#but rarely is a morally gray character set up to NOT seem morally gray at the beginning and you see it play out

[seokwoosmole]

Never has my opinion about a non-antagonist character changed so drastically than it has about Shigure ok there might have been some before but right now I can’t think of any.

I went from “Oh he’s just a silly lil guy” to “*sobs* silly *sobs again* DAD” to “ohhhh….silly….pervy😳lil guy” to “ohhhh….silly mysterious guy???” to “oh- oh….😬”

[hergan416]

@user-needs-new-hyperfixation Thank you for the tag!

Also I'm glad you answered this at the same time you tagged me, because reading your responses literally helped me understand what the heck kind of media this didn't exclude.

Rare writer ask game: name three pieces of media that are not novels/short stories or movies/TV that were formative for you, and tag three people.

Like you, I really don't consider this "formative" to my writing but to my sense of "self."

Anyway:

This is maybe a cheat? Because I still read it? But The Importance of Being Earnest. I really hope that a play is separate enough from TV/movies & novels/short stories to count for this because it really does seem adjacent, and like I'm being overly technical about it but ANYWAY. The unit on this play and on Oscar WIlde generally was like - I dunno. It was a lot of things to me.

So for one, The Importance of Being Earnest is absolutely hilarious, and I genuinely enjoyed reading it. For two, even though a lot of WIlde's statements about writing as a craft were made in relation to The Picture of Dorian Gray, our unit on this book also talked about his attitude in regards to literature and morality and art and aestheticism pretty extensively - I think because this specific literature teacher is awesome, but also because he was arrested during a showing of this play? But all of THAT was also formative. (I could also probably put Billy Joel's Only The Good Die Young here for the same reason - I tied the two together in my mind so if this play can't be it, then that can take over. But the play also was formative when I was trying to get myself back into reading stuff because I no longer read the kind of... "genre" stuff that I read as a kid/teen and I was trying to come up with something I'd actually want to read, and came back to Oscar Wilde like "hey you made me happy before... what's your other writing like?" I was not ... really. expecting. The Picture of Dorian Gray to be Like That the first time - what a tone shift! But that ALSO was formative much later and this is why that showed up for me when it did so.

Next I guess I'll just say "Green Day" - like all of Green Day. At least their discography up through 2009. Like - I already agreed with them, so I guess they didn't really change my mind or influence me much in that sense. But the Green Day obsession was certainly a personality trait for a while. And like - I still jam with King for A Day or Holiday or St. Jimmy or whatever. The characters on American Idiot absolutely made it into some of my fanfiction at the time. It was a major piece of my life.

And I'll end with Arkham Horror: The Board Game (1st/2nd edition) This game was something I was introduced to in college and I had never played anything like it. It is cooperative (games can be won by all the players at once!?! totally foreign to college-aged me) and long and complicated. It took several sessions of playing it before the owner of the game taught me how to set it up even. It's one of those. And without it, I don't think that I'd be who I am today. We also played D&D and Munchkin and Killer Bunnies and some zombie RPG where I played a prostitute and Catan and Axis and Allies and Starcraft The Boardgame... and so I probably would have ended up this brand of nerd either way. But this brand of nerd is horribly central to my world.

I work in a board game store. And this is the first job I've had that doesn't make me feel like killing myself. It's a lot of work, but at the end of the day I'm in the business of having fun. I get to sell people a good time. We're not so corporate that we have no lenience, but it's structured enough that I still thrive. The kind of people I met playing those games in college are why I shopped at this store and how I got this job the first time - and my personality is absolutely affected by this.

Uhhh ok yeah I talked a while here. Let's tag... @sakuplumeria @vitya-nikiforova and @dragontamer05?

[bewaretheidesofmarchyall]

18, 34 and 48 for the qsmp ask game :D

18. Favorite side character/non island residents (This does not include eggs)

Oooo I have to go with Elena on this one. I love a good morally gray scientist, and the recent revelations about her backstory are very Repo: The Genetic Opera.

(Were it not for my lack of drawing abilities and complicated compelling art, artist probably a creep feelings about Repo I would love to make a short animatic of her with part of one of Nathan's songs from that opera)

But if we're allowed to include the Purgatory 2 cast members under a very stretched definition of "non-island residents", my answer changes: Condifiction. 100%. Would be incredible if he could be added to the main cast one day.

34. Free space to talk about anything QSMP related :D

can i talk about qQuackity's tormentous nightmare i want to talk about qQuackity's tormentous nightmare

(by which i mean that time he had a near death experience, toured a Hell of his own making, and then was the first guy on the server to get resurrected during the story [always a landmark in this kinds of stories])

like my thoughts are a bit scattered but. oh my god. it is so rare that we get a direct window into a character's head, and when we do i pounce on his like a starving tiger presented with a meat pumpkin

His hell nightmare version of Tilín telling him he doesn't deserve heaven

The way that he fails every test (doesn't earn Tilín's forgiveness, neglects Richas like he feared he was doing in life, can't make himself let go of the idealized and imagined life he could have as Tallulah's stepfather and probably as Tallulah's father's husband [choosing artifice over the inevitable way he'll ruin something real])

and it's unclear how much of that is him genuinely failing, Oscurucho setting him up to fail to torment him, or his dying mind just deciding failing is what he does, proving to him that he really does deserve Hell

And yeah, I'm reading into it all, sue me. I'm enriched.

SPEAKING OF READING INTO IT, something about qRoier's absence in these streams has possessed me. Because I spent all of the streams just like. Roier today? Vision of Roier in qQuackity's Hell today please? Please he could absolutely kill the role of a guy's dying brain demons. But no. No dice. No Roier :[

Which I then immediately started reading into ASJSJSJ because when only one character in a pattern is missing, that starts seeming notable. And every single one of qQuackity's list of loved ones appears in his tormentous nightmare. except Roier

That's weird, right? He's the only person qQ can't see being in Hell. /probably not the intention but feasible interpretation

Which kind of makes sense? Roier's succeeded at so many points that qQ's failed. Finding love. Walking down the isle. Being a good parent to his own son. Being a better parent to Quackity's kid than Quackity. And then, when Bobby started losing lives, it was never neglect, it was a code attack and an adventure gone wrong. And then, when Bobby was dead for good, Roier didn't go around trying to steal other people's children and threatening murder and any of the various bullshit Quackity did when Tilín died. That fucker grieved better than him.

(obviously this is all just qquackity's knowledge of roier- god knows roier's really had his more morally dubious and heartbreaking moments)

But anyway. The one time Roier appears in Quackity's vision of Hell, he's just text messages in the QSMP server chat. He's not only not shown in Hell, he's not in Hell. He's alive, he's on the island.

And Quackity tries to send messages to him, ask him for help, and they don't go through. He can't do a thing for him, and it's not even his fault. He just doesn't know what's happening in Hell. He's a whole fucking plane of existence above Quackity, thriving and living and unreachable.

dammit i switched into writer mode. anyway, this is my overanalysis of whatever qQuackity's deal is with qRoier

TLDR: I love katabases so so much I think every character should have to take a quick tour of their personal Hell sometime

48. Has the QSMP inspired you to learn new languages? If so, which ones and what have you done to do that so far?

It's definitely inspired me to want to learn new languages- I want to learn Portuguese and French and Spanish and Korean and and and- but I haven't been able to make much progress aside from a frequently broken duolingo streak in Portuguese and then taking Spanish classes. AP classes are kicking my ass right now, but I hope to do more language practice during the summer.

[denimbex1986]

'The book series surrounding the life and crimes of Tom Ripley has captivated audiences since its introduction. That doesn’t mean adaptations have become overdone; in fact it is rare that we get to really dive into the mind of Tom. Then came Netflix’s Ripley, and it is captivating to watch.

Starring Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, the series has a lot of the same beats as the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, while cutting out questions of Tom’s sexuality almost entirely. Ripley’s main goal seems to be highlighting the beauty of an Italian setting and the debauchery that lives in Ripley’s actions against those closest to him.

Tom still goes through the same beats we know well. He goes to Italy to connect with Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) after Dickie’s father pays for Tom to get there. Already lying about his connection to Dickie to get close to him, Tom’s manipulations just take him further and further into this mess he’s created, but where the series stands apart from the previous adaptation is how Scott approaches Tom’s relationships to everyone.

They are all superficial. There is not a single relationship throughout this series that I think means anything to Tom outside of what he can gain from them. Even his relationship with Dickie is fully because he wants to take from him, and when Marge (Dakota Fanning) begins to point this out to Dickie, Tom has to figure out a way to continue using Dickie for his benefit.

The actions of Tom Ripley are contrasted by the black and white aesthetic choice of the series. Tom’s actions do not exist in the gray area of morality at all. It is black and white that he is in the wrong and everyone else is not. But it goes deeper than that.

Beautiful to look at, yet hard to come to terms with Tom’s actions

As is the case with The Talented Mr. Ripley and the book series that inspired our fascination with the titular character, the series does not shy away from how dark Tom Ripley truly is. He is a man who is not afraid of harming others if it means keeping up this façade he’s created for himself, and Scott really plays Tom in an almost completely cold way that makes those actions even more haunting to the audience.

Even in his relationship to Dickie, you can see Tom’s wheels turning to make sure that his wellbeing and his status while in Italy are not in jeopardy. Tom Ripley is a character who cares not about people who may care about him but whether or not he’s going to be able to keep up this persona he’s put on for the world.

Maybe it is Scott’s past work as a master manipulator, like Moriarty in Sherlock, or just how he can approach a character who doesn’t have an ounce of regret, but there is something about him as Tom Ripley that just keeps its hooks in you.

After a while, Tom’s actions should feel exhausting, but you can see in Scott’s performance that he is a man desperate to find where he belongs and is going about it in a way that is horrible to anyone who crosses his path. Ripley made me want more of the adventures of this man; there are five books in total to pull from, so why not?

It is beautiful, twisted, and exactly what I wanted for another look into Tom Ripley, the most talented con man of all.'

[secrets-of-ty]

More Fics below!

💙🟢 Autonomy and Worse Things by faedemon

"In a moment of stress, Danny develops a new power, one far too electrically reminiscent of his death. With it, he can play puppeteer: when he speaks, people will listen, and they'll have thought all along the idea was their own. It's a terrifying power—and when Danny fails to control it, his friendships are left shattered in its wake.

A narrative that explores this new ability, everything else it dredges up, and makes halting steps towards a ghostly coming-of-age."

Electric Core AU! I found this one on Tumblr due to some great art and was instantly engrossed in the story! It's got a great plot that explores Danny handling a manipulation power.

💙👻 The Case Study of Wes Weston by Karcutie

"His face wasn't that memorable. Even after seeing him just that morning, Danny could only conjure up his reddish brown hair and freckle-splattered cheeks, but not much else. At first, it didn’t matter much. Danny didn’t even bother to confirm his name. But after the curious streak dragged on and on, and spiraled into a full on investigation, he learned the name. And now he can’t seem to stop hearing it.

‘Wes Weston asked me for this’, ‘Wes Weston did that last week’, ‘I saw Wes Weston here’, ‘I heard he was there’, ‘Wes is so cool’, ‘I hate that guy’. Suddenly, he’s everywhere.

It seems like everyone except Danny knows Wes Weston.

And, it seems like Wes Weston knows…everything."

***This is my ONE exception for a fic not being completed! And by golly I WISH it was! I love Wes and this was one of those rare fics that was really starting to delve into him as a full character and his involvement with Danny. When I tell you I was crushed to see it hadn't been completed yet... but There's always hope, right? Fantastic character exploration in this!

💙🟢 Something's Wrong With Danny Fenton Vol. I by Ghostly_Cabbage

"Danny Fenton. The enigma of Casper High. It's the first day of the winter semester when she notices him. She notices him for what feels like the first time. Maybe because at this point he's the only alternative kid other than her. Or maybe because boom, there he is: the locker next to hers. -- A No One Knows AU where Danny transfers from a different school to Casper during Junior year and ends up befriending Sam and Tucker. Written for Invisobang 2021!"

No One Knows AU! I had to BINGE this one because it was so good! Reading the development of Sam, Tucker, and Danny's friendship with the added amount of strain from how creepy Danny is was *chef's kiss*. Great characterization in this and a lovely ending that made me immediately want to read it again! OH and I found this fic through some awesome fanart again!

💙🟢 Echoes by PhantomTwitch

"There was something wrong with Danny Fenton.

Nearly eighteen months after a lab accident left him hospitalized, his friends and family assumed he was still recovering from the side effects of his near-death experience. But after witnessing Danny do something ghostly, they begin to suspect something much more sinister is afoot and set out to save their friend from the clutches of the evil ghost possessing him."

No One Knows, Hazmat, Ghost King AU! Another one I recently binged. Again, great character exploration with Danny, Sam, and Tucker, especially with exploring how the Trio knew each other and then grew a part after Danny's accident. Also LOVED the characterization of Nocturne in this!! I haven't really seen him used in a mentor/morally gray light so it was fantastic getting to read something new for his character!

💙👻 Okay by TourettesDog

"Based on the prompts "Lancer is a good teacher and cares" and "Well, shit. He can't change back!""

Ya'll know she had to end the list with yet another Lancer fic. 😏 Seeing them stuck in an elevator with Lancer terrified and Danny nonchalant, to Danny having a breakdown and Lancer comforting him was a great read!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

And there you have it! A whoooole bunch of fics I've read during my time in the Phandom!

Feel free to check out a lot of the Tumblr-Fics I've reblogged with my fanfiction tag here. There's a lot of good ones in there too!

Feel free to add fics you guys have read to this post as well! I hope everyone that I included is alright with it, and let me know if anything needs to be changed/added in a reblog!

Danny Phantom Fanfic Masterlist

I've been meaning to do this for a bit! Since I've been in the Phandom for 10+ years I've picked up a lot of good fanfics over the years and I think it'd be great to share them again in case people have forgotten/haven't encountered them!

