#canon proves they are each others most important person

[seagreenstardust]

No matter what happens in canon, bkdk are soulmates.

[devine-fem]

If you wish to get into Spideypool or write for them then this is a masterlist of all ‘Spideypool’ evidence of Wade Wilson or Peter Parker being astrangly interested in each other. This took me forever... please don't flop. If I miss anything please let me know, I'll edit this list as soon as possible.

1. When bound against Spider-Man, Deadpool gets... excited for lack of a better word and even more so when Spider-Man yells at him.

2. Deadpool has a celebrity crush on Spider-Man like young teenage boys would crush on various female actors, but instead Wade Wilson had Spiderman, I guess.

3. Wade Wilson owns a plethora of Spider-man merch, plushies, blankets, posters, underwear, belts, he has them.

4. There are two official variant covers that display Deadpool and Spider-man recreating the upside-down kiss… this is technically not canon due to them being variant covers, but they can be if you want.

5. When someone asks Deadpool about the relationship he has with Spider-Man he either says they are best friends or lovers.

6. Wade is jealous or envious of Peter’s bond with Johnny Storm.

7. Wade comments multiple times about how tight Spider-Man’s suit is and how nice his butt is.

8. Wade has called Tobey Maguire cute.

9. There are mutliple occasions of pedestrians in the marvel universe assuming Spider-Man and Deadpool are some sort of couple.

10. When Deadpool is asked about a romantic date… he imagines him and Spiderman sharing a candlelit dinner together…

11. It’s important to remember that Spider-Man is a grown man. Yes, Deadpool flirts a lot, but he is flirting with another adult that he is sexually attracted to, and this is not a crime, he’s not harassing Spider-Man in any way and if Peter felt like he was then he can also be an adult and tell Wade to stop which he never does.

12. Deadpool most of the time does not know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man so when Wade flirts with Spider-Man, he’s mostly attracted to the idea of Spider-Man he has in his head and when he’s in the position to know Spider-Man’s identity, he always refuses and even protects his identity from being known by other people. + Forehead kiss.

13. Wade has a list of people that he would cheat on his wife with. It’s a list of people he’d be given a free pass to have sex with if he’s given the chance. Most people on this list are woman but the last person is Spider-Man, this is one of the biggest nods towards Deadpool’s sexuality because it’s set in stone that if given the opportunity, he would have sex with Spider-Man, while knowing that he’s a man.

14. Wade has pictures of him and Spider-Man together in his house.

15. Spider-Man keeps pictures of him and Wade on his phone… for reasons… I don’t know why.

16. They have one biological child together called ‘Itsy Bitsy’ and another they adopted called Matrix.

17. Wade doesn’t hesitate to protect Spider-Man.

18. Ryan Renolds and Andrew Garfield have kissed before. Not really evidence, I just think it's funny.

19. Deadpool loses his wife because of how much time he’s devoted to Spider-Man, instead of her. She even calls him out on his crush, he legitimately loses his wife because of his relationship with Spider-Man due to her feeling like she’s third wheeling.

20. Marvel ships it.

21. Asking Spider-Man for a kiss, an upside-down kiss that is and I mean, if you count the variant covers as canon then sure, yeah, never say never Spidey.

22. Wade would die with Spider-Man (and he gets to prove this later)

23. Spider-Man’s touch, voice and smell all seem to calm Wade down. 24. There's an issue in a Deadpool comic literally just called "Spideypool." 25. Wade references fanfiction, fanart and says Spideypool out of his mouth multiple times so he's very aware that this exists. 26. There's an alternate universe where they are old man in an apocalypse. 27. Deadpool's villains are well aware that he has a weak spot for Spider-Man and uses this against him at times. How cute is that? 28. Spider-Man is Wade's special boy... dude, this is so fanficy... 29. Okay, so, the heartmates thing. A group of people use magic to try and summon Deadpool's heartmate to try and get to his wife, I'm not entirely sure what a heartmate is but I'm pretty sure it's a 'one true love' type of thing and yes, this summons Spider-Man, so unless Wade's 'gay jokes' have tricked the concept of magic as a whole, that's pretty on the nose. 30. Wade has seen Spider-Man naked... I'm pretty sure that is what this is implying. 31. Peter does find Wade genuinely annoying sometimes, but he never voices this to Wade directly but the funniest thing is... Peter's attitude to Wade is like a 'he can only get on MY NERVES!' type of thing. 32. Peter genuinely gets worried for Deadpool when he gets hurt even though he has a healing factor, he even takes care of him when he's healing after a mission. 33. Peter gets magicked into thinking Wade is attractive. NOW LET'S GET INTO THE SAD AND EXISTENTIAL STUFF! 34. One of Wade's bigger character arcs is when he tries to become a hero like Spider-Man. He admires Spider-Man, he puts him on a pedestal because he does the right thing without hurting anyone and he's admired for it. To be honest, we did just go through a bunch of cute fanficy moments but this moral back and forth between the two is definitely the gayest thing they've done. 35. Weirdly Peter is trying to actively force himself to hate Wade, but he can't find it within himself to dislike him. I think that his mean comments toward Wade are definitely more of an act because the behavior that Wade displays remind him of things he dislikes within himself. Peter also has been betrayed multiple times throughout his life by people he thought he could trust so he has a hard time allowing himself to trust Wade. Meanwhile Wade feels jealous of what he assumes is a relationship between him and Peter Parker that could possibly be romantic, yes, Wade does think Peter Parker and Spider-Man may have been dating which is why Spider-Man is so protective of Peter Parker which causes Wade to get jealous. 36. Wade and Peter actually become friends very easily which is something that people complained about when this comic was still just coming out. Eventually, because Wade is convinced Peter Parker is an evil doer, he kills Peter Parker (Spider-Man) which causes Spider-Man to revoke their friendship and feel betrayed by Deadpool. Peter assumes that Wade falsified their entire friendship just to get to Peter Parker and kill him, he eventually finds out this was a mistake and brings Peter Parker to life which is around the time where Wade's wife leaves him. Now, because of Peter, Wade is using rubber bullets and refusing to kill people. It's important to remember that Wade in the past, has mentioned that killing was all he had, and he gave that up for Spider-Man, to prove himself to Spider-man. This is a huge thing for Wade, killing was one of his most defining traits but it also made him hate himself, but he's willing to change for Peter.

Is it... wrong of me for kind of finding the fact that Peter has worked to help Deadpool stop killing but this ultimately culminates as Wade killing Peter, like biting the hand that feeds you... is it wrong that I find this tragically romantic...? I need so much therapy. 37. Wade explains that he was just trying to protect Spider-Man which is one of my favorite moments between the two.

38. Peter eventually forgives Deadpool, and they go after the person who put a hit on Peter Parker.

39. When Peter’s mad at him… he doesn’t exactly… hate it? I guess.

40. Wade has a little "What would Spidey do?" wristband. That's adorable. 41. Wade describes his new morality as the best thing that's ever happened to him and one of the biggest things that motivate him to be better is because someone (spidey) genuinely believes that he can get better. He mentions that if Spider-man was to die or leave him then there would be no point in getting better which is so sad to me.

42. Spider-Man has a bad habit of easily forgiving people. Spider-Man has a hero complex and believes that everyone can be saved, even when told to his face that Deadpool is not the type of person that can be save, he defends Deadpool and rejects this idea.

43. When Wade does the right thing Peter tells him that he's proud of him and this is also a big motivator for him. He feels better if he's told someone notices his efforts and feels neglected if they don't.

44. Speaking of tragically romantic, Peter starts to question his morality because he finds out that there's a hole in his life that seemingly can't be filled with doing the right thing anymore. He lets himself slip away and contemplates killing itsy bitsy which he commits to doing but Wade tries relentlessly to stop him.

He ends up killing Wade because he finds that his ongoing worship of him makes him feel guilty. 45. Wade doesn't stop trying to get Peter to stop.

Ultimately Peter beats him in the fight and to stop Peter, he sacrifices himself. He kills Itsy Bitsy instead so Peter can't. He gives up his morality, something that meant the world to him, for Peter, once again. Peter feels immensely guilty for this and promises to make it up to Wade somehow. It's also implied that Wade fills that gap in Peter's life that he's missing.

46. This is from a different writer so it's a little inconsistent, basically because of Wade's new morality, he stops making as many jokes, starts to become more serious and eventually gets to really be alone with himself and his problems which causes him to dislike the version of Wade Wilson he's become because of Spidey. It's like Peter makes him see parts of himself that he dislikes a little bit clearer, and he loses hope, he stops believing that he can actually become better. Cameleon, a villain at the time fakes Deadpool killing someone, Peter believes this - which hurts Wade due to how little faith it seems Peter has in Deadpool. He blows up in Peter's face and says that he did all of this for him, and he doesn't really care about letting everyone down... except him, he feels extremely guilty for some reason when he lets Spider-Man down.

47. Eventually, Peter finds out that Wade did not kill someone and apologizes to Deadpool which is important because it means Peter cannot wrong Deadpool without the narrative making sure he makes amends for his actions. Deadpool sometimes is very vexing, and this is not necessarily entirely Peter's fault for getting aggravated with him. Deadpool does this on purpose, he has low self-esteem and sometimes uses his behavior as a way to push the people he cares about away, whether it's to protect them or to keep himself from getting hurt. Wade has communicated this to Peter before and Peter very sweetly affirmed him. 48. Wade has a daughter named Ellie that he keeps far away from him because he does not want her getting in the middle of his mercenary business and getting hurt. He says that one day when he's ready to put this mercenary stuff behind him then he'll be ready to take care of her properly. Wade introduces his daughter to Spider-Man, and she says that she loves Spider-Man and Daddy talks about him all the time which Wade adorably gets embarrassed by. 49. Peter goes out of his way to hang out with Wade. 50. Theres this huge arc of future!Wade Wilson coming back from the future into the past to stop things from going so wrong in the future. This might be confusing but basically, this whole arc is about how Wade refuses to live without Peter and without Peter's permission, gives up some of his healing factor to keep Peter alive way past his due date. He outlives every person he knows and the only person he has is Deadpool. He even gives up being Spider-Man until busting a robbery motivates him to be Spider-Man one more time which he spends that time with Deadpool. Peter almost dies once again and to save Peter, Deadpool gives up more of his healing factor to keep him alive. It's so strange to me that Wade refuses to live without Peter but what's even stranger is that it's revealed that Peter knows Deadpool is keeping him alive and never stops him. These two are so weird about each other. This eventually culminates with the both of them dying in each other's arms, I kid you not. 51. So, Wade and Peter, long story short, stops this future from happening which is the second the last arc. The last last arc is them defeating the concept of the third wall I believe...? 52. Another thing that is EXTREMELY important to note is that Wade and Peter are canonically established friends right now. During the last 10 issues of their solo comic they become friends, set in stone, no going back on that. Peter finally accepts Wade as he is, and they go on a little adventure together. There's no point in saying Peter doesn't like Wade or Wade doesn't like Peter. Peter and Wade's friendship developed over time, there's no need to try and erase their friendship. Peter likes Wade now; he stops pretending to be annoyed with him, he cheers him on, and he compliments him regularly. He even trusts Wade enough to reveal himself as Peter Parker. Peter and Wade's friendship was very similar to Johnny Storm and Peter Parker's, both hated each other at first but then slowly became good friends. There's no point of putting Spideytorch and Spideypool against each other when they are so similar. 53. Wade thinks Peter is handsome. 54. Peter thinks Wade is a hero. 55. One of my favorite moments because I am CRAZY. Wade dying for Peter without hesitation and Peter being devastated. This happens almost right after Peter reveals himself as Peter Parker. 56. Wade has eaten Peter before, if you're into that Cannibalism being a metaphor for love type of thing.

57. Wade has called Peter 'baby boy' and "bambi' but these things have happened literally one time before and have become extremely overused. Wade has plenty of nicknames for Peter, let's mix it up a bit. 58. Marvel's little animation for the both of them. 59. They've interacted in Ultimate Spider-Man before.

60. Peter has a fever dream… Deadpool is crossdressing in it.

61. Deadpool gets put into a falsified reality where everything is his version of perfect, this is a villians way of getting information out of Deadpool while using his favorite things as leverage. In this reality, fake!Spider-Man tries to get information out of Deadpool by bribing him with sex. I kid you not.

62. His little “Make Spidey mine, Marvel!” Badge. He’s so down bad.

63. The entirety of Deadpool (2013) Issue #10.

64. The official Deadpool manga where Deadpool contemplates asking Spider-Man for a dirty favor.

65. Deadpool’s random little Spider-Man keychain at the handle of his Katanna.

Or, y’know, reading their duo comic: Spider-Man/Deadpool (2016) would also basically tell you everything you need to know about their dynamic if you need somewhere to start. I hope this helped to refresh anyone’s mind on things as well.

Again, if I missed anything cute, please let me know. I’ll edit it as soon as possible.

[ghost-with-a-teacup]

Hiii LOVE your fic 🫶🏻! I was wondering if you could write a fic where everything that happens in the chase scene, happens to fem!reader but Miguel actually catches up to her & kinda knocks her down. He begs her not to do this, to stay down. As she gets up she asks him if any of it was real, he says it was and still is. He tells her that he thought that if he pursue her romantically then she would accept her dad's fate & wouldn't go against him (of course it doesn't work) she says she can't do that & escapes. He loses it a little & starts destroying everything & makes it everybody's mission to find her

Just pure angst 😭 I'm sorry if this is a lot

𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x Reader

Summary: You finally understand the true purpose of the Spider Society; protecting the canon, protecting the multiverse even at the cost of all the Spiders' suffering. But you were going to stop at nothing to find your way home, though Miguel isn't keen on letting you go.

Warnings: Angsty, Miguel gets angry.

“Miguel…what are you doing,” you ask softly, still not wanting to believe what you were seeing. All around you, members of the Society began closing in, caging you in an inescapable circle.

