#but i’m obsessed with may chang and especially her design right now

[buddleu]

Out of every single Hong Lu E.G.O corrosion, I find Effervescent Corrosion’s to be the most interesting of the bunch. That’s not to say that the others are not interesting in their own right – they all are, incredibly so – but I have a lot of thoughts on Hong Lu’s Effervescent Corrosion corrosion. I’m focusing on the visual design in this post.

I’ll get straight to the point – I believe that the figure inside the clam might represent Lin Daiyu. Now, this is only a theory, and it might be embarrassingly wrong in ways I have not realized just yet. Feel free to criticize this theory as you wish. *This post relies heavily on the Two-In-One or Daiyu-Baoyu theory, so if you don’t know what that is, you should read this post first or else you might get very confused. if you don't want to read the entire thing, or just need a refresher, I believe this paragraph from the post summarizes it well: “At some point, Baoyu either dies or is brought to near death, likely through the same circumstances as in DOTRC - being beaten by his Father. To save him, his memories and consciousness would be transferred to his eye, a process not dissimilar to the one Xichun brings up in Canto 7, and implanted into Daiyu's body, causing them to become a vessel for Baoyu. This would be how Hong Lu as he is now is created.”

(I also have other observations I want to point out as well, which I will do so here.)

Like most of Hong Lu’s other E.G.Os, Effervescent Corrosion’s corrosion appearance shares a theme of restriction/loss of control, to a separate degree than most of the other sinners and different from the literal loss of control that comes with E.G.O corrosion. The figure inside the clam appears to be an appendage of the clam itself, moving with the upper shell, but it doesn’t look like it's controlled by the rest of the clam. The arms sway and move as though the figure is merely along for the ride.

Something I find very notable about the figure is how different their hair is compared to the normal version of the E.G.O and Hong Lu himself. Now, this may be a stretch, but it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I haven't observed that type of difference in any other E.G.O corrosion in any sinner. Most of the changes are due to natural causes or changes in the vessel itself that necessitate the hair to change (like all Bygone Days, or Blind Obsession Ish) and even the ones that do change are not as extreme as this one is. Additionally, Rodion has her normal hair sprite in her corrosion for this E.G.O, so it's not a requirement or pattern for the hair to change in this E.G.O corrosion.

However, the hair is purple-tinted like Hong Lu’s normally is, unlike his Kurokumo identity, of which is also very suspicious in a similar manner.

A figure is not present in either the abnormality itself or in Rodion’s corrosion, so there was a deliberate choice to include it specifically for Hong Lu.

Another thing I'd like to note is the resemblance to an eye. I'm sure most people already know how the pearl is tinted green to look like his jade. There's more than that, though. The shape of the clam, especially when it clamps down, looks a lot like an eye.

You have the jade pupil, and the eyelid.

With it being an eye, and the filth dripping out, it kind of reminds me of tears.

I personally believe that, assuming the theory I pulled from at the start of this post is true, there’s a non-zero chance of the clam (and by extension, the pearl) representing Jia Baoyu and the figure inside representing Lin Daiyu. If this is correct, it would show how he is effectively puppeting Lin Daiyu’s body, at least to a degree.

The figure is behind the pearl, like how Lin Daiyu would be “behind” the jade, identity smothered by Jia Baoyu’s. Of course, it's not completely concealed, like how Lin Daiyu is likely not completely gone.

…or maybe I’m overanalyzing it, and the figure is just supposed to represent Hong Lu/Jia Baoyu, unkempt as more of a “true” self, the self behind the jade, the façade, behind the behaviors ingrained into him since his youth and behind his defense mechanisms that keep everyone “out,” but force himself “in.” However, I have written enough of this post for me to feel that it’s not worth it to scrap everything. Rodion also does a similar thing, and yet, she doesn’t have a figure in her corrosion either.

Additionally:

It appears to me that the guandao the figure is holding is different from the one in the normal version of the E.G.O. You could say that it may just be a more worn-down, longer-used version, but the shaft of the guandao is, still, a lot different.

There also seems to actually be three guandaos in this corrosion, but the significance or meaning of it is utterly and completely lost on me. I still want to point it out, though.

To list: the one the figure is holding (blue), one behind the clam that cannot be seen properly in the sprites (light red), and one that is pierced through the clam (dark purple). Hong Lu’s non-corrosion weapon does not seem to match up with any of them

I can't find any sprite where I can tell what's going on with the back one. I thought that the clam could be holding onto it, but it moves exactly with the upper shell, making me think that it may also be stabbed into the clam.

The top of the weapon circled in dark purple and its shaft move differently, but the positioning of each implies that it was stabbed through and then likely snapped in half by the force of the clam opening.

There’s probably more that could be said, especially in the way of symbolism, but I should end it here. This took way too long to get out and I hope nobody was bothered by the wait.

[soul-dwelling]

Lengthy Barely Organized Remarks about Chapter 430 of 'My Hero Academia' and Lack of Closure

A lot of this is going to be stream-of-consciousness writing, for a few reasons: lack of time right now; a lot of ideas I have had the last few months reading this final arc; and a desire to get it all down on page the day the last chapter officially came out so that I can share my thoughts and put this series behind me for a bit until a question or a new idea or a fic I’m writing inspires me to re-consider the series overall. 

In addition to talking about what I didn’t like in Chapter 430, I’m also going to talk about which details I think lack sufficient closure. As I’ll repeat throughout, maybe that stuff is saved for a sequel, an OVA, changes in the anime adaptation, another spinoff manga, or a fifth film. However, this is the last chapter of this manga, I despised how this manga made you need to read Vigilantes and see the films to make sense of stuff that should have been introduced and clarified within this own series (Oboro and Kurogiri; who Melissa is), and by that same principle, I do not appreciate this manga failing to wrap up pretty big details and, if I may be petty, pretty small details that I selfishly wish had been concluded. 

The Chapter Needed to Give Izuku More Credit

As Reddit user mrwanton points out, it is difficult to enjoy the ending when it feels like Izuku does not get the credit we think he deserves.

I understand Izuku does not want the glory; I understand that other characters with more flashy appearances, superpowers, and continuing Pro Hero work will overshadow him. But as a reader, it is disappointing.

I am not asking for fiction to be realistic: I despise the “grounded in realism” argument, defining “real” is a fool’s errand. But I am asking for a story to be believable--and I can believe Izuku still getting celebrated. Dai’s ability to recognize Izuku by appearance alone as Deku shows that Izuku is a famous enough hero (lowercase or capitalized); I think that is supposed to be our recognition that Izuku is celebrated and famous, but it is admittedly difficult for readers to understand that point when we never see any other reactions to him.

Yes, I am asking for more than this dreaded timeskip: show old YouTube clips right after the war of people obsessing over all the students’ accomplishments; show clips of Izuku still doing Pro Hero work until he lost One For All; do not wait for a fifth film to show just what big or small deed Izuku did that used up the last of One For All--give it to us now. Show us that Izuku was beloved and that is why people still recognize him. You don’t need to give him a trophy, a statue--especially when the asinine Pro Hero rankings should have been abolished and not at all brought up in this chapter. But do give Izuku his victory. 

The Paneling and Art Do Not Show 

I despise the panel showing the older designs of Ochaco et al when the dialogue boxes are talking about her and her colleagues’ work on Quirk counseling. Show me their work in Quirk counseling. I don’t care what they look like with older designs; I don’t even like the older designs, especially as their costumes have barely changed. (Ochaco started this series a bit bothered by the costume she got; it’s been this long, I can understand her getting used to it or thinking it is now iconic and she can’t change--I don’t care, give someone, anyone, a new costume design that is different enough but better suited to their adult self.) 

It’s the same way I feel about how we are told that Izuku is a teacher, but we do not see him at work in the classroom or on the field trip. I get it, this stuff can be saved for a bonus chapter, an OVA, a film. Again, I want it now. 

Aside: The Art and Failure to Show Has Been Bad for Awhile

It doesn’t help that someone on the #MHA tag has been sharing a ton of panels from the manga going back to Chapter 1--and it’s reminding me, first, how much better the art and paneling looked in earlier chapters, and second, how the behind-the-scenes factoid sheets in the volumes show how bad at execution Horikoshi could be. 

There is a list of the Class 1A students and how they trained with the Pussycats--and Horikoshi writes that he just didn’t draw those parts. We really couldn’t have stuff in the background showing Iida running? Even the training he has for the characters is boring: Ojiro just swings his tail to see how much faster and harder he can hit--that’s it? Koji practices yelling louder? No, show us Koji having to train his throat, hot tea, lozenges, something, anything, to make this a gag or visually dynamic--why are we only getting in writing what he did and not seeing it play out?

Overhaul and Shigaraki 

Ever since the manga confirmed Shigaraki’s Quirk was a revised copy of Overhaul’s, I’m even more disappointed the story did not make it more obvious about that connection, and about the parallels for how each could have turned into the other, and the contrasts with how they dealt with their fathers (biological fathers or father figures). 

And given how Shigaraki’s ending is presented as the best option (as gross as it is that putting him down is somehow considered by the story as the best option), I feel bitter about how Overhaul’s story ends.

I don’t like that his story ends as tragedy based around disability. I don’t like that losing his arms is treated as tragic. I don’t like that practically losing his Quirk is treated as tragedy. (I also don’t like that the manga seems to contradict what was either confirmed or hinted in the official encyclopedia that Overhaul was learning to use his Quirk with his feet--something that would have been so creative that it is all the more infuriating that we didn’t see it.) I don’t like how much this parallels Izuku, both in terms of making Overhaul effectively Quirkless as Izuku was because Overhaul now has no arms, and in terms of having both Overhaul and Izuku losing their arms. I don’t like that Overhaul had the same miserable childhood and upbringing as Shigaraki, Dabi, Toga, and Spinner--but he’s the one who gets punished, and has his misery extended to constant chastisement by the Boss (we’ll get to why his return to life also bothers me) while Shigaraki and Toga are considered to have had the best endings by being put down (again, the story implies that, I don’t think that was a good ending at all for them), Dabi gets a lackluster moment of closure with Shoto, and Spinner gets to tell his story. 

I know what Overhaul did to Eri is not forgivable. I also don’t appreciate that his life is treated as a tragedy for what he did, while Shigaraki, Dabi, Toga, and Spinner engaged in actions that crossed over from “good” to “bad” just as Overhaul did. I’m not here to compare whether Overhaul or the other four did worse; I am talking about the binary choice of “good” and “bad,” and all five of them crossed it, but it feels like only Overhaul pays that penalty, and it bothers me that the way he pays it is to be disabled. There is no reforming for him, just getting yelled at by the Boss. There is no use of prison to reform him; again, he is just getting yelled at by the Boss. This doesn’t come across as parental love by the Boss for Overhaul--it just comes across as punishment. 

I know treating Overhaul as some blorbo is gross. I know insisting on some badly written shipping moment with him and Nagant would most likely wreck her character. I also think it is a good writing philosophy to use character interactions to tease out the complexity that character potentially has, and it is bothersome that Nagant’s presence around Overhaul barely amounts to much, Izuku’s promise to Overhaul to see Eri again amounts to nothing and gives no insight into how Izuku rationalizes such a lie he made of a promise and any potential consideration he was giving to actually further traumatizing Eri to make her interact with her abuser again, and it just sucks that Overhaul and pretty much all of the Hassaikai are underdeveloped characters that I would have enjoyed seeing again, especially in this last arc. This is the final arc--bring back everyone. Give me the ending of The Batman where now you have even Batman’s rogues gallery helping stop the alien invasion. Show how their regard for Overhaul has changed. We got Rappa in a flashback in Vigilantes; maybe Team-Up Missions could have spent time developing the characters already available instead of insisting on a series of one-shot characters who never come back. 

Now, onto the Boss: we really couldn’t have just had Eri or another Quirk heal him? We really just had to make it tech? I get that this is building off of the tech All Might used to fight All For One and to foreshadow the technological advancements that will give Izuku his mech suit--and I still don’t like it, it’s a swerve, it’s pulling from another power set that has not been the focus of this series--this has been a series about superpowers, not freaking tech, I don’t care about all the robots and computers and circuit boards, I want the far-out-there Quirks that no one ever imagined before that can show up as a deus ex machina to fix this problem! Why even bring up the Quirk Singularity if you are not going to pay that off? 

And speaking of…

The Quirk Singularity Gets No Closure

It is going to be a slogan of this post that maybe fans should wait for a sequel series, a fifth film, an OVA, or the anime adaptation before talking about all the stuff that didn’t get paid off, such as Izuku’s father, what happened to the rest of Classes A and B and the other Pro Heroes, and, of course, the Quirk Singularity. 

I don’t like the Quirk Singularity idea in theory or principle. I get the point of it, and I get how it builds off of what we have already seen: people like Izuku, All Might, and Aoyama whose bodies are not made to handle these Quirks getting too powerful. But that idea falls apart once Garaki can just mutate Nine and then Shigaraki’s body to make him into Mahito hand-man who can take on more and more power. If there was any payoff to this, that after Chapter 429, during this timeskip to Chapter 430, that Garaki or someone else made advancements to change human bodies to better adapt to their Quirks, that would give closure to this idea. Hell, maybe that could be a good moral and an antidote to the real-life anti-trans bullshit that is spreading like a terrorist plague throughout our world: here is a story that could tell trans people that there is an optimistic future where you can have the body that you identify with, you can live a happy life, your self and who you are is not constrained by societal expectations or even our current medicine, there is hope. 

Instead, the Quirk Singularity and all its symbolic potential is overlooked in the finale.  

Instead of all this talk about giving Izuku more tech to let him play pretend as Pro Hero, is there really nothing going on in this setting about advancements in biotech? 

Underdeveloped Cast and Unanswered Questions

Where is Spinner now? 

What was the deal with Compress and his ancestor? What is their story? What galvanized their philosophy? Why did Compress think his philosophy better meshed with the League more than the Heroes? Why was there never any interrogation about how Compress should have been a Hero and instead threw in with the Villains? How did the Villains help him further his cause, or is the point that his methods were actually defeating his goals and he was too narrow-minded and ignorant to see a better path? Why couldn’t we have had Compress after his capture finding a new application to improve society? Why didn’t we get a moment of horror as he realized he wasn’t improving society but destroying it? Or, is that the point, that he thinks everything has to be torn down and then rebuilt, hence why he has a mask reminiscent of V or the Question or Rorschach just to make that point clear? In other words, is he a chaos agent who thinks this will make a better world, or would he have seen that his methods unintetnaionlly undermined what he was trying to accomplish? 

Where is Izuku's dad?

This Story Wanted You to Feel Bad and Be Disappointed

In case I don’t say this elsewhere: 

A lot of people are upset how the manga ended--Izuku had to stop being a professional hero, Izuku no longer had a superpower. People are upset because they wanted to see him still be a Pro Hero, wanted to see him re-gain One For All or gain a new superpower, or get that mech suit earlier instead of waiting eight years to get it. 

The thing is, that upset, even anger, is what the text is trying to get you to feel: that was the intended emotion it wanted to get out of you, so that, once Izuku gets that suit, it feels like we in the audience can let go of that upset, that anger. 

I say all of that while admitting, no, I don’t like this, it still doesn’t work for me. It works for the story, I can see the craft to it, I see the message Horikoshi offers--but I also don’t like the story, I don’t like the choice, I don’t enjoy the craftsmanship, I don’t like the message. 

Show Izuku’s Success as a Teacher

I love Izuku fishing for a compliment from Aizawa about how good he is at teaching; I despise Aizawa not acknowledging it; I hate that we don’t see Izuku doing much classroom teaching. We at least see him telling Kota where is their field trip and helping Dai apply his Quirk--but I want to see Izuku in the classroom doing traditional, boring, practical, lecture-heavy or Socratic-heavy teaching. 

As I have said elsewhere, or as anonymous submissions said to me, this all could have worked better if we saw how Izuku’s work outside of Pro Hero work and in his teaching were contributing just as much value as Pro Hero work was, and it would have helped if we saw more obvious, more substantial, far more advanced societal progression in which non-combat and non-Pro Hero Quirk usage were more prevalent to address the systematic, psychological, emotional and mental health, physical health, societal, and financial improvements needed after the entire world went to hell thanks to Shigaraki and All For One wrecking Japan, killing Star and Stripe, and almost upending all global order and governmental systems. 

Instead, Izuku was doing the good work of teaching--and the fans online keep treating that as no big deal, and I am struggling to determine how much of that is because those fans are fucking foolish and ignorant about the value of teaching, or because Horikoshi did not do a good job equating Izuku’s teaching work to the work of Pro Heroes, or because the story really should have hit the gas pedal on societal progress and made far more obvious, significant changes to society, even if that depended on handwaving and timeskips, so that this really did feel far more like a better world. 

Speaking of which…

Show This Supposedly Better World

I already said some of this when talking about the paneling and artwork. 

One of the first details about My Hero Academia that appealed to me is that, despite the story beginning with Izuku saying the message of this story was going to be that not all people are created equal, this society still had accomplishments at accessibility lacking in our own world, whether the little trivia tidbits that Ojiro can get his clothing changed on-site immediately to accommodate his tail, or the doors to UA classrooms accommodating people even up to gigantic size. 

The problem is that these parallels to how our world could be more accessible to people with disability kept butting up against how the story was emphasizing that inequality still existed, that equity was not fully there, that discrimination still existed, and that accessibility was still denied. For every bit of improved accessibility in this setting, there was still Izuku bullied for having no Quirk, Mount Lady and certain people with giant mutant Quirks unable to live and work in confined spaces and, in Mount Lady’s case, having to work harder and be more of a showboat to pay off the collateral damage her giant Quirk was causing even as her Quirk was needed to save lives, and giant Quirk possessors unable to find housing and public transportation outside of convenient locations and instead put into NIMBYs or otherwise inconveniently located neighborhoods, discrimination against mutant-type people (with the English dub even having Jiro referring to Tokoyami as “bird-brain”). 

And that’s not even getting into one really good do-not-interact post I found on Tumblr addressing the unfortunate implications that Izuku, in the finale and now Quirkless, hence a metaphor for having a disability, is given a mech suit without anyone letting him know ahead of time, hence taking away his agency and not even asking him whether this is what he wanted or would want and removing the choice from him. 

Horikoshi Never Beating Perv Allegations

Oh, and another post on Tumblr had to remind me of the gross remarks Horikoshi made about what his thought process was designing Momo’s suit--because the creator still has to perv on underage girls. This is not addressing sexism or male gaze or fetishizing or objectification or the actual sex lives of, yes, teenagers--it’s just the creator perving on underage girls, and it is gross. 

In other words, I appreciate the revision to Momo’s costume; I have ranted against that costume online and in conference presentations; I despise that it took this long to give her a better costume. And I don’t get how Mineta is still working and not in jail. 

What Did Shigaraki Actually Destroy? 

I’m getting tired, so I’m just going to link to someone else who talked about the question about what did Shigaraki actually destroy. It doesn’t help that, thanks to the Pro Hero ranking, the emphasis on strong Quirks, and the refusal to apply Quirks outside of Pro Hero work, these improvements we do get just strike me as inevitably leading to the same problems repeating yet again. I don’t care whether that is “realistic”; I want a story that ends with a view to how we can improve, not a reminder how we keep fucking things up. 

Horikoshi’s Development of Izuku and Ochaco: Commit, or Don’t Bother

All of this being said, it doesn’t change that this ending is unsatisfying in a way that comes across as the story or Horikoshi not committing to the bit, not giving closure to what he himself introduced, hence making that lack of closure seem like it was done out of sloppiness rather than circumventing audience expectations and undermining tropes because, if he was circumventing expectations and tropes, then the story would have made it super obvious. 

For example, while I appreciate the point made by others online that Ochaco and Izuku never seem to end up as a couple at the end of this manga, it also makes all of that come across as unappealing. When you are toying with the conventions of a romance story, then do nothing to give it closure, that disappointment is a legitimate feeling to have. Yes, it helps to progress the plotlines of Ochaco finding a way to reach out to Toga and make Toga’s legacy contribute to societal improvement--but it’s annoying that it doesn’t do the obvious detail we want in a romance, that being to give closure to that relationship. 

Either hook up Izuku and Ochaco, or show us Ochaco’s point of view at the end for us to know she has moved on and that Izuku either missed the opportunity or was oblivious that Ochaco even liked him. It is fine and valid for Izuku and Ochaco to not be a couple; it is still annoying to toy with narrative conventions and then drop them as if the story was not setting up a relationship or a bittersweet conclusion that it would never work. 

Shipping Is Good Actually

This is also why I prefer fanworks that go in wild directions in ships. I think MHA would have benefited if Izuku was already dating someone else in the supporting cast who gets little to no character progression in the main manga. 

Yes, this would mean Izuku would not be presented throughout the manga as awkward around dating--which I would appreciate, getting to see his character progression to get used to dating or, you know, being aromantic, asexual, whatever we want to do with him. 

And yes, this means that I am developing under-developed characters through shipping--which is a valid and helpful perk of shipping. What do you think character progression is unless it involves showing how a character is different depending on with whom they interact? Seeing how another character relates to the main protagonist would actually help develop that character, and just because it’s romantic does not cancel out the need to still also develop that character outside of shipping. 

Shipping is opening the door to develop a character; the rest of the work is harder but necessary, and seeing as Horikoshi had more than 400 chapters and barely developed the large cast of supporting characters, I’m not confident he would have pulled it off if he had shipped Izuku with, say, Tsuyu, Shinso, or any other character mostly underdeveloped. And yes, even then, Tsu and Shinso are two of the already really developed characters, so, bad example on my part.

But an End Couple Can Be Cliche and Underdeveloped

I also have to own up to the potential that I’m being hypocritical or asking this manga to stick to cliches. What I’m asking for is that, if the intention was to undermine a cliche, make it super obvious. I can appreciate the argument that Ochaco’s path is a “take that” against similar cliches in ongoing shonen manga. 

Hell, Fire Force shoe-horned in a pointless child to the protagonist--and made it a joke, whether intentional or not (given Ohkubo’s sloppiness, likely unintentional), that we the audience don’t know which if either of the two we see is Shinra’s kid and who the other parent or parents are. That didn’t come across to me as Ohkubo doing a “take that,” it came across as Ohkubo’s fixation on harem logic and refusing to offend readers who don’t want their favorite ship ignored. 

While I see enough takes that Horikoshi provided a canonical ship in the form of Izuku and Bakugo, I don’t see it that way. It sickens me imagining that bully and that victim paired up, but I also can appreciate that reading when it is that intimate and that much concern by Bakugo--even as it still has its own problems (the bullying as I mentioned but, as another post on Tumblr put it well, the refusal of Izuku’s agency by never letting him in on the plan that his former classmates were trying to make a mech suit to get Izuku back doing Pro Hero work without ever asking him whether he’d be up for it or acknowledging to him that they don’t know whether the suit will work before they finish making it). 

Did They Even Test the Mech Suit?

And speaking of the mech suit, and an odd aside: how did they figure out whether this suit would work? Who had to test it out? All Might? Bakugo? Some random schlub Melissa and Hatsume hired as a lab rat to do the field tests? Crash test dummies?

The Finale Kind of Ruins Merch and Video Games for Me 

I keep telling a friend a tortured metaphor I have been using to talk about poor writing in certain franchises. 

I despised how the Tomorrow-verse of DC animated movies wrapped up with Crisis. 

That film came across as, the way I put it to my friend, just seeing a bunch of Funko Pops get smashed. 

I don’t feel anything about these characters dying off, I just feel like I’m seeing consumer products broken like that Apple iPad commercial a few months ago. 

I don’t want to anthropomorphize a Funko Pop, one of the least interesting product lines out there. 

I want to anthropomorphize a pencil. I want that scene in Community where Jeff gets you to name the pencil, sympathize with it, craft a history and a biography and a personality for it--then snap it in half so that you feel something. 

I don’t know whether the ending to My Hero Academia feels like a Funko Pop or a pencil. I am leaning towards the pencil, because I’m so bummed with how things played out for certain characters that it is going to be awkward for me to go back and try to 100 percent complete certain missions in the My Hero Academia video games when I know how Shigaraki, Dabi, and Toga end up. I don’t want to relive that; I don’t know how to get back to those games ever again. 

