#born to draw but was forced to write to be better at defending my favorite characters

[byghostface]

//long rambling

There is a vent in the last part (about pro ship:/+ wired shipping + block list) it's naturally negative so reading at your own risk.

So in the new Batman and Robin issue #7 Nika's sister making an appearance, got me thinking of other possibilities for sibling characters to come back.

Mostly I’m thinking about Respawn since he is Joshua Williamson's own character. And He made Respawn appeared in the last issue of Robin(2021), he also brought back Mara in that run too (just some appearance in the later issue).

And now Joshua Williamson is writing Batman and Robin, so naturally he can bring some characters back in this run. He had said in an interview that he might have figured out a way(try) to bring back Maya.

Throwback to 2022 of this old wip/art I made, is about what I think the emo teens of Lazarus squad dynamic would look like.

I imagine Nika and Respaw are irritated/tolerate with each other but would stay for Damian because Nika is Damian's girlfriend and they want to stick together. Meanwhile, Damian likes to include his half-brother in some fun activities (Respawn is acting reluctant bc of his own issues but he actually likes to have friends and feel include).

I haven’t finished this art bc I was going to add more wips (with other characters like Rose and Hawke) to make it a post. I didn't finish this art back then bc I was afraid Talia fans would be mad at me for drawing Respawn.

Trust me, I hate that Talia gets associated with Deathstroke like this, but I think Respawn is a confused/mistreated teen character and Damian (bless his heart and soul) still wants to be his brother regarding the whole mess. I will explain/talk more about my thoughts on Respawn as a character and his situations once I finish these drawings and get ready to post them.

Writing/typing words is harder than drawing for me personally. Drawing is like channeling my energy into a picture and forming an atmosphere and hopefully people will understand what thoughts and feelings I was trying to convey. Writing is using more brain powers to choose the correct and cohesive words, so people would not misunderstand what I'm talking about. Especially when English is not my first language, and even so I normally don't talk(write) much in my mother tongue either…(I'm not a quick thinker, it took me a longer time to think things through, writing literally exhausted me physically and mentally more than drawing.)

It doesn't mean I don't enjoy writing, it's just not my first choice to convey thoughts… but considering I can't draw everything I have in my mind and it takes even longer time to finish any art, I just need to write down things first from now on. Tumblr is the only place I can think of that has this longer text feature blog post and I'm more familiar with this platform format. So I will still be here posting my fan content.

.

(↓Vent, if you want to avoid being block by me then read down below.)

I must say I will forever hate respawn x flatline as ship, cus I know who started this ship and their reasons behind it—Don’t let the new character develop naturally as the story goes, let’s put them in made-up weird situations first so I can prop up my own ship!😍 And get both of the new characters out of the way, since no one would defend them so I can fanon the hell out of them by making them look bad all around!🤞 (What if I stone you first hand🪨🪨💥)

And I will continue to dislike/against any shipping Damian's sibling to Nika. I simply don't like the unnecessary sibling conflict just for romance tropes! So go away boooo I hate you‼️ Not to mention the ignoring of different age range multi-ship hide behind poly… that's straight up proshipping I hate you even more!!👎

Also for people who said Nika should be crush on Damian's mother instead of him… I hate you twisted proshipper rotten smooth brain‼️‼️ She dating a boy her age and has mutual connections with him, why would she crush on her boyfriend's mother instead?? Just because Nika is a big fan of Talia??? So you telling me young ppl can't idolize adults normally without being labeled as romantic nowadays huh??( Not saying you can't crush on adults, but why crush on your boyfriend's mom? ) Your weird ass mind is showing with this ass hc be fr. Again, why would you imagine that? You just wanted to push a fake narrative of Nika being wired so you could have an excuse to make Talia and Damian dislike her (which is not true), but in fact is YOU are the weird one projecting your twist thoughts/hate onto Nika‼️💥🪨🪨

I will start to block ppl who are shipping/liking respawn x flatline (+proshipper) and STILL interact with me, read the room!! My art is not for you weirdos‼️Go away BOOOO💥 🪨🪨🪨💥💥

Can't believe I need to type this all out cuz some of you weirdos will still do these things and think is okay to interact with me and my post/showing in my notifications BOOO👎🪨🪨💥🪳🪳🪳🩴🩴🩴

(sorry for venting about random weirdos/Nika haters again, and thanks for reading.)

[angelicamerlinbarnes]

TUA DISNEY AUs: Big Hero 6 (Pt. XVIII)

(please understand that by AU, I mean they share an incredibly small amount of things in common with the original source material which I barely remember BUT the “story” takes place in the setting of the film) (not to be misleading or anything :p)

(BEWARE: abuse, murder, corruption, mental health issues, unhealthy coping mechanisms, suicidal ideation, death, grief, violence, basically i took the sad montage after Tadashi dies and just kept going with that except without the whole "getting better" thing, sorry, my bad, enjoy anyway i guess i don't know, bye, etc.)

(If you can handle watching Umbrella Academy, this will be fine for you.)

(Hiro) Vanya hasn’t much of a head for science - not since a gas explosion in her childhood apartment killed her parents and exposed her to radiation, leaving her brittle-boned and sickly. She spends most of her days holed up in her room, reading and writing about every little thing she sees and hears and feels. There’s this cat in the alleyway she feeds sometimes, and her friend Ben who comes by to see how she is every few days. The only time she goes out is for school, or bot fights down in the bad neighborhoods. At those she gets to see Ben, and his partner Klaus and his friend Diego. Oh, and Sissy - the beautiful, shy punk girl who spins the records in the corner store. Vanya lives what she considers a pretty average life - until Ben dies, she screams, and all the windows around her shatter from nothing.

(Tadashi) Ben has been a science nerd for years, spending hours in the libraries and labs researching every little thing that catches his fancy. His partner, Klaus, has no such interest, having more of a head for poetry, but Ben loves him more than life itself - especially since Klaus was the only person who stuck with him when one of his experiments went wrong a few years ago, resulting in tentacles that are prone to ripping out of his chest when he’s angry. And since he loves Klaus so much, he spares not a second thought to running back into a burning building to get him back, even when it means certain death. And Ben knows you can’t bring back the dead - he tried when Klaus’ beloved boyfriend Dave died in a gunfight a few years back. Once you’re gone, you’re gone - or so he thinks until he wakes up and Klaus starts crying and muttering, You’re here, you’re here, you’re here, I did it, I did it, I did it - and Ben reaches out and thinks, Oh, no, sweetheart. You didn’t.

(Honey Lemon) Allison was engaged to Ray before he disappeared, but even after that failed experiment lost her the love of her life, she continued to work for the forward movement of science and kept her vow of love to Ray. Using her research, she managed to create a pill that allowed her to bend reality, hoping to bring back Ray. Though she couldn’t raise the dead - no amount of I heard a rumor Ray was alive again worked - she won herself other advantages with her newfound powers, including sponsors, knowledge, opportunities, and protection. Klaus, Diego, Five, and Ben are her only true friends in this world - and she nearly loses all of them when Ben dies, drowning in their grief. When Luther, one of Five and Ben’s passion projects starts hanging around to monitor their mental health, Allison finds a new kind of love - deep, ever-lasting friendship that she’ll never give up. Even when they have to leave him behind on the moon after they save Ray, she doesn’t let him go - she finally knows how to speak up for what she wants, and speak up she does: I heard a rumor that Luther came back to me.

(Fred (actually a mash-up of Honey Lemon and Hiro though to be honest)) Klaus is a starving artist and poet, and he's covered in tattoos of his own words and drawings. Diego is too, because Diego loves him, and Klaus wants to love him back and probably does already, if he’s really honest with himself, but he’s not ready yet. Dave happened too soon ago. And then there was a fire, and Klaus was running around outside, looking for Ben, looking for the platonic love and light of his life, and he saw him run inside screaming Klaus’ name and never come back out. And he lives with that guilt every day, smoking and drinking all the bad shit again in an effort to just forget, forget, anything goddamn anything to forget, and he goes crazy. People forget, because he’s not a student at their nerd school and because he acts like a dumbass, that Klaus is actually just as much a genius as the rest of them, and whatever he wants, he can get without much trouble. So what if he can’t bring back the dead? He won’t live without Ben, he won’t, and he won’t leave Diego - which leaves only one option, really: find a way to make himself see ghosts.

(Wasabi) Diego lives a charmed life. Truly. He’s almost been assassinated fifteen fucking billion times, his two best friends are robots, and he’s in love with a person too sad to love him back. See, Diego’s skills brought him to the military’s special attention - he found a way to make weaponry that doesn’t obey the laws of physics. He keeps it as secret as he can, and will sell it to nobody, but millions of people are still after it. It’s not until one of the assassins almost nails Klaus with a bullet and Diego kills her with a store-bought kitchen knife without moving that he realizes the weaponry he created isn’t special, but Diego is. From then on it’s nothing but trouble - because Klaus likes to dumb himself down, but he can’t fool Diego, and so when he starts screaming at empty air and calling it Ben, Diego isn’t surprised in the least, though maybe he should be. Instead he just sighs, opens his arms, and lets a sobbing Klaus fall into him, loving him more than he did yesterday and less than he will tomorrow. Diego has his home, and he has his people, and he has his powers - and he will defend them to the fucking death.

(Gogo) Five is bitter and grumpy, living off coffee and perpetually crazy. He’s brilliant enough to have done surgery on himself, implanting an AI pacemaker in his heart named Dolores from an accident that nearly stripped him of everything, his life included. He was born with special powers, both of which fuelled his fascination with science, but he keeps that secret close to his chest - he’s seen what people do to Diego and Allison, and he has no interest in that. He’s close with the others, somewhat, though his impassable genius makes it difficult for people to understand him - Diego gives him piggy back rides and he often falls asleep curled into Klaus’ side, and Allison gives him rides home and Ben builds robots with him. But as hard as he finds it to connect with them, it’s even harder to lose them - so when he realizes he can use his time travel powers to save Ben, he doesn’t hesitate. And then he’s dying in Klaus’ arms, and he’s watching as his favorite person in the world chooses to lose the love of his life all over again to save Five, and something deep inside him changes.

(Baymax) Luther is a medical robot, built by Five and Ben in their spare time. There are some videos in him, mostly of Ben talking to Klaus because Luther was meant to be a gift for Klaus to help him with his depression, anxiety, PTSD, anorexia, and addiction, etc.. Five adds grief counseling to his programming and gives him to Klaus on his first birthday after Ben’s death, making Klaus dissolve into tears. While Luther clashes with Diego, who hates him for surviving where Lila didn’t, they get along well enough to appease Klaus, because Luther knows Klaus loves Diego and Diego knows Luther helps Klaus. When they travel to the moon to get Ray, Luther winds up stuck there, unable to get the others home if he doesn’t stay behind. Klaus and Allison both have trouble letting him go, but Klaus forces Allison to come home with him, crying as he leaves Ben for the third and final time. When Allison brings Luther back, his videos still intact, Klaus touches Ben’s face on his chest and cries, cries, cries.

Lila is a malfunctioning masterpiece, and Diego’s best friend. He made her as a help robot, but she’s a prototype, and was rejected for her proneness to violent outbursts and catatonic episodes. She’s easy to manipulate, as Diego never bothered to fix her security protocols, but it’s not like there’s anyone else who talks to her - except Five, and he’d never touch her programming without Diego’s explicit permission. She sleeps at Diego’s house, in her charging station next to Eudora’s. Lila knows robots can’t feel love, so that isn’t what she’s feeling - but her wires are tied to Eudora’s in some way, she just knows it. They’re two halves of the same code. But she never gets to explore that link - she burns away to nothing in the fire that destroys the Handler’s minions, using the last of her strength to save Five from the flames. She hopes, when Diego finds his baby brother curled in her charred corpse, that he’ll bury her in the rain, and keep on living without her well enough.

Eudora is a suicide-prevention robot. Seriously. That’s all she’s here for. Ben and Diego built her together for Klaus specifically, programming her with some of his favorite jokes and references so she’d have an easier time talking him down from the edge when one of them can’t be there. She’s programmed to instantly call Ben, Diego, Five, or Allison immediately if she finds him doing dangerous things, like playing with Diego’s knives naked. (It happened one time. Seriously. True story.) She’s calm and gentle, unruffled and kind, and Diego often spends hours talking to her, because she may be programmed for Klaus but she can still help anyone who needs it. He nearly looses her to Cha-Cha, but Klaus saves her just in time, beating Cha-Cha to a steaming hunk of scrap metal with a baseball bat for trying to hurt his best (robot) friend. She’s not saddened by Lila’s death, per say, she can’t be… but when she’s downloading databases on panic and anxiety attacks for Diego and Klaus, she makes sure to save some on insomnia for herself, too.

Sissy is a botfighter, one who dresses in a black and magenta punk aesthetic to fend off strangers, too shy for the world. She messes around with Vanya, the two of them often dancing in the rain and finding joy in the small moments, but happily ever after was never in the cards for them. Sissy lives with her abusive boyfriend Carl and has their son to take care of, an accident from too many beers - when Carl murders her in a drunken rage, it’s less of a surprise and more of a solemn inevitably. Her son, Harlan, is placed in Vanya’s care, and Vanya travels the world with him, telling him everything about his mother she knows. It’s a bittersweet ending, but a hopeful one too.

Ray was a student at the nerd school before he became a therapist, using his incredible mind-healing technology to help people all over the world. Allison fell in love with him quickly, easily, and the two were engaged before the year was up, planning for a spring wedding in which Klaus would, obviously, be the flower girl. But when he was offered the chance to go to space as a therapist for the other nine people on the mission, he jumped at the chance, bidding Allison goodbye and heading to the moon. But something went wrong and he was lost to the world, along with the other nine astronauts, all of whom died when the ship crash-landed. Ray has been in a coma for years there, having been knocked out in the explosion, and remains that way until Luther brings him home, Allison having come for him at last. (When he’s well enough to, he takes care of Five, Klaus, and Diego, whose mental states have been steadily declining for years. Their robots are brilliant, of course, but there are some things you just need a human for.)

Reginald is the dean of the nerd school and also an asshole. He has a habit of killing students when they get in his way, or to steal their inventions as his own - and he gets away with it too, because he’s at the forefront of memory technology and quite literally erases these people from existence so nobody comes asking questions. Plus he’s got connections in the government that destory any records he needs destroyed. He had a couple of kids he wanted to get rid of the night of the showcase, and started the fire to make it seem like an accident - well, Ben actually was an accident, he wasn’t on Reginald’s hitlist, not yet, but whatever. It is what it is. What Reginald doesn’t anticipate is Klaus - because nobody ever anticipates Klaus - and so he thinks nothing of it when he confesses to Ben’s murder in his monologue in front of all his former students. He can just erase their memories later. Or so he thinks, until Klaus lets out a savage war cry and lunges forward to strangle him, killing him in cold blood without a second thought, and so is the end of Reginald Hargreeves. (Five takes the fall for his murder - not that it matters. Diego and Klaus break him out and the three of them disappear, never to be seen again - at least, not until Allison’s done manipulating every single person in the world into forgetting it ever happened on live TV.)

The Handler is Reginald’s finest invention: a flawless AI in a perfect human body. Problem is, she became bored of being his servant years ago and took over his life, blackmailing him into doing whatever she wants. Most of the killings are still his idea, and Ben certainly wasn’t her fault, but it’s the Handler who wants Five dead, and it’s the Handler who sends her reject minions after him. She wants Eudora dead and she wants Klaus deader, but she gets neither - Five finds her and hacks her into little tiny pieces, putting all of them in a fire and then shoving those ashes into an Iron Maiden, dropping the Handler to an inescapable grave. Fuck her “life”.

Hazel is a teddy bear with a security camera in his stomach. He sits on Agnes’ counter in her donut shop, just watching the goings-on even though nobody ever steals anything there. Mostly he’s held in the lap of Five, who comes into Agnes’ whenever he doesn’t want his friends to see him cry - over a failed invention, Klaus’ most recent suicide attempt, Lila’s death - whatever, you name it. Agnes takes care of him, making him milkshakes when he asks for coffee, and eventually sends Hazel home with him, asking him to take care of Five for her. He doesn’t know it’ll be the last time he ever sees her - two weeks later Agnes is killed by Reginald and her donut shop is ransacked by looters. Her memory lives on in Hazel and Five, who rebuilds and reopens the shop with Klaus and Diego and Allison after a couple years, renaming it for Ben and living on despite his grief, and Hazel sits on the counter again, watching the sunset through the glowing windows.

Cha-Cha was supposed to be one of those “oh-hey-we’re-not-racist-anymore-we-make-black-dolls-too-see?” Barbies. She ended up with a rather experimental kid who enjoyed robotics and horror films, resulting in Cha-Cha: an AI in a Barbie with chainsaw arms. She kidnaps Klaus under the Handler’s orders, as he’s a connection to Five (who the Handler wants to kill) and Ben (who’s the only connection to Reginald and the Handler’s murders). This backfires spectacularly, of course, when Eudora and Diego come for him: Cha-Cha goes for Eudora’s throat and Klaus breaks himself free of his binds and beats her to smithereens with a baseball bat.

Leonard used to hang around Vanya, just generally assaulting her and being a creep, until suddenly he disappeared one rainy Monday never to be seen again. His body was found rotting in a lake a couple years later. It was revealed later on that he had decided to and succeeded in making real-life replicas of the Five Nights at Freddie’s characters, and they hadn’t been too fond of him trying to boss them around. The Handler recruited the replicas later on for her own schemes, and they followed Reginald rather well, their appetite for people satisfied well enough. But Leonard remains the school legend, and a striking reminder to be careful what monsters you let live.

Grace is the queen of the Land of the Remembered, and you may be wondering what she’s doing in this story. Well, to put it simply - Reginald’s little games have been messing with her shit. There are perfectly kind and memorable people who have come down to her only to be erased in the Land of the Living within the week, leaving her no choice but to take them in as refugees, working out a deal with the Land of the Forgotten since they weren’t given a fair shot at their deserved afterlife. She takes care of Ben when he dies for the second and final time, appearing to assure Klaus he’ll be alright when he crosses over. This is when Diego finally learns the truth about his mom, who has always been home in time to make dinner and never missed a single milestone, and who is apparently also an all-powerful goddess. She gives him a hug and tells him his boyfriend is cute (He’s not my boyfriend.) (You’re holding hands, darling. You may be an oblivious idiot, but I’m not.) and then she heads off, though she’s always back with Ben for the holidays. (Not Lila, unfortunately. She has no jurisdiction over robots.)

And Hiro is ace-aro and he and Miguel are QPPs, and Honey Lemon and Wasabi are QPPs, and Fred and Wasabi are dating, and Gogo is an bisexual aro queen with a girl she likes to kiss in the back alleyways, and Hiro has two sisters named Violet and Boo and Tip is his ace-aro lab partner. You’re welcome.

[adultswim2021]

Sealab 2021 #38: “Let 'Em Eat Corn” | July 18, 2004 - 11:45 PM | S04E05

I can’t explain why, exactly, but I like this episode. It’s as brainless and dashed-off as anything else this season, but there’s a silliness behind it, and same as Craptastic Voyage, it moves pretty well. In this one, Shanks decides to declare Sealab an independent nation, which has a cascading effect where the other crew members to also declare their individual pods as independent nations. War is declared, they all get warheads, British guys eat corn in the nude... I don’t know, man. Somehow this one just sorta works for me. I don’t laugh out loud at it, but this one is more fun than the others.

I think the fact that it evokes other things I like: The Newfreeland sketch on Mr. Show, the “Bomb” episode of The Young Ones. There’s okay jokes that aren’t terrible. The worst joke in the episode is Debbie wearing a helmet that says BORN TO GET CRABS, which is a really cheap joke. I mean, they’ve made jokes about the fact that the writers fall back on making the attractive blonde woman be a whore for no good reason. Like... honestly? The writers give her some slutty lines and the animators draw her in slutty situations, but I don’t really think the voice performs Debbie as being particularly whoreish. I don’t know how to explain it, but she’s only a whore in the most shallow ways possible.

I don’t want to sound like a huge fa-- I mean, SJdub-- I mean... what’s the least abrasive way to say this? I don’t want people to mistake me as a non-piece-of-shit, because I promise you, I am exactly that, but Debbie’s performance always suggested that she was just a young woman, maybe a little shallow and insensitive, very naturally attracted to the only man in Sealab who isn’t a complete psycho, and the only reason for jokes about her being a whore I can think of is low-hanging misogyny. I really don’t think the writers of Sealab 2021 can actually pull off satire or even just irony (two things that I would gladly defend even though by today’s standards they are LITERALLY VIOLENCE). I’m not being critical of dicey humor. I am often a defender of dicey humor. I’m often a purveyor of dicey humor. But having that character in a helmet that says “BORN TO GET CRABS” isn’t even like, funny on a phonic level. It’s just bad writing. And I’m saying this about an episode I sorta like!

Besides, we were ALL born to get crabs.

EPHEMERA CORNER

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - Volume Two (DVD - July 20, 2004)

On the same day Sealab 2021′s first volume came out on DVD, so did Aqua Teen Hunger Force volume two. A brief overview might be difficult for this one, but I’ll try to touch on what’s important: First the design of this volume is so much better than the first DVD set; The menus are beautiful, and there’s copious easter eggs of the various puppet channels as seen in “Universal Remonster”. The only quibble I have is that the episode order is slightly nonsensical. Not strictly in air date or production order, the order seems to compensate for the DVD menu’s art design. My own theory is that “Universal Remonster” is on disc one just because the Easter eggs are tied into that particular episode, and that the selection of episodes on disc two tie into which episodes have audio commentary. There’s nothing truly egregious about watching in this order, but it still doesn’t seem definitive by any stretch of the imagination.

