#does anybody else ever think about how we literally have no idea how some of these guys sounded

[goodluckbabeheffron]

[trainsinanime]

Is there a specific scientific term for what I'll call "harm construction", meaning "thinking of ways that something harms someone in order to condemn it"? There must be, right? I see it all the time and it's not new. Let me give some examples in random order.

One of the first cases where I really remember it was at least a decade ago, an online article by a British newspaper, about how an online store had put a pole dancing pole in their toys section. A bit of an embarrassing mistake but nothing more.

However, that article provided several quotes from a British couple who said they were very worried, because their kid could have seen that. It seems pretty clear that their kid did not, in fact, actually see it, but the newspaper treated their concern as if it was a genuine thing to worry about. It was utterly ridiculous.

A more recent example is a call-out ask I received a few months ago and, of course, immediately deleted, but it's still been living rent-free in my head since then, because it was so horribly bad. I'll not repeat the exact wording, but they were annoyed that their victim blog (which I don't follow and haven't for years, if ever, and they don't follow me) was annoying and sometimes said mean things. They very ineptly tried to explain that this might have been part of the reasons why someone else, completely unrelated, sent out hate messages to yet another person. That was the harm that was so big that it supposedly justified a targeted harassment campaign. (If you're the person who wrote that call-out ask, please rethink your life. You were only increasing the hate in the world, not making anything better. I suspect the sender wasn't anyone who actually follows me, but just in case).

The biggest and most prominent example of harm construction right now is of course all about trans people, bathrooms and school sports. Conservatives and TERFs alike need a reason to oppose the existence of trans people beyond "I personally find them weird", because saying that out loud gets them correctly branded as bigots. How do you turn "let's be really mean to a marginalised group" into a progressive cause? By saying that the existence of this group causes harm. The problem with that is that trans people existing does not actually cause any harm, it's literally fine.

So in an effort to construct harm after all, they have searched far and wide for something that trans people could even theoretically damage, and the only things they managed to come up with are "there might be someone with unexpected genitals behind that bathroom stall door" and "the sanctity of gender-segregated sports". If it weren't for their cultural and political power then it would almost be funny how little potential harm they managed to find and how much they have to amplify it. They're just another couple in the newspaper worried that their kid might potentially see a website.

If you look for it, harm construction is everywhere, because we all sort of agree on a surface level that dividing people into "normal, acceptable" and "weird, must be punished" isn't nice, but the instinct to punish people for being "weird" is still alive and well and many people refuse to question it.

At a completely different end, anytime someone uses the word "normalisation" about a fanfic on Ao3, that's another example. We all know making blorbos do weird things doesn't actually hurt anybody (assuming proper tagging and so on), but we still want to punish people who do it wrong. So we construct harm, by arguing that seeing something on Ao3 might "normalise" the thing and make it more likely that someone will do it in real life.

These examples are very different, at very different ends of almost all scales of power and cultural influence and meaning, but the core idea is always the same. So, yeah. There must be a better term for this.

[adilynnyuri]

I hope this isnt trauma dumping or sm but i just needed to get this out and also get some advice and i think i really like ur advice. So i have been jn a relationship w my bf for 2 years now and i love him with my heart and soul and we plan to get married ( ee are still young but we see that as the futuregoal) so up tntil a few months back i used to just go to random s*x chat groups and something and would share my nudes nd just stuff like that and would also watch p*rn .. these are both things that me and my bf would a 100% consider cheating and if he did this to me i would kill myself out of sorrow. I absolutely hate myself and am disgusted at myself i was distracted for a little while with my exams but now they are over and now im crying all the time again just thinking about what i did to the boy i love the most. At the time i didnt think much of it and at first i would just talk w people but slowly i started sharing nudes and i did this a couple of times until i realized a few months back how wrong it is. I have no idea how i didnt realise how wrong this is?Up until this i was a really good person i dont think ive ever hurt anybody and i am very nice also but now idk i just hate myself and everything about me .Every day whenever i think aboyt this i cant help but cry and think there really isnt anything else i can do. Of course i have changed and wouldnt think of doing such a thing again but still the fact that i did it in the first place makes me want to die.

Ik its so selfish but i cant keeo thinking that he will do sm like this to me also and that ill get my karma. Does karma really even exist and how do i get myself to atop thinking this now i always suspect him of cheating and talking to other girls. Hes done sm similar to cheating to me but nothing on this level. What he did is nothing ckmpared to what i did.

And in the context of manifesting, should i manifest that none of this ever happened and for me to be a really nice person or shoukd i manifest that this completely gets erased from my memory or what?? This also messes up my manifestion so much i cant helo hut tell myself that i dont deserve good things as im a bad person . Please help. If youre not comfortable answering this then im sorry for wasting ur time

Hii love!

BABE CALM DOWN! I UNDERSTAND YOU!!

I totally understand you and your situation but I am here to help you and to remind you THAT YOU DIDN'T AND WILL NEVER DO ANY MISTAKES!

First of all, WHATEVER HAPPENS REMEMBER!

Don't EVER LOSE HOPE!! YOU ARE THE ONE WHO'S CREATING BOTH GOOD/BAD SITUATIONS THAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES!!

You are the MAIN CHARACTER! YOU NEVER FACE ANY PROBLEMS!!

And imo Idgaf to karma. I don't even consider it's real. BUT I WILL USE IT TO MY ADVANTAGE BY AFFIRMING THAT WHOEVER TRIES TO HARM ME IN ANY WAYS THEY WILL COMPLETELY FACE THE WORST.

I understand that you feel guilty about your activities! But! NEVER LET IT TAKE CONTROL OVER YOU! AND DON'T THINK YOU ARE BAD PERSON OR SOMETHING!!

You are limitless and you can do anything!

Until you don't hurt anyone in the name of manifestation, YOU ARE NEVER A BAD PERSON OR DOING ANY BAD!

⭐I will give you an example from my life!

My success in revising an embarrassing situation!

Once I did something very embarrassing like so embarrassing I just wanted to k!ll myself💀 but then I thought why should I do that to myself? I was born in this world to be happy and cherished 24/7! so I just affirmed robotically that NOTHING BAD HAPPENED AND I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT AND MY DP WHO WITNESSED THAT FORGETS IT TOO! (It was very tough for me too! The shit which I did kept popping up in my mind, BUT I DIDN'T GIVE MUCH ATTENTION TO THAT AND KEPT AFFIRMING!)

Well it just took me 1 day! One full day of robotic affirmations! LITERALLY THE VERY NEXT DAY EVEN I FORGOT AND MY DP TOTALLY FORGOT!! I WAS SO SO HAPPY!

Suggestion for you! 💕

I know it's so tough for you to affirm totally against of what happened, but trust me! JUST AFFIRM! YOU ARE SO POWERFUL LOVE! JUST REVISE SAYING,

"I never did anything bad and I am never guilty"

I AM BEING 1000000% SURE WHATEVER YOU WANT WILL HAPPEN. WHATEVER YOU WANTED TO CHANGE, WILL CHANGE! MORE LIKE, IT HAS ALREADY CHANGED !!

With lots of love,

ADILYNN YURI🤍🌷

[coraniaid]

Another AU idea, if you're not bored of these already! Spike, for whatever reason, doesn't come back to Sunnydale. (Maybe the flights are expensive or something.) What alternative bad guy could be an interesting new Scooby? (You know, like Dracula, or Glory, or Sunday, etc. etc.)

PS: Faith isn't a bad guy, so she doesn't count! :)

As I think I've mentioned on here before, if I ever get around to writing a sequel to my S3 AU fic Coexist (which, to be clear, is not very likely to happen), I would probably have Sunday be the vampire who gets captured and then chipped by the Initiative.

But just to be a different (and to keep my options open if I ever do end up writing such a sequel), let's go with somebody else: Willow's vampire alter ego from The Wish and Doppelgangland. There are, I guess, a couple of objections to this idea: namely that the last time we saw vamp!Willow she was (a) in another dimension and (b) dead. But these are easily dealt with, I think.