Heck, I’m struggling to get back to writing any fics with these characters--but at least in the fics I’m co-writing, those characters get happier endings, even if some of them still die. 

[st33le]

HALLO MASH PACRIM AU?????? im giving you free reign to infodump PLEASE tell me more

MEAHAHA! Thank you!!

I originally got the idea from @benevolenterrancy, thank you again for giving me this new obsession lmao.

I have so many ideas for the au in general, and my little story line especially.

I’m a CharlesHawk truther, so my story really revolves around them and their relationship, Bj and Trapper do exist in my storyline, but mainly in the background.

Trapper, I have unfortunately demoted to ✨ Element that drives the plot ✨. I’ve thought more on what I wanted the accident to be between him and hawk. Like there was the question of, oh well, does hawk visit him? No. Why? Guilt. Why is he guilty? That sort of thing.

So the accident, in more detail. Trapper and Hawkeye were deployed to deal with a large category 2, maybe a category 3. The Kaijus nickname right now is Sabermane, but I may change that in the future. Anyway, they’re deployed to deal with the Kaiju and through a series of mistakes, due to Hawkeye's pride and cockiness, they start losing the fight. The Kaiju gets the upper hand and throws Surgeon Resilient back (their jaeger is only a Mark 1, its pretty durable but it’s not as heavy as Cherno Alpha, the Russian jaeger from the movies) because of their jaeger being older there were a few key flaws in the design of the conn-pod. That being that the supports for the pilots can’t take sudden jolts and will release and drop the pilots.

So guess what happens! Hawkeye gets dropped and passes out. My favorite plot device. Leaving trapper to pilot alone, which as you know, people can not do. So later, hawkeye wakes up to a bunch of doctors and a bunch of press. He's confused and pretty out of it all still. hes not that hurt, but he's left a little scarred (i put a few scars on his face in one of my previous posts.)

Hawk is debriefed and finds out that he's been out for about a week. Surgeon Resilient was almost completely destroyed and both of them would have died if it wasn't for the quick actions of trapper. Trapper had piloted the jaeger alone for just long enough to get them a reasonable distance away from the kaiju to eject them both from the conn-pod. But it wasn't without its consequences, shortly after the military recovered trapper and hawk, trapper fell into a coma after all the adrenaline from the battle wore off.

Hawk after some rest was taken to see Trapper and the doctors/military explained that Trapper wouldn't be able to drive again as the Drift would be enough to kill him. Hawk immediately feels overwhelming guilt over this. Feeling that it was his fault that trapper ended up this way.

trapper does end up waking up later in the story and that's a whole angst arc for hawkeye to go through. (and Charles being there and being supportive) But yeah, after all that he goes back to being a civilian for a few years until he's called back for the trial runs for the new jaegers, sense the military wants experienced pilots to run them for the greatest chance at success. Anyway. BJ is also in the story but they meet later on. BJ and Peg are pilots but they were first deployed together after hawk retired, so they didn't really get to meet or know him until recently. I've given a little more personality to Peg, I want her to be a bit snarky and blunt. She knows her limits and strengths and tends to be the smarter out of the two.

Peg is respectful of Hawkeye, but I feel like if she found out why he retired from the service she would be a little more critical of him.

also, I realized I never really explained why Charles was so eager to jump into a jaeger to prove he was right. Charles does have drop experience from simulations. He works with Jaegers so, I would assume he had some.

Charles knows how jaegers work intricately so while Hawkeye handles the physical fighting bit, Charles handles the tactical fighting bit.

Also Ofc my storyline is an enemies-to-lovers sort of situation cause it's one of my favorite tropes. Especially when it comes to Pacific rim and drifting. Going from, I want nothing to do with you too We're so in sync we fight perfectly together,,, THE VIBES BRO.

also, I've come up with a name for my little story, I'm gonna call it Worn Metal. Idk if it's a little Cheesy but yeah, because the new Jaeger is made from bits of the old one and Hawkeye was a pilot before I thought it was fitting. I want it to be a little more on the ship side so I might change it in the future but oh well. i also may make posts about like little things within my story so yeah. Thank you for letting me info dump, i will do more in the future >:3

[nixthelapin]

Hi, fellow ace here!

For me, I do actually notice some of that stuff, beyond the super tight skin suits, probably because I feel very conscious of my own body and how others may perceive it- I grew up very determined to not appear “sexy” at all because it disgusted me to think a person would think my body was attractive in that way (I didn’t mind people thinking I was pretty or cute, it was specifically the sexual kind that bugged me).

I think this mostly happened due to me getting to anime, which has a… reputation… for portraying women in a sexual way.

Now, Miraculous is definitely not doing anything as bad as most animes I’ve seen by a long shot. But it does make me think about the little ways portrayals of characters can make people think about themselves and others. I’m not saying Miraculous has enough power over the minds of little girls (or boys) to change their views that much, but I think it’s worth discussing why these design choices were made- why are the girls in these basic skin-tight suits while the boys get add ons and layers, even when their outfits are tight? Why does the main character, a 14 year old girl, have so much emphasis on her butt?

Because one thing we need to keep in mind is: these are adults making these design and visual choices about how to portray these teen characters. While it may not be an overt message, or even something they intended to convey, biases and views enter both the writing and the design and can sometimes say things that are not good. Why are adults putting all these young girls in skin-tight body suits? Why are adults putting emphasized shading on a 14 year old’s butt? (And you can do this with the writing too- why are adults portraying obsession as a healthy romance? (For both main characters)) Because to them, it’s an acceptable thing to do. Why? Because the sexualisation of women and girls is, sadly, fairly normalized (especially more so now I think- younger girls are dressing older more and more now, which is so scary to see, I’m very concerned for their mental health).

Will the kids watching notice? Maybe, maybe not. But since those types of things are normalized, it just becomes another example they’ll see of women and girls looking like that, like they’re on display. It adds to the pile of exposure, even if it’s small.

(Though I will say that person in the comments bringing up that comic of Marinette being in New York naked is totally right- that was incredibly disturbing and I hope no child reads that hot garbage. That was an intentional choice and it feels so filthy. That one does actually feel like it came out of an anime because some pervert writer wanted to slap in it for his own fun.)

Is it true that Miraculous often sexualizes its characters? Because I see other people say this and want to know if it’s correct

I have not picked up on anything like that in Miraculous, but I'm ace, so sexualization has to be pretty overt for me to notice it on my own. It's entirely possible that there's something subtle that I'm missing. Until someone gives me specific examples, my stance is that this is incorrect. It's not an element that even crosses my mind when it comes to the reasons why I would discourage adults from introducing this show to kids. I am concerned about the quality of the romance between the leads, but that concern comes from a psychological standpoint about modeling what healthy relationships should look like. The love square is way too teen drama for a family show! However, from a purely physical standpoint, it's appropriate for all ages.

[raifenlf]

Why Loki’s Sylvie Is A Mary Sue

So I am firmly in the camp that Sylvie on the Loki series was/is a Mary Sue.  The last episode made me feel better and like maybe the show was doing a thing where they were faking you out that she was a Mary Sue only to show she was actually sort of a bad guy and I liked that.  But all the recent interviews make me think the show wants to go back to her being a Mary Sue.

But I feel like when I call her out for being a Mary Sue people tell me what are you talking about, she’s not a Mary Sue, bad things happen to her, etc.  But that doesn’t actually make her not a Mary Sue.  

Also, before we start, I know some people find Mary Sue sexist.  But I personally use the term for guys and girls. I don’t use the term to belittle women.  I use the term to criticize a poorly written character.

And I know Mary Sue is often used to describe fanfic characters.  But to me, this series is kind of like a fanfic because the writers took a character who had been in canon MCU material for ten years and then created characters around that character.  So, I kind of review it like I would a fanfic.  It’s very different than if the writers had created a brand new show with all of their own new characters.

Anyway, if you are not totally familiar with the Mary Sue term, then check this out:

I know the term Mary Sue probably means different things to different people.  But I have always used these guidelines when I write my own fanfic to make sure my characters never come off as a Mary Sue.

This article really gives you a full scale of what a Mary Sue is.  If you start reading it, you’ll immediately see why Sylvie is.  But I’m going to take out the parts that most fit Sylvie just to highlight why I believe she is a Mary Sue.  I apologize for this being so long.

Mary Sue Character Traits

Personality

Erm... what personality? The typical Mary Sue doesn't have one per se, because she isn't meant to be a character; rather, she's an entity by which the author makes cool stuff happen.

I feel like that is Sylvie in a nutshell.  She doesn’t have a personality.  I feel like even though she ate screentime, I still don’t really know her at all.  The writers love to say she’s badass.  That’s not a personality.  

Sometimes when I am writing stories for fun and creating new characters, I like to take surveys as my fictional characters.  Like the kind of surveys you’d see in a magazine, like personality types, what’s your dating style, etc.  I figure if I don’t know what my character would do in any of those situations, then I need to keep working on my character.  And if I was trying to fill out a survey pretending I was Sylvie I would have no idea what to answer because she doesn’t have a personality.  She’s just “cool”.

What little personality a Mary Sue has isn't as important as how other characters react to it. No matter how shy or socially awkward Mary Sue is supposed to be, other characters will be inexplicably drawn to her

This is so Sylvie.  Loki falls in love with her...why, exactly?  He falls in love with her in the big Nexus event moment...why?  Because she had a tough childhood?  Mobius spends like two seconds with her in a car and goes from hating her to saying she’s his favorite Loki.  For. No. Particular. Reason.

She's extremely persuasive; everyone finds her opinions to be better than their own

She enchants Hunter B-15 and then immediately Hunter B-15 makes it her whole entire life mission to back Sylvie up.  

And occasionally she'll be a complete asshole...This can manifest itself in several ways...The author wants to write a badass but doesn't know how. This leads to a character who mistreats everyone around her and is never called out on her abrasive, casually abusive behavior.

Sylvie talked down to Loki and treated him like garbage for all of episode three, but it was never portrayed as a bad thing and we never got any impression Sylvie later felt bad for the way she treated Loki

The author doesn't know how to hold back the character, meaning that she will succeed at practically everything. This means that when she encounters rules or authority figures who would otherwise prevent her from doing what she wants to do, she rolls right through them (and they praise her for her "boldness" in defying regulations). If a bad guy is violent and aggressive, she can beat him by being more violent and aggressive (with all that entails). It's impossible for her to go overboard because she's protected by Protagonist-Centered Morality.

Sylvie is shown as a kid to immediately be able to grab a Tempad and run away.  And she can kick ass way better than Loki, for no known reason.  She is always able to fight back against the TVA when they attack her.  And she can kill lots of innocent TVA agents but it’s okay because TVA bad, Sylvie good.

Skills

She will always be superior to the canon characters, regardless of what canon has established they can do or whether it makes any sense.

Whose skill was needed to defeat Alioth?  Sylvie’s.  Of course.  Sylvie needed to teach Loki her skills in order for him to succeed (!).  And again, she is literally called the superior Loki.

Relatedly, there's no effort to her skills. She never actually trains or learns anything to become more powerful; she just wins the Super Power Lottery, or is a freakish natural learner, or is just Inexplicably Awesome

We’re told Sylvie literally taught herself magic.  She literally taught herself to enchant people.  That. Makes. No. Sense.  Like, I have so many questions.  Like, why would it even occur to her to teach herself that?  And how????????????  This is really lazy writing.

Canon Character Relationships

Mary Sue is often designed to hook up with another character, often as a form of Wish Fulfillment. This isn't that bad in and of itself (okay, it is kinda weird), but Mary Sue accomplishes this without any sense of realism. She just grabs her lover's attention straight away, and their relationship will never face any obstacles or tension; it's true love from the start and nothing else. The biggest giveaway is if the love interest is explicitly the author's favorite character, and she essentially "cures" him of all the angst that ails him (at the expense of his characterization).

Yeah, so...this one should be pretty obvious to anyone who watched the show.  Loki literally falls in love with Sylvie immediately, and then he suddenly turns from “villain” to “hero” just because of loving her.  And this was definitely at the expense of his characterization.  And Loki just knows he falls in love with her.  There’s not even any moments of hmm what do I feel for this person?  It’s just true love, immediately.

She will be related to a canon character in some way. This (marginally) helps explain such phenomena as her being a Copy Cat Sue and other characters accepting her so easily.

Sylvie is a Loki variant.  They use this to help explain why Loki is drawn to her and why their falling in love immediately “makes sense”.

Most characters give her more heed than they normally would. The good guys never stop praising her

Seriously, it was so over the top and OOC for Loki to gush over her.  He literally tells her she’s amazing.  They don’t even make it subtle.

Characters' previously established personalities change in reaction to her. Proud, arrogant gimps suddenly acknowledge her superiority in everything. Reckless youths will listen to all her advice. Responsible leaders will defer to her instead. Villains will obsess with her to the detriment of all else. Extremely competent characters will become stumbling buffoons who require her help to do anything. Sweet, mild-mannered characters whom the author doesn't like turn evil and insult her. They all become unnaturally focused on her in some way.

Again, Loki’s whole personality changed in reaction to her.  He became a buffoon who needed her help to enchant the Alioth because of course he couldn’t do anything without her!  Hunter B-15 goes from doing whatever the TVA said to fighting the TVA just because of Sylvie.

Story Elements

Mary Sue is without exception a single-person Spotlight-Stealing Squad. The entire story hinges on her existence; if you removed her, there would be no story. 

Sylvie undoubtedly drove the whole story this season.  It all became about HER meeting the TVA heads because of HER trauma.  Loki’s life was only saved at the beginning because the TVA was trying to capture HER.  And SHE was the one who started the whole multiverse (!).

Mary Sue is The Chosen One, even if the setting already has one. There are many ways she can accomplish this: she can be a Sailor Earth type who "shares" the position with the canon hero; she may be vaguely "destined to help the destined one fulfill their destiny" (i.e. do all the work except the final blow so that the prophecy is still technically correct); or the canon hero may be revealed to be a Fake Ultimate Hero all along. Being the Chosen One doesn't necessarily involve her being a God-Mode Sue, especially as authors become aware of the phenomenon and try to avoid it, but it does make her critically important to the world and allows her to continue stealing the spotlight without the "god mode" label.

HWR wanted Sylvie to come with Loki in the end, like she was chosen all along right alongside Loki.  Like one of the most important characters in the entire MCU is now this character who we only met a few episodes ago.

Most Sues have an unusually Dark and Troubled Past. It's often used to create a Sympathetic Sue, but any type of Sue can have one

They tell us, over and over, how hard Sylvie’s life was because she was kidnapped by the TVA in order to create sympathy for her.

She almost never does anything wrong. In the rare instance that she does, it's usually; (a) a way for the author to disclaim her being a Mary Sue by introducing a single imperfection (that has no bearing on anything anyway), and (b) designed to show her smarts by making her feel instant remorse, and she'll be Easily Forgiven anyway:

So this one hopefully will not come true, as a lot can change between now and when the show is taped. But if the show goes on the way the behind the scenes team is talking, Sylvie immediately felt remorse for betraying Loki, and Loki has already forgiven her and is desperately looking for her.  Ugh.

Alternatively, she is more than capable of doing something wrong, be it in general moral terms or something that goes against whatever code she abides by, and she maybe even frequently does so, but don't expect the other characters or the narrative to ever acknowledge or comment on it in any real capacity. If the other characters do call her out, expect them to be treated like they're the problem for daring to criticize her at all.

Mobius calls her out for killing people, but Sylvie immediately says he’s a bad person and then Mobius agrees, because, of course.

She will often suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome; i.e., she has a trait or backstory that sets her apart from her group or race.

She is the only female Loki, thus making her the special one among all the Lokis in episode five.

Presentation

In visual media, the camera just can't stop staring at her.

The camera would follow her in fight scenes rather than Loki.

Mary Sue Tropes

Okay, so there are specific Mary Sue tropes that Sylvie is.  One of those is Copy Cat Sue, which I think was referenced before.

Copy Cat Sue

A lot of fanfic writers...start to write something because of their passion for this character, but they find something about the character that doesn't mesh well. Maybe they're the wrong gender or are otherwise not close enough to the author's expectations...In any case, rather than put them through the Possession Sue process, they just get a Clone-O-Matic™ and out pops a Copy Cat Sue...the character might be intended as a replacement for the canon character, but without whatever icky traits the author hates. They'll then rob the spotlight, prove the canon character to be unworthy of his/her position, and either relegate the character to obsolescence or, perhaps, even remove them entirely.

Sylvie is basically a clone of Loki, she is a variant.  But she absolutely robbed the spotlight of Loki’s, and they literally call her the superior Loki.  I mean, they are literally not even being subtle about this.  And there was a feeling by myself (and a lot of other viewers) that Sylvie might ultimately replace Loki in the MCU. 

Black Hole Sue

Much like a black hole, this is a Mary Sue who "sucks in" the plot and characters to her. Characters will behave outside their personalities, logic will be defied, and rules will be broken for her sake.

Sylvie really does suck up all the plot and Loki definitely behaves outside of his personality just to fit the Sylvie show.

Jerk Sue

A Mary Sue who is mean or maybe even cruel, but are still treated as an ideal person.

Once again, Sylvie is basically a jerk all of episode three, but you’ve got Loki falling over himself to call her amazing in just the next episode.

Relationship Sue

A Mary Sue who exists to be the perfect mate for a specific character...this character has everything in the plot conspiring to enforce this One True Pairing...in Fanfiction, they are the perfect beloved of a canon character.

They literally have Mobius speculate that Loki falling in love with Sylvie is so extraordinary that it causes an entire Nexus event, that’s how huge this One True Pairing is (!).  And Sylvie is the love interest of Loki, the only character who had been around before the beginning of the series

TLDR: Sylvie has all the tropes of a classic Mary Sue character.  So calling Sylvie a Mary Sue isn’t being sexist or just randomly hating on the character.  If you use common Mary Sue characteristics to examine the character, she just has too many of these characteristics to ignore.

[five-rivers]

Green Sky Highway

Phic Phight Phic for @deuynndoodles

.

The Fenton Ecto Cell Bettery (aka the Better Battery) was designed to draw power from not only an internal, pre-charged store of ectoplasm, but also from ambient, atmospheric ectoplasm.  This meant that it would never run out of juice so long as it was in the Ghost Zone.  The Specter Speeder was designed to travel in the Ghost Zone.  Thus, the Betteries were the perfect power source for it.  In theory.  

In practice… Well, that just wasn’t working out, and Maddie didn’t know why.  She gripped the underside of the dash and tried to push herself deeper beneath it to get a better view of the machinery.  

“Maddie?  You see anything?” asked Jack, who couldn’t fit under the dash.  He’d been inspecting as much of the engine as he could from the inside, which wasn’t much.  The Speeder wasn’t designed to be serviced while free-floating in the Ghost Zone.  

Which, now that she thought of it, was a serious oversight.  

“Everything looks fine,” said Maddie.  “Except that it doesn’t have any power.  Nothing’s lighting up, but all the connections look good. You?”

“I can’t get anything to work.  Anything.  It’s like… we’re in some kind of technological dead zone.  But that doesn’t make sense.”

Maddie pulled herself out to see Jack vigorously scratching his head and shedding dandruff everywhere.  “Ghosts do tend to disrupt technology.”

“But we fixed that.  We designed all our weapons to work with that.”

“We know there are things we don’t know,” said Maddie, “and it’s always good to find new things!  Though not pleasant to find them out like this…”  They should really test their inventions more, honestly.  

But it had been over a year of testing since they opened the portal.  They had to jump in at some point, didn’t they?  That was the whole point of the portal.  

She sighed.  “Well, we didn’t have a lot of forward momentum when the portal cut out.”  She looked out the window.  “We could see if we can get out and engage our jetpacks.”

“Uh, about that,” said Jack.  He swung open the door to the jetpack cabinet.  The empty jetpack cabinet.  “I may have forgotten to put them back after refueling them.”

“Jack…”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Maddie massaged the bridge of her nose with her mostly-clean knuckles.  This was a repeat of the handle inside the weapons vault.  At least he wasn’t pushing the blame for it back onto Danny or Jazz.  That would definitely have started a fight.  

On the other hand, there really wasn’t any guarantee the jetpacks would even still be functional, so maybe it was for the best. For certain values of best.  

She groaned.  

There was a knocking sound.  “Is that coming from the engine?” Maddie asked.  

“No…” said Jack, slowly.  “I think it came from the door…”

They both turned to stare.  Something moved outside it.  They shifted to get a better view out the window.  

Phantom was out there, tapping on the door with a ten-foot pole.  

“That little unnatural abomination,” cursed Jack under his breath.  “He’s going to scratch the paint!”

Phantom apparently saw them and waved.  “Hey!” he shouted, just loud enough to be heard through the walls of the Speeder.  “Do you guys need a lift?”

Jack and Maddie turned to each other.  

“How did he know we were here?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack.  “Do you think he followed us?”

“It wouldn’t be difficult, but I’m surprised he didn’t show up on our detectors.”

“He does seem to have the ability to drop off of them.”

“True,” said Maddie.  “So, how do we handle this?  Fenton bat?”

“I don’t know, Mads.  He might be, uh, sincere?  That time with the ectofiltrator he did help me.”

“That’s one, single, datapoint.  He’s a been a menace every other time we’ve encountered him.”

“I don’t know that we have much other choice,” said Jack, nodding towards the dead engines and the empty jetpack cabinet.

Maddie huffed out a sigh, then looked back at Phantom, who waved again.  

“Fine.  We still have to decide how to deal with him while we’re cooperating with him.  Or if he decides to show his true colors.”

“Good idea.”

.

Danny knew this had been a terrible, terrible idea the moment his parents opened the door to the Speeder armed to the teeth.  Why did they always feel the need to do that? None of the weapons, with the possible exceptions of the Fenton Bat and the Fenton Crowbar could even work here.

How his parents had, on their first jaunt into the Ghost Zone, managed to run smack into the Time Locked Lands was beyond him. They had to go to the one place in the Ghost Zone that the Speeder wouldn’t work and after coating the Speeder with some kind of anti-ghost spray that Danny absolutely refused to touch again.  Ever. Especially in ghost form.  Except with a ten-foot pole.

(If they’d left the spray off, he could have just pushed the Speeder back out of the Time Locked Lands.  But, no, they had to make everything as difficult and painful as possible.)

“I am not carrying all that,” said Danny, flatly.

(Especially because it would all turn back on once they left the Time Lost Lands, and if there wasn’t a Specter Deflector under all that, he’d eat his own belt.)

“Then we aren’t going anywhere with you!” proclaimed Maddie.  

“You’re stranded in the middle of the Ghost Zone. I don’t think you have a choice.”

“We do!”

“I could literally just fly over there and snatch you right now.  Plus, again, stranded.  Do you even have any food in there?”

“Of course we do!” said Maddie.  “We aren’t incompetent.”

Jack looked guilty.  Danny decided not to bring it up.

“Okay, but still, you’re going to run out eventually, and then you’ll still be floating in the Ghost Zone with no way to get out.  You aren’t going to get another friendly ghost coming by.”

“I’ve never seen a friendly ghost to begin with!”

“Maddie…”

“I can just leave, you know,” said Danny, planting his hands on his hips and bluffing for all he was worth.  He was not leaving his parents here to be used as hostages or who knew what else.  

Hopefully, they wouldn’t call the bluff.  They shouldn’t.  No sane, reasonable person would.  He was their only way out of this mess.  On the other hand, his parents had never been completely sane, reasonable people.  

Danny thought his odds were about fifty-fifty.  Which meant he could hope.  

Jack and Maddie had an intense, whispered conversation. This, thankfully, lead to them divesting themselves of most of their visible weaponry.  Which meant that they still had more guns on them than most professional soldiers during a firefight.  

Well, it was better than he’d expected.  But it was still too many.  

“Take the Specter Deflectors off,” he said.  “What do you think will happen if I try to carry you and you have those on.”

There was muttering.  