That aside, this is maybe one of my favorite DVD sets I own. There’s a sense of fun when you explore the contents of this disc. Easter eggs aside, there’s also a fun “hunger imagery” intro sequence, which is mostly culled from a sequence shot for Space Ghost Coast to Coast’s Baffler Meal episode (which is also included on this set as an extra, along with the deleted Baffler Meal intro and a commentary. Other stuff on the disc includes what I initially referred to as an “alternate audio” version of “Cybernetic Christmas Ghost From the Future”, but it turns out what they did was make his vocal effects apparent in the 5.1 mix of the episode, so I guess listening in plain stereo kinda squashes the effect. I have personally never owned a fancy surround system myself, so I just don’t know.

Other features include Future Wolf II: Never Cry Wolf: Origin of the Series a fun tongue-in-cheek making-of documentary that also includes a space werewolf, Future Wolf III which is just a montage of stills and production art, and deleted scenes from various episodes. It’s all worthwhile stuff. Fuck HBOMax, get the DVDs.

[swiftlymoniquesblog]

How You Two Meet- Harry Potter Preference

A/N: Hello! Well, here is the first of the Harry Potter Preference series! This is my first time writing for Harry Potter, as I’m still kind of new to the whole fandom. Please be gentle with any feedback because I’m really nervous about this. I love the boys in the HP universe; these seven being my top favorites. I hope I have done these boys justice because I tired to be as accurate as possible, like I always try to do with any of my works. Some of the information has been made up but for the most part, everything should be accurate. If there’s something incorrect, please let me know! 

Y/H/H = Your Hogwarts House

Y/L/N = Your last name

Word Count: 2,469

Warnings: Bullying, self-doubt, shyness, FLUFF!

Requests to be tagged in this series is OPEN! Feedback is ALWAYS welcome and greatly appreciated! 

Check out my masterlist of masterlists to see all the fandoms I write for! All fandom requests are currently OPEN! 

-M

Harry: You and Harry met one day in your First Year, when you accidentally bumped into him in a hallway, as you were exploring the grounds of the school, without your house or permission.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” you say, looking up to the young boy in front of you, big round eyes focusing in on yours.

“Oh, it’s quite alright,” he says, adjusting his glasses as they have been thrown out of place in the incident.

“Miss (y/l/n), Mr. Potter, what are you two doing outside of your houses? It is after hours and you two are not accompanied by an elder of your houses,” Professor McGonagall said, eyeballing the two First Years suspiciously.

“I’m sorry Professor McGonagall, but I got lost. I heard a disturbing noise coming from one of the paintings and I wanted to make sure everything was okay,” you quickly think up a lie.

“I see, and what about you, Mr. Potter?” Her attention now focusing on the legacy student.

“I heard the noise too and when I came out to look, I noticed Miss (y/l/n) was in the dark so I had my wand to illuminate the wall,” Harry lied too, taking your side.

“I see, well off to bed, the both of you!” McGonagall said, demanding you two headed back to your house before she left swiftly.

“(Y/F/N) (Y/L/N), (Y/H/H).” You say, introducing yourself and house to Harry.

“Harry Potter, Gryffindor, but I guess you knew that already,” he chuckled nervously at his celebrity.

“Well, goodnight, Harry Potter of Gryffindor,” You nod to him.

“Goodnight (Y/F/N) (Y/L/N) of (Y/H/H),” He says, nodding back to you, smiling at you.

Draco:

Draco Malfoy was not your favorite person in the beginning. In fact, you found him quite annoying. He didn’t seem like he was owning up to his potential and was more concerned with being the best and everyone in the class was less than he was, instead of actually focusing on being a good wizard, which infuriated you. It wasn’t like attending Hogwarts was affordable for everyone; you were in on a scholarship. And Draco made sure to let everyone else know, that his father was the esteemed Lucius Malfoy, one of the wealthiest men in England. It was in Snape’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class, where you finally had had enough of Malfoy’s attitude.

“What a failure,” you heard him mutter to his Slytherin friends at one of the students in the class who couldn’t grasp a lesson Snape was teaching.

“You know what Malfoy, no one cares about your Father or all the money you have. The only one who actually cares about any of that is you. You don’t have anything worthy of being at school except for the silver spoon in your mouth that you were born with, so why don’t you go back home to your Father and complain to him about every little inconvenience that you encounter? Maybe he could sympathize with you cause no one here certainly does,” You say, quickly turning back around in your seat to face the front of the class again before Snape had told you to pipe down.

“Wait until my father hears about this,” he mutters that famous arrogant speech, but right behind you, to show you he had more leverage. You froze in your seat, afraid to look back at him until Snape forced him back to his seat.

“That will be all, Mr. Malfoy,” Snape says, shooting daggers at the member of his own House.

Draco rolled his eyes but went back to his seat. You were scared to ever look or approach Malfoy again, but he had other ideas. Yes, you were quite the puzzle piece to Draco and he was going to solve you. No one dared to stand up to him, so why did you?

 Ron:

What can be said about the gingered-hair boy from Gryffindor? Well, he was your best friend and he held your heart. It started when you were paired with him in your First Year Potions class. Not really sure how to put a potion together, you and Ron being paired up, may not have been Professor Snape's best idea. However, you two rose to the challenge and worked well together. It would’ve been worse if Ron didn’t insist on making you laugh but that is what made you succeed. He watched carefully, as you added different ingredients, eager to step in if something went wrong. To both your surprise, you didn’t mess anything up and the potion was mixed perfectly.

“Hmm, yes, it appears that Weasley and y/l/n have completed the potion. Not bad, for the First Years,” Snape said to the class, showing some form of recognition, but you two weren’t sure how to handle his response.

“Wow, you guys, First Years never can get their potions done right the first time,” Hermione said, impressed with your good work.

“Well I can’t take all the credit, Ron really helped out. He made me laugh and that relaxed me so I could focus and then,” you explain, looking to your partner, who just smiled at you.

“She has all the talent here; I just helped,” Ron admits, shrugging his shoulders.

“But I couldn’t have done it without you; thank you, Ron,” you say, picking up your books and leaving the class. You felt his eyes on you as you left the room and you were glad, he couldn’t see the blush that had sprouted on your cheeks.

 Cedric:

“Come on y/n, you have to come watch the Triwizard Tournament with us,” Hermione said to you, as you wanted to just stay in your room and away from the sea of spectators at the first task of the Tournament.

“No, I’m good right here. I’m just going to read up on spells; I need to get better for the next Charms class,” you say, fighting to stay put.

“Really? You’re the best in our class, well besides Hermione of course. You don’t need to practice anything,” said Ginny, who wanted you to go just as much as Hermione seemed to.

“Yeah come on, y/n, Cedric Diggory is going to be there,” Cho teased, as Ginny and Hermione joined in on the giggles of affection for an attractive boy. Sure, you thought Cedric to be cute, but he was one of the most sought-after boys in the Tournament, along with Harry and Viktor Krum. No way would someone like Cedric even know you were alive.

When you had joined the group of students and faculty of Hogwarts as the first task of the tournament began. The champions of each school, went one at a time, to capture an egg from a dragon. This didn’t sound too difficult at first but as you sat on the edge of your seat, watching each champion struggle to get their egg, it proved to be near impossible. However, each champion had eventually achieved their goals and made it to the next round of the tournament.

“Oh alright, if it will get you lot to shut up!” You say, and jump up to get ready; your friends doing the same.

“Hey, let’s go congratulate the winners!” Hermione said, dashing down the stands and to an area where spectators could visit with the champions, as long as they knew one of the champions of course.

“Hi, Harry!” She bounces up to her brunette friend, hugging him immediately. “You did so great, we were all so worried!” Harry chuckled, hugging each of you before he talked about how the first task was for him.

“Hey Potter, good work out there,” a voice from behind you said, suddenly drawing on them.

“Hey, thank you, Cedric. You too,” Harry said, shaking the hand of his opponent, as all the girls had their eyes on the Hufflepuff, even you.

“What? Oh, uh, yeah, good, good job Cedric,” You say softly, avoiding his gaze that was set on you.

“Yeah Cedric, you were amazing, that’s what (y/n) here was saying the whole time you were in the arena,” Cho said, bringing you out of your daze and to the group of students.

“Thank you too, (y/n),” he said, offering you a small smile and eventually starting a friendship with you.

 Neville:

Not being the most popular or liked boy in Hogwarts, is what you drew you to Neville Longbottom. You both enjoyed a lot of the same things and you were always there to help him when he struggled with his spells. The other students would laugh at him when a spell backfired and somehow managed to blow up in his face, quite literally, so you took it upon yourself to help out and stand up for him.

With his first attempt at flying, he had managed to completely lose control and ended up crashing, injuring himself quite seriously.

“Hey, not everyone can get these spells down so easily! It’s not like any of us are on the same levels are Professor Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall or whomever else you want to be like; we’re all beginners. Stop picking on him for not getting something perfect his first try!” You yell at every student in your flying class.

“Neville!” You scream as you see him hurt and you rush over to him before Rolanda Hooch tells you to move aside so she could take him to be cared for.

“Why do you defend him? He’s nothing but a waste of a wizard,” Malfoy says, poking fun at the now injured student.

“Because unlike you Draco, he’s a good person, and sometimes people, even magical ones, need help,” you say back to the Slytherin, who just rolled his eyes.

“Oh of course you’re going to stick up for her, Potter!” Draco snarls back, attempting to falter the confidence of the popular Gryffindor but didn’t fumble.

“Just leave her alone, Malfoy,” Harry said coming to your defense.

“Yeah, I am. I’ll stand up for her, for Neville, for anyone who has to put up with the likes of you,” Harry said and you appreciated his support.

“Thanks, Harry,” you smile at him before rushing off to the hospital wing of the school.

“Now I believe there is someone who could really use a friend right about now,” Harry said, turning to you, with his hand on your shoulder.

 Fred:

Being a few years ahead of you, made it near impossible to get the attention of one of the Weasley twins. You decided you wanted to get as close to the Weasley family as possible, to see if you could at least become friends with Fred. You knew the Weasleys were a family of strong and passionate people, and when they accepted you, you had friends for life. The legacy of the family was starting to form, as you took notice of all the twins did together. They fought alongside one another in every battle and you knew you wanted to be apart of that somehow. Lucky for you, you had grown to befriend Ginny, and when she would invite you over to her house, you got to see first-hand, how Fred was outside of school. It turned out he wasn’t much different from in school, but he had his mischievous side and he had, on occasion, a more quiet side, that you took notice in. Without thinking or trying too hard, you had become friends with all the Weasley kids, with as often as you were at their home. Fred had made a joke about how you should dye your hair red and you’d fit right in.

“No, I’m not going to dye my hair red just to look like you lot! I like being the only one in this house without any red hair. Plus, I’m not even a Weasley so it doesn’t matter,” You say as you shrug your shoulders.

“Don’t say such a thing, (y/n) you are a huge part of our family, especially since someone here is quite taken with you,” Molly said, shooting a wink your way. Your eyes widened as you thought of who of the Weasleys could like you.

“It’s Fred by the way. He’s just fascinated with you,” George says, coming over to you while you were in the kitchen helping Ginny with the dishes.

“Yep, call it a twin thing, but I know when my brother likes someone and I know he’s interested in you. He’s just testing the waters right now, but don’t be surprised if he ends up asking you out,” and with that, George was gone.

“What?” You say, surprised to hear that anyone liked you.

 George:

Much like his twin brother, George was resilient at cracking jokes, making everyone laugh and befriending nearly anyone he came in contact with.  Both Weasley twins fought long and difficult battles but their bond was unbreakable, and it was admirable, to say the least. You had shared a class with him every year, and you always sat close behind him and Fred. Surely, the twins were very similar to the other yet very different. It was originally his idea to one day open a toy store but that was a far-off cry from his day-to-day classes as a fifth year. It was then, that he began to show an interest in befriending you.

“Hey, you’re (y/n) right?” He had come over to sit beside you during your lunch hour at school.

“Um, yes,” you said, not sure as to why he was talking to you. He was never rude to you before, but he and his brother always seemed occupied with other friends at school or with his family.

“Well, I just wanted to see if you were okay. I noticed you hadn’t been sitting around me and Fred anymore so I hope you’re okay,” he commented, looking right into your eyes.

“Well yeah, you’ve sat behind us every year now. You think I didn’t notice a pretty face like yours?” He compliments, causing heat to rise on your cheeks.

“You noticed that?” You ask, surprised that he paid any attention to you.

"I guess not," you said, brushing hair behind your ear. “But yes, I am okay, I just…nothing is wrong, thanks,” you avoid the real reason you couldn’t sit near him anymore, but he pushed an idea on you.

You thought about it for a minute, but eventually, took his hand and followed him to where his brothers and sister sat. You had made it a routine to sit with the Weasley children every day, immediately enjoying their company and surprisingly, they accepted you too.

“Well, how about you come and sit with me and my brothers and sister for lunch? You don’t need to be sitting alone,” he said, standing from his seat and offered you a hand up.

Forever tags:  @tloveswriting @fandom-princess-forevermore @hobby27 @juju-la-tortue @thwiso @marvelfansworld

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New tags:  @thinkinghardhardlythinking @spnjediavenger @deansmyapplepie​ @angeredcrow​ @to-my-beloved-fandoms-2​

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[skorpiamynx]

How exactly do people manage to rationalize and explain away and DEFEND Vanya in TUA literally causing 2 apocalypses and everything else she's done when her emotions get out if control but if you attempt to defend Billy Hargrove you are virtually a pariah in the fandom and treated like a piece of shit?

Idk how many people have watched noth shows, I'm gonna guess a lot because they're both extremely popular. You cannot defend Vanya, a grown woman, who before Allison took her memories when they were kids was out of control from the start, not with her powers but with her emotions - she mercilessly and remorselessly murdered how many nannies, Pogo, and that driver (and that's all I can remember right now but I think theres more in season 2) - but saying she was neglected and abused. Yes, she was and I will never attempt to justify what Reginald did to any of the kids. As far as once he realized there was no effective way to control her once she understood how to use her powers, he did what was probably the only good option - most psychopaths and he definitely boarders on one at the very least would have simply killed her.

And you cannot write Billy, a 17 year old boy, off. He was also much more clearly abused and completely alone until Max showed up. Most fans assume Max never knew what Neil did to Billy as a way of defending her. Fine, we'll go with that. Max didn't know. But Susan clearly did. And his real mom knew what Neil was capable of. Susan literally turned away. I refuse to believe Neil abused her too because unlike Billy's mom, she was completely docile and compliant with what we see Neil do so I don't think he would have abused her. And there's no doubt in my mind that at least while Billy was alive he never touched Max because that would be where Susan draws the line. She would have left and taken MAX with her. But she would have left Billy behind. His mother abandoned him. Plain and simple she abandoned him. There is NOTHING that can justify that and if you try to then you should also be defending Billy, too. If you think his mom was at least acceptable in her abandonment and Susan being abused too would make it okay for her to not say anything and look away, then fucking defend Billy too.

Whatever you choose to believe about Billy and his actions and views (I've mentioned this before but I chose to deviate a little from the "canon" info) he had only Neil. Max hated him from the start and Susan never cared. The only person who paid enough attention to him to leave an impression is Neil. Whether he does or doesn't have the same views or mannerisms as Neil, his whole being is wrapped around conforming to what Neil does. If that's giving in and being like Neil or purposefully doing the exact opposite of what Neil would want or expect, everything ties back into the how he was abused for what was probably most of his life.

Different shows, different characters, different circumstances, but they boil down to one key characteristic: abuse victims. One is a mass murderer and probably would have grown up to be a true psychopath and one was an isolated 17 year old. Why is defending one okay and the other not?

Obviously Billy is my favorite from Stranger Things. As for Vanya, as the show is now, I tolerate her. She's got potential but falls short and when she's not destroying the world, she boarders on boring. I would love it if they explored her being a villain because she is obviously born and bred to be one and trying to make her be good and fit this mold is so forced and doesn't work for me. She has potential but shouldn't be good. Billy has potential to become better, to be good. Hes fucked up and hurt people but he is only 17 there should have been time for him to learn and try to make amends. Anyone who watches the show with anything but the clear cut view of what the Duffers said of him will see that he should have been good. Everyone jumps so quick to say he's racist because the Duffers said he is but Dacre, who did more the bring the character to life than they did honestly, says he isn't. The both say hes straight but like 3 people go with that.

When they were kids, Vanya was bad. That's it. End of discussion. She was bad and then she was muted. When she has her memories, she is bad again because she is hurt but she is still bad at her core. You dont have to think this but she would be a far more interesting villain and the whole story would be better if they acknowledged that.

[scone-lover]

@findingniamho​

HAHAHAHA thank you so much for this ask!!! ❤️ This is exciting. Honestly the Egghead fight was one of the most entertaining scenes to write. (Coming up with all the puns was an egg-celent time.) Rereading it just now was like an out of body experience 😂 

Link to the original chapter here - passage & commentary below the cut!

So I have to start with how this scene was born. This is a Simon scene. He’s had a couple fight scenes with Vampire, but I wanted to show him off as the superhero of the city. What was he doing before Vampire appeared on the scene? What are his strengths and weaknesses? Despite the scene’s silliness, it’s also one of the first where we start to get a sense of what Mayor Mage is up to. 

So I knew I wanted him to do the typical defending-the-city thing, and showcase him and Penny as the dread companions power duo.

Besides the plot stuff, my main goal was to make this scene as ridiculously, stereotypically comic book-ish as possible. 😂Hence, Egghead the Villain.

Most of the credit for Egghead goes to my friend -- they’re really into DC and helped me with a lot of the plot stuff in this fic and making things semi-realistic. (Every time you read a clever plot point, it was probably them. 😂) For this non-Vampire fight, my friend suggested a gangster who was doing crimes and bribing the police. Hence this exchange--

“Okay, okay, um-- fuck. Did you call the police?” She huffs. “Yes, and I think they’ve been fucking bribed, because they pretended they didn’t even know who Egghead was! Can you believe that?”

I made him a repeat villain because honestly, I just thought it was more compelling that way. They know who he is already, Simon can grumble about him, they have egg-themed quips at the ready, etc. 😂 

As for the name, Egghead. I love how it came together because Simon is a baker, and I was able to work a couple baking jokes in there eventually. But in reality, it was me begging my superhero expert friend (named t below) to help me out with crafting this villain and coming up with some witty exchanges. A transcript of our conversation with the brainstorming and some of the rejects--

t: the gangster has a nickname right? he has to if he’s a supervillain t: make it a gimmick t: like if he has a red outfit call him mr. red or something t: he has a flamethrower and call him dragon (this made it in, later) me: Vampire already has a flamethrower t: they can be forced to fight him together me: Vampire is at home studying bc he’s a NERD t: ok he can be bald and simon can call him egghead me: THANKS I HATE IT t: simon throws him on the ground at the end of the fight - that was over-easy me: I hate you where do you get this shit t: I mean it’s typical superhero stuff t: he wears yellow and white and deals crack me: This fic is so food themed I love it t: that’s your villain. that’s it. t: listen, if the Flash can have an ice skating villain, YOU CAN HAVE EGGHEAD. And he was born.

(And yes, The Flash does have an ice skating villain. AND SHE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE ICE POWERS.)

Okay, let’s do this! Warning that this is definitely going to go through more than 500 words of the chapter. 😂 

Men dressed in black suits with bright yellow pocket squares. And larger men around the perimeter, wearing grey and holding flashlights. It looks more like a business transaction than anything; there are briefcases and money being passed back and forth, hands being shaken. “Hey!” I call. There are six men, and they all turn to stare at me, and then make a run for it. The flashlight beams dart wildly and I hear a few of them clatter to the floor. Everyone starts yelling at once and looking for an escape.

I basically watched an episode of Brooklyn-99 and crafted the warehouse drug deal based on that. 

“Don’t move. There’s only one exit,” Penny says in my ear. “And you’re standing in front of it.” I stand my ground, but no one comes near me. The suited guys stay slightly behind the muscular ones. Finally, one of them steps forward. “Mage’s Head Boy. Come to tell us off?”

This scene was also an opportunity to have Penny in Simon’s ear! I wanted them to work together more closely than just talking about superhero stuff - I wanted Penny to be invaluable to Simon’s superhero success and in on the action, too. She’s kind of modeled after Oracle from Batman throughout this fic. 

Mage’s Head Boy is a pretty transparent CO reference. 

There are times when I’m grateful for my ability to just have muscles and growl at people and make them disappear, and there are times when I wish I was witty like Vampire. This is definitely the second. I can’t think of a response to that. Luckily, I have a best friend with a head full of wit. “Tell them to fuck off,” Penny says. Then again, maybe not. What would Vampire say? I get hot and frustrated in the face of danger. He seems to get cooler the higher the stakes get. I fall into a fighting stance. “You wish.” The guy takes a step backwards. “But since I can’t bring you to the police, I suppose I’ll just have to teach you a lesson.” “That was good,” Penny says in my ear.

I obviously had to work a bit of Baz jealousy / crushing into this. I like the idea of Penny being super blunt. She’s smart and sometimes witty, but more often she just says it like it is. “Cooler the higher the stakes get” was a direct reference to the similar line in Carry On. With Simon’s last line - this scene was all about showcasing him as a “typical” superhero that you’d find in a comic, fighting a classic comic book villain. So I gave him one of those cheesy lines.