I mostly used Fanfiction.net in my older days so a lot of them will be linked there. I'm also pretty picky when it comes to fics being completed, so expect the ones listed to be bingeable with an ending! And finally, I'm not huge on romance/smut so most of them probably won't involve those genres, I'll point out ones that do. (These are in no particular order).

👻 Happy Reading! 👻

👻 = Regular Fic

🟢 = Alternate Universe Fic

⚔️ = Crossover Fic

💙 = Would Recommend!

💙💙 = One of my Favorites!

💙⚔️💙 Mirrored by Lynse

"As a general rule, diving into unknown swirly vortexes in the Ghost Zone is a bad idea, but this was a time when Danny had no other real choice. Meanwhile, Jake thought he was through dealing with ghosts, but Rotwood, well, he's just getting started."

I posted about this one a few years ago and the author, @ladylynse , said it's also available on AO3. This is by far one of my f a v o r i t e fanfics that I read annually or so! If you're a sucker for American Dragon too, definitely check this one out <3 The characterization of both Jake and Danny, plus watching their friendship grow, always gets me in the feels.

💙👻 Phantom's Sketchbook by AkoyaMizuno

"Mr. Lancer finds himself in an unparalleled situation, he has access to something which can give him incredible insight into the personal workings of Amity Park's local ghost teen hero, Danny Phantom."

It's been a while since I've read this one, but I remember it having a lovely characterization of Lancer plus his mentor relationship with Danny. (I loved this one a great amount back in the day that I, uh, made fanart and turned it in for a school assignment. Which is lost to the ages now 😅)

👻 Darkness by Cordria

"Maddie and Phantom are trapped in the dark. Can they come to an agreement to work together before they both die at the full moon? Part 1 of Illuminations Saga."

I don't quite remember this one but I DO remember Cordria had some absolute bangers. You'll probably see their name a few more times on this list.

💙👻💙 Masks by Cordria

"Sometimes, people hide who they truly are behind masks. This is a short story about the day that Lancer decides enough is enough when it comes to Daniel Fenton. Sequel is 'Plunge'"

When I said Cordria had bangers, THIS is one of them! Another fic that I read annually, this one involves Lancer getting closer and closer to Danny's secret while he's stuck in detention for the weekend. I love love LOVE the characterization of Danny and Lancer in this, another at the top of the favorite list!

👻 Plunge by Cordria (sequel to Masks ^)

"Sequel to 'Masks'. Now that Lancer has learned the truth and has let Danny out of his office, Danny needs to face the next hurdle: his parents."

For some reason, I always forgot to put this on my favorite list so I often missed out on reading it with my annual read of Masks. I remember it being a decent sequel where the Fentons pick up the pieces of Danny's reveal.

👻 Pits by Cordria

"Danny has been captured and thrown into the Pits by Walker to fight for his life. Listen in as he tells his dark, twisted tale of surviving despite the odds. Warning: dark and depressing. Sequel is 'Final Exam'."

Another one I don't fully remember, but it had to be a solid read since it's on my favorites haha! I have a vague sense that it was a little angst/gore-y(?) as the description warns, so just heads up!

👻 Lab Rat by AnneriaWings

"The look on my parents' faces – eager, curious, somewhat hateful – wasn't exactly hard to give away their intentions. I knew what they were going to do to me even before Mom snapped on a pair of rubbery, white latex gloves."

*** This one is definitely a vivisection fanfic with graphic descriptions, so beware that content. Again, haven't read it in a long time but it had satisfied my angst itch back in the day.

👻 Wondering by Phantomrose96

"A continuation to Cordria's starshot #69 "Wondering". Danny's been captured and tortured by his parents, but he refuses to say a word until his psychiatrist starts connecting the dots. Can he risk keeping it a secret any longer?"

*** Another angst, lab experiment-esque fic. There are definite graphic scenes (as warned in the first chapter). I do remember this fic being huge in the 2010s (definitely a staple of the Phandom). The relationships and Danny recovering from his torture were great highlights.

👻 Connections by Lynse

"Maddie knows that the Booo-merang has keyed into Danny, for whatever reason, so what's she to think when she sees it collide with Phantom?"

Don't quite remember this one, but Lynse is amazing at writing, so it's bound to be a good read.

👻 Confessions by Lynse (Sequel to Connections ^)

"Follows Connections. Danny's secret's not as safe as he thinks, what with Maddie unable to ignore her wild suspicions any longer and piecing things together and Jack asking questions all on his own."

Same as above!

💙👻 Earthquake by Turkeyhead987

"Danny leaves with his bathroom excuse and leaves Dash curious. He follows Danny and ends up the the gym room with him. While they're in there, an earthquake occurs and leaves them trapped inside. Will any secrets be revealed? No DashxDanny! They're just the main characters!"

This one is another one that I've read multiple times over the years! From what I remember, it was a fun read involving Dash and Danny being trapped in the gym after an earthquake, and explores how Danny handles his secret around Dash while they wait for rescue.

💙👻 A Jock and a Hard Place by AnneriaWings

"Danny and Dash were silent, trying to wrap their mind around that stupid, simple fact – the door was locked. They were trapped. In a janitor's closet. Together. (Collab with Haiju)"

No romance in this one! Another story where Danny and Dash get trapped together. I've read this one several times, and remember enjoying the tension of Danny's secret being revealed. I also think they explored Danny and Dash's relationship in a fun way!

👻 An Unlikely Alliance by Represent

"Maddie wants her family back. In an attempt to understand her Danny's change in behavior, she unwittingly enlists the GIW to exorcize Phantom from her son."

Gonna be real with ya'll, I don't remember this one at all. But uhhh I'm gonna throw it on here just because I can. :)

👻 Flip Turn by dreamsweetmydear

"Danny's life the last couple of years has been chaotic and pretty scary, to say the least. However, one detention with Mr. Lancer opens a window of opportunity that promises to turn his life around in more ways than one. Revelation fic. Post-"Kindred Spirits.""

Yet again, I don't remember this fic. Sorry! But it's under 8000 words, so it's a little bit of a shorter read than some of the ones on this list!

👻 Journey of Secrets by WolfKael

"First Danny Phantom fic! DXS, TXV, but not super-heavy. Lancer's class is on a trip to the Ghost Zone, courtesy of the Fentons! (Takes a couple chapters to gain momentum, and I promise it isn't your average 'field trip' fic!) T because I'm paranoid, but it could probably be K ."

Also not a fic I remember. It's got about 50,000 words so thought I'd throw it in for anyone that likes a longer fic!

👻 Vulnerable by HaiJu

"A desperate moment leads to a difficult choice, and Danny must deal with the consequences. A collaboration between Anneriawings and Haiju."

Don't remember it, but HaiJu had/has some great fics! Seems to involve Danny and Maddie after skimming the first chapter.

👻 Little Fires by Represent

"My family's supposed to be geniuses, yet they've never figured it out. Now I know why. Because they already know I'm Phantom. They must know. The better questions are: Have they known this whole time? What's in that vial? What happened to Skulker? And what's in the locked drawer?"

You know what, if I remember it, I'll say something 😂

👻 Judge, Jury, Executioner by Cordria

"The Observants and the Ghost Council are sick of the Fentons creating half-ghost creatures that disobey the rules of the universe. It's time for them to step in before more are made. Can Danny save his parents and keep his secret intact? A three-part fic."

💙👻 A Phantom Marooned by LordPugsy

"No one but Danny was suspicious when his English class was awarded an all-expenses paid cruise trip by an anonymous benefactor. Everyone but Danny thought it was bad luck when they became ship-wrecked on an island in the middle of nowhere. No one but Danny fully understood the dangers lurking in the trees. No one but Danny knew how much danger they were all in so far from home."

This one involves Danny and his class getting out of Amity Park, so it's a little more oc-filled and explores a nontraditional setting for the trio. There might be a little SamxDanny in this one if I remember correctly, but overall I do remember having fun reading through this!

🟢 Candlelight by HappyLeif

"Sam's only friend is the ever-loyal Tucker, ever since Danny began slowly distancing himself from them after some accident freshman year. She wanted a friend, but she never thought she'd find the one she was looking for in the highly debated ghostly hero of Amity Park.

AU = Danny alone during the portal accident. Looks like there's some SamxDanny in this one! Don't remember it but heck I might have to reread it since the synopsis has me interested.

👻 Crashing and Burning by GriffinRose

"For two years, Maddie has put up with Danny's ridiculous lies and excuses. She's tried everything to get through to him, but the pattern just goes on. She's so tired of fighting him on this all the time. And so, after two years, she's done. She doesn't care what her son does anymore, because Danny doesn't seem to care that he's her son."

👻 I'll Be Here by HaiJu

"Some days you can't pick yourself up. Having family means you don't have to. Danny-centric, three oneshots. Completely shameless hurt/comfort. Bring tissues… and antiseptic."

👻 What Little Girls Are Made Of by HaiJu

"Phantom and his younger double save Amity Park from a monstrous ghost, nearly destroying themselves in the process. The Fentons have always hunted ghosts; now it's time to save one."

💙👻💙 You Should Be Dead by SaphireDragon11

"Dash and Kwan are horrified to discover they've accidentally killed their classmate, but perhaps even more so when he shows up at school the next day. With his secret on the line, Danny soon discovers Dash and Kwan are the least of his worries."

THIS story is definitely a favorite and fun read! The ending battle chapters always gets me excited to reread! ***Danny does get straight up shot by Dash at the beginning so be warned for that content. But I remember a post going around a year or so ago where someone had drabbled about Danny getting up after being shot by Dash. This story explores that concept with a longer plot!

💙👻💙 Roughing It by HaiJu

"Lost deep in the woods with an undead pack on their heels, Maddie and Phantom find themselves entangled in an awkward alliance. Can they cooperate long enough to get out of this mess?"

Another favorite! This one explores Maddie and Danny's relationship, kind of similar to how the show did in the Maternal Instincts episode. I adore how HaiJu explores Maddie's thought-process with dealing with Phantom in a situation where she kind of needs him and he won't leave her alone. Great mother-son fic!

👻 Phantom of Truth by Haiju

"Locked away in a secret government lab with Phantom as her subject, nothing stands between Maddie and the truth... except, perhaps, herself."

Haven't read this one in a loooooong time, but I remember being around for HaiJu updating this fic, posting about it on Tumblr, and the Phandom being generally hyped for it. Another staple for the Phandom! It's another torture fic, so heads up regarding that content!

💙👻 Shadow of a Doubt by Haiju (Sequel to Phantom of Truth ^)

"The truth was supposed to save Danny. Fix things. The lab, the experiments, the lies, those were all in the past. Weren't they? Sequel to Phantom of Truth."

And then BAM on top of finishing Phantom of Truth, HaiJu hit us all with a completed sequel! I was super excited whenever this fic got updated, felt like I was waiting for a new episode to air on TV every time! There's some OCs in this since it explores Danny running away from Amity, but I remember genuinely loving the OCs and loved reading about Danny mentally recovering from being experiment on.

👻 Just a Boy by Tay1019411

"Maddie and Jack finally have Phantom right where they always wanted him: in there lab, helpless, but everything is different now. Now, Maddie faces the truth about what Phantom really is."

🟢 Make It Go Away by DarkNymfa

"Not for the first time, Danny cursed himself for never telling anyone about his extra-curricular activities. And now, far more injured than he could fix himself, Danny desperately wished that he had told just one person."

No one knows AU

👻 Flicker by DarkNymfa

"It had taken just one moment, one split-second in which she had seen Phantom instead of Danny. Now she found herself on a path she didn't want to be on. One she couldn't leave, not anymore."

👻 The Scientific Method by ReconstructWriter

""After two years of failures you'd have better luck asking Phantom to be your lab-rat," Jazz said. The Fentons decide to try just that."

👻 Phantom Hitchhiker by ghostanimal

"Phic Phight Oneshot: While students get to leave early after a ghost attack, teachers have to stick around for boring meetings to discuss the attack. The ghost attack was now over, but it didn't mean all the ghosts were gone. Lancer finds himself driving a certain Phantom home while reflecting on how young the poor kid is."

👻 Returning After the Reveal by Illusn

"Phic Phight attack, using a prompt by Love-ly-ish. Danny returns to school after his secret was revealed in a ghost attack, having to deal with people suddenly treating him differently."

👻 Vantage Point by Lynse

"Phantom was young. Painfully young. Somehow, Lancer had never really noticed that before. One-shot, written for the 2019 Phic Phight."

👻 Oddities by Lynse

"Jack can't deny that their ghost hunting equipment malfunctions around Danny-consistently and exclusively around Danny-and decides to get to the bottom of it, once and for all. One-shot, written for the 2019 Phic Phight."

👻 To Be a Hero by cosette141

"Danny has always known the consequences should he be captured by the Guys In White, but now Tucker is going to learn firsthand just what the stakes are for his superhero friend and what it really means to be a hero. (not slash) hurt/comfort"

👻 Family Reunion by Dp-Marvel94

"For Phango. Prompts used- Setting: Family Reunion, Wes Weston, Aunt Alicia, Stuck in the thermos. And Identity Reveal…kinda (does it count if Wes had already worked out that Fenton was Phantom but hadn't seen him actually transform so wasn't completely sure?)"

Wes Fic!