How I see this playing out is that everything in Season 4 happens much the same way it does in canon for the first few episodes (Spike either comes back for The Harsh Light Of Day but then not a second time, or we can replace him in that one episode with somebody like ... I don't know, Lyle Gorch?). Oz and Willow still break up, as in canon, and Oz leaves town after Wild At Heart. Then:

We go immediately into Something Blue [skipping The Initiative for now, and skipping Pangs forever because it's trash]. Willow still casts her will-be-done spell and things play out as much as like canon as they can. Obviously that's pretty different, with no Spike -- we probably need to rename the episode for a start -- but Willow can still make Giles blind and Xander a literal demon magnet. Let's say her suggestion for Buffy is a bit like Dawn's wish in Season 6; she's upset about Buffy going patrolling and not staying with her, so she unwittingly says something that makes Buffy both unwilling and unable to leave the dorms (but it takes them a while to figure out this is what's happened). The other key difference is that, while mourning the end of her relationship with Oz, Willow brings up her doppelganger from last season and says she had a point that "this world's no fun". "Why," Willow says, "She should come back from wherever we sent her so I can tell her she was right." Cue to vamp!Willow in the Wishverse, just about to be staked (again) ... only to vanish and reappear in Willow's dorm room. [With some work, you could play up the fact that human!Willow didn't realize Oz could hurt her so badly with the fact that vamp!Willow was about to be killed by him.] Before our Willow can say anything, her counterpart escapes into the night (and Buffy can't chase her, because of the wish Willow made about her, which is something that helps them figure out what's going on).

At the end of the episode, Willow breaks the spell as in canon. Everyone assumes that this sent vamp!Willow back to her original dimension again -- especially when she doesn't show up to cause any more trouble -- but it doesn't. Instead she gets captured by the Initiative, just like Spike did in canon. And a couple of episodes later, she breaks free again ... only to discover, just like Spike did, that she's been chipped and can't hurt anybody human. She probably finds out a little bit sooner that she can still hurt demons and vampires: in fact, given her MO in Doppelgangland she probably only finds out she can't drink from living humans after she's already taken control of the current vampire gang in Sunnydale and tried to attack the Bronze (again). When that doesn't work (and after her reputation has taken a bit of a blow as a result) she tries the Drusilla approach of being a power behind the throne for a bit (not hurting anyone directly but getting a proxy to lead the other vampires in attacking humans and bringing her fresh blood from already-dead victims), but unfortuntately for her credibility the only vampire she can find who's willing to take orders from a vampire who can't hurt people herself is Harmony (who I guess was dating Lyle Gorch in this AU but broke up with him pretty quickly). And between that frustration and the fact the Initiative quickly show up again looking for her, she doesn't have much choice but to throw herself on the Scooby Gang's mercy [which we know, from Season 3, that they're likely to show her, especially if she can give them any information about the Initiative].

Cue sitcom-worthy plots wherein human!Willow is going to class and (mostly) spending her nights in the dorm room she shares with Buffy and sometimes going home to visit her parents and trying to keep her new relationship with Tara hidden from her friends, while vamp!Willow is sometimes hiding out in a crypt somewhere and sometimes hanging out with Anya and sometimes pretending to be human!Willow in Buffy's dorm (to escape both the Initiative and Harmony). Harmony has at least three conversations with human!Willow which she walks away from thinking she's been talking to vamp!Willow (Harmony thinks vamp!Willow is the coolest person she's ever met but the feeling is not quite mutual). Riley is briefly convinced that human!Willow is the missing "Hostile 17" he and his men have been looking for, then is persuaded that Willow is 100% human and not a vampire at all, then almost immediately runs into vamp!Willow and assumes he's still talking to human!Willow. When Faith temporarily steals Buffy's body in Who Are You? she also completely fails to clock that vamp!Willow and human!Willow are different people (though she figures out almost immediately that both Willows are crazy about Tara). She does get on a lot better with the vampire version of Willow than the human one, but she assumes this is just because Willow has mellowed out a lot since high school. (Faith only learns the truth when she comes back in Season 7.) Anya can tell them apart easily and thinks it's weird that other people can't. She and vamp!Willow get on like a house on fire (which really highlights how much Anya and human!Willow don't); they trade stories about various atrocities they've committed when they're bored (they agree that Anya's are better but Anya cheers vamp!Willow up by pointing out she's a lot older and had more time to practice being evil).

When Oz comes back later in the season, we briefly tease the idea that having two versions of Willow might be a way of resolving Willow's putative love triangle (especially by having vamp!Willow delightedly refer to Oz as 'puppy' when he first starts to transform into a werewolf again). The problem is that both Oz and Tara can always tell the two Willows apart, and neither of them is attracted to vamp!Willow at all. (The fact vamp!Willow remembers a version of Oz trying to kill her is not, as it turns out, much of a problem.) Adam still tries to recruit vamp!Willow to sow dissension in the ranks of the Scooby Gang, but she isn't very interested in trying [she's not interested in playing second fiddle to some other demon] and wouldn't be very good at it if she was. Adam gets Harmony to do it instead, and she is surprisingly successful at it at first (in part because she doesn't think of herself as doing anything untoward: she's just helpfully pointing out facts [cf. that Cordelia quote about tact]). Harmony still can't tell vamp!Willow and human!Willow apart though, so she cheerfully tells human!Willow that she thinks she [i.e. vamp!Willow] has done a great job infilitrating the gang and all Willow's friends already like her much more than the original, which she means sincerely and our Willow does not take well. Vamp!Willow figures out what's going on (and decides to tell the Scoobies about it, mainly because she's annoyed that Adam is trying to take 'her' rightful place as the town's Big Bad). But not before Harmony tries to give her the speech which she'd planned to give human!Willow (which is mostly the same speech about how great vamp!Willow is, actually, but Harmony makes the point of telling her that she's not as smart as vamp!Willow "so you shouldn't even try to stop Adam's plan, because there's no way a loser like you will figure out he's going to have all the demons be captured bythe Initiative then stage a break out and hope they all kill each other").

Vamp!Willow also follows canon!Spike's lead in falling for Buffy in Season 5. She is, if anything, even more mortified on realizing this than Spike was. Buffy and human!Willow try very hard to pretend this doesn't make things weird between them, not entirely succesfully. This gets even more difficult to do in Season 6 when vamp!Willow and Buffy start hooking up.

[ckret2]

youve gotten a few asks about billford before, and your plans for ford's relationship with bill in your fic, but im curious if you personally ship it yourself/*like* it. and, just for the hell of it, if you have any opinion on billdip too, since that one's even more controversial.

I'm gonna put most of this under a cut since it's not only long, but also long about two different topics, but the tl;dr is:

Yeah, I'm a fan of billford. I don't think it's canon, inevitable, or necessary to their dynamic, and I'm still on the fence about whether things will tilt toward the romantic in my fic or if it'll stay platonic, but I do enjoy the ship a lot because it has a lot of (obsessive, weird, unhealthy, angsty) elements that interest me to explore in ships. Billdip, on the other hand, does nothing for me. I don't care about how people ship imaginary characters in their fictional fandoms and I'm not gonna block anybody for liking it, so this isn't a moral stance, here—I just don't like it personally.

One of the things that intrigues me most about a ship is the idea of love that's gone so far it isn't even love anymore but punched out the other side into unhealthy obsession, and "I'll spend the next thirty years of my life hunting you to death" versus "What if I turn you into a gold statue and carry you around to stare at you a lot" sure fit right into "unhealthy obsession." On top of that, some of my favorite ship dynamics are:

the worshiper and the person they've picked to revere as their god, either metaphorically or literally—with bonus points if the person they've devoted themself to doesn't deserve that worship and maybe isn't even all that special, and the worship actually reveals more about the mind of the lover than it does about the (un)divine nature of the beloved

the mad scientist and the muse who gives them ideas and inspires their work (one of my all-time OTPs has a line where the mad scientist says to his ex "we were each the muse to the other"), with bonus points if they both get so caught up in "what can we do together? What dreams can we make reality—" that they plunge into full "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" territory—and bonus bonus points if they eventually come out of the haze of SCIENCE and one of them is horrified by what they've done... but maybe the other one isn't.

two people who are wildly compatible with each other (similar hobbies, tastes, worldviews! they fill in the gaps in each other's personalities! they each happen to be the other's type! they understand each other like no one else can! whatever, fill in the blank!), but for some reason one betrayed the other, they've tried to kill each other, and now things are vicious and bloody and painful and raw between them; but if they talk to each other and accidentally let their guards down for even a split second, all that history is still there, they still like the same stupid movies and share the same stupid inside jokes no one else will ever understand and have the same stupid complementary life dreams, they could have been good for each other, but there's no road back to where they were before the betrayal. Their chemistry is like two huge magnets strapped to land mines: the attraction is as powerful as ever but heaven help them both if they ever touch.

or, alternatively, two people that have all that chemistry, but are just really toxic and do bad things when they're together and enable all each other's worst tendencies, even if they don't necessarily do bad things to each other; and they've got to navigate the fact that they might adore each other so much but they are objectively worse people when they're together.