I’m surrounded. There must be fifteen or twenty of them. Eight huge muscular guys, and the rest in suits. They form a loose circle around me. Almost all of them wield knives, but I don’t see any guns so far.

I knew from the outset I wanted this to be a one-against-many fight. At this point in the story I’d set up a good dynamic for Blade vs Vampire, but not so much Blade vs. other city threats. What makes him a trustworthy hero? Simon’s origin story is that he got news attention by fighting off a group - so putting him in this group fight setting was a chance for him to shine.

A man steps out from the shadows. He’s bald, with a straight, dark mustache, and he’s wearing a pristine white suit and a shirt the colour of an egg yolk. “Egghead,” I say in what I hope is a threatening tone. The name sounds absurd. I’m glad the mask covers my mouth, because I don’t think I can keep a straight face. Penny coughs. Benedict Eggerton, better known as Egghead, is a drug lord who wears yellow and deals… crack. (I know.) (He got into crime early; his parents were poachers.) (Okay, I made that one up. I can’t help it.) I put him in jail earlier this year, but he escaped and fled north.

I was laughing so hard while writing this. You can see in the text exchange above where the suit and nickname came from. I was trying to come up with what his first name might be (my first idea was Sunny). I was so amused when I finally thought of Benedict. 😂 The poachers line is also from my friend T, and the “north” is a reference to Scotland, which comes back later as the Scotch Egg joke.

I draw my weapon, trying to look as menacing as possible. “I remember your blade being bigger,” he says, eyeing my kitchen knife. “Is it too cold for you in here?”

PFFFFFT I LOVE THIS JOKE okay so. I originally made Simon forget his sword because I thought the fight would be too easy - and going back to what I said above, he’s kind of returning to his “roots” with this fight - that spark he has that makes him a hero. And then I wrote the line “I remember your blade being bigger.” TO BE CLEAR, this was not originally intended as an innuendo. 

And then my friend said something like ‘he should turn up the heating in this warehouse then’, and I was like OH DING DING DING PENIS JOKE! 😂I’m oblivious sometimes. I’m glad I realized in time because this is honestly one of my favorite villain lines I’ve ever written.

I really, really wanted to give the “too cold” line to Vampire. It would be perfect for him. But Simon always has his normal sword with Vamp, so Egghead it was. And he instantly became an icon. 😂 

I twirl the knife between my fingers. “I can crack you anyway.” “Good effort,” Penny whispers. “But a bit rough on the delivery. 'Take a crack at you' might have been better...” “Sword or no sword,” I continue, “you’ll be an egg wash by the end of this.” “What?” Penny says. “Is that a baking reference?” Egghead cracks his knuckles, and his men rush me.

Much like Penny does later in the scene, I had a tab open of egg-related words up while writing this. I had to work in the baking reference. But a terrible one. There’s a French term for whisking eggs that basically translates to “beating eggs into snow” - and I wish it was a thing in English, because, you know, Simon Snow. Oh well. 😂 

I Google a list of ways to make eggs. Simon needs to win this fight, but more importantly, he needs to get some egg-themed one-liners in there to show them who’s boss. Chances like this don’t come around very often. 

Listen, Penny is very dedicated. I love the idea of heroes just being quick-witted and coming up with these ridiculous quips on demand. But ultimately, I thought it was funnier - and more in character for Penny - to do this. (Even though her Superhero name is Quickwit, oops.) She has the world of Google at her disposal. Egg puns may not seem important, but superhero image and reputation is half the battle.

Simon is being attacked from all angles, but he fights like a whirlwind. The bulky guys attack first, mostly with their fists. Simon kicks their legs out from under them. He throws them across the floor like they weigh nothing. “Behind you!” I say. Simon spins around and disarms the man behind him, twisting his arm, and I hear a shout through my earbuds. He grabs the guy’s knife and kicks him in the stomach, sending him sprawling. Simon Snow faces fifteen men with nothing but two knives, looking like he’s ready to explode.

I loved writing this from Penny’s POV. I am used to writing fight scenes from the POV of the person fighting, so this was definitely a cool challenge. It’s part of why I brought Penny into the scene in the first place - so I could show Simon in third person. Almost like we’re watching a movie and getting some overhead shots. From his POV, you don’t realize quite how awesome he is. So getting to showcase him like this was really fun.

I still have to wonder how Shepard knew… well, everything. 

Don’t tell anyone but I didn’t know yet either

“He’s Scottish,” I tell Simon. “Scotch Egg.”

I know. This one’s bad.

He’s a blur of gold and white in motion. He throws his knife—I have no idea where he learned to do that—and it embeds itself in one of the men’s legs. He rolls across the floor, picking up two more discarded knives.

I don’t do a ton of plotting/outlining with fight scenes, but one thing I decide in advance is where and how everyone gets hurt. I didn’t want Simon to win the fight too easily, but I did need to injure him somehow. So it wouldn’t be too easy, but also to serve as a counterpoint to the socks thing later.

I watched a lot of action sequences to write this fic, especially with the trickier one vs. many scenes. 

Simon tosses him like a sack of flour.

Couldn’t resist the baker!Simon reference.

“Hard or soft boiled,” I whisper. “Which way is it gonna be, Egghead? Hard or soft boiled?” Simon shouts. He whispers to me, “That was stupid.” Egghead raises an eyebrow. “Last chance to leave us alone, Blade.” I consult my list of egg dishes. “Give up before you get scrambled.” Simon twirls his blades. I love it when he does that; he looks like Deadpool. “It’s your last chance to surrender before you get scrambled.”

I loved the hard or soft boiled line at first. And then I wrote it down and said it out loud, just to check, and it sounded SO DUMB. 😂I almost took it out, but then figured—Simon is probably not going to think this through, either.

Maybe the Deadpool line was a bit on the nose here, but I wanted to give readers some really vivid imagery of what Simon looks like right now with these dual wicked blades kitchen knives.

“I prefer my eggs… poached,” he says. 

Even though Egghead has turned out to be quite a serious villain—there are guns, drugs, and a backstory—he is, after all, original master of the egg puns. He would never turn down this opportunity.

Egghead scrambles (ha) to his feet

I think Penny is just me in this.

“Over-easy,” I whisper.

“That was over-easy,” he says.

Not my best. But it had to be in there.

I’ll skip the serious bits, since the plot there is pretty self-explanatory, to this:

I wish he’d asked what we serve, because I have so many egg puns at the ready. Eggs-ecution. Hash-ing out justice. Karma served hard.  

My beta ashspren gave me this line, and I could not be more grateful. Imagine the chapter without this. It would be a shame.

Here are a few egg puns that didn’t make the cut, SADLY:

You're washed out, egghead

*Egghead gets angry* hey, it was just a yolk

I had to go "beat" some eggs

*uppercut* Sunny side UP!

I'll bash in your Eggnoggin’

Some people are just bad eggs

Sorry this is so long—this has been a purely self-indulgent experience. Thanks so much for this ask, I really enjoyed writing this and I hope you like it! ❤️ 

[qm-vox]

Let The World Never Falter - Playing Paladins in D&D

(Pictured: Anastasia Luxan, Knight of the Tainted Cup, one of only two people in her friend group that are not evil-aligned. Her wife Aisling is not the other good-aligned person. Characters are from my novel Mourners: Scum of Shatterdown; art credit goes to J.D)

Paladins are one of Dungeons and Dragons’ most striking, and most controversial, character classes. Few character classes and character concepts capture the imagination as quickly or start arguments of such ferocity. I’ve been in this game awhile - I remember when D&D 3e was released - and paladins have been one of my most loved and most hated parts of D&D and its legacy systems that entire time. So here I am again, about to write a long-ass article offerin’ my perspective on paladins through the ages (hopefully highlighting the strongest parts of each vision of them), talk about their pitfalls and problematic elements, and offer some advice on bringing your own paladin to life.

While this article draws on my long experience with D&D and will be citing specific sources, it would not be possible without the help of some other people in my life. I mention Afroakuma a lot in the context of D&D, and our friendship has once again been invaluable here. @a-world-unmasked , also one of my oldest friends, has long been a source of ethical discussion and debate, especially about thorny questions of justice & mercy, amends, redemption, and punishment, and provided information on D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes. SSG Jacob Karpel, United States Army, brought a Jewish perspective on paladins and their themes into my life and has borne questions of faith, dogma, and tradition with remarkable enthusiasm and patience. @swiftactionrecovery provided further perspective on D&D 4e, and her current paladin (”paladin”; it’s complicated), Aurora, is a great example of a non-traditional take that is at the same time very on-brand. Emerald has long provided the service of beating my ass when I start getting stupid about my own values and beliefs, and @ahr42p‘s fascination with fantasy ethics has informed a lot of my own thoughts on the same. None of this would be possible without you folks.

This article’s title is drawn from Maverick Hunter Quest, written by Cain Labs & Hunter Command. It appears as the motto of the 10th Urban Unit; dedicated soldiers whose specialty was preserving lives, preventing collateral damage, and steering disasters away from the innocent.

None of my articles are quite complete without Content Warnings; the following will contain mentions and descriptions of violence (including state-sanctioned violence such as executions), mentions of high crimes such as slavery and forced conversion, discussion of religion in both fictional and non-fictional contexts, and discussion of fascism and fascist ideology. It is also the end result of more than 20 years of both passionate love for paladins and equally passionate hatred of the same. If you’re wondering what some of that has to do with paladins...well, you’re in for a ride.

So, without further ado, let’s get into...

The Order Of The Kitchen Table - Paladins Through D&D’s History

I hope you like walls of text because I am about to fuck you up with some.

D&D and Pathfinder have a long history with paladins, and they’ve changed a lot through the ages. The following is an overview of the different editions of paladins, what each introduced, and their strengths & weaknesses as a vision of paladinhood. Though the advice in this article is weighted towards 3.PF and 5e, it should in theory be applicable to any of these editions; I should also note that while Pathfinder 2e has its own version of paladins, I am not familiar enough with its vision of paladins to be able to speak on it in good faith. Let’s start with the oldest first, shall we?

AD&D 1e & 2e: Rise A Knight - 1e and 2e were fucking wild. The original incarnation of the paladin showed up as a sub-class of the cavalier, a warrior-group class which had an aura of courage, rode a horse, and had other ‘knightly’ abilities. Paladins had to be a cut above and beyond cavaliers, but unless they also violated the code of the cavaliers in addition to the paladin code, they would become cavaliers when they Fell rather than fighters, which was a bit of a better spot to be in. These paladins were very specifically part of the military arm of a feudal state, with all that entails, and had restrictions on what they could wear and what weapons they could use that were rooted in their social status. In point of fact, in 1e? Paladins couldn’t use missile weapons at all; bows, crossbows, and their kin were for “peasants”. These paladins had to tithe 10% of all income to a ‘worthy’ institution (usually a Lawful Good church of some kind, but other examples include hospitals, charitable initiatives, orphanages, and monasteries), had sharp limits on how many magical items they could own & of what kind, and were beholden to a strict code of conduct rooted in medieval feudalism & romantic ideals of chivalry. While the very original paladin had many of the iconic powers associated with them today (laying on hands, curing disease, an affinity for holy swords), it was not until AD&D 1e proper that paladins developed the ability to cast spells for themselves.

AD&D 2e’s vision of paladins was similar in many ways; they had the same powers, similar ability score requirements, and were similarly rare and elite. They had wealth limits, had to tithe from their income, could only own certain numbers and kinds of magical items, and had to be of Lawful Good alignment. Where things get interestingly different here is who becomes a paladin, and why. In both editions, only humans could be paladins, but where 1e required paladins to be drawn from or else become nobility (because they were derived from cavalier, which was all about status), 2e opened up many origins for paladins. The majority of these can be found in The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, just under 130 pages of nothing but paladins. Reading that book is a fucking trip; it was published in 1994, and while I am not gonna pretend that it’s woke or unproblematic, it has some stunningly modern takes. Do you expect to open up an old D&D supplement about paladins and find it defending poly relationships as valid? NEITHER DID I.

It’s important to note that in both of these editions, paladins lacked magical avenues of attack entirely; Smite Evil was a later invention, and paladin spells, in addition to coming online late in their career (9th level), were sharply restricted to a specific list that included no offensive magic whatsoever. Therefore, any paladin origin had to explain from whence one’s martial skills came, since you are in many ways a warrior more than anything else. There’s some expected ones; religious patronage, which ignores social status but requires an organized church that’s permitted to raise men under arms. Government sponsorship, generally conducted in urban areas where you can actually retain recruiters. Inherited title, if you wanna run a paladin that really hates Mom for forcing them into this. Mentors, for running paladins that are just straight-up shonen protagonists, and my personal favorite, DIVINE INTERVENTION, where one day your god starts talking to you but instead of filling your soul with martial skill she makes you sew training weights into your clothes and miraculously makes a bear live in your house so you can learn courage. It’s fucking amazing.

From those origins, anyone who manages to swear their oath and become invested with the power is essentially part of the nobility from then on; paladinhood marks them as an exemplar of noble ideals, which even in a non-romanticized culture sorta grabs the bluebloods by the short hairs. It’s a bit hard to argue divine right if you try to throw the embodiment of your supposed ideals out of your house. Since these paladins were often, though not necessarily, members of militant organizations they were generally expected to have superiors to whom they answer, a chain of command of which they are part, and to eventually construct a stronghold of some kind and put its services at the disposal of that organization in addition to utilizing it to serve the needy and defend the weak. 2e was a lawless and strange time in D&D, in which building such a stronghold and hiring followers was a class feature of warrior-group classes, and one of the paladin’s key benefits was the opportunity, but not the promise, to acquire some manner of holy sword, which which she gained powerful protections against evil that let her stand toe-to-toe with powerful spellcasters.

Tying all of this together was an in-depth exploration of the most complex and probably the most nuanced code published for paladins in any edition. Though the default was a rigid and inflexible code which defined acceptable behavior, associations, and even employees for the paladin, The Complete Paladin’s Handbook introduced an alternate method of handling code violations that ranked infractions by their severity & intent, and assigned penalties accordingly. Was it perfect? No. Not even a little. The Code was, is, and probably forever will be the most trash part of paladin. But it was a damn sight better than basically any incarnation before it, and most of them after. This code was broken down into (in order of importance), Strictures, Edicts, and Virtues. Strictures are the things a paladin must do and have simply to be a paladin; they must be Lawful Good, they must tithe to a worthy institution, they must abide by their wealth limits, and they must not associate (here meaning ‘serve, be friends with, or knowingly hire’) with evil people. Edicts are the commands of those to whom the paladin is sworn to obey; often this will be a church, a government, or both, but a paladin might instead or also swear to obey edicts given by their family, their mentor, their secular philosophy, or even their wider culture. Military commands and orders are edicts, but so are daily practices such as keeping a kosher diet, maintaining a family burial ground, or obeying a system of formal etiquette. A paladin freely chooses the source of her edicts, but once she’s sworn to obey she cannot selectively turn down a given edict unless it would conflict with one of her Strictures (for instance, if her king orders her to beat a helpless prisoner) or with a ‘higher’ source of Edicts (in general, a paladins religion or philosophy takes precedence over her liege or mentor, who in turn takes precedence over family or culture).

Virtues are where we get real interesting. Lemme quote The Complete Paladin’s Handbook, page 32:

Virtues are traits exemplifying the highest standards of morality, decency, and duty. They comprise the paladin’s personal code. Although not specifically detailed in the PH definition of a paladin, a paladin’s virtues are implied by his strictures as well as his outlook, role, and personality. Just as a paladin must obey his strictures, he must also remain true to his virtues.

Though most paladins adhere to all of the virtues described below, exceptions are possible. For instance, a paladin from a primitive society may be so unfamiliar with civilized etiquette that including courtesy as part of his ethos would be unreasonable. All adjustments must be cleared by the DM at the outset of a paladin’s career.

No system was attached to virtue ‘violations’, because they weren’t oaths to keep as such. Rather, virtues represented commitments to a paladin’s ideals and worldviews; they were the behaviors and values which someone serious about being a paladin would live by because that’s the kind of person they are. They were very Christian and very European in nature, tied up in Catholic ideas of knighthood from which paladins as a class were originally drawn, but there’s definitely a point to be made here. If you don’t walk your talk, can you call yourself a paragon? We’re gonna get into this specific topic more later in the article, when I start discussing other the virtues extolled by other kinds of warriors, but the ones listed and expanded on in this book are as follows:

Fealty - A paladin swears loyalty and service to, at minimum, a faith or philosophy that is lawful good in nature. This forms the foundation of her convictions and informs the kind of good she tries to do in the world. A paladin remains conscious of the fact that she is seen as an embodiment of those ideals, takes joy in her service, and pays respect to those to whom she has sworn her troth. Notably, this is not classic feudal fealty; a paladin swears service to institutions, not people, with some exceptions (generally in the form of paladins who swear fealty to their mentors).

Courtesy - Paladins strive to show respect by following social customs, being polite and well-mannered, and treating even enemies with dignity. A paladin responds to insults with grace, considers the feelings of others, and does not stoop to insults or slander. Remember the Kingsmen gentleman rules? That. This is just that.

Honesty - A paladin speaks the truth as she knows it. She is free to withhold information (especially from enemies), and may state that she would prefer not to answer when asked questions - or that she is ordered, enjoined, or otherwise required not to answer, if that is the truth - but does not intentionally mislead or deceive others. If you ask your paladin friend a question and they say they would rather not answer, think real hard about how bad you want their opinion.

Valor - Paladins display courage in battle. Given a choice between many enemies, a paladin chooses the most dangerous. If someone has to take a risk to defend the innocent, cover a retreat, or ensure the success of the mission, the paladin volunteers for that risk. A paladin only retreats from battle to fulfill a higher part of her ethos.

Honor - A paladin conducts herself with integrity even when no one is watching or when it is of no benefit to herself. She shows mercy, refuses to inflict undue suffering even on such wretched beings as demons, does not cheat or cut corners, and does not compromise her principles. The description of the virtue of honor contains the rawest line in the entire book: “It is an admirable act to comfort a dying friend, but an act of honor to comfort a dying enemy.”

The above are the ‘universal’ virtues a paladin is meant to embody. The book briefly touches on the idea that a paladin might also choose to uphold other virtues and work them into her Code of Ennoblement, the ceremony by which she is invested with the power of a paladin...or isn’t. The sample ‘bonus’ virtues provided are humility, chastity, celibacy, and my absolute favorite, industry, in which you swear to have no chill at all, ever, until the day you finally die, and instead spend all of your waking moments in some effort of self-improvement or work such as reading, building houses for the needy, repairing tools & equipment, and otherwise being completely incompetent in the art of self-care. It’s great, I absolutely love it.

Together, this code and the paladin’s abilities present a vision of classical knighthood, something like, oh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35GUTY_Gr14

That. A defender and paragon of medieval virtues, who lives to help others.

“Alright Vox, surely you’re reaching the end of AD&D 2e now?” you ask. “We’ve been through the mechanics, we’ve been through the vision of paladins as members of feudal states who are figuratively and legally ennobled by righteousness, we’ve even gone into more detail about the code than was strictly necessary. 3e time right?” AFRAID NOT, MY WILD RIDE DOES NOT END. AD&D 2e didn’t have feats, didn’t really have spell selection in this context, and while it had a sort of skill system (the Proficiency system, greatly utilized and suggested by The Complete Paladin’s Handbook) that was hardly a way to make one paladin feel mechanically distinct from others. So how did players do that? Ability score rolls and loot drops?

Nope! We had Kits.

Kits modify a class or multiclass combo (not relevant to this article, but as a f’rinstance, the original Bladesinger was an elf-only Fighter/Mage kit found in The Complete Book of Elves); they give it additional features and additional restrictions. They could, but did not always, have ability score requirements above and beyond the typical ones for their class, and they might also have backstory or roleplaying requirements. A kit might who your character is in the society of the game world, the abilities they brought to the adventuring party, or both. Like Pathfinder’s Archetypes, some kits would strip abilities from the standard class, but not all of them did so.

So what did paladin kits do? In short, they changed the kind of knight you were. An Errant, for instance, is kept on a long leash by their liege and does not often have to fulfill edicts - but in exchange, she’s on her own and cannot expect funding from the state. Ghosthunters, who specialize in the destruction of the undead, gain the power to dispel evil, immunity to paralysis, turn undead just as well as a cleric does, and get access to a holy sword a minimum of 2 levels earlier - but they can’t lay hands, cure disease, cast priest spells, or enjoy immunity to disease. Inquisitors (I know) are paladins who see magic as a good and benevolent force, which is corrupted - profaned, even - by the practice of evil magic; they’re similar to ghosthunters in a lot of ways, but also represent an organized philosophy. The Complete Paladin’s Handbook has 22 pages of kits for standard paladin alone, which you can mix and match to create your own unique take on the concept, plus information on “demi-paladins” - non-human fighter/clerics who slowly gain paladin powers in addition to their own. This was back in the day when certain races just could not be good at certain classes due to level restrictions or being unable to take those classes in the first place, but here was the first glimmer of D&D confronting some of its own bullshit; before this book, the implication was that no non-human race was moral enough to be a paladin.

There’s so much more in this book but I’m not gonna get into all of it or this article’s just gonna be a review of one supplement; if you can get your hands on a PDF or even a hard copy, I highly suggest it as a read. It’s not that I endorse its vision for paladins as being the best or as being objectively correct, because I don’t; the potential of paladins is much broader than this narrow vision of Christian feudalism. It’s that no other book, before or after, has paid such loving attention to who paladins are in the game world, including thought given to details like their mortality rate (paladins that manage to survive to 40 are forcibly retired in the hopes that they can teach the youngbloods to do the same), the economics of knighthood, meta-commentary about how the class’s aesthetic and presentation is built to enhance themes about the game and the setting, and even a chapter on weaving faith into your game world and thinking about your paladin’s relationship to her own. The great strength of AD&D 2e’s paladins is that they, more than any others, have this loving care devoted to them that makes them feel like a real part of the worlds in which they live, and their great weakness is a vision that is more narrow than it wanted to be. You can see the author grasping for something broader, something more inclusive, only for it to slip between his fingers.