You didn’t want to accept it. That all these people, the ones you have grown to call family would turn their back on you in the blink of an eye. Or rather an order from their leader.

“I can’t let you leave, mi vida,” he says, eyes apologetic but unrelenting.

“What is the purpose of this place, the true purpose of this place Miguel,” you ask, your voice hardening. You had always believed when Miguel first recruited you it was to act as Spider-Man across the multiverse, no longer limited to your own hometown. But it seems there was some other agenda you were made unaware of.

He hesitates for a moment before exhaling lowly, eyes boring into yours.

“The Spider Society…was created to protect the canon of the multiverse. To ensure that in each world the events progress as they should,” he explains as the world disappears around everyone, replaced with holograms of a complex web.

“I don’t understand, what does that have to do with me saving my father?” you ask, and he winces.

You were never supposed to see the hologram and the message that followed it, you realize now. But you had snuck into the monitoring room, carrying a lunch of all of Miguel’s favourite foods when you saw it.

A hologram of your father going about his day, the message ‘Canon Event Detected. Time: 2 Days’ followed by the words ‘Soon to be Deceased’.

You thought it was some sick joke, some prank a cruel spider thought to play on you. But when you asked Miguel about it he refused to make eye contact with you, and that’s when the intervention began.

“Your father dying, is a canon event,” he says. “Just like how every person in this room undergoes their own canon events, their own version of loss. It's what ties every person in this room together in the web that makes up the Arachno-Humanoid Polymultiverse,” he explains, and you only grow more confused as he acted like that explanation justified any of this.

“So you’re saying you know that some of the most important people in every Spider’s life will die, and you just let it happen?” you ask, in disbelief at the blatant cruelty.

“It must happen, to ensure that life continues. That it doesn’t disintegrate into nothing…like how my universe disappeared.”

You only shake your head, taking a step back as your breath becomes slightly unsteady.

“You’re saying that our job here is to make everyone suffer, because of something that you fucked up a long time ago?!” you say, and his eyes narrow at you. It was harsh, but it was true. Perhaps the cumulation of disordered events could destroy a universe, but there was no way of proving that slight changes would hurt anything.

Scientific fact arises through countless hours of testing and experimentation. One result that happened one time shouldn’t dictate what the conclusion will be.

“You can’t tell me not to save my father, Miguel! I can’t just let him die if I can do something about it,” he says, and a look of pity washes over his face as he walks closer to you, but you take a step back.

“All this happens for a reason, these canon events allow us to become who we are, even if it hurts,” he says gently. And even though you hate to say it, it soothes you. His voice always has.

So much so, that you let down your guard for a single moment. Allowing him to come close and slip the watch right off of your wrist.

“No!” you say, trying to take it from his grasp but he was too fast. “How am I supposed to go home?”

“You won’t,” he says in turn.

“I’m sorry,” a voice cuts in from behind you. Jess, with a sympathetic look in her eyes. “I know it's hard, but it's for the greater good.” Looking around, you see all your closest friends surround you, but against you.

“Even you, Peter?” you ask softly, and he only glances away with guilt.

“2 days? That’s plenty of enough time, I’ll get home one way or another,” you say, glaring at Miguel.

“I can’t let you do that,” he says before he tosses a trap right at your feet. Before it can work, you use your telekinesis to throw it back, trapping him instead.

“STOP! ENOUGH OF THIS!” Miguel shouts. It was the first time in your life you had ever heard him shout, and frankly, it scared you as you watch him try to claw his way out.

Everyone immediately starts to move in on you, but you throw your arms out casting a force field that throws everyone back.

Leaving an opening for escape.

~

Running from hundreds of different spiders all on the hunt for you was not easy. It doesn’t make you feel very superhuman when all that are chasing after you were also superhuman, and quite frankly you were exhausted.

Not only physically, but mentally as well. The whole situation was taking a toll on you even if you were trying to shove it to the back of your head.

Luckily everything served as a pretty good distraction for the pain your heart was in.

“You can’t keep running,” Jess says as you leap from car to car on the freeway, tailing behind you on her motorcycle.

“What choice do I have?” you say, though your voice cracks. You see her determined expression falter. You and she grew close soon after you joined the Society, she was truly one of your best friends.

But best friends don’t keep things from each other, especially things as important as the supposed ‘cause’ you were all working for.

You notice her hesitancy, and that’s when you strike. Kicking her off her bike, you pin her to a car with your webs as you snatch the watch from her wrist.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” she says, looking up at where you hung from the vehicle, sadness in her eyes.

“You already did,” you say before swinging away.

~

You were very quickly running out of options for escape. Even with the watch, you couldn’t find an opening to program the watch for home.

As a last resort you latched onto the roof of the high-speed bullet train of Nueva York headed toward the skies, hoping that the force of gravity paired with the speed would at least stall some of the spiders off of your trail.

But before you could realize it, Miguel was very quickly on your tail until finally, he grabbed ahold of you, slamming you down into the roof as you yelped out in pain.

“STOP THIS!” he shouts, straight into your face. He doesn’t even take his mask off as he does, making the whole situation seem even more impersonal. You could only scoff in his face before the hurt overwhelmed you, and you spoke before you could stop yourself.

“Was any of it even real?” you ask softly, tears welling in your eyes as you do. Miguel looks taken back for a moment, eyes widened in surprise as his grasp falters for a second.

“What?” he asks.

“Was any of it real?!” you say louder this time. “Those times when you held me in your arms as I cried, the times when you kissed me in the kitchen as we made dinner together, or when we danced in the living room at night. When you said ‘I love you’ for the first time, was any of it even real?” You say as you feel the anger rise.

“Or was it just some kind of sick way of keeping me under your thumb because I’m the 'original anomaly’, to keep me from going against the canon and your sick agenda that you force everyone else to suffer?” you say, your voice loud now as you struggle harder against his grasp.

“It was real...in the end,” he admits, and you feel your expression drop. You wished that this was all some horrible nightmare, that you would wake up and this would just be in your head and he would hold you like he always did.

But deep down you always knew.

Knew that you loved him more than he did you, that this relationship was built on a lie. But you ignored it for the sake of your fragile heart, and here it is getting shattered all over again by the one person in this life you thought you could trust.

“We’re done, Miguel,” you say, resigned at last.

“Huh?” he says, as though he couldn’t believe your words even after everything you had been through.

“I said we’re done,” you say before you kick him straight in his stomach, launching him off of you so that he has to claw his way back onto the roof.

“Goodbye, Miguel,” you say, before you take a leap backwards, flying through the sky for a few moments until you open up a portal back home.

~

Miguel shouts in frustration as he marches back into the monitoring room, rage radiating off of his form in waves.

In his anger he shoves everything in his path out of the way, talons scratching into the walls as the rest of the Society surrounds him, awaiting his next orders.

Finally, he manages to calm down enough to utter out a single phrase.

“Find her, for the canon…for the multiverse,” Miguel says as guilt creeps in like vines around his heart at his lost love.

Taglist: @beiroviski, @scaraza, @blueoorchid, @remuslupinwifee, @local-mr-frog, @johfaam0, @rawegggohan, @honeycriess, @alexenoirex, @chimpkinnuggies, @rqdior, @banana—belle, @notasadgirlipromise, @6billionyearsold, @gods-perfectidiot, @ieatmunson, @honeii-puff, @wh0re4zaynmalik, @toplinehyunjin, @ohworm-writes, @ishii03, @snowywhiterose

A/N: Could you believe I was going to post fluff today? Crazy how life gets in the way sometimes, but hey, managed to get this fic out lol. Sorry, I know I'm the fluff writer and all but angst just hits sometime :3

[pigdemonart]

Battle Subway Depot Agents (by pig-demon)

When I made designs for these guys last year I didn’t really think they needed colored references/master post, but since then I’ve drawn them a lot! Also people have added them to their fanfics and drawn fanart! So I figured it was time I made a post for easy ref. :]

These designs are obviously free to use, just give credit (and link me your work if you're comfortable, because it makes me happy to see!) All I request is to stay respectful to their pronouns and skin colors, ya knooow… 👍 note: The pokemon on their cards are all companions, not the ones they use on the Battle Subway. Except Jackie...the litwicks are just there to fill space/give them company.

More info under cut:

Edit: Important disclaimer:

These are again my designs/interpretations for the agents. Please don’t treat them as canon or as the only, quintessential designs for these literal background npcs. Many people have done takes on them before and after me, even back in 2010. It feels silly to ask, but due to past experience, I ask that you please DONT hunt down anyone that does a different take on the depot agents!! 👍

Tags:

I'm gonna start tagging them individually, but for now all Depot Agent comics and art on this blog are tagged under Depot Agents.

Height chart:

I’m not too strict about heights, so I don’t really care about actual measurements. Here’s an approximation of what I tend to visualize though:

Sexualities/Gender Identities: I don't have official labels for each and every agent because I like keeping things fluid for characters to develop these traits on their own. However, as a queer person, I enjoy designing characters who are also queer, therefore I can safely say none of these characters are straight. The ones who are set in stone are Ramses (gay man), Cloud (lesbian woman,) Jackie (non-binary.) Furze uses he/they pronouns but their gender is undetermined. I also welcome anyone giving the agents a different gender identity to suit them (as long as it's done respectfully.)

Notes about each agent...

Cameron:

- Cameron dyes parts of his hair blonde and keeps other parts in black. This is because he is a big fan of Elesa and her fashion choices.  - Though there have been a few occasions to meet his idol, he is always way too nervous to approach her, feeling deep down that he'll mess up somehow. - He practices modeling poses in secret. He loves flourishes and flare, but is simply too insecure to put it on display. - Of his coworkers, he gets along the best with Furze. He's the easiest to talk to because Furze will do most of the talking. - Cameron is easily intimidated — even mean Pokémon can make him nervous. Though, his two worst fears are being left in a room alone with Jackie, and being left alone in a room with Isadore. - He takes advantage of his height to sometimes hide behind some of his coworkers. - Cameron is much better at Pokémon battles than he gives himself credit for. Emmet and Ingo were pleasantly surprised by this, since Cameron was promoted to fit a temporary role on the Battle Subway. They happily made him a permanent member when he proved himself capable. - His Dwebble (Pebby) is secretly very strong, and rushes to protect Cameron when it can. Cam sometimes thinks Pebby helps him feel more confident in himself too.  - If he stumbled into any of his coworkers outside of work, he would simply explode of embarrassment. - He is the youngest child and only son of his family. He lives in his own apartment in Nimbasa.

Cloud:

- Cloud (like Ramses) knew the twins when they were very young. - She used to be an ace trainer in her youth, even going so far to compete in the Pokémon league. Winning and becoming the champ was the most important part of her journey, but something happened along the way that changed that outlook. - It seems with age, her competitiveness has mellowed out. However, she maintains an intense energy when battling.  - Her favorite types are Psychic and Flying types. Swoobat (Sweetie) is her ace.  - Her favorite hobby is baking, and she often bakes sweets for the crew. She knows all their favorite flavors by now! - She prioritizes keeping a friendly relationship with all her coworkers and thinks of them fondly. She considers Ramses family after all the years of working together!  - She is a big fan of Brycen's movies and can recite the lines. - She lives with her wife in Anville. - Cloud loves doing maintenance work both at home and in Gear Station. She enjoys bringing her own tools and industrial flashlight.

Furze:

- Furze only has one volume setting (mid loud,) but he finds himself feeling right at home when talking to either one of the twins. - Furze has ADHD, and this is reflected in some of his habits, most visibly is his fidgeting when sitting still for too long. - He rides a bike to work every day. When he is late, Cloud clocks in for him so he doesn't get in trouble. - This is a kind of a guy that sits crouched gargoyle style on chairs. Only outside of work, of course. Bad posture could get him in trouble. - While working on the Battle Subway, there will be times Furze feels sorry for his opponents and offers to quietly let them pass anyways. This...has also gotten him in trouble. :[ - He went to the same elementary school as Isadore in Castelia. Though Isadore seems to have forgotten their short-lived acquaintance, Furze has not. This is part of the reason Furze claims they are in fact good friends!!! - Furze is the middle child of a big family. He lives with his mom and takes care of her, along with his many Darumakas and Darmanitan. All of his Pokemon have famous trains names. - He collects model trains. Naturally.

Isadore

- Isadore had plans to become the station master the moment he was hired as a depot agent, but alas... (sad trumpet sound.) - As a youth, he was more interested in science and engineering over Pokemon battles. He enjoys the strategizing aspect, at most. Not so much the competitiveness. - In addition, his Pokemon are all rescues and not used for battling. He's had his Watchog (Winston) since he was in his late teens. - His Electrode (Gregor) and Voltorb (Leonard) were rescued from the likes of Team Plasma. - Isadore admits he understands Pokemon better than humans. This has been apparent his whole life. - In spite of acting like a sitcom villain, Isadore cares about the management of Gear Station and the safety of the passengers to an incredible degree. He sees it as a personal life goal to assist in the management of Gear Station, as well as the success of the Battle Subway. - Though it pained him to become a subordinate to the twins, he begrudgingly accepts it for the greater good. - His almost militant efficiency certainly made up for his years of antagonizing the twins before they became the bosses. Ingo and Emmet understand this better than anyone. - Isadore keeps tabs on all of the staff members. So he very well knows all their birthdays and makes it a point to celebrate it. This is by no means a -happy- or -festive- event. It's just customary. - Like Furze, he was originally from Castelia, but now resides in Nimbasa. Isadore's only family is his mom and she lives in his childhood home with their Stoutland. - Isadore would have probably been voiced by every glasses guy ever J. Michael Tatum had he not already been cast as dear Emmet lmao

Jackie

- Jackie is a mystery and they like keeping it that way. When they talk, it's practically impossible to determine what is a lie or truth, especially if the subject is themselves or their background. - They love scaring Cameron the most and will ask to be paired with him whenever possible. They claim Cameron is their "favorite coworker," while Isadore is the least favorite. - It's plain to see why -- Jackie is the only one that doesn't passively tolerate Isadore's tirades. - Though my comics sometimes may allude to Jackie being a ghost/supernatural, this is not confirmed nor canon. I just personally enjoy toying with the concept. : ) That being said...