I like ships with inhuman things. As a writer I like waxing romantic about the inhuman things and trying to convince the reader that yes, this too is beautiful and lovable when seen through the eyes of a lover. I will make you take the stupidest love interest seriously for five minutes. I've romanticized a sticky pile of goo, I've romanticized a robot spider, I've romanticized the concept of being a disembodied voice, I've romanticized a pteranodon made out of lava, and I'll romanticize a cyclopic gold-plated corn chip too, don't test me. Who better to adore a sentient triangle than a scientist-artist who sees the beauty in precise angles?

Depending on the headcanons and/or AUs you're working with, you can get all of these pretty darn easily out of Billford.

I like writing Ford as the awed naive intellectual, hungry for knowledge, for the secrets of the universe, for more, who was utterly dazzled and starstruck by this divinity who tantalized him with esoteric secrets—and who's been furious at Bill for thirty years for betraying him, hurting him, threatening his home and everyone he loves, but underneath all that also furious at him for not being what he advertised when he could have been that; and Bill, meanwhile, playing it cool, far too comfortable playing the role of faux god, but privately, secretly distraught that his favorite "student"—the one who takes Bill's "teachings" and gets creative and inventive with them, the one who always wanted to know more, not just about the universe but about Bill personally—his favorite student no longer worships him, doesn't even respect him, doesn't even see him as an equal, but looks at him like he's the scum of the universe, and Bill won't even admit that it bothers him but it's killing him that nothing he does can get his favorite to so much as smile at him again.

That's the dynamic in my head when I write them. You could play it as purely professional, a god disappointed to lose a worshiper like a boss disappointed to lose his best employee or a celebrity disappointed to lose the president of his fan club; or you could play it like platonic friendship, maybe a QPR; or you could play it like a romance. I like the zest added when you toss romance into this already nasty mess of emotions. I like capping off all that heartache with, "—and if things had turned out differently, maybe I would have taken your hand and traveled with you to the ends of eternity, if only you weren't [such a brutal heartless backstabbing piece of shit]/[unable to forgive a few white lies and some light torture]."

Billdip, on the other hand, does absolutely nothing for me. Not even just for the age reason—that does squick me out, but even if I try to look at it like "okay pretend he's aged up" or "stick it in an AU where they're both dumb kids having dumb kid crushes" I just, see nothing there. I don't even see anything there platonically. Like, legitimately—for the fic I'm working on, I've been trying to figure out what kind of dynamic/interactions they'd have beyond just "Dipper scowls at Bill a lot" and even on that level I've been struggling to think of something compelling between them. I look back on the fact that for a good few years billdip was the ship in the fandom and I go, "why? where's the meat? what do they do for each other?"

I'm forced to imagine that the ship must have been based on some combination of "fandoms naturally want to ship the everyman main character with the charismatic fun villain," "a bunch of teens with crushes on Bill were using Dipper as their self-insert stand-in," and "people assumed Bill wasn't lying when he said Dipper impressed him and didn't start revising that opinion until we got to see firsthand that he uses lines like that on everybody." It feels really uncharitable of me to the shippers to assume that their OTP is founded entirely on statistically average fandom trends and character misinterpretations rather than, like, y'know, traits actually present in the characters, so I'm taking it on faith that there's probably more to it than that and I just don't see it because it just ain't my jam.

When I do try to speculate harder on "how would I get them to interact with each other in a compelling way, like, just in a platonic sense?" my brain starts going "well, dipper's a nerd who's into the paranormal, he wants to know about mysterious things? maybe he's fascinated with bill as a mysterious thing? and maybe... idk, why would bill give a hoot about dipper—maybe bill takes advantage of that fascination, tempts him with more information, maybe he's amused by Dipper's curiosity about weird things—?" and that's usually about the point where I go "this is just, the way Bill and Ford met. This is the watered-down junior version of Bill and Ford's first few weeks." In trying to figure out what the heck Bill and Dipper would even talk about I keep accidentally recreating a less interesting version of Bill and Ford's dynamic.

I want and need Bill and Dipper to have an interesting character dynamic in this fic so being unable to come up with something that personally compels me has been actively frustrating me lmfao, but it does serve to illustrate my main point here: man, billdip does nothing for me so hard that I can't even see them platonically interacting.

[lollytea]

I love your idea of super pda huntlow bc it goes nicely with the idea of “very behind the doors, make sure no one is watching, send the palismen to play, if someone catches us it’s all over” kind of kisses I think they had in the human realm. Of course, it’s not a shame from each other but the guilt of like “hey this isn’t the time for this, we need to focus and be the strong ones bc if we fall apart then everyone else does too” but also “we’re teens and titan help me bc you’re literally the cutest person I’ve ever been attracted to and a quick peck won’t hurt if no one finds out”.

Hahaaaaa how I so badly love that trope that's like

"We shouldn't"

"I know....but I'd like to..."

"....okay."

Love to put it in a fic at some point. Maybe soon.

I don't imagine a lot of romantic intimacy happened between them while they were in the Human Realm. At least not outside of flirting. Nothing physical is what I'm saying. Mostly because of the body language of the pinky scene. Its such a tentative, scared, inexperienced offer of affection that it leads me to believe that they never would have done anything more than that before.

HOWEVER I still see your visions. I love entertaining visions. And this is a very fun vision to entertain.

I think the two of them are dealing with their situation in very different ways. It's shown in TTT that Hunter seems to take a bit of guilt in focusing on anything that's not relevant to getting them back home, and worse, actually enjoying it. How can he have fun at a time like this, know? That's his mindset.

Meanwhile Willow seems to be focusing very heavily on her own distractions so she doesn't fall apart, and also keeping the calm, fun, goofy optimistic atmosphere so her friends don't fall into the depths of despair.

Hunter is a nice distraction. He's very sweet and very pretty. And when she's feeling rattled from nightmares of her Dads' dead bodies, she likes to sit with Hunter and listen to him talk about whatever silly shit he's obsessed with this week. It's a lot healthier than sneaking some of Camila's wine.

Hunter is picking up on some signals from Willow but he's too scared to ask her upfront if she's doing what he thinks she's doing. It would be mortifying if she said no. And since they live in the same house, he wouldn't be able to hide.

But he's pretty sure she wants to kiss him. And he's pretty sure he wants to kiss her too. But if he did, his focus on their current mission would be in shambles.

But also he's like...very weak willed when it comes to Willow. It doesn't take much prodding. The moment she asks ("Can I kiss you? Sorry...that came out of nowhere. You just look very kissable right now") all of his walls crumble and he's silently nodding.

Just a little kiss. That's all it is. It's not like it's all that important.

Even tho they can NOT let anybody else know.

I like thoughts about the two oldest characters who do everything in their power to be safe, comforting figures to the others, just having a moment to be young and scared together.

[toaarcan]

(please excuse my English I actually speak German) hello, huge Fiona fox fan here I have been reading lots of your rants about fiona, on how her character had lots more potential and that her relationship with scourge is heavily abusive (on which I really agree btw) and since their not many fiona fans here I just wanted to ask you since I literally have no one to talk to. In sonic the hedgehog issue 179 on page 14 sonic says a specific line dialogue that's been driving me crazy. He explains to tails that he hooked up with Fiona hoping that he would move on, but ALSO because he was still getting over Sally stating that "Fiona was there*. Which kind of feels like that even if Fiona had genuine feelings for sonic he would have been still thinking about her. Now I am really wondering could this be a reason Fiona cheated on him, since she felt again like getting burned? We never saw the process of Fiona meeting secretly with scourge, but I heavily theory that A. He could have lied to her at a lot of points and B. That just maybe he could have told her about sonic maybe not truly loving her. Either all of that is true or I'm just going crazy but what's your opinion?

Your English is better than my German, to need to apologise.

You're right about that, while Sonic says his primary motivation for getting together with Fiona was his terrible plan to help Tails, it's also pretty apparent that Fiona is a rebound girl for him. The timing of when the relationship started is much too obvious for that: He and Fiona start their relationship in Issue 155, the same one where Sally's forced marriage to Patch is announced. I have no doubt that this information stirred up all of Sonic's hurt feelings from Issue 134 and drove him toward the course of action he took.

Now, that doesn't justify what he did, what he did is still an awful thing to do to someone, but it does explain it a little better.

I don't think Fiona knew what was going on in Sonic's head during their relationship. If she did, she almost certainly would've brought that up as a point against him, instead of only referring to her traumatic backstory.

(Sidenote: I think her betrayal makes a lot more sense if you reorder some of the stories in the 170s so that Eggman's attack on Knothole comes first, and reopens all of her old wounds. Then it makes total sense for her to snap and accuse Sonic of being too weak- instead of a dumb "I think being good is weak and being evil is strong!" logic that so many shallow villains have, she actually has a point, and an obvious example, that after everything Eggman did to them, a repeat of what Robotnik did to her, the FF still let him go when they easily could've captured or killed him)

That said, I think it's likely that Fiona realised she was a rebound and this pushed her closer to accepting Scourge's advances.