D&D 3.5: Up From The Gutter - Ah, D&D 3.5, the demon that will not die. This game spawned a million spin-offs and heartbreakers, love for it contributed to the rise of Pathfinder, and it remains incredibly popular and played. It’s also garbage, but c’est la vie, c’est la morte. Its vision of paladin is not as detailed as AD&D 2e’s was, and its main innovations were mechanical in nature. However, 3.5 did offer some in-depth explorations on what it means to be Good-aligned that previous editions did not, and given the context that’s about to be important to talk about.

3.5′s vision of paladin mechanics was remarkably similar to 2e’s, with the most notable change being race selection (anyone can now be a paladin as long as they’re Lawful Good) and the addition of Smite Evil, which can be used a certain number of times per day to gain more accuracy and damage when attacking evil-aligned creatures. Paladins are still warriors, they still cure disease, lay on hands, detect evil, and own a horse; in other words, they barely changed. Unfortunately, the game changed, and this left paladins high and dry. I’m not gonna mince words: for most of 3.5′s run, paladins lagged so far behind in terms of combat prowess, skill selection, and general utility that they were essentially unplayable, including and in some ways especially against classic foes such as demons and dragons.

I’m not gonna get into why, because that is a separate and much angrier article that will spark a lot of controversy due to people who run their ignorant mouths like they know what the fuck they’re talking about, not that I’m bitter. The relevant part of this is that over 3.5′s run, paladin did in fact slowly improve. The Serenity feat, published in Dragon 306, (and much more easily available to you in Dragon Compendium) helped clean up the dizzying amount of attributes upon which they were dependent. Battle Blessing (Champions of Valor) made it easier to incorporate their native spellcasting into their play (though nothing ever quite solved their sharply limited spell slots), and Sword of the Arcane Order (Champions of Valor again) both opened up an alternate vision of paladins as a different kind of magical knight & offered broader utility in paladin’s spell list. The Prestige Paladin in Unearthed Arcana converted paladin from a base class to a prestige class, which let you build it off of more mechanically viable classes - further enhancing your ability to customize your paladin, especially since as a PrC you could stop taking Prestige Paladin at any time you felt you were sufficiently knightly. Access to these and other options eventually made paladin, if not good, at least viable, able to be played in most campaigns and pre-made adventures without undue worry or getting chumped out of basic encounters.

In all of their forms, these paladins still had a code. Observe:

Code of Conduct

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.

Associates

While she may adventure with characters of any good or neutral alignment, a paladin will never knowingly associate with evil characters, nor will she continue an association with someone who consistently offends her moral code. A paladin may accept only henchmen, followers, or cohorts who are lawful good.

Ex-Paladins

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all paladin spells and abilities (including the service of the paladin’s mount, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). She may not progress any farther in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description), as appropriate.

Like a member of any other class, a paladin may be a multiclass character, but multiclass paladins face a special restriction. A paladin who gains a level in any class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities.

You know all the horror stories you’ve read of DMs maliciously making paladins Fall, or miscommunications in groups leading to alignment arguments? The ones about youth-pastor paladin characters sucking all the fun out of a party? Meet the culprit. 3.5 did not have The Complete Paladin’s Handbook’s discussion on same-paging with your group to prevent these problems, and this vague code wording paired with immediate and extreme consequences didn’t do it any favors. That’s not to say that this code is unworkable, exactly, but trying to sit down and agree with 4-6 other adults on what ‘gross violations’ actually means is essentially the world’s shittiest round of Apples to Apples and your reward for it is resenting the character you just built.

And that’s the paladin part, which means we have to get into the “being good-aligned” part. Lemme tell you about Book of Exalted Deeds, a historically significant garbage fire of a book that is somehow both the best supplement released about Good and the worst supplement released about Good at the same time.

For those of you with the fortune to have never played 3.5, its books are like that a lot.

So, bad parts first: all the mechanics. Just all of them. The prestige classes? Bad. The feats? Generally bad. The redemption rules revolving around Diplomacy? Sloppy. Magic items? Bad. Spells? Look up an online discussion about sanctify the wicked and then get back to me on that one; they’re bad too. Ravages and afflictions (good-aligned poisons and diseases) were a bad idea that were also a case of stunning hypocrisy from a book whose stance was that dealing ability score damage is ‘needless cruelty’. Even the write-ups for the planar NPCs kinda make them into these basic bitch pushovers, which, you guessed it, is bad. There’s a lot to say against this book and you can find someone saying it in most open web forums if you want to take a journey into the godawful design of the liminal space between 3.0 and 3.5.

But the good stuff was real good. D&D had/has long been stalked by ‘ethical dilemmas’ such as the so-called Goblin Baby Problem, where players would ask if it’s good to let goblin children live since they would only grow up to become goblin adults. Book of Exalted Deeds was the first D&D publication to make a hard stance against racial genocide (hell of a sentence, I know), and it doubled down on The Complete Paladin Handbook’s implied stance that all forms of romance and sexuality are valid as long as they’re between consenting adults that respect one another. BoED strove to define Good not just as the avoidance of evil (”The utter avoidance of evil is, at best, neutral.”) but as actively striving to respect life, practice altruism, and make the world a better and more just place. While its take on ideas like forgiveness, redemption, and justice were not necessarily perfect, it went out of its way to try to offer nuanced takes on those ideas and to note emphatically that practices such as slavery and racism do not become good just because certain historical cultures thought they were at the time.

The other notable thing that Book of Exalted Deeds did for the idea of a Good alignment was firmly state on the record that NG and CG are just as valid and Good as LG is. The existence of paladins and their alignment-locked nature had long implied that Lawful Good was the “best” Good, or the “most” Good, but Book of Exalted Deeds didn’t just introduce material for characters that were paragons of other Good alignments, it provided examples of such characters in action. D&D is still somewhat stalked by that “Law is Good and Good is Lawful” problem, but BoED and other books in its niche (notably including Heroes of Horror - I know, it doesn’t sound like it but trust me - and Champions of Valor) helped push back against that problem and open the floor to other heroes.

I wouldn’t be wholly done talking about 3.5 paladins without mentioning Unearthed Arcana, which introduced the paladin of freedom (CG), paladin of tyranny (LE), and paladin of slaughter (CE). Their hearts were in the right place here, but all three of them were...better ideas than executions, as it were, without much to talk about for them. Still, they make good examples of 3.5′s great strength in paladins: breadth of concept. Ideas that were previously impossible as paladins became commonplace, including paladin-like characters who were not members of the class and which I would absolutely consider paladins myself. It didn’t stick the landing on the mechanics, but that’s just 3.5 for you; if you weren’t a dedicated spellcaster, chances are you were gonna have some manner of bad time. This idea of paladins from all walks of life, from all levels of society and all peoples, has become a cherished part of the popular conception of paladins and it absolutely should be brought forward to other editions.

Which, honestly? It was.

Pathfinder 1e: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back - Pathfinder 1e’s baseline paladin release was essentially 3.5′s in many ways. The key mechanical differences were a revamped Smite Evil (which finally made it effective against its intended targets), the aura line of abilities that begin adding additional effects beyond Aura of Courage at 8th level and up, and Mercies - riders for the paladin’s Lay on Hands ability that cause it to also cure status effects, which in turn greatly enhances the paladin’s utility as a support class. Pathfinder also cleaned up some of 3.5′s attribute problems by orienting all of paladin’s magical abilities to Charisma instead of splitting between Wisdom and Charisma. Another small but significant note is the alteration from ‘gross’ violations of the code to any violation of the code. “Gee Vox, that doesn’t sound like it would really help code problems,” you say, to which I reply: it absolutely fucking did not.

Once we leave core, we get quite a few quality-of-life improvements. Though Pathfinder 1e lacks Battle Blessing, it replicates some of its effects by having many swift-action spells in-house for paladin, notably including the Litany line. Pathfinder’s archetype system for class customization offers options for the paladin that further customize its concept, though on the balance it’s harder to mix and match archs than it was to do so with kits. Archetypes always trade something, so in taking an arch you will lose some part of the base paladin kit and gain something which replaces it.

Narratively, things get more specific outside of core as well. Paizo’s one-and-only setting, Golarion, is one in which paladins must swear fealty to a specific god they serve above all others, and their power is derived directly from that god, who can grant or withhold it as they see fit. These gods (generally LN, LG, or NG in alignment, though certain specific CG deities sponsor paladins who must still be LG themselves) offer their own codes of conduct, which their paladins must follow. A paladin may be obligated to oppose ‘heresy’ as vigorously as chaos or evil, which is an awkward fucking feel, and paladins in Golarion’s setting can be found working for organizations such as the Hellknights, or in the armed forces of nations that practice slavery and forced conversion. That’s not to imply that they’re not also depicted in unambiguously good contexts, but when it comes to establishing paladins (or, well...anyone...) as good-aligned people Paizo has a bad habit of dropping the ball.

Like 3.5, the great strength of the Pathfinder 1e paladin is customization, and in this case a more solid mechanical base in comparison to the rest of the game. Pathfinder similarly flounders in that its vision of paladins is narrow and not fully realized in the game world.

Discussion of Pathfinder 1e’s paladin wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Anti-Paladin, the only “alternate class” to see mechanical support beyond its initial publication. Baseline anti-paladins must be chaotic evil and have abilities that are the inverse of the baseline paladin; similarly, anti-paladin has archetypes available that change it to different kinds and methods of evil. It has its fans, and in terms of playability it’s as good, if not a little better, than paladin, but on the whole I tend to break on the side of thinking that Good and Evil are not mirror images of one another, and thus an anti-paladin is inappropriate as an idea. At least, one done in this way, as an explicit reaction to a supposed paragon of virtue, as things are about to get real interesting in...

D&D 4e: The Knight Unshackled - D&D 4e built off of the foundations laid down by the Book of Exalted Deeds and Unearthed Arcana by completely removing all alignment restrictions from both paladin and its counterpart class, blackguard. This section will also need to talk about cousin classes to paladin; specifically, the Avenger and the Invoker. Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Paladins in 4e are predicament dommes defenders; they use their abilities to place Marks on enemies, who then suffer damage if they choose to engage someone other than the paladin (all defenders in 4e force choices of a similar nature, though the penalty for failing to make the ‘right’ choice is not necessarily damage). In 4e, paladins are not granted their power by gods, nor are they empowered by their faith in righteousness alone; in point of fact, 4e paladins have no restrictions on their alignment whatsoever and are the first paladins to be open in this way. Instead, a paladin in D&D 4e is invested with power in rites kept secret by individual churches. Once invested, that’s it, no take-backs; the paladin remains a paladin even if they forsake that church entirely. The other classes I’m gonna talk about - avenger, blackguard, and invoker - are similarly invested, with invoker being the exception in how they get invested, but not in their no-takebacks status.

So, what powers a paladin after that investiture? Virtue; specifically, caring about others in some way. An LG paladin empowered by their belief in justice might be a classic knight in shining armor, defending her allies in righteousness’s name, but an LE paladin empowered by the same virtue might easily turn totalitarian, determined to establish justice no matter who has to suffer and die. In this model, evil-aligned paladins are those who care too much about something, to the point where they trample and harm others to see it fulfilled.

Paladin’s inverse, blackguard, is a striker class focused on direct damage. They gain their power through vice, inward-facing desires such as greed, selfishness, lust, or five pounds of nachos in one meal (don’t @ me). Blackguards are also not restricted by alignment. A classically selfish blackguard, out for their own power and safety, might be an amoral mercenary who kills because they can’t be bothered not to, but a good-aligned blackguard who’s selfish is, well, Tiffany Aching: protecting the world because it’s her world and how dare you fucking touch it.

Avengers have more in common with barbarians than paladins, but are notable here for their commonalities with paladin as a divine warrior concept, and also for having bones in with the later Oath of Vengeance concept in D&D 5e. Avengers are invested to smite the enemies of their church; they tap into their power by swearing an oath against specific enemies, and then dissociate until those enemies in particular are dead at their feet. Are you really into Alexander Anderson from Hellsing? Do you want to explore the terrible consequences of power, consequences that might not have been clear when you signed up to become an avenger? This could be for you.

Lastly we have invokers, the odd duck out. They are ranged controllers who fight with pure divine power. Invokers are created directly by gods, but unlike the previous three have no associations with churches; instead, their job is to look out for threats to all of existence and make sure that they don’t happen. Even evil-aligned gods create and tend to respect invokers, because you can’t conquer the world and rule it as its Dread Master if there’s no world left to rule. Because invokers are invested by gods directly, they tend to have a lot in common with the divine intervention paladin origin mentioned waaaaay up there in the 2e section; you’re minding your own business when one day God goes “TIME TO LEARN HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD” and that’s just your life now.

D&D 4e’s paladins and paladin-like classes fully realize the breadth of concepts and characters that paladins could fulfill; they offer intriguing possibilities for roleplaying, engaging character and plot hooks, and mechanically distinct interpretations of divine power. In unshackling paladins from alignment, 4e opens them up to questions of heroism, conviction, and belief that were in many ways previously closed, especially because paladins in other editions were often made to Fall for asking those questions. Their big weakness is, well, being in 4e. It’s not that D&D 4e is a bad game - in many ways it’s the most honest edition of D&D, and certainly the most tightly-designed - but rather that 4e’s context is highly specific. It can be hard to find players or DMs familiar with it, might be frustrating to gain access to its books, and once you do adapting its material requires significant narrative changes if you remove it from the context of the Points of Light setting.

D&D 5e: This I Vow - D&D 5e’s paladin is, in many ways, a combination of and refinement upon previous elements. Like 4e’s, it is not restricted by alignment (though the three Oaths in core do suggest particular alignments). Like 3.5′s paladin, it combines magical power with martial skill, though 5e’s paladin is both more overtly magical and gains access to better spells, faster, than its predecessor. Though the paladin gains some warrior-type abilities (notably including their choice of Fighting Style and the Extra Attack feature), the majority of their abilities are supernatural in nature, including Lay On Hands (in the form of a pool of hit points that can also be expended to remove poisons and diseases), immunity to disease, an array of defensive and utility spells (as well as the Smite line for bursts of damage), a Divine Smite that trades spells for damage directly, and native auras that protect the paladin’s allies as well as herself. Their defining feature, however, is the Oath they select at third level, which defines what sort of paladin they are.

Your selection of Sacred Oath nets your paladin 2 utility abilities at 3rd level, an additional aura at 7th, a strong upgrade of some kind at 15th, and a capstone at 20th that neither you nor any other living being will ever see because 5e campaigns barely get to 14th, God forbid 20th. Each Oath also provides a set of tenets that you are meant to live up to, but unlike previous incarnations of a Code of Conduct 5e’s relationship to these tenets is more...human. The following passage is from the Player’s Handbook, page 83 (”Creating A Paladin”):

As guardians against the forces of wickedness, paladins are rarely of any evil alignment. Most of them walk the paths of charity and justice. Consider how your alignment colors the way you pursue your holy quest and the manner in which you conduct yourself before gods and mortals. Your oath and alignment might be in harmony, or your oath might represent standards of behavior you have not yet attained.

Emphasis mine.

The baseline assumption for 5e’s paladins are believers in righteousness, whose faith in virtue empowers them to protect the weak, but more than any other edition, 5e recognizes that paladins are still people, who have flaws, strengths, and ambitions. Its Background system helps flesh out your character both mechanically and narratively, and material presented both in the Player’s Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything encourage you to think about the things that drive and oppose your paladin. Importantly, though the books say that evil paladins are rare, no actual alignment restriction on paladins exist, which opens up some interesting possibilities in terms of character creation. We’ll get more into that down the article a bit, when I talk about same-paging and refluffing.

Because Oaths come with both mechanics and an ethos, there is a strong incentive to create new Oaths for 5e if you want to embody a new ethos, but this may not always be strictly necessary. Additionally, the Player’s Handbook implies that paladins who flagrantly fail or abandon their oaths might become Oathbreakers (Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 97, under “Villain Options”), but this too may not be the correct move, especially in cases where a paladin abandons one set of high ideals for a different, but no lower, form of belief. We’ll get into that later too.

5e’s paladins are in the best mechanical position they’ve ever been in; they’re one of the strongest classes in the game line, easy to build and play, and difficult to fuck up. They have strong thematics with their abilities and especially their Oaths, and the way 5e encourages you to make your characters helps you realize them as people in the game world. The great weakness of this vision of paladins is customization; 5e lacks player options in many senses, and quite a few of those options are gated behind rules that may not be in use (such as Feats). It can be difficult, in many cases, to make two paladins of the same Oath feel different when the dice hit the table.

And at long last, we have finished the establishing-context section of this article, and can move on to the actual fucking article. I did warn you, way up top, that you were in for a ride.

Raise Thy Sword - Paladins At Your Table

The following section is meant to help you in making and fleshing out a paladin concept to play or even to use as an NPC. Most of the advice will be edition-agnostic; advice that isn’t will be marked as such. Also covered herein will be the related topics of same-paging, refluffing, and the common pitfalls that paladins have fallen into over the years (and how to avoid them).

Same-Paging - In Which We Communicate Like Adults

Same-paging is the practice of talking to your group in a way that helps set mutual expectations, and it’s something every RPG group should strive to do regardless of the system they’re playing in. You’ve probably done this to an extent before, as part of being pitched a game (”We’re going to do a dungeon crawl through the deadly halls of Undermountain”), during character creation, and the like. In the specific case of paladins, you want to talk to your group and DM about topics like alignment & alignment restrictions, your code of conduct or oath, and whether or not the group wants to handle things like ethical dilemmas and moral quandaries. Though paladins are famous for those last two, they’re certainly not a requirement; you can just as easily play a paladin in a campaign like Expedition to Undermountain or Princes of the Apocalypse where there is a very clear bad guy who needs to be stopped with enormous applications of violence and guile. However your group wants to play it is fine, but you want to be sure everyone’s on board for it and that you’re ready to rock. If your group signs on for a kick-in-the-door dungeon crawl and then the DM decides to make you pass a series of ethics tests, that DM is an asshole; likewise, if you agree that you want to explore the morals at the heart of your paladin’s ethos and then you just don’t do that, you’re causing the problem.

Who Is Your Deity, And What Does She Do? - Making Your Paladin

Once you and your group have communicated your expectations to each other (and, again, same-paging is something all groups should be doing regularly, not just ones in which you want to play a paladin), it’s finally time to start sketching out your concept! There’s many ways to start this, and while I personally tend to start at the roleplaying end (with ideas about who they are as a person and the themes I want to explore with them), starting with mechanical ideas, with questions, or even with specific dramatic scenes in mind, are also viable. That is to say, “I’m interested in how Aura of the Guardian (Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 39) can help me play a damage mitigation tank,” is just as valid as, “Kass, my character, was lifted from a life of crime by a paladin who reformed her neighborhood and campaigned against a corrupt system, and she’s striving to become a paladin in his image.” That said, if there’s one thing D&D and its related communities are good at it’s mechanical guides, so I’m not gonna try and write one here. We’d be here all day; instead, the following questions are things to consider for fleshing out your paladin’s backstory, personality, and goals.

Why did you become a paladin? The origins of your paladin will probably color how they think of their virtues, as well as how they think of evil. A beaten-down girl from the slums understands that kicking the shit out of muggers doesn’t give the downtrodden food, medicine, or roofs that don’t leak, while the third son of a noble family is in a position to understand the damage done by corrupt leaders and faithless lords. In addition to your background and home life, think about what motivated your character to become a paladin specifically. Were they mentored by an older paladin who saw potential in them? Recruited by the militant arm of a church? Did they grow up with stories of paladins and yearn to become the sort of person those stories were written about, or were they, perhaps, seemingly called to paladinhood without much conscious understanding of what it was?

Where did you learn to fight? Paladins are warriors, and even a paladin that Falls (for those campaigns that use Falling as a concept) remains a warrior. 5e paladins, the most overtly magical of all the available options, still spend a lot of time randomizing the atoms of evil with sharpened metal, and that’s a skill you only get through training and dedication. Who taught your paladin to fight? What’s their relationship with that teacher or organization, and how did it shape their ideas about violence? We all catch things off of our teachers, and your paladin’s instructor in combat will, for better or worse, be as big an influence on their life and ideals as their faith and family are. Don’t be afraid to get wild here; AD&D 2e had full-blown godly training montages where the voice of a god ran you through drills, and paladins join warlocks and sorcerers for being fertile ground for some of the weirdest shit. Did you fight daily duels against a stained glass knight only you could see? Did you find a scimitar in the gutter and pick it up to defend your friends from gangs? Were you bankrolled by an old man who later turned out to be a lich, whose motives you still don’t understand? Live your best Big Ham life if that’s the life you wanna live, this is the class for it.

