrated face.

The officer looks like he wants to say more, a little peeved that all your attention was occupied by the young doctor but he doesn't instead he awkwardly turns around and leaves you two alone, closing the door shut behind himself.

Thank you Eunwoo but you've served your purpose.

"Need to clean this, to make sure nothing got inside the wound or you'll be in trouble." The doctor says, voice still raspy, still pleasant as his hands gently work on your wound.

You only hum in response, eyes starting to roam around the room. Observing the big windows along with the metal bars laid over them, then the square water drainage under the sink to your right and lastly, they fall back to the doctor's face.

You've spent a lot of time digging out information about him. 

You've seen his senior photos, high school graduation photos, photos of ceremonies and galas he's attended with his father, photos from his own charity work that gets plastered all over the newspaper because charity work is just that special when he's the one doing it.

And you have to admit, none of the photos do him justice.

His hair is longer now, black and covering the nape of his neck. He has piercings up both ears, shiny jewelry dangling off of them. Honey-like skin without any visible blemishes, cute nose and full lips that seem chapped from the cold. 

You never noticed the mole below his eye and a matching one on his bottom lip in the photos. They give his face even more charm.

He was gorgeous.

"Tattoo looks fresh." His voice interrupts you from inner musings and it's then that you notice his dark eyes trailing the lines on your right arm which was left bare once you rolled up the sleeve of your shirt up to your elbow.

You suck in a sharp breath before giving him a small, soft smile. Here goes nothing.

"Sorry about this, the last thing I want to do is be an inconvenience but...there was a lot of blood." You chuckle breathlessly which causes him to look up at you with his lips curled up in a small smile. "Thank you for doing this."

"No worries, it's quite literally my job." It's his time to chuckle, smile growing wider as he presses a cotton pad soaked in something to the gash that ran across your palm and fuck, he had a pretty smile. 

"You seemed like you were busy..."

"Nah," He shakes his head, eyes rooted on the wound, "Was just going over patient records. It's fine, I treat the staff here sometimes."

You pursue your lips, eyes drawn to his face again. "I'm Y/N, by the way."

He nods, brows jumping up a little as he picks up his head, like he's already aware of who you are. "The new supervisor for the construction site, I've heard."

"And you are?" You ask, a flirty smile blooming across your features as you look at him through your lashes.

"Doctor Jung Wooyoung." He holds your gaze a millisecond longer which is all you needed.

"Jung like the governor?" You ask, heart soaring in thrill when you feel his hands still on your own. You can't help yourself. "You have the same last name as the governor, you sort of look like him as well."

He, Wooyoung, stays quiet and opts to work on your wound instead.

You cock your head to the side, "You're not related, are you?"

Again, silence.

You let out a small hum, mouth curling as you look at the dirty tissues pilling up on the desk in front of you.

"Wouldn't think you'd find the son of frontier justice Jung Myungdae working in a prison." You comment in an almost taunting voice, rich boys who pretended like they cared about the lower classes and were different than their snobby peers always being a little bit of a joke to you, before turning your attention back to him. "As a doctor no less."

You can hear him let out a sharp breath, head picking up to look at you as a fleeting look of being uncomfortable washes over his face.

"I believe in being a part of the solution, not the problem." Doctor Jung says decidedly and you hum again, eyes falling to the way he gently holds the back of your hand with one hand while he holds the gauze with another.

"Be the change that you want to see in the world." You recite with a nod, still staring at the wound on your palm but noticing the way the comment seemed to strike him. You look at him, not being able to contain the smile on your face when you catch him staring at you. "What?"

He shakes his head, lips pursued like he's holding back a smile. "Nothing. That was just my senior quote."

I know, I had your senior photos glued to my window.

You raise your brows in playful disbelief. "That was you? This whole time I was thinking it was Ghandi."

That gets a laugh out of him. It's a nice sound, slightly higher in pitch but sort of endearing.

"Funny." He comments sparing you another smile and going back to wrapping the gauze around your palm.

Once he's done, you let your bandaged up hand lay on your lap as you watch him stand up.

"Sit tight, I'll get you some painkillers because that's bound to hurt for the next couple of hours." He says before leaving you alone in the room. 

Once he's out of your sight, you pull out a small origami dove out of the pocket of your pants and quickly walk over to kneel down next to the sink, slipping it through the slats of the grate for the water drainage before returning to your place.

Half a minute later, Doctor Jung reenters the room with a glass of water in one hand and painkillers in the other.

"Here you go." He hands them to you and you down them obediently before giving him a grateful look.

"Thank you again for this." You sigh, standing up from the chair and running your healthy hand through your hair before smiling, "Hope I didn't take too much of your time."

"I already told you it's not a problem." He responds with a smile of his own, eyes feeling unusually pleasant on you.

"Well, I'll let you go back to your patient records, then." You say, inching closer to the door.

"If you need anything else, feel free to drop by." Doctor Jung's voice softly calls after you and it makes you pause in your steps as you turn to look at him over your shoulder.

"Then I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other then." You boldly tell him, enjoying the way he obviously tries to bite back a grin.

"Guess so." He responds, eyes boring into your own.

With one last smile, you disappear through the door and head up the stairs leading to your shitty office.

You will be just perfect, Jung Wooyoung.

-

Schweitzer 

Allen 

11121147

You stare at the writing tattooed on the inner part of your lower right arm, fingers anxiously tapping against the hard surface of your office desk before a knock causes you to lower the sleeve of your shirt as your head snaps to the door.

"Come in."

"Miss, the warden would like to see you." The warden's assistant, Soojin gives you a kind smile which you return, standing up and quickly straightening your outfit before following her through the door and down the hallway.

The section with the offices for administration (and now, you) was on the third floor of the infirmary building and almost completely protected from any spaces where convicts might roam around by locked bars placed on the halls going after the staircases.

And while your office was shitty, the warden's was definitely not. 

You observe the spacious room and the big oak table the older man sits behind as he smiles at you invitingly and offers you a seat.

"Did you settle in accordingly, miss L/N?" The warden asks and you nod comfortably.

"Yes, sir. I plan on being very diligent and making sure everyone does a good job."

"Good, good." He nods his head before a look of hesitation crosses his face that immediately causes your nerves to flare up. "This might seem extremely unprofessional and definitely out of character for me as I don't do it often but I'm in need of a little help, you're a structural engineer, correct?"

You tilt your head to the side, brows furrowing, "Yes, sir."

He clears his throat, pushing his chair back to stand up. "Follow me."

You follow the older man as he walks across his face to the door on the opposite wall of the entrance which you've mistaken for a closet so far. He motions for you to enter first and you do, your mouth can't help but part in slight awe.

You stare at the model of the Taj Mahal propped up on a huge table in the middle of the spacious room connected to the warden's office, surrounded by windows from one side entirely, the light seeps through the model beautifully and you admire it quietly.

"Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a monument to his undying love for his wife. My wife is quite fond of the story. It appeals to the romantic side of her." He smiles at you, "Being married to someone on corrections, it's a terrible job, wouldn't wish it on anybody. And yet, in thirty-nine years my wife has never complained and the worst part is I've never thanked her. So because I couldn't say it I thought, you know, I could build it. In January, it's our fortieth anniversary. Well here, look." The warden bends down to look into the base of the structure and you copy his movements, peering inside.

 "The problem is, I build anymore and it's all going to come down like a house of cards. That's where I was hoping you could be of assistance. Obviously, it would be a favor for a favor. I don't know what you would need, new furniture for your office? New heater? I know everything in there is rusty..." He trails off, eyes glinting with pleads.

It felt like Christmas came a month earlier to you.

"Actually, I have something else in mind."

"What? What is it?" He shakes his head, urging you to speak.

"You see your eight wonder of the world might collapse since the stress isn't propagated properly." You inform him with an innocent smile as the warden frowns.

"Propagated properly?"

You nod. "Propagated properly.  The joints are overloaded. They won't provide anywhere near the strength the completed structure will need."

The older man looks at you in mild concern before turning to the model, something he very obviously placed a lot of effort into. "How much work are we talking about?"

"When did you say you need it to be done? January?" You ask, circling around the model again. The warden lets out a small 'yes' and you hum, "Then we better get started then, I'll help you out for an hour every day."

The warden's face lights up in relief and you have to hide the shakiness in your voice as you continue. You clear your throat; "In return, I'd like to be approved weekly visitations to my brother."

The smile on his face freezes for a moment before melting away completely and getting replaced by a deep frown.

"Your brother?"

You gulp down the nerves and wipe your clammy hands on the back of your pants, nodding, "My brother, Choi Jongho."

"Choi Jongho is your brother?!" The warden asks, voice laced with utter disbelief and your eyes fall immediately to the carpeted floor. "How the hell was I not aware of this?"

"I took my mother's last name after I graduated from college." You offer quietly, mustering up the balls to look at the man in the eyes, "It's not like I was hiding it or anything but...it never came up. I didn't exactly learn when was the right moment to say that my brother was one of the inmates in the jail where I'd be sent to supervise the construction site."

"You know you're not allowed visitations if you're a staff member, right?" He asks, crossing his arms over his chest as he gives you a strict look.

"I know but... I'm not a permanent staff member." Your voice drops in volume as your eyes start to burn, "And I'd really just like to see him once a week just like everybody else is allowed. He's my only family, sir."

The warden's eyes soften once he catches sight of your eyes glistening with tears. 

Your nails dig into the wound on your palm.

He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before sighing, then he starts pacing up and down the length of the room which might be a good indicator that he's actually considering it. 

You dig your nails harder into the wound and the first tear drops, you sniffle.

"The reason I took this job was...I felt like I'd be a little bit closer to him for a short period of time. He's my older brother, he took care of me when no-one else did," You sniffle again, feeling a nail punch through the thick gauze of the gash on your palm. Another tear. "I thought, just being able to look at see him through the window when he plays basketball would be nice but then they told me I wasn't allowed visitations and by then, it was to late to change my mind."

You discover that Chungju Detention Center's warden hated seeing young girls cry.

"That's all you ask for? Nothing else?" He breaks the silence after a long moment of consideration, "Wouldn't a new heater for your office be better, it gets cold during the winters here."

You quickly shake your head, "J-just visitations to my brother."

He's quiet again before he finally lets out a deep sigh.

"Alright but it can't be longer than ten minutes, do you hear?" He asks and you nod, eyes growing in size as your head snaps up to look at him. "And the moment I hear about any funny business, it's over. Do you understand me?"

"Absolutely," You nod with innocent, big eyes. The tears miraculously stopping their flow all of a sudden. "No funny business."

He observes you for a second longer before finally allowing you to leave his quarters.

You let out a big exhale on your way out, staring at the blood that managed to run through the gauze on your palm.

-

You were trouble.

That's all the conclusion Wooyoung could come to as he stared at you, leaning against the doorframe of the infirmary with your bag slung over your shoulder, coat folded over your arm and a smile on your face that made his head spin.

"Hey." You greet him, voice mellow and sounding lightly tired as you lean your head against the frame as well.

"Hey," Play it cool, you're a grown man. "How was the first day?"

"It was good, a little unexpectedly boring almost." You answer him with a smirk and he clears his throat before he started staring at your full lips without the option of looking away being in his books apparently and inevitably got caught.

"What did you expect?" Wooyoung lets out a light laugh, crossing his arms over his chest as he sits at the corner of his messy desk. "Shootouts  and heads getting bashed in all day long?"

You giggle, pearly white teeth on full display as you nod, "I was expecting a lot more yelling and screaming at least."

"Hey, we have some quiet times in here as well. Give it a day or two, though."

You chuckle again before shaking your head, hand coming up to brush your hair from your face and in the meantime, showing off the tattoo you had on your other arm as well.

And as Wooyoung was a red-blooded healthy male, of course, his mind started wandering on just how far the tattoos went.

God, you are trouble, you are so much fucking trouble.

He should've been kind of pissed off at you when you brought up his father but...how the hell could he be?

He saw the way the other guards stared at you, how the one who walked you into the infirmary this morning was almost salivating with his eyes glued to you and just how much Wooyoung's ego skyrocketed when you told the guard he can fuck off because he was there now. He obviously wasn't the only one affected here!

With your pants that hugged your waist and thighs perfectly, the shirt that accentuated your cleavage and it's two intentionally popped open buttons , the thin necklace decorating your collarbones, the tattoos (God, the tattoos), long hair that smelled like vanilla to whoever got close enough, a smile that definitely knew of its effect on other people and eyes that seemed like nothing ever phased them.

Wooyoung liked trouble sooooo much.

"I wanted to, um, ask for a favor." Your soft voice interrupts his current train of thoughts and he raised his brows in question.

"What?"

"I, uh, I'm a Type 1 Diabetic." You tell him, straightening out your posture in a way that tells Wooyoung that you might be nervous for some reason. You give him an awkward chuckle which he finds kind of cute. "And I'd get my daily shots at a doctor's office on my way to and from work every day since my own office was close by."

"Mhm..." He tilts his head in curiosity. He wonders where you used to work, did you drive a car? Wooyoung used to work in the center of Seoul as well! Did you two ever ride the same train downtown? 

"And that's no longer an option anymore since, well, I have to be here every morning so I have to leave, like, an hour earlier at least." You bite your lip, pretty eyes meeting his own, "I was wondering if you'd be able to do it here? Obviously, I don't want to impose on your schedule or anything, I understand if you can't but I thought it might be worth trying. I'd bring my own shots, wouldn't want to steal government resources y'know...heh..."

He notices how you always speak like you're an inconvenience when you need help.

Wooyoung bites back a smile as he watches you ramble before finally finding the heart to interrupt you, "Alright."

Your lips part at that, "You will?"

"Yes," He chuckles, "It's not a big deal, it takes, like, two minutes tops so..."

"Okay, great." You sigh in relief, playing with the bandages on your hand before nodding again. "Thank you. For this and...today, as well."

"It's my job." He's quick to respond out of habit by now, God, he's been out of the game a little too long now. There were, like, five different lines he could've dropped there. He forgot how to flirt.

Or maybe flirting with you seems a bit terrifying if he was honest.

"Right." You chuckle, fixing your bag on your shoulder before smiling at him one last time, "Well, have a good night."

Wooyoung nods, almost a little disappointed that you're leaving already. "You too."

-

Jongho might understand why Jisung decided to wrap that sheet attached to the pipe around his neck and jump from the staircase.

In fact, if he had to listen to this dude, Coin or whatever the fuck, talk about his girlfriend Lim Jiyeon, class 2001 of some damn beauty school in Gangnam with auburn colored hair and perfectly applied lip gloss for one second longer, Jongho just might do the same thing as Jisung.

He was serving a life sentence for something he didn't do, that should be a punishment enough. He already knew there was nothing else to do except to serve time here, nobody else will serve it for him.

But, holy fuck, his new cellmate who invited himself to the seat next to him on this bench, could not keep his mouth shut for a second and Jongho really didn't need this so early in the morning.

"Woah, who's that?" Coin whistles, following��someone with his eyes like the sun was shining out of their ass.

"Who?" Jongho mumbles in question not even bothering to turn to the direction his new cellmate was salivating in, thinking it was probably just another stupidity that managed to catch Coin's attention. There's not much to do here, after all...

"That woman." Coin nudges him. Typical, all those woes about his dear girlfriend forgotten at the first sight of another woman. Jongho rolls his eyes, taking a quick glance to where the other man was pointing before turning back around again.

Then he freezes.

Jongho's head whips around in the same direction again, the familiar checkered coat and same hair length making him blink to see if he finally went insane in here.

The walk was the same as well.

His legs, with a mind of his own, started swiftly moving across the yard with Coin yelling something behind him but Jongho ignored it, his only goal to get to that fence even if he had to shovel through the inmates.

"Y/N?" He mumbles to himself, watching the woman move across the gravel, long hair carried to the side by the cold wind. And as if she heard him, she slows down with her steps, turning her head in his direction...

Jongho feels like his heart stopped.

"Y/N?" He asks, this time a bit louder because holy fuck, that's his little sister's face. It's her. It's you!

You don't stop to talk to him, you don't say anything back but Jongho, sure as hell, didn't hallucinate the smile that you throw his way as you continue up the gravel to the building leading to the infirmary.

"You know her?" Coin's deep voice makes him jump in his place, Jongho didn't even notice that the older male was standing right next to him by now.

"Yeah." Jongho whispers, words getting stuck in his throat as he finds it hard to swallow.

"Bro, are you okay?" Coin questions, confused by the way Jongho stared at the building you just disappeared into.

"That's my sister."

And she's definitely up to no good.

[atalossofwords]

YOU TASTE THE SILVER - IvanTill WIP (Part 3)

This is another part of the WIP! This one is shorter, and back to Till's POV. We also learn more about his backstory, and Dewey and Isaac make an appearance! I really enjoyed coming up with a backstory, and making Dewey Till's brother was incredibly fun.

part one - part two

Till is settling nicely in his new apartment. Most of the furniture is assembled, and he has found some really great decorations, enough so it now looks like a proper home instead of a 'frat boy's house', as Hyuna called it. He found a bunch of antique vinyl disks to hang around the living room, and Isaac and his brother found a second-hand store that sold stuff cheap enough that a good portion of his budget wasn't eaten up.

He ponders what to do with it, wondering if he should buy something else for his setup, get some more clothes since he really is always cold and needs more stuff he can layer nicely.

"You should get a tongue piercing." Dewey says, putting his tongue out in demonstration. Besides him Isaac nods sagely, taking a moment to swallow down the burger he's eating before saying anything.

"You can always just wait for winter sale to get more clothes. Plus, the piercing is hot as fuck." He says, waving a french fry at Dewey.

"Aw babe, you think it's hot?" His brother says, battling his eyelashes. Isaac grins.

"Totally, and feels really good on my–" Till squeaks and covers his ears, in no mood to hear about his brother's dating life.

"I'm getting more soda!" He announces, getting up and walking away from their table. He knows them enough to guess that they'll make out now.

Really, Till is glad his brother found Isaac; their childhood wasn't an easy one, and Dewey practically raised Till. Isaac was the first decent person his brother dated after a string of bad exes, the first to sit Till down and do his homework with him instead of insisting Dewey leave his little brother home to go out.

They've been together for almost 6 years now, and Isaac is about as much as his brother as Dewey is. Doesn't mean Till is any more interested in hearing about their sex life now then when he was 16 and they were going at it like rabbits.

He walks back to the table with a new cup just in time to see Isaac kiss Dewey's forehead, their hands entwined on Isaac's cheek, before they look over and lower their hands below the table. Till rolls his eyes. The fact that they have no problem fucking were Till can hear but hide all the mush romantic things is simply beyond him.

"Seriously, though. You can get clothes later, you should get something to celebrate moving out!" Isaac says, pushing his fries over as Till sits down. Dewey is nodding his head.

"If you'd prefer a tattoo, I can design something for you. You'll have to buy the piercing yourself, though I can convince Hyung to lower the price." He says, and Till considers it. Dewey is a good tattoo artist, he did all of Till's tattoos, and the owner of the studio he works at did all of Till's piercings. He's comfortable with all of them, and the idea of getting something to mark the occasion, as he did with all his other piercings, is a tempting one.

"I'll think about it." Is all he says, eating the chips as Dewey and Isaac start discussing what sort of tattoo and/or piercing Till should do, ranked based on hot they think said piercing or location is. Till feels his ears burn when Isaac comments if Till gets a piercing, he bets Navi will send a new one to match his new piercings, and Dewey goes on about how a diamond on the tongue is just a bad idea.