“Come on, come on,” said Danny, snapping his fingers. Which really shouldn’t work through his gloves but did anyway.  

Sometimes ghost nonsense was good for making lasers fly from your hands, and sometimes it was good for tiny aesthetic breaks in physics. It was a grab bag, really.  

“Alright,” said Danny.  “I’m going to fly over and pick you up.  Don’t hit me.”

Oh, jeez, he was not looking forward to carrying them all the way over to the portal.  Sure, he could bench press a school bus, but there was a difference between holding up a school bus for a minute and carrying two people who hated his guts a mile through enemy territory while flying slowly enough not to give them windburn.  

Sure, it’d probably only take a few minutes, even then, but those would be the longest few minutes in his entire life.  Not counting his actual death.  

.

Being carried by Phantom had to be the single worst experience in Jack’s entire life.  

It wasn’t the speed or the lack of control – he loved carnival rides – or the height – Jack couldn’t tell you how many buildings he’d jumped off in pursuit of ghosts – or even the fact that Phantom was a sinister specter, and ectoplasmic emanation, a putrid piece of protoplasm – he’d been carried by ghosts before, usually ones who were a lot more upfront about wanting to kill him.  

Actually, Jack didn’t know why he didn’t like it. He just didn’t.  

Maybe it was just how uncomfortable it was?  But Jack did way more uncomfortable things. Like interacting with his sister-in-law. Brr.  

Maybe it was the lurking feeling behind every interaction he ever had with Phantom that there was something he just wasn’t seeing, some hidden truth that would make everything about Phantom, every contradiction, every confusion, make sense.

Nah, that couldn’t be it.  Maddie would have figured it out by now.  That’s why they made such a great team.  He noticed the things she didn’t, and she noticed the things he didn’t.  

“You’re going the wrong way,” snapped Maddie.  

Just like that!

Wait.  That was a really bad thing.

“I’m not going the wrong way,” snapped Phantom.  “I’m avoiding Walker’s prison.  I don’t know how he didn’t catch you on your way out, but I’m not eager to be thrown in jail for a thousand years.”

“Ghosts have jail?” asked Jack surprised.  

“Depends where you are,” said Phantom.  “Walker isn’t really a sheriff, though.  There’s no government behind him and he just makes up rules randomly so he can lock up anybody he doesn’t like.”

“Like you,” observed Jack.  

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re even wanted by whatever passes for the law here?”

“First, rude.  Secondly, there are realms in here that are just as organized and civilized as any country on Earth.  Just because you opened your portal into the equivalent of post-apocalyptic Detroit doesn’t mean it’s all like this.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Maddie.  

“I could arrange that, you know,” said Phantom, stilling.

Jack laughed nervously.  “Maybe another time?”  The ghost would do what it would do, but they didn’t need to encourage him to bring them even deeper into the Ghost Zone.  They were currently banking on Phantom’s obsession with heroics to get them home, but if they changed the equation…  Yeah, Jack didn’t want to deal with the consequences of that.  

Ghosts were like computers that ran only one program. One homicidal, destructive program.

It was like that thought experiment about an AI whose job was to maximize the number of paperclips.  It’d just keep on making more and more paperclips until nothing was left.  Which was why they had to be stopped.  

Easier said than done, as Jack and Maddie had learned.

“You don’t have to be so freaked out,” muttered Phantom. “It isn’t like I’m going to kidnap you or anything.”  He pretended to sigh.  

What was the point of that?  He had to know that Jack and Maddie wouldn’t fall for his tricks. Actually, come to think of it, he was miming breathing, too, and had been the whole time.  

Maybe that’s why Jack was so uncomfortable.  The constant undercurrent of deception.  

Hmmm… something to think on.  

“What’s that?” asked Maddie, pointing.  

“Uh,” said Phantom, who did a double take.  

Ooh, that wasn’t reassuring.  

.

Danny clenched his teeth, his parents’ reactions to him weren’t reassuring, and even less reassuring was the way Pariah’s Keep had moved from its usual creepy location and to this new creepy location. Not that there were any non-creepy locations in the Ghost Zone.  It was part of the place’s charm.  

No, really.  Some part of Danny craved the creepiness.  He was half-ghost, after all.  

(Even if his idea of creepiness was, according to his friends, sort of lame.)

But back to the main point.  The keep really, really shouldn’t be here.  And it was creeping him out.  

It should be okay to just… fly past it, though, right? Just being in its airspace in the past hadn’t done anything bad.  So, flying by with his parents in tow shouldn’t do anything either.  Right?

Danny put on more speed, just in case.  This coincided with a bunch of large ghost ravens (or were they crows?) dive bombing them and forcing him to land to defend himself and parents.  The only land around being the rim of the island that supported the keep.

He knew something like this would happen. Maybe not exactly this, but he just knew he’d be attacked and everything would devolve into nonsense, and—

Huh.  The birds weren’t attacking him, just his parents.  Oh, these were racist (mortalist?) birds.  Gross.  Trust Pariah Dark to have bigoted birds.  He called up a shield to protect his parents.  Whereupon they shot him in the back, shouting about how he betrayed them to the birds, because why not?  

Why was his life like this?

He pushed himself up off the ground.  Starbursts twinkled behind his eyes.  Neither his parents nor the crows were in sight.  The crows could have gone anywhere.  His parents on the other hand…

There was only one place they could have gone.  

Well.  At least none of the nonsentient traps would work on them, seeing as they were humans. What were the odds that they’d run into one of the sentient defenders?

Well… considering the ravens?

Yeah.  That’d be about one hundred percent.

.

“Maddie, I don’t know about this…” said Jack, examining the tall, vaulted ceiling.  

“We had to get away from Phantom.  This was the only way to go.”

“But he came here for a reason, Mads,” whispered Jack, tip-toing.

“Yeah, this is definitely a trap.  But what can we do?”

“Jack?  Maddie? This is not a place you want to wander around in! Oh, holy—” There was a loud thump.  

Maddie grabbed Jack’s hand and pulled him forward. “We have to get away from him.”

“Come on!  This is a floating island!  I’m your only way off!  Why are you like this?”

“He has a point,” said Jack.  

Maddie stopped.  “I guess he does.”

“This is literally the worst place you could have picked to run away!”  A sound like a very large door opening and closing reached their ears.  “This is Pariah Dark’s place!  Where did you even go?”

“Mads?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s Pariah Dark?”

“I think that was the name of the ghost that sucked the town into the Ghost Zone a few months ago.”

“Please, guys!  I’m trying to help you here!  This place is ultra-dangerous!  You could accidentally – yikes! – wake up Pariah Dark.”  

“Maybe we should…”

“Yeah,” said Maddie, “maybe we should.”

“Phantom!” called Jack.  “Phantom!  We’re over—” The floor opened up underneath them and they fell into the dark.  

.

Maddie woke to a dark room, tied to a chair.  She noticed the faintly glowing ghost in front of her and jolted backwards.

The ghost wore a set of painted and engraved plate armor, a pair of lavender-white eyes glowing from behind the slats of its visor.  A knight, of sorts, Maddie supposed.  

“You…” droned the ghost in a painfully stereotypical ghostly moan.  “Enemies of the king… why have you come here?”

“Huh?”

That was Jack’s voice.  He was tied behind her, apparently.  

“We don’t have anything to say to you,” snapped Maddie.

“Uh,” said Jack.  Something twisted behind Maddie.  “Are you a friend of Phantom?”

“A friend?  A friend?”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” muttered Maddie.  

The door of the room flew off its hinges.  “Fright Knight!” shouted Phantom, pointing a glowing finger.  “Wait, you aren’t Fright Knight.  Who are you, and what do you want with my- With, uh, the Fenton ghost hunters?  Who I don’t know very well at all. Promise.”

“What,” said the ghost.  

“What,” said Maddie.  

“What,” said Jack.  

“Okay, forget everything I just said.”  He gestured at the ghost.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Paladin, my liege.”

“Okay, okay, cool, cool.  I- Wait, what?  What did you call me?”

“My liege?”

Phantom looked like he was having an existential crisis.  

“Maddie was right!” exclaimed Jack, who couldn’t see Phantom’s face.  “You did lead us into a trap!”

“What?  No?  I’ve never even met this guy before!  You are a guy, right?”

“Yes, my liege.”

“Right.  I’m going to put that on the backburner and freak out about it later.  How are you- Why are you—” Phantom shook his head.  “Why are you here in Pariah’s Keep?”

“It’s your keep.”

“Since when?”

“Say what now?” asked Jack and Maddie at once.  

“Look, this is news to me, too.  But, back to the question.  You.  The keep. Why?  I mean, you weren’t here before.”

“That is because Pariah sealed me, my liege.  When you defeated him, I was released and immediately swore fealty to the true king.  You.”

“I am so freaking out right now, but we’ll revisit that. Later.  Right now, I have to get these guys home.”

“But they have hostile intentions towards your person, my liege!”

“Everyone has hostile intentions towards me.  I’m honestly surprised you haven’t attacked me yet.”

“Ah.  My liege, perhaps you should seek the services of a priest, if all your experiences with new people are such.”

“Is that the medieval equivalent of a therapist?”

“I fear I do not know what that is.  Why do you ask?”

“Because the last time I talked to one of those, they purposefully picked at every one of my insecurities and then tried to murder my, uh.  Someone close to me.”

“An evil counselor, then,” said the knight, gravely.

“I want to agree with you, but somehow I feel like you’re talking about something completely different than the image in my head.”

“That may be true, my liege.  Doubtless, you are very wise.”

Maddie was… lost.  

Very lost.  

Even so, her prerogative was escaping.  She started twisting, trying to get to the knots around her wrists.  

“Did you, uh, pilot the castle out here?”

“Yes.  I sensed that mortal enemies of the king, that’s you—”

“I will debate that as soon as my brain stops screaming at me.”

“—had entered the Realm.”

“Right.  Yeah. Thank you.  But I can handle these guys.  And I need to get them home.  Please. I made a deal with them.”

“With these?”

“Hey!” said Jack, offended.  

“I mean, I use the term deal pretty loosely.”

“Hey!”

“But yes.  Please.  Just.  Dang.  How did you tie them up that quickly?”

“It’s a hobby.”

“Do you mind if I take the chairs?”

“They are your chairs, my liege.”

“I’m still not used to that.”

“Are you quite certain you want to take them?  And just… Let them loose?  The dungeon here is very functional.  We even have an oubliette.”

“Raincheck.  But thank you.  Really, I mean it.”  Phantom flew behind Maddie, and she protested as the chair she was in was yanked upward. “Uh… I might have gotten turned around a time or two, so if you could…”

“Of course!  The keep does seem to have sustained some damage, so we will have to take some detours.”

“Phantom!  Phantom! Put us down and untie us.”

“Nah, I think I like this better.  Your kids can untie you once I bring you back!”

“You’re going to drag us all the way through the Ghost Zone?”

“That’s the plan.”

.

The rest of the flight was surprisingly pleasant. No one attacked, and his parents were much easier to carry in the chairs.  Sure, they struggled, but the struggling was much more manageable than the wriggling from before.  

They were mad at him.  But they were always mad at him.  So.  

No loss, really.

With the utmost carefulness, Danny set them down in the middle of the lab, still tied up, and then began zapping then tossing their most troublesome inventions into the gaping maw of the portal while they screamed at him.  

Normally, he wouldn’t do this, especially after successfully rescuing his parents and hopefully raising their opinion of him, but some of those inventions were painful.  Like.  A lot painful.  And dangerous.  Also, he was doing his level best to avoid thinking about the whole ‘king’ thing.  

Which he couldn’t do forever.  

Especially since Jazz walked down the stairs, probably drawn by the screaming, to see Danny shoving half of the Ghost Catcher through the portal sans-strings.  

“Uh,” said Danny.  

“Get that ghost, Jazzy-pants!”

Danny vanished and fled upstairs.  

.

Jazz had seen many strange things in her life, but that scene was one of the weirder ones.  

It took some time to untie her parents, longer to extract herself from the ensuing rant and their attempt to salvage their equipment from Danny’s all-too-explicable rampage.  Honestly, she was surprised Danny hadn’t snapped earlier.  

She opened the door to his room.  It was empty.  She squinted. He was not just leaving her hanging like that, with no context to what happened other than their parents’ ranting.  She opened her door.  

Danny was lying on his side on the middle of her rag rug, hugging Bearbert Einstein.  

“A ghost told me I was king and that I needed a priest.”

Oh boy.  

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Hot takes about Severus Snape are a wierdly decent glimpse into how a person with progressive values analyses things. Literally every time someone talks about Snape, it’s like this tiny window into how one-dimentionally people actually think.

Recently saw a twitter post that was a fantastic example. Here’s how it goes (paraphrasing):

Person A:“Snape is POC and Queer coded, that’s why you guy’s hate him uwu lol.”

Person B: “Actually I hate him because he was mean and abusive to children under his care uwu but go off I guess lol”

Both of these takes are designed to be dramatic and/or reactionary. They each use partial truths to paint very broad strokes. These are get-em-in-one-hit quips. This is virtue signalling, if you’ll excuse that loaded phrase. Nobody had a substantial conversation, but now everyone who sees their statement knows the high ground they took.

At least a hundred other people chimed in to add their own little quippy hot takes into play, none of which add anything significant, but clearly made everyone feel very highly of themselves.

So many layers of nuance and complex analysis is completely lost in this kind of discussion. On tumblr, you get more of this kind of bullshit, but you don’t have a word count limit, so you guys just spew endless mountains of weak overblown evidence backing up your bullshit arguments, none of which was really about engaging in a real conversation anyway.

Here’s the thing about Snape.

He is a childhood domestic abuse victim. His abuser is a muggle.

He becomes a student at a magical school that takes him away from his abuser and immediately instills in him the idea that being a part of this magical world is a badge of self-worth, empowerment, and provides safety and security - provided that he keeps in line.

There is a war is being waged in that world over his right to exist (he is a half blood).

He is a marginalized person within the context of the narrative, forced to constantly be in the same living space as the children of his own oppressors who are being groomed and recruited into a hate group militia (the pureblood slytherins). They are in turn trying to do the same to him.

He is marginalized person bullied by children who are also part of his oppressor group, but who have “more liberal” leanings and aren’t direct about why he’s being targeted (the mauraders are all purebloods, Sirius, who was the worst offender, was raised in a bigoted household, the same one that produced Bellatrix.).

He had a crush on a girl who is a muggleborn, and therefore she is considered even lesser than him and carries a stigma to those who associate with her. That girl was his only real friend. In his entire life.

For both Snape and Lily, allying themselves to a pureblood clique within their own houses would be a great way of shielding themselves from a measure of the bigotry they were probably facing. There would have been obvious pressure from those cliques to disconnect with one and other.

Every other person who associates with Snape in his adulthood carries some sort of sociopolitical or workplace (or hate cult) baggage with their association. Some of them will physically harm and/or kill him if he steps out of line. He hasn’t at any point had the right environment to heal and adjust from these childhood experiences. Even his relationship with Dumbledore is charged with constant baggage, including the purebloods who almost killed him during their bullying getting a slap on the wrist, the werewolf that almost killed him as a child being placed in an authority position over new children, etc. Dumbledore is canonically manipulative no matter his good qualities, and he has literally been manipulating Snape for years in order to cultivate a necessary asset in the war.

He is a person who is not in the stable mental state necessary to be teaching children, whom has been forced to teach children. While also playing the role of double agent against the hate group militia, the one that will literally torture you for mistakes or backtalk or just for fun. The one that will torture and kill him if he makes one wrong move.

Is the math clicking yet? From all of this, it’s not difficult to see how everything shitty about Snape was cultivated for him by his environment. Snape was not given great options. Snape made amazingly awful choices, and also some amazingly difficult, courageous ones. Snape was ultimately a human who had an extremely bad life, in which his options were incredibly grim and limited.

In fact, pretty much every point people make about how shitty Snape is as a person makes 100% logical sense as something that would emerge from how he was treated. Some if it he’s kind of right about, some of it is the inevitable reality of suffering, and some of it is part of the cycle of abuse and harm.

Even Snape’s emotional obsession with Lily makes logical sense when you have the perspective that he literally has no substantial positive experiences with other human beings that we know of, and he has an extreme, soul destroying guilt complex over her death. Calling him an Incel mysoginist nice guy projects a real-world political ideology and behavior that does not really apply to the context of what happened to him and her.

Even Snape’s specific little acts of cruelty to certain students is a reflection of his own life experiences. He identifies with Neville; more specifically, he identifies his own percieved emotional weaknesses in his childhood in Neville. There’s a very sad reason there why he feels the urge to be so harsh.

Snape very clearly hates himself, in a world where everyone else hates him, too. Imagine that, for a second. Imagine total internal and external hatred, an yearning for just a little bit of true connection. For years. Imagine then also trying to save that world, even if it’s motivated by guilt. Even if nobody ever knows you did it and you expect to die a miserable death alone.

There are more elements here to consider, including the way Rowling described his looks (there may be something in there re: ugliness and swarthy stereotyping). These are just the things that stand out the most prominently to me.

J.K. Rowling is clearly also not reliable as an imparter of moral or sociopolitical philosophies. I don’t feel that her grasp of minority experiences is a solid one, considering how she picks and chooses who is acceptable and who is a threat.

All of that said, this is a logically consistent character arc. Within the context of his narrative, Snape is a marginalized person with severe PTSD and emotional instability issues who has absolutely no room available to him for self-improvement or healing, and never really has. And yes, he’s also mean, and caustic, and verbally abusive to the students. He’s also a completey miserable, lonely person.

There are elements in his character arc that mirror real world experiences quite well. If nothing else, Rowling is enough of an emotional adult to recognise these kinds of things and portray something that feels authentic.

In my opinion, it’s not appropriate to whittle all this down by comparing him directly to the real world experiences of marginalized groups - at least if you are not a part of the group you are comparing him to. There have been many individuals who have compared his arc to their own personal experiences of marginalization, and that is valid. But generally speaking, comparing a white straight dude to people who are not that can often be pretty offensive. This is not a valuable way to discuss either subject.

Also, I believe that while it’s perfectly okay to not like Snape as a character, many of the people who act like Person B are carrying Harry’s childhood POV about Snape in their hearts well into their own adulthood. And if nothing else, Rowling was attempting to say something here about how our perspectives (should) grow and change as we emotionally mature.  She doesn’t have to be a good person herself to have expressed something true about the world in this instance, and since this story is a part of our popular culture, people have a right to feel whatever way they do about this story and it’s characters.

The complexity of this particular snapshot of fictionalized marginalization, and what it reveals about the human experience, cannot be reduced down to “he’s an abuser so he’s not worth anyone’s time/you are bad for liking him.”

And to be honest, I think that it reveals a lot about many of us in progressive spaces, particularly those of us who less marginalized but very loud about our values, that we refuse to engage with these complexities in leu of totally condemning him. Particularly because a lot of the elements I listed above are indeed reflected in real world examples of people who have experienced marginalization and thus had to deal with the resulting emotional damage, an mental illness, and behavior troubles, and bad decisions. Our inability to address the full scope of this may be a good reflection of how we are handling the complexity of real world examples.

Real people are not perfect angels in their victimhood. They are just humans who are victims, and we all have the capacity to be cruel and abusive in a world where we have been given cruelty and abuse. This is just a part of existing. If you cannot sympathise with that, or at least grasp it and aknowledge it and respect the people who are emotionally drawn to a character who refects that, then you may be telling on yourself to be honest.

To be honest, this is especially true if you hate Snape but just really, really love the Mauraduers. You have a right to those feelings, but if you are moralizing this and judging others for liking Snape, you’ve confessed to something about how you’ve mentally constructed your personal values in a way I don’t think you’ve fully grasped yet.

I have a hard time imagining a mindset where a story like Snape’s does not move one to empathy and vicarious grief, if I’m honest. I feel like some people really just cannot be bothered to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes, feeling what they feel and living like they live. I struggle to trust the social politics of people who show these kinds of colors, tbh.

But maybe that’s just me.

[imagines-oneshots-galore]

For Science

A/N: Hello all, it’s been a hot fucking minute. Some things have changed in how I write/ When i write/ etc. So I have no idea when I’ll get the time to write. Which brings me to the reason for this fic. I started watching the originals, and was immediately obsessed. Personally, I’m an Elijah girl, but this popped into my head and I couldn’t get it out fast enough. Wrote this in two hours 😅 Hope it’s okay! It was my first time writing for the Mikaelsons.

Pairing: Klaus Mikaelson x Reader

Word Count: 1,587

Summary: It’s the Fourth of July, Klaus isn’t home, Rebekah is oddly silent and Elijah, Hayley and Y/N decide to conduct a scientific experiment.

Warnings: Some saucy implications, swearing, Klaus, innuendos

AO3

Masterlist

Rebekah was up to something, a notion they could all agree on. Elijah, Hayley and Y/N sat on the couch in the living room of the Mansion, not hearing a sound despite knowing she was home. The one person who wasn’t present, was Klaus.

Thus, Rebekah was definitely up to something, but what it could be?

Lots of possibilities, with many different levels of peril, all designed specifically for one Niklaus Mikaelson. They knew they should probably get involved, especially Y/N, whose very boyfriend was the one at risk. But they also knew the outcome would be spectacular, so they all silently decided to do nothing. For now, Y/N would continue to write on her computer, and Hayley and Elijah would continue reading the same book together.

It may be a national holiday, but they had other things that required their attention at the moment.

A loud crash came from above them, followed by a curse only heard by the ones with supernatural hearing. They all looked up to the ceiling, right where they knew that Klaus and Y/N’s room was located. Simultaneously, they looked back to each other, one more silent conversation later, and they returned to their activities.

Hayley felt a buzz against her hip, and she knew it was Elijah’s. She reached between them to grab the phone, opening the notification.

“Klaus just texted saying he was on his way, based on the colorful vocabulary, I’d say the negotiation with Marcel didn’t go as planned,” Hayley said quietly to the group, not loud enough for Rebekah to hear as she showed the text to Elijah.

“He said he’ll be here in a few minutes. I wonder, should we tell her of her expedited deadline?” He muttered, thumbs poised working as he replied to his brother.

“Hell no,” Y/N laughed, and soon as it happened, the three paused, making sure Rebekah wasn’t listening into the conversation now. When nothing was heard yet, they all let out a collective breath.

“I want to see this play out, without interference” She said, softer this time as a wicked smirk came upon all of their faces.

“A scientific experiment, if you will,” Hayley said, suppressing the urge to laugh.

“Yes, for science.” Elijah said, and without another word, they all resumed what they were doing moments ago.

As promised, minutes later, Hayley and Elijah heard the faint hum of Niklaus’s vehicle. Apparently, Rebekah did as well, judging by the way they all heard another curse, followed by a frantic shuffling, and then she ran down the stairs and into the foyer.

She was slightly out of breath, and her eyes looked wild. The most damning piece of evidence was the lone feather sitting in her hair.

It didn’t take a conversation to know they would keep that information to themselves. Letting the cards fall where they may, in the name of knowledge. Rebekah smoothed out her shirt, letting out a breath as she walked over to sit next to Y/N on the adjoining couch. She picked up a random book as the car drew closer.

“I hope that I can trust you all to agree that I was here the whole time,” Rebekah said sweetly, an underlying threat laced in her words as she kept her gaze on the book.

“As long as my room isn’t destroyed,” Y/N said just as sweetly, and Rebekah paled slightly. Y/N may still be human, but she was still able to make Rebekah gulp.

“Rebekah…” She began to warn, right as they heard Klaus make it to the driveway. Only moments now.

“I will fix it myself but please say nothing,” She whispered, speaking fast, pleadingly, and before Y/N could agree or deny, Klaus sped into the mansion. His posture was tense, and his brow was furrowed. They all knew Hayley’s suspicion was correct.

“Marcellus Gerard is a conniving twit and I will be glad when we finally dethrone the treacherous bastard,” He huffed, as his gaze shifted to his girlfriend, and he softened in front of their eyes. He plopped down behind her, pulling her body closer to his chest. His hands traced down her arms as he whispered loud enough for only her to hear. Not that any of them would want to hear whatever it was. Based on their facial expressions, it wasn’t hard to guess what was being said.