How do you imagine good and evil? What does your paladin’s vision of a Good world look like? What is the face of wickedness that comes to mind when they’re asked to think of Evil? A knight from a kingdom plagued by portals to the Abyss is going to think of both of these things very differently from a gutter rat whose ascension came with a prosthetic hand to replace the one she lost to gangrene, to say nothing of differences in ideals when one factors in Law and Chaos. Your paladin doesn’t have to be perfect, or even, honestly, correct. Your classic ‘noble, but kind of a dick’ paladin (such as Corran d’Arcy in the novelization of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, who we’re gonna talk about more later because he’s a weirdly great example of an adventuring paladin) thinks of evil as evildoers, who must be Brought To Justice, which while not entirely wrong is lacking in important nuance. He may conflate manners with virtue, or allow his prejudices to color who he does and doesn’t think of as ‘good’, but that doesn’t change his fundamental desire to Do Good - a desire that could be the catalyst for personal growth. A flawed understanding of virtue and wickedness could be a great character arc for your paladin, especially if it dovetails with the themes of the campaign.

What do you enjoy? Paladins are still people (shocking, I know) and people tend to have hobbies, preferences, and goals. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has some nice material to quickly flesh out some of those aspects of your paladin (a personal goal, a vice that tempts them, a nemesis that dogs their footsteps), and I highly encourage you to think about such things as well. Does your paladin crave glory, wealth, or revenge? What sort of things do they turn to when they want comfort, or to have a good time? Do they still practice a trade from their youth, such as painting or blacksmithing? The archetype of a knight looking for their true love (or at least a series of whirlwind romances that always seem to end in someone’s bedroom) is a staple, of course. These things don’t necessarily need to be sinister temptations that lead you away from justice; they can just be nice things you like, or comforts that sustain you in your long fight against evil.

How do you relate to your faith? Many settings (notably including Forgotten Realms & Points of Light in D&D, and Golarion in Pathfinder) explicitly link paladins to churches and patron deities, and even in ones where this explicit link does not exist you see paladins who fight in the name of their faiths, serve in the militant arm of their churches, and otherwise seek to live their lives in accordance with their religion. D&D’s history is also full of paladins whose relationship to their faith is more distant, more questioning, or even outright rebellious. In Eberron, for instance, a paladin might dedicate herself to the Kraken - an evil god embodying sea monsters and catastrophes - with her understanding of that faith being preventing monster attacks and protecting the innocent from hurricanes and tidal waves. A paladin might be retained by the Church of St. Cuthbert as a barometer for their own morality, trusted to leash his peers when their retribution grows out of hand & play the devil’s advocate against them, or a knight might simply try to live their lives in accordance with the ideals of beauty, joy, and wonder espoused by Sune Firehair, without being for or against the actual church. What or whom does your paladin believe in, and why? Remember as well that not all, or even most, faiths are particularly similar to Christianity, and as a result your paladin’s relationship to that faith might just be business as usual. A Jewish paladin arguing with God is Judaism working as intended; similarly, a paladin dedicated to the Aesir doesn’t get to act surprised when they come home one day and Freya is chilling in their bathtub with a glass of wine and a ‘small request’.

You Wouldn’t Download A Class Feature - Refluffing & You(r Paladin)

So: you’ve come up with your concept, you’ve asked yourself all the relevant questions, but damn, some things just seem to not be fitting. What do you do? It may be the case that refluffing - changing the flavor of a mechanical option to better fit your campaign or setting - may be the right move for you. Refluffing gets a lot of pushback from a certain school of tabletop gaming that believes the flavor of an option is part of its mechanical balance. These people are wrong and I encourage you not to associate with them, in particular because the first party publishers often refluff material for similar reasons. For instance, the setting of Eberron has ‘anything published in D&D has a home here’ as one of its meta-tenets, and in the process of giving many of those things a home it changed their identity. Those hordes of angry ancestor-worshiping elves? That’s refluffing elves. In 3.5 you can see explicit discussion of refluffing in Oriental Adventures, which...well...it’s a book that exists, let’s leave it at that. Oerth having an entire alternate Material Plane where all the mirror of opposition copies come from? Refluffing.

So, when do you refluff? An obvious example is when your group is comfortable with an option being on the table, but is not playing in the setting that option comes from (for instance, the Sword of the Arcane Order feat from Champions of Valor when you are not playing in the Forgotten Realms). Refluffing is also great for when the narrative you’re building for a character implies or requires certain mechanics, but the flavor of those mechanics does not fit that narrative. In the ancient past I briefly GMed a game where one of the PCs was a ‘barbarian’ - a mean-streets kid looking to make a better life for himself, whose Rage was just the fight-or-flight kicking in from living in the garbage parts of Waterdeep. The important things to keep in mind when you choose to refluff an option is to stay on the same page as the rest of your group, and also to not replace the original fluff with nothing; mechanics do help define flavor (they’re the tools with which you interact with the game world), but you still need some reason that your paladin casts wizard spells, or has the abilities of the Oath of Vengeance when the original version of that Oath doesn’t exist in this setting. A very common school of refluffing is changing the origins of one’s power; rather than pure faith, for instance, a paladin’s powers might come from her innate spiritual energy, or from the favor of kami rather than gods.

Refluffing is also great for playing paladins that don’t have levels in the class named paladin. This option is especially relevant in the context of 3.5 and Pathfinder, when it may be more suitable to the needs of the campaign for you to be playing a more powerful or versatile class. In this context, clerics especially make very competent ‘paladins’, as do wizards (you wouldn’t think so, but I’ve seen that campaign played), inquisitors, crusaders, and even druids depending on how your concept is. You don’t need Fall mechanics to follow a code, after all.

For What The World Could Be - Defining Your Paladin’s Ethos

More than almost any other aspect of the class, possessing and following an ethos has defined paladins through the ages. For many years, this was a very specific ethos based on European ideas of chivalry and Christian virtue, and there’s something to be said for it when done well (certainly the Arab warriors from whom Europeans acquired the code of chivalry were lauded for their honor and virtuous conduct, so at a bare minimum one set of folks following these ideals in the real world absolutely nailed it). This is not, however, the only set of high ideals to which a paladin might cleave or aspire, and many fine homebrewers, players, and dungeon masters out there have chosen to craft their own, or to represent their own beliefs in the game world. Many cultures throughout history and all over the world have retained elite warriors held to high standards of conduct, and those traditions are rife for representation as paladins.

I fully intend to provide some specific examples of ethea (evidently this is the plural of ‘ethos’, no I didn’t know that before I started writing this, yes it looks wrong to me too) beyond the ongoing D&D default, but before I do you may want to consider how your paladin relates to those high ideals. After all, these are virtues that your character holds dear, but not everyone does so in the same way. Does she believe that everyone would be better off if they tried to live up to her standards, or does she believe that only certain people should (or must) do so? Does she consider her virtues an impossible ideal, something to strive for rather than fulfill, or does she not harbor such doubts? Is your paladin an idealist, who believes in the power of Good in itself, or is she more cynical?

The answers to these questions don’t necessarily make your paladin less Good as a person. A warrior who believes that there’s always a selfish bastard reason to do the right thing, who sees Evil as suboptimal, could still be a paladin if they work to bring Good into the world. An idealist who still needs to learn about the real consequences of barging into complex problems in a morally complicated world is equally valid, to say nothing of just...playing a genuine in-the-bones Hero, here to Do The Right Thing. Each speaks to a different kind of virtue, and a different life that has led them to these choices, and each deserves their day in the sun. You might have a lot of fun playing someone whose view of what Good is, and why, is different from yours!

Some specific examples of ethea (god that looks so wrong) follow. For the sake of convenience I’m gonna skip anything that’s actually showed up in a paladin entry before, or I’m gonna be here until I die. I am also very much not a member of just about any of the cultures and/or religions I’m about to talk about, and while I have sought the advice and review of those who are, I’m not about to claim that I’m an expert. Any errors in what’s presented are mine, and not those of my friends & readers; I welcome correction and discussion.

Irish Celtic: Blood & Troth  - The ancient Celts were not a people shy about death, and excellence - skill, improvement, and genuine growth - in all of your crafts was one of their high virtues. In addition to excellence, a Celtic warrior was expected to be honest (to never tell a direct lie, and to keep all promises given), hospitable (to be a gracious host & and honorable guests, and defend the sanctity of the home), to be charitable with their skills and their worldly possessions (to give to the needy, defend the weak, and fight for the helpless), to display loyalty to their family, clan, and gods, and to be courageous. That last virtue is an interesting one, because it dovetails with excellence; it’s less about acting in spite of fear, and more about enjoying fearful situations and the call of battle. A paragon of Celtic warfare should love her job, perhaps even revel in it; she relishes combat and the mayhem of the killing fields. Paladins following these virtues are likely to be Chaotic in nature, skewing towards Chaotic Neutral as D&D thinks of these things, and prone to contemplation on concepts of obligation, truth, and the nature of political violence. The crows know that there is always a final answer to injustice.

Irish Celtic paladins are likely to look towards Fionn Mac Cumhaill as a role model; as warriors with magical powers of protection, defense, and healing, they would be valued as keepers of lore, wisdom, and art, more warrior-poet than berserker. If your paladin is part of a wider culture from which she derived this ethos, she was probably expected to both learn knowledge and pass it on to others, and to restrain more eager warriors in favor of cunning plans and clever tactics. Imagine the look on your party members’ faces when they meet your family and realize you’re the sane one; that’s the exact emotion you wanna look to create if you really want to bring this out in the classic vein.

Jewish: We Shall Serve The Lord  - Judaism places a lot of emphasis on the sanctity of life, restorative justice, and doing the good you can do here, and now, with what’s in front of you. Though there is no tradition of elite Jewish warriors in the vein of knights or samurai, Jewish citizens tend to serve under arms slightly more often (about 5% more often) than their countrymen, and defending the innocent & helpless is certainly one way to do good now. A Jewish paladin would be expected to uphold the sanctity of life (preservation of life is the highest calling; a Jew may do anything except deny God in order to preserve life), to practice the principle of Tikkun Olam (’repairing the world’, working actively to make the world around them a more just, peaceful, and pleasant one), to show compassion and generosity to others, to uphold and defend hospitality, to know the Torah and the Law, and, where necessary, to practice intelligent and purposed dissent and skepticism. In the context of D&D, such a character is not likely to be particularly scholarly (paladins haven’t needed a decent Intelligence score at any point in the class’s evolution), but they’re probably conversant in the techniques of reading and research, critical thinking, argument, and debate, if only through exposure. Jewish paladins are most likely to be Good, leaning Lawful, as D&D thinks of these things.

The Jewish ethos describes a set of minimum standards for a righteous person, the Noahide Laws, and greatly encourages you not to associate with any person or culture that can’t meet that standard. They’re honestly not hard to meet either; you basically have to not be a dick about God (don’t try to stop folks from worshiping, don’t spend your time mocking and blaspheming their faith), know that lying and murdering are wrong, don’t be a sexual predator, don’t eat animals that are still alive, and bother to establish a system of laws for self-rule. Though Judaism lacks an elite warrior tradition, you might look to people like Joshua, Judah Maccabee, or Solomon as inspirations for a Jewish paladin character; warriors known for their wisdom, determination, and and in many cases, self-sacrifice. Solomon is also notable as an example of someone who swore the Nazarite Oath, a promise to God to fulfill a mission or task, and to not rest until one has done so. Nazarites are held to higher standards than their peers, notably including the expectation that the object of their oath becomes their only goal until they get it done or die.

As stated before, I am not Jewish and while this information was provided to me by Jewish friends, it is far from complete. @oath-of-lovingkindness might be by to expand on it, if they’re comfortable doing so.

Kemetic Pagan: The Power Of Truth - It’s difficult to talk about how the ancient Kemetic faiths were practiced; there was a lot of strife between the various cults of the gods, sometimes backed by pharaohs who were willing to revise history to get their way about thing, and then the English got a hold of the records. The English getting a hold of your culture’s history rarely ends well for just about anyone. The modern practice of Kemetic worship places great emphasis on service and identity as a member of the community, the promotion and preservation of knowledge, learning, and education, opposing is/fet (’chaos’, here also very much including the breakdown of social bonds and the systems which sustain life), and truth. A Kemetic paladin would be expected to oppose chaos by sustaining or creating such systems (funding schools, founding a neighborhood watch, finding or creating jobs for the poor), defend the defenseless, further her own education and knowledge & teach the ignorant, to be honest and forthright in word and deed, and value strength and justice. They are likely to be Lawful, skewing towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things. For a society to be just, it must first be a society; preservation of the order (both natural and artificial) which sustains human lives comes first.

Kemetic paladins are unlikely to be priests or even to be formally part of a religious heirarchy, again because they have traditionally had issues being scholarly people; instead, they uphold ma’at (what is true, what is just, what is necessary; ma’at is the principle that establishes a community, that relates one person to all other people and defines obligations between them, and opposes chaos) by fulfilling roles that assist their community. Such a paladin might look to one of their patron gods as an example of both the behavior they wish to emulate and their role in the community. A defender and guardian who supports the rural folk might look to Sobek, whose great strength guards the Nile; a would-be hero who craves power and the glory that power might buy her could instead look to Set, who guards the sun-barge and tests the established order so that it can grow strong. This is an ancient faith with quite a few gods, and I haven’t even gone deep enough to say I’ve scratched the surface; if they’re comfortable doing so, @merytu-mrytw may be by to expand on this topic for those interested in learning more.

Samurai: Reaching For Heaven  - You knew we were gonna go here eventually. As famous as knights, and perhaps even more known for their strict code of honor, the samurai were the elite warriors of feudal Japan and members of its ruling class. A samurai was expected to be a warrior, to cultivate an appreciation for high arts such as calligraphy, poetry, and sculpture, to be a scholar or patron of scholars, and to otherwise serve their lord and establish justice in that lord’s name. Today the samurai ethos is often called Bushido (”the way of the warrior”), but that name and conception of their code of conduct is actually a relatively recent invention, dating back only as far as the 20th century. It has its bones in with a 12th century dramatization of a war between two proud clans, and the ideals embodied by the warriors of those clans. Notably, these ideals were considered unattainable; something to strive for, and in striving grow as a person, but not a realistic expectation for a living human in a physical body. I’m gonna go ahead and quote the breakdown of this code that was given to me, because I feel the long form is going to be helpful here. These were the things to strive for, if one wished to call oneself a samurai:

Your duty calls on you to die if necessary. Your honor is more than your life; to live in shame is worse than death. You are expected to be righteous - to have integrity, sincerity, and honesty. To display heroic courage - to be intelligently aware of risks, but to face them boldly, not rashly or foolishly. To be benevolent and compassionate - for you have strength of arms that others cannot fathom. To show respect, even to your enemy. Cruelty, mockery, showboating, boasting, these are against the samurai code. Your strength and stature come through how you stand in adversity, unyielding. To understand that there is no such thing as a promise, or "giving your word" - you do not speak unless you mean what you say. Meaningless words are for shameful people. To safeguard your own honor, for you are its judge - and you will know what will cause you to live in shame, which as noted above, is worse than death. To show loyalty and be dutiful - if you give your service to another, it is theirs to command, and if you set someone's life above yours, you cannot keep honor if you live and they die. To demonstrate self-control - excesses and wants are openings to great shame. Moral character lies in the desire being sublimated toward the better self and higher standing among men.

As the politics and culture of Japan evolved through the years, so too did attitudes towards, and understanding of, this code of conduct, but most dramatic and romantic depictions of the samurai ethos root back to something a lot like this. A paladin dedicated to this ethos is likely to be Lawful Neutral, bending towards Good, as D&D thinks of these things; it emphasizes the virtues of loyalty, duty, and the obligations of both lord and vassal to one another. It is particularly appropriate for characters who see high ideals of virtue as being an unattainable goal to strive for anyway, or for character-driven campaigns looking for high drama that comes from tensions between personal desires and societal expectations (you can see it used for this to wonderful effect in the Legend of Five Rings RPG, most recently published by Fantasy Flight Games).

There are of course many other potential sources for a paladin’s ethos; check out D&D 5e’s homebrew materials and the DM’s guild for just a few. If I didn’t include something here, I promise you that it’s because I’m either ignorant or not confident of my ability to speak on it even in this limited context, not because I was trying to deliberately leave anything out. As I said above, any errors here are mine, and I welcome corrections. I’m also eager to hear about other ethea and how they might be adapted for paladins, so if you’ve got some thoughts there, please, slap ‘em on! I’m quite literally begging to read your paladin takes!

That said, remember that these are real beliefs, that real people follow. If you’re looking to explore an ethos from a culture that is not your own, you should do so with respect and especially with consideration for others that might be affected. It’s one thing to realize 12 sessions into a campaign at your own house that you’ve been accidentally blaspheming someone’s religion; it’s quite another thing to realize that if you’ve been playing in a public place such as a library or a gaming store. Ask folks from the culture or faith in question about it if you can at all do so, and just...if you wouldn’t want someone to be depicting you in a particular way? Don’t depict them that way.

The Trolley Problem And Other Forms Of Psychological Torture - Paladins, Falling, & Alignment

All editions of paladins except 4e have some kind of rule for Falling; losing one’s paladin status and powers, generally because of violations of your code of conduct or a failure to maintain your alignment. 5e sorta-kinda has those rules in a “well if the DM says so” way, which is, in some ways, a worse situation to be in since it leaves the matter unclear. In particular, many editions of paladins require that you have and maintain a Lawful Good alignment, and completely strip you of all powers if you ever change alignment for any reason. If the above sections of this article didn’t make it clear already, I tend to break towards 4e’s school of thought and support unshackling paladins from both alignment and Falling mechanics for general play; they certainly haven’t been powerful enough in the meta to mechanically justify additional restrictions.

This isn’t to say that you can’t use Falling or the threat of Falling for interesting stories and excellent character moments, just that I personally feel that it’s not as necessary as some schools of thought seem to think it is. If you want to incorporate this idea into your campaign, make sure you bring that up when you’re same-paging with your group; it’s definitely one of those topics everyone wants to have a clear understanding about. From there, it’s on the DM to not be a dick about things. Using paladins to explore ethical dilemmas can be very rewarding, but putting one in an ‘impossible’ scenario is rarely any fun. For some great examples of using ethical dilemmas as a form of character growth and to explore the concept of morality, check out The Good Place if you haven’t already. Remember: it’s a game. The goal is to have fun, yeah?

Genocide Is Not An Ethical Dilemma - Common Paladin Pitfalls

This is the part of the article where I get very angry about things.

As I alluded to before, there have been some common pitfalls when it comes to paladins both in the history of their formal writing and in the way the fanbase has chosen to play and relate to them. This section is going to discuss those and what you can do about them, so without further ado:

Fascism  - Paladins have some unfortunate bones in with fascist ideology, particularly the Third Reich’s obsession with ‘will’, as well as the fascist preoccupation with the Crusades, the Crusades themselves, and with being members of social classes which are often oppressive in nature. You really do not have to go far to find some jackoff posting DEUS VULT memes about their paladin, and that’s a problem, first because fascists are bad, and second because that definitely misses the fucking point by a country mile. All editions of D&D and its legacy systems have struggled with this, but a shout-out goes to D&D 5e for publishing the Oath of Conquest, because we definitely needed to respond to this problem by creating an option that gives you heavier, more ornate jackboots to put on people’s necks.

So, what do you do about this? Well, for one thing if you find a fascist at your gaming table you throw them the fuck out into the street, and beyond that mainly you just...try not to play a fuckin’ fascist character. This isn’t really a problem you can solve at the table level, since it’s buried into the writing; all you can do is be aware of it, and not play into it. It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to not make a paladin who’s into kicking poor people and undermining the rights of sapient beings, yeah? Paladins tend to fall into these sorts of problems when they’re depicted as supporting strongmen, or as being the Special And Exalted People to whom the rules do not apply - basically the same situations that give superheroes as a genre their ongoing fascism problem. Keep a weather eye out.

Genocide - The two-for-one combo! Paladins have had a genocide problem as far back as AD&D 2e, where several had racial or religious genocide in their backstories. Sometimes those paladins Fell as a result, sure, but a disturbing amount of them didn’t. We also have such gems as, “A local paladin has started a crusade against half-breeds” (a plot hook published in Draconomicon for 3.5), that greentext story about the paladin and dwarf ‘bros’ who spend their free time murdering orc children, and everything that’s ever been written about how drow are characterized and treated by others. Now, in fairness to paladins, Dungeons & Dragons itself has problems with the themes of race and with its depiction of the morality of genocide, and paladins could be merely caught up in that. On a basic level, solving this issue is easy; don’t endorse genocide, don’t make edgy racist concepts to see if you can ‘still be good’. Even if that wasn’t already tired and worn, someone else already took that concept and went pro with it.

For more information about fantasy’s troubles with race and racial coding, I highly suggest this article & its sequel, as well as Lindsay Ellis’s Bright video.

Youth Pastor Syndrome - This one’s not as dire a problem as the other two; there’s a tendency to play paladins in a way that sucks the fun out of the rest of the group, either because you’re being a judgemental asshole in-character (and possibly out of it), or because they’re constantly having to tiptoe around you to get things done or do what they want in the campaign. In theory, same-paging should help solve this problem before it starts, and it honestly mainly stems from the various ‘association’ clauses in paladin codes through their history. An uptight paladin isn’t necessarily a bad concept, but make sure it’s the right concept for your group before you just go there. Your desire to run a particular character is not an excuse to shit on everyone else’s fun.

Sir Dumbass the Just - So this topic isn’t so much a ‘pitfall’ as something that doesn’t get talked about a lot. There has not been a single incarnation of paladin that is rewarded for investing in Intelligence; instead, they tend to crave Strength or  Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom and/or Charisma (depending on edition and build). Once your main three are solved, Wisdom is the next-most important ability score for an adventuring paladin, because it directly relates to detecting threats, seeing through illusions, and resisting mind control, which leaves Intelligence in the dust next to whichever one of Strength or Dexterity you didn’t pick. This means, more often than not, that paladins are going to struggle in scholarly pursuits, be bad at Knowledge-type skills, and otherwise be uneducated in many ways, which most assuredly influences both their internal culture and the sorts of people who become successful paladins. Give the matter some consideration when you’re making your own.