👻 Stuck by SummersSixEcho

"[OneShot] After a prank from two of his ghostly acquaintances, Danny is stuck in ghost mode during one of the most important events of his young half-life. If only he didn't have to give a speech on top of it... [Phic Phight 2020 entry; prompt by Ghostanimal]"

👻 One-Eighty by SummersSixEcho

"[One Shot] After a grueling battle, two teenagers at a diner try to sort out a night of revelations. [DannyMay 2020, Day 28: Diner]"

👻 Threads of Time by ZombieRed

""I just want to know what's going on with you, Danny! I wish I could just, I don't know, spend the day figuring out what you've been hiding from me. Then maybe I could help you. But you being closed off from everyone is only hurting you. Can't you see that?" Or Maddie keeps on waking up to Thursday morning [No PP, pretty much ignores season 3 as a whole]"

👻 Invisible Stitches by Lynse

"Family bonding time might be less dangerous now that his parents know his secret, but that doesn't mean Danny is wild about being kept in the dark when it comes to his dad's plans for the weekend. One-shot."

Loved the concept of Danny having trouble being away from Amity Park!

👻 Whenever You're Ready by SummersSixEcho

"[OneShot] Jack and Maddie try to show their son they are very supportive of Phantom once they find out his secret. They want him to tell them on his terms, but everything ends up in bigger misunderstandings and more revelations they weren't prepared for. [Belated Phic Phight entry for Star G, Arioz, Bird, Dekalkomania, and Wife]"

Written in a Journal-Entry style! Interesting format if I remember correctly.

👻 An Attempt at Camping by Seasilver17

"They should have known that even when they were in the middle of nowhere camping. Something would have to go wrong. Curse his Fenton luck"

👻 Secrets Secrets and Advice (This Teacher's Vice) by AppleScentedLazers

"After a particularly grueling day Mr. Lancer just wants to go home, kick up his feet, and read some Shakespeare. But, when he runs into two of his students looking for their missing best friend, Lancer ends up with more questions than he has answers for. Such as, who is Phantom? And just what is Daniel Fenton hiding?"

👻🟢 Going Ghost by cosette141

"My take on the moment Danny turns on the ghost portal and becomes half-ghost… as well as an alternate way for Sam and Tucker to find out. Friendship Oneshot"

👻 Lair by Lexosaurus

"When something goes wrong with a piece of Vladco tech, Valerie ends up stuck in the Ghost Zone. With Phantom."

💙👻 In Case of Emergency by Unlucky Alis

"Lancer is grading papers when he gets the call. "I'm calling from Amity West. I have an underage patient here who has named you as their emergency contact." Lancer rushes over, of course, fretting all the while about what accident Danny Fenton has gotten himself into now, because it could only be him. Except, when he arrives, it's not the Danny he expected to find."

I remember enjoying the little twist on Lancer being the emergency contact for Phantom yet having no idea. Lancer handles it pretty well all things considered. (I think you guys can tell I just like Lancer fics at this point HA)

👻 Furthest from Myself by WastefulReverie

"An accident during a ghost invasion leaves nearly a hundred citizens with inexplicable ghost powers. Little did they know, this was only the catalyst for a series of revelations."

👻 Ghost Smarts! by Dekalkomania

"When it becomes clear the ghosts are here to stay, the Amity Park school district decides they need to teach proper safety precautions. In dire need of extra credit, Danny takes Mr. Lancer's offer to be the assistant in an assembly titled, "Ghost Smarts!"

Very unprepared for what he signed up for, Danny must deal with the eccentric detective J.J. Bittenbinder, all while not blowing his cover."

[sanktyastag]

genuinely so confused with people who hate show!darklng. show!darkling is as much of a part of oppressed minority as book!darkling is but with even more 'validation' for his purpose, and i see people still hate show!him saying "oh but he is very bad in book" but then i see them rooting for book m*l LIKE HOWWW [i do kinda understand with those who dislike book!darkling but im still as baffled when when they root for book m*l]

ah, the good old darkling vs mal debate, lol.

in all honesty, i think whether someone prefers mal or the darkling when they watch/read SaB really comes down to how different fans like to engage with media.

i really enjoy politics, moral ambiguity, and fiction as a tool to examine real world oppression. as a result (and incredibly predictably to every single person who knows me) my favorite character is the darkling, because his character is a great lense to examine those different aspects of the series from. but, let's be honest here - both the books and the show only engage in politics, gray morality, and discrimination and oppression against minorities in like... the most surface-level way possible. if you're not already prone to getting over-invested in those fictional aspects, there's very little incentive to do so - because both the books and the show only set the darkling up as a focal point to examine those concepts in book 1, when alina thinks he could possibly be a good person. as soon as the darkling is revealed to be an eViL mAnIpUlAtOr, quite literally all of the nuance is stripped from his character, and we no longer engage with any valid points he may or may not have.

which means, if you're not super interested in socio-political worldbuilding, or you don't really want to examine war from a philosophical or moral standpoint, the books and show won't make you, and so it's nice and easy to just view the darkling as the amoral antagonist who needs to be taken down. i honestly don't blame fans for not liking him in the books, because the books don't... really want you to. and the show does pretty much the same thing. the show stops sympathizing with the darkling the second baghra lets the truth drop, and so every single thing he was previously shown to care about is now framed as the manipulation of an evil, calculating villain. so if a fan looks at the darkling, sees all the evil shit he does, and doesn't want to look past all of that, in order to critically examine his character, and the biased way he's viewed... i mean. yeah. then they wouldn't be a fan of his. they're more than justified in that, in my opinion. "this character is interesting, you just have to look past all the nonsensical extremist, stupid bullshit he does that harms everyone around him" isn't going to be a universal opinion, and i don't blame them for not wanting to go out of their way to sympathize with an uncompromising, murderous bastard who doesn't really respect anyone else's opinions other than his own (which, i think, is true even of show!darkling, although he feels worse about the fact that he's screwing people over. like he might cry about it, but he's still going to go forward with his plan, regardless of who objects). there's a reason darklina fans spend so much time writing about what they think would have been a more satisfying or interesting character arc for the darkling to go through - because canon absolutely doesn't do him any favors. like at all.

and on the other side, there's mal. i actually like both show and book mal, even though i don't think book mal was always handled incredibly well. i think he's a fairly sympathetic character with phenomenally bad coping mechanisms, and that the story spends essentially no time actually exploring his negative character traits in a meaningful way, which means, again, that we're given a character who the audience is tasked with doing most of the legwork for, if they want to like him. just like darkling fans very rarely excuse every single thing he's ever done, i don't actually see mal fans defend all the shit he pulls - beyond when both sides are baiting each other, in which case everyone seems to say the most black and white shit i've ever heard. but that's just kind of how online discourse works, so i won't judge people based off that, lol.

i think most fans of book mal seem to take his character, examine his negative traits and where they stem from, pick how they, personally, would like to see those issues addressed, and then put in the work to give him and alina the breathing room to do go through that character growth together.

so, by and large, i think fans of book mal and show mal just have different concepts that they find interesting or satisfying to explore in the media that they like. i obviously can't speak for others, but generally with mal and alina, i do think it's an interesting coming of age story, and has a smaller-scale, trauma-focused approach to the over-arching, wide-scale moral dilemmas that i focus on when i think about the darkling and alina. they're two flawed characters, thrust into a horrible situation, and they're desperately trying to get through it together, while fighting for the happy, peaceful lives that no one else has ever cared about them achieving.

so, yeah. in the end, i think it's really about what a fan wants from the media they consume. there's not really a wrong answer, in my opinion. it's only when people start judging each other over their fictional preferences that things start getting rocky, which is something that both darkling/alina shippers and mal/alina shippers could probably be better about, as needlessly antagonistic posts are prominent in both ship tags.

[acourtofthought]

Mates ARE Just as Romantic

The more I think about the argument that it would be more romantic if a couple were to choose one another outside of having a bond with someone else, the more I confuse myself turning it over in my head. So let me know if this makes any sense:

(But first, taking a quick detour:

I do understand that mates are supposed to be rare however, I think a possible argument to why we're seeing so many in this series (in Rhys's words) is that the bond might be meant to provide the strongest offspring. That doesn't mean that a couple needs to have children because each couple still has free will and that may not be the right path for everyone but.....the members of the IC and now the three sisters are some of the most powerful Fae in Prythian. If Fate were trying to set things up to create the most powerful offspring for whichever couples want to try for a biological child then giving a mate to all of the above makes sense. Taking one Fae with extreme power and having them mated to another Fae with extreme power = the best chance of nature providing powerful offspring. Please don't misunderstand me though. Even the ones who end up with their mate may still choose against having children. I'm only basing this off Rhys's attempt to explain the bond to Feyre.

Back to the choosing outside of the bond is more romantic debate:

Is it though? The bond draws these characters to one another, sure. But is Rhysand ONLY amazing because of the bond with Feyre? Is Cassian ONLY worth being in a relationship with because of the mating bond? Did Feyre choose Rhys, despite the fact that he's as attractive as a warthog with a terrible personality because she's so blinded by the bond that she just can't stay away? Did Nesta finally commit to Cassian regardless of him being a hideous ogre who eats small children only because she had no choice in the matter because of the bond?

Or............

Is Rhys drop dead gorgeous, fiercely loyal to his friends and people, and a morally gray match for Feyre herself? Isn't that romantic enough? The bond is an added bonus to it all but aren't they still perfect together?

Is Cassian not a perfect compliment to Nesta because he's got a warrior heart the same way she does but his soft edges sooth her rough ones? Is it less romantic that they finally got together because they are mates? Would it have been more romantic that they refused to give in because a bond existed despite their personalities being a wonderful fit?

Rhys is who he is, Feyre is who she is, Cassian is who he is, Nesta is who she is. They are all who they are because of their lives up this point. The bond is sort of a dating app in Prythian. "Hey, based on these factors, we think you should Swipe Right on this person." It's a way to bring people together. But the app (bond) isn't what makes the choice for them to move forward with a relationship. It's just as romantic if they decide to be together regardless of what brought them together in the first place.

Without bringing theories into this, going off the assumption that Lucien is in fact Elain's true mate and the strong hints that Azriel and Gwyn are mates, are we honestly going to say that neither Lucien and Az are really that great? That them having a bond with someone means that's the ONLY reason a female could feel something for them so it's less romantic if they end up together?

If Gwyn ends up with Azriel and they are mated, it's not romantic because it's the bond making Azriel attractive? It's the bond tricking her into thinking he's brave? It's the bond making him seem to have that dry sense of humor that only exists when she's around him and that no one else sees since they aren't mated to him?

If Elain and Lucien finally connect, is the bond tricking them into finding the other physically appealing? I'm pretty sure I've noticed that literally no other character seems to be able to stop themselves from commenting on how beautiful Elain is, how Lucien's hair shines like molten fire, how muscular and strong he is, how handsome even with his scar. I've also noticed that these same other characters have commented on how wise Elain is, how intelligent Lucien is, how alive they both seem when they're out in nature. None of these other characters have a bond with Elain or Lucien so they must both have some redeeming qualities. But for some reason, them noticing these same things about one another would be less meaningful because they have the addition of the bond.

I think the fact that SJM has never shown us a case of Insta-lust is the proof that it's not really about the Bond. If Feyre met Rhys and found herself so overcome with passion that they eloped that very evening then it could definitely be said that are only together because of the bond. But Feyre and Nesta both pursued other paths after meeting their mates. They found that did not make them happy, they got to know their significant others as individuals for quite awhile and decided they actually liked them for WHO they were, not WHAT they were.

There's no reason the same can't be said for other eventual mated pairs IF that's the direction SJM takes the story.

[love-peterparker]

In Extremis || Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: After the reveal of Spider-Man’s secret identity and the release of Quentin Beck’s murder video, there isn’t a lot going right for Peter Parker. But he has you. 

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Warnings: Cursing, protests and rallies, mentions of murder, a gun that is never shot, and some hair description for Y/N for plot purposes (but it should still be generic enough).  

Word Count: 2.3k

A/N: I’m first a Captain America and Agent Carter fan, and I wanted to recreate what makes their relationship so special, but with Peter and Y/N… ‘cuz I also love Peter Parker. I really loved writing this, and I hope you enjoy it.

Also, thanks to @marvelouspeterparker, @sinisterspidey (she actually has a blurb called I’ll Follow You and it builds off of Spider-Man’s identity reveal) and @stuckonspidey for answering my anon asks for general writing tips and Peter’s character. And @spideyspeaches with her kind words after reading one of the final drafts of this fic. Lastly, a special thanks to @peterbenjiparker encouraging me with this fic and for making me so emotional with her series Invisible String (Read this!... but only if your heart can take it) that I needed to write something. This story has nothing to do with it, but it does make some small generic references to her fic, and I would like to think that Y/N and Peter are soulmates in this story.

***

This takes place in a universe where a FFH-esque identity reveal happens when Y/N and Peter are young adults.

***

This fucking city didn’t deserve him.

Peter rarely admits it, but you say it all the time. When you hit a dead end in the Avenger’s database. When checking for your gun before leaving another safehouse. When reaching for him in the dark of night.

This fucking city didn’t deserve him.

It had been over a year since Peter’s identity as Spider-Man was revealed and the dubious video of Quentin Beck’s murder was released. But it felt like a lifetime.

These two Peter problems were like ivy. They rooted, twisted, and spread. Winding into chokeholds around their victims.

But heroes knew how to play with fire.

Peter’s identity was dealt with in a straightforward fashion. Plenty villains who would do anything to exact revenge on Spider-Man, but they would have to find Peter Parker and identify his loved ones first. And for someone like Peter? Well, it was going to take some time.

To you, Peter was lifegiving. A shining ray of golden hope. You fell to sleep and rose to press kisses into his face. To cherish and hold. To share tears. But to the world, or even New York City? He was a nobody, one who couldn’t even hold a steady job.

You all worked fast while the wicked played catch-up. The Avengers searched and wiped all, but ultimately little personal information Peter had on the internet, as well anything that might connect him to your shared inner circle. Everyone was given an Avenger’s signal watch. And both you and May opted to move as a precaution. May to Brooklyn. You to Avenger’s Tower.