I think Scourge lying to her should be taken as given. Probably about Sonic, definitely about himself. However, I don't think he knew for sure how Sonic felt, simply because Scourge doesn't understand Sonic at all, ironically enough. We can see as much from his attempt at a "One bad day" speech, he fully believes that Sonic is only a bad day away from turning out like Scourge himself did, but Sonic has arguably had a rougher life than Scourge ever did. We've seen him have plenty of bad days and never once has he turned into Scourge.

Scourge thinks everyone is worse than they actually are, in essence. I have no doubt that he presents his flawed perception of everyone to Fiona, why else would she, a character who owes her whole life to the support she's received from other people (first Nic, then the FF) suddenly turn around and declare that "You can't count on anybody?"

It's an idea that fits so little with what we know of her character and history that it more than likely came from someone else, like the known liar and manipulator she's suddenly 'romantically' entangled with.

That said, him not knowing about how Sonic felt doesn't mean he can't tell Fiona that Sonic doesn't love her. He is, after all, a liar, and likely playing to Fiona's fears and anxieties. If he realises that Fiona believes Sonic is using her as a rebound, he would absolutely have agreed with the notion despite not knowing whether it was true or not.

This is part of what frustrates me with Fiona's character: There's the pieces here to make something absolutely fantastic with her, and Archie just... didn't do that. Her existence pre-155 is largely an afterthought, from 155-171 she's "Sonic's shady girlfriend" and then post-172 she's "Scourge's girlfriend", and that's all she's allowed to be. Even her one outing as an independent villain (with her own team, because of course the character who believes you can't trust anyone has immediately gone and gotten herself another team) turns out to be setup for her getting Scourge back.

Whether you prefer her as a hero, villain, or somewhere in the middle, Fiona has enormous potential as a character, and Archie never used it.

[bugslaststraw]

Oh yeah. I'm tired and feel a bit out of body from morning to night dance moves pat and immfeelingalright right now but I had an idea about why Murdoc got like that with 2-D to begin with. Like yes okay I understand that once the stone is kicked down the road there's no way of stopping it; I always accepted that Murdoc was just never gonna be normal about him, but I also can't... Recall any one moment when we were ever told why, like. Why.

Why what? Why everything, why the core question at the centerpoint of everything, why is Murdoc so fucking angry with him all the time. Cos it sure as Hell isn't because he hates him; we're way beyond that now, and we know that that's a lie and most likely always has been. But Murdoc really likes Noodle too, she's his kid after all, his little girl, and he's never treated her the same way even remotely. If the reasons why he's always bullying 2-D is simply "well he's a control freak and gets affection mixed up with beating people half to death because that's what his dad did so he does this to everyone" then why doesn't he ever act this way with anybody else?

Well, the reason I accepted up until now is because Noodle and Russel can't be pushed around as easily. You try to hit either of them and they hit you back way harder and you crumple to the floor like a sack of wet rags. Obviously the logical next move after that is to try to suck up to them instead so you can get them to at least tolerate you, and maybe decide to stay and not set off the ole' abandonment issues as bad. Russel states at one point that 2-D is the only person Murdoc can reliably win a fight against, presumably because he'd never have the idea to swing back. It's not that he's that weak or whatever. He's just, well. Not a fighter.

I had another idea though. A real devious one, this one. Evil shit cooking. I'm an angst wizard where was I going with this

Ever notice how when Murdoc opens up to someone emotionally it's somehow always 2-D? Like, without fail? Okay, sometimes he has full scale mental breakdowns and opens up to Literally Everybody (see; Pirate Radio) because lord knows he isn't very good at keeping secrets, or at pretending to be cool. But also remember that comment he makes about making 2-D dictate his autobiography during, like... YouTube comment section impromptu QnA, space between Song Machine and Cracker Island, I believe. We never got that autobiography. We probably never will get it to be honest. All I remember is 2-D broke his fuckin hands writing it all down.

And, okay, time to beat the same dead horse again, I'm about to bring up arguably some of the most infamous 2-D Moments™ in GZ history but behold;

the other two times. I'm not sure how to put this objectively. Whenever Murdoc ends up crying and spilling his whole tragic backstory in someone's arms it's, like, 2-D 90% of the time. Coincidence? Gods no 2-D is just the person who's around him the most. Because he can't leave. He's also just more... Compassionate and forgiving. At the risk of making him sound like a dumb little baby again #let2dsayfuck he's been shown to be very empathetic and quick to forgive and all. If someone's having a mental breakdown, you try to comfort them. Isn't that how it works? But Noodle is too practical (and doesn't deserve to deal with her own shit father's mental breakdowns, trust me, speaking from experience, it sucks ten times more when it's your parent, especially if they do it often, you do NOT wanna parent your parent it's the most unfun experience I've had period, and I think or at least hope and headcanon that she's resilient enough to go no I am not dealing with this why are you crying get the fuck off the floor) and Russel possibly too mad at Murdoc to even get himself into this situation, so if there's any one person in the band you *want* to be crying in the arms of, it's probably 2-D, right? At least if you're Murdoc.

But. That's a bit annoying, isn't it. You slip up one time and suddenly you wake up the next morning and realise that this... This little fucking twerp has suddenly got immense power over you. Last night you took a Floor Pill off the dance boards of a shady nightclub and it made you think you were legitimately dying, and he was the only person technically in the band at the time, and you'd only first met him a couple weeks ago, but he was the person to go looking for you. Nobody's ever really done that before. And then he tries to help you, shit, he even gets on his knees on the pavement to help peel you off it, and you can't recall anybody ever being that kind to you in your life, and you break down completely, and you cry and hold onto him so hard he complains you're gonna break his spine and you make him promise to never ever ever leave you et-cetera. And instead of going "fuck off man" and disappearing into the night like everyone else you've done this with he actually does promise. Which has also never happened before. And then you wake up the next morning and have to deal with the fact that, on pure god damn accident, you gave that skinny little fucker your whole heart, and you can't take it back.

What's worse, 2-D doesn't understand the weight of what's just happened. Nor does he understand it the next time, or the next time, or the time after that. He doesn't think he's special, he doesn't understand what he's got and that you can't take it back. He's not malicious. He's not laughing at you. He's just confused, confused and very, very open. He's practically parading around your biggest secret like it means nothing.

And don't get me wrong: Murdoc is fine telling people about his past, in fact he seems to like it; he tells Cass Browne about his childhood so he can put it into Rise of The Ogre. He slips in that bit about the lunch lady iykyk as a joke, mid-interview. It's not about the backstory itself. It's about the emotional distance he has from it. And when you're fresh off an acid flashback I don't think you've got any emotional distance from it at all.

2-D doesn't connect the dots at least not until specifically Song Machine If Murdoc thought he was special he wouldn't be hitting him, right? He probably isn't even in the top ten of his favourite people. That's why the times where he's suddenly so familiar, and on top of that so vulnerable, just confuses him. He tells the story about the strawberries as a "weird thing that happened on tour," and the subtext (which we can quite easily spot from an outside perspective, like, come on,) flies completely over his head.

Can you imagine being Murdoc, and reading that interview after it was posted? Skimming through 2-D's synth article in the G-mag while editing because it's probably just stupid anyway, missing the bit about the acid flashbacks, and only noticing it two months later and everybody acts surprised you even care in the first place?

I think if I was Murdoc and I accidentally laid bare the depths of my soul (got a normal amount of vulnerable) and the mother fucker I did it to just started telling random people about it I would become the Joker immediately.

[theberriesncream]

dot anon here. i wanna rant about something but i fear the g&b community would come at my throat for even thinking it BUT. i'm doing it anyways au's where dead jacob haunts jean are really fucking cool and awesome and i love them. however they like. never do anything interesting with jacob beyond the haunting and all the focus is on jean. jacob is nothing but " ohhhhh scary ghost ohhhhhh. 👻👻👻👻👻 " and i hate it. i hate it so much. i understand having a bias for their favorite character but come on. think outside the box. why does it hurt jean so much?? consider stuff like that!! and give jacob some sort of flavor!! jacob is a blank canvas of a character! he has zero characterization in canon people can do virtually anything with him. stop just using him for your angst slop and your ship slop i'm begging you. there is nothing wrong with angst or ships involving jacob, but please. stop making him bland so you can kill him off and call it day with every other npc who may or may not have the exact same situation as jacob. head in hands. this is not directed at you of course, don't worry! you are literally one of The jacob guys i could never say that to you. it is simply something that has ticked me off a bit ever since i joined this community and you have zero part in that. it was a rant about dead jacob au's at first but then it slowly formed into a rant about how some parts of this fandom characterizes jacob. and this rant was made by someone who is also very passionate about him. aka me. dot anon. just needed to get that off my chest and see if anybody else agrees. have a splendid day! (p.s. also i use it/its pronouns. saw that comma anon told you hers so i'm stealing her idea. (not really an idea but. lol.))