“I rather think a long relaxing wash in my multi-headed shower sounds rather spectacular before the upcoming night of festivities” Klaus grinned into her skin. She shivered as she felt his warm breath on her neck, and she began to nod her head. But then she opened her eyes and gazed back upon Rebekah, with the damn feather in her hair.

She quickly thought of an excuse.

“I’ll be up in a moment, I have a couple more things I need to write down before I forget them.” She said, a little breathy. Both at the thought of what was promised, and her being put on the spot. Then another thought crossed her mind, as Klaus nodded, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.

If she didn’t say anything, she would surely not get to experience whatever Klaus was cooking up in his gorgeous head. But if she told him. He might forgive Rebekah’s attempted prank in favor of private time with his girlfriend. She locked eyes with Rebekah, and saw that she knew what Y/N had on the line.

After a tense millisecond, Y/N rolled her eyes, and let Klaus get up without another word. Rebekah breathed out imperceptibly, and Hayley rested her mouth against Elijah’s shoulder to conceal her smile.

Right before he left, Klaus turned and looked at Rebekah.

“There’s a feather in your hair sister,” He said, before turning back around, as Rebekah frantically pulled the feather from her blonde curls.

Klaus finally left with a pleased smile on his face, and suddenly they all felt a bit guilty.

Only for a moment though, he had staked and tortured (except for Y/N and Hayley of course, though Hayley was not immune to his taunts and quips) them many times over the centuries.

“Thanks for telling me,” She growled quietly, and Elijah casually looked up at his sister.

“For the results to be as accurate as possible, we could not interfere” He said matter of factly, as Hayley nearly snorted, her hand gripping his button up shirt. He reached up to grab hers, and brought it to his lips.

Before Rebekah had the chance to ask what the hell he was talking about, they collectively heard Klaus open his door, and then a mechanical grinding. Something that sounded like a liquid fell to the floor as Klaus cried out in clear surprise. Moments later, and a loud wooshing sound was heard.

It was silent for a few moments, and everyone waited in bated breaths for what was to come next.

“REBEKAHHH!” Klaus screamed dramatically, and before the name was even finished, she was out of the door, running away like her life depended on it. Probably because it did.

The group busted out laughing, and Hayley and Y/N looked to each other. Another wooshing sound and there he was.

Covered in thick chocolate syrup and a shit ton of feathers stood a murderous Klaus Mikaelson. Even the stoic Elijah couldn’t help the chuckle that left his lips at the clever prank.

“First, Marcellus turns down a perfectly good exchange of power, then my sister proverbially tars and feathers me, and now I begin to realize that my sweet Y/N let her devoted boyfriend walk right into a trap,” He said, continuing the dramatics as always.

“Happy American Independence Day brother” Elijah sighed, as fireworks started up outside. Hayley turned excitedly to the window, and his gaze turned to her, adoration clear on his face. Without another word, he stood up, Hayley cradled in his arms as she yelped at the sudden movement.

“If you’ll excuse us, I will be going to take my partner to watch the fireworks,” And he ran out of the room before Klaus had the chance to argue, Hayley’s giggle echoing in the wind.

Klaus huffed indignantly, getting himself all worked up again. Y/N lifted the laptop from her lap, setting it to the side so she could make her way to her whining boyfriend.

“I’m going to find Rebekah, and when I do I’ll…” He ranted, Y/N wrapping her arms around his neck, not caring about the sticky transfer of chocolate sauce and feathers onto her clothes. His arms wound around her waist as she quietly interrupted his threats.

“Pretend to laugh it off, to lull her into a false sense of security. Then you’ll come back to me to plan your revenge,” Her lips ghosted over the skin of his neck as she spoke, before her tongue darted up to lick a bit of the dark syrup.

“For now, I promised you a nice long shower,” She said as she pulled away, and met his signature smirk.

“You are truly wicked my dear,” He all but growled, pulling her harder against his body as she giggled. “I believe you are correct, I will most definitely be needing your assistance, love,” And as soon as the words left his lips, he picked her up and ran them to the washroom, the need for revenge forgotten for now.

A solid day's work in the name of Science.

[chaoticpuff17]

Endgame

ADG Tae fic

Masterlist

Warnings: reference to non con. yandere behavior

hello my darlings! A little later than intended. blame my computer problems. But here it is! the next ADG oneshot! love you all, I’m off to go rewrite everything I lost on the Yoongi chapter. I’ve been avoiding it.--- Chaotic puff. 

Taehyung watched the screen a vicious smirk playing across his lips as he watched her run through the alleyway. His poor little bird, always running. She had to know by now that she couldn’t escape him. How many years had they been playing this game? She had to know by now that she couldn’t win, but it was cute to see her try.

She hated him. That was okay though. She just needed a little push in the right direction. He was tired of watching from a distance. He was tired of watching her and only seeing her face to face a few times a year. They’d been playing their game for so long now, she had to be tired as well. His sweet Aerie was an excellent opponent, but she had to know that it would all come to an end eventually.

He could remember the first time he had seen her. They’d been so young then. They’d both been on the train. Taehyung had been exhausted after a night of hacking, and she had been immersed in something on her own computer. Her glasses had slipped down her nose in the most enchanting way. Her hair was piled haphazardly on top of her head with strands falling down all around her face, though she didn’t seem to notice or care, and he couldn’t help but wonder what kept her so immersed. He’d pulled out his own computer and set to work finding her among the other people doing work on the train.

He’d found her easily enough, and the cause of the little furrow between her brow became evident enough. It was a paper for school, a literary analysis for an English literature class. Her face was all scrunched up as she looked over The Picture of Dorian Gray. She was intensely focused on it, and a little digging into her files and schedule had told him that the paper was due in a few days. He found her concentration, the way she poured over each line, endearing. He loved the way she chewed on her inner cheek as she thought over paragraph. She was just adorable.

A little digging into her computer had given Taehyung access to her life. He knew exactly how to go about finding her. He knew what school she went to, her major, where she lived, and he pursued her with enthusiasm. The only hitch in his pursuit was her continued rejection, something Taehyung had not anticipated. Why would he have? No one had ever rejected him before. She couldn’t have done better. Even if she tried, Taehyung wouldn’t have allowed it. She was his from the first moment he saw her on that train.

Aerie may have looked sweet, but she was a snappish creature by nature. She rejected every bouquet, every invitation to dinner. She’d rejected his affection at every turn, rejected his every effort, until she’d taken matters into her own hands and begun their little game. He’d gone to offer her the world, only to find her gone. Her apartment was empty. A quick search revealed that she had even dropped out of school. She’d simply vanished.

Taehyung’s first instinct had been panic and rage. How could she leave him like that? How could she reject him? And then there came a new feeling. Excitement. If she wanted a chase, he would give her one. It had been no trouble at all for him to track her down. She’d changed cities and was doing her best to keep a low profile, but she had no idea who she was dealing with. The look of shock on her face when he’d appeared on her doorstep had been so satisfying, so adorable. The frying pan she’d taken to the side of his head, was less adorable.

Taehyung had become smarter after that. His little bird was so prone to flight that he had to be more careful in his approach or risk another frying pan to the head something he had no intention of repeating. She’d been easy enough to find again though. She was never really out of his reach not with all the resources he had at his fingertips. He’d cornered her just a few hours later in a bus station a few towns over, succeeding in knocking her out and taking her to a hotel to wait for her to wake up again. He wanted her calm when he made his offer again, a life by his side.

She had not been calm though. She had fought him tooth and nail to get out of that room and had laughed in his face when he’d made her the offer, and it was something he couldn’t understand. How could she refuse him? He was handsome. He was young. He was wealthy, and he had chosen her. Out of every woman that had thrown themselves at his feet, he had chosen her. None of that seemed to matter though. She looked at him as though he had a second head, as if he was the most vile being on the planet.

It had been the beginning of a longstanding game between them. He would chase, and she would run. Sometimes he would let months elapse before he took her again. He loved the look of shock and horror on her face when he showed up again. It was something he would never get tired of.

The next time he decided to take her, he brought her to what the boys had dubbed as his play house. The house was situated in the middle of nowhere. Even if she was able to make it out of the house, there was nowhere she could go. He had designed it especially for her after all.

The area surrounding the house was made up of a series of mazes designed to keep her in, and most paths led back to the house, back to him.

The games were fun, but Taehyung was craving more now. Everyone was settling down. Namjoon had Y/N even if she had engaged him in a chase of their own. Hoseok had Iyla. Jin had taken his patient as his own, and Yoongi had sired a kid with one of Jimin’s girls. It was time to settle down himself, but that required nailing down his little bird.

He’d indulged her long enough. He’d given her plenty of chances to end this on her own, plenty of chances to surrender, to come to him of her own will. He let her believe that she’d managed to escape him, but she was never truly out of his grasp. He always knew where she was, always. A few sneakily placed tracking devices on her body ensured that.

She was a smart little devil. He’d give her that. His first few attempts at trackers had been foiled by her throwing out her phone each time she came in contact with him. He had quickly learned that he couldn’t place trackers in any of her devices. So when he’d switched to placing chips on her person, he’d errored on the side of caution and placed several in assorted spots. She’d never be able to get rid of them all. Of that, he was confidant. She was smart, but not smart enough to find all five trackers, and they ensured that Taehyung had no problem tracking her down for the endgame.

Taehyung stood up from his chair with a leisurely stretch. It was time to fetch his little bird.

Aerie woke up in a house she was horribly horribly familiar with. She’d been there more times than she’d like to admit over the years. She knew that within its walls lurked the psycho that had been nipping at her heels for years. Every time he tracked her down, he brought her to this horrible place. The house was like its own circle of hell with Taehyung ruling over it. Each time she was there, there was some new horror awaiting her. There had always been a way out, but it came at the price of playing his twisted games. She’d learned early on that Taehyung never did anything out of the goodness of his heart. Nothing was free, and she’d given up more than she’d ever wanted to admit over the years. He’d slowly taken everything from her.

In the beginning, he’d only been a stalker, the creep she kept rejection. She’d thought that if she moved away, if she laid low for a while, he’d forget about her and find a new obsession, and she would be free to enroll in a new school and live her life free of him. That hadn’t been the case though. He’d followed her wherever she went.

She knew he was toying with her. She knew he was letting her escape. He’d made that clear, made it clear that she had no power in their relationship. As much as she hated to use that word to describe them, it was the best fit. Twisted and horrid as it was, it was still a relationship, and Taehyung had made his affection for her more than evident even if she had done the same with her hatred for him. That never seemed to bother him too much though. He wasn’t delusional. She knew that he understood her hatred of him, he simply didn’t care. He seemed to think that time would reverse her contempt. It had not, and as much as she hated to admit it, this was not the first time she had woken up in the house tied down and practically naked.

Her hands were bound by leather cuffs to a bed that looked more like a bird’s cage than it did a bed. It was a glaring reminder of his degrading little nickname for her, his little bird. She hated that nickname as much as she hated him. The bed didn’t just look like a cage, it functioned like one as well. If Taehyung wished he could lock her behind the elaborate bars to rot. It was degrading, but so were most of the things he did to her. This time even her legs were restrained held apart by a spreader. It was only the beginning of her humiliation. Taehyung hadn’t even made his appearance yet.

She took a moment to shake off the last vestiges of grogginess caused by whatever drug Taehyung had used to knock her out his time. His more violent methods didn’t leave her with a lingering feeling of nausea, but they did cause more bumps and bruises. It was hard to say which one was worse, but she supposed that it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t as if Taehyung gave her a choice in how he captured her.

Once she didn’t feel like her head was spinning and her stomach wasn’t about to heave its contents all over the red bedding, Aerie took a look around to see where her tormentor was. She couldn’t see him through the intricate bars of the bed, but that didn’t mean much. He could be lurking somewhere just out of sight. What she did notice was the set of skimpy lingerie that clung to her body. She should have been used to it by now, but seeing his selections still made her skin crawl. There was no such thing as modesty when it came to Taehyung.

This particular set was black, lacy, and strappy. It didn’t cover much though. Much to her annoyance it was lacking in two distinct areas. There was no material where the cups of the bra should have been, there was nothing. Strips of lace curved up around the top of her breasts, but the majority of her chest was left exposed to the room. Her panties were lacking as well in the fact that the lace was missing one vital component, the crotch. In its place were two silky straps that curved down between her thighs and back up around her ass leaving everything but the area right above her center exposed. His lingerie choices were typically risqué, but they usually covered a bit more.

As much as she hated the lace wrapped around her body, what was worse was the collar fixed around her throat. This was an item she was intimately familiar with. The collar was made of a thick leather that was wrapped in a sumptuous black lace. The front of the collar was decorated by a single silver ring that Taehyung took full advantage of in his escapades. As his “little bird”, Aerie was nothing more than a pet to him, and the collar staked his claim in a blatantly obvious way.

She was ashamed to say that Taehyung had been her first, though it hadn’t been her choice. She could still remember that horrible day vividly. It had been a little over two years ago. She’d been particularly resistant to him that night, sick of him and his games. Her sharp tongue had been her undoing. She’d pushed Taehyung too far, refused him one too many times. Granted it was bound to happen eventually, but that didn’t make the result any less traumatizing.

Aerie woke up groggy doing her best to shake off the remnants of a drug induced sleep. It was like swimming through a fog. When she finally shook it off, she wished that she hadn’t. Her hands were bound above her head by leather cuffs, and she was dressed in a set of skimpy lace lingerie that certainly wasn’t hers. She couldn’t recognize the room, but she did recognize the man pacing around the room like a caged animal even if she wished that she didn’t.

Everything came rushing back at the sight of him.

Aerie hadn’t been on a date in a long time. Her stalker had put a damper on love life. Moving around from place to place in an effort to avoid him didn’t leave much time for dating, but she was excited. She’d even taken the time to do her makeup with what little skill she had and curl her hair all in preparation of her date with Minho. She’d met him at the store she’d been working at to make ends meet while she tried to hide from the man who had been making her life a living hell. He was sweet, and she enjoyed talking with him. One date couldn’t hurt especially not with someone has lovely has Minho.

The grin that had stretched across her face had been there all day that is until she saw the man of her nightmares stalking into the restaurant practically radiating fury. She stared at him like a deer in the head lights as he paused by the first few tables. The world stopped for a moment only to start again with the sound of bullets.

Taehyung released a volley of shots into the air sending the entire restaurant into a panic, a cacophony of screams filling the air.

“Everybody out!” He growled eyes fixated on where she sat across from Minho, and the patrons scrambled to obey him.

Minho reached across the table grabbing her hand as he stood up to flee the restaurant with the rest of the customers.

“Not you.” Taehyung growled stalking towards them pulling up a seat and taking a seat beside Aerie.

“We don’t want any trouble.” Miho stuttered eyes wide and frightened eyes his gaze flitted between Taehyung and the door.

“Don’t want any trouble?” Taehyung laughed arching one perfectly manicured brow as he draped an arm across Aerie’s shoulders keeping her in place. “You should have thought of that before you took out my girl. Isn’t that right, little bird?” He purred leaning in and brushing his nose over her neck in a motion that was far too intimate for what the two of them shared.

“Look man, I didn’t know she was taken!” Minho gulped raising his hands in a motion of surrender.

“Didn’t know?” Taehyung laughed moving his hand so that it was curled around the back of her neck one finger twirling a strand of her curled hair. “That makes it all better then.”

Without any warning, Taehyung drew his gun again and fired three shots directly into the other man’s head as Aerie screamed in horror beside him. His hand fisted cruelly in her hair dragging her back against her seat stopping her from running as she so wanted to do.

“Aerie, Aerie, Aerie.” He cooed his grin vicious as he gazed down at her. “You’ve been a very bad girl, little bird.”

There was a sharp prick, and then everything went dark.

That brought her back to the present where Taehyung had only just noticed that her eyes were open.

“You’re awake.” He grinned coming to take a seat on the edge of the bed. “I thought that I’d given you too much of the sedative for a minute there. How are you feeling, little bird?” He cooed moving up the bed so that he was sitting next to her hips, trailing a finger across her clavicle.

“Fuck off.” She growled trying to squirm away from him without much luck as the cuffs dug into her wrists keeping her in place.

“None of that, little bird.” He growled pressing down to keep her from wiggling away. “If you wanted my attention, you could have said something. I would have been by your side in a heartbeat.”

“Fuck off.” She repeated kicking wildly in the hope of landing a hit. She was almost successful, landing a hit to his upper thigh, but it was just shy of where she need it to land, and only served to piss him off.

Taehyung was quick to straddle her hips keeping her pinned down as he wrapped a long fingered hand around her throat.

“If you’re going to act like a whore, little bird, I’ll have to treat you like a whore.” He growled grinding his hips against hers.

“Get off!” She shrieked trying to buck him off without much success.

“If you’re going to be a whore,” He snarled moving down the bed and binding her legs so that they were spread apart. “You should at least by my whore, don’t you think?”

“Get off of me!” She shrieked again tears brimming in her eyes as the panic began to settle in.

“Such a shrill voice.” He hissed moving off the bed to grab something. He returned much to quickly. “If you can’t be sweet for me, you should remain silent.”

There wasn’t anything she could do as he wrenched her jaw open shoving a ball gag between her teeth and fastening it behind her head with practiced ease. “There.” He purred moving back so that he was settled between her spread legs. “Much better.”

She thrashed against her bindings as the monster tore off the skimpy underwear. Tears burned her eyes as he shoved a finger into her cunt. She wasn’t ready for the intrusion, but Taehyung didn’t seem to care as he pushed forward. He only paused as he was met with a resistance he hadn’t expected.

He pulled back a slow smile spreading across his features. “Little bird.” He cooed gently brushing the tears from her eyes. “Such a good girl, saving herself for daddy.” He pressed kisses down against her throat trailing them down towards the lace that covered her breasts before he savagely tore that from her body just as he had the panties.

“Don’t worry, baby. Daddy can be gentle.” He promised pressing a kiss to her nipple that had pebbled from the cool air. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to punish you for letting that leach put his hands all over you.” She whimpered her pleas coming out as a garbled mess against the gag.

She’d always thought her first time would be, well maybe not romantic, but at least nice and with someone she chose. Having that choice ripped away while being violated by the man who had made her life a living hell had made the blow all the worse. It had taken her a long time to recover from the trauma of being raped by her stalker, and that time had been made even longer considering that every time he came back to torment her, he had no problem with repeating the process over and over again. It was horrible, but she expected it now. It was just one more thing to get over with before he put her through whatever game he had prepared for them this time around.

“Hello, little bird.” His deep voice washed over her filling her with deep seated dread. “Did you miss me?” He cooed entering the cage like bed and perching himself on the edge of the mattress as he grinned down at her.

“Fuck off, Taehyung.” She growled pulling on the restraints that kept her arms in place. She knew better than to pull of the leg spreader. If she pulled on it, it would only make her predicament worse.

“Aerie, Aerie, Aerie.” He tutted one of his long fingers slowly trailing up her bare leg. “Why must you always be so rude, little bird? Haven’t you missed me at all? I’ve missed you.”

She grinned viciously as she jerked at her arm restraints trying to lunge at him. “What do you want, you fucking psychopath? Can’t you find another girl whose life you can ruin?”

He laughed showcasing that box shaped grin that would have been endearing on anyone else. “Why would I do that when I have you?” He cooed trailing his finger up to her thigh.

“What do you want?” She growled again.

“I have a proposition for you, little bird, but why don’t we have some fun first?” He hummed slowly crawling on top of her while she glared up at him.

“Or you could just tell me.” She grumbled wishing that any of her limbs were free so that she could smack him.

“And what would be the fun in that?” He chuckled placing a kiss on the soft skin of her belly. “I’ve missed you so much, little bird. It’s been so long.” He purred trailing kisses up towards her exposed chest.

“Get off of me!” She growled bucking her hips up in an attempts to throw him off thought he motion only seemed to encourage him.

“And if I don’t want to?” He asked smirking against her skin as before nipping at her exposed nipple eliciting a yelp from her. If there was one thing that Taehyung loved about his little bird, it was how sensitive she was. Her reactions were just as adorable as that first night.

“Fuck you.” She hissed doing her best to wiggle away from him despite her restraints.

“Oh, you will.” His grin was positively devious as he dove down to attack the sliver of her neck that was left uncovered by the collar.

He loved that collar. He loved the way the lace looked against her skin and how easy the loop made it to manhandle and restrain her. He’d more than once attached the matching lace covered leather leash to that little loop. Seeing her in that collar always got him fired up. Once he brought her home he’d have an array of collars for her, but this one would always be his favorite.

“Get off!” She shrieked wishing not for the first time that she could torment him just as much as he tormented her.

“Hush, little bird.” He cooed lifting his head so he could brush his nose against hers affectionately. “Let me make you feel good.”

It was a source of never ending shame for her that Taehyung was in fact an excellent lover. He pulled her pleasure from her by force with the persistence of a dog with a bone. Even if she resisted, he would make sure that she came for him, more than once. It was a matter of pride for him that he could make his little bird writhe with pleasure beneath him despite her protests.

“Stop!” She shrieked taking the opportunity to head butt him forcing him back much to his displeasure.

He hissed placing an elegant hand against his throbbing nose as he glared down at her. She was still feisty no matter how many times he played with her. He loved it.

“That wasn’t very nice, little bird.”

“That makes two of us.” She snarled relieved that he had backed away for the moment. “What proposition did you have?” She asked hoping to distract him.

“Eager aren’t we?” He cooed sitting back so that he was settled on top of her thighs.

“Just tell me, you sick fuck.” She huffed glaring up at him.

“This is something best discussed over dinner. Though I’d love to keep you just as you are.” He purred his eyes trailing over her form.

“Then let’s have dinner.” She’d do anything to avoid his more amorous attentions even if it meant sitting down to dinner with him.

With a sigh Taehyung set to work undoing the restraints at her ankles before unclipping the chain that kept her attached to the bed, though he left the cuffs on.

“Let’s get you dressed, little bird.”

She didn’t fight him as he pulled her up from the bed or when left her standing in the middle of the room her hands still cuffed together. He knew better than to leave her completely unrestrained. This wasn’t their first rodeo. She’d be more than happy to take off down the twisting halls of the house if he gave her the chance, but it was harder to escape from him if she was still bound, and it was better to see what he wanted before she made her escape. Taehyung would eventually start a game that would lead to her eventual freedom. He liked games.

He returned moments later with a long black dress in hand.

She didn’t argue or fight when he uncuffed her handed or when he stripped her of the strap of cloth he called a bra. Even if the dress was revealing, it had to be better than the lingerie he had provided.

She was right. The dress was revealing, but so were most of the clothes that Taehyung had forced her into over the years. This dress wasn’t the worst of them. The material was soft and silky against her skin leaving her back completely left exposed to the air. The top wrapped around her neck before diving down into a deep v ending just before her belly button. Not even her legs were left covered. There was a slit up the side leaving the entirety of her left leg exposed. But overall it was still better than the lingerie. Anything was better than the lingerie.

What surprised her was that Taehyung had removed the collar. He loved that collar almost to the point that she would call it a fixation, but she supposed that it didn’t match the aesthetic of the evening gown.

She allowed him to seat her on a long ottoman as he pulled her hair back in a sleek pony tail, and gave her a pair of earrings to match. They trailed down from her lobes in a line of stones that ended just at her jaw. She was dressed far too nicely for dinner with her worst enemy, but what choice did she have? It was always best to cooperate until he made his intentions for the evening clear.

He led her through the twisting halls of the house until they came to the overly ornate dining room. She never understood why the house was so sumptuously decorated. She’d seen it during the many times she had run through the halls in many failed attempts to get away from the psychopath that made her life hell. It wasn’t as though he lived in the house. She’d figured that out pretty quickly. The house was completely unlived in. She didn’t know where he lived, but it wasn’t here.