- Item #: SCP 7453

- Object Class: Euclid

- Special Containment Procedures: The ████ ██████ is ██████ within ████-██████. - Ingo and Emmet choose to not question anything about Jackie, since it's clear they're one of the more efficient workers. However it can be a safety concern... - Cloud and Ramses have worked with Jackie for a long time, though they've forgotten somehow. They believe Jackie is a new hire since they appear to be young. - Anyone trying to make sense of Jackie's employee records simply can't bring themselves to any conclusions. It's better to ignore the inconsistencies. - Jackie has never been seen to leave Gear Station. Jackie has never been seen in anything but their uniform. Jackie has never been confirmed to eat, drink or blink. Jackie knows your secrets. Jackie thinks it's... amusing.

Ramses

- Ramses sometimes misses having a full head of hair, but he thinks his signs of age make him look distinguished. (he is correct.) - Ramses is sort of the "mom friend," making sure everyone's concerns are heard, as well as trying to keep the peace whenever a conflict might arise. - If another coworker is feeling low, Ramses will try to cheer them up with a lighthearted joke or offer advice if they'd like it. - When the twins were promoted to bosses of the Battle Subway, Ramses cried because he felt so proud. - In most circumstances, he is a very simple and logical man. He is quick to find solutions and tries not to fret over the little stuff. It's not good for his heart after all. - His ace is his Pikachu (Musa,) though the mouse is more of a lap pet now. At home, he also has an Audino (Sara) and a Manectric (Nubi) who keep Ramses' husband company. His Klinklang (Moli) is the only one of his personal pokemon that accompany him to work nowadays. - Ramses considers Cloud family. They are best friends and love having family gatherings outside of work. They also gossip a lot, and don't mind when Jackie decides to join. - Ramses jokes about looking forward to retirement, but really doesn't want to leave until he is physically incapable of working anymore. Gear Station is like a second home to him.

In-Game Quotes

The most important reference of all are their in-game quotes, of course, so I'm adding it to the post. A lot of their personality traits can be extracted and interpreted from these few lines. And I personally love that about Pokemon NPCs -- there's a lot of room to explore and play with. Some appear very obvious. Cameron practically announces that he isn't ready for the battle that's about to ensue and seems genuinely surprised to win. Furze comes out the gate talking about the subject they actually care about, which is their job and their love for trains. The two of them are very easy to understand. Now, Ramses lines allude to a gentle and simple personality. He views himself with humility, and maybe even with a bit of humor comparing himself to a train and to his opponent to a station. If he loses he shows no signs of disappointment, he just accepts defeat with one last honest quip. It s also amusing to see the Depot Agents all use train metaphors to describe themselves since it falls in line with how Ingo and Emmet talk.

In comparison, Cloud does the same thing calling herself the terminal instead. Immediately, she is way more daring, though still keeping a sense of professionalism. To me, it's obvious she is competitive as she even admits she was expecting to win ("Ah...I didn't see it coming.") Jackie's lines are fun since it's up to interpretation if they are being literal or lying. It's almost like they are more interested in confusing/creeping out their opponent than actually beating them. To me, it gives off a mischievous vibe. Isadore's opener "There are only two roads in life." is a curious one because it almost feels like he is trying to be philosophical. Definitely a guy who views himself as an intellectual, regardless if that’s true or not. I like to think it's a saying he really believes in, and it applies to his life. The road he likes (long route) vs the road he hates (shortcut) -- fighting tooth and nail to become boss vs biting his tongue and accepting Ingo and Emmet as the Subway Masters.

Those are just my thoughts on how I write these characters. Please have fun playing with these lines too!

[kijimha]

Nahyuta is the most OVERHATED character in SoJ

"He's constantly repeating the Holy Mother stuff" yes, because a character's speech should be recognizable to some extent, especially if they important. Religion is also a very important part of Khura'in and its legal system, too. Of course he'll rely on the Holy Mother a lot. Not to mention many characters have repetitive speech (For example, Franziska is an amazing character and uses the word "fool" a lot)

"Ema says he's a good person outside of Court but he isn't" We have BARELY seen him outside of Court, but you don't even have to in order to know he is a good person. He suffered in silence so Rayfa wouldn't have the same fate as he did, gave a witness a name despite having no need to, and didn't confiscate Dhurke's badge when interrogating him in hopes that he'd save him.

"He's annoying and extremely ruthless" Because his perception of defense attorneys was completely warped. When you live in a place where they're hated, you'll be bound to as well. Besides, he never believed that the person he was prosecuting was innocent and just wanted to give the victim their last rites. He is literally shown praying for the fallen, proving he has immense respect towards them.

Not to mention Khura'ins legal systems rely on Rayfa. Outside of Khura'in, naturally he is going to believe the accused is guilty and will do his best to make them pay for their crime.

"He was rude to Athena" Because she is young and, again, he does not like defense attorneys. He at least saw her as a worthy adversary after seeing her strengths.

"He kept throwing beads at people" As if the other prosecutors haven't done WORSE? Throwing coffee, whipping people...

"If his rude persona was an act, why was he mean when outside of Khura'in?" Okay, one, maybe he didn't want to break the persona. It'd be weird if he were mostly ruthless and suddenly switch personalities. If he wants to help Rayfa, he can't show something is going on at home. And if that won't help; maybe he's just a bitch???? He has every right to be. So many other characters are flat out mean. Also; he's in only ONE GAME so far. He still has a lot of his personality to develop.

"His writing sucks, he's basically a second Edgeworth" I agree some parts of his character are not as good as I wish they'd be, but he and Edgeworth are quite different. Even if the character arcs mimic each other, it isn't as if it hasn't been done before. Also, many just refuse to see Nahyuta past the stuck-up religious guy perspective. It's so interesting to wonder how his relationship with religion, rebellion, obedience, etc. would be before, during and post canon.

"He's the worst prosecutor of the series" Because he wasn't easy to beat? He was described to go from place to place, solving difficult cases. Of course he's not going to give up easy and will be a challenge to face

I admit his writing is not the best and could have been better. His redemption arc was a bit short and I think it could have been more interesting if he actually believed in Ga'ran, but Nahyuta is being treated as if he killed everyone's families. Seriously, people seem to forget so often he did so much for Rayfa, even working under someone he didn't believe in.

"He's still my least favourite character" then why are you still reading. I love him. he's my favourite character in SoJ and so mecore. skill issue skill issue

[imposterogers]

being a stevebucky stan (brotp or otp) sucks bc on one hand we have all this canonical evidence both from the comics and the films proving that they’re the most important person in each other lives and they’d die for each other and they’ve been inseparable since they were six years old and their relationship slogan is literally to death do us part…….and then on the other hand endgame exists

[whateverisbeautiful]

Now that TOWL is over, what do you say is your top five favorite moments from the show and your not favorite top five moments from the show? From the start of their relationship, people were against this coupling, and some still are what do you have to say about that? Did TOWL exceed your expectations of what the show was going to be about, and what pulled you into liking this couple? Sorry for so many questions, and I love your breakdowns. I started to reread them all from the beginning. 😍💓

Hi! Thank you! I always enjoy answering so thanks for asking these questions and for rereading the breakdowns. 😊 I wrote out what drew me to this couple here. And for the rest of the questions I wrote out my response below. ⬇️💗

#1: Did TOWL exceed my expectations of what the show was going to be about?

TOWL for sure exceeded my expectations with the love story they promised. When they announced it was going to be a love story I figured we were going to get some pretty heartfelt scenes between them. What I didn't realize is that every scene of the show was going to be rooted in Richonne's love because their love was going to be central to each aspect of the plot. That was great and refreshing to see.

I appreciate how TOWL solidified that Rick and Michonne and the family they created are the most important in the world to them. Richonne's love and relationship have long been such a powerful thing and a massive motivator for these two characters and I love that TOWL didn't hold back in depicting how vital they are to each other. The passion and love displayed in TOWL felt very true to the characters. And allowing Rick and Michonne's relationship to take centerstage gave room to really explore the character's humanity in fresh and focused ways.

#2: Thoughts on people being against this coupling?

I think one of the great things about being a Richonne fan is that we really don't have to make anything up. The content speaks for itself. So while I have my thoughts on the people who hate on this couple and who have commented negative things about them for literal years, I feel like the TWD/TOWL content always ends up affirming what we know to be true and proving all the Richonne slander false.

People who are against this pairing can comment for years that Richonne came out of nowhere but there are seasons worth of pre-canon scenes that confirm the seeds of Rick and Michonne's attraction and love were planted long ago. They can say Richonne feels forced or like fan service but Gimple has said he was seeing the potential for Richonne when he was a writer crafting Clear long before any fan had even seen Rick and Michonne together on screen.

They can try to say that Rick's relationship with so many other characters is more important but TOWL especially set the record all the way straight on the person Rick prioritizes and loves most. They can try to knock the chemistry and say they just don't see it "for some reason," meanwhile it's on record that part of why the writers kept writing so many scenes for Rick and Michonne is because of their undeniable chemistry.

And especially after TOWL, which is Andy and Danai taking their chemistry to another level for six straight episodes, still not seeing the chemistry is certainly a choice. There's a reason many viewers said they tuned in to TOWL just from seeing the chemistry between these two actors and characters. What those two have is unparalleled and magnetic.

People don't have to like Richonne. We're all entitled to our opinions. But I have yet to see any substantial critique of the pairing, as people tend to just say they don't like it or buy it but never seem to pinpoint specifically why. (Although for many (not all) but many, we know why they don't see or like it.) The negative things said about Richonne are often either purely biased opinions or easily disproved. But again, it doesn't even have to be argued because the actual media shows, and has always shown, that Richonne is a beloved fact within fiction.

With 7 seasons of Richonne content on TWD and their closing TOWL chapter being heavily focused on the love they found with each other, it's clear that everyone behind these characters understands the absolute importance and value of Richonne. All these years later and Richonne being something special and meant to be is still proven true every time.

#3: TOP 5 Least Favorite Moments In TOWL

1. Jadis & Father Gabriel Scenes (1.05)

These are the most skippable scenes in TOWL to me. And I think there were a bit too many cuts back to their scenes which weakened the episode's pacing.

2. “If We Don’t Who Will?” “No One.” (1.06)

I was really not a fan of the writing for those two lines. 😅 It just didn't feel like how those two characters or any people would naturally speak. The visuals were beautiful tho.

3. Museum Scene & The Bumbling Trio in General (1.05)

There were a few decent moments in the museum scene but some of it felt a bit like clunky shenanigans. I also wasn't crazy about the bumbling trio of siblings in general. TOWL had done such a good job of making even small characters feel real and lived-in but those three siblings felt more like walking plot devices.

4. Final Fight Scene Dialogue (1.06)

This is another time where I didn't like the heavy-handed dialogue. It felt like they were saying things that should have just been left on a poster, like "In a dead world love is dead" and "love doesn't die."

5. More of an alternative opinion: Okafor should have lived & took Beale's place

It was sorta hard to think of a 5th thing I disliked since I loved so much of this show. So instead I figured I'd just say a personal change I would have been interested in seeing.

I think Terry O'Quinn is a great actor but he didn't really get screentime in TOWL. And so since they didn't give him more of an opportunity to show off his chops, I would have rather seen Beale be the one who dies in the helicopter with Rick in episode one and then have Okafor be TOWL's main antagonist.

Okafor was one of the most compelling characters to be added to the franchise in years and he played off Rick so well. They were great foils to each other. I think Okafor being the one left alive would have complicated things in a really interesting way both for Rick & Michonne and the CRM. Especially if they added some more layered villainous motives to his agenda, Okafor would have made a great and perhaps even stronger series antagonist.