The case of Quentin Beck’s murder was a much more grinding process. Through polished superhero reputations, the lawyers secured an Avenger’s Tower house arrest during court proceedings. An overwhelming amount of evidence in Peter’s favor was gathered. Press conferences were held. Speeches were given. And when it all seemed like it was too much for too long, you and Peter would lie in bed, arms and legs entangled, whispering that everything would turn out all right. Good will win. You just had to keep going.

It was taxing, but not impossible. And just when you all thought you were pulling at the end of the thread with the jury in your favor, the ground beneath you crumbles into nothingness. You spiral and crash into a labyrinth, lush and high-walled. Maybe this was the way out- oh wait, you’ve been here- or have you? You all turn and turn only to face a new dead end. A new set of incriminating videos were released. Spider-Man’s videos took the spotlight, but videos of Wanda and Bucky were also revealed. The streets of New York bustled in whispers.

Can we really trust these heroes? What if these videos are the truth?

And what happens when these powerful people think they are right when they are wrong?

When public protests against Earth’s heroes sprouted and jury members started to disappear, it was clear that the whoever or whatever was behind this had greater motives and powerful allies. It was time to buy time.

Everyone had tried to convince Peter to go into hiding somewhere else. Anywhere else. He had enough super-friends where anywhere was possible. Lay low while everyone else above ground scrambled to unweave this massive web of lies. But Peter was infuriatingly adamant that New York, regardless of her wavering loyalties, was his to protect.

So two months ago, he started bouncing around New York City, investigating when he could, and making polarizing headlines with every swing he took.

You tried to continue as if Peter was still by your side. After being terminated from your junior journalist job for “suspect ties to Spider-Man,” Spider-Man became your mission. You originally attended press conferences and rallies as moral support, but after Peter’s first awkward mumbles of a speech, it was painfully clear that he needed a new voice. The public herself needed a normal person who interacted with superheroes. Who better than Spider-Man’s girlfriend? But after the last kidnapping attempt and the Avengers’ numbers shrinking, it was clear that this wouldn’t last. The world now knew who you were too.

The thick ivy had caught up, and you were on fire.

But to hell with it because there was no universe where you would be leaving this nightmare without him. So the next time you looked in the mirror, you donned short red hair and heavy eyeliner.  

Days were spent questioning possible witnesses. Nights were spent in the light of a computer. And when you could barely drag yourself to continue, moments were spent staring at your beautiful boy’s picture. He needed you.  

You had only heard from him twice since he went into hiding, though there were a few times answered unknown number calls would lead to abstract rustling and distinct web shooter noises. To those, you always whispered “I love you,” before hanging up.

That was until last night, when you noticed small slip of paper in the crack of the window of the safehouse you had been staying at. Only a time and an address were written, in messy, but undeniably Parker script.

You spent the next day visiting arbitrary places in the Bronx, trying to determine if anyone was following you and collecting items in an unsuspecting backpack.

It was a balancing act between comfort and practicalities. An extra stealth suit. A waterproof jacket you both shared. Protein bars. Extra web fluid and a first-aid kit. A hefty wad of cash, just in case. And in the smallest pocket, things to help him in the darkest days to come. Letters from you, May, Ned, and your other friends. A few packs of gummy bears. And a picture of you and him, laughing in Central Park on one of your many dates. Sunlight casting halos on your heads. Bright. Carefree. Brimming with love.

Your heart cried and cried and cried, begging for those days.

But they were gone. And as much as you didn’t want to admit it, so were the people in that picture.

You travelled to the building location and made your way to the rooftop. Rows and rows of white sheets were hung, all whipping in the wind to dry.

A small smile graced your lips. You had to hand it to him. He was smart.

You folded yourself into one of the corners of the rooftop, gun in hand and waited. Eerie silence slowly lulling you to…

You woke up to the soft footsteps, sleepy eyes registering a shadowy figure behind one of the bedsheets.

“Hans?” you whispered, pointing your gun with a finger on the trigger.

“Leia,” the figured replied, equally hushed. The shadow lifted the curtain. It took a second to register, but it was really him. You raced towards each other, quick hold each other, beaming. Today, you existed in the same place at the same time.

“That was so stupid. I can’t believe you got me to do that,” you laughed, pressing your face into him, holding him tightly as if he could disappear at any moment.

“Oh, come on, you loved it!” he quipped. You hummed in appreciation.

“True, but I love you more.” His eyes brightened at your confession, pink dusting his cheeks.

“I know.” You shook your head, smiling at his response before turning your head and taking in who he had become. Gone were the luxurious curls, replaced with a buzzcut. A pair of fake glasses perched on his nose in further attempts to conceal his identity. Hallowed eyes. His skin tinted gray from the stress. You ran your fingers through the fuzz on his head, massaging his scalp. A sigh escaped his lips, eyes fluttering shut, with hands reaching to caress yours.

“You cut your hair.”

“You did too.” His fingers danced in the ends of your own tresses. A sad smile furnished your face.

“It had to be done,” you replied, before pressing your lips to his cheek and gently removing yourself from his embrace to get your laptop. “We need to get started. We’ve found a lot since you left.”

With his head on your shoulder, fingers laced with yours, and your laptop on your lap, you recounted the on-going investigation to him. The deep web that just kept going and going. Your theories and suspects. And when that was done, you kept talking. How Aunt May and his friends were fine but missing him. How the remaining Avengers were fairing. Peter was oddly quiet, sharing only a few thoughts here and there, but you attributed it to his weariness.

As the sun continued to dip, the silences between sentences stretched, but you mustered more words. As if your sentences were the delicate string that grounded him to you.

“Y/N,” he interrupted. You looked at him and hummed in reply. He began playing with your fingers, eyes never meeting your own. “I love you more than I ever I thought I could, and I’m really thankful for everything you’ve done. And you’ve done so much. Like, I don’t know if I would have even made it this far without you, but here you are, and well, you can’t keep doing this.” You cocked your head, before shaking your head, hair rustling.

“What? Peter, we are getting somewhere! I just need to visit the-“ He lets go of your hand, fingers clenching into trembling fists.

“No, no more visits. No more investigating. This can’t be your life. When this started, we thought there was a way out. But it’s been over a year. Clearly whoever or whatever is doing this won’t stop until we’re all gone. This may never stop. I can’t have you throwing away your life for me. Hell, I don’t even know when I’ll see you aga-“

“Peter,” you cut him off, your voice pitched lower in concern, “Where is this coming from? We’re gonna make it. It is just a matter of-”

“I can’t give you what you deserve! I’m Spider-Man, so we don’t get to have a house and two kids! We get this-, this fucking disaster! I live like this because I have to. I don’t get a choice. And you shouldn’t be stupid enough where you are doing the same thing!”  

Your mouth fell open, ready to spit back poison when he looked at you. It was in his eyes. Behind the falling tears and redness was the glint of insecurity that Peter had always carried. This was the child whose parents died. The teenager who didn’t stop his Uncle Ben from getting killed. Who held Tony Stark in his last moments. The man who was on the run.  

The hero who would never stop giving to a world who would never stop taking.

Your thoughts frenzied. If you held on to him too tightly, he would resist. The more he would thrash, determined to save you while slowly sacrificing himself until there was nothing left. Your brain was frozen, so your heart gave you the words-

“Marry me.”  

Peter’s eyes widen before retracting into a tight furrow, scrunching his nose.

“What?! No! Did you not hear anything I just said-“

“I’m not leaving you. I will never leave you. The one thing you never get to doubt in the world is us. So, I’m gonna ask you again; will you,” you took his hand, went to one knee, and let your voice soften as you held his gaze, “Peter Parker, marry me?”  

You both bathed in silence. His chocolate doe eyes boring straight into yours, searching for truth. The thought that maybe you had gone about this the wrong way started to crawl into your mind, but then a smile slowly creeped onto his face, bright red with blush. More salt-water pooled in his eyes. He pulled you into a near lung-constricting embrace, smothering wet kisses into every inch of your face. Mine. Mine. Mine. You could practically hear his thoughts as you basked in each kiss. I missed you. I love you. And oh my god, you’re here to stay.

“What did I ever-, I have no idea know what I ever did to ever deserve you.” A smirked formed on your lips.

“Is that a yes?” The gold stars in his eyes shined at your playfulness. There was the man you always loved.

“Yes, yes, oh god yes. I do, Mrs. Parker,” he said pulling you in for a passionate kiss. And you both stayed there, melting into the ground beneath you. Breathing each other in as moments passed. Tender “I love you’s” flowing generously from both of your lips. As if the world had vanished and all that existed was you and him, and him and you, and this understanding that this, this was a love until death do you part.

Peter was the one to break the string of kisses, leaving you to chase his lips before touching his forehead with your own. His breath hot on your face. “I- , if you go to my lab there is a secret compartment. In my desk. The code is your birthday. I was going to ask you myself, but then, well… this.” You chuckled as he stumbled on his words.

“I’ll get it as soon as I can.” You both leaned in to close the gap again when a cacophony of sirens and lights echoed in the streets below.

Frustration filled Peter’s eyes as he sat up. “Shit. I-, I gotta go. Are you gonna be okay?” You let out a shallow breath, but quickly forced a smile.

“Go get’em.” And with the whip of his webs, he was gone.

You sat there for a moment, taking in the new quiet. Your fingers graced your lips, still warm with the memory of his. A lightness had settled in your chest, and with every breathe you could feel it pulse stronger.

Because no matter what it took, no matter how long the wait, there was two things for certain.

He was going to protect the city. And you were going to save your husband.

[writerthreads]

The top 10 classic fears in literature

By Prof. Marianna Torgovnik on TedBlog

Fear #1:  Death, death, death—did I mention death?

An almost universal fear, death recurs in literature more than any other fear, all the way from canonical works through fantasies like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I list the fear of death three times since it occurs in many forms: fear of our own deaths, fear of family members or close friends dying, fear of children preceding parents, the death of an entire culture.

Some examples: Shakespeare’s Sonnets (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”; Hamlet  (“To be or not to be”); John Keats (“When I have fears”); Virginia Woolf, The Waves; Pat Barker, The Ghost Road. This list could go on and on, because the fear does.

Fear #2:  Avoiding death for the wrong reasons.

Literature loves paradox and so, paradoxically, the second greatest fear is avoiding death for the wrong reasons: when death will inevitably follow a noble or moral act or out of cowardice, especially in war. For understandable reasons, this fear is less common than more general fear of death, but it is out there and memorable nonetheless.

Some examples: Sophocles, Antigone (to bury her dead brother, Antigone famously courts death); Shakespeare several times — Hamlet again (“There is a providence in the fall of a sparrow”) and Antony and Cleopatra (to avoid capture by Octavius); Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done”); Harry Potter in his pursuit of Voldemort.

Fear #3:  Hunger or other severe physical deprivation.

Survival tends to trump the finer emotions when it comes to fear. Sometimes time specific, the fear of hunger nonetheless reminds us of basic things. In romantic novels or poems, it can be and often is a symbol for more abstract needs, like love. In Holocaust literature, it portrays humanity strained to the core.

Some examples: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Count Ugolino and his children); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (“Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink”); Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; Elie Wiesel, Night; Susanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Fear #4:  Killing or causing the death of someone you love.

Whether by murder, negligence or a set of circumstances beyond our control, the fear of causing the death of someone we love is a big one. It’s a stock feature of numerous spy and crime dramas, where we tend to brush it off since the hero (think James Bond) or (more rarely) heroine’s beloved is almost always a goner. Numerous operas by Verdi, including Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera use this theme, sometimes more than once; in fact, opera thrives on this fear, as in Bizet’s Carmen. It usually takes serious and even majestic forms in literature.

Some examples:  Patroclus dying for Achilles in Homer’s The Iliad; Othello killing Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (“Done because we are too menny”); D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (Gerald choosing to die rather than kill Gudrun); Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Fear #5: Being rejected and/or being loved by the wrong person.

At last we come to a fear that can have a lighter side and, sometimes — though not always — a happy ending. In literature, characters fear being rejected, being loved, and being loved by the wrong person in almost equal proportions. Once again, the examples span the ancient classics all the way up to the present.

Some examples:  Woman loves step-son madly in three versions of the same story, none with a happy ending (Euripides, Hippolytus; Racine, Phaedra; Mary Renault, The Bull from the Sea); mixed up couples set right in Shakespeare’s As You Like It; love triumphs by the end in Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; two different kinds of love lead to tragedy in Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles; mixed results in Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot.

Fear #6:  Illness, disease and aging.

Closely allied to the fear of death — but not identical to it — the fear of illness is another constant though, as we’d expect, the disease most feared changes over time. The bubonic plague used to be the leading contender; TB enjoyed a long dominance until cures were found. Nowadays, cancer and, more often, dementia are far greater fears. There is at least one stunning example in this category of embracing the fear being absolutely the right thing to do: Flaubert’s St Julien, L’Hospitalier, in which the saint embraces a leper and achieves transcendence.

Some examples:  Giovanni Boccacio’s Decameron; Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year; Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray; Albert Camus, La Peste (The Plague); Ian McEwan, Atonement; Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections.

Fear #7:  Lost reputation, divorce or scandal.

People used to fear this one more than they do today, when our motto seems to be that no publicity is really bad publicity and unseemly revelations are the order of the day. Still, this is a significant fear, and one that even recent books revisit in original ways.

Some examples: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina; D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Thomas Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities; Phillip Roth, The Human Stain.

Fear #8:  War, shipwrecks and other disasters.

The fear of shipwrecks can seem archaic — but they were the airplane crashes of yesteryear. Shipwrecks can be mere episodes or the core of the plot; in early literature, they are closely allied with war, a more global disaster. While other disasters arouse fear — earthquakes, volcanos — war and shipwrecks lead the field. Both change characters’ lives, with variable results.

Some examples:  Homer, The Odyssey; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Tolstoy, War and Peace; Yann Martel, Life of Pi.