He seated her at the table before going out to get the meal he had had prepared for them. Taehyung wasn’t much for cooking, but he found that the staff at Namjoon’s estate were more than willing to work with him, and they did a far better job of it than he could. He would have asked Jin to do it knowing that his hyung was an excellent cook, but Jin had been busy preparing for the journey to go and retrieve Namjoon’s wife. She’d finally been located in some dingy little village in Italy. More than that, she’d been found in the final stages of a pregnancy that could only have been Namjoon’s doing. His hyung was as ecstatic as he was angry to find her. He knew that Namjoon had always wanted to be a father, but it had to hurt knowing that his wife had run off with one of his enemies and was peacefully playing house with them. It didn’t matter though. Namjoon would have her and the baby home in no time just like Taehyung would have Aerie home where she belonged at long last.

They both remained silent for the beginning of the meal as they both cut into the steaks that Namjoon’s chef had prepared, but eventually, she couldn’t take the anticipation anymore, though she hated being the first one to crack.

“Why am I here?” She asked setting aside her cutlery as she stared him down from across the table.

“Can’t I just miss you?” He teased setting aside his own utensils. He chuckled seeing the completely unamused expression on her face. “No. You wouldn’t believe that would you? I have a proposition for you.”

“So you’ve said.” She grumbled crossing her arms under her breasts.

“I’ve enjoyed our games, baby. I really have, but I’ve grown tired of them.” He drawled leaning back dramatically with a long suffering sigh. “I want to put an end to them.”

He could see her brighten up at that staring at him with interest. “You’re going to let me go?”

He laughed at that finding her suggestion amusing. “Of course not. Why would I do that?”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I want to play one last game. If you win, I’ll let you go, for good.”

“And if I lose?” She asked her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“You come with me willingly. You surrender, be mine.” As she stiffened her mouth set in a thin line of dread, Taehyung couldn’t help but smile. “No more running. No more games. As simple as that.”

“And why would I agree to that?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “You don’t really have a choice. I could always take you by force.”  

“Like you haven’t before?” She scoffed her gaze taking on a hard, bitter edge.

“One last game.” He assured her even though he didn’t have any intention of playing fair. She didn’t need to know that though.

She eyed him weighing her options. On the one hand, he could be lying, but on the slim chance that he was telling the truth, she would be free of him. She’d never have to worry about him lurking in the shadows at every moment. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had been free of him. It would be like the sun coming out of months of rain, but there was a much greater chance that Taehyung was lying. It could just be another twisted part of his games, one designed to crush her hopes.  But on the off chance that he was actually telling the truth, that the offer was genuine, she had to take it.

“Fine.” She agreed reluctantly. “What kind of game do you have in mind?” She asked even as she began to wonder if this was the right move after all. She knew better than to underestimate him. She even had a few small scars as a reminder of that. 

A feral grin spread across his face as he registered her agreement. She didn’t trust that grin. It never preceded anything good. It was too manic as was the light in his eyes. They always shone too bright whenever he got excited, but his excitement always brought her pain. Even though his eyes were shining with that disconcerting glee, they were dark. It was like two black holes staring back at her ready to suck her into his madness. 

“You remember the mazes. Don’t you, little bird?”

A grimace spread across her features, but she nodded. She had extensive experience with the mazes that surrounded the house. They were Taehyung’s favorite game. He’d set her loose in them to run like a scared rabbit. Each time they were different, and she hated them more than anything. They were as dehumanizing as they were unfair. They changed even as she was in them. The walls moved at their master’s bidding, confusing and turning her around through the endless halls of greenery. 

“I remember.” 

“You’re aware by now that there is more than one maze.” He began leaning forward gleefully. Of course she knew. She had tried more than once to slip through the gates that separated the different parts of the labyrinth. “All three sections will be available to you tonight. I’ll give you a twenty minute head start before I follow you in.” 

That caught her attention in the worst sort of way. Taehyung hardly ever entered the maze. She could only recall him doing it once before when she’d fallen and twisted her ankle rather badly after trying to scale one of the hedges. He preferred to watch and taunt from the cameras and speakers hidden throughout the infernal maze. 

Her new found hesitance didn’t seem to deter him though. He continued with just as much enthusiasm as before. “If you can make it out of the maze before dawn, you win,” His grin got even wider excitement coursing through his veins. “But if you fail to solve the maze or I catch you before your time is over, you’re mine.” 

It seemed simple enough, but nothing was ever simple when it came to Taehyung, and this would be the first time that he had actively hunted her through the maze. While she would have the whole of the labyrinth at her disposal, Taehyung still held an unfair advantage. They were his mazes. He knew them far better than she did despite the many times she had run through the mazes. He made sure to change them before she ran a particular section again. She had no idea how large the full Maze would actually be or what sort of traps he had laid for her within it. 

“As simple as that?” She asked slowly, skeptically. 

In the past, if she could complete or beat his game, she was free to go. He would even have some faceless driver take her back to the city where she would run as far as she could as fast as she could even though she knew he would find her again. She had no more desilusiones of being able to hide from him permanently. It was the whole reason she had decided to agree to this despite the unfair odds. It was a chance for complete freedom. 

“As simple as that, little bird.” He purred dark eyes boring into her. “Shall we?” 

He was more than eager to begin. The sooner they started, the sooner she would be in his arms. He had everything prepared for her. 

He’d moved into the house that Namjoon had provided in the vicinity of the main estate. With Hoseok, Jin, Yoongi, and Namjoon all starting families of their own, Namjoon had formed a sort of gated community surrounding the main estate. There was a house for each of them. Hoseok had taken Iyla from the main estate to settle her into her new home before Namjoon and Jin returned with Y/N. Yoongi and his little family had moved into their designated house as well. Sen was thrilled with the space for their son to run around in, and Taehyung could hardly wait to fill his own house with little ones. They’d have to start right away once he took her home. He wanted a big family after all. They’d have to start soon if they were going to meet his goals. 

She nodded stiffly standing up from her chair. It was better to get it over with whether she was going to win or lose. If she won, it was all the better to have her freedom sooner. If she lost, it was better not to have her hopes up for too long. It would only prolong her heartache.

She was quick to leave the heels that had been foisted on her at the door. They would do her no good in the maze. Heels never worked well on the soft ground and the grass. They would only slow her down. If she was going to fail, she preferred it be because she had failed to solve the maze than give Taehyung the added satisfaction of catching her himself.

She was about to head into the maze through the entrance Taehyung had led her to when he pulled her back by the wrist. The jolt sent her flying back into his chest much to his delight.

“I’m giving you your head start, but I’ll see you soon.” She was going to bite back with an acerbic response, but Taehyung cut her off with a searing kiss, one she wanted to immediately wipe away, but that would have only served to make him angry, and she had no time to waste.

Without a word to him, she hiked up her skirts, disappearing into the maze.  Twenty minutes wasn’t a long time, and she had to make the best of it or regret it later.

She had never had the entirety of the maze open to her, and it made her apprehensive. Even one section of the maze was hard enough to master, let alone all three of them. Trick walls and dead ends littered the halls, and Taehyung always made sure that each time she entered the hedges that she’d find them just as difficult.

She rushed through the paths cursing the dress that Taehyung had dressed her up in. The slit at least provided her with free movement, but only the demon that was Kim Taehyung would force her to run a maze in an evening gown. He was over dramatic like that.

Another thing to curse was the abundance of dead ends that thwarted her at seemingly every turn. They forced her to back track far more often than she would have liked or was prudent. No matter where she turned, it seemed like she was only going in circles. As much as she hated him, she had to admit that he had pulled out all the stops for their final game.  

Taehyung had retreated into the house to wait out the twenty minutes before he could follow his little bird into the maze. Logically, he knew it wasn’t long to wait, but the anticipation made the minutes stretch on into eternity. He passed the time watching her on his phone. The cameras gave him an unfair advantage, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was more than happy to watch her wear herself out. He had always kept the maze at least somewhat fair, but he wasn’t willing to give her that advantage this time. He had promised her that if she could escape the labyrinth before dawn, she would be free, but there was no escape. The only exits lead straight back to the house, and making it back to the house did not count as solving the maze.

He knew it was unfair, but it didn’t matter. He was tired of waiting, and she would be his whether she liked it or not. This at least gave her the illusion of a chance. There would be no escaper for her.

When the twenty minutes had past, Taehyung took to the maze, leisurely strolling down its paths as he trailed after his prize. He had the advantage of his little spies and the trick walls. He could herd her however he liked with those. He had the entire labyrinth at his fingertips, and she would never even know. Or perhaps she would. She was a clever little bird, and he wouldn’t put it past her to have figured it out. It was one of the many things he loved about his little bird.

With every step he was brought closet to her, he made sure of it. Doors were strategically closed guiding her towards dead ends and herding her back towards him. There was no need for him to strain himself. His poor Aerie was going to be exhausted before the evening was over, but that wouldn’t stop her from putting up a fight. He expected he’d have to carry her back to the house whether it was because she refused to come or from sheer exhaustion. It didn’t matter to him. She’d be in his arms either way.

It was easy to catch up to her with how much backtracking his meddling had forced her to do, but Taehyung wasn’t finished playing yet.

“Give up, little bird!” He called out knowing she was just on the other side of the hedge. “I’m going to find you!” A grin spread across his features as he heard the sound of her taking off further into the maze.

Perfect. She was headed directly to the center of the maze. He’d catch her there, and even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t be long until he caught her, not when he could see her every move.

“Come out, come out where ever you are!” He trilled out turning a corner and catching the faintest glimpse of her ankle as she ran around a different corner.

“Wouldn’t it be so much easier just to give up?” He cooed driving her further into the maze. It would be easier to subdue her when she was tired, and with the way she had been running around, she was bound to be exhausted. “I know you’re tired, little bird.” He sang catching another glimpse of her turning a corner. “You’ve done so well, but it’s time to go home. Don’t you want to go home, little bird?”

Her heart was pounding against her chest as she ran further into the maze. Taehyung’s words hounded her every step pushing her forward as panic coursed through her veins. Even if she was going to lose, she wasn’t going to go willingly. He’d have to drag her back. And with every step she was regretting her decision to run the maze. It felt less like a chance and more as if he was toying with her. He was always toying with her.

“Come on, little bird!” He called again drawing nearer excitement coursing through him as he pushed her towards the end game.

She burst through the path and into what had to be the center of the maze. There was a fountain there and two other paths leading out, but just as she made to run towards one of them, a gate slammed shut. She made for the other path only for the same thing to happen. There was only one way out, and she could hear Taehyung coming down that path calling out to her.

“No!” She shrieked pulling at the wrought iron of the gate trying to force it open, but it was no use. The door wouldn’t budge.

“Awww,” she could hear her tormenters deep voice coo, far too close by for comfort. “It looks like you’re trapped, little bird.”

She whirled around to face him eyes wide and chest heaving. “You cheated.” She hissed hands gripping the bars behind her as though to stabilize herself.

“I never said I wouldn’t.” He shrugged strolling towards her. “Game over.”

“You cheated!” She snarled again though her back was pressed against the bars in the hope that she’d somehow slip through them A foolish hope. He wouldn’t allow her to escape, not now.

He held out a hand to her smiling brightly as he beckoned her forward. “Come along, little bird. It’s time to go home.”

[poursomesunaonme]

UM HI??? WHY HAS IT TAKEN ME SO LONG TO WATCH MIDNIGHT MASS???? (good) ranting below the cut bc holy shit… *spoilers* do i need to even give a religion tw i mean…

so yall know i have oodles and oodles of religious trauma from my involvement w the church in high school so watching it has been a trip to say the least

also im obsessed with anything that mike flanagan has created the man rivals my obsession w david lynch SHIT

the hymns that they choose - phenomenal. i may not identify w the faith anymore BUT i love hymns and i was singin along like a mf fiend

but anyways imma do an episode by episode review bc im that neurotic

episode 1

i love it when creators have their fav actors/actresses, so seeing kate siegel, robert longstreet, annabeth gish, samantha sloyan, carla gugino, and henry thomas just really made me so happy! henry’s character design had him nearly unrecognizable and his accent too so whenever i realized i was like… u bastard ur amazing. he’s so talented! but i thought that this episode created a lovely setup about the show, with all the family and community dynamics. i heavily relate to riley’s dilemma about not going to church when he’s back home because of my estrangement from it all - and face it, my mom’s more of a bev than an annie (which makes the series a lot more… fun to watch because flanagan really hits the nail on the head when it comes to bev’s character). i’m hopping on the father paul is a hottie train because i have a thing for priests (hehe choo choo all aboard the trauma train!) but also that one sermon… wowza

episode 2

the homily that father paul gives… nearly converted me LMAO. NOT REALLY! but still i was like mans deserves an emmy for that. the whole crock pot luck scene had me in tears when pike died… like i haven’t finished it so i’ll let myself predict that it was bev bc she’s a big fat BITCH. continuing in the bev vain, riley’s exposé had me fuming with 1) taking money from the oil company and 2) using it for tithing like obviously she pocketed what was leftover from the community center. my parents give sO MUCH MONEY to the church like ??? i want an inheritance??? sorry im a bitch but its true lmao. but then his whole monologue about god and bad things happening and suffering had me bawling. my. eyes. out.

i used to be one of those people who believed that suffering was a good thing - i will reiterate that i was heavily involved with church activities in high school, staffing and planning retreats, giving talks, all that fun stuff (it’s fun looking back now because i see that it created a deep fear of intimacy in my heart hahahahahah). but hearing riley talk about it, and going on about how the townspeople especially suffer… woof that hurt. but the whole monologue was so well written, and so beautiful - i also appreciated how he has the whole view of the other side because he was born into and involved with the faith before leaving the island.

i think those kinds of views are one of the best perspectives because they really understand the church’s view and all. like with issues nowadays and with arguments with my parents, i can best them because i still somewhat know what i’m talking about. but watching other shows that explore catholicism just aren’t done right but this one… takes the mf cake. i can also really appreciate the imagery of the island being the faith and leaving it allows perspectives to change because it was what happened to me when i left my hometown to go to college. love how relatable it is.

episode 3

leeza’s miracle: had me shaking to my core, honest. my theory that i’m screaming into the void is that there’s some kinda blood in the chalice that heals her and is what’s healing everyone else. but moving on, whenever they go to sarah’s office and wade says something along the lines of “why can’t we just label it a miracle and be done with it” when sarah suggests testing that would actually benefit other people in leeza’s situation, it just blew my mind. and bev gatekeeping people from father paul (i guess it was alright since he was violently ill)… also for those of yall who dont know, priests aren’t supposed to be in a parish for more than like a few years so how the monsignor was there for so long… who knows. but the whole purpose is that the parish doesn’t get attached to the priests, which in a lot of cases happen and people move parishes after they leave, yadda yadda… but with the miracle and gatekeeping, it just goes to show you how attached they already are.

i simply adore how father paul’s confession telling of what happened to pruitt went - especially with the story of saul and the images of the stations of the cross… like christ it was amazing. and of course, bev has to be teaching about god in the public school. the whole conversation made my skin itch because it was like listening to my mom talk LMAO but i love hassan’s character and his view on it, and especially how the show explores his ostracization from the community because of his muslim identity. it made me sad to see how bev trampled on him and erin but i was like this is the christian’s world and we are sadly living in it lmao.

and HOLY SHIT LEEZA’S CONFRONTATION WITH JOE. in tears. in fucking tears. now i was not shot and paralyzed by a man but i was sure traumatized by him and when i tell yall that every word she said i have uttered to him. how my faith used to enable me to be beaten down by him i will never begin to comprehend (nor do i want to) but this scene just said it all and more.

riley and joe’s conversation really hit me so hard. no matter what happens, the town’s opinions isn’t going to change of them, and they know that. but when joe asks, “does it ever get any different for people like us?” i was bawling crying. because that’s how i feel coming home. all the people i used to know are still involved in the same old activities in the same old circles, and then there’s me. people know that i don’t go to church anymore; i mean i’m not crazy but i still feel like im ostracized in the place that i grew up in. i’m sure that my mom’s asking all her friends to pray for me to come back to the church and when i tell you that makes a person feel like garbage… when they all look at you with that pitying smile. like i know how it felt and i don’t want to go back there you can’t blame me.

the conversation between hassan and ali also had me emotionally deceased. ali made a great point saying that he didn’t choose to be muslim, i didn’t choose to be catholic; so wanting to experiment is valid. i love how hassan’s character is explored here, i was just disappointed in how deep. but his love for his wife *chefs kiss* im in love with him.

“if god really worked that way… if he decided that he was gonna heal some and not others”

tears… so many tears… the wounds of my grief dealing with my uncle really opened up and i was losing my mind about it because his death really began my distancing from the church and all. like he was so influential in my town and such and i started to think of all the deaths of people i knew recently… it all just hit at once man. it was a beautiful monologue and one that really hit close to home (too close if you ask me)

but yall would not believe my frustration when fr paul “died” i was screaming at the tv HES ASPIRATING TURN HIM ON HIS SIDE GODDAMNIT like not that it wouldve changed anything but if yall ever see someone throwing up on their back… for gods sake turn them on their side LMAO but i was like tf why did he die oh nvm we gucci continue on.

the religious parallels i literally cannot get enough on. flanagan deserves the gluck gluck of a lifetime for that.

episode 4

okay starting typing while watching now

ERINS BABY IS GONE?????? the fuck?? i dont remember if she drank the wine and i cant imagine she did but if she did then why did it make the baby disappear?

but her and riley’s prayer is so simple and so beautiful. and i love how they start the our father, the prayer that riley started after his accident but never finished.

riley’s monologue about death reminded me of how much im afraid to die lmao thats i think why i was so attached to religion was because it offered a comfort as to what occurred after death.

they finna be battling over this blood lmao love that turn and the significance of greed. kinda reminds me of how i compare my relationship with religion to an addiction heheh

NOT THE SLIPUP WITH JOE’S SISTER LMAOOO poor fr paul all mixed up w his old decrepit mind

ah yes monsignor’s hat and coat… oh yeah… its all comin together

SHIT ARE THEY ABT TO KILL OFF THE MAIN MF CHARACTER??? or even worse, make him into a pious freak? all will be revealed in the next epi

will i ever complete my wips…

episode 5

i was like i started recognizing henry thomas bc i was like are the characters getting younger - yes mildred is fuckin BANGIN’ get it girl

ayo FATHER PAUL SAYING THAT THE MILITARY SHOULDNT BE ASSOCIATED WITH A COUNTRY???????????? mans is speaking the language of my coochie

im hoping that bev grows an independent conscience but i know she wont

i LOVE how they wrote in the priest’s dramatic walk off after dropping a bomb ass homily it was so perfect

okay RILEY?????? im scared shits about to hit the fan - or theyre about to fuck, or hes about to lure her to the angel… or is he keeping her from it

i love how this is devolved to my insane neuron firings

just the little sprinkles of the bible, the whole “you know who i am” and the doubting thomas stuff i love it.

the series itself has kinda strayed from the original and old traditional beauty of church but im always invested in a mystery that flanagan produces

i just love that it has spiraled into putting things in the place of a proverbial god, i mean all things can become a “god” in their lives but this especially, and putting it under the guise of the christian god; so interesting. im not gonna read an article of an interview w flanagan that i found bc i dont wanna spoil it but im so intrigued as to what drove him to make this

also how people are only accepted into the flock once again when they have some spectacular miracle so to speak. like bev wouldve never looked at riley if he hadnt been changed

is riley gonna nom nom on erin orrrr…

their relationship >>>

WAIT HIS DREAM oh my god hes gonna wait for the sunrise. and hes gonna have his dream and hes gonna die

tara beth.

6

wowee ladies and germs here we are. erin greene redeems this show and i want so badly for her to escape the island because shes always had the best chance of living away from it but she wont so.

sarah is a fucking g. lets go lesbians.

yo if dolly’s crying… easter vigil is abt to be a mf sacrifice. everyones about to be “converted,” shall we say

im gonna fuck the sheriff

the procession to the church… the doxology… fucking art.

hassans like the one fucking time i go to church….

the angels like… lemme fuckin strut this aisle. its giving… moira during david’s wedding

millie was the g.

ed was the g.

well thank god leeza’s not in a wheelchair anymore

okay millie’s back i have a feeling her confrontation w sarah is gonna make me cry

i have a sneaking suspicion that ali’s gonna kill his dad

7

i hate how i say that all these people are dead like they arent coming back

annie the mf g though holy fuck.

“he wasnt exactly celibate” sarah is def monsignors kid theres no doubt abt that. how does it feel to have a heathen gay child father??????? hahahhahahahaha

yoooo bev’s retelling revelation with the blood dripping down her chin >>>

beverly, the budding arsonist

i really appreciate how bev’s whole rage over cherry picking god when shes the one that blows religion completely out of proportion. and thats the whole idea of it

“at that dinner, at that last dinner, i would’ve-“ “they know”

oh fuck. grief machine go brrrr. wanna hear me overshare bc i wanna overshare. the last time i saw my uncle my parents started a political discussion. yup. and then i left to see my friends. i dont even remember if i told him that i loved him. so holding in hope to leeza’s words with this one.

sarah… sarah sarah sarah… “it was a gift-“ “and [she] spat it out”

theyre gonna watch the sunrise burying sarah.

ali im CRYING

fuck bev literally half her words are from the bible yet she shoots hassan before he can finish one verse

oh my god erin clipping the angels wings. that is all. that is fucking all.

die alone bev watching all your manipulation burn

needless to say the second ali said “allahu akbar” i was shitting crying

bev digging her own grave like she had been the whole fucking time

and everyone singing together. hot damn flanagan sure knows how to end a series

and how else to end something with a jarring dialogue like “i cant feel my legs”

leeza, the impetus for the majority of the series, one of the most purely devout souls (i was leeza in high school going to daily mass every morn and so on), tells us that its all for naught, that it all wears off eventually.

flanagan you are blessed. idk if i can say that, but what a mastermind.

[prettywarriors]

Ok ill bite whats the worst mg series

alright, whats the worst magical girl series in your opinion?

Thanks you two for letting me do some yelling. The obvious guess would likely be one of the recent edgelord shows right? Magical Girl Site or something similar? But nay I say, for while MGS and Day Break Illusion and such and what not generally tell you what to expect right away. Don't like super violence and suffering? Watch something else is the clear message from the get go. One of the bait and switch series then like Madoka or maybe Yuki Yuna? For what faults they may or may not have, at least these series do something and are interesting, even if you're not huge on what goes down in the series. A parody then? They range from affectionate to banned in New Zealand but regardless of quality and their feelings for MGs, it's a parody. It's a joke and shouldn't be taken seriously (plus they're usually short so you can just forget about them forever).

So what makes a series terrible then, I am sure you are asking. IMO? Setting expectations for an interesting and enjoyable series, and then dashing them to hell.

Come with me below the cut, as I talk about Key Princess Story: Kagihime Eternal Alice Rondo!

Spoilers abound so if you care about those for a 15 year old series, click away.

Background: Kagihime was a 4 volume manga that ran from 2004-2006 that was picked up for a 13 episode anime adaptation near the end of its run. The manga is created by a pair (Kaishaku) who you may know for making Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto. Kannazuki no Miko, and Steel Angel Kurumi, and the anime had a script written by the same writer (Mamiko Ikeda) for Tenshi Ni Narumon who also did some script writing for Princess Tutu and Seven of Seven. The anime also had 6 character music videos which are fairly simple but a nice addition to the series for the main girls. Discotek has been publishing the anime in the states in recent years, and the manga was brought over by *squints at book spine* Dr Master Publications.

The Premise: Girls transform and enter weird outside of reality spaces to fight each other with giant keys to take each other’s stories to create a third Alice In Wonderland story.

Well, an off-brand Alice story written by Alternate L. Takion, rather than Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson, that while the series uses all the aesthetic hallmarks of the tradition Alice, the little we see of the in universe Alice story is clearly different. Which is fine, at the end of the day, it’s still about someone who loves the Alice stories and wishes there was more, and even makes his own fanfiction version. His? Oh yeah, while the girls do all the fighting, the main character is Aruto, a teen boy who loves Alice, and for reasons we don’t know till late game, can enter the liminal spaces that the ‘Alice Users’ fight in. He chases a girl who looks like the Alice he sees in his story, who is named Arisu, and gets roped into this fanfic battle royale. He is also the older brother of the very needy Kirihara, who also ends up being and Alice User. As does Kirihara’s bff Kisa. To round out the group of enemies-turned-friends-who-will-work-together-to-collect-the-Eternal-Alice-without-having-to-fight-eachother group is a young genius researcher Kirika who wants to know more about Aruto’s connection that allows him to enter the spaces where the girls fight.