BASED BASED BASED!!!

GIVE JACOB A PERSONALITY OUTSIDE BEING JEAN'S SON/SIDEKICK!!!

I SWEAR, ME AS JACOB FAN MOST CONTENT I SEE OF HIM HAS A BLANK PERSONALITY-

Honestly I don't really mind Dead Jacob's AUs but brooooo my guy got reduced to be nothing but a fucking Creepypasta ghost that all that he does is torment Jean like... why he would do that? Revenge? They're enemies?? Beacuse Jean didn't save Jacob at time??? Huh???

I think ppl care less about Jacob than the rest of NPCs and it Hurts me a lot that he dosn't got any personality! We don't have to much information about him and that why I love him!!!

Everyone remember that he save our asses from being zombie food in Leipzig!! Best yall for do is give him characterization or recognition.

Idk if u seen these old drawings I made where Jacob is alive (well... with his face burned due the miscalculated explosion) being terrorized by his traumatized vision of the only friend he had in a long time ago. Blaming him for not being there for him and not saving him. And why is that? Maybe is beaucse I made Jacob a whole backstory about how he was blamed on everything by no other than his own parents to not being good enough, marking him for life that he will never be loved if he do things wrong. (TL;DR Survivor Jacob and Dead Jean AU but Jacob has a personality) is not that difficult to make lore for him just like yall with Barry, Karl or Jean!

Jacob Justice!!! I agree on you 100% Dot Anon.

In this house we like Jacob Guts and Blackpowder.

[acaciapines]

obviously if you’re busy leave this alone but: your tag essay has made me VERY intrigued about Dess and Azzy’s relationship in this AU. Tell me about it?

(also, did you see they did an announcement about Starship Iris season 3? It’s finally gonna happen!)

okay IM HERE TO TALK LOL i will NEVER not talk about this au <3 uhhh under a cut bc. really i should just expect these get super long.

big important note up top: all of this is in! early stages! things are not fully formed and researched yet so please keep that in mind as you read this. ideas might change and will get deeper as i do more work for this au, but since rn im focusing on owl house most of these are my ideas i've had without time to do deeper dives into them.

okay so with asriel i've always sort of written him as this guy who like...has an idea of what is 'normal' in his head, ie, what society wants from people, and what it doesnt want, and he has tried his hardest his entire life to always fit into this box. (think about i know im not well--this is why he's always seen kris as a human. being nonhuman is abnormal and gets you punished in society. to an extent this is also how he views dess being aromantic.)

i think a lot of this comes from fear--asriel IS for sure contorting himself and actively harming himself to stay inside this narrow box of 'normal' (think of this as another sort of prophecy--these are all touching on the same themes). and he applies this same mentality to other people BECAUSE of this fear, because he doesnt want his loved ones to be hurt, to be punished, ostracized, etc by society--which are i wanna be clear VERY MUCH THINGS THAT HAPPEN--but in doing this he sort of just hurts the people he loves. because instead of being someone who rejects these boxes hes like. no we gotta be good and fit into the boxes and then everything will be okay.

so when it comes to dess, dess has always very much Done Her Own Thing, consequences be damned. partly this is who she is, partly this is hashtag undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, the onset of which happens around when shes 18 and everything is going down with the bunker (which is NOT helping at ALL). and so when dess comes back from the bunker asriel does very much go 'oh. shes delusional.' and proceed to be No Help At All.

and like, the thing is dess IS very much having a psychotic break. this bit is very much still in deep research (sidenote: anybody in my audience who has experience w/ these things. feel free to hit me up/dm me lol i'd love to talk through some of my ideas as a sort of preliminary sensitivity read, but of course only do this if you are up to it, no pressure lol bc again we're in early stages) but she has schizoaffective + bipolar disorder. dark worlds dont help with this, asriel SUPER doesnt help with this (he doesnt know her actual disorder--neither of them do, this is the onset of things. but tbf even if he did he Would Not Help asriel is essentially doing everything wrong here.) and what dess needs is literally one single person in her corner but the person who is supposed to be in her corner (azzy) is basically being like 'you are making this up' and shes like im NOT, and everything is all mixed together, terrible, bad, awful, and eventually everything culminates and. we know what happens.

(side note but this is why she and chara work real well together actually--chara gets her when asriel doesnt!!)

asriel never actually like. tells anybody about this though. in his head after its assumed dess and kris have died he sort of just. is like well this proves it. i cant let anybody else i care about go that far EVER AGAIN, because if i was a better friend i would've noticed and i wouldve stopped it and made dess "normal." (yes asriel sucks here. the focus is on the kids but. he's getting an arc. i do promise he will get better but. that doesnt really fix what he's done in the past.)

and all of this is like. it fucking sucks for the people around asriel. in hurting himself he's hurting his loved ones--it pushes dess away, and that relationship is never going to be the same. even when asriel realizes how he fucked up i dont think dess really forgives him. because if asriel had just believed her, or at least even if he didnt actually took her seriously and tried to help, shes like. things wouldve gone differently. and asriel knows this too.

and then when it comes to NOELLE, well. asriel's always been very overprotective of her. terrified the world is going to hurt her. and so when noelle starts experiencing things, things she cant tell if theyre real or not...

she doesnt tell him. she doesnt tell anybody. she keeps it all to herself, and this means its a hell of a lot easier for the player/red soul to manipulate her. and nobody finds out until its too late.

[symphorine]

dock town time. lots of quality time with neve!!!

we finish going through the crossroads. find this codex entry near a tree person overlooking the main plaza:

On Mapping the Unmappable This appears to be a piece of litter. Closer inspection reveals that it is an obsessively drawn map folded like a Rivaini paper toy. Unfolding it creates a three-dimensional model of... something. A scrawled note is visible: I refuse to be beaten. These are reflections of true places; they have logical form. Therefore, these streets and their origin points can be mapped as anywhere else. I have charted the shifting, intertwinning dreams of a primordial sloth demon and its victims. I will not be bested by architecture. My mentor keeps whining. "Some things are unknowable, Virien. You're courting madness, Virien." Well, I say to him: Would a madwoman concoct and entirely new schema of wisp mapping incantations just for this? The rest is unreadable.

interesting! i wouldn't call the part of the crossroads where we are streets. roads, paths, but streets implies buildings on both sides to me, something very much belonging in a village, town, city, and that's not what the crossroads look like. so did they change? did they use to look very different? in his note in the lighthouse (https://symphorine.tumblr.com/post/766887207286046720), felassan does say that "the path outside is fractured" and expressed dismay at the state of the lighthouse; it's possible the crossroads also degraded with time. also idk if i'm reading too much into it, but is the "shifting, intertwinning dreams of a primordial sloth demon and its victims" a reference to the fade section at the end of broken circle in origins?

i also enjoy the musings on mirrors and reflections - from this note, bellara when she fixes the eluvian, one of felassan's notes. i don't think it ever really culminates into anything, but it's fun to think about, and an easy jumping point if anybody wants to write about fucked up times in the crossroads :')

onwards to dock town! first we meet the shadow dragons. tarquin is grumpy and lets us know his life sucks. i am immediately charmed. then we meet the viper/ashur, who has good manners, and by contrast im even more endeared by tarquin.

neve talks about dock town very much in a tone of "it's a shithole but it's my shithole". no wonder she got along with varric and his kirkwall complex. speaking of, varric is mentioned (tarquin asks neve "is this about your work with varric?") but somehow we avoid mention of his death yet again. we get an idea of the situation in minrathous: the cult (the venatori) are actively moving (The Viper: "Underground sacrifices, dangerous relics flooding the black market... the cult's gathering power.") Now, the only "power" mentioned here is basically just literal magical power (through blood magic and relics), but i'd imagine they are gathering/increasing political influence as well? though it's not entirely clear how open the venatori are at this point.

we're also given the venatori motivation:

Neve: The Venatori want one thing. If an ancient power promised them control of Tevinter... Tarquin: They'd sign the deal in blood.