Fear #9:  The law and, more specifically, lawyers.

Fear of the law is a surprisingly classic fear, weighing in at number nine. But what’s meant by the law changes over time. While fear of God’s judgment remains plausible in literature, it is far less common today than fear of society’s laws — and specifically the rapacity of lawyers and the law’s ability, in Dickens’ words, “to make business for itself.” In some modern books, the law becomes a metaphor for the meaning of life.

Some examples:  The Bible; Aeschylus, The Oresteia; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Dickens, Bleak House; Franz Kafka, The Trial; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Fear #10:  That real life won’t resemble literature.

While this might seem the most trivial of fears, in fact it drives a lot of great literature. Some characters want life to be elevated, inflated, like epic or romantic literature. Deprived of that illusion, they die or take their own lives—looping us back to fear #1. Other characters favor codes of renunciation that have been called by literary critics “the Great Tradition,” fearing that they will gain something by immoral or amoral actions; a variation on this fear is the fear, as George Eliot’s Dorothea puts it, “I try not to have desires merely for myself.” Not at all light for avid readers, this fear usefully reminds us that life is not really like a Henry James novel.

Some examples:  Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Henry James, The Ambassadors; Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.

[condorclaw]

Why It’s Hard To Understand c!Technoblade

Note: These are my own thoughts and beliefs. This isn’t meant to be hate or critical at all, but rather trying to figure out why Technoblade’s actions are harder for some people to understand. I’m always open to friendly discussion, as some people might have noticed things that I haven’t!

After completion note: This could be slightly hard to read due to my jumbled thoughts, and the sudden realization I had while working on this, but I tried to explain everything as best as I could! This is now not even c!Technoblade critical, but rather Minecraft critical /j

A quick lookover at the cast of the Dream SMP will definitely show how many unique characters there are within the story, and that’s only based on appearances. Diving deeper into each of them, they all have their own morals, backstories, and relationships that drive what they do.

There’s another factor that makes each of them unique too, and that’s how they tell their stories. Some are more reactionary, while others take time to work out their own feelings and thoughts. Imagine it as a scale:

While some characters are more introspective and express their feelings and motivations more through words (ex. Ranboo, Ghostbur), other characters share their own morals through their actions, be them extreme or subtle (ex. Sapnap, Dream). Of course, those aren’t the only two options, with the storytelling being a sliding line where there is a middle ground for some characters to display their own feelings through a combination of words and actions (ex. Jack and Tommy).

Now, this isn’t saying that Ranboo can’t act on his morals, or that Dream can’t use his words (we’ve all seen them do both very well). It’s more so a representation of the storytelling they’re most common with. All the ones who use words to express their feelings have backed it up with actions, and the ones who’ve acted on their thoughts have shared reflections on it with words. One way of storytelling is not better than the other, and it’s rather good to have multiple ways of seeing how characters react to situations through their common/preferred method of expression.

However, when it comes to Technoblade, he exists on the scale in a very weird way.

While he can appear on the scale, he doesn’t exactly fit within the similar boundaries of other characters. He acts, but rarely backs it up with almost any words. When he does use words, while they make sense, there’s too little to connect them to the full extent of what he does.

There’s another character who’s also in the same spot as Techno on the scale: Phil, who does tend to act in the same way Techno does, also having the same explaining gap as Techno.

So why do I understand Phil’s reasoning more than Techno?

It’s because of something else outside of words and actions, just rather character explanation. It’s an overlying trait.

Phil’s overlying trait is that he’s centuries old and has seen loved ones die. With this knowledge, it’s much easier to come to an understanding of where Phil’s own thoughts lie and why he acts the way he does. Of course this trait isn’t applicable to all his actions, but it allows us to bridge gaps between his disconnected actions and come to an understanding of why he might believe in specific ideals and morals.

Overlying traits can change though, Ranboo being an example of this. At the beginning, his trait was memory issues, which caused his feelings to be affected by his condition, and seek out those who he remembered to be good. It’s why he had the memory books, and why they were used to bridge parts of his own thinking and actions. Currently, his overlying trait has shifted to wanting peace. It’s through this why he takes his alliances and friends into consideration when making decisions, because all he wants in the end is the best result for everybody to benefit from.

Techno doesn’t appear to have a current overlying trait that originated from anywhere. “Destroy the government” could possibly be seen as this, but it’s more of an overlying statement than an overlying trait, something that’s rooted in mostly words rather than in a fact. “I’m a person too” could also be it, but that thought is rarely covered, with Techno currently leaning towards a more militaristic and authoritarian mindset.

At this point, there doesn’t seem to be a clear overlying trait for Techno’s character that connects his actions together. Techno rarely goes into his own mindset, rather acting upon what he believes in the moment without exploring it in a coherent way. With characters like him who don’t use their words for solid explanation, visuals are especially important to convey how a character is feeling outside of said words, which Techno tends to do.

Now, this isn’t Techno’s fault in being unable to convey his specific emotions to his audience. IRL limitations are in the way of that, such as cc!Techno streaming very infrequently. With cc!Ranboo, he streams every day, so there’s time for him to introspect and to do what he wants to do in terms of lore. Minecraft is also extremely limited in specific emotions of players, which is why crouching is the closest thing to conveying fear or playfulness, and the arm motion is used for waving or expressing anger.

For c!Techno, facial expressions would be the most useful tool in explaining his internal thoughts, but he can’t show them like how he could in animation or live-action. As seen in the content created by the fans, famous Technoblade scenes will have a wide variety of facial expressions, since that would be the visual focus of his character.

I believe the reason it’s so hard for people for understand Techno as well as they could, is because he doesn’t express his feelings through words or actions, but rather a third category: his expressions, which we are unable to see due to the limitations of the game.

Actions don’t always equal true feelings, and while words are important, they can be inconsistent with how one expresses them.

So while this is the more linear form that we can expect:

In reality, it’s actually more like this:

And with the third category, the previous linear form is rather inaccurate within itself. Yes, this makes things more complicated in terms of working out how each character can portray their own morals and ideals.

But isn’t that what Dream SMP is about? Absolute insanity wrapped in different perspectives that might not be as clear as they seem?

TLDR: Technoblade is hard for me (and possibly many others) to understand due to the most important factor of his storytelling, facial expressions, being limited to nonexistent within the game Dream SMP is set in.

(Thank you so much for reading this if you got this far! I really appreciate it!)

[leebird-simmer]

Russian Fairy Tales Test Prep: Max Luthi

Max Luthi (1909-1991)

- Swiss literary theorist - specialized in folk fairy tales of Europe, not Russia specifically - published The European Folktale: Form and Nature (1947), first English translation published in 1981 - major three elements he discusses are one-dimensionality, depthlessness, and abstract style

I. One-Dimensionality

- magic is considered mundane; characters are not surprised by the existence of talking animals, enchanted objects, witches, dragons, etc. - distance is created geographically, not magically. if you travel long enough (to the faraway mountains, to the thrice ninth kingdoms, to the heart of THE WOODS), you can reach your destination. - a folk hero has no hesitation about marrying a supernatural/otherworldly bride; he notices nothing strange or disturbing about her. He is neither fearful nor curious about the numinous (that which is spiritual, religious, and/or mysterious).

II. Depthlessness

- characters have no psychological depth. Their personality traits or sentiments are expressed via action. If there is a show of emotion, it’s typically either necessary to the plot or embellishment on the part of the storyteller. - characters are fairly indifferent to the passage of time. They might age three years in the span of a sentence, but it doesn’t actually *change* them. Similarly, there’s no real development or character arc. - characters don’t have willpower; their psychological motivations are expressed through external impulses (ex. a character who needs to stay awake all night will conveniently have thorns to sit in that prick him and keep him awake). - “plot armor” protects the hero not only from death, but from incorrect actions. He will inevitably exhibit right conduct (not necessarily *ethical* or *appropriate* conduct). There are no moral dilemmas; the hero never feels reluctant or conflicted about the actions he must take. - illnesses are non-descript and unspecified; injuries & mutilations are not perceived as horrific or disabling (ex. a hero might cut off his leg to feed an allied beast and this is not considered a hardship). - the hero has no social environment. He is not embedded in a family structure or community; his relatives, friends, and allies appear or disappear as the plot dictates. If/when courtship takes place, there is no romance or affection in it. - Relationships are typically symbolized by gifts, and magical gifts are used strictly “as needed.” Before & after the crisis point, the items are forgotten.

III. Abstract Style

- the stylistic means of achieving depthlessness; only the essential is mentioned. - strict word-for-word repetition - formulaic numbering (usually trebling) is more important than drama. Favored numerals are 1, 2, 3, 7, and 12. - people/objects are described with a substance or a color (ex. “skin as white as snow”). as a rule, nouns receive one adjective. - only a few things & persons are assigned a color. Folktales prefer clear ultrapure colors: gold, silver, red, white, black. Occasionally you will see gray, although it is likely to be associated with steel or iron. Now and then blue is mentioned. Green is rarely used {I have seen it mentioned once so far in my studies}. - many things, both animate & inanimate, are described in mineral or metallic terms. Folktales prefer precious rare metals: gold, silver, copper. - otherworldly beings frequently gift the folk hero with a means of transportation. He is essentially a wanderer and almost always sets out alone. - otherworldly beings frequently live in solid houses, castles, or splendid underground lodgings (like people). - drastic metamorphoses, abrupt & unexplained, illogical - all extremes are welcomed, extreme contrasts in particular - events happen when they are convenient for the story, which has a single sharply-defined plot line. - characters have perfect timing; every time limit tends to be either used up exactly or exceeded by a narrow margin. - minor characters are defined by their functions (ex. “messengers” exist for no other purpose) - objects & situations fit together miraculously: clothing that seems tailor-made, a purse of gold that covers the exact cost of a needed item, arriving in precisely the right place, etc. - hero is assigned very specific tasks with very specific solutions, but somehow he or his advisers always know exactly what needs to be done.

Gerhart Hauptmann: “Whatever one adds to the plot is at the expense of the characters.”

[itsclydebitches]

Voyager. Now that’s a kettle of fish. Obviously watch/enjoy whatever you wish, but I do recommend also checking out SFDebris’ reviews of the episodes (he’s the rwde of Voyager). He is a lot smarter and more eloquent than me.

Putting these two asks together since my thoughts on both are all jumbled! 

Now, I want to emphasize that I’ve only watched the first 16 episodes (Season One + Season 2 premiere), so idk if Voyager is going to go seriously downhill later on, but right now I do really like it. And not in a, “Lol yeah compared to the other crap on it’s good, I guess” way, but in a completely honest, “It has its flaws, but is overall a solid, compelling show with lovable characters” way. Out of curiosity I watched SFDebris’ review of “Phage,” though I’m afraid I didn’t agree with it. The only part were I was like, “Yeah okay” was pointing out that they had the Doctor using a keypad when he supposedly wasn’t solid, but that’s precisely the sort of continuity error that, in an otherwise strong show, I’m willing to shrug off. For all the major points, it sounds like SFDebris is concerned primarily with the show he wants Voyager to be, rather than the show Voyager actually is. Which I know sounds familiar--I’ve heard that criticism leveled at my own work: “You just want RWBY to be a totally different show”--but the difference is that Voyager is a part of an established franchise, following three other TV shows, an animated series, and a collection of films. It’s not an original show (like RWBY) that can take itself in any direction the story may need/claim to want (again, RWBY). It has a brand and those established characteristics seem to be bumping up against SFDebris’ critiques: 

Hating Neelix as a character - You’re supposed to hate him. Or at least find him frustrating (I don’t personally hate him) because that’s what all the characters are grappling with too. From Tuvok forced to have an awkward conversation while Neelix is in the bath to Janeway dealing with him taking over her dining room, Neelix’s conflict revolves around how others learn to accept him. Star Trek as a franchise is about “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Voyager begins with the problem of how the trained Federation officers are supposed to work with the more violent Maquis. Difference doesn’t just create “Wow, you’re so amazing!” reactions, it also includes frustration, disagreement, and outright hostility. Creating an outsider character with a kind heart but incredibly overbearing personality is a great way to test the other characters’ convictions. Do they actually care about all life in the universe? Or do they only care about life when they personally find it palatable? Having Neelix around is a great reminder for them--and the viewer--that just because someone annoys you at times doesn’t mean they’re any less worthy of love, respect, and companionship. It also doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer: he keeps the crew fed even if his cooking is horrible, he provides information about this area of space even if he sometimes gets it wrong, we roll our eyes at the “Morale Officer” stuff, but Neelix does provide much needed perspective for characters like Tuvok. If Neelix made fewer mistakes, stopped bugging the crew, became a “cooler” character for the audience to root for rather than be frustrated by... a lot of the point of his character would be lost. 

Frustration about discoveries not carrying over to the next episode - AKA, the crew finds inanely powerful, alien tech and then (presumably) never uses it again. This would indeed be a big problem in a serialized story (like RWBY) but Voyager maintains much of Star Trek’s original, episodic nature. Though we have continuity in the form of them inching towards home and evolving as characters, the world still resets to a certain point at the end of each episode. This is what allows Star Trek to explore so many different questions and have so many different adventures. If you demand that serialized continuity--this character needs to have an arc to deal with this traumatic experience, the crew has to follow the thread they just discovered, our Doctor needs to do something with the new tech they just found--then you lose the variety that Star Trek is known for. Instead of a new story each week (or, occasionally, across two weeks) you’ve got a single story spanning months. Neither form is better or worse than the other, it’s absolutely a preference, but there’s a very specific, structural, intentional reason why the characters “forget” about the things they’ve discovered and, at times, experienced. Unlike Ozpin forgetting that he has a nuke in his cane for seven volumes, or Ruby forgetting to use her eyes at crucial points, Star Trek deliberately sets things aside to ensure there’s room for new ideas and questions next episode. 