Then there’s all the other girls, some of whom still have real importance to the story and some who have a few panels or 2 scenes total. But with a whole bunch of girls to design, the creators reached out to a whole lot of other people to have them create designs! Eventually the battle gets down to the last few girls, there’s a confrontation with the guy running the whole thing, and while the anime and manga vary quite a bit the whole time, in both version Aruto ends up with Kirihara. Oh and Arisu was created by Aruto’s super imagination powers.  

The Promise: Here on is subjective, particularly with what I personally saw as potential from this series. because I need you to understand how much I want to like this series. 

~Alice in Wonderland themed: I know some people aren’t alice fans and that’s fine you do you but as a big alice fan this is great. We have a few alice episodes and themed characters amongst series like CCS and MGRP, and even Alice themes in other series like Tweeny Witches and Alice 19th. But damn it I am down for Alice series.

~Giant Keyyyyyyyys: Yeah yeah Kingdom Hearts but these keys are much more staff like for a lot of the characters which ads and air of elegance rather than the KH ones that for me at least feel well designed for big ol props rather than actual weapons. We also get...

~Weapon variety: It counts as a key if it’s a thorn whip that can be shaped like a key right? How about a giant pocket knife? Crossbows can also be keys. Hush. And we have this variety because

~Guest Artists: For magical girl series where we have a variety of outfits designed by different people, we have Kagihime, Uta~Kata, and uhh I guess Magia Record? But that’s a mobile game with a hella number of characters and with how mobile game works I wouldn’t count it just because it’s less the intent of the series to have variety and more the nature of having lots of girls. (Precure doesn’t count because unless I missed a memo each season’s set is still by one designer). If a series isn’t about a team and therefore doesn’t need cohesion, bringing in other artists is a great way for variety and new looks. 

~The long term goal: Fighting with other people who love the same piece of media you do in hopes of creating new material that will be viewed as official? That’s just fandom nowadays. But it’s a legitimate interesting concept, and opens up so many doors for a message for the series, be it ‘what you create is no less valuable than the canon work’ or ‘it’s hard to let go when something you love doesn’t have more to it but you can still love it for what it is’ or ‘bond with the people who like the thing you like ya idiot instead of fighting about it’. The concept is interesting and there are so many narrative ways you can take this.

~Gays: Between the anime and manga, we have at least 5 wlw. Is it a magical girl series without some gays? (side note- the manga had a short thing where the MC wears a girl’s uniform and is pretty comfortable in it and while there is no way this was the intent, between that and the emphasis on the stories that live in girls and how the fight zones have no men, I’m just saying, Trans girl Aruto.)

~Greater Fairy Tale Premise: We meet a Little Match Girl based MG who is obsessed with Andersen rather than the Alice books, and touch on a Sleeping Beauty character in the manga. The manga at least implies that classic stories and fairy tale authors uh. Live on in a liminal space as immortals with world warping powers within that world and there could be opportunities for other girls in the real world to fight for Little Mermaid 2: Electric Boogaloo.

The Good: Everything has positive points, no matter how bad it is.

~Character Designs: Some of those looks slap. As do most of their weapons. 

~Backgrounds: I have a strong opinion on backgrounds in anime that can be easily boiled down to old watercolor backgrounds good, modern filtered photos as background bad, and as a 2006 series, this might not be Memole nice but they’re quite attractive. 

~Splash Pages: Easily my favorite thing after the designs, each chapter’s title page for the manga just has a character standing in a setting. Which is not everyone’s thing I’m sure but it’s a nice simplistic way to let the characters breathe imo. Even if at least some of the settings were deffo traced. But that’s how backgrounds work to some extent? If I ever get to the Met again, I am tracking down this exact photo, but here is a likely candidate for an example.

~Different Versions: I do not understand the need to make an adaptation that tries to be a 1:1. Kagihime had the same ideas and characters and did some of the same beats but very much had a different finale story and a lot of changes in the middle (like the Alice cops in the manga). Again, not something everyone probably wants I’m sure, but I very appreciate this, especially since the Anime kept good pace with the number of Manga chapters (reading the manga again while watching the anime at 3.8x speed just now was very interesting to see the different interpretations of events in a different medium.)

The ‘Fine’: Yeah.

~Anime Visuals: Look 2006 was still early enough into digipaint that I will give it a total pass on these. The colors are too bright but in a very bland way, the lineart is nothing interesting, and the faces are. Iffy. But it’s not total garbage to look at (probably helped by backgrounds and character designs...) it just came out in an era where not enough people knew how to stylize things to account for the weakness of the tools of the time. (It was 4 years earlier but I feel Kagihime is the polar opposite of Chobits with its painfully bland color palette while still being just. Flat. Sorry for the drive by Chii.) 

~Music?: There sure were songs. Obviously, they are nothing to me.

The Bad: CW for.... somehow all the big things to an extent. 

~Fanservice: Look, I am fine with fanservice, especially for a series that’s, ya know, not targeted at kids, big Mai Hime fan here even if I would recommend skipping the panty thief episode. And honestly the series generally isn’t fanservicey, at least by the modern standards of having the camera choosing under the skirt rather than an over the shoulder shot like I’ve seen plenty in other shows. Even the sexier outfits like the rose whip dominatrix aren’t bad BUT. When the girls fight. One takes her phallic key and drives it into another girls chest between the boobs while the loser cries in pain and then her book comes out and when the victor rips out pages, the loser’s clothes also rip. It is very SuperS Amazon Trio assault metaphor-y. There’s also a bit of fanservice with the sister becauseeeee....

~Incest: If you read the premise up there, first wow good job because I’m sure not re-reading that, you might have noticed I said MC ends up with his sister. As someone who is a big mythology fan and watches plenty of anime, I have a decent tolerance for your obligatory ‘oh we’re siblings but actually cousins so our feelings are okay’ or whatever the fuck Citrus has going on I don’t know that series and I don’t vibe BUT. I have limits and boy did this series go beyond that because multiple episodes are dedicated to the sister being in love with the brother? And the brother returns her feelings but knows that they are wrong so he put everything he likes in his sister into his version of Alice who, of course, physically manifests as Arisu who he creates accidentally with his uh. Magic imagination powers. But again in both versions MC still ends up with his sister. Hey, at least the manga eventually said the boy was adopted when the sister was like, 3, so if nothing else no blood relations? The anime did not ad this. -_-

~Under Utilized Characters: Arisu’s gradual revelation that she has no childhood memories because she isn’t a real person is so interesting and they don’t do nothing with it but also? That’s the kind of thing I personally would love to dig into and Kagihime, while touching on this world shattering revelation, easily loops back to So Anyway She Should Fight For The Man and to hell with developing a life or personality outside of what has been written for her. The rest of the main 5 were 2 note characters which. Could be worse? The most interesting character ends up being the child genius who accidentally murdered her childhood bestie (and/or lover? depending on version) and her coming to terms with that (the friend is alive but the version changes how and why she thinks she’s dead). Then the villain has the motivation of ‘i lost my creativity and now have become an immortal living outside of normal space and am getting girls to fight each other because that’s like a story so I’m still relevant right?’. But shoutout to the anime for then taking death of the author literally. The numerous other girls are canon fodder outside of like. The manga version of the dead gf and the little match girl.

~Battle Royale: This is not a thing I have an issue with generally. Again, but Mai Hime fan, I need to read MGRP 11, BUT by not developing the non-main girls there is no emotional connection which makes them just canon fodder and that’s boring as sin for a royale system. The initial main character fights revolve so much around the MC guy being there that they fall flat, and the 2 or 3 final battles in both versions still feel without any stakes. Also for a royale thing most of the characters don’t actually die, which cool! Neat! Except when they do? Some nobodies and a somebody are murdered (at least in the manga) and the tone never feels like it’s supposed to be upping the stakes, it’s just. Some people are dead now. And do you want to guess which of the main characters died?

~Gays: Oh boy the best friend of the brother-complex sister is in love with her and (in the manga) dies. She does apparently get better for the last chapter but the death itself is only felt by the rest of the cast for a page or two before we go back to feeling sad big brother wants to kiss his mentally generated sister clone rather than his actual sister u_u. Bury your gays is nothing new, but I wonder if it was also intended to be justified because Guess Who Is Creepy and a bit Perverted? Oh look the lesbian keeps the used swimsuit of her beloved and manipulates events to get an indirect kiss and when she sees the sister trying to strange Arisu for a moment she decides to do it for the sister? It’s not good. You want bad gay rep in a magical girl series, well here ya go. We also had a nobody in the first(second?) episode whose story pages reveal her having a kiss with a girl, and then we also have the prodigy again and- in the manga- her. Uh. childhood lover who she thought she killed but the girl has been wiping her mind over and over so prodigy remembers ‘killing’ the friend and not the she’s alive so she can keep? fucking with her? Toxic!

~Sexual Content: But wait you say, you already covered fanservice! Ah but that is sexual content for titilation. This is sexual content for dramatic backstory! The red riding hood character was sexually assaulted, another character was manipulated into sex first as a teen and then more often to ‘get into the publishing industry’, and the same writer forces some aggressive kisses on the MC. None of it is gratuitous which is nice, but also, was it necessary? Not making a new point for this but read riding hood’s dog was also murdered so unnecessary animal death gets tossed on in there. 

~Male Lead: You can have a male, non magical character as the main character surrounded by magical girls. This is not how to do it. If I can make a vicious and hopefully not understood reference, Aruto is basically Tate from the Mai Hime Manga. If you understood that, I am so sorry. If you didn’t, congrats! Don’t read the manga. Or do and send me asks about the iconic final page of the first volume (18+). Anyway, this dude is boring, everything revolves around him, BUT I’ll be generous and say at least this isn’t a harem series? It looks like it out of context but it’s just a triangle with a fun attached scientist and token lesbian.

~Premise: They didn’t make good use of it. The initial goals of ‘take other girls pages from their soul books because if we get enough we unlock a third alice book’ is good! And then we add the twist that that was never going to happen and either if we get all the pages we can grant a wish, or these fights are just happening for the amusement of and asshole. Either way, yeah okay I guess. But at no point do we ever achieve this forbidden wish granting book and the asshole just. Lives. Nothing happens to him. His peers don’t even dunk on him. The only real changes from the beginning and the end of the series are: the siblings are now chill with dating, and the scientist lady won’t turn into a child in magical spaces. Oh. Yeah.

~Why did we make this adult a child sometimes?: I think we know why. Stop trying to get those types of folks to watch your already meh series. I also could have sworn at points in the past looking up images for this series I’ve seen extra art for Yuuri the Thumbelina-y Alice User that seemed like it would fit alongside anything by POP. You know, the Moetan guy. If you don’t know, god I wish that were me. 

Wrap Up: I have definitely forgotten some points and am well within my rights to ad to this whenever I remember more points but uh. Yeah.  

Listen you want an alice themed battle royale with nice outfits? Rozen maiden is right there. Battle Royale magical girl series that’s good with fanservice? Mai Hime. Series with different outfits while being based on a classic story? Pretear.

Hope anyone who read all of this at least got what I was saying, even if they don’t agree with it. And thanks for reading because whoops. 

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

BFCD Reviews by Nesha: Final Space, Season 3

Everybody that know me know that I’m high class #Quillective trash and my main thoughts and feelings go out to Quinn Ergon and Gary Goodspeed - precious Gemini gems, and of course the BABIES: Little Cato, Ash and Fox #NeshaLuhDaKids I had some attachment to Avocato once upon a time, but that n***a got on my LAST nerves this season, so we currently at “Do you, Boo” status by the end of S3, and eventually, yes, I’ma get to why that is. 

Disclaimer for somebody who stumbled across this post because of the fandom tags - I am an independent partaker of this content, not “part of the fandom,” and my audience in particular is NOT for everybody. SO: If you may have been criticized in the past for casual racism, tone deafness to Black women’s concerns or accused of misogynoir or antiblackness, leave now. 

If you don’t like cussing, AAVE, general ratchetness and mean lesbian energy, you too might wanna go. A bitch can be eloquent, but I type like I talk, at times, so it is what it is and I don’t curate for kids, dudes, or nonblacks. That’s just what that is.

I wanna start with Ash Graven. This season is about Ash more than anybody else, despite the fact that there was a lot of emphasis on Avocato’s toxic ass man pain and growth in Quinn and Gary’s relationship, ULTIMATELY, nobody in the crew did more coming into fruition as Ash did, and I have a lot to say about her, because I have a lot of feelings.

♡ Ash Graven

1. Ash is a kid. Lol. Everybody got very confused because of the unnecessary transformation that Invictus gave her. Ash did not “grow up,” her body was altered. That’s a fuckin kid in a woman’s body. A kid who has previously been living with survivor’s guilt, parental abuse/neglect/exploitation, chronic trauma, and a disastrous superpower that most people could not be trusted to carry. She’s a child having a coming of age moment in this season that is mostly molded in manipulation. If you hate on Ash, go fuck yourself. ESPECIALLY if I’ve caught you stanning other characters who have been shit characters, in this fandom or not. Ash was dealt a shit hand and nobody had her back but her brothers, and she’s done what she could and thought was best to care for them. Anybody that missed that - just don’t have kids, K.

2. Ash has no parental guidance. As far as she knows, the only adults who have ever had her back are dead and the ones that she’s stuck with now, she GAVE a chance to try to trust them. She gave Quinn a chance to try to see some of Nightfall (the only adult that we’ve seen not exploit her) in her. She gave Gary a chance by choosing him over Clarence, when she had to make a choice. She even gave Clarence’s ass another chance - with which he responded by dying to not fail her. Now, she has Gary, who just a few days or weeks ago, idek, forced her to try to summon her powers while she was both injured and also upset over having to leave her brother behind - TO SAVE HIS GIRLFRIEND! And she got snatched away in the process and left behind with the enemy, to be mentally assaulted and returned changed, only to have them not trust her.

I love Quinn too. I love her dearly. But the facts were that she was dying and having an episode that nobody could really help with, and Gary didn’t take the time or consideration to think about the stress that he was putting on Ash by putting her in the position to make her feel like she needed to save Quinn for him. Whether or not she was the only one who could, that is a lot to put on a child, and not only did he do it, but he didn’t even seem to think that hard about it whenever he then left her ass. Sure, he was glad when she was returned, but that was a fucked up situation that yet another adult put her into, and the first thing that he should have wanted to do when seeing her was to apologize and try to make it right. It was a huge miscalculation to treat her as a potential enemy that he and Avocato needed to vet. EVEN IF that’s what she was to them, both of them should have had the sense to assess while still treating her as the kid that they supposedly knew.

3. Most of her trauma has been recent and continuous. She looked up to Nightfall, watched her die, and had a meltdown. The events from Season 2 (with Clarence almost killing Fox and leaving him to die, her leaving his side to help out, seeing that Sheryl was treacherous to her own son, losing Nightfall), and the events that are taking place in Season 3 are only in the span of a few months.

They were only stranded for a month whenever we see them surviving together. That girl has had more happen to her to hurt her than to help her and nobody around her BUT Little Cato has been sensitive to that. And they are all fucking adults.

These things being noted - changing Ash’s design was the absolute worse fucking thing. Aging a girl up to make the bad things that follow more palatable is what that seems to be. Ash is still a kid. And THEN, they allegedly made her a queer kid. I say allegedly, because that “reveal” was so poorly done and subtle and weak that I, an almost 40 year old queer, didn’t realize that that’s what they meant whenever they said that they were gonna reveal somebody as a character who is part of the LGBT community.

So... FS production just gon’ decide not only to transform her body into that of a woman, when her mind is still full on traumatized child and hormonal teenager, but also, she likes girls, and they didn’t even do it in a cohesive way that added to the story. They threw it in, like, “BTW, she likes girls, and also, she’s full grown now.” then immediately went for the “Villain” lever, and bitches just ate that shit up. Fuck y’all, forreal. 

& Fox

He didn’t deserve that shit. And, I know a lot of people felt that he was pointless and boring, but his ass was sweet and caring and searching for love and acceptance. As a background character, I liked him. But, he was literally just fodder for Ash’s downfall, which was unfair and problematic, considering that his ass is definitely Black coded. Don’t play. He was voiced by a Black man, spoke with a blaccent, and definitely would be read as Black if you wasn’t looking at him and seeing an alien. They gave him a sacrificial negro trope, the big friendly negro that can kill you but loves everybody trope, and they used his death to just push some narrative forward to set up the one verified queer character as a villain. They got they ass in a vehicle and rolled right over another Black character, and another queer character. Chile...

 ♡ Little Cato!!!

My precious have not been getting some good for too long, and I have had it. He’s not focused on so much this season as he is in the background of other people’s stories, but a very important takeaway is and will always be that Little Cato, aside from Fox, really was the only one here who consistently treated her like she mattered, so it made a lot of sense that he could be the catalyst for her finally having ENOUGH with these people.

I really wish that he could have found out the truth about his past from Avocato, because that’s really who OWED him that truth, but Ash did the thing that I’d expect and told him, to be honest with him. She even told him that Avocato wanted to tell him and that she took that right away from him, because she didn’t believe he deserved it, and I’m respecting her for that, too. I wish she could see how much it hurt Little Cato for her to try to take him away from his home. 

Little Cato has lived before, for a while, and he’s not mature enough to behave as a man, but he at least has a loving foundation to draw from, and having had that support, this is more of his home than it is Ash’s. He doesn’t know how to explain that to her, and she doesn’t know how to understand that for him. Just a tragic situation for two kids with a lot of problems.

♡ Quinn Ergon & Gary Goodspeed

Quinnary notes that might not be featured in the BFCD Reviews by Nesha:  (Quinn Ergon/Nightfall x Gary Goodspeed) rundown - 

I've had two favorite parts of this season so far and they're very mediocre things that you wouldn't think would be like my favorite part but they are. One of them was that the first thing Gary does when she wakes up is to ask her about her sister (someone obviously very important to her who he's previously promised to allow to let live through Quinn's memory and says he wants to hear about her when he's trying to keep Quinn from dying). Because... He really did care and wasn't just saying something to keep her.

Quinn's mother fucked her up in a way that is so frustrating because Black mamas really will traumatize you about their younger kids. That shit hurt. You showed your daughter dead bodies to make her think about that in the event that your other daughter might be in battle? Bitch wtf

Whenever we say that Black girls are programmed to put everybody ahead of us, that's unfortunately not just including Society, it's in households too. And Quinn comes from this place where that is her reality... Then she meets Gary and he doesn't even register for her as anything special. He doesn't appear impressive or incredible in any way... But he (admittedly) weirdly locks on to her and shares himself - thinking that he's showing himself to her, and ultimately he DOES. And he wants to see her too, beyond all this, who she is, at her most humane. He wants to know about her sister. About someone who mattered to her enough to have the helm of her trauma when she was out of touch with reality. Very soft. Very sweet.

The other was when they were talking about how they met and stuff and Gary absolutely cringed thinking about how corny he was when he approached this woman. A lot of dudes never do that. The complaint of earlier seasons that Gary was overbearing, obsessive and creepy , if you missed the fact that he has terrible abandonment issues from his father’s death and his mother’s rejection, here we have him, in his adult state, looking back at the way he was and being embarrassed about it, and that’s growth!

A close third is whenever at the beginning of the Season he says "Quinn it's been a month eventually you have to open up to me about what you've been through" and she says "I will in time" and he respects it but he reiterates that he's there whenever she needs him. I don't think that people realize how revolutionary that kind of statement is especially for a character like Quinn to hear - who has always felt like she had to take charge, had to take the lead, had to make the sacrifice.

Even when she realized that she was dying, she didn't want to burden him with the information. Not even like ‘a thing that she knew if that could help prevent it and she didn't want him to have to go after it,’ but... she didn't even want him to have to deal with knowing about it!

Maybe she thought that she would just drop, maybe she didn't realize that he was going to have to see her in that condition. And then once she realized that he was going to have to see her in that condition one of the first things she says is "I should have told you." Girl is on her deathbed wishing she had done it differently, for Gary's benefit.

I saw somebody on Twitter tried to come for her about not going to Gary after he killed Fox (you know, shortly after her surgery to save her from the very brink of death, and listen... Quinn comes to see about Gary when she can. She’s done it several times. In fact, I’ma make a whole POST about Quinn and Gary moments SPECIFICALLY to point out to haters in the main tag - where they got Quinn Ergon, and by extension, me, FUCKED UP.

Stop Playing in Quinn Face

HI! HELLO. ACTUALLY MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS SEASON IS THAT QUINN AND GARY JUST FUCKED. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANKS. OK. Back 2 bidness

See.. after Gary and Quinn got over the humps of Quinn’s Final Space poisoning... everyone got it... nobody told her until Avocato was mad and told her during a lash out, and let me say something about Avocato’s fucking audacity this season... 

♡ Avocato (Note: His name is A-V-O-C-A-T-O. Some of y’all be tryna stan and y’all can’t even spell his name.)

I done seent Avacata, Avocata... That’s not that dude name. Be writing whole ass expositions about some other Ventrexian n*gga. Hope this helps:

AVOCATO. Listen, boy. YOU decided to be a traitor to your people and your king and queen. YOU decided to dedicate your cause to the Lord Commander and lied to your son his entire life about killing his parents, raising him, and never talking to him about it.

Yet and STILL - whenever you had the chance to finally tell him, you ain’t do the shit. Lord Commander gave you the perfect ass opportunity - WHEN IT CAME UP, and even then, with that boy looking you dead in the face and being glad that now he knows everything... you ain’t Ventrexian man up.

Then, whenever you were supposed to be checking on Gary after his traumatic murder fight with Fox and Invictus, you turned it around and literally made it about you. attacking him in the process and only after a physical fight did you apologize. (And y’all still didn’t get back to what had happened to Gary, which was no real fault of his own). 

Fast forward to after you willingly agreed to stay behind and fight and y’all lost. Now, it was Quinn’s turn to be the center of your blame and you lashed out at her because everybody is dying, despite the fact that y’all agreed to stay behind and fight, nobody even told her that y’all were sick, AND you still wasn’t 100 with Little Cato. 

You just had a lot of mothafuckin audacity this season, Avocato, and I personally was not here for the shit. Even when Ash blasted yo ass, your main thought was to threaten to kill her if she took Little Cato, instead of assuring her that despite what you’ve done, Little Cato was safe with you. No, she wouldn’t have listened to you. But, the words you chose tell us about who you are and how you are. You a war mongering killer that don’t ever take responsibility for his shit, and even in those brief moments that you do, its always somebody else’s problem. 

I’da thunk that LC getting snatched away would be humbling for you, but I guess you were chosen by the writers for minimal growth. Bye, Avocato. Witcha bitch ass. We is not cool right now, but you do you. Hope you find some growth up there in ya ass, where ya head been. 😁 Can’t believe I mourned yo ass. You coulda stayed dead as hell.

FINALE NOTES:

OK BITCH OK THIS FINALE WAS HYPE!

Let me pull it up so that I can liveblog it for the shit that I need to conclude this journey. 

We start out after Ash done took Little Cato and burnt off. Gary and AVOCATO done said they finna go get they son. Chile, I cannot handle Biskit voice. I like that lil’ dude but ya voice, Mane. I can’t with it. 

OK OK OK... Whenever Quinn comes up to Gary to talk to him and say potential goodbyes, she look like she wanna say some and that makes me think about whenever she looked like she wanted to say something in season 1 and didn’t. Quinn as grown a lot in her feelings for Gary, but she still has that hard time with talking about her feelings, but I love that you can see them in her face.

Chile... these folk was kinda taking they time gettin started, huh? Knuckas, do y’all remember that everybody finna die of FS poisoning? Lol. Also... why didn’t they start hallucinating and shit? I guess its not until it covers ya face? 