#4: Top 5 Favorite TOWL Moments

Now this one is tough because there are so many scenes I love. Every episode of TOWL has some Top 10 worthy moments. One day I think I just might sit down and really try and see how I'd rank my favorite TOWL moments because I still don't know just yet where I'd rank certain scenes. Which is a great problem to have since it shows TOWL really did give us an abundance of riches. But until I have time to figure it out and elaborate on my top five, one thing I always know for sure is that the masterpiece Episode 4 features my favorite Richonne content of all time. 👌🏽

Thanks again for asking these questions and for your patience with me answering @theoneswholive32! 🫶🏽 I'd love to know yours and other people's least and most favorite moments from TOWL if any want to share! 😊

[whinlatter]

sirius and ginny: a meta (part 1)

“Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking.’

are you a very brave, very reckless, very hot self-destructive rebel with a treacherous sibling and a flair for christmas decoration, harbouring complex feelings about your mother, close ties to crookshanks the cat and spend your days plagued by the memory of your worst mistakes and dark past? do you find yourself constantly being begged to stay in a state of protective confinement to save your life by a young man with a lightning scar, bad hair and crippling abandonment issues? if so, congratulations! you might be one of harry potter's chosen family members, sirius black and ginevra molly weasley! 

basically - i want to talk about sirius and ginny. these are two characters who don’t share a lot of scenes in canon but who, i think, have some clear (if overlooked) parallels: stubborn, fiercely protective of harry, self-sacrificing, admired, principled, haunted (in different ways) by traumatic pasts and betrayals, with complicated relationships with their families and entirely uncomplicated devoted relationships with someone else’s cat. their narrative arcs are successive, with ginny ascending in significance in the series during sirius’ period of decline and ultimate death. and ultimately, they’re also the two people who become, over the course of the canon series, family to a protagonist desperately seeking to build one. sirius and ginny are the two people harry in canon most worries about, wants to protect, and thinks of as someone who embodies the promise of family and home.

sirius and ginny aren’t mirror images of each other. ofc, ginny also has parallels with the only other family members harry claims in the series, lily and james (i mean, especially james - she’s literally a cocky funny flirtatious chaser with a years-long debilitating mega crush who can also catch a snitch like a champ. come on now). it’s also clear in canon that sirius means more to ginny as a hero/role model/ally against her mother than ginny ever means to sirius. nevertheless, the text puts in work to let the reader know we should think about these characters together as somehow aligned. from the beginning of ootp, there are clues and signals in the text that foreshadow ginny’s emergence as someone important to harry, and that subtly let the reader know that the baton of being harry’s ‘person’ is about to be passed from sirius to ginny, two kindred spirits, after sirius’ death. so that's what this meta is about! (consider this my 700th attempt to show that, as the popular fandom complaint/all of reddit still insist, ginny as a character, and especially the harry/ginny romance, did not ‘come out of nowhere’.)

the following meta is part one of two (and yet it's still too long! sorry about it). o in this part, i look at the period from the end of goblet of fire thru the start of half blood prince, exploring how the text sets up the sirius and ginny parallels as a way of foreshadowing ginny’s emergence as harry’s main love interest and place as a family substitute. the second part (tbc) will be what the memory of sirius does for harry’s view of his relationship with ginny, and the kind of positive - and negative - ways this shapes harry’s ideas about love and what family do for each other. i wrote this meta as a way of thinking through some characterisation choices for my current WIP, beasts. if you're following along with that fic, this meta can be seen as a companion piece especially to my thinking behind chapters ten and eleven, so hope proves helpful for some of my thinking behind the sirius and ginny friendship that appears in that project. it's also dedicated to @ashesandhackles, queen of metas, who has reminded me to post this meta precisely 9 million times because she is a long-suffering saint.

ok - sirius and ginny. let’s goooooo!

sirius and ginny before ootp

before OotP, ginny is absent from any plot connected to sirius. ginny doesn’t know the truth about sirius’ innocence, nor does she know that harry, her brother and her friend are in regular contact with sirius and that harry now as a surrogate father/big brother figure to confide in and seek comfort in.  in fact, in one of ginny’s few appearances in GoF, the narration is unusually insistent that the reader knows how little ginny knows about sirius:

“And have you heard from — ?” Ron began, but at a look from Hermione he fell silent. Harry knew Ron had been about to ask about Sirius. Ron and Hermione had been so deeply involved in helping Sirius escape from the Ministry of Magic that they were almost as concerned about Harry’s godfather as he was. However, discussing him in front of Ginny was a bad idea. Nobody but themselves and Professor Dumbledore knew about how Sirius had escaped, or believed in his innocence. “I think they’ve stopped arguing,” said Hermione, to cover the awkward moment, because Ginny was looking curiously from Ron to Harry. “Shall we go down and help your mum with dinner?” 

the only other tiny crumb of sirius and ginny we get is the news that the owl sirius bought in PoA and gifted to ron as a replacement pet for scabbers has been embraced and named by ginny. sirius gifting a tiny little spitfire of an owl that annoys ron? it's giving foreshadowing, your honour.

the reader, though, knows who sirius is to harry by GoF. throughout this book, for the first time in the series, harry has a person he can claim as something like a family: someone to worry about, someone who cares about him,who can advise, guide and mentor him, as well as offer him support and consolation in difficult times (‘someone like a parent…’) although sirius has not been able to offer harry a stable alternative home to the dursleys due to his status as a wanted man, he’s still filling a role that previously had been vacant in the series: he’s harry’s person, the surrogate parent chosen for him by james and lily. he’s close by, either by the floo or eventually living (at great personal cost) as padfoot in hogsmeade, and he’s present emotionally for harry in ways that prove incredibly meaningful to his young godson. in times of great of distress, sirius is there for harry to meet emotional needs that ron and hermione (understandably, no shade to them) can’t always meet. the floo scene early on in GoF, during harry’s row with ron, is a particularly good example of this:

“Never mind me, how are you?” said Sirius seriously. “I’m —”  For a second, Harry tried to say “fine” — but he couldn’t do it. …Before he could stop himself, he was talking more than he’d talked in days — about how no one believed he hadn’t entered the tournament of his own free will, how Rita Skeeter had lied about him in the Daily Prophet, how he couldn’t walk down a corridor without being sneered at — and about Ron, Ron not believing him, Ron’s jealousy . . . Sirius looked at him, eyes full of concern… He had let Harry talk himself into silence without interruption’.

harry derives enormous comfort from sirius’ presence in his life during GoF. he writes to sirius, he repeatedly turns to him for advice, he worries for him more than he does any other person. sirius fulfils harry’s desire to be kept abreast of important information about voldemort and death eaters, doesn’t sugarcoat news for harry, and makes him feel important, cared for and understood. (harry even shows off to sirius telling him about how much of a slay the first task was. ugh). by the time of the third task, sirius is sending harry daily owls, a constant flow of reassurance and concern (‘He reminded Harry in every letter that whatever might be going on outside the walls of Hogwarts was not Harry’s responsibility, nor was it within his power to influence it. If Voldemort is really getting stronger again, he wrote, my priority is to ensure your safety.’) when harry returns from the graveyard at the novel’s end, it’s sirius who races to his side to advocate for him and offer him both words of comfort and physical affection as he processes the traumatic series of events that constitute the climax of the book’s plot. (my personal favourite part is where harry says ‘wormtail cut me with a knife’ and the text says sirius made a ‘vehement exclamation’, which i can only assume is children’s book speak for ‘fucking hell’.) harry goes to bed: sirius stays with him, a literal guard dog as he recuperates. after the most traumatic events of the series to date, the reader is at least consoled that harry potter has a person now, someone he loves for him to worry about and to worry for him, who catches him on the other side of traumatic events and makes them that bit much more bearable.

sirius and ginny during ootp

with sirius' role in harry's life established in GoF, OotP begins with harry, cooped up and restless at privet drive, angry with ron, hermione, sirius, and dumbledore for abandoning him at privet drive and keeping him in the dark. harry arrives at grimmauld place to find an anxious ron and hermione, with whom harry is angry and frustrated for having left him out of their summer hangs and having neglected him, by his assessment, in surrey. it’s the most conflict we’ve seen in the trio in terms of harry vs ron and hermione, and sets up one of the important themes of the book, which is harry no longer being solely emotionally fulfilled by the people he is closest to, including his two surrogate parents best mates but also his godfather. when he encounters sirius for the first time after the order meeting, he finds him surly, bitter, and depressed, furious that he is confined to his childhood home, and (understandably) much less able or willing to offer harry much in the way of comfort, apology or cheering words (‘Harry, who had expected a better welcome, noted how hard and bitter Sirius’s voice sounded.’) in this sense, the book opens with harry disappointed and/or more distant from all the people on whom he most depends and is usually closest to, and that there therefore is already an absence of a certain kind of emotional support in harry’s life that the plot demands be filled.

fresh off the back of harry’s row with ron and hermione is ginny’s reintroduction to the reader. after years of being so shy in harry’s presence she was often nearly mute, the reader finds that ginny is not only now speaking, but that her presence turns out to be remarkably refreshing. from her opening scene where ginny enters harry’s bedroom at grimmauld place, the reader discovers the new ginny is confident, up to no good, in cahoots with her most troublemaking brothers trying to intercept the order meeting, enterprising in her mischief (and very happy to lie to her mother’s face about it). she’s thoroughly unfazed by harry’s great display of rage that has just startled and upset ron and hermione. (side note: in both ootp and hbp, ginny’s opening scene is her entering harry’s bedroom, which is the kind of foreshadowing i personally find delicious). everyone else is behaving pretty much as they have been up to this point, but it’s ginny who is showcasing behaviours new to the reader, a signal that she might be about to play a different role in the series than she has done up to this point.

cut to the dinner scene. sirius and ginny are in the room together for the first time. sirius is moody: though he’s still able to laugh, enjoying displays of mischief and humour (the twins and the knife), he’s more bitter than harry and the reader have seen him since PoA. it’s an important scene for lots of reasons (not least the sirius v molly beef), but it’s also one where sirius and ginny are repeatedly drawn into mental association in the reader’s mind. it’s also a great scene because the behaviour of crookshanks the cat literally serves to foreshadow the behaviour of harry james potter in ways that are frankly extremely fun.

so! the sirius and ginny hints start small. from the start of the scene, ginny is amused by mundungus the crook (a man, we will learn, so disdained by her mother):

“Some’n say m’ name?” Mundungus mumbled sleepily. “I ’gree with Sirius. . . .” He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused. Ginny giggled. “The meeting’s over, Dung,” said Sirius, as they all sat down around him at the table. “Harry’s arrived.” 

sirius and harry, sat at the end of the table, are both greeted by crookshanks, sirius’ old accomplice from PoA:

'​​Harry felt something brush against his knees and started, but it was only Crookshanks, Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, who wound himself once around Harry’s legs, purring, then jumped onto Sirius’s lap and curled up. Sirius scratched him absentmindedly behind the ears as he turned, still grim-faced, to Harry…

when fred and george’s levitation goes awry, flinging a knife at sirius (now that’s how you foreshadow a death), crookshanks bolts: 

‘Harry and Sirius were both laughing… Crookshanks had given an angry hiss and shot off under the dresser, from whence his large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness…’

during the meal, ginny’s with hermione, having a laugh with tonks, a character harry has just met but whom he has already decided to both admire and like. after the meal, when harry’s cheered up a bit and had his crumble (the man loves dessert), crookshanks finally emerges from his hiding place, having been coaxed out from his sulk by - you guessed it - one g. m. weasley:

‘…Ginny, who had lured Crookshanks out from under the dresser, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling butterbeer corks for him to chase.’

a grouchy character, initially drawn to sirius, but prone to lashing out and locking himself away, only to be lured back out into comfort and safety by ginny weasley? wow………. radical

after dinner, the argument between sirius and molly kicks off. sirius is arguing hard for harry’s right to know, though he makes no attempt to advocate for any of the other weasleys or for hermione. ginny’s noticeably singled out in her reaction to this scene, the text highlighting that she is particularly struck by this conflict as if it is of particular personal resonance, including someone standing up to her famously overprotective mother for once:

‘Ron, Hermione, Fred, and George’s heads turned from Sirius to Mrs. Weasley as though following a tennis rally. Ginny was kneeling amid a pile of abandoned butterbeer corks, watching the conversation with her mouth slightly open. Lupin’s eyes were fixed on Sirius.’

of course, molly loses the argument: harry gets to stay for juicy order deets (‘Sirius was right, he was not a child.’) after the row, ginny is the only person forbidden from hearing information about the order’s activities. suddenly, the roles are switched: it’s ginny who’s now furious and bitter to be kept out of the action:

‘“Fine!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “Fine! Ginny — BED!”  Ginny did not go quietly. They could hear her raging and storming at her mother all the way up the stairs, and when she reached the hall Mrs. Black’s earsplitting shrieks were added to the din. Lupin hurried off to the portrait to restore calm. It was only after he had returned, closing the kitchen door behind him and taking his seat at the table again, that Sirius spoke. “Okay, Harry . . . what do you want to know?”’ 

it’s not just the parallels of confinement between harry, sirius and ginny that are so revealing, it’s also the dual maternal conflicts. ginny loud raging at her own mother sets off the howling relic of sirius’, serving to underline two characters who continue to grapple with maternal relationships that are complex and full of conflict, though by no means solely negative (sirius i see you sleeping in your mother’s bedroom babe. don’t think i think your relationship with walburga is just one of straight hate ok). when ginny later gets knocked down the stairs by fred and george, there’s more direct mrs weasley/walburga parallels, with the two of them literally shouting over each other during the ordeal lol. as such, the readers see that the conflicts being set up for sirius’ character in this book - frustration at confinement, conflict with a mother figure, drawn to more reckless and arguably irresponsible characters (mundungus, the twins) and courses of action - are also conflicts subtly playing out with the new ginny we’re meeting, too.

as the rest of the summer at grimmauld wears on, there are more examples of sirius and ginny foreshadowing. the scenes where the two characters interact serve to place ginny and sirius firmly in the same camp of people harry admires and has fun with, the troublemakers and the rebels. over the prefects issue, ginny not only is sat chatting with the troublemaking adults harry likes most, but actively draws sirius into conversation on the issue, likely knowing the answer will comfort harry, but also showing a curiosity and interest in sirius that suggests she admires him:

“I was never a prefect myself,” said Tonks brightly from behind Harry as everybody moved toward the table to help themselves to food. Her hair was tomato-red and waist length today; she looked like Ginny’s older sister. “My Head of House said I lacked certain necessary qualities.”  “Like what?” said Ginny, who was choosing a baked potato. “Like the ability to behave myself,” said Tonks. Ginny laughed; Hermione looked as though she did not know whether to smile or not and compromised by taking an extra large gulp of butterbeer and choking on it.  “What about you, Sirius?” Ginny asked, thumping Hermione on the back. Sirius, who was right beside Harry, let out his usual barklike laugh…’

ginny’s choice to try and draw sirius into the conversation bears fruit: sirius confirms james was never a prefect, and harry’s sour mood is suddenly lifted. (‘All at once the party seemed much more enjoyable; he loaded up his plate, feeling unusually fond of everyone in the room.’) ginny is thus beginning to provide harry with subtle comfort and reassurance, especially as sirius, struggling with his own confinement,  is taking a less active role in trying to cheer harry up. what i also like is that we have evidence of how ginny views sirius - she’s curious about him and his past, she clearly thinks he and the other new rebellious adults are cool as shit, and she’s drawn increasingly away from her mother’s cautious overprotective approach towards these resistance fighters who prioritise the fight over safety. (it is noticeable to me that ginny does not become a prefect in HBP, suggesting sirius' example proved instructive).