Till focuses on finishing his fries. He's still unsure of what to think about Navi. Before the gifts, he was mostly just... ignoring it. Yeah, Navi sent in a lot of money, but they were never inappropriate on their messages, and Till knows that streaming is his job; there's no use worrying about how much money someone wants to send him. He's not going to clickbait his viewers or try to pretend at a parasocial relationship, so if someone wants to spend money on him, that's none of his business.

The piercings kind of change that, though.

It's physical proof that there is someone out there who listens to Till, who spent time choosing expansive things for him, who comes to almost all of his streams, even if just to leave a "Busy today, will watch the VOD. Good stream <3" donation.

It makes Till wonder who it is.

Dewey thinks its an old woman who's bored with her husband, like one of the many kpop fan's he's seen online. Isaac thinks it's some office worker who likes to watch Till's streams on the way back from work. Hyuna says it must be some bored executive who's looking for a new sugar baby.

Till has no idea which one it could be, but the way Hyuna talks about it makes his stomach squirm, and he's not sure if it's in a good or bad way yet.

Till snaps out of his thoughts when Dewey messes up his hair, looking up to see him standing up while Isaac collects all the trash to throw out.

"Ready to go? If we're done with the supermarket by four, we can probably stay to make dinner."

"Oh hell yeah!" Till says, practically jumping up. Isaac's homemade dinner is always the best kind of dinners.

part four

[xx-psych0-rabbit-xx]

how do you imagine zan interacting with each of the dream friends? sorry if thats a question thats asking for a lot.

never apologize for wanting me to write an essay regarding zan partizanne i would do that for a living if i could

nyways luckily zans the one responsible for announcing n showing off the dream friends on twitter so we can have some idea ! of that ! kinda ! as a base !

(note:ive previously answered regarding her feelings on marx, susie n magolor here! so i wont touch on them for this one)

animal trio:its her most brief tweet regarding the announced characters, so i dont think she rly has any thoughts on them ? she doesnt even bother w a nickname, so i imagine shes just neutral on them, lightly bothered rick n kine r notorious for slacking, maybe looks down on them a bit in a "wow my trio is sm professional n stronger than yours." way

gooey:gooey, along side void n the other generals, r the only characters who get nice nickname privileges from zan, in gooeys case v likely she recognized him as part of dark matter n immediately went for expressing appreciation for his holy existence in her peculiar little way (i recall someone pointing out zan has three naming ways for ppl:derogatory, cutesy affectionate n Extreme Respect By Using Full Name.not related just silly aside), i think shes Very Appreciative of gooey n therefore rly affectionate towards him but shes also rly religious abt him.like if a christian met jesus on the street.btw being gooey must be crazy yk nothing abt yourself or your origin n then you find out theres a cult for your species w sacrifices

adeleine/ribbon:throughout her tweets zan.rly goes in on insulting adeleine.like yeah her hairline comments but she keeps bringing up how adeleine seems weak n hides like a little girl (SHES LIKE 12 SHE IS A LITTLE GIRL!!!) n while zan usually atleast acknowledges others fighting skills before claiming shes better, for adeleine she instead insists on constantly bringing her down anyways even when shes surprised at her having a new skill, n her last tweet is literally "hah, im looking forward to facing you!" after commenting ado n ribbon r dancing around adorably, basically she seems to.lowkey hate her LMAO? the adeleine tweets r sooo important to characterizing zan constantly challenging ppl tho !!! she prides her own strength (she even calls herself a battle hardened warrior) a lot n constantly wants to prove it, n hates what she sees as weak or cowardly to the point she seems to lowkey want to teach ppl like that a lesson? so yeah no she has some weird personal one sided beef w adeleine that ado is prob so confused abt, she actually seems to ignore ribbon in her tweets so i imagine she just thinks of her as some extra to ado than a partner to take seriously

honestly shes prob projecting some stuff but thats another post n this is long enough of a paragraph already lol

DMK:not much on the tweets aside from the usual "I CAN BEAT YOU UP" (btw she sounds a bit excited abt it? shes so cute) i dont think she has much interest in him beyond "sounds fun to beat up".shed probably lose btw bc an essential part of zans ego is she does not realize her boss fight is designed to have safe spots bc shes not actually that good at this 🩷

daroach:she doesnt have much to comment but does compare daroachs leadership style to her own, knowing her shes prob gonna get competitive abt that, i cannot see daroach caring back beyond being annoying abt it for fun lol

taranza:so this one is fun bc i think taranza sympathizes w her quite a bit, yk whole "you ever absolutely adore your evil boss n they could not give less of a shit back?" n so he thinks he can help smooth the way into acceptance of trauma bc he did it by himself so he can help n itll be less lonely n hard if he does! n like.its coming from a good place! he rly does want to help.but ultimately their situations r crucially different in what ended up happening (sectonia died n taranza could tell when enough was enough, hyness survived n zan has.no awareness his behavior was bad shes in full acceptance he can treat her like that if he wants to) so what ends up happening is he just gets on her nerves. a lot.bc shes absolutely not anywhere near where taranza started after sectonia died, zan in the tweets acknowledges the similarities between them withhhhh no awareness of what happened to taranza after n honestly knowing her...ego problems shed probably think "what actually happened is you were not good enough, when i would fail lord hyness always found a way to still make me useful.i am simply better than you n you refuse to see it." taranza by some miracle still tries to atleast be friendly w her.he rly does want to help n be there when he can man

[maxwell-grant]

since you mentioned him, why do you like mysterio so much?

Much like I mentioned in that other post, my appreciation for Mysterio is based on "pretty much everything the character's been in, comics in last place" first and foremost, mainly because comics Mysterio, while he's obviously the source and has really great, essential storylines for appreciating the character, also has a lot of moments that make him too much of a scumbag for me to enjoy the way I'd like to, particularly Guardian Devil, I really, really don't like that storyline. It's this problem everyone cursed with a love for comic book characters runs into, especially when they are villain fans who like their favorite villains a little or a lot less nasty / murdery / perverted / etc-y than how most writers prefer to use them, I think you all definitely know what I mean without me having to cite specific examples, so we can put this caveat aside.

So I can talk about how much I love Mysterio in general.

(Art by michalivan)

First off, Mysterio has what is EASILY one of the greatest supervillain designs period, not even just for comic book characters, and I'm that they never got rid of the fishbowl or tried to permanently redesign it into something "cooler", like the fishbowl isn't already unbelievably cool, and that, even with the lengths they took to modernize and blockbuster-fy Mysterio for FFH, they didn't touch the fishbowl and instead used it as a centerpiece for some of his illusions (by far the best part of that movie, really the only thing that made me watch it, was it's depiction of Mysterio and his traps). 

It’s a design that wouldn’t look remotely out of place in a Power Rangers or Kamen Rider show and I mean that as a compliment, tokusatsu supervillain designs are generally a cut or several above comic book supervillain designs, partially because, much like how fighting game characters need to be appealing at first sight in ways other videogame characters do not need, tokusatsu villains, especially in monster-of-the-week formats, need to strike up an impression and be distinguishable and show you what kind of threat they pose or character they are, often with nothing BUT their design. And so Mysterio stands out in any line-up, next to any candy-colored criminal mastermind or deformed gangster or animal-themed superthug.

Mysterio’s look, even at it’s most basic form, strikes a weird, confusing, mystical figure. What should be a fairly obvious albeit still cool supervillain look, with that green bodysuit and purple cape and wrist ornaments, turns almost into some kind of weird abstract art piece, with the net pattern over his body and those wretched eye ornaments attaching his cape and of course the fishbowl, obscuring and dehumanizing his features beyond even the usual  monstrous mask, evoking something far less bestial than the other Spider-rogues, instead pushing it to the truly alien and dreamlike, something you’d find minding it’s business in M.C Escher rooms squirreled away in unexplored depths of subconscious, something that only bothers to look human so it can better taunt you with just how stupid and ignorant you really are about the world around you. 

And of course, Mysterio is not some grandiose, godlike alien, he’s just a theatrical asshole with parlor tricks, and his design excellently communicates both of these aspects to him, especially when the fishbowl is inevitably destroyed and suddenly the entire illusion is gone. Or is it? He always finds a way to get you the hardest when you think you’ve got him down and he’s got no more illusions to pull, and then he turns out to have a whole ensemble of extra illusions, or just good old fashioned dirty tricks, because Mysterio is nothing if not a resourceful bastard.

I mentioned atop that I don’t like some moments where Mysterio is made too much of a bastard for me to enjoy the character as a fun supervillain, but that is in no way me saying that I don’t like Mysterio as a bastard, quite the opposite. I love that he in particular, out of most of the major Spider-Man villains, is the one with the least tragic reasons for becoming a villain. He wasn’t turned into a monster, he wasn’t screwed over unfairly out of his life’s work, he didn’t have any mental illnesses or conditions to push him to crime (which gives him less of an excuse than fucking Carnage, of all people), he didn’t even have a tragic life story prior to taking up the costume.

His backstory is that he was an accomplished VFX artist and stuntman, with steady employment, who became bored and, failing to transition into acting, decided to take up costumed supervillainy (a retcon later established that he was blacklisted after one of his special effects injured someone, but that doesn’t mitigate anything as he could have, and indeed has, found any number of workarounds for this). Even adaptations that try to give Mysterio more concrete or understandable (and sometimes less fun) reasons for becoming a supervillain don’t do anything to mitigate that this guy, while not nearly as cruel as the Goblin or the Symbiotes, or as dangerous as Doc Ock or destructive as someone like Electro or Scorpion, is a piece of shit who became a costumed terrorist purely to sate his ego, because he had the means and resources to become a supervillain and the idea appealed to him, so he did it.

You know how Breaking Bad appears at first to be the heartbreaking story of an average, well-meaning man driven to crime out of desperate financial woes, when it turns out to be mainly the story of a gargantuan, cartoonish asshole finally finding an excuse to cut loose and go on an ego trip at the expense of everyone around him? Or Death Note and that whole joke that goes around in this site, about how Light Yagami saw the slippery slope and decided to grab a sled? That’s Mysterio. He’s the greatest example of a genuine, bonafide Saturday morning cartoon villain in Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, and often times this doesn’t at all mitigate the threat he poses, even when Spider-Man is actively aware that he’s dealing with Mysterio’s Scooby-Doo bullshit again.

If there’s a single thing that asshole’s honest about, is the why he’s doing this, and frankly I tend to like that in a villain, especially because all the other Spider-Man villains tend to be largely tragic victims, fully monstrous and irredeemable murderers, or funny assholes who are meant to be slightly sympathetic and pathetic also. In a world where the biggest villains tend to be self-deluded monsters and scumbags doing wretched things under a pretense of nobility or excused (sometimes by the narrative even) by personal tragedy, like Magneto or Dr Doom or the X-Men in the Krakoa era or MCU Thanos, I find Mysterio refreshing. Nobody’s gonna ask me to debate the morality of the mass murders and war crimes committed by Mysterio (and it helps that he’s not interested in doing those, he really just gets his kicks out of putting on a show and fucking with Spider-Man) and we’re all generally on the same page that he’s a total dipshit and kind of a joke but he’s also very cool and genuinely scary at points, and he’s generally not bad enough to the point it ruins how fun he is to watch as a cartoon villain (again, minus stories like Guardian Devil, at least for me). Nobody’s gonna come up to me in real life and argue with me that “he’s got a point” that I should consider debating over. 

Mysterio is a creature of spectacle through and through. It’s the spectacle that makes superhero comics what they are, and the true power of Mysterio as a character comes not in the ways he poses a personal threat to Peter Parker (which he does, having gone through painstakingly cruel lengths to gaslight and torment Parker’s mind in ways that other villains with direct mind-control powers couldn’t conceive doing), or a major-scale menace to the city. It’s not in the ways he poses a dark mirror to Spider-Man or a symbolic attack on his persona, that’s what you go to characters like Venom or Doc Ock or Kraven for. What makes Mysterio interesting to me, on a deeper level, is that his power lies in the spectacle that we inherently sign up for when we go to superhero stories. He may not break or acknowledge the 4th wall directly, but on some level, Mysterio displays awareness that he lives in a world of story, that he is a player on a stage like all the others around him, and that he must entertain. His very gimmick as a villain is to tell stories within stories, to insidiously take control, even if only briefly and only in the little world he lives in, of people’s lives and puppeteer them along.

Speaking more personally, Mysterio’s always been a concept deeply appealing to me personally, a grandiose theatrical supervillain who specialized in using movie special effects and film concepts to pick fights with superheroes. I’ve wanted to become a filmmaker since I was 13 and it’s a dream I latched onto strongly my whole life no matter what, one I’ve only been able to begun achieving recently. I’ve always loved telling stories, learning about stories, taking facts and events and spinning stories out of them and getting people invested in them, I’ve been doing it even before I knew what it was, and one of the big reasons why I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker is because film affords you more tools to work with when creating a story, and I’ve always wanted to learn more about what those tools were and how to use them. Learn the “magic”, as it were. 

And sometimes it feels weird or wrong to call it “magic”, when it’s stuff that you know how to do so mechanically, when it’s stuff you have to do for a living, when you have to do it when you don’t want to, when you got bills to pay and so parts of the “magic” become a job like any other and suddenly you have to come to terms with the idea that maybe you ended up choking your childhood dream by chasing it and it’s hard to muster up the love and excitement you need to in order to go after those dreams you’ve been putting in the backburner forever now and-

..Allright, you know what, I take it back, maybe Mysterio did have a point. A worker in the film industry, ESPECIALLY in the special effects and stunts department, choosing to become a supervillain, feels like something that doesn’t need much justification. Mysterio’s real arch-enemy wouldn’t be Spider-Man, it’d be CGI. 

Or Sony.

(Fingers crossed that, with all the Raimi love in NWH, someday we’ll FINALLY get some justice in this world and get Bruce Campbell as Mysterio for real.)

Jokes aside though, part of the reason I always found Mysterio cool, even when I had read or watched very few stories with him in it, is the same reason so many people quote first and foremost when asked to describe why they like Batman: the ability to kick ass without superpowers. I’ve always liked to watch Mysterio fight Spider-Man for similar reasons people like to watch Batman fight Superman.

I’ve never, ever, liked the idea of Mysterio using actual magic, it runs very much contrary to his appeal as a tremendous illusionist without any magical abilities, using purely advanced technology and his own brilliant mind to run circles around superheroes (and sometimes even supervillains, even those who are actual magic users, who can’t figure out and counter what he’s doing). I didn’t want to get into film because of Mysterio, but the idea of Mysterio made filmmaking and special effects look cool to me the same way Popeye made spinach look cool or Batman makes being a detective look cool. Yeah, spinach doesn’t turn you into a fighting god (to my bitter dissappointment when I first tried it) and by all means Batman would be a pretty terrible detective, but that’s what fiction is for, and fiction is Mysterio’s power.

Fiction is what allows Mysterio, a no-name scumbag with no superpowers, to pose a regular challenge to a superhero who leaps through buildings and juggles cars. Fiction is what allows Batman to beat up Superman, and it’s specifically the fact that it’s Mysterio’s background in film, in special effects and stunt work and acting and etc, that allows him to do all of this, that always made it really, really cool for me. One of the great things about film for me is that learning how the magic is done doesn’t destroy it, quite the opposite. Is Jurassic Park spoiled for anyone when they find out that, no, they didn’t have an actual T-Rex on set, so they built TWO GIANT ROBOTS made to look impeccably like artistic renditions of Tyrannosaurus and whole teams had to operate those under extremely precise conditions just to get seconds of footage? Of course not, that only makes it better! We all know that the Muppets are not “real”, and that doesn’t stop anyone from treating Kermit like he’s a real dude, just a little smaller and a little more green than other dudes, to the point crew members regularly describe completely forgetting that the Muppets are not actually fellow actors. You know it’s fake, and you still think of it as real anyway. Spider-Man knows everything Mysterio does is an illusion, and he still has trouble fighting him. 

Mysterio is a creature of the story who weaponizes stories, weaponizes the art, the scenery, the actions, the reactions, the character arcs, the medium itself, against the protagonist, on paper for his own benefit, but really, for our own (because Mysterio is nothing if not a performer, and a performer is nothing without an audience). His power is his ability to give us a show. Not Spider-Man. Us. Who guarantees that, beneath that fish bowl of his that betrays no line of sight, he isn’t always looking at the reader to gauge your interest and is just good at pretending otherwise, like he does with everything else? 

Mysterio may be a gimmick villain, but it’s a gimmick that makes him an extremely versatile, interesting villain nonetheless because his gimmick is that he’s a storyteller. He weaves lies, frauds, deceptions, tricks, cons, all in spectacular packages and villainous plots, fueled and sustained by magic. Not the hokey bullshit used by that goober Dr Strange to save the world, the real stuff, that which has magically influenced you to spend time, if not money also, to read or watch a story with a guy who has a fish bowl for a head fighting a guy in spider pajamas. Used and designed by a criminal whose endgoals are often as basic and unremarkable as Quentin Beck himself is when you strip away his costume, when he’s nothing but a scumbag with dirty tricks, but Mysterio? Mysterio is magic, and he’s here for us. 

Or so he would claim. He is a professional liar above all else. But he prefers the more pompous name for that, it’s called “artist”.  

[merakiui]

What do you think of the concept of yan!xiao, childe venti trapping their darling in a teapot?

I feel like they would be less restrictive since the darling wouldn't necessarily be able to escape most likely, so they wouldn't worry about restraint much. Esp in Ventis case...he is the God of freedom so while his darling isn't exactly 'free' they're still kinda free in a way that they have their own world to be free in?

Xiao would probably be somewhat restricted, but only just keep them in the house because he probably wouldn't trust them to be by themselves yet--he figures they may try to run off and hide from him or something

Childe would probably let them try to "escape" on purpose and would be absolutely amused when his darling finds out they wouldn't be able to leave

(cw: yandere, captivity, unhealthy behaviors/relationship, mention of children and implied stockholm syndrome for childe’s part)

Venti doesn't exactly lie to you, but he does trick you. He's aware that it's not the nicest thing to do and that it's not exactly captivity if you're living in a world that resembles the one outside. Only this pocket-sized world is nicer and happier and there aren't any people to get in the way. He tells you about it when you're vulnerable. Maybe you're drunk or you're crying your eyes out because something horrible happened. Either way, you're not in the right state of mind when you make the comment: "I wish I could live in my own ideal world for just one day." And this is great news for Venti because it makes relocation so much easier.

He shows you the teapot and explains it briefly, leaving out certain details. It's better if you don't know everything about how the teapot works. After all, ignorance is bliss. Venti tells you how to get in, but he doesn't tell you how to get out. And the way he describes it makes it sound so tempting—as if living inside this teapot for a bit will cure whatever's bothering you. You decide it wouldn't hurt to spend a day or two inside the teapot to see the little world Venti holds in the palms of his hands.

It's a lot of fun at first. You and Venti glide from the top of the mountains in Emerald Peak, he sings melodious ballads as you look up at the sky, and the two of you play hide-and-seek inside of the house, playfully popping out of rooms and laughing when you’re caught. Eventually the charm wears off and you start to yearn for the outside world. It’s not the same in the teapot. As pretty and peaceful as it may be, it still feels so empty. And when you bring it up to Venti he finds small ways to change the subject. It probably plays out like this:

“Venti, I’d like to go home now.”