Janeway doesn’t kill the Vidiians to get Neelix his lungs back - No Starfleet captain would. At least, not during this period of Star Trek. Sisko has development in that regard (making morally gray choices), but that’s built into the heart of the show from the start: he’s on a station, not a starship, that is jointly run by the Federation and the Bajorans, and built by the Cardassians. The rules of the Federation always had a tenuous hold there and Sisko as a character always pushed the boundary of the Federations expectations (Q: “Picard never hit me!”) Janeway, in contrast, is 100% a Federation captain and, more importantly, has explicitly told her crew that they will be operating as a Federation vessel, despite being so far from home. That’s the conflict between the officers and the Maquis. That’s why Tuvok accepts the alien tech in “Prime Factors,” recognizing that Janeway can’t. That’s why Seska is a compelling antagonist, pressuring the crew to abandon their ideals for survival. The series (or at least that first season) revolves around questions about identity and whether they’re willing to give that identity up now that they’re out from under the Federation’s thumb. Overwhelmingly, they choose not to... which would make murdering the Vidiian a complete 180 for her character. We’re not necessarily supposed to agree with Janeway’s choice, we’re supposed to acknowledge that murdering another sentient being is not some simple choice to make, especially when you’re a leader devoted to a certain set of ideals. We’re supposed to recognize the challenges here (many of which SFDebris doesn’t acknowledge) like how you’re supposed to keep a prisoner for the next 75 years when you’re already struggling to feed and take care of the crew you have, or the fact that they claim to take organs from dead bodies and this was a rare time when they couldn’t. (It’s only in “Faces” that we learn this is complete BS and they actively kidnap people to work as slaves and then be harvested.) The frustration that Janeway doesn’t act here stems from wanting her to be a character who is, fundamentally, not a Star Trek captain. 

Granted, I only watched one review, but that’s what the whole thing felt like: wanting a series that’s not Star Trek. Something without a token, challenging character, without hand-wavy science, that’s more serialized, and doesn’t adhere to a “do no harm” code. (I just started “Initiations” and Chakotay asks a vessel to stand down three times, while actively being attacked, before finally retaliating and then he tries to reestablish communications and then he warns them about their engine and then he beams them aboard his shuttle. That’s what Star Trek (usually) is: that idealized love of life, even when that life is actively hostile). And like, that’s obviously fine! As you say, Flawartist, “watch/enjoy whatever you wish,” but just based on this one review I wonder if SFDebris just wants something other than Star Trek. 

I think one of the reasons why I feel passionately about this (beyond my love of context and recognizing when shows are actively trying to accomplish something specific) is that I went through this with DS9. For years I heard about how horrible the show was. It’s trash. It’s a mess. It’s not TNG, so don’t even bother. Or, if you do, be prepared for disappointment. There was this whole, strong rhetoric about how silly it all is--Star Trek is, by default, silly, so supposedly only the Shakespeare loving, archeology obsessed captain is sophisticated enough to save it--and then... I found nothing of the sort. I mean yeah, obviously Star Trek is silly as hell (that’s part of its charm), but DS9 was also a complex, nuanced look into everything from personal agency to the threat of genocide. There’s so much wonderful storytelling there... little of which made it into my cultural understanding of DS9. And now I’m seeing the same thing with Voyager. When I did some quick googling I was bombarded by articles saying how bad it is and now I have an ask comparing it to a show I don’t think has even a quarter of the heart the Star Trek franchise does. Which is is not AT ALL meant as a knock against you, anon. I’m just fascinated by this cultural summary of Star Trek: TOS is ridiculous but fun if you’re willing to ignore large swaths of it, TNG is a masterpiece and that’s that, DS9 is bad, Voyager is bad, and to be frank I haven’t heard much of anything about Enterprise. It’s weird! Because I watch these shows and I’m like, “Holy shit there’s so much good storytelling here.” Is it perfect? Not on your life, but it’s trying in a way that I can really appreciate. It’s Star Trek and Star Trek (at least at the time) meant something pretty specific. Criticisms about divisive characters or idealized forgiveness feel like walking out of a Fast and Furious film and going, “There was too much driving and silly combat. Why didn’t they just fix the situation in this easy way?” Because then we wouldn’t have a film about lots of driving and silly combat! If you make all the characters palatable, make Janeway harder, extend the impact of all the discoveries, remove the ridiculous science that doesn’t make any sense... then you don’t have Star Trek anymore. 

[winx-reimagined]

Ships & Relationships in Winx Club| Romantic

ToC

Okay, it's obvious that a lot of the relationships in Winx Club suck. In this specfic post, I'm mainly going over romantic relationships but I'll make another for friendships & family and I'll either squeeze enemies and more gray relationships on that post or they'll have their own post.

The two biggest issue couples, Musa & Riven and Bloom & Sky. At least with Musa and Riven they both tried to better themselves. They were both toxic too, it wasn't only Riven -although it was mostly him.

Riven & Musa.

Riven's selfish, beyond rude, and of course there was that time he bretrayed them. Musa doesn't even try to understand him and she only want to argue back, she just fuels the flame. From what I've seen, neither of them have any mutual hobbies or interests, they can't communicate like friends meaning they sure as hell can't communicate as lovers. As bad as this is, if Winx was more realistic and much more mature, I feel like their relationship would be purely sexual. Which is fine in general, but not so great in a supposedly committted relationship. Just sucks that they're trying to play off a toxic and abusive relationship as "fixing the bad boy."

Speaking about committment... Bloom & Sky.

I hate this couple the most. To be fair, most of us do. At least with Riven and Musa they somewhat learned from their mistakes and were held accountable. But Sky, barely was. I can't remember a time Bloom did anything serious (although I'm pretty sure in one of the dubs for season 4, it was made obvious that she wanted to cheat on Sky), the worst she does is just get really angry -usually for no reason- and refuses to listen. But Sky literally led on two girls.

Despite how close Bloom and him were getting, he never tried to tell her the truth. I don't care if he lies about being a prince because he doesn't want the attention -which is actually pretty stupid because Eraklyon is one of the biggest kingdoms it's strange that no one recognized him like, hmm I don't know, Stella- but that isn't a good enough reason to lie to your bestfriend and girlfriend.

Now him being in an unwanted arrange marriage and cheating, sure. It's like a forbidden love trope and in my books doesn't count as cheating. And I could maybe understand him not saying anything to her since it'd most likely get her in trouble. But I still question why he has that framed picture of Diaspro on his desk 🤔, it's almost as if they're close. Hmm. Sure she could've given it to him but there's no reason he couldn't just throw it out or lay it flat.

Before I move on, I need to talk about their relationship as a whole. They're so similar. Of course, you need similarities to make any relationship work but they're like really similar. They're both peacekeepers -which is ironic to say the least-, they're both agreeable -again, ironic- and this just kind of makes their relationship really boring. Boring doesn't mean there's no drama, there's just no interest. You don't watch the relationship grow like with Stella & Brandon or Aisha & Nabu. They never have any actual conflict nor any actual arc, I can't even call it a linear relationship. How do they relate on anything? Their lives are so different, the most the could talk about is what literally happened three episodes ago. Even if they didn't have these petty issues, it's still be a bad relationship.

More about boring couples... Flora & Helia and Timmy & Tecna

I have more to say about Timmy and Tecna for a different manner but like these two couples are so boring. That's probably because they're mainly in the background. But I do think Flora and Helia are kinda cute, but their kept in the background so much, I literally don't know enough about their relationship to make an actual conclusion about them.

But Timmy & Tecna... 👀, they're okay. My most vibrant memories of their relationship is Tecna constantly calling Timmy weak, pathetic, or a coward. I don't give a fuck how angry you are at someone, that is NOT a reason to constantly abuse them like this. And it is abusive, it doesn't help that Timmy sees Tecna as amazing. He lowkey praises her.

I do like the idea of them being very "emotionless" or not being able to recipicate said emotions very well then learning to open up. This is mostly for Tecna, but there are times Timmy falls under this like when Tecna was stuck in the Phantom zo- I mean Omega dimension. He abandoned any sense of reasoning and only went off his emotions, believeing she was still alive -to be fair, he was right. I actually have very big plans for this dynamic, that mostly has to do with Tecna. I'll be making a post about Tecna's Issue soon 😉, but to say the least, he unlocks more than just her emotions. (I swear if that post comes out before this.. A/N it did)

Aisha & Nabu

Out of all of them, these two are the best relationship. Although it is EXTREMELY weird how they set them up, with Nabu stalking Aisha. The way their relationship grew was beautiful and they were about to get married but then Nabu died. Which I would've enjoyed the tragedy of it, if 1. it meant something afterwards and 2. if it wasn't the only man of color this happened to (not to mention the only black woman is the one to ignore all sense of reason and go apeshit).

Nabu is most likely going to stay alive in my version.

I almost forgot about this one... Brandon & Stella

They're cute. They're one of the best couples in the series. Really the only issue I had with them was their petty arguements which, like any Winx romantic drama, had to do with "cheating." It's stupid that they'd accuse each other of cheating if they're literally comfortable with dozens of people flirting and complienting their partner. They even compete over it. It goes to show how much they trust each other yet they still get in a tizzy when their SO stood near the opposite gender.

I've just noticed something about all the relationships. They characters are matched up with someone who is almost basically the genderbent version of themselves. Bloom & Sky; peaceloving leaders, Stella & Brandon; vain, comical characters; Musa & Riven; damaged goods, punks, and so on. It's not the worst thing you could do, but when it's for all of your characters, yes.

Just to address it, I don't have anything to say about Icy's relationship with Tritannus.

I just realized the best way to describe the Winx relationships, and it's just teenage couples. Their relationships never seem to mature except for Aisha & Nabu's relationship.

Now for the SHIPS! There's many I won't include, just because I don't want this post to be very long and I don't know too much about too many, but maybe I'll come back to them or I can just answer asks.

Were gonna start with the ones I hate :) which isn't many

p.s if you ship any of these more power to you, I just don't like these ships in particular, I'm not attacking you as people.

Bloom X Valtor...

I cannot even begin to dig into this one... alright then, let's begin. To get the moral/ethical issues out of the way. Valtor is much older than Bloom. Sure she's 18 by season 3, she's an adult in most places but it's still really gross. Besides what does a thousand year old (wait, how old is he?) have in common with an 18-year-old teenager? He helped kill, if not killed her parents. Look, forgiveness is a beautiful thing... but that's too much. It's fucking unforgivable. His very existence is to destroy the dragon flame. His like, literal reason of existence is to destroy her magic, her family, her world, HER. Ignoring the whole age thing real quick, they just wouldn't work. There's no chemistry between them that won't lead to an explosion.

Now about the intrigue in the dynamic; you know hero x villain, I get it, but the conflict in their relationship isn't romantic.

I also cannot believe one of the official winx club channels made a video for this ship. It's just...

Bloom X Darkar...

I'm pretty sure this is somewhat unpopular but it still exists, which is just like... I have no words. To be fair, I do like them, but as a platonic ship, I'll explain in the continuation of this post. Darkar is a fucking entity he's even older than Valtor. His goal, I feel, is a little less defined other than "he's doing evil things because he's evil", he's a god of darkness not fucking evil.

- I need to rant real quick, I have such an intense love-hate relationship with darkness being evil and light being good. I love it because it's easy to make out and the whole forces of good and evil really gets me going, but like I hate it cause it's always light is good and dark is bad. To be fair, I do appreciate it when it's mudded in which some light creatures turn/are evil and dark creatures turn/are good. Like if there's a lot of gray, I'm happy. Not everything is in black and white.

Anyways, they also only interacted for a short period of time and that wasn't enough for any sort of real relationship (of any sort) to bloom. Although, Darkar is like one of the nicest characters to Bloom which is strange. I get he was just using her but I'll explain later why it doesn't make sense.

These are the two romantic ships that I hate. It's mostly because of age, like if Bloom were older and Valtor was younger I could see them being an interesting enemy to lover ship, but it'd still be a stretch to me. But Bloom and Darkar I can't see romantically, but that's probably because I see them differently.

For the ones I could somewhat see or somewhat like, bruh by this point I'll have to come back and make a continuation post just called THE POTENTIAL...

SunFire, Bloom X Stella...

They're bestfriends which is already a good start, although in the series I don't think they actually act that close, it tends to be more of a rare sight. They're always supportive of eachother (that is until all attention went to Bloom) and Stella was the one to help Bloom's "gain" powers and showed her the magic dimension. Stella immense confidence would be a nice boast for Bloom, since I personally see Bloom as not being very confident in herself and having low self-esteem. They're very cute too.

Tecna X Riven...

Honestly, I think they'd work. They both have common interests for machinery (and presumably sports), they both have emotional issues that would be interesting to see them work out together. I also think they're relationship would be more interesting than their canons ones.

There's always the issue of... y'know, Riven being a piece of shit. But Tecna strikes me as a "takes no shit" type and I feel like that would be their dynamic. I also feel like Riven would like that sort of confidence.

Riven X Darcy...

I also think they'd work. I know in some dubs Darcy used her powers to control Riven, which really just feels like an excuse for his actons. But in the Rai dub, the one I grew up on (is it the original English Dub?), Darcy just had a way with words and was easily able to calm Riven down.

They seem to be able to relate to eachother, and I would like to think that, despite the finale, she still cares about him. (Also I could see them as being a trans couple, I can see both of them being trans so there's something for them to relate to)

Soundwave, Aisha X Musa...

I love this ship. They have a lot of relatability, a lot in common, and have a lot of screentime together. Musa is the one that made Aisha feel accepted in the Winx Club and they found solidarity in each other. In comparison to everyone else, they just seem so much closer and honestly I don't remember a time they fought. Except for maybe the time Nabu died, but Aisha was fighting with everyone.