we see more small parallels between sirius and ginny during the cleaning scenes. the battle against grimmauld place is an important symbol of one of the important themes of OotP as a book: a battle over past traumas and their persistent and unwieldy symptoms that are seemingly never-ending. while it’s harry’s experiences that, of course, take centre stage, sirius’, too, loom omnipresent throughout the text. it’s significant, then, that ginny’s own past gets brought up for the first time in three books here, albeit briefly: 

'They found an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scuttled up Harry’s arm like a spider when he picked it up, and attempted to puncture his skin; Sirius seized it and smashed it with a heavy book entitled Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. There was a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune when wound, and they all found themselves becoming curiously weak and sleepy until Ginny had the sense to slam the lid shut…'

in this moment, we see sirius and ginny singled in the larger group as quick-thinking, shrewd characters, with a good instincts and common sense (if a bit of a tendency to get scrappy). their respective dark pasts are subtly alluded to. sirius whacks a spider trying to attack harry with a book that might as well be entitled my big book of family trauma. ginny, meanwhile, steps in when everybody present starts to be enchanted by a mysterious object luring them into danger by whacking it shut (gee i wonder why!) given this is the book that will see ginny mention the events of CoS for the first time in errrrr three years, it’s significant that the text is careful to draw ginny into this broader theme that unites sirius and harry, the constant reminders of traumatic pasts at every turn. we also see here the revelation that regulus black was a death eater. coming after news of percy weasley’s betrayal, sirius’ bitter dismissal of his younger brother deliberately mirrors ginny and the other weasleys’ attitude towards percy, this sense of pureblood families split over wizarding politics, often fatally. 

while harry fears his expulsion from hogwarts prior his hearing, he continues to fantasise about coming to live with sirius at grimmauld, and about being with a family member and finding an alternative home to hogwarts. sirius, as hermione astutely observes, tries to manage harry’s expectations and not to get his own hopes up: still, when harry is exonerated, sirius is visibly depressed, showing the beginnings of an emotional dependency on harry that harry feels great guilt over.when leaving grimmauld for the start of the school year, sirius, as padfoot, accompanies harry to king’s cross: unlike in GoF, though, he is spotted, and harry begins to worry much more actively about sirius’ vulnerability to capture, about his recklessness and about his judgement. concerned for sirius, and absent ron and hermione, who are in the prefects carriage, the person who stays with harry and offers him company is ginny. she sacrifices her own train journey (presumably with her own boyfriend) to find a carriage with harry and make sure he’s not lonely, bringing him to neville and luna and sorting him out after his embarassing cho run-in. it’s not a coincidence that once again we see ginny here taking care of harry crookshanks:

'“Where’s Crookshanks?” “Ginny’s got him,” said Harry. “There she is. . . .”  Ginny had just emerged from the crowd, clutching a squirming Crookshanks. “Thanks,” said Hermione, relieving Ginny of the cat. “Come on, let’s get a carriage together before they all fill up. . . '

once harry’s back at school, having left sirius behind to languish miserably in london, we see he's more isolated and alone than ever. he’s tormented by umbridge, endlessly (though often unfairly) frustrated with ron and hermione, ghosted by dumbledore, yet absent the more stable, reassuring sirius he came to know in GoF, unable to write candidly to him and faced with a much less well sirius in the opportunities they do have to speak face-to-face. as sirius’ mental health declines as he is shut up at grimmauld, his ability to support harry and comfort him starts to falter, and he becomes a much more uneven source of advice and support, particularly during his car crash floo appearance, where he’s much ruder than he has previously been (cutting off, ignoring their pleas for him to be more cautious, the infamous ‘the risk would have made it fun for james’ moment). this new sirius, clearly struggling, is much more happy to do up guilt trip to his godson than we have seen him to up this point (‘I’ll write to tell you a time I can make it back into the fire, then, shall I? If you can stand to risk it?’ - you petty little shit, padfoot). all of this serves to increase harry’s anxiety about sirius’ wellbeing and reinforce harry’s sense of emotional isolation. even sirius’ encouragement on the DA is, as hermione points out, partly bound up in more selfish motivations (‘I think he’s really frustrated at how little he can do where he is… so I think he’s keen to kind of… egg us on.’)

ginny’s largely absent in this section of the novel. in the brief moments she does appear, it’s to inject humour (eg. her impressions at the DA meeting) and in little reminders that she now has a boyfriend, no longer harbours romantic feelings for harry, making sure the reader continues to hold her mentally apart from harry. harry, meanwhile, misguidedly tries to seek out a relationship with cho chang, who is showing clear signs of her own emotional distress and inability to meet harry’s emotional needs given her own grief. still, among this, there’s still room for some small subtle sirius/ginny parallels. once the DA plot picks up, we have another little sign that ginny weasley and sirius black think somewhat alike:

“Yeah, the D.A.’s good,” said Ginny. “Only let’s make it stand for Dumbledore’s Army because that’s the Ministry’s worst fear, isn’t it?” 

“Trained in combat?” repeated Harry incredulously. “What does he think we’re doing here, forming some sort of wizard army? “That’s exactly what he thinks you’re doing,” said Sirius, “or rather, that’s exactly what he’s afraid Dumbledore’s doing — forming his own private army, with which he will be able to take on the Ministry of Magic.” 

with harry's isolation and need for more emotional support established in this first term, christmas at grimmauld offers more opportunity to subtly develop the sirius and ginny parallels, as well as to highlight ginny’s ability to fill the gaps left by sirius’ decline. after the attack on arthur weasley, the group arrive back at grimmauld:

‘Sirius was hurrying toward them all, looking anxious. He was unshaven and still in his day clothes; there was also a slightly Mundungus-like whiff of stale drink about him. “What’s going on?” he said, stretching out a hand to help Ginny up. “Phineas Nigellus said Arthur’s been badly injured —” 

could this be sirius literally lifting ginny up into plot significance? why yes it could

ofc the weasleys then argue with sirius about their right to go see their father. despite his own frustrations at being trapped at grimmauld, sirius proves the voice of reason and rational decision making against both ginny and the twins’ hotheadedness (ginny asks to borrow cloaks to go to the hospital: sirius: ‘Hang on, you can’t go tearing off to St. Mungo’s!’) crucially, though, when sirius points out that there are bigger things at stake - the work of the order and the resistance movement - it’s ginny who listens:

“Your father knew what he was getting into, and he won’t thank you for messing things up for the Order!” said Sirius angrily in his turn. “This is how it is — this is why you’re not in the Order — you don’t understand — there are things worth dying for!”  “Easy for you to say, stuck here!” bellowed Fred. “I don’t see you risking your neck!”  The little colour remaining in Sirius’s face drained from it. He looked for a moment as though he would quite like to hit Fred, but when he spoke, it was in a voice of determined calm. “I know it’s hard, but we’ve all got to act as though we don’t know anything yet. We’ve got to stay put, at least until we hear from your mother, all right?”  Fred and George still looked mutinous. Ginny, however, took a few steps over to the nearest chair and sank into it. Harry looked at Ron, who made a funny movement somewhere between a nod and shrug, and they sat down too. The twins glared at Sirius for another minute, then took seats on either side of Ginny.  “That’s right,” said Sirius encouragingly, “come on, let’s all . . . let’s all have a drink while we’re waiting…’

there’s a lot going on here: ginny’s willingness to follow sirius’ orders, but also her willingness to accept an argument based on some idea of the greater good before any of her brothers. she and sirius are aligned here, and it’s her decision to accept sirius’ reasoning that proves the catalyst for her brothers to follow. we see here how ginny has come to see sirius: someone she looks up to and admires, an adult whose judgement she trusts and whose worldview she subscribes to. (as a character prone to hero worship - see her view of her big brother bill - i think this is noteworthy, and is behind a lot of my characterisation choices for ginny towards sirius in beasts). but we also see that ginny agrees with sirius' worldview. there are some things worth dying for, and self-sacrifice is part of that.

when harry goes to sirius for reassurance about witnessing arthur’s attack, he finds sirius unable to properly console him and convince him that he was not to blame for arthur’s attack. the reader gets the impression of sirius withholding information from harry (‘He could only see a sliver of Sirius’s face; the rest was in darkness’), and the scene ends with sirius clapping harry on the shoulder and leaving him ‘standing alone in the dark’. while sirius throws himself into christmas preparations, obviously delighted to have company, harry shrinks from the cheer and isolates himself. in the end, ofc, the only person that manages to pull harry out of his dark, brooding thoughts is ginny. the text is careful to note she’s sitting beside him on the tube back from st mungo’s, when he looks very unwell. then, in the ‘lucky you’ scene, she showcases some of the same skills harry first came to appreciate in sirius in GoF. she tells it to him straight: she’s sympathetic, but not overly gushing, and she reminds him of her own intensely frightening experience which she endured alone, something harry can relate to, even if the experience of possession is not.  it’s an important scene for lots of reasons, but it’s also, crucially, the intervention that causes harry’s mood to lift, and he gets to enjoy a christmas with his godfather, the thing he had most wanted in the run-up to christmas, and which becomes the only holiday period harry and sirius ever spend together: 

‘I’m not the weapon after all, thought Harry. His heart swelled with happiness and relief, and he felt like joining in as they heard Sirius tramping past their door toward Buckbeak’s room, singing “God Rest Ye Merry, Hippogriffs” at the top of his voice.’

of course, once christmas is over, sirius slips back into a depressed, gloomy state. harry wants a better goodbye than he gives him, merely giving him a quick one armed hug (there’s a real theme throughout harry and sirius’ relationship of very sparing physical contact on sirius’ part, which is obviously a hole in harry's life ginny will fill in - er - a big way). back at school, harry returns to umbridge’s increasingly draconian rule, maks a disastrous attempt at forging a relationship with cho, and continues to feel lonely, paranoid, and angry. unable to speak to sirius properly via letter or floo - and unwilling to open the present sirius has given him to communicate directly with him, the two-way mirror - harry is increasingly sullen, a mood that only worsens after seeing snape's worst memory.

the easter egg scene is obviously important for hinny for lots of different reasons. but here i just want to highlight how the scene serves to show ginny as both the conduit to sirius for harry, and someone whose behaviour echoes that of sirius in GoF when harry first began to open up to and seek comfort in him. harry is distressed by his now complicated feelings both towards the father he previously revered and towards sirius, who seemed to encourage james’ bullying behaviour. ginny hands harry a chocolate easter egg covered in snitches: chocolate, a canonical source of comfort against dark thoughts, and an egg that reminds him of the love of parent. the act makes him suddenly emotional, though he at first denies he’s upset. ginny presses carefully and sensitively, asking the right questions to get him to confess the source of his worry, waiting for harry to take his time to speak - all behaviours that echo sirius’ own effective listening techniques. ginny’s acquaintance with sirius, and knowledge of how significant he is to harry, is important here, too, and a subtle sign to the reader that he trusts ginny with knowledge about sirius after a long time of having her in the dark about his godfather.  the reader leaves the scene having seen ginny breakthrough to harry emotionally in a way for the second time in the novel, in a way no other character has done (‘he felt a bit more hopeful…’) 

of course, the course of action ginny has set in motion is itself risky and reckless (‘anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve’ is very marauders as a philosophy). the decision to go ahead with the plan the twins come up with is one harry sees as a decision on whether to be more like james and sirius - a risk taker - or to abandon the hero worship for the marauders he has lived with for so long. in the end, of course, it’s a win for the reckless troublemakers: he chooses to go ahead with the plan the twins have crafted and that ginny has set in motion, and to speak to sirius.

and yet. sirius is still alive - there is not need for ginny yet. for the remainder of the book, ginny has to beg to be included in the trio's plans and to be allowed to be a part of the plot to rescue sirius. she’s is often in conflict with harry, showing a lot of sirius’ bitterness at attempts at containment and to keep her out of the fighting. she grates against harry’s insistence that she is too young and inexperienced, and having to remind the trio that she, too, has come to care about sirius and wants to see him safe: 

“I’ve got a broom!” said Ginny.  “Yeah, but you’re not coming,” said Ron angrily.  “Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking. 

of course, it all ends in tragedy: sirius, desperate to go to harry’s aid and absolutely gunning for a fight after months of confinement, is killed, leaving harry alone. there a subtle clues that something has shifted in ginny’s relationship to harry and the trio in the scenes after sirius’ death, including ginny positioned as the mirror image to harry in the hospital: 

‘Harry was sitting on the end of Ron’s bed and they were both listening to Hermione read the front page of the Sunday Prophet. Ginny, whose ankle had     been mended in a trice by Madam Pomfrey, was curled up at the foot of Hermione’s bed…’

despite this, in the immediate aftermath of sirius’ death, harry is extremely alone. he is unable to work out what he needs (‘Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.’) he tries to go to hagrid’s, but regrets it (‘He was starting to wish he was alone again’), leaving after hagrid reminds him of sirius’ core traits, an inability to stay out of the fight when he believes in the cause:

“But still, Harry . . . he was never one ter sit around at home an’ let other people do the fightin’. He couldn’ have lived with himself if he hadn’ gone ter help —” 

unlike at the end of GoF, harry is isolated by his grief and the revelation of the prophecy's contents by the end of this book. he goes alone to a secluded corner of the lakeshore, ‘sheltered from the gaze of passersby behind a tangle of shrubs’, and ‘[stares] out over the gleaming water’, and cries alone. there is no sirius or other person to catch him and console him in his grief. his person has died, and there’s a gap in his life again, just waiting to be filled: 

‘Wanting to impress Cho seemed to belong to a past that was no longer quite connected with him. So much of what he had wanted before Sirius’s death felt that way these days. . . . The week that had elapsed since he had last seen Sirius seemed to have lasted much, much longer: It stretched across two universes, the one with Sirius in it, and the one without.’