“But we were just about to play another round of hide-and-seek! Come on! Don’t be a spoilsport! One more round? Then we’ll leave.”

Or he’ll tell you that you’re already home. There’s always a big smile on his face when he says stuff like that. He’s happy that he gets to spend so much time with you and no one can interfere. But it does get annoying when you start to beg for the old world. Your pleas to leave will fall upon his deaf ears. Venti does feel a little bad when you start to sulk, but his sympathy is short-lived. Let’s not forget that you were the one who wanted this. You wanted to live in your ‘ideal world.’ And isn’t this ideal?

As an adeptus, Xiao is aware of Sub-Space Creation and the effort it takes to construct a presentable teapot. He’s been working hard on his ever since you came into his life. Before he knew you he didn’t have a reason to put effort into it because he stays at Wangshu Inn, but after he met you he started working a lot harder. He tries to make the teapot as comfortable as possible. You mentioned you like dogs or cats in passing? You can find a few in the teapot. You said you like berry bushes and flower fields? There’s a bunch in his teapot. He probably has a nearly perfect model of your room in there as well. Before he brings you into the teapot, he’ll often sit in that room and make sure everything replicates the original, down to the bed frame and the fabric used for the pillow case.

He’ll put some of your things in it just so it feels more personal. Xiao knows he’s stealing from you whenever he does this, but it’s not like you ever noticed anything was missing. Besides, it’s all going in the teapot anyways. You won’t even need your real room or mortal possessions anymore. Xiao is actually quite proud of the teapot and manages to fool himself into thinking you’ll like it, too. And you do (for the first few days, that is). He’s very forward with his question of whether or not you’d like to see his teapot. And you eagerly nod because the two of you are friends and Xiao wants to show you something he made and he looks a little…excited? There’s definitely light in his eyes when he gets your agreement to view the inside of his teapot.

Once you’re inside, you’re genuinely surprised. It’s far more beautiful than you could have ever imagined. The Floating Abode is a really gorgeous landscape. You’re so caught up in looking at the sunset and the flowers and the animals that roam the teapot that you aren’t aware of the horrors that lie just beyond. You’ll find the room that resembles yours in no time and it’s really creepy. As much as you try to tell yourself that Xiao means well and wouldn’t actually do something like this on purpose, it’s hard to ignore the fact that everything is practically identical to your room. It’s so, so strange. You want to ignore it, but you just can’t. It’s so obvious.

It’s definitely creepy, but you don’t have the heart to tell him.

You hold your tongue because you don’t want to hurt his feelings. You’re really the only close friend he has, so you’d feel bad if you insulted his interior decorating skills. Xiao’s pleased to hear that you like it so much. Praise falls from your lips like a waterfall and it gives him a sense of relief. He’s so happy that you like it and since you’re okay with it it’ll be fine if you live here. When he tells you that, your brain freezes and you’re not sure how to respond.

“Live here? Like…permanently?”

And to your shock he nods.

Xiao is far less lenient than Venti. With Venti everything feels like eternal, childish fun with the idea of freedom sprinkled in. But with Xiao it’s definitely a harsher form of captivity. You aren’t allowed outside because he’s worried you might fall off of the bridges that connect the floating islands or you might try to find your way out of the teapot. So you’re confined to the mansion. It’s got everything you could ever need and the interior design matches that of your home perfectly. Just treat it like it’s your own home and it won’t be so bad. You definitely try to see the good in this situation because you care about Xiao, but it’s so hard when he’s keeping you here like you’re just another addition to his teapot.

It’s miserable, but at least you can count on him to visit you every single day.

Childe is very receptive to the idea of owning his own little world in a small teapot. Maybe he was holding you captive before he came upon the teapot and while you’re sleeping he relocates you. You don’t expect to wake up in a new location, but you assume you’re still somewhere in Liyue. Childe finds it cute that you’re so startled, clearly confused with the change in scenery. And when you glance at the surroundings on the Cool Isle, it feels like you might have a chance. Childe seems to think so because he waves you off, telling you with the sincerest voice that you’re ‘free to go.’

You don’t need to be told twice and so you run because you’re invigorated. You can leave and he’s not coming after you. Childe doesn’t even raise his bow in warning. You’re actually leaving him and he’s letting you! But it feels too good to be true. A day passes and you learn that there’s no one else to help you. So you find an empty shack on the shoreline and you hide in it because survival is the only thing you know right now. And the day goes by, the night comes, and morning makes its arrival. You’re still safe. He hasn’t found you.

And it really feels like you can make it out of this. Even if there’s no one around, you can still find something to help you. You’d take anything at this point. By the end of the week, you’re losing sight of your goal and you really just want to head back to the mansion and nap on a comfortable bed. You’ve been catching the crabs and the fish and doing what you can to start a long-lasting fire. When Childe finds you, you’re so exhausted from running and hiding that you collapse into his arms. And he smiles so sweetly while he tells you something that shatters your entire world.

“You did well, comrade, but this isn’t Liyue. You have no need to run.”

It’s not even Teyvat. It’s another world entirely—one existing solely within a teapot. And everything comes crashing down when you realize just how impossible that makes any escape attempts. No human contact. No energy or life that comes from meeting with friends and seeing family. It truly does feel like you and he are the only people in this world.

Childe knows that you’ll adjust to this new world whether you like it or not. It was fun to toy with you in the beginning (and it still is) when you didn’t realize this was the world inside the teapot. But now he just wants to settle into a comfortable life. He takes every chance he has to visit you and eventually you’ll find yourself succumbing to the relaxing pleasures of domestic life. You learn how to cook delicious meals with Childe’s help, you collect seashells on the shore to cure your boredom, and you’ll take care of any chores or housework. It warms Childe’s heart to see you accepting this life.

Maybe the two of you can start a family. Maybe he should get a few pets to liven up the house. It’s not like you can get away from him while inside the teapot, so it’s a recipe for anything to happen. And you’ve come to learn that what happens in the teapot stays in the teapot.

[witchy-jadda]

rott spoilers ahead

so i’ve given myself some time to think about everything and try to process it all and here are some of my thoughts on trollhunters: rise of the titans...

- straight off the bat, i loved the intro. opening with blinky telling the story of what happened up until this point was incredible. i would have loved if they had circled back to this though (i saw someone else say it should have been him telling the story to jim and claire’s kids and i loved that idea!)

- i also liked that they didn’t waste time at the start, instead they just jumped right into the action which was fun.

- honestly, i thought jim’s plotline throughout the movie where he basically thought he was useless without the amulet was just really not fun to watch. i understand why it was there and it played into the climax but i really did not find it one bit necessary seeing as i felt that we have grown beyond that. i felt it was overused. we’ve been there before and jim is aware that he’s the trollhunter, amulet or not.

- douxie being so soft with nari was genuinely one of the most heartwarming parts of the movie. i feel that we were really robbed of so much potential with douxie in this movie though. we didn’t see nearly enough of him. it seemed that the writers were picking and choosing when to remember how powerful he is. switching with nari and connecting to her are two examples of when they actually used his power, but aside from that they just disregarded it a lot.

- and speaking of forgetting how powerful people are... i’m genuinely so hurt and let down over what they did to claire. do they not realise how powerful she is? did they just forget about her character arc? it sure felt like it. she got to use her powers a few times (connecting to nari, portalling the titan, etc) but mostly it felt like she was saying she was spent and therefore unable to do anything. she is so strong and so powerful, and that’s just so empowering - especially for young girls. and then it kinda felt to me that rott was reducing her to basically nothing more than jim’s love interest.

- okay another quick note, it kinda felt to me that krel’s potential was also pretty wasted? he barely did anything and i just think he deserved more too.

- ew okay i don’t even want to think about it but i know i can’t discuss rott without talking about the mpreg thing. seriously, what the fuck was that? at first, i thought it was going to be a joke. i thought aja and krel were gonna wind steve up and see how far they could go with making him think he was pregnant just for a little bit of comic relief. but then he was actually pregnant. and so i laughed, because even though it was dumb it was kind of funny. weird and unexpected, but kind of funny. but by the time the movie was over it just didn’t sit right with me. looking past the fact that it was just more of them making steve’s character into a joke, i couldn’t see the logic in giving so much time to that subplot when other characters (claire, douxie) and other relationships (claire and douxie’s friendship) were sidelined. maybe if he had gotten a whole season the mpreg thing could have been included as comic relief or whatever, but with such limited time i really don’t see the point of wasting so much time on something so pointless. 

- speaking of steve, i need to talk about creepslayerz... they really deserved more :( like i get that eli literally helped steve through child birth and then named one after him which was lowkey adorable but i loved their friendship so much and i was really hoping to see more of them. i was kind of hoping they’d get to do more as well. look i gave up on hopes of a romance long ago (even though i still really wished it would happen) but i hoped that at least we’d see some more of their friendship.

* by this point my brain has decided to forget absolutely every point i wanted to make... cue the brain fog (we don’t like her) and allow me to take a moment to read back and try to find my point again *

- i don’t think i can stress enough how much i loved the visuals in this movie. holy fucking shit it was just phenomenal. like wow. the art was absolutely fantastic and i’m really hoping for another the art of... book because i love the art of trollhunters and i feel that they could do with updating it to include the newer stuff. but yep, the animation quality was incredible and i don’t have a bad thing to say about it because just wow.

- speaking of art... a moment of appreciation for character designs. just wow wow wow. we love to see such intricately designed villains. we love to see growth in our other much loved characters. and the locations too? fantastic. beautiful. amazing. loved it.

- another moment of appreciation for jim. the hair. the scars. the injuries. the winter jacket. the fact that he looked a little older.... loved it. loved it, loved it, loved it. i cannot wait to spend hours pouring over reference pictures to draw them all.

- and claire... her armor being weathered and worn. her eyes!! her hair looked great as always. i just love her...

- nari nari nari... my goodness, her magic is so beautiful. i wish we got to see more.

- also, the jlaire moments were very cute. their kisses? so soft. they literally love each other so much. i adore them.

- what happened to the babies from the darklands btw? is not enrique just chilling in the lake’s house with a ton of babies? 

- barbara deserved better. i would have liked to see her and strickler happy.

- on that note, why the actual fuck did they think a few explosives would win against magic?? literal ancient magic and these dumbasses were like huh i guess we should blow it up. i’m sorry, what?? y’all are stupid.

* currently trying to think of every possible point that isn’t to do with the ending because i really don’t want to think about that yet *

- the whole thing with archie and charlemagne felt super unnecessary. like usually characters sacrifice themselves and it’s like sad and you can see the reasoning and stuff. but they literally could have gotten out. i really did not vibe with that. it felt like they just did that to leave douxie with no one.

- that trollmarket was beautiful though.

- speaking of trollmarket... they really restored the heartstone just like that? are you joking? i was not impressed at all. the heartstone was dead and gone, could not be destroyed. did they just forget that? half the shit in wizards wouldn’t have happened if the heartstone could have been restored. very pissed off by that. it was dead, that was it.

- okay back to jim... love that he pulled the sword from the stone. it was cute that it was a group effort, kinda would have preferred if it was just him but that’s just a me thing. and maybe me and my daylight tattoo are biased here, but excalibur is not half as pretty as daylight.

- not gonna lie, jim yelling come on trollhunters! kinda got me. i was very emotional watching this.

- i think the most in character jim moment of the whole movie was when he dropped excalibur, he didn’t have his armor, he was all alone and he decided to make a fist and fight the wizard/god with literally no weapon or means of defence. i don’t think y’all understand how much i love this dumb self sacrificing selfless boy. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, he is literally one of my most favourite characters of all time. i love him with all my heart.

- the armor!! wow wow wow. that was a fucking cool scene. beautiful.

- jim getting stabbed or whatever with that fucking spear thing nearly killed me.

- okay here goes... toby. my sweet toby. jim and toby’s friendship is one of my absolute favourites ever. my goodness. and toby getting in the van and going to save jim was incredible and such a toby thing to do. of course he would think of doing that.

- but like seriously... claire and douxie are so fucking powerful and they were both just like lol i guess we can’t do anything to help jim? i’m sorry what?? don’t tell me that claire wouldn’t go full on black and purple eyes and get herself up their to him. i just... i’m so bothered by the fact that they were sidelined y’all :|

- also, do not seriously try to tell me that aaarrrgghh!!! would let toby go on his own. he would have went with him. he would have followed him.

- literally as jim was falling the first thing that went through my mind was oh aaarrrgghh!!! is gonna run up and catch him.

- and while we’re on the topic of aaarrrgghh!!! why tf did they have such a build up that something was going to happen to either him or blinky for literally no reason? wtf

- aaarrrgghh!!! would not have let toby go alone!!! if he had been there, he would have protected toby, he would have saved him and none of that mess of an ending would have happened.

* ugh here’s the bit i was dreading... the ending *

- first off, i am choosing to ignore it.

- time stone? really? we’re... we’re gonna do this? literally one of the most original things i have ever watched is now - at the literal last possible minute - rip off another movie?? really?? whyyyy???

- i literally cannot express how much i hated it. it was so fucking unnecessary.

- he didn’t need to go back that far!!!

- i’m actually trying to block this out but i suppose i have to at least touch on it. jim would never ever put that burden on to toby. he just wouldn’t. before even looking at all of the other issues with toby getting the amulet, i need to say that. it just wouldn’t happen. he struggled so much with being the trollhunter, he wouldn’t put that on toby. 

- also toby literally never wanted to be the trollhunter?? he never wanted the amulet? he wanted to be a duke and have his war hammer and go on adventures with his best friend and his wingman and eat mexican food.

- okay so um i guess they all just forgot about unbecoming? cool cool cool.

- seriously though, was it not established many times that jim literally had to be trollhunter? and if he wasn’t it would be draal and everything would go to shit? did they just forget about that??

- having jim just decide to give toby the amulet literally takes away from the entire meaning behind jim getting the amulet and becoming the trollhunter. the amulet chose jim. merlin chose him. out of all of the creatures in the world, it had to be jim. he can’t just give that to toby!!

- and as much as i love toby, he would not last a day as trollhunter.

- and that’s not even beginning to mention all that jim erased by not becoming trollhunter. no father son relationship between him and blinky. they didn’t stop steve from picking on eli so no steve redemption and no creepslayerz. is he just going to allow enrique to be taken? toby will not have the same incentive to go into the darklands to save him if that’s the case. strickler will not show any sort of sentiment towards toby either. and then the big one...

- IS THAT FUCKER REALLY GOING TO ALLOW CLAIRE TO NOT GET HER POWERS??? WHAT???

- if jim isn’t trollhunter and the whole thing with enrique doesn’t happen then claire will never get her shadowstaff. let’s be real, strickler probably wouldn’t even need angor rot with toby as trollhunter. somehow i can’t see him making it that far...

- if claire doesn’t have her shadow staff then the whole thing with morgana won’t happen. she won’t destroy the shadow staff and then she will never develop her powers. would jim really rob her of that?

- okay i can’t do anymore, it’s too much for me now...

- i touched on this already in a separate post but i gotta say it again... i did not enjoy the destiny is a gift bit at the end. first of all, jim having toby find the amulet literally takes the meaning of that speech and his destiny away instanty. and second, i just could not stand hearing emile hirsch say the words that belonged to anton yelchin. it was just uncomfortable.

aaand i think i’m done. maybe i’ll have more later but i have a headache now from all of this.

[beevean]

SEGA and its most recent Sonamy side – more canon than ever

[Translator’s note: this article was originally written in Spanish by @latin-dr-robotnik​]

Hello again! Today we’d like to discuss about something that’s been happening recently, and probably taking Sonic fans by surprise: what is going on with SEGA and its stance about Sonamy?

At the beginning of this year, to celebrate the 200 articles on Seaside Hill Paradise, I finished what I call “the Sonamy trilogy” of articles that I started in 2018 and which cover different themes, such as:

SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonic-Amy dynamic

“I love you” – Forbidden words in Sonic

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

The idea was to offer a more-or-less complete analysis about the many facets of their dynamic in the last 27 years; a dynamic that, you may have noticed, is not that easy to pin down, and that we’ve been updating almost regularly (although I also intended to investigate on other dynamics, like Knuckles and Rouge’s for example, and write about them). Generally speaking, in these articles I don’t draw objective conclusions about the status of the ship in canon (despite the fact that the available information tends to confirm it in various occasions). I also like to repeat myself and say that shipping is supposed to be for fun, not for tearing each other’s hair in that black hole of misery that is Twitter, but recent events left us slightly perplexed, and this is why we’re here once again.

We left the status of the Sonamy canonicity with these two peculiar instances back in August: Sonic mentioning his “girlfriend” in the Japanese version of Sonic Battle, and the Twitter account of SEGA of Europe saying Sonamy is their “favorite videogame romance”. Now, let’s recap a bit…

Sonamy in Sonic IDW... Round 3

[SPOILERS ALERT FOR IDW SONIC #14-#35]

In 2018, when IDW just started, I decided to study a little how the Sonamy dynamic worked in this new universe. To our surprise, the comic didn’t waste time in dropping its biggest bomb, in one of the cutest scenes we had seen in ages. Since the very beginning, IDW proved that it didn’t intend to deceive those fans that looked for a bit of development of both characters.

I wrote an article about it in June 2019, and it coincided with the beginning of one of the most infamous arc I’ve seen in a Sonic comic for a long time: the Metal Virus Saga. The question is, what has happened since then?

Well, in 2019, with the same accuracy of an aimbot, I said “We’ll probably see some new interactions between Sonic and Amy sometime around IDW #20”. And wouldn’t you know, as misery and tragedy settled in that arc, it was exactly around IDW #20 that we saw some Sonamy interactions: both exhausted, to their limit, with a Sonic that couldn’t even touch Amy to soothe her pain, due to him being infected with the virus.

The arc developed like this in what felt like an eternity, to finally conclude in one the most absurd ways in Sonic history. But it wasn’t a complete disappointment, as, after months and months of asking and discussing on the internet about how much Sonic and Amy deserved a hug at the end of the arc… it actually happened.

Since that moment in IDW #32, we shippers thought that it was what both of them deserved after so much time spent separated and pushed to their limit to survive, but also that after the end of the arc everything would go back to normal. However, what we didn’t know was that the Sonamy train had no intention of stopping, not in IDW, nor anywhere else.

A recurring detail in IDW Sonic is that Amy’s tail starts wagging every time she sees Sonic, as if she was a happy dog. I swear, it happens every time.

Come IDW #35, once again we have some hugs and bits of dialogue between our hedgehogs. For sure, the question here isn’t their relationship itself, as it was for IDW #2, but rather the issues this arc is slowly dealing with. But it’s really nice to see them again, sharing that closeness that they’ve had in the comic since the beginning– be it with some gestures of affection, a wink, a gesture, a private joke.

My favorite image is the first one, Belle’s reaction to seeing Amy hugging Sonic. It’s like she’s thinking “oh, is she his girlfriend?”, and she wouldn’t even be wrong in thinking that.

It can’t be denied that IDW Sonic provided us the conversations and the emotions that the games seldom do. Certainly, the comic has its share of issues and it’s not really a story that I personally follow for its own merits (it’s more because it’s still Sonic, for my interest for things like this, and Belle’s existence… whom I already ship with Tails, sorry not sorry), but what it does well it does really well.