NIGHTFALL. 😥 I love you, Sis. I miss you. But, “Because I’m you and WE think of everything...” YES. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT! EVERYBODY EXPECTS QUINN TO THINK OF EVERYTHING AND WHENEVER THEY DON’T THINK OF THE THINGS, SHE GETS BLAMED FOR MAKING THE TOUGH DECISIONS THAT NOBODY ELSE COULD EVEN MAKE. Underappreciated, really. And people still mark Nightfall as a villain, despite the fact that she not only sacrificed herself, but also came specifically to help another Gary. Sidenote - Nightfall didn’t actually pursuit Quinn’s Gary until Quinn was trapped in Final Space and she thought she got a signal from him. So, I’m still salty AF that she been labelled as a villain just because people don’t like her, when her actions have all been to try to help. Here is no difference. She thought of the things that she didn’t think a younger version of her would think of, and left it for Quinn to find. Nightfall be on RNS, and most of y’all didn’t deserve her.

Quinn’s identity crisis is so sad, but I liked that Nightfall EVEN thought about that. And Sheryl... you kinda starting to grow on me. I hate to give shitty mothers who find compassion in old chance a try, but she do seem to really be giving it a go. 

Ash is so fucked up that she rushes right into the devil’s arms. This reminds me of when trafficking victims go back to their abusers because they don’t have the resources to adjust in the system. 😪 She REALLY believes what she’s saying. She really feels like Little Cato is safer with Invictus with the Team Squad. That’s sad as fuck, bruh. 

THE. ACTING. AND. ARTWORK. IN. THIS. CONFRONTATION. SCENE.

Avocato... I’m proud of you for FINALLY taking responsibility ad opening up about it. Little Cato’s reaction is precisely how kids in the system are, as well. They wanna be at home with their parents, no matter who their parents are or what they’ve done. and Avocato meant what he said and did what I referred to earlier as “Ventraxian man up.”

“I’m sorry we failed you,” from Gary was so important. Because, they technically did fail her. Had Ash seen the same amount of love from Gary as she’s seen him give to others, she might have been more receptive to the truth and less susceptible to lies. But, as she had just said earlier, it was too late for kind words. She’s currently beyond accepting them from him. For a brief moment, it breaks through, but without that ability to know love from an adult properly, she can’t accept that apology right now.

H.U.E. with his big robot, Lord Commander...EYE. There’s so much happening right now bitch processing has left the room girl. Biskit did so damn much this episode. And it was good to see everybody on the team have a moment to help things, instead of like one person having to handle the bulk of things. 

Quinn’s begging voice... its such a contrast from whenever she sent out the SOS in season 1 and was afraid and angry. Like... the desperation here shows her softness. 

Ash’s RAGE Bitch...

Gary’s “I love you...” She looked so happy! And then she just sat with it. I feel like she definitely loves him too, but she doesn’t communicate that way. But, her FACE. She was just... did she think that he didn’t before, or was she just speechless because she didn’t expect to hear it? Because, we gotta be real... Sis probably has not ever heard those words from anybody before. And that first time, when it’s really there is a DOOZIE. She had an abusive mother, a seemingly jealous or competitive sister, and we saw how nobody in the Infinity Guard respected her ass when she was serving them the real. I think this is the first time she’s been in love or felt it and when Gary said it, she had to collect herself. The way she ran to him and jumped into his arms??? SHIPPING CRACK. And Mooncake was a part of their hug too. I have a lot of feelings about this dynamic since Quinn and Mooncake are the only characters that we’ve seen Gary have these “love at first sight” reactions to and Mooncake is the first character that I recall Quinn being nice to in S1. 

So.. my heart was very full when they ripped it from my chest moments later. Mooncake has been watching Team Squad members be self sacrificing for a little while now, and he loves his family and Gary so much that he rushes straight towards danger. (Sure, I don’t think that he estimated how powerful Ash could be at this moment), but he had to at least consider that he might be caught or left behind.

Bitch, Ash is GONE. She said, “Fuck all y’all!” Not knowing whether or not Mooncake is destroyed makes it very hard for me to know how much I can stand this, but I also want to hope that he is gonna survive. Quinn having to make the decision to lightfold is hella sad, but even though Gary is destroyed, he has to know that this is exactly how Ash must’ve felt whenever he had to make the call to leave Fox behind. She hated to do that to Gary. She even seemed more regretful about it than Gary did whenever he had to leave Fox and when he left Ash. Sure, its because she loves him more than he loved Fox and Ash, but its a terrible position to be in to have to hurt somebody you love like that. On the other hand, they gave her hella shit for them not escaping when could have the first time, so naturally, she was going to make this decision. 

It very much sucks that Invictus is free and my brain can’t eeem FATHOM what that means for everything and everybody, but the Final Space poisoning left the Team Squad’s system, so maybe there is a rejuvenation of some sort in Invictus’ power? Or does Final Space poisoning leave your system as soon as you leave Final Space? I don’t think that was clarified. 

Anyways, I still don’t hate Ash. Y’all can say whatever about it, but I see sad white boys get forgiven all day every day on this site, and I’m upset, but I’m not letting my baby go. I’m not cheering her on, but unless she dies, I’m gonna hope for the best for her, like I said here. 

DAMN this season was some shit. Ionknow if I’m emotionally capable of watching another season of Final Space in progress. If they make it back for another season, I will most likely just wait until the end to dive in and let them shock my senses all at once instead of on a weekly goddamn basis, because GODDAMN GODDAMN GODDDAMN!

@andromidagalaxie @daintyurbanprincess @shslargue @space-finally​  The Quinnary Moments Masterlist probably won’t be ready by Quinn’s birthday, since her birthday is the day before Juneteenth, but I’ve started on a little fic that I might have the first installment of posted by then. We shall see. 

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Here is my JOURNEY during my first watch of the first two seasons of the show. (I watched Season 3 in progress and waited until it was over to write up this review) and my probably incoherent tag of whenever I do me a lil’ liveblogging: Nesha Watches Final Space, and here is my review on Quinnary: BFCD Reviews by Nesha: (Quinn Ergon/Nightfall x Gary Goodspeed) FINAL SPACE

[ceoofanticatradora]

We need more anti C//A who are Adora stans (like you seem to be) so that people can understand that C///A is bad for Adora. Heck C//A is bad for Catra too, but the shippers don't seem to realize it. If Catra had been able to let Adora go maybe she could have healed instead of her festering and the abuse may have ended instead of escalated.

Hello Dear, welcome on my Blog and a big thank you for your message! Firstly I wanna apologize that this response is reaching you more than three full days, almost four later. Just real life getting into the way of my online presence (at least I got my A-Levels admission!) but I assure you that replying to you was on my To Do List the entire time. And while I could've typed something quick, I thought you deserved a full length response just as much as the person before you received. That goes for anyone really to ask/write me anything in the future.

Adora is a character that has flaws, her own interests, things she struggles with/is insecure about etc. but she also still works on being better (up to Season 5). This makes her relatable, fleshed out and overall three dimensional. Overall for me that makes Adora very likeable. Which is funny because when I first watched the show I thought of her as too goofy and felt like she as a character was overall just flat. Her character design did not speak to me either, the ponytail with the weird hair poof and these pointy shoulders of her jacket just really were not my taste. Isn't it amazing how perceptions can change?

As you can guess from that description I did not always stan Adora and she's probably still not my favorite character but over the almost two years I've been in this fandom I've grown rather fond of her. Other important characters to me are Kyle (a very relatable comfort character of mine, he learned to stand up for himself and others and I support that, f*ck Season 5 for barely acknowledging his existence), Lonnie (apart from treating Kyle badly (which I really do NOT support or excuse) I really love her, man, some women just do me like that, I mean she really stood up to Catra like that), Entrapta (I'm autistic too! It's great to have some representation, seeing the ableism/treatment she experiences in the show is not so much though), Seahawk (I don't even know why, I have some issues with his behavior towards Mermista at times but overall I love this dork), Scorpia (she reminds me of myself so much and I really wanna give her hugs, I'm so glad she chose to no longer let Catra treat her like that even though I will be forever salty she just immediately forgave her), Peekablue (I can explain this even less than Seahawk, especially since it was not even really him in the end but his existence somehow helped me cope with Season 5, without him I probably would've left this fandom ... and also my favorite color is blue) and Double Trouble (now there's enough people already critcizing how they're not exactly great Non-binary representation but this dramatic lizard will forever be in my heart, that reality check they gave Catra, basically slapping her in the face with facts was satisfying as h*ck, also I like lizards overall).

Now there's plenty of characters I like, dislike (or even hate) or am simply indifferent about but after all this is not a tier list but me talking about Adora, Catra and Catradora. Adora started off as this girl that was so sure what she was doing is right but once she was taught differently she was willing to leave everything she knew (except Catra, because she valued her despite everything) behind. And not only that, she broke out of the abuse cycle that Catra tried so hard to keep upright. And that is exactly what makes Adora such a good role model. She teaches children (or people) that:

Your past doesn't define what/who you are or what/who you can become

-> Adora used to be a Horde soldier and did not know where she came from, but nonetheless she found herself a family and became a hero that saved thousands of people

You can always change your mind and start a new life if you feel disappointed in what you are doing/who you are as a person

-> Basically the exact same point, Adora started a new life as she saw what the Horde really was and changed her mind about who to fight for

You deserve love too, be it platonic or romantic (or se*ual???) (If you're aro and/or ace just ignore the part that does not work for you)

-> While Adora for various reasons thought her only use was to please others and meet their needs and expectations (mostly due to Shadow Weaver and Catra) she learned to accept that she too deserves love and validation (if the love aspect would not have been focused on it being romantic love so she could smooch Catra in the finale this would've been a billion times better because she got love from her friends that showed her her real value)

You can walk away from something/someone, that does not make you egoistic/selfish

-> Adora walked away from the Horde, after Catra stubbornly refused to come with her despite many offers (basically Catra broke the promise, not Adora) from her too and that did not make her a "traitor" or "selfish", h*ck, Adora in the end did this for a bigger purpose too, even if part of it was her not wanting to live with such wrong morals

Your opinions, feelings etc. about a person/something can change and that is perfectly fine and valid, being able to change is part of what makes someone human

-> Adora's views on many things changed throughout the show: The Horde and the Rebellion, the First Ones, Catra, being She-Ra, herself, her priorities and so on ... she actually makes use of her brain, which is why Catra saying "Don't you ge it?" or calling her an idiot and dumb never sat right with me, she's a realistic character for shifting with her thoughts, feelings etc. and sometimes just does not fully think things through

You don't have to let other people treat you like sh*t (just because they have some issues they never worked through does not give them any right to let it out on you)

-> This point is obviously centered mostly around Catra and her abusing Adora almost every chance she gets, which is why Adora standing up for herself and not letting Catra blame her for her own decisions and mistakes is so important, "You made your choice, now live with it" is one of the most powerful lines throughout all the five Seasons

Now I'm sure there is still more to Adora's character than what I just listed and unfortunately almost all the points basically got pushed aside, well, Adora as a character got pushed aside in Season 5. All her growth, the things that made me love her, see her as great role model for so many people robbed of their value for the sake of making everything revolve around Catra. That brings me to her and how you are absolutely right that Catradora is harmful to both characters. Of course Adora is affected most by it in the end but Catra too is obviously suffering under the fandoms obsession and just the overall idea of them being romantically involved.

Just like with Adora the stans make almost everything about Catra over her relationship with Adora. She too can barely exist outside of it and if she wasn't the fan favorite she'd most likely would too be mostly in Fanarts that include Adora and not just her (if you google "Catra Fanart" most content is still Catra and Catra only but here and there Catradora still peaks through). But for whatever reason the fandom still views her more as her own person as the other ones? Catrouble and Scorptra Shippers might actually still get less hate than Glimmadora Shippers (I'm not denying they don't get any, they most certaintly do) which is just plain hypocricy and favorism. Kinda like the: A woman needs to be loyal to her husband and her husband only but if the husband wants to be active with other women that is perfectly fine because "that is just how men are" or how i like to call it ... sexism. Now in this case they are both women so it's not sexism but yo do get my point.

But much more importantly, Catra has an unhealthy obsession with Adora. Signs of that are for example:

Constantly talking about Adora, even when said person is not around (to Shadow Weaver, Scorpia etc.)

Obsessing over having control over Adora like in that one Episode "Are you kidding? I finally got control over Adora, I'm not giving that up!"

Building her entire character and her actions around Adora "We need to take Adora down", "Adora left me", "I'd rather see the whole world end than see you win!", also shown in Season 5 where she states she does save Glimmer only for Adora and not for Glimmer or to do the right thing

Getting aggressive or very emotional over Adora like clawing the wall, having nightmares etc. (destructive behavior towards herself and others)

Having no or barely any characteristics outside of her relationship with Adora like, we don't know her interests or likes and dislikes outside of being evil, obsessed with Adora, being abused by Shadow Weaver ...

Trying to force Adora to meet her needs and expectations regardless of Adora's owns

Sacrificing her oppurtunity to be happy in the Crimson Waste for the sake of her Adora obsession and being better than her at all costs

So yes, you were very right with saying that not putting Catra in a relationship with Adora would've benefited both characters. Catra could've learned to exist on her own, develop interests and a life outside of Adora. Learn to accept herself and eventually come to terms with her childhood abuse. She could've been free and not "the abusive cat girl that ended up with the person she unhealthily obsessed over to the point of no return" she kinda is now. Even if we ignore the whole "dating your long term abuser" part from Adora's side and "being rewarded" for horrible behavior, Catra alone is not giving a good example to people watching. As much as I dislike Catra, disdain her even, an ending where she is dependent on Adora, unable to stand on her own two legs after she led armies in war is not what I would wish for her, even with a decent redemption arc (that she did not get).

[onomonopetabread]

Declawing the Cat- Chapter 2

“ Can you believe that nerve of that jerk?”

Marinette was absolutely furious. Tikki watched her from the bed as she paced from wall to wall. It was really getting concerning; she’s been ranting for the past three hours. School ended about five hours ago, but Marinette’s little encounter with Felix never left her mind.

“What, did he think that a few thoughtless compliments would get me to trust him? Who does he think he is, the MaYOR?”

That last part was a particularly loud shriek, and if Tikki had eardrums, they would be completely shattered by now. It was time to stop this madness.

“Mari, I know that you’re upset, and trust me, I am too. But… don’t you think that you should calm down? You’ve been at this for a really long time.”

Marinette hardly heard her. “I really tried. I tried to just leave it alone. But nooo, he just had to go and rock the boat! Can’t the guy take a hint? I mean, if someone didn’t talk to ME after giving the third fakest apology given ever, I would know that they hated MY guts.”

“Why should we trust anything he has to say? He hasn’t exactly given us any reason to like him.”

“Yeah, how can you expect us to just become friends with us after what he did? He’s a liar!”

The group gathered around Felix. He’d just been introduced to the class by Adrien, and it didn’t seem as though they were very happy to see him. They were making so much noise that no one had noticed the lack of a certain blue-eyed class president. Unbeknownst to them, Marinette was crouched behind a pillar near the courtyard, watching and listening to the entire thing.

She had been uncharacteristically early to school and was chatting with Tikki in the locker room when she heard Adrien’s voice outside. Naturally, she'd begun to walk outside to greet him. The fact that she had decided to try to get over him out of respect for Kagami doesn’t make it illegal for her to talk to him; he is her friend.

When Marinette first stepped out of the room, her first thought was that there were somehow two Adriens. Then she realized that one Adrien looked like...Adrien, and the other looked like a sad old man somehow ended up in a teen’s body. In about 0.2 seconds, she was absolutely seething. What was he doing here? Why wasn’t he at his comfortable home in the ninth circle of hell?

“Guys, this is my cousin Felix. He’s going to be attending school with us for now on. I know you guys will take him in with open arms.”

Open arms? This clown? Marinette scoffed. She’d sooner swallow a cup of tacks than let that prick into her life. Her classmates however, aren’t as strong-minded as she was. It’d probably be better if she stayed silent and invisible for this and let them make up their own minds about this, just to see what they would do.

“Why should we trust anything he has to say? He hasn’t exactly given us any reason to like him.”

“Yeah, how can you expect us to just become friends with us after what he did? He’s a liar!”

Okay, so far so good. Maybe this time around, she wouldn’t be (almost) the only person that didn’t trust a liar. Oh, how great it will be to openly loathe for once! One by one, more and more voices were protesting letting the rat into their friend group. The entirety of the class was hanging Formally-Dressed Draco to dry, and Marinette was in ecstasy.

‘Yes,’ she thought. ‘Tear him to pieces!’

Just when things were really starting to escalate, the sound of someone clearing their throats cut through the noise.

“Hello, everyone. As Adrien just told you, my name is Felix Graham de Vanily. To answer your question, Mr. Le Chein, yes, I’m the cousin of Adrien’s that impersonated him and sent you a cruel response to your heartfelt videos. For that, I am deeply sorry. I have no excuse for wha-”

What. In. The. World. If Marinette was furious before, she was positively incandescent now. He really was another Lila! Not to mention the fact that he didn’t even have the decency to make the apology seem even slightly convincing. Anyone with an EQ of 3 could see that those puppy-eyes were rehearsed and don’t even get Mari STARTED on that pout. There was no way that her class would buy this, but by the looks on their faces…

“If you’re really sorry...”

…Of course. Of-freaking-course they would believe him. Marinette sighed and walked into the classroom. Once again, she was left to hold the class’ single brain cell, by herself this time since there was no chance in Adrien distrusting his own cousin. Now how was she going to go about this was the question. If he really is Lila 2.0, then her initial plan to outright hate him will boomerang her right in the eye. No, it’s better to just avoid him at all costs; you can’t hate what you never come into contact with.

“Are you really sure that’s going to work, Marinette?” Tikki asked once they were safe inside the room. “You can’t stay away from him forever, you know. He may be a nuthead, but he’s smart enough to notice when you aren’t fawning over him like the others.”

“I know Tikki, but I think I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. For now, I’m going to go above and beyond to make sure our paths never cross.”

“That’s a relief. I thought for a moment there that you were going to do the rational thing for once.”

“Really, Tikki? Sarcasm? That’s beneath you.”

“If you’re looking for a finger to point, blame Plagg. You pick it up after being with him for a few thousand years.”

Marinette stayed true to her word and made it her mission to never be in the same room as the Great Disturbance unless it was class time. Even then, she kept a compact with her so that she could see if he was coming up behind her. Whenever someone began to bring him up into a conversation, she would quickly but subtly change the subject.

After a few days of this, she seemed to really be getting the hang of it. Avoiding him was becoming second nature to Mari. It actually would have been way easier for her if the demon hadn’t kept trying to collect her soul. Like always, Tikki had been right. The little son-of-a caught on to her really quickly and didn’t hesitate to try to reach out to her. In fact, the other classmates would often tell her that he had been looking for her, and she’d had to act as though she didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. That part hadn’t been so easy.

“So, what are you going to make for the big competition, Mari? A dress maybe?” asked Alya.

“Actually, I was thinking about sewing up a pair of suits. I’m not sure what they’ll look like yet, but I really want to try something new this time.”

“Well, I know whatever you’ll make will blow their socks off, girl. Speaking of designers, Felix told me to ask you to meet him after school . He said he wants to talk to you.”

“Is that so?” Marinette asked, feigning surprise (see bane-of-existence, you’re not the only person who can act here).

“Yeah, he really seemed to have taken an interest in you. All he ever asks us is what you're up to. It’s almost an obsession. Do I sense a little romance here? Another blond-haired green-eyed love interest?”

“Not very likely, Alya. Anyways, I guess I’ll have to talk to him later. So, are you going to tell me about your new reporting piece or what?”

What? Don’t give me that face, it’s technically not a lie; Mari did end up talking to him later, didn’t she? Though, to be fair, she wasn’t planning on actually interacting with him until they both passed. No, not passing class. The other pass.

One thing that she had learned about the knock-off Five Hargreeves was that she had greatly overestimated him. For the love, the kid wasn’t fit to kiss Lila’s feet. At least her schemes were clever and thought-through; this amaetur just existed and everything was handed to him on a silver platter. The rest of the class has spoiled him into thinking that it would be easy to capture her attention with a tense grimace of a smile and two ounces of ‘charm’. Unfortunately for him, Marinette Dupain-Cheng wasn’t so easily bought.

So, that’s the way it went for a few weeks; a classic game of cat and mouse. He would try to catch her, and she would slip out of reach at the last minute. If she had to admit it, it was very fun, especially sneaking peeks at the frustrated faces the devil makes when he thinks no one is looking; the coward can’t be emotionally vulnerable for a second.

That’s why she felt so sure that he wouldn’t follow her to the park; the place was way too open for a stand-offish guy like him. She was very safe in the great outdoors with nothing but her sketchpad, a sharpened pencil, and a sleeping Tikki in her purse. She had been working on that design that she was talking about with Alya. Marinette really needed this design to be perfect. Perhaps a double-breasted suit would work? How many buttons would she have to buy? If she was any deeper into her work, she might not have noticed the distinct smell of leather and the tears of the innocents approaching her. She just barely retained her composure.

‘What is he doing here? Whatever, perhaps if I just stay completely still, he’ll go away.”

“Ah, Ms. Dupain-Cheng! How lovely it is to see you. We never seem to talk, do we? It is quite a shame really.”

‘It would also be a shame if you were to get punched where the sun doesn’t shine, Mr. Pied Piper’, Marinette thought. Alas, no matter how much she wanted to move her hand like so, she couldn’t let him win this fight. No, just silent-treatment it out and pray he either leaves or gets struck with a lightning bolt.

“I must say, that is a lovely suit you’re designing there. I love the use of gold thread on the pants. If I may make a few suggestions-”

Him? Give fashion advice? Marinette would rather NOT learn how to dress like an off-brand Crowly, thank you very much. Good grief, he really wasn’t going to stop trying, was he? Alright, no more Nice Marinette.

That’s when she finally snapped and, well, you know how that went. Had it been ANYbody else, she probably would feel guilty for talking to someone so blatantly, but it turns out that she left that situation with zero regrets. If she didn’t put a stop to this whole ordeal, she’ll probably have to carry around a tiny halberd with her for the rest of her life, and as much as she would like to use it, he really wasn’t worth the trouble. Ugh, he makes her absolutely Sick. He’s so slimy, terrible, arrogant, deceitful-

“MARINETTE JOSEPHINE DUPAIN-CHENG BE QUIET!!!!”

Marinette was so startled she tripped over her chaise and fell onto her bed.

“Geez, Tikki! Couldn’t give a girl a warning before you scream like that?”

“You’re one to talk, Ms. The Mayor. And for the record, I did give you a warning; I’ve been calling your name since for the past hour. Are you really going to get all worked up over this, Mari? You said it yourself, he’s just another Lila.”

“I know Tikki, and I’m sorry I’ve been rambling on for so long. It’s just- yeah, he’s a liar, a fake, and way too stoic to be real, but he’s different from Lila. I don't know what it is about him, but I can’t help but wholeheartedly loathe him. Just the thought of him makes a shiver run down my spine.”

“Loathing. Right. That’s it, totally. Is that why you haven’t said his name this entire time.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I’m very happy you noticed, Tikki. I spent a lot of time thinking up all of those insult names.”

“I’m sure you did, Marinette,” Tikki sighed. “You really don’t like this kid, do you?”

“No, I definitely do not, and not a fiber of my being will ever so much as be happy in his presence for as long as I live.”

@ceres-zephyr here u go!

Chapter 3’s up!

https://qualityladybread.tumblr.com/post/632447827994411008/declawing-the-cat-chapter-3

[revengerevisited]

So I’ve been kinda dancing around my original story idea for a little while, and I got this idea in my head of ‘what if I release chapter 1 and then get feedback without telling anyone what the story is about first so it’s more of a surprise?’ But honestly? I’m realizing since I already released a preview-of-a-preview for chapter 1, and it might be a little while until I finish chapter 1, plus I honestly kinda feel like I’d rather work on sketches of my character designs than write at the moment, I might as well go ahead and tell you guys. X’3

So! I watched a couple anime recently both centered around the premise of... monster girls! These being Monster Musume and Monster Girl Doctor, but then I noticed there’s also Interviews with Monster Girls, A Centaur’s Life, and the infamous Interspecies Reviewers, and I asked myself... Monster girls are pretty popular right now, yeah? But where’s all the monster boys?! And that’s how I got the idea! I re-watched some of my favorite anime based on Otome Games, Kamigami no Asobi and Uta no Prince Sama for inspiration as well, and a few ones I hadn’t seen before like Dance with Devils and Magic-kyun Renaissance for inspiration as well.