ginny and sirius parallels in HBP and DH

after sirius’ death, the parallels between sirius and ginny become more important as ginny moves into the centre frame as a character. at the start of HBP, harry arrives at the burrow and discusses his grief over sirius’ death with dumbledore in the burrow broom shed, acknowledging how profoundly the loss of a family member who cares singularly about him is affecting him. ('He felt stupid for admitting it, but the fact that he had had someone outside Hogwarts who cared what happened to him, almost like a parent, had been one of the best things about discovering his godfather . . . and now the post owls would never bring him that comfort again. . . .' beasts readers: there's a reason harry clings to letters!) of course, having reminded the reader of the gap in harry’s life that now needs to be filled, harry goes to sleep, the active reflection on his grief for sirius put to one side so the novel's plot can get underway. he'll go to bed mourning sirius and wake up in a sunlit bedroom. of course, ginny will walk into this bedroom too, only now things will be different: harry potter is back to the search for a loved one, for a family, and he's about to realise ginny is the one he wants to fill it. thus the start of the plot of ginny stepping into the role vacated by sirius beginneth.

so much of who ginny is in HBP is reminiscent of sirius. she frequently leaps into battle as harry’s protector (‘You’re taking orders from something someone wrote in a book?’, ‘Give it a rest, Hermione’), she’s scrappy (RIP zacharias smith), she’s funny and laughs easily in a way that less recalls sirius in the time harry knew him than sirius as harry sees him as a young man, in photographs or memories. she's the one who commits to the insane christmas decorations, determined to cheer everyone up over the festive period as sirius did the year before. she even enjoys the widespread admiration and lust of her peers, a trait that directly recalls sirius being eyed up by his peers in snape's memory. by the novel’s end, after dumbledore’s death, it will be ginny who goes to harry’s side after the climax of the plot and catch him in his grief just as sirius did in GoF, this time over dumbledore’s death: 

‘He did not want to leave Dumbledore’s side, he did not want to move anywhere. Hagrid’s hand on his shoulder was trembling. Then another voice said, “Harry, come on.’ A much smaller and warmer hand had enclosed his and was pulling him upward. He obeyed its pressure without really thinking about it.’

their breakup has sirius all over it. taking place at the lakeshore, the place where harry wept alone over sirius a year prior, harry draws on the circumstances of sirius’ demise as a reason he must break up with ginny (‘Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to.’) the breakup does little to shift what ginny has become in harry’s mind, though, and he spends all of DH thinking of her as he once thought of sirius: the person whose safety he most craves, the person he misses, someone he claims as his, and whom he associates with (now banished) hopes of a home and a family:

“It’s not a problem,” said Harry, sickened by the pain in his head. “It’s your family, ’course you’re worried. I’d feel the same way.” He thought of Ginny. “I do feel the same way.”

of course, echoes of sirius will also come into play during open war. it’s now ginny, not sirius, who is the one left behind for her own protection: in the run-up to the battle, harry finds himself once again faced with the prospect of confining his loved one for their safety, despite their desperation to fight and do the right thing. but these are thoughts for part 2…….

[bluemooniegif]

Let's talk about Coats in Bungou Stray Dogs, and what they mean

[i.e. a repost of perhaps my most famous BSD analysis ever]

Mild spoilers for Beast, Dark Era, and Dazai, Chuuya, 15 ahead! (I'm thinking of posting an explanation of how the Beast Universe works soon anyway... lmk if that's something you'd like!)

If you've come across this theory before (uve most likely seen me talk about it on tiktok or youtube), you've probably heard already that the coat or outerwear a character is wearing (especially if it's different from the rest of their outfit) is indicative of the persona that they're trying to project.

You may have noticed, for example, that the colour and the way that Dazai wears his coat changes depending on the organisation and universe he's in. Let's start by taking a look at his Port Mafia outfit from the Canon universe:

As you look, remember that Dazai joined the Port Mafia against his will. He only joins because Mori promises that if he's useful to him, he'll provide Dazai with a quick and painless way to die:

And now I want to get into why Dazai doesn't actually want to die, but that's a whole other post for a later time.

So, Dazai joins the Mafia, rather begrudgingly, and dons the relevant 'uniform' as he does. This is necessary to show Mori and he other members of the PM that he is committing to the role; it is necessary for survival.

The important thing to note here, however, is that he wears his coat off-the-shoulder. Of course, this could just be chalked up to the questionable fashion standards of teenage boys, but when we consider that the coat is like a representation of the Mafia's values... it becomes an indication that Dazai is putting on a persona; one that he's ready to throw away at the drop of a hat. The are three reasons I know this is how he feels for sure:

we saw the exact moment Mori recruited him, and how reluctant he was to join;

he actually did throw it all away the second he had the chance;

Beast. let me explain.

Have a look at Dazai's outfit in Beast, where he takes on the role of Mafia Boss:

There are several notable differences here, but for a moment I just want to focus on the fact that he's wearing his coat properly. That was the one thing that really struck me as significant the first time I read BEAST: in the world where Dazai has to fully commit to the role if he wants his plans to work out, he pushes himself to play the part, regardless of how he feels.

The next huge difference lies in the bandages: here, his left eye is covered, whereas in the Canon manga his right eye is covered. There are several theories we could derive from this: a popular one is that each eye represents light and dark, respectively. In the Canon universe, Dazai covered the eye that saw the light, so he could more easily resign himself to living in darkness. Then, Oda pulled the bandages away, and he found himself running towards the light. I could talk about this for hours, but for the sake of brevity... ouchies.

Moving on. Another thing to note is that, duh, there's a bigass scarf around his neck here. Why? How? It looks an awful lot like Mori's... which could mean nothing. Just like how his ADA coat looking like Oda's could mean nothing. Haha so normal guys don't even worry about it!!

ANYWAY. Coats. Isn't it interesting that Akutagawa also properly wears his coat (a hand-me-down from Dazai, nonetheless) and spends a vast majority of his time trying to prove that he is worthy of being in such a high position within the PM? Isn't it interesting that his ability, the entire reason he became the Mafia's guard dog, relies on that very coat? His entire personality and reason for living becomes so entrapped within Rashoumon that the two are practically inseparable.

In Beast, when he's given a coat that echoes that of Oda's, he still uses it (via Rashoumon) like a shield, and like a weapon... but he tries to learn how to be more gentle. The beginnings and intentions are almost the same, but the outcomes are totally different. Which is very telling. I'll let you connect the remaining dots on that one.

Now, there is one more Mafioso character who wears his coat off-the-shoulder in Canon. But for some reason, in BEAST, he doesn't wear a coat at all... Strange, right?

I am, of course, talking about Chuuya. And the thing about Chuuya is that defining the representative idea of his coat is much more difficult than it was with Dazai, purely because there was so much going on at the time he joined the Mafia. He was betrayed by his closest family, while simultaneously feeling like he betrayed them. He had no choice but to accept Dazai's offer, which was actually Mori's offer. He'd been backed into this corner by Dazai, but also by the Sheep, and he'd lost everything, but was being offered all the things he used to pine after: answers, protection, relative safety. Maybe even family, something he could devote himself to- but all this lay in the hands of the organisation he'd promised to eradicate. He was going through it, as the poets say.

Personally, if I were to assign his coat with a specific ideal/persona, it would be this: acceptance of the Mafia, and hatred towards Dazai. Just like Dazai, wearing his coat off-the-shoulder indicates that he doesn't fully prescribe to their ideals... but in this instance, it also means that he doesn't truly hate Dazai like he claims.

I know, fork in the kitchen. But I also want to point out something that helps drive this perspective home for me: whenever they fight together, as Soukoku, Chuuya takes his coat off. He has a lot of fighting quirks, actually- he always keeps his hands in his pockets (something that is echoed by Dazai ohmygod I cry whenever I think about it), takes his hat off for Corruption (this is discussed in-depth in Storm Bringer), takes off his gloves when he wants to ramp up Tainted Sorrow. But, just like the coat, this only happens whenever Dazai is around. Chuuya literally and figuratively bares himself to Dazai, which can be read as something necessary for him to be saved by No Longer Human, yes, but it would be remis of anyone to ignore the fact of their trust in one another.

There's one more reason that I think these two ideals are so intertwined: it is, you guessed it, Beast!

The interesting thing is that here, where you'd almost expect him to wear something similar, Chuuya simply doesn't have a coat at all. Why is that?

If we follow the same logic that we did for Dazai, we can assume immediately that Chuuya doesn't want to hide behind a facade here. He has no facade to consider hiding behind. He's honest about his work with the PM, and open about his complex feelings towards Dazai- mostly his hatred, though that manifests purely because he's frustrated; a part of him knows Dazai can be doing better, or working differently, but he can't understand why. Or maybe he does understand why, and this frustrates him even more.

It's extremely complicated, and I feel like the way I've said things makes no sense, but I hope it's at least got you thinking. What does this truly mean for Chuuya? What does it mean for Atsushi, who doesn't wear a coat in canon, but does in Beast?

(I already have a post delving into Atsushi's character design, which I think is genuinely one of the coolest things ever!! I don't discuss Beast in it, but it's a great starting point if you're interested <3)

I feel like I've rambled on too much, but I'm fighting brain fog rn so this is as coherent as it gets. I hope this has helped you learn something, or made you interested in delving deeper into costume design in BSD as a whole. I kiss you mwah!!!

[anxiousdreamcore]

May I humbly asks for your interpretation/opinion/view of the Spider & Quaritch as well as the Spider & Sullies relationships/dynamics ?

Sure! I’ve complained about how my opinion of the characters changed throughout the year of being engaged in the fandom so I might as well share! 🤭

Spider: An audacious, frat-boy-ish teen who stinks of dirt, sweat and will eat a live bug to gross you out. Kiri said that he bites and she was 100% honest because this kid will fling his mask off and tear into your throat if you mess with his baby siblings 😤 at the same time, he’s more than capable of being responsible and gentle, especially when it comes to Pandora, its wildlife and cultures, all of which are clearly very important to him. A menace with a heart of gold and an iron fucking will, untameable. Unbreakable. No authority scares him.

Quaritch: A man so damaged he can’t be repaired. He’s seen too many horrors, killed too many people, watched too many comrades die, has been infected with too much poison. It runs in his veins and destroys everything he touches…which is precisely why he is only likeable as a father. He has never been one before and that part of him is completely new, not yet damaged. The only part of him not yet tainted by the rotten creature that is the rest of him. A mangy, old army dog that will burn Pandora to the ground if its chain is broken, but will lie down and wag its tail for his child, and only him.

Oh, and he’s mentally ill too, at least to some extent, canonically. It’s not to say that his mental illness makes him a bad guy. No. It’s the lack of care he puts into coping with it that contributes to the dumpster fire that is Miles Quaritch. My personal headcannon is that he needs mood-stabilisers yet regularly skips them.

Spider & Quaritch dynamic: Two outcasts who bond over being isolated by their respective groups. Also, Lima and Stockholm syndrome duo! Quaritch gets an instant liking to Spider that soon grows into fatherly love, as Spider brings out the best in him; his most pure, childish and kind traits. Does the rest of him, the rotten, the poisoned, hate it? Oh, absolutely. But he can’t, won’t stop the wild-child from worming his way deep into his decaying heart. Spider meanwhile battles his own platonic feelings and holds onto his resentment as much as he can. He wants to love Miles but he doesn’t. He loves him but he wishes him an agonising death. He wants to be hugged by him and sink a blade into his chest. He wants Miles to prove him that not all grown ups are rotten and he can still be loved. He wants Miles to love him.

Spider & Sully siblings dynamic: “A family disappointment and local cool stoner to his siblings, who are more than happy to take after him because they think his utter freedom and lack of care for authority is cool” kinda vibe. Will play fight with his siblings and bite their noses before kissing them better and shoving them away. Calls Tuk a little gremlin affectionately. Brings Lo’ak back down to Pandora when he spirals into his insecurities or gets too bold and self-sacrificial. Is platonic soulmates with Kiri and feels a profound connection to her, as she does to him. Resents Neteyam for abandoning their little group to become a "respectable warrior". Wants him back. Wishes things could be like when they were kids.

Spider & Neytiri dynamic: She she sees him as a pesky, dangerous demon child that…that didn’t do anything but stay loyal, through all the torture and horrors. A lot of guilt is present between them after the final battle, and they will definitely have a horrible, explosive argument about it sooner or later, but for now they are content at silently sharing space, at time quipping and taking light jabs at each other, because that is their cycle. Playfulness, fear, resentment, until it all explodes and they scream at each other, then the cycle repeats, fuelled by guilt. Is there a chance to stop it? Will they ever be okay?

Spider & Jake dynamic: Hero worship turned disappointment. Spider idolised him for his status and incredible feats as a child but as he grew, and Jake consistently kept him at an arms length without establishing clear boundaries, the constant pining to have him as a father became a never-ending, aching pain in Socorro’s chest. Jake gave him an empty hope that they might one day be a family, without ever clarifying that it’ll never be true, confusing the boy until he was proved not once, not twice, but thrice, that he isn’t needed, isn’t missed, or loved by Jake. He’s a stray animal, and that is all he’ll ever be to him. He knows better now than to wish for something that can never be…doesn’t even want to. Quaritch might be a horrific monster, but at least he genuinely loves him. He doesn’t need Jake’s pathetic scraps of affection anymore. He doesn’t need him anymore.

•

[hyuga-eyes]

NaruSasu is not a bad ship, the problem is that Naruto fandom decided to make it as if it was religion. If you support any other ship with Naruto and Sasuke you are immediatly attacked, and the most shocking thing is that some people truly believed that Naruto and Sasuke would be together in the end. As if NaruSasu would be romantically canon. I mean, really? Did you really think it would happen? Really? In our homophobic 2000s world?

I'm not saying that if it was canon that it would be a bad thing, actually, I think it would be amazing cause they do have chemestry even though I don't ship it. What I'm saying is that we should have some common sense here. It would never happen.