For now, we have to see how IDW Sonic will follow the development of the characters, especially in view of the closure of the current story and beyond. And we may be done with this part of the article, but there is still a lot left.

Sonamy in merchandise

Taking us completely by surprise, recently SEGA launched, in collaboration with Hot Topic, a series of Sonamy-themed t-shirts. No, seriously.

So many people told me this as soon as the voice spread (you know who you are, thank you guys for thinking about me <3), and I can’t help being still surprised that this is actually a thing. T-shirts with lines like “You’re my favorite”, “Love in the fast lane”, and my personal favorite, “S&A Forever”, with drawings of Classic Sonic and Amy… in SEGA-approved products. I don’t know if you realize how much of a big deal this is, even more than “Celebrate the 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend” from 2018.

One of the things that surprised me the most (aside from how explicit they are in officializing the relationship, and the fact that there are still 2 months left before Valentine’s Day 2021), was the decision to use Classic Sonic and Classic Amy. I tried to understand this decision by analyzing the simplicity and easiness with which the Classic designs convey a message (let’s not forget that Classic Sonic was so iconic because it was specifically designed to convey his expressions without words), besides the fact that they’re inherently cuter than their modern designs. There’s also the controversial aspect of post-Adventure Sonamy, with all the dubbing and weird interpretations that the fandom made over the years… By comparison, the Classic design are a much simpler choice.

What is actually going on?

Well, let’s take a step back and think about what we just saw. The way SEGA has been recently trying to push Sonic and Amy in front view (and for the entirety of 2020, based on the articles I mentioned in the beginning) tells us the harsh truth we all have to accept sooner or later: Sonamy sells, and it sells a lot.

From a strictly business point of view, the ship is so iconic and popular, with fans and detractors alike, that it would be absurd for SEGA to ignore the chance to print these two characters and get a load of money. As I said in my 2018 article, despite the fact that in Japan Sonic isn’t as big of an icon as it is elsewhere, they know pretty well that Sonic + Amy = love, and they have huge amounts of merchandise to back it up. It’s in the West that because of different cultural values, of which we’ve already talked about, along with some internal resistance, left this aspect of the franchise a little on the side. But they’ve been trying to fix it… and how…

Let’s not forget that a decade and a half ago Sonic Team seriously favored Sonamy. They officially said it, Sonic X was their purest view of Sonic they had at the time.

Outside of the business perspective, I believe we’re facing the moment that we’ve been waiting for: it’s time they’ll establish once and for all the dynamic of these two characters, following more closely the original Japanese vision of Sonic. I said many times that, in trying to change canon, the West, especially SEGA of America, did nothing but confuse fans and generate more discussions than needed, by introducing different data and portrayals that contradict the canon established by Sonic Team.

We’ve talked about Unleashed and emotional support, about Sonic X, about the major moments that opened the door to interpreting this dynamic as something more. We don’t threaten at gunpoint those who would rather stay away, but we respond to those declarations that still try to violently discredit the simple fact that Sonic and Amy, who are most of all close friends, form in some measure a couple that, even with its imposed limitations, manages to captivate fans and not fans everywhere in the world. Even the Simpsons used it as a joke, and that says a lot.

What the future has in store for us.

Unless something else happens in this last month of 2020, this is the most complete compilation I can offer at the moment about the status of Sonamy in the fandom and in the official canon. Yes, canon.

It’s impossible to ignore the signals. As you may have noticed, I’ve been considering Sonic and Amy as an official couple, with its clarifications (for example, that at the end it’s more of a friendship, that it’s not a romantic relationship in the most explicit way, that it’s more of a personal perspective to justify a more mature vision of the relationship in the future, not right now), but nowadays I think that SEGA has spoken loud and clear. I think canon is ready to negotiate the idea that Sonic and Amy, apart from being excellent friends who would risk their lives for each other in a heartbeat, have something else on their hands (probably the other’s hand). This won’t automatically translate into a kiss, or a complete love declaration (although Sonic X came close…), or a commitment to a formal relationship like we know them in real life. SEGA canon affirms that Amy is “Sonic’s girlfriend” and nothing more. Outside of that detail, they still pretty much function as friends interacting with a little flirting here, and a little Sonic running away there. It’s the basis of their dynamic, now enhanced by the fact that SEGA is giving us a clearer message.

I think that this all may culminate in a game or an animated series, but I wouldn’t completely count on that. It is good to recognize how far the official position goes on this issue, but at the same time I want to reaffirm that there are things that are better left in the hands of the fandom, and in the meantime that IDW or any other continuity gives us hugs, winks, gestures and words of encouragement, we as the fandom will take care of exploring other avenues and hypothetical scenarios.

This is all I have to say on the matter for now, and I hope you’re happy with this wonderful Sonamy experience we’re going through – I certainly am. See you next time!

[tiptapricot]

I’ve been having a lot of Evil Robo BnT thoughts recently, so here’s a bunch of them! This ended up pretty long just as a forwarning djjdjd

Post DeNomolos, Evil BnT are forced to do a lot of self exploration and discovery

They’re two robots from the far future, stuck in the past with each other and the two humongously important historical figures they were not only sent back to kill, but also physically made to look and sound exactly like, with no way back to their own time and no further reason to carry out the mission they were created for

It’s a lot to adjust to

(Three uses of the f-slur near the end in a canon compliant/reclaimed usage context, and implied sexual content, but extremely mild)

It still doesn’t have much of an impact on them at first though, besides some anger and annoyance. They don’t feel emotions in the same way or to the same depth that humans do, so they kind of fall back on: this sucks and that guy was a dick, guess we have to live in the stupid past now, and that’s the extent of it

But they’re also AIs, and AIs learn and grow

They hide out in a cheap apartment for the first few months or so back, going out to steal money to pay for rent and to pick up movies and stuff, but it’s exposure to the world, it’s living. And the more they interact with people, the more media they consume, the more the rigid walls of their programming break down and expand

And that’s when things start getting complicated

Because that’s when things like morals, sense of self, purpose in life, and, to their horror, real emotions start coming into play

Their evil edges start corroding, things stop being as straightforward, and they start developing into their own complex people

Being Bill and Ted with a few glorified descriptors stuck on the front starts feeling… weird, especially when they inevitably end up running into them again and being around them more

Because they’re supposed to be Bill and Ted, but they aren’t, and yet they can’t completely deny the parts of themselves that are….. it’s frustrating

As a first step in both asserting and exploring their individuality, they choose their own names

Evil Bill chooses Willis, or Will for short, and Evil Ted goes with Theoneous, Theo for short

It’s different enough to feel like their own thing, while still appeasing the ingrained itch to take BnT’s place

There are gaps like that, a disconnect/mental dissonance between their consciousnesses and the knowledge that they’re robots, circuitboards and wires and code, like a separation between what they feel is them and what they feel is the robot

That’s an experience that continues as they grow, especially as they try and figure out what to do with their lives. It’s tough sometimes, to figure out where the programming ends and where their own wants and drives begin

They’re the only ones familiar enough with future tech to help each other when they experience technical issues or need repairs, and the only ones they feel comfortable being that physically vulnerable with

It leads to them being kind of codependent, but it’s warranted in a lot of ways

They also naturally stick closer to each other, because even though they grow to have emotions and are able to care about people, they aren’t totally mushy

They don’t get as upset about things, or as excited, and while they form their own kind of love for the people they end up caring about (without admitting it), they’re still never able to connect with humans in the same way they connect with each other

It’s this inherent wall, a difference in how they experience the world

Their forms of affection are machine based, just like how humans are human based. They’ll give each other cold packs when it’s hot or they’ve been moving a lot, they’ll do evening maintenance on each other, chatting while one of them has their hand in the other’s chest cavity, and they jump on each other or bang their shoulders together super hard, because they can’t feel a thing and they’re durable enough for it, and that’s fun to them

That doesn’t really carry over to human interaction though, and a lot of times they end up coming across as cold or mean

They generally have a rougher seeming relationship than most humans. There’s a lot of teasing and insults and slapping, which turns most people off from them, but that’s how they show they’re comfortable (it’s also how they show they don’t like people, but there’s a subtle and meaningful difference there, AKA that they won’t purposefully try to harm the former party)

Robots process sound differently too, for them it’s more of a physical experience than just listening

Will’s guilty pleasure is that he likes to listen to piano (secretly), especially Debussy and other classical that sounds similar. Something about it makes his circuitry feel good and fuzzy and calms him down

He doesn’t feel comfortable telling Theo about it, it still feels like a dumb pussweed thing to be into (plus it continues to make him have some most non metal thoughts about kissing and That’s DEFINITELY not something he can share)

They also both really like death metal. Though they were loosely programmed with the knowledge of BnT’s music taste, it’s not quite their style, and they lean towards the more intense stuff

They do that in most fields though, since it usually takes higher energy stuff to get them going/excited/into something

That’s why they roughhouse a lot, and mess things up, and drive recklessly, it forces their mechanics to process more things more quickly, and as a result gives them their own form of dopamine/adrenaline

Sometimes things backfire, they’ve fucked themselves up accidentally on more then one occasion when stuff goes too far or isn’t what they expect, but they’re always there to patch each other up

When their synth skin gets ripped or torn they don’t always bother to repair it, and underneath there’s a layer of see through hard plastic and their bodies look like those clear case electronics that were popular in the 90s (idea cred to @juiceboxfrog !)

They also have inspector gadget-like telescoping stretch arms at their wrist and ankle joints, but they don’t use those much because they’re unsettling to most humans. Definitely a leg up when they want to climb places the shouldn’t, though (idea cred to @showbiz-za !)

Theo is more prone to needing fix ups than Will, since the extra wiring that was installed for the time and space spanning camera DeNomolos gave him made him more susceptible to short circuiting, over heating, and other glitches

After awhile he just takes his left eye out and leaves it like that, keeping his hair in his face to cover it. It doesn’t do anything for the internal parts of it he still has, but it’s not like it’s a loss. The connection port kept sparking, and it was uncomfortable and kept fucking with his vision, so it wasn’t worth it

Plus he didn’t really like that it used to be a camera… or still could be

One of the things Will and Theo both have to get used to is actually valuing their own privacy and autonomy

When DeNomolos was around they were just his tools, tools that he didn’t even like

They honestly grow to resent him pretty fast, both with his treatment of them, and, when their emotions are especially out of control, his creation of them

They don’t talk about it much, or when they do it’s mainly anger, not addressing or showing the more raw parts they do feel, because that’s still foreign to them, and their circuits weren’t designed to process or understand more complex stuff

Complex stuff like how being around Ted more makes Theo develop a certain… insecurity

It’s not like the connections are hard to make: he looks like Ted, he sounds like Ted, he was meant to be Ted, Ted has a dickweed of a dad, and Theo had a dickweed of a creator, Ted has Bill and Theo has Will

But Theo doesn’t have Deacon

And while he doesn’t want to be exactly like Ted, part of him also does (it was made to). Part of him wants to be human, to have those natural connections and someone to watch over

But he doesn’t and it’s weird*

He tries to ignore it, chalks it up to his drive still attempting to put him on his original track of replacing Ted, and therefore making him more aware of the family roles Ted has

For all he knows that is what it is, he’s just a robot after all

Even though they aren’t really ones for mushy love, Will and Theo do love each other

You can’t not when you know the other person inside and out, literally

They joke a lot about that when they’re doing repairs (“Dude you’re holding my heart, pretty faggy of you.”), and though they laugh, there’s an unspoken intimacy to it, something that sits warm in their wires and goes beyond platonic; something (though they would never describe it as such) loving about getting to take care of each other, and getting to get taken care of

The jokes also stop being jokes after awhile and take on a charge, morphing into unofficial flirting

Eventually that charge sparks, and their relationship becomes a different kind of physical. That’s new, too, a type of exploration neither of them are familiar with, but it’s nice, it’s good, and it’s easier to write off as casual and not meaningful than anything else (for the record I do think this works/plays out different for them than it does for humans, but I will nOt get into that here or anywhere lmao)

That arrangement doesn’t last forever, though, because one night Theo has a bad malfunction that cause him to completely power down, and it sends Will into a panic

It takes him almost an hour to fix the problem and for Theo to reboot, and when he comes back Will can’t stop touching him and checking in and it’s weird

“Why are you so worked up dude, this’s happened plenty of times.”

“Yeah I know you just… you fritzed out and went limp and it freaked me out dude.”

“So? You know this is nothing to worry about. I don’t get why you’re kinda acting like such a pussweed dude.”

“I didn’t know what was wrong! That’s plenty of reason to be fucking worried!”

“Not for you! Not for us! Why the hell do you care so much this time?”

“Because I love you, asshole!”

And then there’s silence, and staring, and then Theo cracks a smile

“Heh, fag.”

Kissing after a confession, as it turns out, makes both of them short circuit, and they wake up three days later still tangled up on top of each other, half falling off the apartment couch

“Y’know… I think we’re both fags now dude,” Will whispers, and they chuckle in the space between their mouths. “I did it first though.”

*he does get this later with Billie and Thea, but that’s a whole separate post

(As one last thing wanted to add that Love Came Along by Pansy Division perfectly encapsulates the vibes of Will n Theo’s relationship to me, AKA something casual and almost humorous while still being super intimate and emotional, so def check it out if you’re ok with suuuuper explicitly sexual lyrics bfgjgfdfg)

Headcanons masterpost

[feralphoenix]

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: The View Myla Grants Us Of Hallownest’s Moths

hello again hollow knight fandom, i am back with my picante takes and ready to discuss two things i love: myla hollowknight and the moth tribe! Let Us Be Sad About Them Together.

as with my previous essay i’m going to be putting this fellow up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. this time i’ll be attaching that in a reblog to avoid this post getting eaten by the dread tungle algorithms.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses colonialism and genocide both in real life and the fictional depictions in Hollow Knight, as well as racism in the zombie horror genre and in fandom.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

SONGS OF RESISTANCE: THE VIEW MYLA GRANTS US OF HALLOWNEST’S MOTHS

In this house we are all love Myla.

Well, in all fairness, there are probably plenty of Hollow Knight fans who aren’t interested in her character, since which fictional characters one attaches to is always a matter of personal preference. But she’s still well-loved for a minor NPC and inspires a high level of devotion in her fans. There’s nothing that whips folks into a frenzy like a cute character you can’t do anything to help, and unlike some other characters in Hollow Knight Myla’s fate leaves no room for ambiguity. Once you pick up the Crystal Heart you’re left with only two choices: Avoid her, or kill her.

A lot of Hollow Knight’s world is designed to make you care about it so that it will hurt more when Ghost’s violent skillset proves too limited to save something or someone. The consequences of Hallownest’s founding and policies have directly or indirectly caused a great deal of damage to everything, and chief among those consequences with massive damage and a wide splash range is the Infection. Much has been said elsewhere by other people about Hollow Knight’s predominating mood being a struggle against futility, with Ghost arriving at the eleventh hour and every new tragedy designed to make the player more desperate to find something actionable, only finding out by trial and error what’s beyond your personal ability to save.

Myla, in that sense, is a typical example of that worldbuilding. She’s a particular kind of stock character in the zombie horror genre, the innocent who falls victim to the plague and cannot be saved, wrenching audience hearts and demonstrating the stakes.

But Hollow Knight plays with the trappings of zombie horror in a very unusual way, one I find thematically fascinating.

For a quick overview, the “zombie” as we know it in popular culture is an appropriation of a voudou (the Black American spiritual practice) concept that deals with the fear of slavery killing one’s spirit. (People more versed in/with roots in voudou culture can give a much more comprehensive overview than this simplistic one.)

The zombie horror genre, especially in Western media, is part of the great white fragility stock plot trifecta (the other two being alien invasions and robot uprisings). Zombie horror in particular expresses white fears that marginalized ethnic groups will rise up violently in revenge for their mistreatment and destroy white society. The fear of “that which is human, which ‘humanity’ is not” (to borrow mecha visual novel Heaven Will Be Mine’s pithy term) and the extreme levels of violence towards human-but-not bodies typical of zombie horror are often an expression of such bigotries. This is, again, a subject that’s been discussed in greater depth and with more nuance elsewhere.

But what Hollow Knight does is take the ugly metaphors and it makes them literal, makes it harder to ignore the toxic subtext of the genre. The Infection is literally a native god’s revenge on the settlers who committed genocide* against her people. How the Pale King’s colonization of the crater negatively affected the preexisting groups of bugs underpins every level of the worldbuilding, as does Hallownest’s cruelty towards its neighbors.

Hollow Knight is a game that is about the tragedy of Western imperialism. It is one of the work’s central themes. There are a lot of conversations that need to be had about the ways these themes manifest and, on a real-world level, about fandom’s predisposition to avoid the subject.

But, for now, let’s get back to Myla. If she fits such a stock zombie horror archetype, and Hollow Knight uses zombie horror tropes to underline the conversation it attempts to have about colonialism, then what has Myla got to teach us about the overall worldbuilding?

There's two topics I’d like to broach here: First we’ll get into how the circumstances of Myla’s infection fit in to the implied role of Crystal Peak in pre-Hallownest society. Then let’s take a long look at the lyrics of Myla’s song and what it implies.

MYLA, THE CRYSTALS, AND THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

If you think about it, Myla is an interesting outlier compared to the other NPCs we encounter on the verge of succumbing to the Infection. Both Bretta and Sly are unhappy: Bretta is a lonely, anxious bundle of abandonment issues yearning for someone to sweep her off her feet; Sly misses his pupils and loved ones who’ve left him in death (we never learn who Esmy is or what they were to Sly, but we sure can tell they’re not around anymore). The temptation to dream away those sadnesses seems to play a part in their vulnerability to the Infection, and also why Ghost’s interruption brings them back to reality.

Not so Myla. She appears to be blissfully unaware of her fellow miners’ fate, and most of her dialogue prior to her infection (besides the song - we’ll get to that later) is about how much fun she’s having at her job and how much she enjoys Ghost’s occasional company.

Yet she still winds up infected when Ghost’s back is turned. Why?

Not to discard the possibility that Myla’s got her own issues too, but in her case there seems to be another likely cause at hand: The crystals. If hit with the Dream Nail before infected, she mentions that she can hear them “singing” and “whispering”.

Under the The Hunter’s Hot Takes section of the Hunter’s Journal entries on various Crystal Peak enemies, we can learn more about the crystals - particularly in the entries for the Husk Miner and Crystallized Husk.

Crystal Peak’s crystals were thought of as particularly precious in Hallownest and harvested en masse for use in luxury items and the like. To do so, the mining operation was set up throughout most of the mountain, though the area around its peak still remains largely untouched. However, there’s more to the crystals than just that. Like Myla, the Hunter notes that the crystals can be heard to sing very very softly if one listens closely enough.

Perhaps of even more interest than that is this particular comment he gives us, from the Crystallized Husk journal entry: “There is some strange power hidden in the crystals that grow up there in the peaks. They gleam and glow in the darkness, a bright point of searing heat in each one.”

I don’t think it’s a particularly revolutionary idea to point out that there’s some connection between the crystals and Radiance’s power; this is something many players have intuited just based on Myla’s dialogue. But, in order to understand what Myla is demonstrating about the game’s world I think it’s important to think about what that connection is.

Speaking of which, the local Whispering Root has two important clues for us: The phrases “light refracted” and “energy contained”.