Lady Natasha Pointe-Claire of the Dust March - Paladins as NPCS

Related to what was discussed just above, not all paladins are necessarily adventurers. Though the image of the paladin as a knight-errant, wandering the world in order to defeat foul plots and punch demons in the asshole, is both valid and probably very relevant to paladin player characters, there are other roles that a paladin might fulfill in your campaign setting. Such paladins are still members of a warrior class, and will thus have things in common with player character paladins, but their different roles will encourage investment in other kinds of abilities and skills which might not lead to a successful adventuring paladin, but will lead to a pretty good life in the other job. The following examples are by no means exhaustive, but they should provide a good place for a DM to start if they wanna incorporate paladin NPCs into their games in roles other than fellow (or rival) adventurers. Mentor - Probably the most straightforward; this paladin was a successful adventuring paladin who ended up retiring due to age, injuries, or just to enjoy time with their loved ones/family/children rather than getting mauled to death by undead birds. Take a normal paladin build, ratchet them up into Middle Age or Old Age, call it a day. Such paladins are likely to be a lot calmer and more pragmatic than the younger set, with a combination of painful experience and perspective guiding the advice they give on how to fight evil and how to dodge the fireballs that evil be throwing.

Knight-Hospitaller - Hospitallers are healers, caretakers, and guardians of the sick, injured, and infirm. Such a paladin might help maintain a home for those who have been traumatized (abuse victims, soldiers, people laboring beneath magical curses), be employed at or run a hospital, or maintain a temple dedicated to a god of healing and medicine. Hospitallers tend to choose options that enhance their Lay on Hands ability, memorize more healing spells than attack or defense ones, and value Wisdom and Intelligence more highly than their peers, often at the expense of their Strength or Dexterity (or even their Constitution; paladins, being immune to disease, can afford to be surprisingly frail of body in this role).

Fortress Knight - These paladins have a lot in common with adventuring paladins, but are for one reason or another posted in one spot from which they do not leave. They might be the guardians of a frontier village, soldiers watching over a sinister portal, the personal bodyguards to a powerful noble, or any other role in which they take on a defensive, reactionary stance rather than actively seeking out new and exciting forms of evil. Fortress knights need a higher Wisdom and to invest in Perception-type skills, and will tend to focus on utility-type spells with a strong subtheme of attack; they need to be able to rouse the alarm, dispel magic on their allies, and keep an enemy pinned down.

Example Paladin - Corran D’Arcy

I promise you, your long journey through my article is almost over. I wanna talk about a specific paladin to kinda tie things together, as an example of some of these principles and ideas in motion and because Corran d’Arcy is just weirdly legit when he has absolutely no fucking reason to be. Corran appears in the novelization for Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, written by Carrie Bebris. The book is based on the videogame of the same name, which in turn was made to celebrate the release of D&D 3.0. “Should I play this game?” you ask, to which I reply: absolutely fucking not, the game was a rough ride when it came out and it has not aged remotely well. 3.0 was rapidly updated to 3.5 because of deep and wide mechanical flaws that made the play experience almost physically painful, and converting it to a CRPG did not help that experience at all.

The book though? Excellent. Legitimately one of the best D&D novels. Spoilers for it follow, but I’d still suggest reading it if you get the chance.

The novel is told from the perspective of Kestrel, a petty thief trying to raise enough money to quit her life of crime and, ideally, die in bed of old age rather than of blood loss in some gutter. A series of poor and alcohol-related decisions leads her to volunteer to guard an evil pool of soul-stealing water, which is where she meets Corran d’Arcy, a paladin of Tyr and the third son of a noble family. The two get on like water and oil; to Kestrel, Corran is a pompous, classist piece of shit who judges her without knowing her, and to Corran, Kestrel is the exact kind of criminal and evildoer he so often fights in his day job. When another team opens a portal to beg for help while they’re being slaughtered, Corran quite literally throws Kestrel through it when she’s trying not to go, nearly killing them both.

This puts their professional relationship off to a bit of a distant start, as you might imagine.

Corran’s prejudice, as well as Kestrel’s more-justified-but-still-unhelpful resentment, hinder the party as they attempt to survive in Myth Drannor and defeat the Cult of the Dragon’s schemes there. Corran’s life of privilege has left him unfamiliar with Kestrel’s skills, and he consistently misuses those skills or forgets to ask for her opinion and expertise - to the detriment of the group. This painful oversight aside, however, Corran proves surprisingly practical; he works with the party’s wizard to create effective combat tactics, utilizes invisibility for surprise attacks against powerful foes, and coordinates well in the heat of battle; after all, the Cult of the Dragon is not taking requests for formal duels, and the fate of the world is at stake. Corran is polite even to his enemies, and openly negotiates with the minions and allies of the Cult in order to avoid combat - notably including drow houses that have made their homes in Myth Drannor. Through the course of the novel, he and Kestrel go from being openly antagonistic towards one another to developing a newfound respect, starting when Kestrel calls Corran out for endangering the party by refusing to retreat. Corran, in turn, forces Kestrel to confront the fact that she has been unhappy living her life with no purpose other than to die another day, a revelation that shakes her to her core.

Things come to a head when one of Corran’s decisions gets a man killed. Kestrel calls him out on it, accusing him - correctly - of hurting those he’s trying to protect by misusing her skills and ignoring the advice of his companions. Seeing his genuine anguish over these events softens Kestrel’s rage towards the paladin, enough that they essentially start their relationship over from the top with genuine change from both of them. A scene late in the book where Kestrel helps Corran find the confidence to attempt divine magic (a gift given only to ‘truly worthy’ paladins) cements what has finally become a trusting friendship.

Corran d’Arcy is an excellent example of a classic paladin archetype with life and humanity breathed into it. He has prejudices and insecurities; he feels pressured to live up to a long legacy of knighthood that intimidates him. At the same time, the virtues he lives up to reward him over and over again, from his bold valor (which sees to the defeat of many evildoers) to his courtesy and honor in social situations (which wins him unlikely allies in a ruined city overrun by wickedness). Though he starts out as a dick, Corran is not malicious, and it’s his genuine desire to do good by others that motivates the change in his behavior; when he learns that he is hurting his friends, he knows that he must change.

That’s the end of the article proper! I hope you found it informative and, more than anything, helpful in creating paladins for your game and campaign setting. I absolutely welcome questions, comments, critique, additions, and the like; my Ask box is open, and the Reblog button is right there.

That said, if you’re interested, Mister Vox’s Wild Ride is not yet over. I got bit by the homebrew bug halfway through this damnable thing, so here’s a paladin oath based on a family from my first completed interactive story, Dungeon Life Quest. Constructive critique of this material is also very welcome!

Oath of the la Croix (D&D 5e Sacred Oath)

(River la Croix, journeyman necromancer and demonologist, ex-mercenary. Character is from Dungeon Life Quest, art provided by Domochevsky.)

The la Croix family have been necromancers for longer than they’ve been the la Croix; they laid down much of the foundations of modern necromancy, and have, through the ages, been tyrants, villains, refugees and, these days, heroes. To be a la Croix is not a matter of blood, but of commitment to the family’s ideals; one must be willing to help those in need, to serve the community, be a level head in times of trouble, to show respect for death and the dead, and to make hard choices with a calm heart.

Though most la Croix are necromancers, alchemists, healers, or summoners of various kinds, every now and again a paladin-like warrior emerges from the ranks of the family, often by adoption. Whether or not such cousins are ‘real’ paladins is a subject of languid internal debate in the family - no la Croix has ever fallen to the point where she lost her powers, but a few have managed to go mad enough with that power to end up hunted down by the rest of the family. The question doesn’t really need answering, but it’s fun to argue about after three cups of wine.

Tenets of the la Croix The high standards expected of la Croix paladins are also expected of anyone who chooses to bear the family name. You can give up the name at any time, but most la Croix children - by adoption or by blood - try to wear it with pride.

Life is for the Living, Death is for the Dead. No one chooses to be born, and very few people choose to die. Respect these truths. Take life when you must, but not cruelly, and never for personal gain. Remember that you, too, are alive, and deserve the chance to enjoy that life as all people do.

Your Name is ‘Somebody’. If there is a call for help, you are the one to answer; when you hear ‘somebody do something’, ‘somebody help me’, you are Somebody, child of Anyone. If you can’t help directly, do everything you can anyway. None of us deserve to be alone.

Serve, Not Rule. A la Croix’s place in her community is service to that community. We are not nobles, tyrants, or generals; we dwell among the common people to protect and shelter them, and to remind ourselves of all the ways in which we are alike. Our power makes us different, not better.

They, Too, Are Victims of Life. You do not know the struggles others go through, just as they do not know yours. All are condemned to live and to die, and deserve your compassion even when you are moved to strike them down for the greater good. Bury your enemies and give them their last rites as if they were your own family.

Oath Spells You gain oath spells at the paladin levels listed.

3rd - bane, false life 5th - darkness, gentle repose 9th - bestow curse, fear 13th - phantasmal killer, shadow of Moil* 17th - danse macabre*, planar binding

*appears in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Channel Divinity When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following Channel Divinity options.

Ancestral Protection - You can use your Channel Divinity to call upon your la Croix ancestors for protection. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level; this damage cannot be prevented or reduced in any way. Then, you and all allies within 30 feet of you gain a bonus to armor class equal to your Charisma modifier for 1 minute.

Balefire Blast - You can use your Channel Divinity to scourge an enemy with death-in-flame. Make a spell attack against a creature within 30 feet. If you hit, that creature suffers necrotic damage equal to your paladin level, plus fire damage equal to your paladin level. If it dies within 1 minute of being hit, it counts as dying of old age in addition to its actual cause of death (usually meaning that it is much more difficult to bring back from the dead).

Necromancer’s Aura Beginning at 7th level, you radiate constant necromantic wards that protect you and your allies. You and allies within 10 feet of you have resistance to necrotic damage and radiant damage, and you make saving throws against effects which would kill you outright with advantage.

At 18th level, the range of this aura increases to 30 feet.

Friend of Death Starting at 15th level, you regain 1 spell slot of 3rd level or lower whenever a creature within 30 feet of you is reduced to 0 or less hit points. You can regain a number of spell slots this way equal to your Charisma modifier; once you reach this limit, you must finish a long rest to use this ability again.

Aphrael’s Chosen At 20th level, you gain the ability to enter a state of heightened necromantic power, in which you can channel far more sorcery than usual. As an action, you suffer damage equal to your paladin level, then begin channeling raw death magic for 1 minute. While in this state, you gain the following benefits:

- You are immune to all effects which would kill you outright - Whenever you cast a paladin spell, you can make a weapon attack as part of casting that spell. You are not required to make this attack. - Creatures make their saving throws against your spells with disadvantage.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

[missblissy]

SO I ACCIDENTLY DELETED THE ASK BUUT! Anon asked about my OCs so here they are ;v;

These are my two important children. I do not have their demon forms drawn out yet because THIS IS A VERY OLD REF OF THEM ((I drew this in 2017. I do not have a working tablet but im GETTING ONE FOR CHRISTMAS SO IM GONNA BE DRAWING AGAIN SOON!! This is just their general bio, not necessarily Hazbin hotel))

Sage Helvig:

Age: 26 Gender: Female Race: Mixed. Japanese/Europen Descent.   Status: Alive Build/Body Type/Physical Frame: Smol Height: 4′9″ Weight: 160 lbs Skin: White Hair: Long black hair that stops above her waist, wavy but little to nose curls Eyes: Blue Other defining features/extra anatomy: Has many piercings on her ears, both ears are completely covered with piercings. Voice: Soft-spoken and relatively monotone. Doesn’t express a lot of emotions when speaking. Often mistaken for being tired. Style: POP PUNK!!! EDGY!!! EMO!!!!

Loves/Favorites: - Tol Husband - Magic/Pagan worship - Japanese cuisine and culture - Archery/Bowhunting - Studying Mythology - Pepsi ((She’s addicted)) - ALL BREAKFAST FOOD - And fruits. She prefers fruit over candy - Chemistry - Cleaning ((It’s a form of therapy for her)) - Science ((in general)) - Crabs ((She keeps them as pets and thinks they are the cutest things every)) - Winter and Fall - Swords/Daggers/Blades

Hates: - Candy, like unnaturally sweet things ((like taffy, lemon drops, sour patch kids, etc etc)) - Math - Cooking - Most internet culture. - Evil/Dark spirits/Demons ((Anything malevolent)) - People who don’t know how to shut up about cars - Bugs - Spring and Summer

Hobbies: - Studying different culture’s mythology/history/religions. - Witchcraft/Spellcasting - Demon slaying - Archery - Chemistry - Swordsmanship

Hopes/Dreams: - To one day rid the world of all demonic and malevolent spirits. - Have a daughter of her own and raise her the way she was raised - To become a skilled and honorable Demon Slayer

Fears/Nightmares: - Anything bad happening to Van or her brother - Death - Demonic possession ((Ya know, being possessed and shit)) - Hurting the innocent. - Getting sent to Hell

Best Quality: - She is a skilled Demon Slayer who has seen more combat than the average person. She used a mix of a short bow, rapier and magical abilities when hunting and fighting demons and spirits Greatest Flaw: - She doesn’t put enough trust and faith into those around her. She struggles with taking on to much at once and burning herself out. She tries to hard to fix everything by herself and tends to push the people she cares most away from her. How does the character picture himself/herself? - She doesn’t see or view herself as the legend she is slowly becoming. She’s very humble and feels as though she is at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to anything she does. There is always room for improvement. How do others see him/her? - One of the best Demon Slayers there are out there, many people are fame struck when the come meet her because she is from a long demon slayer that dates back to some of the earliest centries of human culture and society. This causes her and Van to move a lot.

Most valued possession: - The rapier sword that she was gifted too by her father as he died from a fatal wound during a battle with a demon. It is the same rapier sword that she used to kill said demon that murdered her father.

Is he/she motivated by possibility or necessity? - Necessity. She knows that she is needed because there are so few people left on the planet with gifts like hers ((I.e Magical abilities)) How does he/she view the future and/or the past? - Sage thinks there is a grim future for humanity and has little faith in those around her. She tries not to think about the past either but uses it as motivation to keep moving forward. What is his/her philosophy on life and death? - She fears death more than anything, only because she doesn’t know what kind of afterlife she will have. Sage doesn’t think death is the end, and believe there is life beyond death. She wants to live as long as she can, possibly growing old with Van. What kind of energy level do they usually have? Sleepy and depressed. She’s not a bubbly person and is very serious and stoic and quiet.

Does he/she have a temper? Yes but only if you push her to the edge or if she’s been cornered in some way.

Polite or rude? Rude Stingy or generous? Generous Leader or a follower? Leader More happy by themselves or in a group? By herself What is his/her sexual preference/experience/values? - Sage is bisexual, monogamous, and demisexual. Before she married Vanderlinde she dated both men and women. She doesn’t sleep around and find causal sex repulsive ((for her, she doesn’t care what other people do with their sex lives)) -History/Background- - Sage was born from a Japanese mother and a German father. She was born in Japan but her family moved around every few years due to being members of a secret society dedicated to exterminating demons. Her mother is still alive however her father died when she was 17 years old in a fatal battle with a Demon. - She has spent almost her entire life working for a secret society of demon slayers, which she took on as a full-time job after her father died. - Sage has an older half brother named Kael, they share the same mother but a different father. - She received formal schooling through the secret soceity she worked for. She was able to still get her high school education while traveling around the world to slay demons. - She met Vanderlinde when she was 20 years old and after just moving to the United States. Vanderlinde was a priest at the time and Sage had just enrolled in university for a chemistry degree. They quickly fell in love and Sage welcomed Vanderlinde into her secret society with open arms and Vanderlinde happily joined.

((There is so much more to Sage’s backstory I’m just TIRED and SLEEPY so this is all ya’ll get.))

___________________________________________

Vanderlinde Helvig:

Age: 31 Gender: Male Race: Cucasion, Scandinavian descent. Status: Alive Build/Body Type/Physical Frame: Tol Height: 6′0″ Weight: 230 lbs Skin: White Hair: Short blonde fluffy hair Eyes: Green Other defining features/extra anatomy: He has several tattoos, all of them are based of Nordic Mythology, Nordic Ruins, and Scandinavian Vikings Voice: Deep but soothing. Imagine what butter would sound like if it could talk.SMOOTH Style: Business Causal, he’s a professor so he wears a lot of dress shirts and sweaters. This boy loves his cashmere sweaters.

Loves/Favorites: - His smol wife - Music ((He loves pop punk, rock, grunge, metal, etc etc)) - THE LORD ALL MIGHTY - Sunday Prayer - His Students - Teaching - Nordic Mythology - Cooking - PEACE AND LOVE - Coffee and tea. - Summer and Fall - Going to concerts/rock shows - Motorcycles

Hates: - Spring and Winter - Unnecessary arguments/debates - People who refuse to educate themselves - Lazy Students - Grading paper work - People who don’t know how to drive - Demonic/Evil Spirits - Pepsi ((He’s a Coke-a-cola person)) - Alcohol ((And Drunk people. If you are drunk he won’t even try and talk to you))

Hobbies: - Reading - Writing ((He’s written many books about religious study books)) - Exploring the unknown ((He breaks your modern Indiana Jones tbh lmao)) - Providing Exorcisms/religious healing/cleanings - Working out/staying fit - Researching religions and mythology

Hopes/Dreams: - WORLD PEACE - That everyone can be happy and treated equally - To destroy every demonic/evil spirit - To have a child one day, just one. Doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl he’ll love them the same. - To be recognized worldwide for his work and struggles.

Fears/Nightmares: - Losing Sage ((In any way. Like if she’s killed or if she leaves him etc etc.)) - Becoming possessed and harming people. - The Devil/Lucifer/Satan - Demonic spirits ((He’s always afraid of them even if he’d confronted by them)) - Heights/Being up high - The ocean

Best Quality: - Vanderlinde is a very mild-mannered person. It’s hard to piss him off, he’s very calm and collective and has incredible control over his emotions. People often describe him with a “healing” personality and an “open mind.” Greatest Flaw: - He lets his fears control him. Too often he runs away from things that quiet literally scare him. He is not a fighter and doesn’t enjoy fighting, he’d rather run away defend himself or those around him. This often leads people to say he is cowardly. How does the character picture himself/herself? - Vanderlinde sees himself as a weak softy who can’t win a single physically fight. He doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence so he doubts himself and his skills way too much. He thinks he a push-over that anyone could walk all over. How do others see him/her? - Many people view Vanderlinde as an incredibly intelligent and kind professor who cares about his student’s education more than anything in the world. ((Next to his love for Sage)) People describe him as a very kind and loving person with a big heart.

Most valued possession: - His rosary, he carries it with him always. It was a gift to him from a priest that change his views on Christianity and other religions.

Is he/she motivated by possibility or necessity? - Necessity. Vanderlinde knows there aren’t enough people in the world fighting the dark forces. He knows it is his duty to educate the masses about what is going on when no one is looking. How does he/she view the future and/or the past? - Vanderlinde hopes for a pretty and peaceful future, a safe world where his child can grow up without fear. What is his/her philosophy on life and death? - Vanderlinde does not fear death, he knows that he is going to Hell anyway, so he might as well enjoy his life to the fullest until that day comes. What kind of energy level do they usually have? He’s very relaxed, calm and cool. He’s known for wearing a comforting smile and using healing words to lift people up and make them feel better about themselves.

Does he/she have a temper? No. Vanderlinde has incredible control over his emotions. Even when he’s pissed off he’s still nice, happy, and trying his best to please others.

Polite or rude? Polite Stingy or generous? Generous Leader or a follower? Leader More happy by themselves or in a group? By himself What is his/her sexual preference/experience/values? - Vanderlinde is a straight monogamous male. He’s experimented before here and there but he prefers women for the most part. He is very private about his sex life and gets very uncomfortable when people talk/ask about it. -History/Background- - Vanderlinde grew up in an orphanage for wayward boys, he never knew his parents and refuses to look into them. He was born in the United States. He doesn’t want to know why or how he ended up at the orphanage. It was run by a Catholic church, where he grew up with a deep faith in the Lord. He began to question his faith when the Priest he looked up to had passed away. - Around 18 years old Vanderlinde left the orphanage and went on a soul searching journal across the United State. He was homeless during this time as he traveled cross country, drinking, doing drugs and learning about all different types of faith. When he turned 20 he turned back to the Church and became a priest for the next five years. - He met Sage when he was 25, she was 20 at the time. Because she was a pagan witch, Vanderlinde was punished for getting himself involved with her. At the same time, he also got in trouble for researching other religions other than Christianity. He chose to renounce his priesthood and left the church because he did not agree with their rules. After that, Vanderlinde worked towards becoming a professor at the local university where he could freely research and teach others - After he fell in love with Sage, Vanderlinde joined her secret society, more than happy to join a cause he believed in and was willing to fight for.

((Again, there is so much more to Vanderlinde’s back story but Im just so tired and I wanted to quickly summarize the 20 pages I have for these two dorks.))

[themattress]

Wow. Tomoko Kanemaki SUCKS!

I decided to be masochistic and read back through the KH2 novels by Tomoko Kanemaki. And I just have to say: that there are actually people out there who like her writing and consider it to be in as good or superior to the games astounds me. These books are awful.