(not their blood, mind you)

Once again, I find it frustrating that we get this straightforward explanation and then never get any nuance from venatori we meet, or proof of dissent in the ranks in any way. I suppose that them being a cult makes it more understandable, if we take it as not just a derogatory designation but a literal one. i'll stop here before speaking more on this because i did pick treviso in my previous playthrough, and so I assume my experience with minrathous was very different from what it'll be this time around (where i'll choose it instead), but considering the piss poor "nuance" we got for the qunari/antaam in treviso, i don't have much hope. it's in line with the direction taken by the game, but it's still disappointing.

anyway. we then learn a dangerous relic that enhances blood magic is in dock town, and neve won't let that stand. rook offers to help, and we go on a tour of the area.

small banter as we walk around; i had bellara with me and neve here.

Rook: So you live in Dock Town? Neve: My whole life. Unless I'm away on a case. Or crashing in the Fade. Bellara: I heard the Archon's Palace shot at you. Which is bad. Bellara: And now we're chasing this relic. Which is also bad. Neve: This is why I never get sleep.

we get to the temple of Andraste, surrounded by civilians in bad shape that seem to have just gotten attacked by demons (the first time around, I thought they were still victims of the demons that appeared during solas' ritual, which was like. less than a week ago.) some of them are elves and, even more notable, qunari. except that because we're not seeing slaves, the implication is that they're just citizens or refugees? which has interesting implications. elves in tevinter are almost always slaves, and if not, they are at risk of being made slaves at the first bout of bad luck. qunari are also surprising, because while it's not really mentioned this game, tevinter is and has been at war with the qunari for a while, and i don't think they'd particularly care about the internal politics of the qun in terms of benevolence towards individuals. if we're taking this at face value, it seems like opinions have changed enough that elves and qunari can be present in the capital of tevinter while being free, not enslaved or imprisoned.

Neve: Blocked. We need another way in. Bellara, in the most delighted tone of voice: Oooh. Are we breaking into a chantry? Neve: The courtyard's public public ground. and we can't lose the trail.

Bellara's excitment at breaking and entering in a chantry is great i love her.

we go through back alleys, and one of the buildings we pass has a dead man with several dead (or at least non functional) candlehops around. there's no codex and no mention of this later as far as i remember, but i thought it was intriguing! to me it looks like this was some sort of candlehop relay hub? and someone sabotaged it (with murder).

in the first room we get into there's a dead body and a note:

UNSENT LETTER Marcus, I've been delayed at the chantry. The sisters need time to gathe the records we requested. I'm sitting on the steps as I write this. Someone just ran through the courtyard and gave me a weird look. I thought they could carry this letter, but I'll find someone else. I wish the sisters would hurry. I'll be very late, but still wait for me at the Lamplighter. I'll be there. -- Sybil

I don't remember getting to talk to anyone about this at the Lamplighter? maybe i missed it, but if not, it could have been a fun thing to add.

When we get in the chantry proper we find dozens of dead bodies, and fight some demons. I counted across the courtyard, the upper courtyard, and the hallways, 85 dead bodies.

we find also a note on one of the deads in the hallway:

BLOOD-SPATTERED NOTE Another complaint -- rumors of someone shifty seen carrying some sort of relic. People are worried it's unstable and might draw demons. Could be nothing, but we've got too many people on edge. I'm sending you to the Temple. Just check it out so we can say we did. I'll meet you after. -L

two things there: first, we later learn that the knight-commander's name is Lenos - maybe he is the one who wrote this note? second, im very amused that unstable relics that draw demons is such a problem that regular people see someone look shady and are like "oh this is gonna be a demon problem", but it's still interesting, both because it gives us a glimpse into the way their attitude is different to this compared to the south (i feel like people in southern thedas would be more panicked and agressive about this, but here, although people are clearly on edge, it seems otherwise it was business at usual), and into how often this kind of thing happens (enough that multiple people clocked it very fast and reported it, and that whoever wrote this note was a little blasé about it).

overall not much more I noted in this quest until the end, although we do meet rana and learn neve works with her, but avoids the other templars. it's pretty clear why when we get to the end: despite us catching albin bataris, a magister's son, right as he is receiving and using the dangerous blood magic relic, the knight-commander comes in as we're done fighting, accompanied by bataris senior, and albin bataris gets off free (while we do arrest the smuggler, who doesn't benefit from a magister swooping on for her). knoght commander lenos clashes with neve, who's unhappy about the situation, but we can end the quest on a positive note still: at least we got the relic and stopped the demons it released.

something here is that as we walk through the streets, overhear conversation, and talk to neve's informants, we learn some stuff about the Threads: a crime syndicate, they run smuggling (the smuggler we pursue is from the threads) and protection rackets (getting rid of demons for a fee, or a favor), most likely other stuff as well (maybe blackmail, counterfeiting, shit like that). as Neve recognizes the smuggler, she says "Smuggling, sure. But red lyrium? Working with Venatori? That's not your style." yay for criminals with standards! I'm not being facetious this is what i want from this game. also fun to see the breadth of neve's contacts! the shadow dragons, sure, but also vendors, errand runners, later elek who's a pretty high ranking member of the threads, etc.

albin also gets to leave while telling us very unsubtly that the venatori are rising. cartoon villain main. you almost just got killed by your own summoned demons bro.

we also see neve in general just caring about dock town and her people. she immediately takes the case of the relic, repeats that it's her neighborhood and neighbors, is kind to her informants, asks a beggar if she's got a safe place to stay for the night... she starts this off by telling us dock town will eat us alive if we're not careful, that it's a dangerous place, but it's so clear in every word and action that it's her home and she loves it so deeply, with all its people.

back to the lighthouse! im gonna try to go back as often as i can this run. neve's room is updated with some more furniture! the lighthouse in general also has a lot more plants and vines!

i think this might be the last major appearance change apart from unlocking the other companions' areas? but i'll keep an eye out just in case. either way it's nice to see and more welcoming than the bare trees and debris from before, although it gives it the air of being abandoned as nature reclaims it. i interpret it as really being more a show of life than neglect though, since imo this is happening because there are people living in it again, possibly also because the caretaker has a more permanent presence, and it's connected to the crossroads through the vi'revas that bellara fixed; overall all of this is instilling life in it again - it's messy, but green and suddenly thriving.

[shamemp3]

THOUGHTS ON YOUR FAV SPIDERMAN RUN KING? 🎤

OHHHHH MAN.

okay. i have two favorites. there is jms's run (DESPITE sins past and omd bc those were editorial pushing that onto spider-man's narrative and it just happened to be him writing asm at the time so he was stuck with those shitty storylines. i also didnt like the spider-totem shit bc imo it goes against the core of spider-man which is that he wasnt "the chosen one" and that anyone can be spider-man but i will forgive jms for this) and there is friendly neighborhood spider-man 2019 which. believe it or not was by tom taylor. do not like the guy but that run was REALLY good but jms is still on top for me he just gets spider-man sooooo much tbh

jms's spider-man is good for many reasons to me, aside from the storylines being fun in general like even tho omd was ass it was written beautifully. peter and mj's goodbye brought tears to my eyes even tho i hate that stupid fucking idea im glad it was jms that executed it bc at least the writing was beautiful. AND what came before omd was back in black which is one of my favorite peter storylines in the entire world bc jms does write peter as a funny guy while also having him be hot-headed and vengeful and a dick ESPECIALLY when people he loves are on the line and this is something that many modern writers forgettttt omfgggg they diagnosed him with funnyguy disease and he has NO OTHER traits and he's so shallow but with jms he's real because you can tell his humor and his flippantness is an act and that he is VERY intense as a person which ... duh. his guilt is what gets him into spider-manning and then that guilt grows into a sense of responsibility and a care for community and people and that is something else i love about jms is the community in his stories !!! many of his storylines are focused on the neighborhood rather than him fighting outer space aliens or some shit its literally just him helping his neighbors and sometimes not even as spider-man but as peter which i love. and he's a teacher in this run too which is one of my favorite jobs peter has ever had because i think it fits him very well and he loves it and i wish he had gotten to keep it.

this run is so earnest and sincere and so many panels and conversations with mj and may make me insane but its still funny and it shows you who peter really is as a character i wish i could explain it with words but ill show you my favorite panels later instead. petermj is also at its heigh here and i think that if anybody were to read any peter run it should be jms's. i just think that overall jms shows you that despite peter's humor you still see how much he cares about people and how earnest he really is despite the whimsy (sigh) and though he's rude and a dick he does put his heart into everything it's just that the entire world is so against him and so his guilt and his grief and his choices eat at him no matter the outcome.