Speaking of which, I would write them together if I didn't find Aisha and Nabu so cute. Of course, if he dies, yeah, she can move on and be with Musa but I don't know if I'm going to kill him. So this is honestly a huge maybe for my rewrite.

Icy X Bloom...

Honestly, they're most likely going to be canon in my rewrite.

Their similar backstories are incredibly interesting especially since they basically took two different paths. Same cause, different outcomes. Which makes their relationship and dynamic pretty thrilling since to be together they have to be on the same side, so will they be good or evil together. It's almost like a game of tug of war, if you will.

It's hard to find any common interests between them in the series and I haven't read the comics, so I'll talk more about headcanon stuff. Neither of them get what they want in life, they always seem to be unlucky. Both of them are very lonely, usually it's their own fault; and (after the first encounter with Lord Darkar, where Bloom turns evil) Icy tends to find peace in Bloom when they're not fighting. I'd imagine them both to be very artistic, Bloom loves to draw (which is something they dropped in like the first episode) and I could imagine Icy liking sculpting.

Plus, it's the rivals to lover trope, that'd could actually be a healty rivals to lover trope. Which I love, literally one of my favorite dynamics.

Diaspro X Bloom...

Damn, a lot of these have to do with Bloom.

If Diaspro were to see how bad Sky was she'd probably want to be around the one that originally called him out, Bloom. Diaspro can actually be really fucking sweet, but only to people she likes which in this case, is Bloom. Although, she'd probably be very clingy. We don't get any information about Diaspro's interests or her actual personality because she's eViL. So it's difficult to see how they'd work out.

But it'd be cute to see Diaspro teach Bloom how to be a princess and to act like a "proper lady."And to see Bloom teach Diaspro to be more free-spirited and less uptight (I'm thinking about the second Mulan movie now). I'm really tempted to have them be somewhat hinted at in the story; like Diaspro likes Bloom but Bloom doesn't like Diaspro. We'll see...

Brandon X Sky...

Similar to Bloom and Stella, they're best friends which is a good start. They seem to have known eachother for a long time. Really if anything, they're just the male version of Bloom X Stella, but like a little calmer.

Diaspro x Icy...

I've seen this ship here and there, but to be honesst I really know what I think about it. From what I remember, they don't ever interact. And I guess they can just be a villaness power couple. Or hard and soft relationship, where like Icy's a hardass and Diaspro's her surprisingly sweet significant other. Well, sweet only to her.

Stormy X Musa...

They're both punks. They'd either always butt heads or they'd always vibing together. I think they'd be kinda cute tho, just two gals being wild.

Stormy X Flora...

A hardass and a softass, since Flora's gonna be like 5'10-6'0ft in my redesign and Stormy is absolutely shorter than her; they'd be the small, angry and big, soft dynamic. And I think that's kinda cute. Plus, they're both forces of nature. I could see Stormy allowing Flora to be more chaotic and open up about her more negative emotions, especially if these emotions have to do with the rest of the Winx. And Flora could allow Stormy to chill out and be calmer, I could see Stormy picking up a gardening habit because of Flora.

This is kind out of left field, Professor Palladium X Professor Avalon

I half-jokingly, and half-actually shipped them when I rewatched season 2, then I was surprised to find that people actually ship them. And that it was kinda popular. There's really not much to go off of, but they're really cute and I just really want them to be together. Palladium seems very anxious and is really sweet and Avalon seems like he has a lot of self-esteem, I don't know where I'm going with this so make due with these observations as you please.

There's like a million more ships and maybe I'll talk more about them if some catch my eye, but I'm stopping for now. I still have to work on platonic and enmity ships.

Honestly, writing about my thoughts on these ships and canon relationships kind of opened my eyes to possible pairings. Once I'm done with all of these, I'll definitely have a lot to think about when writing these character's relationships. Oh, and sorry about the long ass post. If it's an issue, I'll just separate it into parts.

[apinkblueberry]

How to go about a Bright Fantasy?

[To Long? TLDR at the bottom]

So I have an inherent issue going forward. My D&D campaigns keep getting darker despite me not wanting them to. I am hoping to write a Bright Fantasy campaign but I am having trouble doing so in the context of a D&D campaign.

I think this is because of the inherent mechanics of D&D support a darker setting. There are many official or WOTC supported classes that tend to lean towards these darker perspectives. It's not that they can't be brighter but players that play these usually end up sending their characters down a darker path them being: Blood Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, Barbarian and very often Sorcerers. For races: Dark Elves, Half Elves, Orcs, Half Orcs, Tiefling, Dhampir, Goblins, Goliath, Aasimar, Bugbear, Hobgoblin, Kenku, Kobold and Changeling. Now that may be just my experience but I think both lists should give some perspective. Now many of you may say that they are not inherently dark and I would agree but I think many players just enjoy the darker perspective of this sort of character.

Blood Hunter is pretty clear, the concept boils down to controlling people and becoming more monstrous to kill monsters. It is by no means a bad class but it does rather strongly tend towards darker characters. If you don't believe me I encourage you to Google Blood Hunter and just look at images. Rogues I personally dont think have to be dark but their tendency towards Stealth by far tends to lean people towards playing them darker and playing them with that perspective in mind. Warlocks in my experience tend to play off a dark patron and a darker world as a result. Looking at the Player Handbook subclasses for Warlock: Archfey, not inherently dark but many tend to lean towards characters like the Fairy King who tend to be quite dark rather than a brighter fey, The Fiend, I mean Demons I suppose they could be written brighter but that writing is rather rare, and Great Old One, ah yes what part of Lovecraftian horror isn't bright. Barbarians are often played as dumb brutes who only care about bashing things to death. Now by no means is this the rule but in my experience thats how people tend to play their characters. For Sorcerers very often how their power emerges in their backstory often kills loved ones and does a lot of damage. I personally see why but I think that it can very often lead to a darker character. I won't go over every race but I can make a seperate post later on if some of those aren't clear. They just tend towards darker characters.

This is by no means me saying that dark characters are a bad thing because it isn't but it does make the campaign darker as the campaign should be centered on the characters. So now the issue is how does one while still using D&D and not blocking half the classes from the players do a brighter fantasy setting. In addition, there are very few resources online for writing better bright fantasy but if you search on Youtube Not Grimdark Fantasy you get a series of Grimdark resources. Now obviously it sees the Tag Grimdark but seach Bright Fantasy you get a song. My point is there are limited resources for a Brighter setting but many on a darker one. So how do we go about writing a brighter world, unless anyone has found a brighter title I'm calling it Bright Fantasy. This is because Grimdark is Dark Fantasy so the opposite would inherently be Bright Fantasy.

Well, one primary example of a brighter Fantasy is the earlier pokemon games. For many of these pokemon they use bright and colorful animations and have fun cute stories. Now obviously there are many with dark Poke Entries but to find those you have to dig. The bad guys tend to be evil without really any remorse or if they have a reason its completely ridiculous like Team Magma and Aqua. But, and I recognize many people will be frustrated by this sentence, Generation 4 was the generation to move away from this brighter fantasy. You can catch several gods and even move through the distortion world and even catch the embodiment of death. Now its still a great game, however, from that point on in the series it never really returns to that brighter beginning. It seems like a lot of series that start bright turn dark. Obviously comic books are a great example where now everyone wants to be Dark Knight x Watchman. Even Jak and Daxter the first game is a very bright game but by the second it becomes super dark and depressing where Jak's first words are about murder.

So let me ask, how do I move my campaigns in more of a direction of Bright Fantasy. Some major elements that many stories use to move to a brighter setting is brighter characters. I can make the NPCs brighter but if the main cast is inherently a dark group than the bright fantasy will be too contradictory. It would be like Anakin Skywalker in the land of Teletubbies. Many stories add visuals that are brighter and more pastel colors but since I dont use maps and the like that would be very difficult to do. Many of the things used in other stories aren't options here so if you have any ideas please let me know.I almost forgot one final thing. Villains. So Grimdark villains tend to be morally gray but they do things so bad they can't be forgiven. Brighter Fantasy villains tend to be evil for the sake of being evil so that is something I may use but if the rest of the campaign isn't bright then it may just come off as edgy for the sake of being edgy.

TLDR? It's hard to do a a campaign of a brighter tone because so many mechanics inherently lean for a darker tone, so how do I write a Bright Fantasy in DnD?

[swampythesweetsketch]

 Fun idea I had this morning but I want to share with you guys for fun.

NSR GUARDIAN ANIMAL AU

Gist of AU is that someone/something is born with a tiny, magical animal that accompanies them.

Think Golden Compass but everything gets a animal, and the animals also act as magical instruments.

Imma call these creatures "Notels".

Qwasa energy is the lifeblood of these creatures, of which means the world is rampant with energy. Drawback is that the city's blackouts are caused by a lack of artists openly preforming for the energy to freely flow.(Unknown to NSR)

NSR are the major power to Vinyl City due to their rare instance of multiple/being bigger than average Notels.

Buildings have Notels that act as protector to their home (confined to that one space). They stay until the home is demolished, they will continue to exist to supply their home(s) with energy until they are exhausted of all musical resources.

Security bots have their own Notels, but the animals are smaller, chibi versions that focus their energy on keeping their mechanical holders charged at all times. They can hop onto other bots if their initial bot is destroyed in combat and will scurry off to new energy sources if there is no other bots around.

Human(oid) figures have more normal sized Notels that turn into various instruments that match up to their talents. They can also turn into other objects, but Notels are more music focused.

Non-music Notels are often referred as Nolls.

TIME TO HOP TO THE CAST AND PLOT

Bunk Bed Junction!

The two are still a band, but their sewers becomes a underground cavern that has old scriptures that depicts the more open, free flowing energy of Notels. They wish to join NSR in hopes of opening up the freedom of performance to other artists.

Pretty much like the OG B2J, but their focus is changed a bit to help Notels become stronger beings to help Vinyl City climb out of the black outs.

As Vinyl City keeps getting the blackouts and music tastes have all become selective, many Notels have started disappearing due to their respective genres starting to die out in the EDM dominate city.

Mayday's Notel is a rat! A smart creature that came to her in early age, it turns into her guitar. It stays perched in her hair and loves the food from Aunty, as to why B2J are regulars.

Aunty's Noll is a octopus, that turns its tentacles into various cooking utensils. I thought you might like to know.

Zuke's Notel ia Ellie! The little alligator uses their back scales as Zuke's drums and fangs as drumsticks! Ellie is still an integral support character as she and Zukes share the only braincell in the group.

Kill, who pops in after DJSS, has a armadillo Noll that turns into his phone.

First Artist, DJ Subatomic Supernova.

The first NSR artist they face off against is DJ Subatomic Supernova. His Notel is a dog, a nod to Laika, the first animal to ever orbit the Earth.

The Notel is made of pure Qwasa, with rings around its tail that turn into the scratch discs DJSS uses with a custom turntable. These rings will always burn up and become compact Qwasa stars that fizzle out over time. These stars are the main energy source for Club Planetarium.

The dog is massive, about the same size as DJSS. It's breed is best described as a greyhound.

Second Artist, Sayu.

She herself is a Notel!!! Kura Kura Stream Hun was once a interactive hologram theater that fell under, and Sayu was once a little fish Notel that swam around the building. When the place went under, she was alone for years.

It wasn't until the new NSR kids found Sayu and evolved their idea of reviving their old favorite building into a giant aquarium for Sayu to preform. And in debut of her inclusion to the NSR artists, Sayu evolved into the mermaid you see today!

The kiddos do have their own Notels that work as the aquatic buddies to Sayu!

Tila writes Sayu's lyrics and the beta singer of all the mermaid's song. She's the only one in the four creators that has a Notel. That is a vibrant green-red beta fish that turns into a small microphone for Tila to sing into.

Remi is the artist of the group, his Noll is a sunfish that uses its body as a drawing surface. When drawn on with a new design, it will swim around Sayu and act as a "magical transformation" of sorts.

Dodo is the choreographer for Sayu, teaching her the moves for her shows. His Nolls are mossballs. Tiny little things that act as the tail in Dodo's routines to help Sayu understand the whole of her dancing!

Sofa, the editor, has eel nolls that work in the background with him to navigate the theater and control lighting and setting for Sayu's preformance. He's the one with the strongest Nolls as their energy helps fluctuate the surroundings.

Third Artist, Yinu!

Her district is unique as she is a classical prodigy that seems to be the only other genre kept actively alive in Vinyl City.

Her Notel is a gosling, who uses their feathers as piano keys. The keys break apart over time as Yinu and her Notel are not fully grown, so she does most of her preformances with a physical piano until then.

Her mother's Noll is a spider, who uses their webs to create iron bars to trap B2J.

During Yinu's last stand in battle, her piano is broken already, so she and her Notel work together. But her Notel is near exhausted of feathers and has to stop when B2J reach her. They stay to help Yinu calm down and wait for her mother to shrink back down. They leave when the mother and daughter play the broken piano, helping Yinu's Notel regain energy.

Fourth Artist, 1010!

Neon J has a Moose Noll. I’m not sorry. It shrunk a bit since he became a cyborg to help charge his body. Back then it had to rely on tricking Neon J to sleep with soft lullabies to tune out the war going on, but now it can choose to stop feeding him its energy to force him to sleep.

White/Rin has a tiny wolf Notel that turns into a long microphone stand, he uses it for solos. Other than that, its a little wolf puppy that chases Rin around to keep him charged.

Red/Zimelu has a cockatiel Notel that turns into a microphone/drumstick combo. A single long, thin stick that Zim can sing into to generate a flat disc that sharpens into a circular saw, the handle acting as... the handle. 

The cockatiel loves perching on his arm and nibble his ascot.

Yellow/Haym has a rabbit Noll! It has a reaaaalllyy fluffy tail that pop off into pompoms! Haym loves using them to boost the moral of his team! When not in use, it lays in the faux ascot of Haym’s- he really had a hoodie hood for his rabbit to stay in!