The very top of Crystal Peak is one of the only places in the crater where the moths’ architecture has escaped Hallownest destroying it, and is the only place in the entire game setting where their religious iconography remains fully intact. There are stone monuments covered in their language (which has been destroyed with the rest of their culture) and the statue of the Radiance - this is easier to see in the Wanderer’s Journal tie-in book, but the huge stone arches upon the Crown represent Radi’s halo and its rays and encircle her when viewed head-on or from a distance instead of the side view we get in the game.

The crystals grown here were used by the moths to store and cultivate Radiance’s light. It’s impossible to know what sort of architecture/infrastructure existed inside the mountain before Hallownest stole it from the moths. But between the massive scope of her statue and all the texts at the Crown, and the fact that the moths were working with their literal actual god’s freely given power here, it can be safely asserted that Crystal Peak was a holy ground to them.

Hallownest didn’t care about the mind-boggling level of spiritual significance Crystal Peak must have had to the natives, though. To the Pale King and his people, the crystals are just a natural resource to be harvested for personal profit.

This is unfortunately a conflict that still plays out in colonized countries today. If you’re American, #NoDAPL probably comes to mind; Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are filled with these sorts of horror stories too. Settler disrespect for indigenous sacred grounds is a huge problem that needs addressing. If you’re looking at the story of Crystal Peak and thinking it’s very on-the-nose... maybe it needs to be.

Anyway, Myla is nowhere near as miserable as Bretta or Sly, but she still notices that something’s up with these crystals. She hears the voice coming from inside, and she’s curious, and she tries very very hard to listen to it... so she DOES end up hearing Radiance’s voice. Radiance’s real voice, not the songs and whispers inside the crystals: The voice of a frightened, angry, grieving god who knows there’s a new vessel running around in Hallownest, and doesn’t want any part of that. A voice that’s pleading for someone, anyone to kill this dangerous creature, and save her from the threat Ghost poses.

Between how freaked out Radi is to know Ghost is poking around, the tendency we see in her boss battles for her to panic and kneejerk blast things at full volume/vibrance when she’s panicking, and the way her dream broadcast seems to be only a one-way communication line while she’s in the Black Egg... naturally this spells disaster for poor Myla.

Similar to the Moss Prophet, this small tragedy is a demonstration of the eleventh-hour state the conflict is in: The Pale King has escalated this situation so far, and Radiance is so traumatized and isolated, that bystanders who might in a kinder timeline have become Radi’s allies instead get caught up in her AOE. Myla’s definitely not as aware of the overall situation as the Moss Prophet, since she’s a Hallownest bug and not an indigenous one the way they are. But she noticed things were not as they seemed, and she was curious. Who knows what new possibilities could have opened up, if Radiance was able to truly communicate with bugs in the outside world?

Small side note before we move on, but I’ve noticed a tendency among some folks who notice the missed connections to come down extra hard on Radiance and chalk Myla’s infection/Moss Prophet’s death down to deliberate cruelty on her part. I’d like to gently push back against this.

Living in a post-colonial world we all absorb some level of prejudice from our surroundings, and it’s important to take a look at our first assumptions about people (or, in this case, fictional characters lol) to examine whether these prejudices we’ve inherited have influenced those assumptions.

So, if your first instinct is to look at this situation and say the problem is that Radiance is being too harsh and too angry where she should have stepped back and softened her emotions for others’ benefit to gently persuade them to her side... Please think about how when people of color and non-Christians express anger or hurt at our treatment, or even so much as calmly assert our boundaries, white/Christian viewers often view us as much more aggressive and threatening than we actually are. The “angry black woman” trope is a good example of this stereotype. You may want to look up the HuffPost article “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” and its discussion of white fragility to further understand this phenomenon.

It is absolutely essential to remember the complex power dynamics in play in Hollow Knight and that the Pale King deliberately imprisoned Radiance (who had at this point already gone through an extreme amount of trauma) in a way that would compromise her ability to communicate with others. If you can extend compassion to characters like Ghost or the Pale King and empathize with their motives/feelings when their actions cause harm, but you are not willing to do the same with Radiance... it’s important to sit down with yourself and examine why that is.

THE MEANING BEHIND MYLA’S SONG

Okay, let’s switch gears and take a look at the lyrics to the song Myla sings, since it’s got some interesting things to tell us too.

The first verse, which you can hear from Myla the first time you meet her/before you acquire Vengeful Spirit, goes:

Bury my mother, pale and slight Bury my father with his eyes shut tight Bury my sisters, two by two, And then when you’re done, let's bury me too

There’s not much particularly story-related going on here except foreshadowing that Myla may in fact wind up dying. Most of what we get here is that a) this is a song about burying the dead and b) it’s morbid as fuck.

Curious, a new player might think of the mention of burying the dead; there are a lot of corpses just lyin’ around all over the ground - something that might lead one to believe Hallownest didn’t have such a custom. Later players will discover the Resting Grounds, confirming Hallownest did bury its dead... and that the gravekeepers are all dead too.

Let’s look at the second verse, which Myla remembers and will sing after you pick up Vengeful Spirit:

Bury the knight with her broken nail, Bury the lady, lovely and pale Bury the priest in his tattered gown, Then bury the beggar with his shining crown

This right here is where it gets interesting. The first verse describes the singer’s family as dead or dying, but the people we’re burying now sure do have some parallels to Hallownest's ruling body, don’t they?

Among Hallownest’s Great Knights, three of them - Dryya, Isma, and Ze’mer - were women. They are also very dead or might as well be: Dryya was killed by Traitor Lord’s resistance, Isma is a tree spreading acid through the kingdom’s waters to cut off access to the City of Tears, and Ze’mer hung up her nail after her mantis girlfriend’s death and only lingers on as a revenant.

While there aren’t any characters who are described in-text as “priests” in Hallownest, the idea of a tattered gown might bring Lurien the Watcher to mind, or perhaps the Soul Sanctum’s magicians before they went rogue.

The lovely, pale lady in the song can only refer to the White Lady, Hallownest’s queen. And there’s only one man in the game who has a shining crown: The Pale King. The lyrics are particularly derisive towards him in a way they aren’t to any of the other figures listed, too.

So, it seems like whoever came up with this song didn’t think much of Hallownest. With that in mind it’s hard to think that it originated from any sort of faction loyal to the king.

We’re missing a line from the third verse, which Myla sings after you’ve beaten Soul Master and she’s beginning to become infected. But what we do see of it is Huge in terms of lore:

Bury my body and cover my shell, [...] What meaning in darkness? Yet here I remain I’ll wait here forever ‘til light blooms again

So. The “protagonist” of this song’s family has died, and they expect to die as well, but even unto death they're waiting for Hallownest to fall and the light to return.

The moths became Hallownest’s gravekeepers after the Pale King forcibly assimilated them. Under the Pale King’s light, the moths forgot Radiance and most of their original culture, but Seer tells us in her final monologue that a few individuals remembered just enough to pass bits and pieces down through the generations. This secret resistance among the moths was what kept Radiance alive and prevented her from being sealed away entirely.

This song Myla sings comes from that moth resistance.

Code songs amongst oppressed ethnic groups are very much a real thing, especially when groups have to communicate or signal each other within hostile parties’ hearing. Since I’m American (and had a big ol crush on Harriet Tubman as a little kid lmao!) the first thing that came to mind for me when I made this connection was the working songs escaped Black slaves used in the Underground Railroad.

These have another point in common with the moth gravedigger song Myla sings, in that they enter the general cultural consciousness through out-group people who don’t know the true context. If you ever pick up a book of American baby songs, you’ll probably find some Underground Railroad code songs in there - often because generations ago white kids heard these songs from Black slaves or servants, and went on to sing the same songs to their children with zero awareness of what the songs were really for.

So some Hallownest bug somewhere probably heard the moths’ song and liked it and sang it in a context totally divorced from its original one, and it got spread around and passed down to become one of Myla’s old favorites, with her seemingly not realizing the meaning behind the lyrics. The moths’ song of devotion to their lost god survived them as a people.

This is some VERY realistic and layered worldbuilding. There is so much to glean from just one NPC’s dialogue when put together with other clues. Of course all of it is SAD and DEPRESSING, but Hollow Knight is a tragedy with a super unsubtle point to make about the unsustainability of Western imperialism.

What happens to Myla is awful, and upsetting, and unfair. So was what happened to the moths and their sacred ground, and to Radiance too. It’s important to understand the scope of the conflict that led to all this happening, trace it to its roots, and lay it at the feet of the ones responsible for engendering all this tragedy in the first place: Hallownest and the Pale King.

*A NOTE ABOUT MY USE OF THE TERM “GENOCIDE”

This is a tangent, but since there’s some debate about whether it’s appropriate to define the Pale King’s actions towards indigenous bug nations as genocide, allow me to cite the official definition of genocide here.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention for short) defines genocide like this:

Genocide is any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group, as such:

A) Killing members of the group

B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

C) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Among the abovelisted, Hallownest is guilty of A (Deepnest and the moths), B (Deepnest physically/the moths vis a vis brainwashing), C (the mantis tribe and the hive), and E (the moths, which we know from Marmu, and possibly the mosskin also - Isma is mosskin).

Then there is cultural genocide, i.e. acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious, or racial group's way of life. Let’s look at the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) and how it defines cultural genocide:

A) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities

B) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources

C) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights

D) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures

E) Any form of propaganda directed against them

Hallownest is guilty of every item on this list. A: The moths, attempted with Deepnest. B: The moths, the mantises, the flukes, the mosskin; also attempted with Deepnest. C: The moths, the mantises, the flukes. D: The moths; attempted with the mantises and Deepnest. E: The mantises and Deepnest.

Any sort of discussion of the wide-reaching harm Radiance caused MUST include the context that the Infection is her response to multiple levels of genocide. Discussion that does not include this context loses nuance and simplifies the conflict and power dynamics portrayed in the game in ways that reflect real-life racism and Christian supersessionism.

Now, this is NOT some sort of holier than thou Fandom Purity dunk to say that it’s Bad or Wrong to care about Hallownest’s nobility. Like, one of my favorite characters in this dang game is the White Lady, who spent a long ass time enabling her husband’s actions before she finally walked out on him over the mass infanticide thing. You can, and it is okay to, love TPK and want rehabilitation for him while acknowledging that the dude has done objectively bad things.

I just feel that it’s important to keep things in perspective so that we don’t wind up stirring a bunch of real-world bigotry into our fandom funtimes. A lot of us don’t have the luxury of turning our brains off and simply Not Seeing It, because these same sorts of dynamics are behind a lot of the hardships that threaten our everyday stability.

It’s pretty hard to have conversations about those things in real life if one can’t even recognize them in fiction. So, this might be a good opportunity to start practicing anti-racism so we can better utilize that ideology in real life, where the stakes are much higher.

[everythingsinred]

Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 5)

I'm back on my bullshit. I decided I'd post these, once a day, four days a week. Then I'll go on breaks for the weekend to let interested readers catch up while also further writing more entries. At the time I'm posting this, for example, I'm in the process of analyzing Chapter 39. That way, it's easier for everyone to enjoy this essay. Which I hope people do.

Anyway, this can finally truly be called a ship essay, because one of our key players has FINALLY developed feelings! Going forward, Natsume's behavior will heavily feature his growing affections for Mikan. We'll be analyzing Natsume's self-preserving hesitation as well as his immediate instinct to give up any chance he has from the get-go.

Chapter Seventeen

Natsume next shows up to walk into Class B during a commotion of Mikan’s retelling of the Reo incident. The kids all gather around him now too to ask questions and press about his condition. One kid even asks if he should teach Mikan a lesson for bragging about his rescue. Mikan smiles at him, under the assumption that their shared trauma has brought them closer and maybe even made them friends, but Natsume’s response is to simply turn away and ignore her.

He’s still Natsume after all. This is the first girl he’s ever liked, and she used to be somebody he despised, so the change in feelings is probably very strange to him. He’s confused and possibly embarrassed. He doesn’t know what to say or how to act.

Can't have her getting any ideas that he's completely changed his mind about her or anything.

Most of the people that Natsume likes at the school (although that is just Ruka and Youichi… so… you know) know that he likes them. He spends time with them, is gentle with them, does things for them, and can openly say kind things to and about them. Mikan is different. He used to be her number one enemy, so all of a sudden switching gears and becoming her friend would be quite odd.

Over time, Natsume will find ways to be gentle and sweet to Mikan, but for now his crush is brand new and he doesn’t know how to act quite yet. He’d rather avoid her entirely, or pretend like nothing happened, than openly approach his new feelings.

Furthermore his behavior is always and under all circumstances inseparable from his status as Persona’s favorite and as the Black Cat. He may have some loved ones, but he keeps the number low and tries to avoid getting close to people for a reason. Naturally, nobody could ever really understand his experiences so there will always be a divide between him and the rest of his peers, but even more than that is that considering people precious turns them into targets.

Natsume has probably learned the hard way that displaying closeness and affection for his friends can have dangerous effects, so he might now think of showing that kind of affection as selfish or even cruel. Why subject somebody to something like that, merely because he has feelings for them? It’s not fair.

In either case, it’s really not that Natsume is naturally mean and cold. He just doesn’t trust his situation enough to properly act. It’s safer in every way to just pretend like nothing changed. It’s too much to deal with otherwise. But sooner rather than later, the hard thing will be staying away. Eventually, maintaining coldness with her will be almost impossible.

Chapter Eighteen

This chapter further touches on Natsume’s new-found crush and its consequences.

Class B is used to being in an environment where Natsume hates Mikan and is bothered by everything she does. He gives in to her slightly, in small ways, and it shocks his classmates. Now, it’s understandable that, even if he hadn’t developed a crush on her, he might still be softer to a girl who risked her life to save him, but it’s still odd.

Mikan recalls asking Natsume for help training her alice. She needs an offensive alice to nullify, so Iinchou or Hotaru’s would be ineffectual in training. Natsume is really the best person to ask, and, to everyone’s surprise, he actually agrees to help.

Natsume doesn't need any convincing to help her, but what did she think practicing with a fire alice would entail?

And yes it does seem like he’s only doing it to torture her, because his alice is capable of genuine bodily harm and his admirers snicker with amusement at his antics, but I can’t help but assume there’s more to it.

He doesn’t really hesitate to help. He doesn’t need convincing at all. In some ways I think he did genuinely want to help. Her alice helped save his life, after all. Why not repay the favor by using his alice to help her train? To him, there's a lot of value in her alice, so training it is beneficial in his perspective as well.

And later still, Mikan spots Natsume sitting amongst the principal students. He stands out, as an elementary student next to upperclassmen. This moment is a good introduction to the arc. His crush on Mikan only grows stronger as the festival goes on, but there’s something looming over him too--he’s different from the rest of them. He stands out so much during the festival. He’s a dangerous ability type who’s not allowed to participate while also being a principal who has to sit on the stage for the opening ceremony. That's horribly ironic, but also shows just how singled out and under the spotlight he is. It’s a huge part of why he acts the way he does, so cold and mean and distant despite his growing affections. It’s all he can do.

He may see potential for a future, but he’d be foolish to think he should be able to acquire it, because his current circumstances have not changed at all.

The chapter ends with Natsume being asked by Koko if he wants to try out the special ability class event. He’s looking towards the special ability area, and we can tell the next chapter will be fun.

Chapter Nineteen

And how!

Natsume is here to see Ruka, his best friend, but he’s also here to catch a glimpse of the girl he has a crush on.

Sumire is also there, and it’s interesting to see that Natsume hasn’t changed in his attitude around her either, even though she also helped save him. She tries to embrace him and he dodges her.

This catches some people’s attention and they start to whisper about his presence.

In the anime, this moment is a bit more potent, hearing the murmurs and seeing a darkness over the gossiping kids, but the manga still establishes that the people waiting in line are by-and-large unhappy to see him. They whisper amongst themselves, rudely asking why he’d bother to come here, but that gloom only lasts for a moment (one singular panel and then Natsume’s responding bitterness) before Mikan appears jumping over the wall, calling his name and even smiling.

It’s almost like she was waiting for him to show up, running off from her post the second she heard Natsume was there. The dark looming screentones are replaced with flowery ones, and it’s hard not to think of this as his perspective: all is gloomy and then there is Mikan. All of a sudden, after hating her for so long, he thinks of her as bright sunshine, and he must have showed up just to see her and feel nice for a change.

It's Natsume seeing Mikan through floral-filter lenses for me...

Of course, he ruins the mood. It feels almost as if he does it solely because he knows it will upset her. She was so excited to see him, and he manages to completely turn her mood from eager to angry, just the opposite of how she was able to unwittingly turn his mood from gloomy to... as close to content as he can get.

He’s okay now. He doesn’t want her getting any ideas.

Now, in my opinion, his method of bothering her could be anything and the plot would remain the same. What matters is that he wants to piss her off, and this just so happens to be the way he does it, partially because it’s intended to be funny. Mikan has to get angry at him for this chapter to progress the way it does, but his actions could have been replaced by any other irritating action and it could’ve gone the same way.

Tsubasa then appears, drawn to the sound of a loud commotion. He sees Natsume and vaguely wonders why he’s there. Everyone knows Natsume, at all grade levels, because he’s famous. For Tsubasa, whose only real knowledge of Mikan’s relationship with the kid is that he causes trouble in Class B, it would be strange to see him at the RPG.

Natsume, meanwhile, has no idea who Tsubasa is. Seeing Mikan crawl all over her senpai, seeing him easily comfort her, is something that bugs Natsume. He glares at Tsubasa, somebody whose name he doesn’t even know, and then starts leaving with Ruka.

At first, Tsubasa is confused to be treated like this, until he hugs Mikan tighter and sees both Natsume and Ruka turn in jealousy. Tsubasa gets it immediately. Thus begins a strange and tumultuous frenemy relationship between Tsubasa and Natsume, where they both begrudgingly understand each other while also irritating each other beyond belief.

Natsume is not interested in playing the game, insulting it and wondering how anyone could get hooked on it. Ultimately, it’s not even Mikan who convinces him to give it a shot; it’s Tsubasa taunting him, “then you should be able to win, no problem, right?”

Tsubasa will come to regret saying this, because the answer is yes.

The RPG is designed to be tough. Nobody has won the whole game yet. Beating one or two students is one thing, but being able to outsmart or outmaneuver the entire special ability class is a difficult feat.

Natsume agrees to play, and gets a robot cockroach as a weapon.

Tsubasa is hugging Mikan as Natsume is about to enter, and that pisses him off even more. He decides that Tsubasa will be his slave, his motive being get your hands off her. This is silly considering that just a short time ago, Natsume hated Mikan. His feelings really did a 180.

The challenges pick up in difficulty as he goes on. The first one is effortless. He doesn’t even move from where he’s standing. The mirror-alice girl just freaks out about the cockroach and sends him on his way after two seconds.

The next one is trickier, and Natsume will need to put in more effort than just standing and waiting for the cockroach to do its job. But not that much effort. He sits next to Megane, lights a fire, and waits. It’s a scorching flame, and although Megane tries to tough it out, he gives in with two seconds to spare. Natsume, a smartass, quips sarcastically that he’s sorry--he really can’t tell how hot it is. (This is not actually important or anything, it’s just interesting that Natsume is not affected by his own flames and can’t feel the heat of them. I might end up referring to this a couple times.)

With the exception of the first and last challenges, Natsume uses his alice to beat the maze; either by heating Megane up so his soul goes back into his body, or by writing with fire instead of chalk. The next challenge is the one Natsume has been waiting for and he’ll use his alice here too.