So now I’ve got my premise that I shared earlier: This is the story of Millie, a young woman down on her luck who happens to live in a world where monsters aren’t just real, but commonplace. She started working as a maid in a mansion-turned-art-school whose students are a group of very attractive monster boys. The twist is that these aren’t just any monster boys; they belong to various rare and exotic species with deadly reputations...

Note that character and place names are technically place-holders for now and may change if I come up with better ones. Now, I don’t wanna spoil anything story-wise, but I think I can introduce my setting and some of the characters that you’re gonna meet. The story is set in a modern setting, though it’s vague if it’s actually Earth or just some generic world similar to it, as I try to avoid referencing real-world places or events. This is a world where humans and monsters live together after a Great Interspecies War happened in the past, but tensions have mostly relaxed by the time the story takes place. The war could be thought of as the equivalent of our own World War One, one in which there was a truce decided after many years of stalemate fighting.

The city everything takes place in is tentatively named Dullahan, and was built directly after the war to commemorate peace between human and monster kind. It’s considered an artistic cultural center, and it’s got a lot of interesting entertainment places to go to, arcades, theaters, aquariums, etc, that the characters can have a lot of different shenanigans in. The other main setting is the Beaufort Academy of the Arts, which was actually a mansion that was converted into a small private school. This is where all the characters live, and our main character Millie works as a maid there.

Before I go into the characters, I should start with the various monster species. There are 12 species, divided into 2 groups: common monsters and exotic monsters. The common monsters are centaurs, harpies, lamias (snake people), kobolds (dog people), ogres, and merrows (mermaids). These species are all pretty standard, and will be mostly background characters and npcs. The main characters, and love interests for Millie, will be of the exotic variety: arachnes (spider people), sirens (deep-sea mermaids), mandrakes (plant people), dragons, manticores (with a liontaur body-type), and scyllas (octopus people).

So what differentiates a common monster from an exotic one? Well, while the Interspecies War was between humans and monsters in general, some monsters were already at least partially integrated into human society, and the rest followed soon after the war ended. These monsters were almost as common as humans, and either herbivorous or omnivorous, with the exception of the carnivorous lamias who prefer to eat eggs over anything else. On the other hand, the so-called ‘exotic’ species were not only much more rare, but they had a very different food preference... one which earned them the now derogatory nickname... man-eaters.

Naturally, most ‘man-eaters’ weren’t exactly welcomed into human --nor common monster-- society with open arms, not that most of them wanted to. For the most part, species as powerful and dangerous as them didn’t want to play nice with those they had once --and in some cases still do-- regard as prey, and so hid away into the furthest reaches of the world. Which of course makes them perfect material for all our leading men and Millie’s various love-interests!! Oh yes, while all of these monster boys are perfectly civilized --well, for the most part-- they still belong to species that many both human and monster alike continue to fear to this day. While they aren’t exactly fish out of water (well, except for the siren) there’s still plenty of awkward misunderstandings and interesting scenarios that can be played out.

So! Let’s have a quick run-down of the characters, keep in mind that none of these names are final and could change later on. First there’s Millie, a hardworking young woman who’s had a recent streak of bad luck. Through a misunderstanding she gets hired as a maid in a mansion-turned-art-school. She’s very sweet and tries her best to help others, but she’s not as innocent as she appears; she’ll understand your innuendos just fine, even if she doesn’t really say any herself! Next is Richard and Lara Beaufort, a husband and wife who run the school. Richard is rather laid-back, yet he’s also a master of all kinds of art, painting, sculpture, photography, dancing, singing, you name it! Lara is his arachne wife, a rather boisterous woman who owns a high-class fashion company. The secret to her clothing’s success?? Arachne silk, of course! The school was her idea, a way to help better integrate exotic species into society. Will her mission succeed? Only time can tell.

Richard and Lara have a son named Simon, our first love interest and a human-arachne hybrid who takes almost entirely after his mother in the looks-department (hybrids tend to look like one species or the other, rather than a mix of both). He’s a bit withdrawn due to dealing with bullying as a kid; most people --human and monster alike-- are afraid of his spider-like appearance, so he doesn’t get out much-- to the point his parents worry about him being a shut-in for life! He’s also a gamer boy, and has a secret soft side for gothic poetry, although he doesn’t want to join his parents’ art classes. He actually disapproves of his mother’s exotic species integration plan, as from what he’s experienced he feels it’s a waste of time.

Simon’s best friend and Millie’s second love interest is Louis, a mandrake who lives in the woods behind the manor. Louis is extremely shy and more than a bit lonely, even more so than Simon, and he doesn’t speak very often out of fear that the sound of his voice will hurt others around him. Mandrake screams can induce insanity or even kill those that hear them, hence his fear. Being part plant, Louis has mild shape-shifting abilities and is able to transform between child and young adult forms at will, although he’s actually the oldest of the group. He also isn’t a student at the art school, although he has an interest in floristry.

Now for our actual students! Forrest is a manticore, which in this world means he has a body similar to that of a centaur, but with the lower half of a lion instead of a horse, and a scorpion-like tail tipped with a deadly venomous stinger. Despite his species’s name literally meaning ‘man-eater’, Forrest is extremely friendly and cheerful, and is very sporty too. His passion is photography, and he also loves eating food-- any sort of meat dish is fine by him! He’s also a fan of fantasy tabletop roleplaying games, and will often make references comparing them to everyday life; he always plays the knight who saves the princess!

Anthony is a childhood ‘friend’ of Forrest’s, though he’s loathe to admit it. Highly intelligent and highly snobbish, Anthony fancies himself an intellectual-- and he’s not exactly wrong. Being a dragon, he likes to hoard things-- in his case, knowledge. Anthony loves to read, and is most often found in the library. His skill is in drawing and painting, and all his paintings’ invariably morose subject matter worry Millie. Still, this haughty dragon could definitely learn to loosen up a little, and be a little more kind; perhaps his stay at the academy --and his interactions with Millie-- will open his mind to appreciating the feelings of others. He does, at the very least, greatly respect Master Beaufort as a master of the arts.

The other two students are denizens of the sea, and have been friends for a very long time. Emil is a scylla, and like all scyllas he’s a little eccentric, and just can’t seem to keep his tentacles to himself! While Forrest is obsessed with eating, Emil’s true calling is cooking, and he loves making all kinds of dishes, especially anything seafood and/or foreign. Emil also is highly appreciative of women’s fashion, and absolutely adores everything to come from Madam Beaufort’s clothing brand-- so much so that he actually wears them himself! His pretty-boy looks and penchant for wearing women’s clothing actually has Millie mistake him for a girl at first, though he’s very much unafraid to show her his romantic side, or at least what he interprets as romantic... 

Keeping Emil’s pervy antics in check is our sixth and final monster boy, Oswald! As a siren, Oswald spent most of his life in the sea, and still has a lot to learn about humanity. He’s a pretty cool guy but gets a bit embarrassed about his species’s troublesome past as the cause of many shipwrecks at sea, and would prefer to not discuss it. His passion is rock music, and his main instrument is the guitar. He also loves to sing, but refrains from doing so due to the hypnotic effect it has on other species. His lack of legs, tentacles, or a snake-like tail means that like other merrows and sirens he requires a wheelchair to move around on land, and often feels frustrated that he can’t show off how adept he is at traversing water. He’s also easy to embarrass and obsessed with not allowing anything to ‘ruin’ his manly image, including allowing Millie (a girl!) to help carry him around.

So there you have it, all my monster boys! I left out a few things, as those would be major spoilers, but those are my ideas for the characters for now! I’ll try to draw and post some sketches of their designs later. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything, but this won’t be the last time I talk about monster boys. Any questions or comments would be very much appreciated! Nsfw questions are allowed (all the boys wear pants for a reason, after all), though I’m currently not sure if this series will be 16+ or 18+, if you catch my meaning. Lemme know how interested you are in this story, or if you’re not interested please let me know that too! 

[sneakydraws]

Well, here it is - a lengthy explanation of each card in my mdzs major arcana deck and what I meant to convey/what i would have changed in retrospect/what alternatives i considered! It’s a bit messy and my typing style is lazy but hopefully it will be an interesting read to some of you :)

And so you don’t say I didn’t warn you - jiang cheng’s section (11 justice) is absurdly long lmao

0 the fool  I elaborated on this in the post itself but yeah basically jin ling is kind of representative of all the damage and trauma caused by the past, and there’s a kind of danger there of him falling victim to the same vices as the older characters and repeating the same mistakes and perpetuating the cycle of war and misery (the cycle that we already see with how the jin sect became the new wen sect, and later with how jgy became the new wwx) and he has a lot of room to grow! He grows so much over the course of the novel, comes to realise the complexities of the past and gets a harsh life lesson in how nothing is as black and white as it seems. But ill save talking about his progress for the end, for now whats important is that he has room to grow and also a dog. I don’t really have a justification for the sun, i mostly just thought it looked sick? It made its way to the next card as well, where it makes a bit more sense, but then i realised it was a dumb motif to include 1 the magician I still very much like wwx for the role, and that illustration would have probably had him raising a corpse on his left and pointing threateningly to the sun on his right. I considered including the table as well, with some mdzs relevant items replacing the card suits. Anyway, like i said wwx got a few cards to himself already so i went with the alternative wq design, since i think she fits the card as well. Both she and wwx are highly skilled people, extremely driven once they set their mind to something. The card to me symbolises the creative mind as well as a general drive for action, which fits them both - wwx was famously a prolific inventor, and wq came up with a previously unheard of surgery, after all. This card strays pretty far from the rider-waite deck design, largely because i was still figuring out how i wanted to approach this series, but you can still see the influence. 2 the high priestess I was actually going to skip this card at first because I couldn’t think of a fitting character, but once i considered a qings character post death, it all fit pretty well. She was already a highly intuitive person in life, and in sharing her memories with wwx she is, in a way, relaying a kind of secret knowledge. Anyway she’s one of my fav characters so im glad i got a chance to include her. The coffins could be interpreted to be xxc and sl or xxc and xy 3 the empress Theres other mother figures in mdzs who got to be mothers for a longer time, but jyl definitely embodies the positive aspects of this card the best. She’s nurturing, kind, emotionally supportive, she already mothered wwx and jc quite a bit when she was young. Plus i liked that the rw card had both water and flowers, making an easy lotus connection. In retrospect the stars look kind of out of place and i should have replaced them with something more relevant... Also, i should have had her hold a lotus seed pod instead of a flower, haha 4 the emperor Like i said I considered jc for the role but hoching bullied me into admitting that nmj was better… they’re both more of an inverted emperor than an upright one but then again theres hardly any character in mdzs who would fit upright emperor so. Jgs was also considered but he’s even uglier than nmj so i couldn’t bear to draw him 5 the hierophant It was pointed out to me that lqr would have fit this card better and the truth if that statement haunts me to this day. Unfortunately I have no space in my brain for lqr so lxc got the role instead. My main reason was his role during the wen destruction of gusu lan, when he ran away with the contents of the library - this is why there’s bookshelves behind him. The keys, take, from the rider-waite deck, are meant to represent the gusu pendants that allow you to enter 6 the lovers Im sure many people would have chosen wangxian here but I uhh don’t really care abt wangxian personally? And also their love story is so convoluted that jyl and jzx seem idyllic by comparison lol. Also i didnt really have an idea for who to put in the angel’s place for wangxian… mme jin certainly did not get these two together in the end but undeniably she and mme yu did initially give them a chance to fall for each other so. Thats something i guess. Anyway the trees became their sects’ flowers and the mountain became the burial grounds - an omen of their tragic fate, basically 7 the chariot There might have been other characters who fit this card better but i couldn’t really think of another card for lwj and i thought it would be weird to not include him… anyway i don’t really care for current timeline lwj BUT i do like that he was clearly influenced by wwx to walk his own path in life based on his moral convictions rather than follow his sect’s rules blindly. The chariot is to me a card of self control, self determination and focused action, so it seemed fitting. The composition felt kind of empty without the actual chariot so i padded it out with the guqin, the cloud recess in the bg (it doesn’t look great but i tried to replicate the drama design….) and the bunnies which conveniently fit the colour scheme of the sphinxes in the rider-waite design 8 strength Like i said before, my interpretation of this card is more… morally ambiguous than the quote unquote official meaning, so i thought about manipulative or duplicitous characters more than kind characters whose strength is expressed through gentleness (though i did consider jyl briefly for the latter interpretation). As such, i considered both jgy and nhs, but ended up going with jgy largely because i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put the nie sect’s beast as the lion. 9 the hermit My thoughts immediately went to bssr lol. It may be an overly literal interpretation but whatever, i like it just fine. And i like that i managed to echo the rider-waite silhouette in the mountain and the tree (and even in bssr herself) 10 wheel of fortune God i love the parallels between these 2… this card to me is about how you cant trust your current situation, good or bad, to last forever, and these 2 embody that perfectly imo. Wwx went from son of a well off servant and a powerful cultivator, to street rat orphan, to adopted son of sect leader jiang, to double orphan, to MIA, to terrifying but admired warrior, to terrifying and despised traitor, to dead, to, at the very end, suddenly respected and trusted again. The dishonesty and cheapness of whatever the public’s current opinion of him is is portrayed beautifully as far as im concerned. And jgy of course claws his way up to power only to instantaneously become public enemy number one, to the point that he’s probably blamed for stuff there’s no reason to believe he had a hand in. Wei wuxian’s silent astonishment at how quickly the cultivation world turns against jgy and towards him again is a delicious moment of thematic resonance.  11 justice I settled on this card for jc after he got booted from the emperor seat but i do think it fits, in a somewhat convoluted way. I turned both the sword and the scales into visual representations of the golden core transfer (can you tell im obsessed with it). According to biddy tarot, the justice card is partly about searching for the truth, and the scene where jc finds out about the transfer is of course a big deal. I was also very influenced by the reversed meaning again - which is about being reluctant or unwilling to face or accept the consequences of your actions. I feel on an intuitive level that this fits jc but I’m not sure how well i can explain it - it’s something about how he’s a little too comfortable scapegoating wwx for things that were also, if much less so, influenced by his actions, and also something about the way he keeps wwx at an arm’s length emotionally but still leans on him and accepts his support when he really needs it, and somewhat hypocritically expects wwx to put the needs of him and the jiang sect before the needs of others. And also something about the core exchange is the consequence and proof of wwx’s deep - terrifyingly deep, even - love and care for him, which is something jc doesn’t seem to let himself acknowledge. Maybe even something about how you could argue that the way all of the jiangs acted around wwx - jfm’s favouritism that left him with the feeling of a debt he needs to repay, mme yus insistence that he be a servant more than a brother to jc, prepared to give his life for jc, and jc’s own unwillingness - or inability, he was a child after all - to clearly acknowledge wwx as an equal to himself, enabling wwx’s self sacrificial and protective tendencies - that all of this was what caused wwx’s complete and unquestioning willingness to do whatever it took to protect jc, and therefore paved the way to the golden core transfer. And i don’t mean this to be scapegoating jc - especially considering how young he was when this all went down, it wouldn’t be fair to expect this level of emotional perceptiveness, awareness and maturity of him - but i think adult jc has to grapple with the fact that the chain of cause and effect was not as simple as wwx fucking everyone’s lives up to be a martyr, and that both jc and his parents had a role in that story as well. I don’t even necessarily think this is something that jc only realised in the current timeline - i think it’s something he felt on some level this whole time, and it probably led to a lot of feelings of guilt - but the suibian reveal definitely puts it in sharp focus, and i think he’s now better equipped to handle this introspection than he was as a recently orphaned, traumatised teenager, lol. ANYWAY the window with the fabric is both a nod to the rider-waite design and a reference to the destruction of lanling - i actually did some basic ass research for this, and it seems that in ancient china fabric would indeed be hanged in a window if the normally used paper was damaged. The design of the window, as well as the very idea to use it to imply the reconstruction of lanling, was taken from this great piece of jc angst by my pal moroll1! Oh yeah also the covered window kind of works as a denial of forgiveness for jc because it’s like a halo but covered up... Also I completely forgot to put a blindfold over his eyes which would be perfectttt because blind justice and the core exchange......... ok moving on 12 the hanged man I always have issues with this card because i cant find a satisfactory summary of what it’s really about. Best i can tell it symbolises a need to hit pause, surrender or let go of something… ive also seen it tied to sacrifice? So mo xuanyu doesn’t fit perfectly, but sacrifice is definitely there in a surface level reading kind of way, and the idea that you have to surrender or let go in order to achieve your goal does fit the whole deal of getting revenge but giving up your life in exchange and not being there to see it 13 death This is probably one of my favourite cards, definitely not because I have huge issues with change or anything…. I see this card as signalling the necessity of change or putting an end to something / leaving something in the past in order to start anew? At first i considered putting past wwx, mxy and current wwx here as a kind of transformation and one cycle flowing into the next... But firstly, I’d already used mxy in the very previous card, so putting him in again would feel like overkill, and secondly, the longer I thought about it the less convinced I was that this would even fit with the card’s meaning? Because coming back from the dead doesn’t like... trigger an internal transformation within wwx or anything? Anyway, fun fact: the design I ended up going with was actually originally intended for judgement! I thought I was being very clever with the whole “figure plays an instrument and the dead rise” parallel, but apparently I’d just completely forgotten that the judgement card had a completely different composition... Truly I was boo boo the fool... But yeah anyway at the end of the day I figured the design would kind of work for death as well, with Wen Ning and the theme of transformation, (since in his case coming back as a fierce corpse does actually mark a certain transformation in behaviour) and Wei Wuxian’s protection of the Wen people essentially signifying an attempt to break the cycle of oppression if that makes any sense? Like, wwx is trying to revolutionise the way the world works a bit, if you catch my drift 14 temperance  The centrist card! Again this is probably going off track from the “official” interpretation, but to me this card has a certain “don’t commit fully; do everything in moderation; don’t take either side” flavour to it that i personally find infuriating irl and that i very much assign to lxc. It’s entirely possible that I’m misinterpreting his character because i didn’t really pay him (and the 3zun in general) much mind while reading, but hell, I’m allowed to pick favourites and choose who i want to interpret deeply vs shallowly. Again, i wish id chosen lqr for hierophant because its so annoying for a character i don’t care about to get two cards…. But oh well 15 the devil My alternative idea for this was jgy as the devil and lxc plus nmj as the figures, but since all three had been featured already (multiple times, even!) i figured I’d go with xy instead, especially since he’s among my faves lol. I think the devil signifies something along the lines of unhealthy attachment, obsession or addiction, which isn’t 100% accurate in the case of xxc and a-qing, but if i stretch it a bit to cover toxic relationships in general, and especially manipulation or negative influence, i don’t think it’s half bad. My main struggle here was to choose who amongst the xxc/sl/aq trio to choose for the human figures. 16 the tower Arguably jin zixuans death and the following massacre of nightless city were the final and most direct reason for the siege of burial mounds, and the tiger seal is good shorthand for wwx’s loss of control over his powers, which led to the deaths of jzx and jyl. When reimagining major arcana i like to feature some kind of building in this card (spoilers for a possible future project but in my rose of versailles major arcana set the tower is bastille) and even if it’s not a tower, the image of wwx looming over the gathered crowd from atop a rooftop is so good i couldn’t resist 17 the star Struggled with this one - considered both jin ling and lsz for it, as symbolising a hope for the future, but that was kind of covered by the world so it wouldn’t make sense to include here as well... As usual when I struggle with interpreting a card (as opposed to understanding it but struggling with matching a character to it, like with death or moon) I went to biddy tarot and read all the details about its meaning. What i got was that this card signifies an incoming period of introspection and inner peace following a time of turmoil, as well as a general moving on into a new, better phase of one’s life or finding new meaning and purpose. The figure also suggests someone vulnerable, but possessing a keen sense of intuition as well as a good degree of practicality and common sense. Given all those, I settled for mianmian because IM LOVE HER..... I also kind of see her as a prelude to the “just one person is enough” theme present in tgcf!! And i think her decision to abandon her sect because she saw the toxicity and corruption in it is a very inspiring action - even if it didn’t make a large visible impact, i think the appearance of her and her idyllic family at the very end of the novel - paralleling and mirroring wangxian - implies that at the end of the day, it was a meaningful one 18 the moon Another card i ALWAYS fuxking struggle with - this time less because i can’t grasp its meaning and more because I can never find a character that fits it well. I usually get fixated on the “dreams and subconscious” part, but if i lean more on the “disguise, deceit, anxiety and fear” part, i eventually figured the whole yi city arc wouldn’t be a bad fit. I say the entire arc because it really does encompass all those themes if you include both the past and the present - xue yang’s disguise, his tricks with the villagers, a-qing’s lies and even xxc’s reluctance to talk about his past as well as xue yang pretending to be xxc all fit the disguise and deceit angle, and the general mystery and creepiness of the current timeline yi city work well with the anxiety and fear - the mist, the slow uncovering of the past, even a-qing being revealed to be an ally after scaring the shit out of the protags. I definitely struggled with including all the elements and characters, and even moreso with making them vaguely fit the rider-waite composition, but i think it ended up okay ish. OH and i completely forgot to draw mist swirling around them :( 19 the sun I was considering mianmian’s family for this one, but since I used her for star, I ended up with wwx and his parents instead. Once again I’m reinterpreting the card a bit - normally I think it symbolises incoming times of pure happiness and abundance, as well as a connection with the inner child, but I gave it more of a nostalgic or sentimental twist - wwx looking back at the brief glimpse of his happy childhood. 20 judgement another card that i struggle to interpret a bit... Here i actually used the tgcf tarot zine as a reference! In it judgement is summarised as “rebirth, following duty, absolution” SO i figured that nhs, mxy and wwx all together would fit pretty neatly... wwx achieving (public) absolution through clearing his own name after being reborn, and nhs sort of calling on wwx to expose jgy’s crimes... It’s a bit messy but not bad I think! 21 the world This ties very closely to my read on mdzs as a story - which is that it’s, at the end of the day, largely about cycles, and about how hard it is to break them, but how we gotta keep trying and have hope anyway. Or maybe more precisely, that the people directly involved with and influenced by the trauma of the past might not be able to get over said trauma and that the hope for healing from it will be shouldered by the new generation. Or something like that… Basically what i mean is that jc and wwx and lwj and lxc and nhs and jgy and all these people who were in the thick of the sunshot campaign and the siege are so profoundly affected by it that it genuinely feels by the end of the story like there is little hope for them to ever truly overcome that trauma and build a better future without repeating the same old mistakes - but there is a glimmer of hope in the new generation, specifically in jl and lsz. And it’s a bit paradoxical, because they have also been directly impacted by the past tragedies - lsz having his entire clan wiped out after wwx failed to protect them, jl losing both his parents to wwx’s mistakes - but despite that loss, and despite coming from arguably the two opposing sides of the past conflicts, they are both, in the end, capable of moving past that tragedy, of recognising the complicated nature of those conflicts (jl’s moment of clarity at the end is both heartbreaking and hopeful) and forging friendships between clans in the process. I honestly think that the extra where jl is struggling to assert his authority as sect leader, to treat his subjects well and to cooperate with other sects in a truly amicable way is the single hopeful ending note for the larger themes of the novel - it allows us to imagine that maybe these kids can learn from the mistakes of their elders rather than getting sucked in by resentment at those mistakes, and actually build a brighter future for the cultivation world. And sidenote, this is also why i have a soft spot for jin ling and lan sizhui as a ship... speaking of which their poses were directly referenced from the lovers card ehehe

Looking back, I’d like to add some symbol of jin ling’s trauma so that it mirrors baby wen yuan in the tree stump... maybe his father’s sword?