The fact that Sakura and Hinata are getting so much hate just prove it. Even Karin gets hate sometimes. People are completely frustrated that Naruto and Sasuke are not fucking each other canonly. They are attacking female characters for nothing. Really, all your arguments are just stupid and I'm tired of people distorting the main plot of the manga. I'm tired of people pretending that Naruto and Hinata didn't have their moments together when they do have. If you don't like it then that's okay, it's your problem, but they do have important developments together whether you like it or not.

I agree that Sakura and Sasuke together has some problems the same way as NaruSasu, and it is one of the reasons of why I don't ship it because I think Sasuke is extremely toxic. But I'm really tired of people pretending that Sakura got pregnant with her finger as if Sasuke has nothing to do with it. People keep saying they are stuck in unhappy marriages, and that Naruto and Sasuke were forced to marry them like, really, what prove do you have about it? Because if no one sends me manga panels made by Kimishomoto himself showing Sakura and Hinata pointing knives at Sasuke and Naruto forcing them to get married, then I'm not gonna believe you.

And don't start with that shitty argument about Neji's death and Naruto feeling forced into something, there's no way to prove anything through this except that Neji was an important person for both of them. Anything else is just your distorted perception.

I'm also thinking about making a long post analyzing Sasuke character explaining that he does have difficulty showing love because of the traumas he suffered and how this reflects on his relationship with Sakura and their daughter. After all, you can't kick a dog and expect it not to bite anyone. But only if I'm in a good mood to do it.

[kaizenproductions]

Natsu does NOT have any previous experience with romantic love

This is the (better) Tumblr version of my post from Twitter. Given the format of this website, I'll add some details to what's already written.

Before starting with this, I want to clarify that the motivation to write this post has little to do with nalu itself (it will be mentioned to highlight a point though). Having previous romantic partners DOESN'T really make any ship invalid. You'll find the actual reason behind this essay under the cut below.

This is about how Natsu, as a character, is never presented or seen by others as someone who has experience with love and such idea is never hinted or implied anywhere in the canon material. This lack of experience explains why Lucy thinks he has no interest in it.

As we will see later, Lucy isn't the only one who thinks like this... Let's get started.

Year 2024. Why writing all this? Some weeks ago I was involved in a discussion about whether Natsu was being OOC during a filler (non canon) scene of the anime where he snaps at Lucy in a way he never does with any of his friends in canon material. The discussion led to this...

I didn't want to assume that this person was taking Lisanna as some kind of first love. At the end it turned out that was exactly what was happening. The proof? The most platonic reunion ever... with Happy reacting the same way as Natsu and comedy being included. It is important to highlight that Mashima never makes two people between whom there have been romantic feelings reunite like this, with comedy references in between that downplays the seriousness of the moment to some extent. While this post is about Natsu and his feelings, I could also mention Lisanna's reaction to this, something that proves that there wasn't even a one sided love: after noticing this Natsu is the same one from her real dimension, she doesn't start crying because of him but because of her siblings.

Let's ignore the part where this dude started calling me and some other users "retards" because that speaks volumes for itself about his lack of real arguments. After all, he has been fighting for at least 4 years with teens over power scaling, a topic he may seem to be knowledgeable about but actually isn't so much, plus he has been banned from at least one Discord server because of his r4pe threats. It seems this individual was so obsessed with that specific thing that he said Zeref did it to Mavis and that's how August was made... That also speaks volumes about his media literacy and the fact that even if it's true that he did read the manga so many times as he claimed during this discussion, he has serious problems with reading as a normal person. When it comes to the topic of this post, the problem is that he has some influence within the fandom, at least on Twitter, so whatever he says is something that many of his followers will start repeating.

What does Mashima do when Lisanna finally comes back to her original home and she gets a proper reunion with everyone?

After the initial shock from seeing Edo Lisanna in Earthland and the big reveal, this is how Natsu reacts.

This isn't a reunion that suggests that Lisanna is special compared to everyone else in the guild, and particulary to those who grew around Natsu. Also, we can't say Mashima just doesn't know how to write such scene properly... because he's written it at least once (in Rave).

The emotion you can feel in this scene, the way ONLY both lovers are on the spotlight and the rest of their friends are in the background until the end... Well, the difference is so obvious that it's ridiculous to say more. Given how well Mashima handles the emotional dimension of his characters in his mangas, the possibility that he didn't know how to depict two lovers who got separated from each for some time due to circumstances beyond their control is off the table.

Also, notice how the end of the Edolas arc depicts this.

The difference with her reunion with Natsu and the others is so obvious that there's no need to say more.

We can also discard Lisanna as a former love interest because there's no akwardness between them once she's back to the guild. They can be seen playing together and briefly interacting from time to time, so it's not like they're avoiding each other.

Is it implied somewhere that they had something beyond friendship? Not in any kind of canon material. Every time Lisanna is mentioned in regards to Natsu she's presented as a close childhood friend. We have, for example, her profile from one of the first chapters where she's back home and the information of the official magazine that was released 10 years ago.

But what if they simply stopped loving each other due to being separated, as a fellow nalu shipper told me on Discord? Making characters fall out of love is something that Mashima also references (see Macao pic a bit below). It also goes against what we saw regarding Erza and Jellal, who still had romantic feelings for each other despite their antagonistic positions for many years, or against the whole Zeref and Mavis thing. In other Mashima mangas we have more couples like this. Elsie and Justice still loved each other despite being sworn enemies, and Let still loved Julia (and vice versa) when he discovered she was alive, a kinda similar scenario to Natsu and Lisanna if they had been lovers. Given that Natsu and Lisanna weren't even enemies to each other at any point and they were only separated for two years, we can't say they had something canonically and they simply got over it with no actual reference to it.

There was a very good moment to reference past feelings in 100YQ: when Touka includes Lisanna in the group of women "around Natsu".

Instead of offering us a comment like "it's not like that anymore", Lisanna just says something that implies they're not that close. After all, Natsu is hanging out with his team most of the time since it was established.

What's the reason this fandom has been so many years discussing about this friendship? Because the first anime adaptation goes beyond that friendship and the manga omake where both of them take care of Happy's egg, something Lisanna decides to help with because she loves animals and she felt Natsu wouldn't do it properly. The first season includes several fillers that pave the way for a love triangle, presenting Lisanna as a girl who is VERY interested in marrying Natsu when they're adults. In addition, Happy is presented as their son, something that totally goes against the source material. Even if Natsu is the one who saw Happy be born and was living with him since then, Happy is never considered as his son and is always called a nakama/companion/friend.

This long thread has everything that A-1 and Satelight added in regards to Natsu and Lisanna. As we can see in the info provided in one of the first tweets, Mashima let them "edit" the story the way they wanted to and it's mentioned explicitely by both him and Ishihara (the director) that Ishihara is responsible for those additions, not Mashima. We also can't say the additions were something Mashima asked for because he couldn't include everything he wanted in his manga for some reason. This is supported by the fact that Lisanna is never presented in the manga as any kind of romantic interest after she comes back.

There's also this tweet from 2012 where Mashima replied to someone asking him whether he was involved in the story of the anime. His answer is no.

It's also important to say that these fillers aren't canon: they're not referenced in the source material (the starry key arc was, even if Mashima wasn't involved in the writing), they're not referenced in the anime itself after Lisanna comes back and they have no impact in the events of the story during and after Edolas.

Currently, thanks to Mashima's Twitter Spaces, we know two things: he revived Lisanna because some people in the anime staff liked her (Ishihara is one of them for sure), which explains why she's not very relevant and is always tied to her siblings, and he once considered to include a love triangle between Natsu, Lucy and Lisanna after Edolas, but he liked Natsu and Lucy's dynamic by then enough to not introduce such storyline. He also said Lisanna was "だめ" in regards to that triangle that never came to be, implying that she would have been the one that doesn't get the boy in that scenario.

So is Lisanna our supposed former love interest? As far as the canon material goes, no. Was she close to Natsu? Yes. Is she dear to him? Yes, just like everyone in his family, the guild, is (I can't believe I'm writing this in fking 2024). Now, what if there was someone else? The assumption that characters may have dated another (unnamed) character offscreen isn't totally crazy. After all we saw how Juvia dated Bora, even if it was a narrative tool to show that not even dates would make Juvia stop being depressed. However, we can't say there was someone else as more than a headcanon unless it's implied or mentioned somewhere explicitely. We know Macao was married but got divorced thanks to the official magazine, for example.

When it comes to Natsu, nothing is ever mentioned.

100YQ, the official FT sequel, has several pannels that go against the whole idea of Natsu being experienced with romantic love. As I mentioned at the beginning, even others from the guild, and especifically Macao in this pannel, who knows Natsu since he was a kid, have a hard time believing he's interested in love.

This part of the story includes a very interesting pannel that also debunks the whole idea that Natsu felt more than frienship for Lisanna before she was transported to Edolas.

Why would Lisanna's brother react like this over such comment if Natsu and his sister had romantic feelings in the past? Easy: because those feelings never existed.

Even Lisanna is a bit surprised when Touka expresses her interest in him.

Previous romantic experience would also mean that Natsu's relationship with Lucy would be more advanced than it is as of now, not to mention this recent scene.

Natsu is still quite dense with romance, even when it doesn't involve him, and while he talks about his and Lucy's kids they still have a long way to go due to his total inexperience in this area as of now. Someone with past love experiences wouldn't be like this. I could say more about this but this isn't the post for it so...

Conclussion: the first season of the anime did a lot of damage that resulted in many years of discussions, fights, misogyny towards both Lucy and Lisanna. There was no childhood or teen love, no jealousy from Lisanna when she saw how close Natsu and Lucy were as a team and nothing suggests that Lisanna was more than a friend in canon material. Claiming the opposite at this point of the story is useless.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I still don't know what to make of this little story beat. I KNOW the game isn't being written for me, personally. I Know that despite saying otherwise, Bounding Frog is not the Canonical Warrior Of Light. I understand that things just kinda happen based on themes and characters and stuff and things had been established in some way with Erenville having toad-based associations, having previously claimed to be an expert.

On the other hand, the first zone I chose to go to, the very first thing we did, was split up to go investigate a body of water and draw some conclusions like an amateur ecologist on what may be afflicting it. And there was a cute little creature named Lethargic Frog, which is about as "hey this is symbolically important to you, Bounding Frog, someone who takes their whole name inspiration from the admirable leaping power of a healthy frog based on their childhood experiences catching frogs, just as the noble Vipers named themselves after the snakes they learned from" as can be.

This frog was placed here for Frog to see and based on her entire personality, to notice and care about and understand how it was not feeling good.

Also, the writer of this quest wanted Bounding Frog personally to know this was her chance to prove to Erenville that she did know her frogs, and was perfectly capable of talking to him frog expert to frog expert. I can't overstate how thrilled she was that she had this opportunity. She was going to show him that she was just as competent! She could impress him, she could prove she was worth talking about frogs to... Yep.

Aaand then after all this careful study of the Lethargic Frog, she bounces back to the group, and this happens...

She starts to explain about the water quality and fields, saving her deepest insight for last, you know, the other thing the quest made sure we would see and interact with so even if I allow for a WoL to exist who isn't a Frog Expert like mine (who this quest was personally tailored to, again) you might reasonably expect that after Krile has agreed with you about the first point, you MIGHT KEEP SPEAKING ON THE SUBJECT OF YOUR OBSERVATIONS.

Nah, before Frog can open her mouth again, Erenville cuts in to announce that the frogs are kinda sleepy, while she was politely waiting her turn to speak. All she can do is stoically nod and agree everyone noticed the same things she did (shh Alisaie has something funny to say on the subject before you return to the group to chat as well), and that's that, we're rushing off to the next thing and the opportunity has fizzled out and there's no chance to impress because Erenville stole it from her...

How could they have known we need to start this adventure with a huge knock to Frog's ego when it comes to Erenville, and a reminder of why they've been snarking at each other for months. And he's far more concerned with Wuk Lamat presenting a semi-competent front and feeling chafed by travelling with other people to even notice he was, once again, catastrophically rude on the subject of frogs, to Frog.

All her attempts to befriend him and make him laugh and generally have him notice her for the last few months, and she's riiiight back at step one, fuming about his existence and sulking about how he won't let her have the one thing she most prides herself on, because he's too busy being some sort of frog snob himself.

So, yeah, I think the writer of this quest knew that Frog was the main character and also that Erenville is her nemesis :)

[eisforeidolon]

MISHA IS SUPERNATURAL BIGGEST MISTAKE.

CASTIEL COULD HAVE BEEN AN INTERESTING CHARACTER, IF HE HAD BEEN PLAYED BY A TALENTED AND PROFESSIONAL ACTOR. ESPECIALLY PROFESSIONAL AND SERIOUS.

WE DON'T DESERVE MISHA'S LIES AND QUEERBAITING.

BUT I THINK THAT MISHA ONLY TALENTS ARE LYING TO PEOPLE AND QUEERBAITING HIS DESTIEL FANS FOR MONEY. THIS ARE THE ONLY THINGS HE KNOWS HOW TO DO.

DESTIEL ISN'T CANON. JENSEN SAID THAT SO MANY TIMES.

HE EVEN SAID THAT WHEN HE WAS ASKED ABOUT "THE CONFESSION 'S RESOLUTION".

HE SAID THAT THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE RESOLVED. BECAUSE EVEN IF THE "CONFESSION " WAS ROMANTIC, FOR DEAN NOTHING WOULD CHANGE.

DEAN ISN'T IN LOVE WITH CASTIEL. HE ADDRESSES CASTIEL AS DEAN 'S FRIEND AND ONE OF THE PEOPLE CLOSEST TO HIM. BUT THAT'S IT.

JENSEN NEVER ADDRESSES CASTIEL AS DEAN'S POTENTIAL LOVE INTEREST.

JENSEN (AND JARED) SAID MANY TIMES THAT SUPERNATURAL IS ABOUT SAM AND DEAN AND THEIR DEEP BOND AND UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

15X20 IS THE PROOF OF THAT LOVE. WINCEST IS MORE CANON THAN DESTIEL WILL EVER BE.