When they just straight-up adapt the game to text like the KH novels and the COM novels (except for the R/R one, but R/R sucks anyway), it’s fine. They even do the visits to Land of Dragons, Beast’s Castle and Olympus Coliseum better than the KH2 manga does, plus swaps in Agrabah for the far more important Port Royal. But that’s the only good thing I can say about them. In literally every other regard, the game and manga are infinitely superior.

The main problem is simple to sum up: Kanemaki is a fanfic writer. A pretty stereotypical KH fangirl. This in of itself wouldn’t be a problem if she weren’t adapting the games, but she is, and when she combines the game adaptations with her own fanfic based on what she wants to see, there is inevitably going to be a clash between them. The story written by Kazushige Nojima that she is adapting to novel form does not gel at all with what she writes, and as a result she has to either change that story (to the detriment of both it and its characters) or she neglects to change it even when it directly contradicts her own writing. This happens so much that it really makes for an excruciating reading experience. So let me list all of my problems with these novels point by point, to clarify just why Kanemaki’s writing fails so hard.

- I’ll get the biggest one out of the way right off the bat: Kanemaki is obsessed - and I mean obsessed - with the existential plight of the Nobodies, which includes the Draco in Leather Pants treatment to Organization XIII (”Is it really wrong to seek what you’ve lost?” is asked at one point, as though it’s a profound question. Um, when you’re doing so by inflicting that exact same loss upon millions of innocent people, yes it is!) The worst part is that characters (usually Namine, but Axel, Riku, Saix, Xemnas and even Ansem the Wise get on it at some points) are constantly repeating the exact same angsty inner monologues and internal (and sometime external) quasi-philosophical debates about Nobodies. I’m not kidding, it’s usually word-for-word. “Is it right for Nobodies to exist?” “Nobodies have nowhere to go or call home”. “Do Nobodies really lack hearts?” “What defines a heart?” “If Nobodies don’t have hearts, then why do they feel such-and-such?” “Why were Nobodies even born?” “Nobodies aren’t meant to exist, but does that still mean...?” And so on and so on, blah, blah, BLAH. Hearing this over and over and over and OVER again throughout my reading of the novels doesn’t make me more sympathetic of the Nobodies, it actually makes me less sympathetic and want them to go away so I don’t have to keep reading the same damn woe-is-me grade school-level existentialism! I want to keep reading about Sora, Donald and Goofy, damn it!

- Three characters who were mostly on the sidelines in KH2 somehow get a majority of time and focus here: Riku, Axel and Namine. They are even forced into an apocryphal trio together. They are basically treated as the de-facto secondary main characters next to Sora, Donald and Goofy, with their actions and development being given equal importance. Actually, that’s a lie - Riku, Axel and Namine are honestly given more importance. There is so much wrong about this - not only does the trio not feel organic and reek of bad fanfic, but each character in it isn’t well portrayed at all compared to the game or even the manga.

- Riku had the most potential, since he’s always a major character and a more talented writer could’ve come up with more feasible things for him to have been doing off-screen during KH2. But what Kanemaki has him do is ridiculous. If it’s not just stalking Sora, Donald and Goofy as a silent protector (which is the least interesting thing you could do with him), it’s bullshit with Axel and Namine, or fighting Saix midway through even though Kanemaki still keeps Saix’s later line of “Didn’t Roxas take care of you?”, or having him fight Xemnas in the Old Mansion only for Ansem the Wise to show up and Xemnas then just...retreat for no reason, letting Ansem live and thus ensuring the later destruction of his Kingdom Hearts like a dumbass!  And through all of this, she frequently makes Riku default back into snarky, arrogant asshole mode, which doesn’t fit his character at this point at all. Also, while I saw no deliberate yaoi bait in the writing of the KH2 game, it’s definitely present in these novels.

- Axel. Oh my God. Anyone who hates what was done with him as Lea in the games, you should blame Kanemaki, since she actually ran with that kind of writing and characterization for him in these novels long before that happened in the games. He is treated as a totally trustworthy good guy who is a great friend to Roxas, Riku and Namine. The one dick move Kanemaki has him make is quickly backtracked on and then swept under the rug. His whole villainous role is whitewashed at every turn, from both what he intended with Roxas (legit deciding to kill him is changed to attempting a murder/suicide so that he can die with his best friend) to everything concerning Kairi (no, he didn’t kidnap her at all, that point is hammered in frequently, he was going to take her to Namine and they’d then see Sora together! And he didn’t want to turn Sora into a Heartless, that was a wrongful assumption on Saix’s part! And Saix summoned those Dusks on Destiny Islands, not Axel! Axel is chivalrous and heroic and does everything possible to protect and save Kairi! Gag me.) It’s so obnoxious, and beyond removing all of the character’s edge, it’s a blatant case of giving a character a major role in a story that they aren’t supposed to have one in just because he’s a favorite of the writer.

- Namine is an equally blatant case of this, but her case might be even worse. Not only is she THE source of the repetitive woe-is-me existential Nobody monologues and debates, with her whole character arc being changed to revolve around this which honestly makes her unintentionally unsympathetic and annoying, but this portrayal of her has a negative effect on her in both fandom and canon. In terms of fandom, a cult of bad apples (usually yaoi fangirls who already hated Kairi) arose around Namine following KH2, declaring her as superior to Kairi in every way and worthy of being the real main heroine of the KH series. Not only is this false, but it arguably got started because of these novels (translations of which had made their way online long before they were localized), where a character who literally only got 10 minutes of screentime in the game literally gets transformed into the main heroine and one of the most frequently appearing characters in general, even if her “character development” is horribly written and amounts to her being a mouthpiece for Kanemaki’s views. Then again, maybe they just projected onto Namine due to her introverted, fond-of-drawing nature, and Kanemaki was just one of them and thus produced something that kept them going. It’s a Chicken/Egg type of thing, I guess. But whatever the case, what it did in canon was worse. Kanemaki was the first to write for Namine after KH2, in 358/2 Days, and her characterization of her translated in game form to the stagnant caricatured plot device that Nomura then realized was easy to write for and convenient for making other convoluted plot turns happen. 

- Come to think of it, Kanemaki’s partnering up with Nomura for Days probably did a lot more harm than just with Namine. Because her obsession with the “What Measure is a Non-Human?” trope never truly leaves the series after Days. It doesn’t pop up in BBS, since that was being worked on before Days, but everything afterwards is sure to feature it in some abysmal way or another, whether it be Nobodies, replicas, data copies or beings of pure darkness. The “Nobodies have hearts after all” comes straight from her writing (even if she had it as a needless overcomplication of the original idea that strong hearts can share feelings with those without it and thus serve as a heart for them too, while Nomura’s retcon is just “Nah, the body can regrow a heart, Xemnas lied”.) A lot of KH3′s worst writing might have not existed had Nomura not picked up on Kanemaki’s fixation with woobified “non-beings”.

- Sora honestly feels like an afterthought for Kanemaki. She’s so eager to write new fanficcy material for other characters, but not for the actual main protagonist, who only gets straight-up game adaptation. Oh, except that some of his lines that were “mean” to the Nobodies (and thus “OOC”, as both KH2-hating anon and Kanemaki seem to think) are changed or cut out.

- Y’know how the KH2 manga made Kairi even better than her game portrayal? Yeah, well this novel makes her far worse. First off, her defiant “you’re not acting very friendly!” to Axel is cut because Axel is whitewashed in that moment (he even readies himself to defend Kairi from the Dusks which Saix summons). Later, she does not get away from Axel because he was never kidnapping her to begin with here. She then realizes that he’s really a good person before Saix kidnaps her, with Axel desperately trying to protect her. She then only shows up toward the end when Axel once again comes to be her hero (again thwarted by that dastardly Saix), with her moping about how she can do nothing to help the brave, noble Axel. (I feel sick just typing this...) In the finale, not only does Kanemaki not take advantage of the potential Kairi development that the game relegated to optional text boxes, but she actually destroys Kairi’s entire arc long before BBS did by making one of her few additions to Kairi be an inner monologue she has on the shore of Destiny Islands alongside Mickey, Donald and Goofy just before Sora and Riku make it back, where she’s just wishing with all her heart that they’ll come back because “We’re here waiting for you. We’ll always wait for you.” BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. Kanemaki, just like Nomura and Oka, clearly has no interest in Kairi as a character on her own. She is used here as a plot device for the character development of Axel and Namine, characters she is interested in, even though Kairi had more significance and screentime than them by far in the actual KH2 game. Geez, even Nojima tried with her!

- Roxas is written just fine during the prologue, since his scenes are just lifted from the game. But when he resurfaces in the final novel, added material make Axel be the most important thing on his mind. Even his final thoughts as he makes the full merging with Sora is that he hopes to meet Axel again. More deliberate yaoi-baiting, and more shoving Axel down our throats. Hell, that last novel is even named “Anthem - Meet Again / Axel Last Stand”. God damn it, Kanemaki, Axel was not important to KH2. It’s not his story. Get over it already!

- Hey, remember how in the game DiZ/ Ansem the Wise did a total character 180 due to offscreen reasons when he came back after the prologue? That was dumb. The novels add new scenes for him, so Kanemaki could actually rectify this issue....OR she just repeats it, since the first new scene she gives him also has him in 180 mode due to offscreen reasons! 

- Xemnas and Saix both have their levels of menace neutered thanks to the existential angst of the Nobodies affecting them too, with none of their inner monologues bemoaning their fates really adding up with their actions. The game let you make up your own mind as to whether you found them sympathetic despite their monstrous behavior, but Kanemaki is clearly trying to force the sympathy angle, and it really lessens them, especially Xemnas. 

- Really, only Xigbar, Xaldin, Demyx, Luxord, and the trio of Hayner, Pence and Olette were written completely accurately out of the KH-original cast. Nothing felt out of place with them.

- Other nonsensical fanficcy events besides what I’ve already mentioned include bringing stuff from COM (like Repliku) back up frequently instead of keeping focus on the story at hand, a totally different version of how Namine and Axel split from Riku following the prologue (one that continues making Namine unintentionally unsympathetic), Riku having Mickey make the promise after the prologue before Kanemaki’s own 358/2 Days retcons this to happening before it, Riku meeting with Maleficent in Hollow Bastion, Mickey meeting with Axel in Hollow Bastion, Axel being the one to wake Goofy up after his “death”, Axel having a sort of odd friendship with Pluto, Ansem the Wise being the one to provide the box of clues for Riku to give, Axel pretending to betray Riku and Namine so that he gets let back into the Organization and thus be able to rescue Kairi, meetings between the Organization where they talk about totally different and less interesting matters than they did in the game, and having Namine stalk the group throughout the finale as she thinks her last pretentious inner monologues. Also, given its subject matter and how it plays during Days’ opening, I swear to God that Kanemaki created the Axel/Roxas ghost scene that Nomura added to KH2:FM. That it shows up in the last novel, word-for-word, a month before KH2:FM’s release, proves this.

- The misplacement of Disney Castle. This one REALLY bothers me. She places Disney Castle between Beast’s Castle and Port Royal in the third novel. This makes no sense whatsoever, since not only was this meant to be Maleficent’s re-introduction to Sora, Donald and Goofy, but now it comes after Maleficent already made an alliance with Sora and his friends at Hollow Bastion! And then all of a sudden, she’s no longer keeping the Nobodies at bay and is back to self-interested villainy! And there isn’t any dialogue explaining this away or anything!  We still have Maleficent saying “If it isn't the wretched Keyblade holder and his pitiful lackeys!” as if she hadn’t agreed to temporarily join forces with said wretched Keyblade holder and his pitiful lackeys! Way to ruin one of the best Disney world visits, Kanemaki!

- The whole finale and especially the ending itself, which were so powerful in both the game and even the manga, has no power in the light novel style of writing Kanemaki uses. Part of that isn’t Kanemaki’s fault, since so much of the finale’s greatness is visual and that obviously can’t be recaptured in text form. And yet she still makes some baffling pacing decisions, with stuff like the aforementioned Namine stalking passages throwing the whole thing off, LOL moments such as Riku himself outright admitting that he has no idea where he got Kairi’s Keyblade also breaking the immersion, character alterations like to Xemnas and Kairi ruining the effectiveness of things they do, and a truly WTF-inducing final chapter where the entire Secret Ansem Report is put before a novelization of both the credits scene where Sora sees Kairi’s drawing in the Secret Place and the epilogue scene where they get the King’s letter.

Overall, these novels just don’t feel like Kingdom Hearts II to me. Even the KH2 manga, the middle of its first half notwithstanding, felt like it. This does not. And that’s because whatever the faults in its narrative, KH2′s story was first and foremost a fun Disney/Square crossover adventure starring Sora, Donald and Goofy, with angsty existentialism merely being one of its themes and meant more for players to think about and discuss rather than the characters. The novels tell a story about angsty existentialism starring characters who think about and discuss it, with Sora, Donald and Goofy’s adventures being a passionless afterthought. That there are people who honestly think that Kanemaki doing this “fleshes out the characters” is shameful. Constant angst and grade school-level philosophical circle-jerking is not character depth. It is pretension of depth, hence the word “pretentious” which fits perfectly here. It takes a lot more than talking and expressing feelings at length to constitute character development. It requires meaningful actions, and it requires some form of growth and change. Kanemaki’s characters are largely static, simplistically characterized beings who spin their wheels in terms of both actions and growth. Riku does not change: you can barely tell he has any kind of depression or has experienced any kind of humbling. Axel does not change: he’s a great guy from the start and has no internal problems to overcome, only the external one of being separated from Roxas. Namine does not change, she goes through the same questioning and angsting over her existence and the existence of other Nobodies until the last minute where the answer just suddenly comes to her (in fact, it was apparently in her all along and she just forgot it. Shades of Sora’s dumbass “Power of Waking” arc in KH3 here...)  Any actual development that happens with some characters (like Ansem the Wise) comes straight from the game...and Nojima didn’t write that all too well either!  There is just very little that’s enjoyable about the KH2 novels to me, and Tomoko Kanemaki’s writing is to blame for that.

In the words of Lemony Snicket: I highly advise you to not read these books.

[nighttimefjaeril]

As promised, here’s more info on the middle-schooler quartet of my Ibun “Kids investigating mysteries with shady uncle Jikaku” AU :’3

Houmei is 12-year old going on 13 (his birthday will happen during the vacation). He lives in Yokohama and is sent to visit his Great Uncle Jikaku for the summer, who used to live and work in Tokyo but has retired in a rural village in the Tohoku region, where he hails from.

Given we literally don’t know anything about Houmei’s backround, I’m having a hard time coming up with anything too specific linked to his family life; as a general rule, I’d say his family situation isn’t the easiest. He lives with a caretaker, and Jikaku is related to them. The two are completely estranged, and the reason he was sent to him was because of issues between him and his caretaker; as he’d become increasingly rebellious and problematic growing up, hoping that Jikaku would straighten him : D But caretaker definitely has issues with their life as well. Overall, things at home aren’t the best and Houmei isn’t all too unhappy to live at his uncle’s for a couple of months, despite having troubles adapting to such a different lifestyle at first : D He’s an extremely intelligent and curious kid, a day-dreamer, and an avid reader of mystery and fantasy novels. He comes off as extremely well-mannered at first, which surprises Jikaku given the situation he was told, but he soon learns that it’s all an act of course : D He knows how to hold a façade in order to get away with things, and is extremely manipulative towards adults and kids his age alike. At first the other boys find him odd as he talks of weird stuff and acts ditzy at times, but as they’re all misfits they end up taking the outsider in pretty much right away. He’s the type to hide his problems , real feelings and thoughts behind a dorky smile. He doesn’t have much interest in leadership, but thanks to his natural charisma and adventurous spirit he ends up being the driving force of the group by default. On the other hand, he can be a bit of a slob at times and gives into laziness easily. Much like Sho'un, he has a problem with authority, but unlike him he’s able to find sneaky ways to break the rules. As for now he has no definite life plans nor dreams; he knows that if he’d work hard enough he could easily enter any college and take on any career, but he also very little interest in formal studies and he’s the type who prefers researching stuff on his own (he has a very broad knowledge for a kid his age, but he’s not driven enough in his studies for his level of intelligence and pretty listless). His favorite subject is literature, but he wouldn’t have troubles with anything if only he applied himself. His hobbies include reading and writing, skateboards, videogames and daydreaming. He’s learning to play guitar but he’s too lazy to practice often (he also has a pretty good voice).

Jyoan is a 13-year old going on 14 (his birthday is in late September). He lives with his mother and two sisters (one older and one younger) and his younger sister’s father. His biological dad is not in the picture. He doesn’t have a good relantionship with his step dad and his family situation also isn’t ideal, and for that reason he tries to stay away from his house as much as possible (he usually stays at Ganpuku’s house most days of the week). His family was also struggling with money a lot in the past, even though nowadays they’re doing better economically after his mother got married again, he’s still known as the “poor kid” at school, and he was being made fun a lot for being… extremely feminine (no day has gone by without him being called a fag by classmates or his step dad). He used to be bullied a lot more in the past, until he started to clam back (also his friendship with dangerous kid Sho'un made the transition easier :D He’s considered a bit of a punk himself by his peers). Of all his friends, he’s the one who hates living in the village the most and dreams of moving in the city as soon as possible. He’s an extremely ambitious and driven kid, and puts his status above all; he lives for receiving praise and attention by others and puts a lot of efforts in everything he does for that; he has good grades but he’s the type to truly shine only in what he likes (he excels in arts). He’s a sensitive boy, pretty mature and deep for his age (or so he thinks lol), but at the same time can act pretty bratty and and has a really bad temper; the more he’s obedient with teachers and authorative figures the worse his attitude towards with his friends and siblings. He’s also extremely foul-mouthed and gets reprimended for it a lot by adults. He may or may not have a one-sided rivalry with Houmei, as he basically represents everything he wishes to be… or so he thinks (not that he would dare to admit that of course). His hobbies include fashion, drawing, pretentious movies and books that are way beyond his comprehension level for his age (but he still watches/reads them anyways ‘cause that’s what cool kids do right?) and singing.

Malcolm (aka Ganpuku) is 13 (he was born the same year as Houmei but has had his birthday already). Being born in May he started school one year earlier and so he’s in the same grade as Jyoan and Sho'un (they’re all classmates as there is only one class per grade in the local middle school, too). He lives with his parents and one older sister, and his family owns the local convenience store. Ever since he was a child he has been helping his parents carrying it voluntarily as he really likes working there, so he spends a lot of time inside the shop. He has quite the business acumen and loves money and hopes to be able to better his family’s average income someday with a business-oriented job. He has a very good relantionship with his parents, especially his mother. His family hails from the US, but he and his sister were born in Japan. Because of their western appearance and names, they have been both seen as outsiders in the village small community and could never really fit in, if not with the other misfits. For that reason he hates using his real name and goes under “Maru” instead, as it’s close to the japanese pronunciation of “Mal”. He and Jyoan have been best friends since kindergarden, and he gets along with his sister a lot too. He’s a very bright, loud and cheerful kid, he’s the friendlist of the trio and he’s the one who accepts Houmei into their group right away. His hobbies include eating and cooking, as well as manga and videogames: one could say he’s a bit more childish than the others, but he’s often more insightful and smarter than people give him credit for. He’s also extremely affectionate and protective of his friends and family. His grade are pretty good, and he’s basically excels in everything his deskmate Jyoan doesn’t and viceversa :D He’s good with maths, science and economics (and English ofc as it’s the language spoken home), while Jyoan is better at humanities and art. He has pretty clear plans for the future and he definitely wants to go to college and land a high-paying job in the economics field, to grant his family and himself financial stability. Much like Houmei, he also falls victim to laziness pretty often, which may be a hindrance to his dreams of success :D (I’ve talked about his hobbies before, I would include that he’s learning to play the piano but wishes to switch to something more “fun”, like drums; he’s also into soccer and baseball and fantasy books/videogames)

Sho'un is 13 going on 14 (his birthday is in December). He’s an only child and his father is a monk and owner of the local temple (in Japan monks can marry and have children). As you can imagine from his appearance and rebellious attitude, he isn’t exactly the dream heir his father wishes, and for that reason his relantionship with his parents are extremely tense. He also tries to avoid being at home as much as possible and sleeps over at either Ganpuku’s or at his cousin Ryuzen’s student apartment in the city(he doesn’t really get along with him all that much, but he likes his cooler roomates better lmao). From a very early age he was considered a “difficult kid” for a his rebellious strike and attraction to… darker things (he’s the type who idolizes yakuza, smokes in the school bathroom and steals shit as a test of courage). For his reason he has a pretty bad reputation in town and peers and thier parents are pretty scared of him. That, coupled with the failed expectations of his parents, just reinforced his bad attitude and made things worse. He used to be pretty lonesome until he became friends with Jyoan and Ganpuku when they started middle school, thanks to their involvement with the music club. In fact music is his biggest passion, he plays bass and guitar and wishes to start a band someday (school band secondary plot? Probably lol). Music and art are the only subjects that interest him, as for the rest he’s a pretty much a slacker who doesn’t put effort in his studies and has terrible grades. He often says that if he can’t make as a musician, he would open a tattoo and piercing studio. Despite his “tough” exterior, he’s actually a pretty laid-back and reserved kid, not very talkative but mindful, and once you get to know him he’s actually very caring and approachable. He’s the type to defend his friends no matter what, and follows his own moral code that doesn’t accept dishonesty nor ambiguity. He has a somewhat melancholic and pessimistic streak that he tries to conceal with his insolence; of all the four he’s the one who has more… grown-up interests (meaning he’s the only one who’s very much into girls, the others are a bit of late-bloomers in comparison^^’); he’s also the one who tries to bond with the older guys via his cousin, and he tries to emulate them. His hobbies include gravure magazines gangster movies, rock and punk music, playing instruments and sketching out tattoo design.