i also love this run bc mj knows about spider-man and may finds out and it just makes me think wowwww wwhat we could have had if omd had not happened. i get peter and his secrets blah blah but i hated that so many people do not know anymore after bc come on. ESPECIALLY mj and may (and the f4 and matt as well tbh but. for another day) and idk this run shows u a little glimpse of how much better it is when pete's loved ones know about his other life. idk. this was a small thing but whatever

i have so much in my head its just not coming out and its not coherent so. panels:

asm (1999) #34

asm #35

asm #38

asm #53

i want to add more panels but my laptop is starting to lag excuse her she has been with me since 2017 and is breathing so loud right now

to sum it up the writing is beautiful i love peter as a teacher i love the neighborhood and community aspect i love peter's characterization i love mj and may i even liked the little part where he lived in the avengers tower idk it was fun. i LOVED back in black. i didnt like the spider-totem shit bc i refuse to believe peter is the chosen one and i HATE sins past and i HATE omd (but jms wrote it beautifully). but overall jms gets it he sooo gets it and i love this run forever and as for taylor's fnsm 2019 its nice and fun and he also got pete's characterization but i wont go into it as much

[chalkrevelations]

So then we cut to the car, and let's be honest here - Night's request for Day to put on his seatbelt - which Day initially ignores and then acts like an ass about complying with - is 1) a request designed to keep Day safe and 2) a request that would be made of anyone in the car and has nothing to do with Day's disability. But Day's spoiling for a fight, because whether Night meant it this way or not, his reactions to Day's difficulties inside the Institute are being seen as an "I told you so" and an enforcement of the idea that Day can't function on his own - it's another brick in the wall of enforced dependence.

And this is a place where I wish we knew more about the relationship between the two of them before the accident because I gotta tell you, when Mom calls and tells Night to talk to Day about the documents - which sound like some kind of healthcare power of attorney - if I was Night, I'd'a been like, yeeeah, no. I'm going to wait to do that until you can be part of the conversation, so maybe your precious baby boy will be slightly less of an asshole. Because this gets us into the ugliest we've seen Day be to someone, all, "I know you want everything I have" and "Mom bought this car for me" and "I'll get my eyesight back and no one will ever care about you." FR, Bro? I'd'a treated you like you were no different from anybody else and pulled the car over and punched you in your nasty mouth for that last one. And now I really want to know what the relationships actually were like in that house, that Day throws his supposed favored son status in Night's face as aggressively as he does here.

Are we going to find out that Night bears some responsibility for whatever accident happened? I hope not, because that opens the door to more interesting possibilities.

The initial interaction with Mork strikes me as just having a convenient target, but watching this scene in the car, I wonder how much Day feels safe being a heinous bitch to Night because Night is family and can’t leave him (can't abandon him, the way Mork feels Rung did to him). Dad is entirely absent in the equation so far (heeeeyyyy, do we think he might have been killed in the accident, or was he already out of the picture, or has he left because he can’t handle all this?), and Mom is the source of security and comfort, presumably, and it’s too scary to think about doing anything to push her away, and you also don’t want to do anything to risk your position as her perceived favorite. But Night is a safe target. He’s the older brother, he’s supposed to be the bigger person, lit. and fig. He has to take all the shit you shovel onto him, right?

I would be much more interested to see that kind of dynamic dealt with than something as simple as oh, Night was driving the car when the accident happened.

And then Day throws a tantrum and literally walks into traffic, and Mork saves him, and we are pushing hard on the instant attraction thing, and I guess if it's a fuckable knight in shining armor, then it's fine for Day to play the damsel in distress, lol.

[steelstreqq]

*About your Rustout AU*

So. You have this awesome A.U. and I require further information and to gush about it

First and foremost, compliments.

Your designs for Ranboo and Charlie are incredible?? They fit the characters really well, and they remain pretty unique, which I think is lovely. I genuinely adore Charlie's outfit. It really seems like something that fits him, and something that would fit this kind of world (even if you don't think of it at first). Ranboo's scarf/hood thing was a really creative way to incorporate his mask as well!

Your handle on proportions is incredible! Everything looks really nice, it's the type of art I want to put in a snow globe and vigorously shake around for three minutes straight and then stick on a mantle for the next five years of my life.

Your backstories are all really neat! If you had handed anybody else on Tumblr that same list of characters and the idea of nuclear fallout set in the 80s/90s I don't think that anybody would have come up with the same ideas. I want to specifically mention:

Ted - him as a serial killer is genuinely insane. I really don't think anyone else would have thought about that, it is such a cool concept. I don't see him often in fan content, so it's really neat to find him here, and I think this does him justice!

Wilbur - his backstory is a great set up to his character, and it seems really fleshed out. It fits both him and Fundy as characters, and I think it would be really interesting to see how this event impacted him and his future interactions with others.

Charlie - again, such a unique idea. And it fits. Former front man of a pop group stranded and separated from his friends while on a burger break? Pretty much insane but swears up and down that he is normal? Silly billy but also, like, clinically insane? Literally Charlie. The perfect backstory.

Quackity and Schlatt also sound like they're just. Crazy. I find their backstories kind of hysterical, like, 'We'll get married to look good and adopt this thirteen year old gremlin for the news but hey we're attached to him and now we just murdered everybody in the 1% bunker. huh.'

Absolute perfection, those two.

Anyway, you said that asks were welcome, so I have a few questions (if you have answers, or if you're willing to share).

Character stuff (pretty short, but I wanted to ask anyway):

Does Niki/Nihachu have any role in this?

What's Jack up to? Do you plan for him to be close with anybody in particular in this, or is he going to be something closer to a loner?

Do you have a specific age in mind for Fundy? Is he a younger or older teenager, or is it still up in the air?

General Questions:

What character design are you most proud of?

Which character backstory do you find most interesting, out of the backstories you have created?

Any specific plot points you want to share?

Thanks for reading through all this, I hope you liked the ask, because I adored your original post.

OMG THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IVE EVER GOTTEN A FOR REAL ASK AAAHH... thank u so much this means everything <3 both me and my partner (who helped a lot on this au) (@belovedstilldear) adore everything about this ask and it means a lot

esp about ted, cuz the serial killer thing was my partners idea :3

ANYWAYS, TO THE QUESTIONS

Does Niki/Nihachu have any role in this?

i didnt think about niki until you asked this and OH MY GOD IM SO MAD AT MYSELF FOR NOT CONSIDERING IT, im thinking for her she could run some sort of a hostel or sanctuary faction including such characters as bbh and condificition ^-^, she knows her way around a blade and isnt afraid to defend those she is protecting. honestly she probably goes out of her way to attack first, esp when wilbur and his motley crew roll around

What's Jack up to? Do you plan for him to be close with anybody in particular in this, or is he going to be something closer to a loner?

hes gonna be some sort of a raider or pirate type of character (courtesy of my partner AGAIN for this idea). a lone grifter who wanders from settlement to settlement, taking whats not his, and hes definitely not afraid to fight back if confronted. hes a little jackass

Do you have a specific age in mind for Fundy? Is he a younger or older teenager, or is it still up in the air?

deffo around 14-15ish, he really cant navigate the world like he thinks he can

What character design are you most proud of?

CHARLIE CHARLIE CHARLIE, i think i hit a sweet spot with his designs esp with the super big glove

other than him im super happy with ted and tubbo, esp with tubbo having schlatt merch :o

Which character backstory do you find most interesting, out of the backstories you have created?

the most interesting i feel is techno who i didnt go into too much detail with -- hes a college student whos majoring in mythology studies and english. when tommy goes missing, phil calls up his old buddy techno and asks if he can come along with him to look for tommy -- phil and techno essentially adopt these 'wandering criminal' identities and don these kickass gas masks that obscure their faces. ill totally go into their history more when i post their designs

Any specific plot points you want to share?

i dont wanna reveal too much cuz i might make some short comics about these fellers, but i do want there to be some major character death (ao3 style) along the line, it always hurts to lose a character in apocalypse fiction and we'll see where that goes :3

again thanks so much, this means everything to me -- both me and my partner (@belovedstilldear again) answered these on vc at like 1 am BUT THATS LIKE SUCH A VIBE

ALSO I NEED CHARACTERS TO ADD AS WELL SO IF ANYBODY HAS MORE CHARACTERS TO SUGGEST PLZZZ HAND THEM IN!!!

[lollytea]

please please my dear tell me a story of one of Willow's murders

I'm gonna copy and paste down some of the idea from the DMs from a while ago. I'll only steal the messages I wrote, which is why they might look disorganised. Cuz I'm replying to something another person said. Anyway forgive it for being sloppy, you know how it is with DMs:

- We had the hc that having a galdorstone for a heart might tamper with Hunter's blood. Like the liquid would be imbued with an unstable amount of magic.

Its considered extremely dangerous to work with grimwalker blood. Raine and the rest of the lab experimented with a literal DROP that Hunter donated once and it made shit fucking explode. Its just WAY too much to handle.