Tsubasa is shocked to find Natsume has progressed so quickly, but he proceeds with the challenge: Natsume has to touch him in thirty seconds, but it’ll be tricky ‘cause he’s held in place by his shadows. He toys with Natsume’s shadows a bit, which really pisses Natsume off. Tsubasa even apologizes nervously, even though he’s the one in control. Or he is, until Natsume uses his alice again and gets rid of the shadows.

Natsume’s anger towards Tsubasa all stems from jealousy. It’s not just that Tsubasa was hugging and comforting Mikan, it’s that he can. Natsume needs to distance himself from Mikan in order to keep her safe, and he’s aware of that right from the start, but there’s more to it. He’s busy establishing himself as an enemy to Mikan, doing things to bother her to make her angry with him, but nobody rushes to their bully for comfort, and Natsume knows this. It’s not just that Tsubasa was hugging Mikan; it’s that he feels like he will never get the chance.

And so the next and final challenge is where he gets to be selfish.

Mikan is aggravated to see him, obviously not thrilled that he was able to make it in such a short time. Her task is that he has to get her off the carpet in thirty seconds. He can’t hurt her or force her off the carpet, and because of their alice training together, he can’t use his alice on her either. (They’d apparently practiced so much that she was able to sharpen her skills significantly. Before, her alice was a wildcard and she struggled with using it, but now she’s able to use it with relative ease. That’s a lot of training in a short time, and I’m sure Natsume wasn’t upset at all the time they had to spend together as a result.)

Natsume must feel relief regarding Mikan's nullification alice. She's nullified his alice in pretty big ways already, one time to save his life. The girl he's crushing on is capable of turning off the thing that decreases his lifespan. She really is a breath of fresh air, in more ways than one, and his appreciation for her alice, even if he doesn't voice it, will only grow. This is important, but I'll talk way more about this in the other POV.

He tries the cockroach, but she’s a country girl and unaffected.

Natsume is genuinely stumped by her challenge, admitting to himself that it’s a tough one. He then comes up with a risky idea, no doubt influenced by her rescue of him when they were kidnapped by Reo. He plays sick. This act only works if Mikan falls for it and is concerned enough to jump off the carpet, but he’s a good actor on account of all the sick experience he has and she does fall for it in no time. Her being concerned was a given.

She jumps off, meaning he’s won the game, but that’s not enough of a victory for him. He acts sick until she’s closer, so he can grab her and put his arm around her. Yes, he calls her an idiot, but this is the closest he can get to a hug… for now. It doesn’t matter that she’s annoyed and dismayed that he won. All he cares about is that he got to touch her.

She jumped down. He won already, but it's not enough! (Also sorry about two pictures. If it ruins the format, oh well.)

Natsume was jealous that Tsubasa got to do something he thinks he'll never be able to, and so he got a taste of what he wanted some other, convoluted way. He gets angry that Tsubasa is so touchy, but that's only because he wishes he could be touchy too. Natsume will get bolder and bolder with his physical affection, because he will want more and more to show it. When he starts being honest about this affection, she will be more eager to return it.

Natsume is the first winner, and Tsubasa admits it was never expected for somebody to be able to pass all the challenges. Part of the appeal is that it’s an unbeatable game, but Natsume’s feelings of jealousy and spite were enough to get him over the finish line. Though perhaps knowing it's beatable but only one person could is also appealing. It's possible to pass, but very rare for somebody to be able to, so they can draw in crowds by capitalizing on kids who want to the next person to beat the game.

He gets to choose a lamp, but he has no idea which one is whose. He cheats by asking Koko to tell him which one is the right one, but he ends up picking Mikan’s, because Koko assumed that’s the one he wanted. After all--Natsume was thinking about her. Natsume is lucky that Mikan was too anguished at being a slave to care about Natsume thinking about her, but it’s interesting to know that even when he’s supposed to be angry at Tsubasa, he was only thinking of Mikan.

Chapter Twenty

This chapter’s premise is pretty simple and light: Natsume can’t think of any use for Mikan other than to follow him and Ruka around the festival and carry their stuff. They navigate the technical ability class area and even encounter Hotaru, though only for a short time because she’s quite busy.

Most importantly, their time in the technical area makes Mikan insecure. Everyone in the tech class seems to know what they want to do with their lives, with their alices being perfect for research or creation. I’ll go into more detail with this during Mikan’s essay, but it’s important to note that Mikan asks the people around her if they’re prepared for their future only to see that they all are. Hotaru, Sumire, and even Ruka all have dreams for the future, even if Ruka won’t share his. Natsume has decided to leave the conversation and we don’t hear what his dream is, which makes sense because he doesn’t have one. Natsume doesn’t think he’ll live long enough to graduate, so why even bother wasting his own time and getting his hopes up for something unattainable?

It’s then revealed that Ruka is also a triple, and Mikan can’t tell, but the mood has been soured for Ruka. His triple-star status is a touchy subject that he’s unhappy with. His star rank is representative of Natsume’s suffering and he doesn’t like talking about it. He only says that he didn’t mention it because he didn’t get it on his own talent or effort before Natsume forces Mikan to walk in another direction, claiming to be hungry.

This is literally just a scan of the TokyoPop version, which is better than the other version I see floating around.

He can tell Ruka is uncomfortable and is ready to step in so that his friend can feel better.

As a result, they end up at the cafe where Anna is working (after all, Mikan has been perfecting her puppy-dog eyes routine and I think both Ruka and Natsume are affected, even if the latter would never admit it).

Natsume takes the first bite of Anna’s hell pie, just to see a rot demon (or whatever that thing is) taunt him about the trouble his stomach will be in soon. He really doesn’t have a choice but to throw the tea over the pie. Ruka is grateful, but Mikan is outraged at how rude Natsume is acting, and even angrier when Natsume explains that the pie was horrible. She demands he apologize but Natsume simply walks away, content to be the bad guy because he saved his friends from getting food poisoning while also sparing Anna’s feelings and reputation at her cafe.

"Your stomach will writhe" is such a potent threat. I feel sick just looking at that demon/scoundrel/rot thing.

This scene has more substance than in the anime. In the episode, Natsume sees the rotten scoundrel (or WHATEVER IT IS) before he can take a bite. He tosses the tea for all their sakes and ultimately nobody is hurt. But here, in the manga, Natsume has already taken a bite. We see the missing part of the pie, the residue on the fork. Natsume is already screwed. He's going to have food poisoning from Anna's pie, and he still puts her feelings before his own. He'd rather say that the pie is terrible according to his own tastes than to let everyone around know that she made such a health-risking mistake. He drenches the pie so that Mikan and Ruka don't get food poisoning, even if it's too late for him. Natsume leaves, knowing he will look like an asshole, AND with stomach problems on top of that, but at least he's the only one who will be seriously hurt.

This is a pretty insignificant example of a trait that we have seen before with Natsume but haven't really fully explored. It's going to play a major role for the rest of the manga, because Natsume has something of a martyr complex, where he is quick to sacrifice himself because he sees little to no value in his own happiness. This is a small example, and I'm not saying it's not kind of him, but there are consequences with his line of thinking. He's fine with looking like an asshole to protect people, or giving up things he wants so someone else can have it, or blowing himself up so two girls can escape safely. Whenever there's a chance to sacrifice himself, Natsume will take it every single time.

This may seem noble or romantic or admirable but it's not healthy at all. The way he was raised (no shade to Papa Hyuuga and Kaoru but also.... tentatively side-eyeing them for putting so much responsibility on him) and the way he is now tortured by the school has put him in a position where his self esteem is horribly low. This complex of his results in suicidal tendencies, even after he falls in love with Mikan (and even exacerbated by that love). For Natsume, love is sacrifice. He simply cannot love without feeling like he has to give something up. Ideally, he would grow out of this and maybe start seriously choosing himself sometimes. It's not evil to want yourself to be happy and to choose your own well-being, even if it occasionally makes others sad or upset.

In the context of the actual story though, we have yet another glimpse of a complex that will cause a LOT of trouble down the road for Natsume and Mikan.

Conclusion

Natsume has new feelings for Mikan and is having trouble navigating them. They will cause even more trouble in the next essay. We also touched more on Natsume's self-sacrificing tendencies and how devastating they will turn out to be. These tendencies will be consistent and persistent throughout the manga in regards to NatsuMikan's relationship, and cause more problems. These problems will pop up a bit in the next part, so stay tuned!

Also, small note: I call him Ruka and not Luca because I got used to it after watching the anime and through scans and fanfics. I heard his name pronounced that way and at first thought it was a Japanese name so I simply copied the pronunciation. When I found out it was supposed to be Luca, I'd already been using Ruka for a while. I don't really want to switch to using Luca most of the time because I know people in real life named Luca/Luka and I talk enough about GA on the daily where it might feel strange to me. I use Luca sometimes when I'm talking to others who prefer it, but Ruka is what I'm used to. I hope this isn't frustrating, but understand that I pronounce Killua's name (from HxH) like "Ki-ru-a" as well and in my head "Gakuen Alice" is pronounced "Gakuen Arisu" because I pronounce things based on what I hear when watching the anime ;-; These are things I have no real desire to change because they sound right to me. I'm sorry. (Nobody has said anything or complained, and this is not a vague or anything like that! I just wanted to say that I know it's supposed to be Luca and it's not my intention to be disrespectful when I pronounce/spell it Ruka. I am fucking crazy, but I am free.)

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[mrpenguinpants]

hellooo this is not a request but what do u think of the new upcoming character (he'll probably get release like... at least after 2 years ig TAT) Dainsleif?

Major spoilers for Kaeya’s Character Story and Khaenri'ah Lore. 

TLDR: I like the potential Dainsleif has plus his design is really nice. He might be a catalyst or sword user with empowered auto's or he might be similar to Zhongli that uses field effects and has a delete button for his elemental burst. 

I have many theories on who Dainsleif is and that he is either some type of traveler/god/homunculus and he has the element of ash or quintessence. The opposite of dendro and nature. I'd like to believe that the lore of Khaenri'ah relates to his story and his attitude (since he's from there originally) and it's a desolate place with no archon blessings so the people themselves had to develop their own methods to survive, hence the art of alchemy Khemia. When Dainsleif get's introduced, mostly likely towards the very end, we might find out why Scaramouche said the sky and the stars was a gigantic hoax and the truth behind Kaeya. 

---

ANON. YOU. YOU GET A COOKIE. I LOVE TALKING ABOUT STORY AND CHARACTER LORE SO MUCH.

Please, if any of you wanna talk about this I’m totally on board. I love Dainsleif and I’m so upset he’ll probably be released towards end game so yeah two years at least;; 

Okay, so level with me. I’m about to bring out the whiteboard for this. I tried to format it so it was easier to digest but this is pure word vomit and I went overboard again. 

What do u think of the new upcoming character Dainsleif?

I’m very excited. I think his design is beautiful and I want those lore bomb drops. 

Firstly, I can’t wait for him to drop. I’m always a sucker for lore and he’s been dropping hints from the start since he narrates all the character’s collected miscellany. He does remind of me Dimitri from FE3H but I’m excited for more Khaenri’ah lore. 

I have some theories about where the story will go with him and  Khaenri’ah but those are some major spoilers so I left a read more tag if you’re interested. 

Tumblr won’t let me upload his splash art but just google it lol.

Which weapon will he use? 

Catalyst or Sword. He might have empowered autos like Diluc and Razor or he might apply a mark like Childe. 

I can see him being a castor since his right arm is glowing. But he might also be a sword user that uses empowered auto’s like Diluc and Razor. Since the name Dainsleif was King Högni's sword during the battle of Hjaðningavíg. According to the reliable source of wiki, whatever wound the Dainsleif sword cause could not be healed. 

I think it would be cool if his auto’s apply a stack/mark (similar to Childe’s riptide mark), and after 3 auto’s the mark is consumed and the enemy gets dealt heavy damage. Or maybe you can apply debuffs like “defense down” or maybe even a blind, based on the number to stacks you have on the mark. 

What vision will he have?

A hydro vision or a custom one (similar to a delusion). Or he doesn’t have a vision at all and uses alchemy or is secretly a “god”.

As for vision, he might be a hydro character since his splash art appears like he’s coming out of a ball of water. I’ve heard people say he might be cyro also, which wouldn’t be extremely off if visions actually correspond with their user. 

Or he might be introduced with an entirely new element (perhaps a new type of alchemy?). His star is a dark blue too so he might have the element of black mist/dust or ash/shadows as a potential power. 

In the Albedo trailer he mentions:

"But I know it well. It hails from Khaenri'ah: The Art of Khemia. Soil and chalk, the universe and earth, pure dust and the birth of life.”

Perhaps this is the vision/power that Dainsleif has? Maybe even the creator or maybe he even taught Albedo’s Master how to do Khemia. I don’t think he really encompasses the Geo vision (I will seriously write an 11 page essay on how vision’s correspond with their holder). We don’t know a lot about Dendro but I think he might be related to it. But just like Khaenri’ah, he’s reflects the opposite. Instead of “birth of life” and tree’s, he’s the “death of life” and ash. (wow doesn’t that sound deep lolol sorry I don’t really know how to explain it). The way he talks in trailers, he says “mortals” a lot but does vouch for them so it makes me wonder if he might actually be a god. 

Also his title is the “Bough Keeper”. A bough means: a main branch of a tree. This makes me believe that he can either do something similar to what Albedo showed us and can create life or he does the opposite and creates ash. Honestly, a part of me believes he might just have generic moveset’s like everyone else but let me dream lol. 

Or he might not even be a vision holder since we don’t see him holding one, but we only have this angle and art to go off on. He might even use stars haha. If anyone remembers, during the falling star event, Scaramouche says the sky and stars were a gigantic hoax. I would not be surprised if the world is actually upside down or the “sky” isn’t even a sky at all. More like a sheet over Teyvat or some kind of illusion. 

Or another theory, perhaps Dainsleif is the god of time since he says in Travail during the Traveler chapter:

“Defeat me, command me to step aside, show me that you are worthier than I to rescue her. Then, the threads of all fate will be yours to re-weave“

It would explain how he knows so much about the other characters and what happened in the past since he brings up “the war” a lot. I’m assuming it’s either the Archon War or something before that. 

Or mihoyo could shred my thesis paper and Dainsleif has nothing to do with this and he’s some random guy from Khaenri’ah with plot convivence. 

---

I just want to mention at the bottom of this, but the classical elements are water, earth, fire, air and (later) aether. I find it funny that the male MC shares the name. 

“Aether, also called quintessence, is the fifth and highest classical element. It’s a material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere.” 

“It permeates all nature and is the substance composing the celestial bodies. The essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form,”

Or this is just a hint to the traveler’s power since the traveler is the only one that can use all the elements. 

Possible moveset?

He might use stars or air/anemo in his moveset. He could be a very good dps with a lot of trapping potential. Or he might be a field effect support like Albedo, but can still do a lot of damage. 

Imagine Dainsleif uses stars haha, throwing them to do damage like Ningguang’s rocks. The splash art of him shows two stars in the top left. He might have a teleport (similar to Keqing + Mona dash), or maybe he could even have some sort of telekinesis with his right arm. I’m just getting Xayah from league of legends vibes where he can throw the star, it places itself at max range, then he can recall them and the star does damage on the way back. Similar to how Keqing’s elemental skill works but instead of teleporting to the stiletto, the stiletto comes back to you when you press e again. (Sorry I play on keyboard). 

The opposite of nature is void or cosmos so that could be relating to his power as well since the only animation we get of him is in Teyvat Chapter Storyline Preview: Travail (I’m just gonna say Travail) and this black mist comes from his hand and he says: 

“"We will defy this world with a power from beyond.”

Could be interesting hehe. He might even be a field effect character like Albedo. He doesn’t really strike me as the guy that likes fighting but in the Albedo trailer he says: 

“I am content to watch most crises play out from the sidelines. But if Albedo were ever to make a single wrong move...I could not let myself ignore it.”.

Seems to be that Dainsleif is pretty powerful or at least has some type of influence. It could be interesting if he’s similar to Zhongli and has a giant delete button for his elemental burst haha. Or he has some type of imprisonment power like Mona’s burst. Or as I mentioned earlier, it would be fun having telekinesis but this is just me taking liberties haha. 

(and yes I totally understand that I’m forcing the story to support my theory BUT IGNORE IT OK.)

Black Mist/Dust and Ash/Shadows?

Uh I gave up on these summaries lol 

I touched on it briefly but I say black mist or shadows since I believe that Khaenri’ah is probably not a good place to live originally. Similar to how Mondstadt was in the past, it is probably surrounded by some type of barrier (hence the mist or even the sky) that both traps and makes sure no one get’s in or out. Khaenri’ah is quite the opposite of most regions besides the whole “no archon” business but in “Travai”, when Dainsleif brings up Khaenri’ah this shows up:

It seems like a star to me in some hidden pocket in the sky and what not. This is what I would assume Scaramouche saw (possibly, we have no idea) and therefore there are people and an entire region that’s in the sky. But why would  Khaenri’ah be above Celestia? Since you can see Celestia in Teyvat. I would like to think that Teyvat is either upside down and Khaenri’ah is actually below everything or this pocket in the sky isn’t even in Teyvat and is similar to how you reach spiral abyss. You have to go through this circle in Cape Oath and you get sucked into this worm hole thing and you make it to Musk Reef. Where we saw Scarachmouche and he tells us the sky is a hoax. 

This idea kinda supports my idea that Teyvat is either upside down or the sky isn’t real since how could Dainsleif know who all these people are (since he narrates all the 5 star character’s trailers). Either the man is just really smart and travel’s around a lot but he’s aware of who Zhongli is, an archon from 6000 years ago. This makes me believe he is either a god himself or if he is also a homunculus. Or he’s in the third category and perhaps he’s also a traveler like the main character’s.

I don’t believe he’s an archon but it would be interesting if he was a potential candidate for becoming the Khaenri’ah archon. Since I believe vision holders (human) can become archons and rise to Celestia but Dainsleif refused or he was capable of becoming an Archon

“A human with a Vision is an allogene — one with the potential to reach godhood; however, it isn't clear if having a Vision is a requirement, or simply makes a person more likely to meet the qualifications to reach Celestia.”

But going back to the state of Khaenri’ah, I’d like to think that since the art of Khemia is from Khaenri’ah that would mean that they had to learn how to make their own food and life since they didn’t have an archon to bless their lands. Barbatos had swept the snow and land away in the region of Mondstadt but Khaenri’ah doesn’t have that luxury. Naturally, I would imagine that there are some downsides of Khemia when it was first being practiced, hence the ash. But ash isn’t a bad thing, in fact you can use ash to amend soil and boost your lawn. 

But obviously having a vision would be a whole lot more useful since it’s literally god given talent/blessing so if you have a vision, you might be able to break out and go to the “above” world of Teyvat. If you have a vision you’re seen as being blessed by the gods and you might be able to ascend to Celestia itself. I believe that Khaenri’ah is secretly the abyss and doesn’t see the sun so it’s always dark and it’s hard to grow anything so the people of Khaenri’ah had to find ways to make their own food, hence alchemy. This could be why Dainsleif is so adamant about humanity and questioning the Archons and visions. 

If we are going on the theory that Dainsleif is actually a normal human, then I’d like to imagine he was one of the people that prayed for a vision or some type of blessing and finally got it. But an incident happened and he lost his faith or resolve in the Archons. He mentions it a tiny bit in the Diluc trailer but this is just me spit balling. 