[theycallmebuddy-blog]

My “Family”

As you have guessed by now, the mercs that found me took me in for much longer than they had thought they would, and eventually I became part of their family. I think before I begin creating actual blogs about regular daily life, I had introduce them first.

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Yankee

Real Name: Nathan [REDACTED]

Codename: Yankee

Age: 25 (born [REDACTED], 1980)

Nationality: American (born in Massachusetts, raised in New York)

Specialty: Run and Gun Renegade 

Desc.: 

A rebel of the highest degree, Yankee is a riot to be around. In fact, he’s the closest thing I have to an older brother. He doesn’t have much respect for those he doesn’t like (Megalo, Megalo!) but is quite loyal otherwise. He’s one cocky son-of-a-bitch, on and off the battlefield. His favourite thing to do on the battlefield is disappear, then reappear behind the enemy and give them a nice dose of “Oh shit” before he blows their head off. His favourite thing off the battlefield is watching baseball and spending time with his dog, General Woofers.

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Megalo

Real Name: [REDACTED]

Codename: Megalo

Age: ...we think he’s in his 30s?

Nationality: ...somewhere in Europe.

Specialty: “All known forms of espionage”

Desc.:

Sly, sassy, and downright classy, Megalo doesn’t take anyone’s shit and is ready to tell you if you’re being an idiot. He’s a man of mystery with a dark secret he’ll go to any lengths to hide. He obscures his face with a plastic white mask that’s molded so well to his face that it moves as if it was his face. His heir of mystery is helped by his absolutely indistinguishable accent and his way of never sharing any information about himself. He’s what we call a spy, though he’ll never “degrade himself with such a label”. His favourite thing on the battlefield is to slip away once he’s been caught. His favourite thing off the battlefield is to find out more about you, for better or worse (his regular favourite things to do are reading, writing, and sneaking off base to do god knows what). It doesn’t matter if you have a secret you’re hiding from the rest of the group. Megalo knows.

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Root

Real Name: Daniel Brown

Codename: Root (I think it’s short for Rootin-Tootin but he’s never confirmed or denied)

Age: 41 (born [REDACTED], 1964)

Nationality: American (Texas, born and raised)

Specialty: Speedy Offense/Defense Construction (and occasional shootin’)

Desc.:

Always bettering himself and his craft, Root is a kind soul with a dedication to protection. He’s the fastest builder the world has possibly ever seen, though you’ll never hear that from him. He’s a humble man with enough childhood stories to last you an entire night curled up in a blanket, just listening. He’s often the voice of reason between any fights, though he’s not afraid to defend his honor as well. His favourite thing on the battlefield is when he gets to protect a teammate with his defensive builds. His favourite thing off the battlefield is learning new things (for the past year or so, it’s been mechanics), cooking, and telling stories of his childhood.

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Sergeant 

Real Name: [REDACTED]

Codename: Sergeant

Age: 47 (born [REDACTED], 1958)

Nationality: American (Wisconsin, born and raised)

Specialty: Sharpshot + Military Tactician

Desc.:

Blunt and forever to the point, Sergeant is your guy when it comes to any type of warfare. After being drafted [REDACTED] War between [REDACTED] - [REDACTED], Sergeant found purpose in his life in the loving hands of warfare and bloodshed. He spent [REDACTED] more years in his branch before being honorably discharged. Unfortunately, after being discharged, some of his less savory memories from the War began to haunt him, leading him to cope with copious amounts of alcohol. Recently, Lucifer has taken to developing a type of medicine for his condition that can be taken with alcohol (he doesn’t drink anything else, mind you) to administer to him without notice. Sergeant’s favorite thing on the battlefield is taking out the leader of the enemy forces. His favorite thing off the battlefield is watching old war movies, telling stories of his childhood, and secretly watching the 1985 “Adventures of the Gummi Bears” show (acc. to Megalo).

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Lucifer

Real Name: Victor [REDACTED]

Codename: Lucifer

Age: 38 (born [REDACTED, 1967)

Nationality: Danish (Specific Location Unknown)

Specialty: Medical Sciences + Innovation

Desc.:

A scholar of everything life-saving, Lucifer is the true Mengele of the group. His codename came after he accidentally killed a past group member from performing twenty-three experiments with his self-made equipment on them for three days straight. He’s a bit loose in morals when it comes to thinking of others as people and not experiments, but he does care for his cohorts. In fact, he’s promised them that he will never experiment on a live body again, and now instead uses the cadavers of the enemy forces. His favourite thing on the battlefield is getting to heal a teammate that was close to death. His favourite thing off the battlefield is classical Beethoven and working on his “respawninator”...whatever that is.

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Miss Quill

Real Name: Emma Quill 

Codename: Miss Quill

Age: 24 (born [REDACTED], 1981)

Nationality: British (birthplace unknown, raised in London) 

Specialty: Administrator of the Mercs + Technological Genius

Desc.:

Despite being the youngest of the team, Miss Quill has quite possibly the most important job. She works closely with a person only known as “The Agent”, who secretly oversees the company from the shadows. Miss Quill’s job is to act as ringleader to the rest of the mercenaries, as well as run some of the tech in their base supplied by the company. She’s a mild-mannered, kind, and understanding genius who loves being able to help as much as possible, even if it means giving up something of herself. Her favourite thing on the battlefield is the victory, knowing she’s done a good job administrating her team. Her favourite thing off the battlefield is reading, listening to jazz/swing music, cooking, and teaching me the ways of life.

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As for me...well, I’ll try to fill in what I can.

Buddy

Real Name: Amélie Quill (previous name unknown)

Codename/Nickname: Buddy

Age: 14 (born Unknown, 1991) ((found after numerous tests))

Nationality: ...we think I’m Puertorican? Or Mexican?

Specialty: Parkour/Dodge Gunning + Robotic/Technological “Innovator”

Desc.:

After waking up in a desert, I spent 578 days searching for any signs of salvation. I found it in my “family”. I work with my “family” in the merc business, but have since been put on unpaid vacation so I may resume my schooling (against my wishes). I’d do anything to save my family, even if it means risking life and limb. My favourite thing on the battlefield is to watch the dazed look on my enemy’s face when I manage to dodge their bullets and simultaneously win the high ground. My favourite thing off the battlefield is writing, drawing (I’m finally starting to learn digital art), and listening to punk, rock, or and swing music.

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[imaginemycroftholmes]

Submission form

(I’m actually the sassytrickster666 but my computer crashed so my friend offered to send it in :))

Name: Luci

Nationality: Dutch

Age (note that if you below 21 your scores may be lower until age of legality): 21

Personality Type: My MBTI type is INTJ and my enneagram is 5w6.

Level of Education: Currently working on getting my Bachelor at Erasmus.

Best Subject: English, Physics, Art.

Worst Subject: PE ( I detest soccer and being forced to play it, especially when the field looks like Swiss cheese… so many awkward falls).

Favorite Subject: English, Biology

5 Hobbies (if applicable): drawing, reading, writing, hiking and baking.

Favorite Genre of Music: Rock (Classic or Hard), some metal and occasionally classical music.

Movies/Books: It’s either mystery or science-fiction.

Last song you listened to on repeat: Head like a hole- Nine Inch Nails

Last phrase you said to another living person: ‘Look, if it does go wrong I’ll help you hide the body.’ (Friend of mine was going to break up with her horrible boyfriend.)

How many blankets do you sleep with: So. Many. About 3 at the moment.

7 note worthy skills: I’m loyal to a fault, determined/passionate, logical, humble, very caring, independent and I remember EVERYTHING.  

7 noticeable sins: I procrastinate. A lot. The remembering everything is also a sin. I have zero self-esteem and I tend to build very high and thick emotional walls. I’m selectively lazy, I eat my feelings and I often come off as cold to strangers (I’m pretty sarcastic and apparently I have a ‘resting bitch face’, but if you get to know me I am I dare say pretty funny and outgoing).

Allergies/impairments/illnesses: I’m allergic to mosquito bites and certain antibiotics. I have dealth with depression and anxiety in the past.

Level of Intelligence on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being dumb, 2 being below average, 3 being average, 4 being above average and 5 being genius): 4, I guess.

Level of Fitness on a scale of 1 to 5( 1 being obese, 2 being overweight, 3 being average, 4 being fit and 5 being skinny): 3.

Level of Attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being Anderson, 2 being below average, 3 being average, 4 being above average and 5 being Mycroft): I feel like a 1 or 2, like I said my self-esteem is not my strong suit, though I’m very lucky to have sweet friends that make me feel more empowered.

Feline, canine or both: Canine, dogs are loyal and usually sweethearts that notice how you feel and act on it. I do like cats, but just don’t really understand them very well as I was raised with dogs.

Confidence Level on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being nonexistent, 2 low, 3 average, 4 above average and 5 Sherlock): 2-3. In certain areas I’m not hugely confident. Though if I know I’m right about something or good in something I won’t hesitate to show it.

Position in the Family (oldest, youngest, middle): It’s pretty complicated. In one I’m the –sort of- youngest in the other the older sister/something like that.

Eye Color: Grey-Blueish more Blue though

Hair Color and Length: It’s currently black with a red glow and it’s pretty long (it reaches my waist).

Height: 173 cm

Combat level on a scale 1 to 5 (1 being useless, 2 being somewhat capable, 3 being average, 4 being more than capable and 5 being expert): 4, did some martial arts and had some gun training. I dislike fighting but will defend myself or the ones I care about.

Your normal dress: When I’m in a hurry black jeans, a shirt or hoody,a jacket and boots. When I’m not black jeans with a blouse or flannel, a blazer and dress shoes.

How well you take rejection on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being temper tantrum, 2 being vindictive, 3 being average, 4 being can take it like a man, and 5 being like water off of a duck’s back): 4. To be very honest I usually refrain from doing anything until I’m about 99.5% sure. Though if it goes wrong, sure it affects me, I don’t like it, but it’s not like that will make me behave like toddler that doesn’t get their way.

Languages known: Fluent in Dutch, English, German and Italian. Studying French.

Cleanliness of your bathroom on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being a crime scene, 2 being messy, 3 being average, 4 being pretty clean and 5 being perfectly spotless): 4.

How big is your circle of friends on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being nonexistent, 2 being very small, 3 being average, 4 being large, and 5 being a massive social network): 2, I prefer a couple of very close friends that I can trust 100%.

How would you rate your mental health on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being very poor, 2 being poor, 3 being average, 4 being good, and 5 being prefect): 3.

Opinions on the current Holmes family members ( Siger Holmes, Violet Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and Eurus Holmes):

 Honestly, I think that Violet is a little overbearing and somewhat cold and I doubt it is a good idea to get on her bad side.. well let’s just say she is not my absolute favourite. I think that Siger seems kind ,but is pretty much whipped. Sherlock is the typically rebellious younger brother, but so so very talented. He is way more sensitive and emotional than he lets on, but hides it quite well. I think we could get along pretty well. As for Eurus… Well, I like to think that there are multiple sides to each story, as the truth we see comes from just our own perception and might not be 100% uncompromised. She both earns my curiosity and makes me a little uneasy. Incredibly cunning, intelligent and…dangerous. I don’t scare easily though. Maybe she’s deatlh with frustrations and pain the wrong way, causing twisted views. No one is born truly evil after all. 

Please bold the following below that applies toward your submission:

Friendship

Mentorship

Relationship

Partnership

I couldn’t quite find the original form without having scrolled trough numerous answered ones, so I skipped the question portion. I mean while scrolling I came across some answers, so my mind is probably corrupted and I don’t like cheating on this. It would be an insult to the minds of both the submittees before me and my own. My apologies.  Thanks so much!

Mycroft’s answer:

It’s nice to meet you Luci but might I say that is an odd form of spelling considering its nation of origin but welcomed nonetheless. Its refreshing not to see ‘Math’ marked as the least favored subject on one of these forms although it is sad to see that physical education has taken the part. I confess that I didn’t exactly hate the subject as much as I did sharing the class with a group of very unkind peers and doing so at my own pace. Had it been more tailored to my wants I believe that my current physique and health would be indefinitely better shape than it is currently. Finding confidence in doing something unfamiliar can be daunting especially when there is pressure to do well as an older sibling however, I find it oddly comforting to remember that not everyone is an expert so should a mistake occur you can at least claim you are human and therefore capable of mistakes time and time again. You may just be the first application from the Netherlands but rest assured if you understand English and Italian learning French shall not be too difficult of a task to accomplish.  Luci you seem like that if you can muster up the courage and the drive you could do great things with your life. Higher forms of science and English (especially when its not your country’s native tongue) are ones that like math, are often what can keep a person from entering higher fields that can better benefit society so finding them on your form was very comforting to see the youth of today going somewhere. I am more than ready to offer assistance should you come across a road block and pray that moving forward you will continue to do well in your studies.

Friendship:6.9

Mentorship: 8.3

Relationship: 4.5

Partnership: 5.2

[ddproductionsw77]

Just Go To Sleep, Riles

Fandom: Girl Meets World

Pairing(s): Riarkle

Characters: Riley Matthews and Farkle Minkus

Rating: K

Description: Riley is trying to study for her Russian Lit exam but she just can’t concentrate.

Author’s Note: So, I have headcanons of the Riarkle-children and like how they all come to be and all that… this is basically born from that. IF YOU HAVE A RIARKLE ONE-SHOT REQUEST SEND IT MY WAY!!!

“Sophia Mars Minkus, you are making it very hard for Mommy to study.”

Riley grumbled and threw down the Dostoyevsky novel she’d been pouring over for hours now. Her hand slipped to the swell of her stomach, feeling a small kick against the tips her fingers. Her daughter, it seemed, was tired of studying and restless.

“Well, what do you want me to do, Bug? I gotta pass this exam.” Riley asked, tracing patterns over the fabric of her— well, Farkle’s —shirt with her fingernails.

The baby had started moving almost the second she was expected to and hadn’t seemed to stop since. These days, Riley was lucky to sleep through the night without feeling a sharp kick or a bout of hiccups and while she was elated that her daughter was healthy, she was also exhausted.

The baby kicked again, hard into Riley’s ribs, in response.

Well, that's too bad, Mommy...

Flinching and rubbing at her tummy, the brunette pulled herself to the side of the bed she’d been sitting on and just managed to get herself to her feet. Giving her head a moment to adjust to the shift in gravity, Riley started out of the bedroom and trailed down the hallway.

Boxes and various items stacked up the walls of the small hall, evidence of the young couple’s procrastination in moving in. They knew they had to get unpacked eventually but between jobs, internships, classes, and now the ever-approaching arrival of Sophia Mars Minkus there just hadn’t been time.

Topanga had made Riley feel a little better by commenting that she was astounded they had managed to even find a bigger place with how busy they were. However, the comment didn't unpack the boxes...

But obviously, with a baby on the way, they couldn’t have stayed in their original studio apartment. It was perfect for a young couple, just starting out, but didn’t quite fit a small family that was just beginning.

It started after high school, when Riley and Farkle had decided to move in together.

Farkle’s parents hadn’t been thrilled. They had already been distraught over their son choosing a girl and Columbia over Trenton and Princeton, so finding out that he would be living with said girl on top of it all had only been icing on the cake.

There had been some yelling about getting distracted and falling off course, but Farkle had made up his mind. Riley was his choice. How could she ever not be?

So, they found their little one room, studio apartment, nestled exactly halfway between Riley’s NYU and Farkle’s Columbia. It wasn't exactly glamorous... Riley had sobbed for a month after they moved in because there was no bay window and the 'water tasted different' — it didn't. Farkle had to patch drywall for the first time and ended up sticking some in Riley’s hair by accident.

But that was what just starting out was all about, right?

Being terrified?

Having no fucking clue what to do the first time something breaks?

Then bucking up and working through it together.

That was normal and for about three years, nothing changed and the space slowly became endearingly horrible. You had the kick the fridge open, hot showers only lasted 10 minutes (if you were lucky), but those things made Riley and Farkle laugh. It made it their apartment.

And then the pregnancy test came back positive about halfway through Junior year.

Things, to put it lightly, had to change.

Jennifer and Stuart had had some more yelling to do over that news. Words that hurt more than either Riley or Farkle openly admitted were said — "mistake", "regret", "screw up". Topanga had had to catch Cory when he passed out and then Farkle had been forced to try and outrun the man on the crowded New York streets.

The thing was, even with all that and being scared out of their fucking minds... Farkle and Riley were happy?

Because, holy shit, they made a tiny, little person who was going to live and breath and need them for everything.

Nothing they had ever done before seemed even remotely impressive anymore.

Riley was pregnant.

They were going to be parents.

To a baby.

A daughter, to be exact. And her name was going to be Sophia Mars Minkus, after wisdom, intellect, and her father's favorite planet, and she was going to be out of this world. But she wasn’t there quite yet.

Not that something like that would keep the little Bug from demanding attention.

Riley came to the living room and glanced at the clock on the small mantle. It was late, later than she’d been known to stay up since she’d gotten pregnant.

Months ago, Maya had called her boring when she'd left their favorite bar before even 8 o'clock. At that point, the couple hadn't disclosed the news of their little surprise to their friends and the blonde could not imagine what would be making her Honey such a party pooper. Riley'd cried the whole subway ride home. Farkle had come home two hours later, taken one look at her tearstained face, and rolled his eyes with a "Babe, you're not boring. You're pregnant."

Only this was different. She just couldn’t bring herself to put away her textbooks and novels. Russian Lit was hell but it was necessary for her Bachelor’s. She had to pass that exam.

Sophia needed a well-educated Mommy with a nice job where she could write about important things and people every day and come home to her baby girl every night. And Riley would give her that.

Another thought crossed Riley’s mind and she smiled down at her bump, “Daddy’ll be home soon, Bug. Maybe he’ll be able to get you to calm down.”

It infuriated her, but Riley couldn’t deny that Farkle was by far Sophia’s favorite, not only out of the two of them but out of everyone.

When ever he touched Riley’s stomach the baby would always shift to press against his hand and she would even kick directly against his palm. However, the most precious interaction was when Farkle would read to their daughter.

The baby Bug would always immediately settle at her father's easy, soft reading voice. Riley couldn't blame the baby though as she could barely keep her eyes opening listening to A Brief History of Time, but it still made the brunette's heart sing to witness.

Sophia was definitely going to be a Daddy's Girl, just as her mother had always been.

Wondering to the fridge, Riley worried at her lower lip as her mind wondered to the leftover homemade mac and cheese from dinner the night before. God, it sounded so good...

But she knew it wasn't good to eat right before sleep and honestly she was maybe just a little worried about the weight she'd already gained over her pregnancy. She really didn't need mac and cheese... but then again maybe Sophia did? Maybe that was the reasoning behind her craving?

Well, for Sophia...

Twenty minutes later when Farkle's key turned in the door, Riley was tucked into the couch with cold mac and cheese settled into her lap and Netflix calling her full attention to the television before her. As her fiancé came stumbling in, she shoved one last bite into her mouth and (as quickly as she was capable of) shot into an upright position.

"Oo're ome!" She exclaimed, covering her mouth.

Chuckling tiredly, Farkle ruffled his hair. It was sprinkling outside, making his walk home from the subway station a bit wetter than usual. He easily deciphered her yelp, knowing fluent 'Eating Riley'.

"Yeah, I'm home," He stepped towards her on the couch, quirking at eyebrow, "Why are you still up?"

Riley swallowed her food and shifted as Farkle slipped between her back and the armrest of the couch before laying back onto him. Her head fit just right in the crook of his neck. "I'm studying."

Glancing between the mac and cheese, television, and his fiancée, Farkle rubbed light circles over the woman's arm. "You were? Because we might want to go over what 'studying' means again."

"I was studying!" Riley defended, glaring up at his jaw line. Her eye fluttered closed at she sighed, shrugging, "Sophie got bored. Not me."

"You got bored, Bug? How could Mommy do that to you?" Farkle asked, leaning in to gently address Riley's stomach. His hand came to rest over the fabric of her shirt and Sophia nudged against his palm, drawing a tired smile.

Bring her hand up, Riley jokingly slapped Farkle's cheek, bring his gaze to her's. "I had no choice! My Russian Lit exam is tomorrow and if I don't pass-"

"Then you'll still be okay, Babe. Besides, you're going to pass, Riley! You're too smart and too damn determined not to." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her temple, shifting to nuzzle her soft hair.

Riley sighed and closed her burning eyes again, "Well, at least one of us has faith in me."

Sophia gave another hard kick and Farkle smirked, "Two of us."

"She doesn't count. She's just tired of studying." The young mother's speech was slightly slurred from exhaustion and her eyes hadn't come back open yet.

Farkle lightly ran his hand over her stomach, "Well, you seem pretty tired too."

She brought her hands down to encase his and nodded, cracking one eye open, "Maybe just a little."

"Just a little?"

"A smidgen."

"Obviously," Farkle placated, shaking his head. Kissing her lips this time, he leaned back against the couch and closed his own eyes, “Just go to sleep, Riles."

"If you insist..." She trailed off, running a finger up along his arm. "Farkle?"

"Hmm?"

"I love you."

He smiled at the ceiling, eyes still closed. "And I love you.”

AM STILL TAKING ONE-SHOT REQUESTS FOR RIARKLE!!! PLEASE SEND ME SOME!!! I LOVE WRITING THESE TWO! Also, would you like more future-Riarkle one-shots like this one? Like their lives before kids but after high school? Or bits and pieces of engaged/married/parenting life?