Blue/Purl-Hew has a Snake Noll that extends it’s tail into a thread-thin whip. He uses it to grab his teammates out of danger. The snake loops around his neck and has constant yawns since Purl-Hew doesn’t exert a lot of energy outside of work.

Green/Eloni has a Cat Notel! It turns itself into cat ears headphones with a little microphones. When not doing anything else, it lops in the circle on Eloni’s head and cat naps there. He has trouble keeping his head straight sometimes, but he can never remove his precious chunk. 💚

When B2J crash their party, Mayday is terrified of Eloni’s cat and Purl-Hew’s snake cause she thinks they might eat her rat (Who she has gone to call Chebbar. Like Cheddar, but with a B).

When 1010 are nearly destroyed, all the Notels/Nells freak out in hopes of repairing their respective boys, but this only makes things work as they are what cause 1010 to ultimately explode.

When Neon J comes to the scene- atop 1010 limousine. No matter where I fight whether near or far- I bleed in the name of NSR-

When Neon J comes to the scene, he and his MEGA MOOSE NOLL (who turns into a rapier with many disfigured blades that hut out like antlers.

The Mother Machine that keeps spawning 1010′s new bodies has its own Noll that is respectively a doe. All of 1010′s Notels/Nolls rush to their protection. Moose dad and Deer mom are PISSED.

All the Notels and Nolls cling to their beaten owners after the fight, the doe keeps close to Neon J when the Mother Machine is destroyed.

Fourth Artist, Eve.

Eve has two Nolls, peacocks that are pink and white respectively. They turn into her masks or Humor and Tragedy.

When one is used, the other uses its feathers to construct large arms and hands that chase B2J around. When they swap, all hands and arms melt into puddles that can still cause damage if stepped in. They evaporate after a little bit.

The peacocks steal Eve and try to run into the white void when she’s defeated, pecking Zuke when he catches up to them and talks to Eve. They eventually deescalates the tension and pet them while they talk.

They follow B2J outside the studio in order to combine their feathers into a key that unlocks the gate to NSR tower.

Final Artist, Tatiana.

Tatiana has a Noll, a steel gray hummingbird. It looks dead a majority of the time. It may look rejuvenated one second, but the next it will look drained of all life. Tatiana refuses to acknowledge her Noll’s problem.

When B2J encounters Tatiana, they battle with their music which seems to revive the Noll. That catches Mayday’s attention.

Mayday goes in to shame Tatiana for neglecting her Noll’s need for Rock, revealing B2J’s motive for auditioning in the first place. 

To save the Notals, dying form the lack of their genre being played and oppressing artists that don’t fall in line of EDM.

Tatiana is caught off guard by the revelation, but listening to Mayday’s complaint, she turns her Noll into the clock hand blades she battles with. Using the rock music played by B2J to fuel her Noll’s power.

Mayday and Zuke are forced to drop their Rock solo and battle with EDM mixed with their tunes. The combination boosting their power enough to  overcome Tatiana ‘s attack.

As the battle concludes, the clock tower releases Tatiana’s guitar, who reveals to a phoenix Notel that has been supplying the tower with the majority of its power since Tatiana abandoned her old persona, Kul Fyra.

Kliff comes into the scene, and using Tatiana’s weakened Notel and Noll against her, takes control of them to grab the last bit of power from NSR.

All the defeated artists call in to see Tatiana, beaten. It is there that everyone is then told how the lack of genres have been killing off the Notels and causing the blackouts. But Tatiana refuses the idea... then her Noll collapses. 

Mayday and Zuke rush to the Noll’s aid and play their music for the poor thing. Kliff chews Tatiana out for not seeing the obvious. He misses the hypocrisy in his speech, as he only idolizes Rock as the definitive music genre of Vinyl City.

During their fight, Kliff uses his Noll to control the tower’s system and the satellite starts to fall.

The finale continues as normal, the districts are returned to their respective Artists, and Tatiana puts the call out for artists of all genres to come to the Grand Qwasa to preform like never before.

Kliff, seeing a error in his ways a little too late, gives back Tatiana’s Notels and leaves his own Noll behind with her.

Lyrics screamed, horns blasted, drums punctured, string snapped.

The blow of musical energy surges the Grand Qwasa as the whole city glows in a light long missed as every single artist plays their heart out. 

But it works, the tower transforms with the help of its Noll (a metronome) and flings the satellite back into orbit.

Mayday is given Tatiana’s offer to join NSR and refuses, and instead is gifted her Notel.

Tatiana’s Noll is fully revived and reveals to be another phoenix, still steel gray but it’s body burning brighter than ever before.

The announcement is made to restructure NSR, and in so, Vinyl City is opened alive once more to revived and brand new Notels.

ANNNNNNNNDDDD that’s the end! Thanks for reading my rambling of a AU that doesn’t change a lot but was fun to make! 

Byyyeeeeeee!!!!!!!

[jonthethinker]

Does the Cerberus Assembly need to be reformed, or destroyed? And can it really be either?

Let’s start with an opinion we can all agree on; Trent Ikithon sucks. He’s clearly a very bad person, and our collective hatred of him is one of the rare things this fandom seems to actually agree on. What he’s done to his “disciples” is horrifying, and his general ideology is monstrous and abhorrent, although not surprising considering the role he plays in the Empire. We can, on this, agree that the world would be a better place if he was removed from power, correct?

Now this is where I start explaining my probably very divisive opinion.

A lot of people would say that all it takes to make the Cerberus Assembly better would be to replace the members like Ikithon with Good People. Maybe Caleb Widogast, for instance. If you simply put someone with a stronger moral character into that position, then its output in turn will also be Good.

This, whether knowingly or not, implies that institutions, even those like the Cerberus Assembly, are by their nature at the very least morally neutral. That all it takes to make an institution like the Assembly be Good is have Good People run it. You do that, and with time, all is well.

But what if institutions did have a moral character? what if the responsibilities and powers given to a body like the Assembly and its requisite components are not Good or even neutral, but instead very, very bad? And what if the incentives the people deciding who stands on the Assembly, namely the members of the Assembly themselves, are actually antithetical to any ideas of a substantially reformed Assembly in the first place?

Let’s think for a minute about Trent and his job. We are all horrified by his methods of creating his Volstruckers. But as much as it bothers me, what bothers me more, personally, is what they are for. While we tend to view them as arcane assassins, what they really are is a wholly unaccountable means of performing all of the Assembly’s, and by extension the Empire’s, dirty deeds not meant for public notice. And seeing as they fall under the sole purview of the Archmage of Civil Influence, this is largely going to translate to “managing dissidence and discontent” in the polite language a body like the Assembly would use to describe its work.

What this means is that its job, and the job of Trent’s office as a whole, is to keep the wrong ideas from getting too popular and the people from getting too loud about the awfulness of their everyday lives, and inside a broader system like the Empire, this is usually going to be dealt with by means of coercion and outright violence. While it’s easy to feel sorry for the incredibly abused and tormented people under Trent’s power, like Caleb and Astrid and Eadwolf, I feel like I’m one of the few in the fandom who has really considered the true extent of terror being unleashed on so many whose faces we’ll never know.

Peasant farmers’ organizing for lower taxes on their grain sales. Laborers gathering to raise hell over the low wages they receive from mandatory state projects. Citizens concerned about the unchecked brutality of the Crown’s Guard. Religious worshipers worried the Empire is straying from the path set by their gods. The mentally ill and other people who simply don’t comfortably fit into the grand scheme of things. Races of folks seen as outsiders suspected of conflicting allegiances. How many people like this have vanished in the night, either to be imprisoned or tortured or killed, or I guess in many cases, all three? How much suffering has been caused, hidden away from any measure of accountability?

And this brings me to my next point; While Trent is truly awful, his title, and the role he plays, are also awful, and I think you don’t get into a position like that in the first place without being someone like Trent. I say this because we’ve gotten to meet a handful of people on the Assembly outside of Trent, and they’ve all generally had the same things to say about him; he gives them the creeps and they don’t like him personally, but he has his uses. I interpret this to mean he performs the responsibilities of his office well enough, and while his methods and general demeanor may be off-putting, it isn’t worth causing a fuss about so long as the work gets done. If they simply ignore what he’s doing, they get the benefits of a suppressed polity with very little of the personal hangups of what it requires to make that happen.

So let’s say, for some reason, Trent dies or is imprisoned and disgraced, and Caleb assumes his role. Caleb has experienced a remarkable amount of personal growth, although not without his own stumbles and set-backs like any victim of severe trauma such as he. He is, in my humble opinion, a Good Man. I know if given the power of this office, he’d be motivated to end the traumatizing of children, and killing of parents, and perhaps even the wholesale disbanding of the Scourgers itself. He’d maybe seek to alleviate the suffering of those his office is meant to contain instead of inflicting more pain upon them. And wouldn’t that be nice?

But when you’ve got this entrenched elite like the Empire does, those sorts of efforts are not going to go unnoticed, and in many cases, are going to cause one hell of a backlash among the powerful, who more often than not believe in their heart of hearts that those lowly commoners deserve their lot in life, and to spare the lash is to spoil the child, and soon you’ll have a bunch of peasants thinking they can go so far as to ask for actual power, actual control over the direction of their lives, and for any empire, but especially this one, how do you imagine that’s going to fly?

I’m reminded of an anecdote out of Brazilian politics. Former President Lula da Silva is one of the the most popular Brazilian political figures of all time, and managed to massively alleviate poverty in Brazil while also working with Brazil’s entrenched elite to make sure not to piss off the wealthiest of the wealthy. But the comfortably upper middle class, or “petite bourgeoisie” as Marx would call them, were disgusted that all these poor people were suddenly climbing the ladder. According to some folks, they complained “The airports are starting to look like bus stations,” because for the first time, working class people in Brazil could actually afford to fly. This discontent among the comfortable led to a chain events ending in the false arrest and imprisonment of Lula and the rise of their current terrifying president Jair Bolsonaro. I learned from this, and other tales like it, to never underestimate how angry some people will become when their special status ain’t so special anymore.

This is to say, that while Caleb is an undoubtedly brilliant man, without the potential intervention of DM magic, I don’t see someone with his lack of political savvy either holding power long or holding onto his convictions long enough to do anything meaningful, if someone like him is considered for the job in the first place. AND even if he does accomplish all those wonderful things through this office and survives until he’s old and gray, he will eventually die. And judging solely on the general quality of character among the wizards we’ve met thus far, I’m not so optimistic about his potential replacement.

This example does spill out my major beef with the whole “Good Person in power” idea of reform. Good People either can’t live up to their values and actually wield power, or the clock itself defeats them and everything they ever stood for. This is also my problem with governmental models overly dependent on norms, as all it takes is someone willing to just completely ignore them,and for the people in power around them to have no incentive to stop them, for things to completely go off the rails. This is why reforms generally don’t last unless they universally redistribute power itself, from the top to the bottom, and even this is going to come with its own backlashes, and it generally doesn’t happen from polite attempts at reform by well meaning leaders, at least not all on their own, but through the sheer force of mass movements or outright revolutions.

And its not just Trent’s office that has this problem. It’s every single seat on the Assembly. His is just a particularly egregious example. Vess DeRogna didn’t get her job by being polite, of that much I’m sure. She’s clever, devious, and patient, not to mention her skill set and interests directly line her up for the role as Archmage of Antiquity. I don’t really think her sole interest is making sure nobody gets hurt by all these artifacts lying around, and neither do I imagine the Empire itself has any intention of keeping her discoveries behind lock and key; they pretty clearly want them mass produced where they can and immediately wielded against their enemies, both foreign and domestic.

And I’ve hinted at this earlier, but if you think Trent is a unique monster in the halls of Dwendalian mages, I’m going to have to disagree. I’m certain there are more than a few wizards in service of the Assembly and the Empire, who if not already believing similarly to Trent, could easily be convinced of his convictions, and ready to use his power themselves in an eerily identical manner. People like Trent aren’t as rare as we’d like them to be, and they’re all ready to grab power just as soon as they can.

So it would seem I come firmly on the “burn it all down” side of things. If only I believed it were that simple.

You see, I see the Cerberus Assembly as an institution that exists, in its entirety, for the cementing of power of the Dwendalian Elite and the progression of its interests. It protects them from threats both from inside and out, it teaches their children magic, it helps negotiate its trade, it aids in putting food on its table, and makes sure its armed for bear with the deadliest of magic only the Age of Arcanum and ancient elves could provide. It’s very reason for existence is to uphold the way of life for those on top. Even if it competes idly for who sits at the head of the table, it very much is invested in maintaining the structure of that table.

So if it were sundered and destroyed as an institution, what is to stop its functions from simply being absorbed by the broader Empire? What’s to stop the Empire from simply recreating the Volstrucker program under a different name? What’s stopping them from hiring its wizards to perform their original tasks, just under the sole discretion of the king? So I’d wager the problem isn’t the Assembly, but the very distribution of power required to maintain an Empire like Dwendal’s in the first place. The assembly is an immoral institution upholding a much larger, equally immoral institution. And you can’t truly solve the problem without tearing the whole damn thing down.

Do I think this campaign is going to be one in which our lovely players start a revolution? Hell no. I expect Trent at least to die or be deposed, and with the aid of some DM magic, things will get a little better. But Matt has given enough consideration to the political forces present in his world building, that I wanted to treat his world as if it were subject solely to the forces and motivations our own is. Just to see how things could turn out without a generally kind god like Matthew Mercer at the helm.

Plus I just really love trying to understand how fantasy political structures would really work. It’s usually a lot less depressing than real political structures, at least in so far as there are no real consequences for their abject failures. But I’ve rambled long enough. Thank you to the poor souls who read this ramble. You’re truly wonderful.