Also, Kaeya’s talents also mention about an abyss and void before the change. I don’t think abyss was made to relate to the abyss order and more the actual definition of abyss but it’s still interesting. 

What is Khemia?

Well I don’t know and I don’t know how accurate google is but let’s try and go through it together. I have no idea if what I’m about to type is offensive since I do not have a history degree and I’m pretty much paraphrasing what google tells me.

---

So Khemia, is an Egyptian sacred science. When Egypt was occupied by the Arabs they added “al-” to the world “Khemia” and “al-Khemia”. Al-Khemia means “The Black Land” and is now seen as a possibly origin of the world alchemy. 

Not gonna lie, I did not know al-khemia meant the black land so idk if my hindsight is 2020 or it was just super obvious for my monkey brain. 

As for the world “Chemeia”, it was used to designate the art of metal-working, specifically changing base metals into gold and silver. The Arabs later prefixed it with “al” and the world “alchemy”. Alchemy came to signify the art of chemistry in general. However the word "Chemeia” was probably derived from the Greek word “chemi” which means “black”. This could be because: 

In the sense of "dark" or "hidden", since the Dark, Hidden or Divine Art was the only name by which this science was known to the ancients.

However, the word chemistry might have had a Chinese origin.  It may have been derived from the Hakka term KIM-MI or the Cantonese term KEM-MAI, which signifies "gone astray in search of gold" or "secret of gold". 

Assuming it’s from Egyptian origin, the ancient Egyptian word khēmia means the transmutation of earth, thereby the science of matter at the atomic to molecular scale. According to some etymologists, khēmia or “preparation of black powder” ultimately derived the name from Khem or Kēme, Egypt, the land of black earth. 

---

So if we are going with the Chinese origin, I’d like to think that this is a hint towards the story and people trying to find the “gold” or perhaps a vision. This could explain why Kaeya was sent to Mondstadt to hopefully require a vision and come back. 

What is the lore behind Khaenri’ah then?

So, why do I think the people of Khaenri’ah are looking to be saved or want a vision so badly? Well, time to go through the entire Khaenri’ah lore with you lads. 

The Khaenri’ah lore goes as this:

At least 200 years ago, the Eclipse Dynasty threw the kingdom into chaos (meaning it was the last Dynasty).

The people were cursed and transformed into monsters.

Mondstadt’s Knights and Grand Master Arundolyn went on an expedition to Khaenri’ah to fight off the monsters.

In the present,  Khaenri’ah is still struggling against the effects of the curse. Kaeya was sent to Mondstadt as their last hope and for the sake of the “ancient plot”.

1. For those not aware, China’s time periods were separated into Dynasty’s (sort of). The Chinese characters of “Eclipse Dynasty” are [古国黑日落] or "The Ancient Civilization of the Black Sunset". There is probably some type of history or connection to this since Zhongli’s voicelines are full of them but this post is long enough and I don’t know if people want to or care about hearing Chinese history but um let me know? Cause I’m really into that and I will gladly write about it.

2. We’re not completely aware if the people transformed into Hilichurls or were apart of the Abyss Order. But since the last dynasty was literally called Eclipse I would like to believe this supports my idea that Khaenri’ah isn’t someplace you can easily reach and you have to entire a fucking worm hole to get to. I’m in love with the idea that Khaenri’ah is the spiral abyss or at least part of it, that Childe fell into when he was a younger. Perhaps even the spiral abyss is where he landed since time technically doesn’t pass in spiral and it’s just a wave of enemies. I would 100% not be shocked if we have to enter the that wormhole to get to Khaenri’ah or something similar. 

3. Arundolyn was a previous Grand Master and while he did not possess a Vision, he was naturally gifted through intense training. He was formerly one of the Four Winds and had the title of “Lion of Light”. So Khaenri’ah is possible to get to and someone from Mondstadt has done it, but without a vision. The Traveler also doesn’t carry a vision so it might be interesting to see. Kaeya didn’t get his vision until he was 18? 17? When he had a falling out with Diluc. 

I would like to think that perhaps the Archon’s betrayed Khaenri’ah or someone fucked up in their pursuit to develop Khemia to it’s fullest potential or wanted to make their own vision, hence the delusion and how it transforms Childe into a foul legacy form. The Dragonspine lore could point to how Celestia has the power to seal away Khaenri’ah. This also might have been where Dainsleif lost his resolve (assuming he’s a human and just happened to get some sort of power or is really good at Khemia he saw the past or fate or whatever lol)

“Murals, Record of Serial No., and other lore bits in Dragonspine indicate that those who dwelled there attempted to fight against Celestia but lost. As punishment, the Skyfrost Nail was dropped, and the area was turned into a frozen wasteland.

Therefore, people with visions cannot enter Khaenri’ah because of the Archon’s and people that receive visions (which I still think is highly unlikely if you’re in Khaenri’ah) might be able to break out. Think of spiral abyss as some sort of “purgatory” except to enter Khaenri’ah you go down. To get out, you start AT FLOOR 12 and make your way up. Similar to Kid Icarus and how the hardest level was at the beginning and as you went up, it slowly became easier. 

4. I like the idea that Khaenri’ah is a land that either doesn’t have vision holders or the people that do have visions aren’t seen the same way as other regions. People are are actually cursed by the Gods or people that require visions leave Khaenri’ah because they now have the power to. In Travail Dainsleif says this:

"Some say a few are chosen and the rest are dregs, but I say we humans have our humanity. We will defy this world from a power from beyond”

Naturally these are his ideals and I’d like to believe that Khaenri’ah is actually split on this. Some believe in Dainsleif ideals while the other half doesn’t. If we’re going on the theory that Khaenri’ah is actually the abyss then the abyss order makes a bit more sense. 

Plus the idea that Lumine/Aether (I think the story is just going to stick with Lumine being the “villain ”) working for the abyss, it could be because their twin was separated by an unknown god. Aether was asleep and plagued by nightmares with his sister saying “it was too late”, perhaps he lost his memory since he doesn’t know what he was late for? Maybe this is what she meant since I’d assume the story has you going from place to place and the Archon’s stepping down like in Liyue and the Tsaritsa collecting all the gnosis. 

Why is the Tsaritsa collecting all the gnosis?

“She is a god with no love left for her people, nor do they have any left for her. Her followers only hope to be on her side when the day of her rebellion against the divine comes at last."

I can imagine that Tsarista or the Cyro archon is collecting all the gnosis because she believes in the Khaenri’ah attitude and is apart of the ancient plot or is trying to protect them somehow since she isn’t an evil person based on Childe’s voicelines:

“Her Royal Highness the Tsaritsa is actually a gentle soul. Too gentle, in fact, and that's why she had to harden herself. Likewise, she declared war against the whole world only because she dreams of peace. And because she made an enemy of the world, I had the chance to become acquainted with you.”

Or maybe even more interesting, she was actually a citizen of Khaenri’ah since the Tsaritsa wasn’t apart of the original seven but this is a huge stretch. Maybe she’s collecting all the gnosis to finally break the seal on Khaenri’ah? Plus the people of Sneznaya strike me as “I don’t care if you’re blessed by the gods or have a vision, if you can fight then you’re good in our books”. Plus the people of Khaenri’ah are probably pretty mad at the Archons so when the rebellion does come I’d assume the Tsaritsa wants them on her side. 

What happened to Kaeya?

Now Kaeya’s character story goes into how he met Diluc and Crepus. It’s hinted that it was on purpose since Kaeya’s father left him there specifically. 

"One afternoon near the end of summer a decade ago, my father and I passed by the Dawn Winery."

This matter-of-fact description hides a carefully constructed lie. Kaeya has never once spoken the truth about what happened that afternoon:

"This is your chance. You are our last hope."

Kaeya would never forget the look of both hope and hatred in his father's eyes as he uttered those words.

Now you can interpret this as many things, either collecting all the gnosis and obtaining a vision to hopefully come back to save Khaenri’ah could be what he meant or he want’s Kaeya to stop the Abyss Order from literally setting Teyvat on fire. You can probably sympathize with the Abyss Order if we are following the theory that they are actually the mutated monsters of Khaenri’ah citizen’s during the Eclipse dynasty but it’s also like, how about we not set the world on fire ya know?

But interestingly, the reason why Kaeya’s father left him with Diluc’s family is because they have a long history of participating in the rebellion against Decarabian 2,600 years ago and Vennessa’s rebellion against the Aristocracy. 

What will happen when Dainsleif get’s introduced?

So, I’m fully on board with the “Kaeya being the secret prince of Khaenri’ah” theory. I like the idea that Dainsleif is Kaeya’s servant or trusted advisor but I think that’s mainly rooted in the ship. Dainsleif strikes me more as someone who observes and only steps in if he has to because it might affect fate or whatever.

“I am content to watch most crises play out from the sidelines. But if Albedo were ever to make a single wrong move...I could not let myself ignore it.” 

I don’t think Dainsleif is the King of Khaenri’ah that Jean mentions in her hobbies voiceline but perhaps he was related to them somehow. Maybe the first King or the King that Jean mentions was real and Dainsleif was his friend or the God that helped him become King, then the Eclipse Dynasty happened and everything went downhill. Since I believe in Kaeya being a secret prince from  Khaenri’ah, Dainsleif would still be somewhat loyal to the Kingdom or perhaps he had lost faith after what happened and how so many people got corrupted and turned into monsters. 

I was talking about this with my friend but what if genshin pulls an fgo and “kills” Kaeya? Similar to FGO where Leonardo “died” in a car accident and when we visited a shop, there was just a hologram. What if genshin’s story kills Kaeya in a cutscene, and we can no longer use him since Kaeya was a free character, only to return as - THE 5 STAR WE WERE ALL WAITING FOR - the prince of Khaenri’ah.

When will we see Dainsleif?

According to the “Travail” the order of appearances is this: 

I believe part 1 is finished with Zhongli and dragonspine was just an add on for Albedo. But this makes me believe that Dainsleif and Khaenri’ah will be after we go to Snezhnaya. Also side note, the music for Natlan slaps hard. 

---

But yeah, I kinda went a bit off track and started talking about the story haha. I really love lore so if anyone has any questions about other characters or want’s to discuss the genshin story I am all ears^^. Also, if any of this becomes true in two years time I WILL BE BACK TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO. 

Or genshin prepares to rip this post apart and none of it is true. If you actually read my word vomit I appreciate you and you get a free cookie. If you’re wondering where I’ve been, it was writing this haha. 

[buglife]

Bend and Not Break - Ch 1: A Mark

Anonymous said: Not sure if someone has requested this yet, but I’d love to see how the cast would react to an assassin coming after Ghost or Quirrel. I mean, there’s gotta be some bugs out there who don’t adore the new sovereigns right?

Anonymous said: If your still doing these (if not I’m really sorry and please just ignore me) may I request 17: “Ok, well… Fuck.” With Quirrel and Ghost being his knight in shining armour.

Read here on AO3 :3

Quirrel looked in the mirror, sighing to himself as he regarded his reflection. He was due to make a public appearance today along with Ghost, so he had to look the part of a King. He still didn’t feel much like a king, not really. He felt more like he did when he was helping his mother run the archives, which was a lot of running around and keeping people from losing their fingers to explosives. It wasn’t all about preventing disasters, it was also about fostering the love of learning and the curiosity that makes society better. So in a way...he felt the same now as he did then. There was more paperwork, of course, but he was happy. It helped that he had a spouse to share the load with.

He fiddled with the ring on his left hand, the pale ore gleaming in the light. It had been made from Ghost’s old nail, with them having a matching ring. They had long since outgrown the old nail, and most of it was used in making the pure nail he now carried. Still, it was something special that their rings were made with the metal that helped kill a god and started the rebirth of Hallownest. Smith and Sheo were absolutely delighted to work on them, and now the both of them had completely unique nails and rings that will probably last forever.

Today was going to be a rather emotional day for Ghost. He remembered them telling him snippets about the Soul Sanctum here and there. They could only mention what they were comfortable talking about, and it wasn’t much of it that qualified as such. Sometime during their journey to end the infection, they had entered the Soul Sanctum and put down the mad scientist within along with his equally mad followers. Grandeurs of immortality and power was enough to corrupt any bug, but from what he heard, the ones involved went far beyond corruption. It was evil. Pure evil. Ghost usually stopped talking at around that point, and Quirrel found himself cuddling them as they sought comfort to ease what they cannot forget.

The worst day perhaps, was when the Kingdom had established themselves enough to expand beyond bare necessities. As soon as the funds was available, Ghost had the Soul Sanctum completely stripped down to the bare walls and floors. They had gone that day to oversee it all and when they returned, they could barely hold themselves together. They spent the night crying, mourning the lives lost in the pursuit of power. They had given the dead within rest, but it still destroyed them on the inside to have to return to that place. Quirrel did his best to help, and many a sleepless night was spent together, attempting to heal deep wounds within.

They had recovered, in time. Stripping the place had done a lot to help them move on from the experience, and they had decided to turn it into something new. Something useful that would help bugs and not harm them. Something that promoted life, not take them away.

Its where they were going today, to officially open it up to the public. Quirrel would be there not only as a fellow ruler, but as support for Ghost. Despite it all, it was going to be hard for them.

Quirrel smoothed back his antenna and tied his silk kerchief around his head. It was a necessary habit he picked up while growing up with his mother. After burning his antenna one too many times due to splashes of acid or a chemical reaction gone wrong, he tended to pin them back. They got in the way sometimes, but once in a while he felt safe enough to let them out. The palace didn’t really have acid, or volatile chemicals, but old habits die hard.

He clipped on his cloak, letting the study fabric fall around his shoulders as he pinned it in place. It was a lovely blue, nearly iridescent, and clasped with a pale ore brooch that designated him as king. There was no way he could ever bring himself to wear something as tacky as a crown. Hell, Ghost wouldn’t even be able to fit one on their head. Instead, brooches seemed to fit a whole lot better.

Once he made sure his nail was strapped to his side, he deemed himself ready, and exited the room - only to nearly smack into his spouse, who was opening the door at the same time.

“Oof!” Running into Ghost wasn’t as fun as it was when they were little. Back then their shell was soft and kinda squishy like any other grub. But once stasis ended and they caught up on all their missed molts, their chitin had become tough and hard.

“Are you alright?” Ghost’s telepathy was soft and gently breezed by his mind. It’s just something gods could do, apparently. Their sire could, Quirrel knew that as a fact, but the fact they also ate a god boosted their ability to communicate without relying on sign language. They only ‘spoke’ like this to family and friends, a little too nervous to use it on the public. Quirrel hoped that would change with time.

He didn’t blame them, though. They were terrified of being considered scary. They were certainly imposing, but not as much as their sibling, Hollow. There were those that will always be scared of them, with them being a god and immensely powerful. But enough of their subjects loved them enough to not care. He just wished they could see it. Quirrel considered them handsome and cute, but then again, he was biased.

“I’m okay love, I was about to go and find you.” Quirrel smoothed down the front of his cloak and picked at Ghosts, adjusting it around a little. “It’s nearly time.”

Ghost was silent for a moment, and then leaned down to softly bonk their forehead against theirs. “I know.”

“You’ll be fine. That place doesn’t exist anymore.” He did his best to soothe any lingering nerves. Being around Ghost for so long as alerted him to their various tells. “It’s a better place now. Much better.”

They nodded slowly and let out a deep breath. “You are right. It is just hard to let go of what it was.”

“I understand, it will take a while, but you are doing great.” Quirrel took Ghost’s claws in his and gently squeezed. “Come along then, we don’t want to be late to the dedication.”

Ghost tilted their mask up in a smile, and then nodded. They bent down to steal a quick kiss, one that Quirrel returned, and together, they headed to the Stag Station.

----

The Capital was bustling, like always. It no longer was the City of Tears, not with the new revitalization of Hallownest. The rain had been stopped, redirected with new plant life growing on the ceiling. Lurien himself helped renew the spells that kept the water from outright pouring out of the lake above. Without being constantly rained on, more bugs were out and about. Today however, they were gathering in front of what used to be the Soul Sanctum, waiting around a platform where their rulers would be giving a speech. Most bugs were eager to enter the newly renovated building, because it was for them, and them alone.

The Soul Sanctum, which had brought so much death and misery to so many lives, had been converted into a multi-level communal greenhouse. There, farmer bugs would grow a verity of food, which is then free to be picked and used by the public. Taxes from the upper members of society will be used to keep the place running. That way, no bug would have to go hungry. The intimidating and Gothic architecture of the building had been transformed into a pillar of glass and green. It was now friendly, the oppressive air from before banished into a place of shelter. Not only could you go there to eat, but you can go there to rest among some of the floors dedicated to flowers. It was a gift, from the rulers of New Hallownest to the people, and the people were waiting to be allowed in to enjoy it.

The five new knights of Hallownest stood in various places around the crowd. So far, they didn’t need to do much but remind some citizens to calm down and not crowd each other. With Xena on her beast (named Pickles, but only she can call them that), it was easy to keep everyone in line. Cloth stole a quick moment to wave to Myla in the crowd, temporarily breaking protocol, but it wasn’t like Tiso was going to scold her for that, since he did the same thing. Once he finished his quick wave to his other date friend, he scanned the crowd and recognizing a few folks from Dirtmouth as well. A lot of people showed up to this dedication, hell, he even spotted a few spiders and bees in the crowd. It just made him scan the crowd more thoroughly. Threats could come from anywhere, and he took security very seriously.

It wasn’t long before he spotted the Kings approach the platform and climb on, waiting for the crowds cheering to die down before they began the ceremony. Quirrel was doing the speaking today, Ghost standing beside them and holding his hand. Tiso remembered when Ghost was small enough to pick up and throw. It was lots of fun, but now they were too big for that. Oh well. As soon as the crowd’s noise died down, Quirrel tapped a speaking stone on the provided podium and his voice was projected outwards to be heard by everyone.

“Hello to you all, our dear subjects. Today we continue to do our very best to provide for you, our people, whom we dearly love and cherish. This site was a place of tragedy, and pain, part of the past of old Hallownest that was rife with corruption and oversight. But today we have washed away the dark and terrible past, to bring in the new, which is full of hope and life. We have -”

Quirrel had always been a good speaker. But Tiso wasn’t here to hear a speech. He heard it before, when Quirrel had asked him and his fellow knights to hear it and give honest feedback. Tiso had suggested Quirrel get to the damn point because nobody liked just standing around, so he thankfully cut the speech down by half.

There were bugs everywhere. Bugs in the square, bugs that could climb were hanging on buildings, bugs looking out windows, bugs on roofs, everywhere. Tiso scanned them all, eyes narrowed. It was no lie that there were bugs out there who didn’t agree with the direction the new government was taking, especially having another god as a ruler. Ghost and Quirrel had managed to piss off the right people. They were the folks that enjoyed profiting by gaming the system, and that system came tumbling down once Ghost claimed the throne. It got even worse when they married Quirrel, who was scarily smart. Quickly it became obvious that nobody was going to get away with old hustles anymore.

Quirrel continued talking, and Tiso continued watching. Then, something caught his eye. A glint of metal shined on one of the rooftops, a figure crouched down behind it. The glint moved, and Tiso’s heart went cold.