I'M TALKING ABOUT PLATONIC LOVE OF COURSE.

I SHIP WINCEST BUT UNLIKE THE HELLERS I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT IS CANON AND WHAT IS JUST A FANTASY.

15x20 SHOWS TO THE VIEWER THE ESSENCE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SAM AND DEAN.

SPOILER FOR 15X20.

SPOILER FOR 15X20

SPOLER FOR 15X20

DEAN DIES, BUT EVEN IN HIS LAST MOMENTS HE COMMITS HIMSELF TO ONLY LOVE SAM. HE SAYS HE LOVES HIM AND THAT IT'S ALWAYS BEEN THEM TOGETHER AGAINST THE WORLD.

" IT'ALWAYS BEEN YOU... AND ME". THAT'S WHAT DEAN SAYS.

THE PAUSE IN THAT PHRASE, THE WAY THEY EMBRACE, THE FOREHEAD TOUCH. EVERYTHING IN THE SCENE IS POINTING TO WHO IS WATCHING THAT DEAN GREATEST LOVE IS SAM.

THIS IS A CONFESSION. PLATONIC AND SO BEAUTIFUL. BETTER THAN ANY OTHER "ROMANTIC" CONFESSION THAT I EVER SEEN OR I EVER HEARD.

END SPOILER FOR 15X20.

OF COUSE DEAN IS ALSO SAM GREATEST LOVE, BUT I WANTED TO GIVE MY ATTENTION TO DEAN 'S BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS SAM VS DEAN BEHAVIOUR TOWARD CASTIEL IN THEIR LAST SCENE TOGETHER. THERE IS NO COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO.

WE ALL KNOW THAT SUPERNATURAL WAS ALWAYS ABOUT SAM AND DEAN AND THAT A LOVE STORY CAN BE ABOUT TWO BROTHER WHO SAVED EACH OTHER AND FOUGHT MONSTERS, EVIL CREATURES, DEMONS, ANGELS, THE DEVIL AND GOD FOR STAYING WITH EACH OTHER.

OF COURSE WE CANNOT SAY SAM AND DEAN WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT JARED AND JENSEN. THEIR ACTING, THEIR CHEMISTRY INSIDE THE SHOW AND OUTSIDE TOO, THEIR KINDNESS, IS WHAT MAKES SUPERNATURAL A SHOW THAT CHANGED MY LIFE.

I ALWAYS GET EMOTIONAL ABOUT THIS SHOW. THAT'S WHY I CAN'T STAND PEOPLE LIKE MISHA WHO ALWAYS SAYS SHIT ABOUT THE SHOW AND THE ACTORS ( JARED AND JENSEN)

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO MY RANT, SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH, IT ISN'T MY FIRST LANGUAGE, AND I HOPE THAT I DIDN'T ANNOY YOU OR BOTHERED YOU.

MAY LOVE AND KINDNESS ALWAYS FIND YOU.

I have to agree. Also, your English is fine and I definitely understand the need to rant about all this nonsense sometimes, that's why I've got this blog! <3

I do actually feel like Misha was a perfectly serviceable actor way back at the beginning. I even get why they decided to keep him around when he proved popular with the fandom. It was indeed proven a mistake in so, so many ways as time went on, though.

Yeah, first and most egregious is the kind of person Misha turned out to be - or at least turned into after so many years of fans blowing smoke up his ass. A bitter, entitled, ungrateful, lazy backstabber who is perfectly comfortable telling blatantly obvious and contradictory self-serving lies and nonsense. Whether that's about the ship or his relative importance to the show directly, whether that's skeevy sexual comments about Jensen/Dean, whether that's trying to paint Jared as some kind of evil bully that abused him. He keeps proving again and again there is no bar he won't limbo under.

Next is I think his performance on the show and what his continued presence on the show resulted in plot-wise from the writers. He was fine at first when he was just playing a non-human mysterious figure that only appeared now and then and had a major role in the whole structure of the apocalypse. He even had a pretty good arc leading up to the Leviathans. The problem was they kept him around as a "fan favorite" after that when they really didn't have anything for him to do but eat up screen time to give J2 time off. Would we have really gotten so much bad, circular angel politics if there wasn't a need to give Castiel something to do to keep Misha employed? I personally doubt it. Even worse than that, though? As time went on, Misha seemed to recognize that his only relevance was baiting shippers and wasting time and leaned into turning Castiel into the type of character he gets written as in so much bad D/C fanfic - a pathetic mostly human woobie who is completely useless for anything but the projection of bizarre teen romance fantasies that don't make any damn sense. Which culminated in that bizarre ambiguous queerbait he and Bobo the Clown cooked up for Castiel's exit. Which doesn't even touch his later seasons' presumable attempts at acting where his choices for Lucifer!Castiel & AU!Castiel & Empty!Castiel were all ... entirely made up of bad accents and gurning. It wasn't about any of those character's motivations or places in the narrative, it was about the laziest possible attempt to differentiate them from his normal character. Even in latter season's SPN, which IMNSHO had so, so many issues dragging things down, Misha's lack of interest in anything but the size of his paychecks and con earnings played into some of the worst.

Which brings us to D/C and the whole supposedly canon thing. Canon is literally what happened. D/C didn't happen, it's that simple. Castiel rambled some ambiguous bullshit about love and got sucked into the Empty while Dean looked bewildered and sad at him from several feet away. Misha can make up as many stories about what the character was totally thinking and how he was totally coming back in the finale and queerbaiting about what will totes happen in a revival, but not a word of it actually makes what Castiel said "I'm IN love with you". Nor does it magically manifest a reciprocation from Dean. What doesn't happen on screen but actors or TPTB say about the canon is often called Word of God. Which yes, Misha's does not outweigh everything Jensen and Jared and various showrunners have clearly said. Jensen might have gotten less confrontational about shooting it down over the years, but the underlying message hasn't changed. Meanwhile, not only do the details of Misha's stories constantly change, but the general message of his claims has flip flopped so many times. The show was about the brothers, no actually the brothers and the angel! He joked about wincest, no actually he'd never heard of it! He didn't want to say what that scene meant, no actually feel free to attack anyone who says it wasn't a homosexual declaration of love! There's more, but Misha's not worth the effort of looking them up.

As you say, at the end of the day, anyone watching the totality of the show and seeing how it ended? It's very obvious the center of the story was a platonic love story. A complicated one, granted, but Sam and Dean so many times made it very clear that it was them ... and everyone else. Except in the same way that acknowledging that doesn't serve the hellers agenda in demanding a continuation must center their ship so they can finally have visuals to go with their fanfic, acknowledging that doesn't serve Misha's agenda of fleecing them out of money for telling them it will happen for as long as he can get away with it.

[eepop-stuffs]

Edit: made this when i was an uniformed CHILD. The youtube channel isn't reliable💀

Tobe is 14. Garu is 12. Which means if it was anyone, it would HAVE to be his father.

Oh my god. I'm gonna rant. OK. So previously I was ranting about this to some people on discord (I sent the same rant to three different servers, it's your guys' turn)

So basically, in one of the various licensed Pucca games, there's a cutscene that reveals that Tobe killed Garu's father while Garu watched. However, this makes absolutely no sense given their canon ages and overall dynamic.

Below is the big rant, prepare for me to speak absolute nonsense.

So according to the Pucca YouTube channel, Tobe is 16 and Garu is 12.

In the cutscene, the VERY oldest Garu could be is about 6 or 7. Which would make Tobe about 10. I personally don't believe that bro would be doing allat at 10 years old given the fact he's regularly represented as utterly useless on his own (at least compared to Pucca and Garu combined, which is admittedly like comparing a housecat to a tiger). Assuming they're a little older than my prediction, placing the cutscene a little bit before the show, that would make it a little more plausable with Tobe being in his earlier teens (but honestly not by much).

But considering the Pucca lore is so generally fucked up due to the amount of retcons (Pucca being listed as 10 before being changed to 11 later on being a good example), let's assume that Tobe is at least a little bit younger than Garu's dad and Garu is a small child. Everything makes sense considering the timeline now, but that would leave their dynamic.

Their overall dynamic is the key reason this cutscene makes no fucking sense whatsoever and I personally choose to ignore it.

So, Tobe and Garu are more like frenemies than anything. For one, the only real reason that Garu seems to engage with Tobe's very non-specific "vengance" is his own ego. (In season one and two of the show, at least) it's evident that Garu fights Tobe half because of his friends and family and half out of spite.

Like, Garu just can't let him win. In the episode The Sooga Showdown (season 1 episode 19) where they all have to race around Sooga with one of Master Soo's ladies, we're given a good example of how much their rivalry is just one big dick measuring contest.

Secondly, that nonspecific "vengance" Tobe wants seems more like Tobe was wronged. Which could just be his goofy ass POV of how things went, but that's sort of reaching given all the information we have.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY;

In addition to all this, they are really just rivals. Like, when they aren't blinded by their little rivalry, they're shown to actually like each other's company. They don't seem to mind each other when they're forced to not be physically violent. If it wasn't for their egos, they'd probably be friends, probably have some sort of brotherly friendship. But they're both just little dillholes who can't take someone being better than them.

It's also important to note their rivalri is also toned down in season 3 for the point where Garu just seems to want to protect his friends and family, and Tobe just wants to beat his ass for no reason and make him miserable. There's not really any given reason for either of their behaviors because season 3 doesn't have much lore aside from the whole thing where Dandy is delulu about the Goh-Rong's """secret to martial arts""" and the stupid ass Dong King shit.

TL;DR

Tobe didn't kill Garu's dad, if he did their relationship would be much more volatile.

If anyone would like to prove me wrong, I would love to have such a conversation. I generally don't know ALL of the lore and don't trust the wiki for shit, so yeah.

I would also like to add that the yt channel can't really be trusted with any lore video posted within the past 4 or 5 months as of July 2024 since that channel is legitimately crumbling into dust. Some of the facts they give are a little cute, but for the bigger stuff I'd take it with a grain of salt unless it was stated somewhere before (like THIS video)

I'm so done with this channel istg🌚

Like gurl....gurl...

[boykingscourt]

Ooh! Who is who in your Lost Boys au & what are the best protectiveness parts?

ok so lost boys au that lives in my brain. this might be long for no reason so I apologize for that. two things to keep in mind:

idk if you've seen the lost boys before, but don't try to think of the characters as a 1:1 ratio, not in their relationships to each other nor their personalities. some of this will make more sense given their relationships in the movie and some of it will not

vampires-only universe. and the winchesters are just normal people with no prior knowledge of them

so most importantly dean is michael (older brother who falls in with the vampire gang and is unknowingly turned) and sam is... well sam! it makes almost too much sense given michael also calls his little brother sammy

dean is early 20s and sam is late teens

in this, john is lucy. lucy is technically divorced in the movie, but we can just keep it canon and have john be a widower (sorry, mary). certainly a version where mary is alive and john is dead can exist, but it's not this one

okay so this next part is kind of embarrassing. I know the lost boys is about well the lost boys, the gang of four vampire boys, but I really only have the most important member planned out.

benny is david, the leader. it makes sense given his relationship with dean in canon. can be homoerotic if you prefer. I can't find any photos of ty olsson around the age I'd want him to be here, but you can imagine him as dean's age (at least at the moment he was turned)

cassie robinson is star, who in the movie is david's (unwilling) girlfriend and is herself a fledgling vampire. if you want dean and cassie to be together the way michael and star were, then that's fine too! cassie is gorgeous; star is gorgeous, and both are brave. makes sense to me

btw I don't care about that little kid who hangs around star in the movie, so we're not gonna care about him here

my favorite role to fill was the frog brothers, two teens who work at a comic book store, befriend (movie) sam, and try to warn him about the existence of vampires. making them charlie and garth seemed like a no-brainer. they can still call themselves the frog brothers (even though charlie called the men of letters' name sexist, being a frog brother is just much cooler and I think she'd like it). they don't have to be literal siblings. sam, charlie, and garth will work to cure dean of his vampirism by attempting to locate and kill the head vampire

oh the grandpa is going to be bobby, a family friend john and the boys move in with for the time being. I don't think this needs further explanation

okay so now max, the head vampire

I want him to be rowena. now HEAR ME OUT

I love rowena and of course I don't see her as a villain by the end of spn but damn it let me have fun!! let her seduce john with the motive of turning him and his boys into vampires so they can all be one big happy vampire family. let sam, charlie, and garth try to prove she's a vampire in front of john and have that hilarious and iconic dinner scene from the movie ensue

because vampire mother is much cooler than a dorky vampire dad, yeah?

so now the best instances of michael protecting sam in the movie that I can then use for dean and sam? while it's true michael is not as outwardly protective of (movie) sam as dean is of (spn) sam, it is clear he cares for sam a lot and is not letting any vampire near him (including himself)

there's another iconic scene where sam is in the bathtub and michael nearly feeds on him, only to be mauled by the family dog lmao. so dean can indeed nearly feed on sam and get mauled by the family dog, sam's dog, bones in this case!

bones is a very good boy

when the vampires make their final attack on the winchester brothers, cassie, and the frog brothers, (who are all at bobby's house while both bobby and john are away) bones will run out into the yard, leaving sam to run after bones and dean to run after sam, shouting at him the entire time. bones will be fine!

there was also a part earlier in the movie where sam and the frog brothers sneak into the vampires' lair to kill them. this is where that gifset came from. michael (dean) is weak from the sunlight and nowhere near as powerful as david (benny) and his gang, warning sam (sam lol) that he can't protect him down there, to which sam replies that he has to protect dean this time

if you are still having a hard time seeing the vision, please imagine these two scenes as sam, dean, john, and rowena and then sam, dean, and cassie, respectively

and there you have it! lost boys au that lives in my head. ending and in fact the majority of the plot is up to you

if you know anything about the movie and want more specifics, and if I've thought of those specifics, ask away again!