But obviously, that's not gonna stop some people from trying to get a hold of it. It's considered extremely valuable. It will sell for SO MUCH at the night market.

Obviously anybody who's willing to risk everyone else's safety to get hold of an absolutely lethal substance and possibly harm/capture Hunter to bleed him dry, would obviously be an absolutely depraved awful person. Just vile.

However, people do not go after Hunter as often as one might think. It definitely happens every once in a while tho.

Willow is up early tending to her garden, letting Hunter sleep in an extra few hours before he has to go to work. She's taken the baby from her cradle so she doesnt cry and wake up Papa and now has her sleeping in a sling against Willow's chest, soothed by the sound of Mama's heartbeat.

Willow's whole garden abruptly shifts in a way only she can notice and she lifts her head, alerted to the apparent disturbance. She recognizes the signal. It means there's an intruder.

Willow approaches the back yard where there is a man who tried to break in by their window but was immediately snatched and restrained by vines.

Willow quickly deduces who he is by rooting around in his pockets and discovering his identifications, weapons, vials, ropes and sleep potions.

"Let me guess," Willow says softly. "You're here for my husband,"

Said husband continues to sleep on peacefully, as does the baby curled up against her breast. The baby doesn't wake because Willow's heartbeat remains steady.

The Boiling Isles doesn't have Coven Scouts anymore. There's no longer a police form. Meaning, it's easier to get away with crimes. You won't go to jail. However you might get slaughtered in cold blood if you pick the wrong target.

Willow thinks about strangling him until his organs pop but she decides against it.

She won't kill him.

Instead she smothers his mouth shut in vines so he can't scream. (The two loves of her life are sleeping ssshhhh)

She sprouts the plants that Hunter was always deeply fascinated with. The ones that sizzle and boil and devour flesh.

She has it slither up the intruders body, leeching against his left leg, his right arm, his back, his collarbone. The acidic spit stings like a nightmare. It takes chunks out of him.

He'll live. He's in immense pain and no healing magic will ever fix that but he'll survive. He'll never forget the mistake he made in threatening her family tho.

Willow lets him go and sends him off. She gives him very firm instructions.

"Your friends, partners, whoever put this stupid idea in your head, you go back and you tell them I went easy on you. Consider yourself a warning to them. You will never attempt to touch that man. Do you understand me?"

- I like the thought she wouldn't have tortured him quite so severely if they didn't have a baby. Like No. You won't touch her husband. You won't touch her baby's Papa. They're starting a family together and she will melt you from the inside out if you try to get in their way

- As soon as she fucking renders a guy to a gasping wreck because of the excruciating pain she put him through, she calmly strolls back into the house, into their room and sits down by her husband.

She pecks his lips and she hears him groan.

"It's about time you woke up," She says, tenderly brushing back his hair.

Eyes still closed, Hunter raises a hand and searches around for hers. He finds it and presses her palm against his cheek.

"Okay...I'm up...I'm up...." He mumbles, still half asleep.

He has no idea. And he probably won't. He's not adverse to his wife *handling* problems like these. He just asks that she not tell him the details. Makes him nauseous

- It's the reason she has absolutely no mercy. Her methods are not only ruthless but strategic. There are people who want to harm her husband and she wants them feeling just as helpless, haunted and traumatized by her actions as she was in that graveyard all those years ago.

She needs them scared of her. She need them to shit themselves in fear over the IDEA of ever going near Hunter again. She kills some intruders. But mostly she mangles them and sends them running so people understand the kind of pain she could put them through too.

She wants them scared. Because *she's* scared. She's scared of being the princess who loses the prince. So she becomes the fire breathing dragon instead.

She often wants to hold him in her arms for a very long time. Even if he's reading or carving or typing some fanfic on his laptop she'll cuddle him from behind. He doesn't always know what she needs comfort from but he's familiar with how she acts when she needs it. So he let's her hold him

Its when Hunter is holding their baby in his arms, talking softly to her, allowing her to seize hold of his finger, that Willow is like "We are going to have a happy peaceful future together if it kills me"

- Willow gets no joy out of killing people but it doesn't make her uncomfortable in the way that it does to Hunter.

When Willow was little and her powers were out of control, she always worried that one day she could seriously hurt somebody and not mean to.

But that's not the case anymore. Sometimes she kills somebody. And she *does* mean to. Everything that's keeping Willow sane and stable and in control of herself are her friends and family. Meaning she will do whatever it takes to strike down any threat to them. She doesn't CARE. She realizes that some people are beyond redemption and if she kills, she kills.

Hunter, meanwhile, has reservations about killing, no matter how vile the person is. Like he is absolutely capable of it. He's strong and tough and powerful. HOWEVER the grimwalker trauma is rooted deep. Its a really troubling thought to shake off, knowing you were literally *constructed* to slaughter witches. It's an act of defiance that he never sheds a witch's blood *once.* If he's ever forced to, it would probably send him spiraling. But like. He's not all "nooo Willow everybody deserves to live." He understands killing as self defense. He just doesn't want to be the one doing it. If he's ever around when Willow has to do it, he turns the other way so he doesn't have to see.

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

for rico: 1, 2, 5, 7, 14

1. What is your character's biggest fear, and how does it affect their actions and relationships?

HOOOO. she is simultaneously terrified of being close to people (mortifying ordeal of being known is a kind of power she doesn’t want anyone to have over her) and also because then she’s got weaknesses that can be used against her (girl who is determined to never watch anyone she cares about die ever again and has resolved to accomplish this by not caring about anybody anymore.)(top ten methods that Don’t Work and also then she fucks it up anyway but that’s kind of a long story)

There are other Big Fears but I’ve been typing forever (did these in reverse order) so I will come back if any of them stand out in my brain as an “oh god how could I forget that one”

2. What is something your character is deeply passionate about, and how does it drive their goals and motivations?

Okay I don’t know if it counts but besides the obvious. Going all in on the Decepticon cause (twice!), most of her goals and motivations are driven by her need to Move Forward? She pushed really hard on the idea of defecting once she’d heard some of the arguments— less for the idea of Leaving the Decepticon army and not even a little for the idea of joining the Autobots but for the sake of Seeing What Else Is Out There! Her and the whole unit (not Dyker. That’s a different problem) had spent their entire lives so far in one (1) building and/or ship (I don’t know that we ever decided where this was set?), they were built for the war effort and they work for the war effort and she believes in what they’re fighting for wholeheartedly but also it seems like a good idea to get some Contexts so she can have that identity and also know what it means!

And then from then on she goes BACK to the Decepticon army to climb her way up the ranks (well. She goes back bc she’s lonely and that’s where the only family she has left is, which ends the Worst Possible Way It Could Have for Her Specifically, and THEN she dives into climbing her way up the ranks) and she gets like. A normal amount and then fucks it all up reaching for too much (thinks she’s high enough up to get away with trying to assassinate the guy that killed Reefer. She Is Not.) and goes all the way back down to the bottom and also beat half to death about it. But she is not discouraged! (Yes she is.)(She got a lot of issues from that whole shebang.)

And then the war she was literally built for ends. And she’s on the wrong side. And megatron renounces the decepticons and tells them to all go their separate ways. And she has literally nothing to do with her life anymore. SO. she decides that She Is Going To Restart The War And Finish What He Started RIGHT this time. This also. Does not end well for her. I forgot what the question was I think I’ve strayed pretty far from actually answering it but here’s a plot summary

5. Does your character have any hidden talents or abilities that only a few people know about?

She was a medic for a while!!! Token guy in the original unit who knows how to do first aid and then when they all defected and Reefer (her platonic/familial Other Half) died and she dropped Hadron (her younger brother who she never really got along with and whom she is blaming all of this on because it was technically his idea in the first place and the other option is blaming herself) off with the Autobots she fucked off to go find some like. do transformers have Doctors Without Borders. Something like that.

7. How does your character handle failure or setbacks? Are they resilient or easily discouraged?

OH BOY HOWDY. she’s basically a series of failures in the shape of a girl (in the shape of a backhoe) and she takes them all Really Really Badly but also she hasn’t died yet, so 🤷‍♂️ (her main coping mechanism is throwing herself headfirst into whatever new questionable decision she’s making so she doesn’t have to look at her complete and utter lack of self-worth)(this goes. About as well as you might imagine.)

14. What is your character's preferred method of self-expression? Do they have any artistic talents or creative outlets?

God that would go a long way towards fixing her, wouldn’t it. No she does not but Roughhouse HAS 100% made the squad do Paint Nights on multiple occasions. She’s not good at it and it haunts and vexes her.