“GET DOWN!”  He shouted, and with a heft, threw his shield as hard as he could. Bugs instantly dropped to the ground and the knights gathered to the podium. The shield whistled through the air, and with a satisfying clunk, impacted the bug on the roof. There was a brief shout of pain, and then came the thwip as a crossbow bolt lodged itself in the podium. It was obviously aimed for the pillbug’s head, and it missed him by scant inches. Someone in the crowd screamed and it started a chain reaction of panic. Cloth and Ogrim took crowd duty, ushering the crowd into nearby buildings to get them off the streets and away from the danger.

Xena was already heading up to the roof atop her beast, the creature climbing up the sides with frightening speed. Tiso flashed his soul and recalled his shield, just in time to hear the bug on the roof start screaming once the beast reached it’s fanged maw out and grabbed them. He trusted Xena to keep at least enough of them alive for questioning later.

To add more chaos to the mix, some bugs in the crowd dropped their cloaks, revealing nails, and rushed the podium.

“No more gods! No more masters!” Some of them shouted. The sentiment was echoed by the other assassins as they parted through the crowd, not caring about who they knocked over or trampled in their haste. Bugs continued to scream, struggling to get out of the way as some were simply tossed aside to make way. Tiso could hear grubs wailing and the sharp clang of metal as some of the bugs in the crowd took up their own nails. They were valiantly trying to hold back the assassins, who cruelly cut them down and left them to bleed out. Thankfully medics were among the guards, and they quickly raced out to try and save the injured civilians.

So this was a coordinated assassination attempt, usually they were done by singular bugs. They must have gotten a little smarter. Tiso was about to jump into the fray, only to hold back when Hollow sped past him and body checked an assassin so hard that he could hear the chitin cracking from where he stood. Ouch.  He let Hollow do their thing and barked out orders to his guardsmen. They had to get everything under control, and fast.

However, the Kings of Hallownest were no pushovers. Quirrel practically teleported, moving with an insane amount of speed to kill an assassin with a flash of their nail. Since the crossbow bolt was aimed at him, Ghost was especially pissed. They were trying their best to not change into their true, terrifying form and completely destroy the square they worked so hard to rebuild. Judging by the extra three pairs of eyes that opened on their mask, they were barely holding on. Tiso did not blame them.

One assassin got lucky, moving at just the right time to scratch their nail along Quirrel’s side. He let out a hiss of pain and leapt backwards, ignoring the wound for now. He moved to retaliate, only to see said assassin become a smear of hemolymph on the platform. He glanced up to see an absolutely furious Ghost retract a void tentacle back into their body, still coated in a thin sheen of gore.

“Are you okay?” Ghost’s mental voice was now tight, louder. Quirrel could hear the rumbling of the void in behind, overlapping as the power of a god began to leak through Ghost’s control.

“Yes dear, just a scratch.” Quirrel sidestepped another assassin, bringing his nail around to cleanly slice off their nail arm. The assassin screamed, now missing an arm, and was quickly grabbed by Ghost and slammed bodily into the ground. Ghost then proceeded to kick them into the nearest building, cracking the stone slightly and leaving said bug a quivering mess.

As quickly as it all began, it was over. In total there were eight assassins. Three were outright dead, most due to Ghost. The rest were maimed and beaten bloody, but were alive. They weren’t too sure if the ones Hollow got to would survive or not. Either way, they weren’t going to get out of the situation alive, either by the executioner’s axe or dying from their wounds. Tiso had ordered the spare guard out, and there was a city wide search for more conspirators. There was no way to tell how many were out there, at least, until the prisoners were questioned. Something Tiso was going to enjoy doing so very much.

Ghost was panting, trying to calm down after losing their control for the bare moments it took for the fight to finish. Quirrel shivered, also breathing heavily. Adrenaline was surging through his body still and he doubted he’d be able to calm down anytime soon. Ghost had grabbed him, holding him tight as they too, shook. For a being designed to have no emotions, Ghost sure wore theirs on their sleeve, frantically patting Quirrel down for injuries. He knew what they were afraid of, and he stopped their hands with his to prevent their anxiety from taking over their rational thought.

“I’m okay love, it’s just a scratch.” He had time to look at his wound, bleeding blue. It wasn’t even terribly deep. It would just need some cleaning and some shell paste. If anything, it was making a mess of his cloak. The cleaners were going to have an absolute fit about it. He sighed as Ghost moved their hands to the wound, clearly worried.

“Your Majesties!” Ogrim hurried over. “Are you okay?”

“We’re fine, thank you. What of the assassins'?” Quirrel again, moved his hands to hold Ghost’s as he listened to Ogrim.

“Captured. We have guards scouring the city for anything suspicious.” The dung beetle looked about the now empty square, watching the assassins that were dead being dragged away. “Tiso and Xena are going to head an investigation once they interrogate-”

Ghost whistled, stopping Ogrims words. “I will interrogate them.”

“Your majesty, are you sure, you-”

“I am very sure.” They had since hunched protectively over Quirrel, arms like a gate around him. The malice in their 'voice' wasn't hard to miss, something Ogrim picked up on. He was always able to pick out the tiniest of details.

Ogrim bowed his head, but spoke plainly. “With all due respect, as your knight, and as your friend, I urge you to at least let the captain and his lieutenant do their job first before you decide to do anything.”

“Ogrim is right, love.” Quirrel reached up to cup Ghost’s cheek, hand oddly feeling weak. Perhaps he was still worked up? He started feeling a little dizzy, maybe he needed somewhere quiet to de-stress for a little while. He wouldn't mind retreating back to their bedroom to cuddle for a while. That should be able to do the trick nicely. Still, he continued with his advice. “You are too worked up right now. You need to calm down first. We both do.”

Ghost shook for a moment, and then took a few deep breaths. “Okay. Please tell Tiso and Xena to get as much from the prisoners as they can. I will be there shortly.”

Ogrim nodded. “Of course, Cloth and Hollow will be here soon and they will be able to escort you back to the palace.”

Quirrel started to say something and then was hit by a sudden wave of light headedness. He grabbed onto Ghost’s arm to steady himself as he momentarily lost feeling in his legs.

Ogrim and Ghost noticed that for sure. “Your majesty?” Ogrim questioned, reaching out a claw to offer support.

“No no- I’m fine...I’m..” The world twisted and a spike of pain and nausea punctured his gut. He suddenly couldn’t tell which way was up or down anymore. His legs gave out and through an increasing and concerning wave of numbness, he felt himself being caught.

“QUIRREL!!”  The mental shout was loud, and with it came more noises he couldn’t quite make out.

Ok, well… fuck.” The pain seemed to get worse, now a burning sensation that spread from the wound on his side to the very core of his body. His lungs hurt. His heart hurt. A disturbing wave of pain twisted around his limbs and went right into his brain. It suddenly got more difficult to breathe as he clutched his spouse with his claws.

He was dimly aware of someone screaming desperately, echoing around his head as he lost the ability to understand it, he was too busy gasping for breath.

The noises blended together until finally, there was nothing but darkness.

-----

“In you go, ya fucker.” Tiso not so gently tossed one assassin, a particularly nasty looking cricket, onto the stone floor of the dungeon cell. They had given just the bare amount of medical care necessary to keep them alive. The worst injury was the stump where their nail arm used to be, cleanly cut in half by the biggest nerd in the kingdom. “This’ll be your new home for a while, but it can get a little nicer if you decide to talk.”

“It won’t make any difference,” The cricket spat a wad of hemo on the floor. “I’m dead anyway.”

“True…” Tiso mused, leaning on the bars to stare the other bug right in the eyes. “But would you rather prefer a quick death, or being dragged kicking and screaming into the void? Cause let me tell you, I’d rather take a beheading over that. That shit is fucked up.”

“Typical of a tyrant.”

“You seriously calling the squirt and the nerd tyrants? I mean, they literally were about to open a public greenhouse so that everyone can eat before you idiots crashed it.” Tiso tapped his shield against the bars, making the metal ting in the most annoying way possible. He absolutely loved messing with prisoners like that, it made them slip up more often than not. Tiso learned more from pissing off the prisoners than he ever did 'nicely' interrogating them. “I don't know about you, but that don’t sound like tyrants to me.”

“All gods, are tyrants.” The doomed assassin moved to sit up, resting their back against the cold stone walls. Their movements were awkward, now that they were missing an arm. “The Pale King was. The Radiance was. Even the White Lady. Now we have an even more powerful tyrant as our king! We can’t keep letting ourselves become playthings for monsters!”

“Call them a monster one more time and I’ll feed ya to Xena’s beast, and the beast chews slowly.” Tiso narrowed his eyes at the bug on the other side of the bars. He could roughly hear the other prisoners being tossed in their cells as well. Judging by the echoes, they were spouting the same nonsense and getting zero sympathy for it. “You’re a fucking idiot, you think you can just kill our Kings like that? King Ghost killed the Radiance, for fucks sake!”

The cricket smiled through their broken mandibles, dribbling hemo over their cloak. “No, we can’t kill the tyrant, but we can hurt them.”

Tiso stared, shocked by the words. A very bad feeling sat in his gut, and was quickly vindicated when Cloth rounded the corner.

“Tiso!” she shouted. “It’s Quirrel!”

“Yeah?” The bad feeling grew stronger and he desperately prayed to whatever was listening, that the next words out of his love's mouth wasn’t going to be bad news.

“Quirrel...he's...He’s been poisoned!”

Tiso’s world went numb, and all he could hear was the insane laughter of the prisoner behind him.

[papabirdurskeks]

I ask this both for Baron Dark, Ariandel and SkekSo !

Give me a character and I will answer: @ben-the-hyena

Oh boy a triple feature! :D Here we go, folks!

Under a read more cause its going to get long but each listed character will be split apart evenly!

First up is Baron Dark!

Why I like them: He is just bombastic in personality! He lives loud in his actions and words, participating in most of the action himself while also showing he is a threat and menacing altogether! I also like that he is one of the few villains that shows he cares for his crew as a “family” (at least for most part of the series before being overtaken with obsession to have power more on his own). Given the dynamic we are given from the show, its obvious he cares and treats them all on a level of respect as well, something so rare to see nowadays! And I also enjoyed that his reasons to take over and do the shit he did in the series, “Because I can!” is just as refreshing and fun to see in a villain too!  And again, his design is a top tier design I love overall! Its menacing, powerful, and outright amazing! Definitely adds to the character and how well he works in effect to keeping my attention! Like just look at that design! And his VA did a wonderful job of adding to that charm that is just delightful to see in his personality! Overall, he is totally a villain I would love to see more of in the future!

Why I don’t: I say my dislikes often fall on the usual tropes of a kid’s show of the 90s. He talks too much when he could be doing things himself and falls victim to the typical “I am too powerful” but doesn’t think of the obvious steps ahead that will be his downfall. But honestly, its so small I don’t find it jarring or that bad to be in the way! It was the 90s and aimed at kids at the time, so we can’t expect TOO much out of that xD

Favorite episode (scene if movie): Oh man, that’s a tough one cause every scene/episode Baron is in he totally slays it! Its either a tie from the first episode to the very last one cause the stakes of start and finish are so well done, I love it all! 

Favorite season/movie: Obviously, the TV series is the best version of him! The comics sucked and turned him too OOC from what was initially given! Like how does one go from point A to be Z so freaking fast? xD

Favorite line: “Because I can.” Yeah, not gonna lie this was indeed my favorite line of his xD

Favorite outfit: Honestly, the outfit he gains near the end of the series is by far my favorite! Its like a mix of the Bejeweled Catacomb Saints and Mictlantechutli put in one and its befitting of the Baron given his gain in power! 

OTP: Baron and Cyborn are my OTP and are married, fight me. 

Brotp: Definitely Brotps with the rest of his henchmen though I see them more being like his adoptive children! 

Head Canon: Baron is of indigenous background! I also like to headcanon that the white tuft/strands in his hair are truly his and have been there since birth!  (I have so many more HCs for him but I will keep it short cause it can go all day x’) )

Unpopular opinion: Don’t think I have one, at the moment at least. 

A wish: To have gotten more information/lore on him and the entire cast, honestly! I would have loved to see more of his character explored and what more he could have had to offer as a series main villain! Hell, the whole damn series had so much to offer! And just the relationships he has with the others and what more he could have done post season and before! So much potential there to be explored! I honestly would not be objecting to a reboot/revival or continuation of the series! 

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: Though with that said, if a reboot does come around, don’t turn it into the mess of current cartoons we have. Not that they are all bad but most of them have been very disappointing in keeping my attention and liking. Keep the same type of messages it had before! It worked beautifully as it did then and still does work now! I’d love to see the same formulas used while also updating it to be more gritty and mature like they did for Castlevania! Just... Don’t turn it into a cringe worthy mess that will ruin Baron and all the characters in the series! Don’t do what the comics did! 

5 words to best describe them: Charmingly evil, badass, fun, conniving bastard, and menacing. 

My nickname for them: Mega dork (affectionately speaking)

Next is Ariandel!

Why I like them: Oh boy, there is a lot to say in terms of why I like him but I will try to keep it short and simple for time purposes!  His design is top tier for me! Like a rotting skull like face? Check! A monstrous body much like a bird’s? Check! And to add he is a giant Corvian, which are one of my favorite enemies in Dark Souls III!  His personality also differs from the usual loud, bombastic, and proud characters I tend to gravitate for. Instead, he’s withdrawn and rather sad to look at and hear. You know he’s going through a lot but don’t know exactly what it is. In game, one can sort of get hints as to what has gone on behind the scenes but at the same time, its still vague and hard to really pinpoint what really did happen. So he has that air of mystery to him that I honestly adore in many characters as it leaves room to explore deeper into their lore! But I also find his personality relatable as well as sympathetic.  But that’s just me, I can gush about him all day but I will cut it short here x’)

Why I don’t: To be honest I don't have any reason not to like Ariandel other then the small fact that he followed Friede and let the Painted World rot in such a terrible state. But that is so minor of an issue to me to really make a difference, lol. I adore this giant bird man!

Favorite episode (scene if movie): I have to say the scene where he ultimately snaps and breaks out of binds after seeing Friede's lifeless body before him is my favorite scene of his. The amount of pain and anguish heard in his scream and the way he moves prior and after; I can very much relate to that feeling. Sometimes, actions truly convey the emotions better in the most powerful means necessary. And this scene alone truly nailed it.

Favorite season/movie: He's only ever seen in the Dark Souls III DLC, so obvious answer points to the DLC!

Favorite line: "When the Ashes are two, a flame alighteth. Thou'rt Ash, and fire befits thee, of course..."

Favorite outfit: Uhh, he doesn't really wear any clothes save for his cape? So I guess the cape does him well as he is, though I always draw him without it xD

OTP: To be honest, I don't ship him with any canon characters within Dark Souls. Friede does not deserve him..

Brotp: Ariandel being best friends with the Ashen One is my ultimate Brotp! Just think of how much of a valuable ally he could have been!

Head Canon: I know his origins are debatable, as either theory I have for him can be plausible but I often lean more towards the idea of him being half Giant and half Corvian! IDK why but I just like it a lot more x’)

Unpopular opinion: While Ariandel is partly responsible for what happened to the Painted World, I still feel he was manipulated overall and probably at one point did have a change of heart before being forced into complete isolation. He plays more the role of the willing/unwilling accomplice then the actual perpetrator of the crime.  

A wish: He could have had a happier ending without having to die for Friede. I know, its Dark Souls. Such a thing is expected to happen in the Soulsborne series but its a wish, right? 

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: That anything beyond the infatuation he had for Friede took place. Just.. No. He loved her but never could ever have her in that sense and never did. Just no, she is horrible to him. 

5 words to best describe them: Sad, lonely, birdman, withdrawn, and tragic

My nickname for them: Papa bird

And lastly for skekSo!

Why I like them: I think its as obvious as the case for Baron Dark. I like evil, smug bastards that shine through their wickedness and don't usually hold back. In the case of skekSo, I actually didn't care for him at first but then after my second viewing of the show, I started to like him more and enjoy his villainy! He's selfish, arrogant, vain, and conniving and I love it! Added that his design is really appealing to the eye and how he carries himself out, I gotta say he's one of the few villain characters from a show that makes the turn around for me to like them instead of hate them more. Also, his voice. Can NOT go wrong with that voice cause DAMN, its good and shows just how powerful a villain can be with a voice like his. And those eyes. Oh man, those eyes!

Why I don’t: Despite his villainy being the main point that caught my attention, its also a part of his downfall too. His constant greed and arrogance pushed him too far into doing what he did and ultimately cost him everything in the end; including loyal allies that end up dying for him in the long run. I hate how easily and quickly he changes his mind when actual logic is put into perspective of his plans and how quick he is to dismiss someone else when they don't please him anymore or things don't go his way for the smallest things. And yes, that is part of his character, I know that. That is what makes him as scummy as he is and why I love how trashy he is. But I also can't ignore just how easily he pushed skekVar away and believed skekSil despite knowing just what a lying bastard he is. IDK, it just feels too obvious but at the same time, it is what it is and I am not upset about it in the least x)

Favorite episode (scene if movie): Honestly, I enjoyed all the scenes with him in the show but mostly in particular with his interactions with skekVar, especially towards the end of the series. It showed a peak part of his vulnerability in his character that honestly I doubt he ever shows to anyone else. He spends most of his time pushing others around and making them fear him but with skekVar there is a sort of mutual respect going that really speaks out in a different way. Maybe I am just reading too much into it, but I always did enjoy how they interacted with one another!

Favorite season/movie: Well, skekSo didn't get much screen time in the movie other then him dying and turning to dust so.... Definitely enjoyed him more in the show then the film xD

Favorite line: "NOOOOO!" (Yes, this scene is still very infamous to me for personal reasons but the way he carried out his "no's" cracked me up each time xD)

Favorite outfit: Honestly, the main outfit he wore throughout the show. It's just so regal and goth, I love it! And as a goth and fashion enthusiast myself, I am all up for the style he has! The battle armor he wore near the end made it a tad more laughable to be honest.

OTP: I started shipping him with skekVar but ended up with an OT3 of skekVar and skekZok. So now all three of them live in a happy relationship with each other in my noodle~

Brotp: I see him being on neutral terms with skekMal! 

Head Canon: I feel that even in the show it wasn’t seen or given, but he did feel a lot of remorse and regret after the loss of skekVar. He seemed very close with him and spoke with skekVar with more trust then he did the others. Perhaps in secret he did mourn the General’s loss. 

Unpopular opinion: Does this count as an unpopular opinion? I know most people see him with just a few strands of hair but I tend to see him with a head full of long flowing white locks he keeps hidden beneath his clothes. It adds to the extra layer of vanity for a proud Emperor such as he! He looses it over time the darkening consumes him and withers down his health. 

A wish: To see what he was like as an urSkek prior to being split up into a Skeksis and urRu. Yeah, I know people don't care or like the urSkeks all that much but honestly, I would LOVE to see more urSkek lore and see what it was that made SoSu so special among his peers. It was said, after all, he had a voice that could move the stars but was conflicted and consumed with darkness. Honestly, I want to know why and who he was prior to all of this mess! SkekSo even says in the show he still has nightmares of the life before so I wonder, what they were and how it was! So much potential here, man!

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I don’t think I have any of these to be honest? At least with skekSo. Not that I can think of on top of my head now. 

5 words to best describe them: Proud, absolute piece of shit, pretty, conniving, and menacing. 

My nickname for them: Stupid idiot