#even gave them the same online name as the character i based it on

[killjoy-prince]

Telling Astarion that another character is charming but he's not bad either

[ariichive]

crossed wires

k. kenma ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹🍒

fluff | misunderstandings (nothing serious) | reader has a rbf | mutual pining | cursing | fem. reader

this is a cute idea i had; i thought kenma would be a good fit for this ;p

"kenma, how do you not see what everyone else does?"

kuroo's teasing voice rung through Kenya's mind. it was like an alarm going off on an early school day. please, just be quiet. kenma stared at the giant 'GAME OVER' on his console; his irritation with his best friend seemingly growing.

"clearly, you're not seeing correctly. you sure your hair isn't cutting off any brain cells?" kenma mumbled as he pettily shut off his console. his eyebrow twitching when he heard the familiar snicker from the tall captain next to him.

"dude.. that's like.. not possible."

kenma did not have the energy to respond.

the two friends continued on their walk home after a long practice. kuroo, the whole walk there, had been nonstop bickering about the 'not so obvious but totally obvious' admirer he had: (name). admirer was not the term he would use. if anything, it was more like a butcherer stranded on a meat farm with nothing but a meat saw and an empty stomach. maybe even like one of the villains from his game; the ones with a deep rooted trauma causing an untamable hatred for the player. well, in kenma's case he was the poor player and you were the villain.

it all started in the beginning of the new school year. new faces in a new classroom. usually, kenma never really paid attention to his classmates. sure, he gave them a typical rundown and would decide to judge them based on first impressions for the rest of their lives. then boom, he would eventually forget their names come the second week of school. they didn't talk to him, he didn't talk to them.

that was hard to do when you, a classmate who sat diagonally behind him, would constantly feel stares at the back of his head. one time, he seen the reflection of your murderous gaze in his gaming console and he damn near flinched.

did he accidentally do something to you in the past? he tried to put a name to the girl with (eye color) eyes and (lip color) lips, but nothing was ringing a bell in his head.

because of this, he started to pay more attention to you.

when lunch would roll around, you would become joyful with friends, a rather pretty smile on your face. this was when he heard one of them say your name in a fit of laughter. (name). he repeated a few times in his head. kenma thought it was a nice change of scenery; his heart even skipped a little. and then when you felt eyes on you, turning and making eye contact with the quiet boy in your class, your face dropped.

it looked like a mix of both fear and absolute horror before morphing into a stone faced, angry expression.

yeah, you definitely hated him.

at first, he kept these interactions a secret from kuroo; truly not wanting to become a victim to the already relentless teasing.

until the one day you so happened to take the same train as them. today just had to be different.

kenma was set on ignoring you. he was locked into his video game: a PVP fighting game with unlockable characters and an online ranking system. kuroo usually would have ignored kenma's gaming; it was second nature to him after all. but of course, today was different.

"care to tell me why you're playing an online game with no internet?" kuroo pointed out as he stared at the constant loading circle making zero progress on kenma's screen.

kenma snapped out of whatever trance he was in and looked up at his friend with wide eyes. "...no." kuroo hummed in response, taking a quick look around the train. that is when he seen a sight that he never thought he'd witness. a girl staring at kenma with practical hearts in her eyes.

"kenma.. that girl is totally checking you out."

kenma's face contorted into one of disgust and confusion as he looked in the direction kuroo was only to make eye contact with you.

"kuroo, if that's how girls look at you i think you're never going to get married." kenma quickly shook his head and avoided looking back at you with everything in his body. "what? i know what i'm talking about. listen to me, i'm older and wiser." kuroo smirked arrogantly.

"she is the definition of if looks could kill."

"so you think she's pretty?"

kenma paused, his brain not really processing kuroo's words.

"that's not what i..."

pretty?

he hesitantly glanced at you again. with a closer look, he noticed how you fiddled with your hair when you looked at him. the way brows were furrowed, and the way your leg bounced.

it kinda looked like.. you were nervous?

"...meant?"

by the time he realized how long he was looking at you, his stop was already here, leading to his current predicament of kuroo's constant teasing and shitty advice.

"he.. HE DEFINITELY LIKES ME!"

you screamed into your pillow with a heated face. after rolling around for a few minutes to calm yourself down, you laid on your bed facing your ceiling.

you first noticed kenma during a rather boring lesson. the teacher's voice was draining all your energy, and it was getting harder to keep your eyes open. your eyes found focus on the boy in front of you, who had bleached hair and questionable posture.

he was playing a video game hidden in a book on his desk. you glanced up at the teacher one more time, making sure he was distracted. you watched as the boy played effortlessly through levels of a game you didn't know the name of.

before you knew it.. the school day ended.

it became a ritual for you, staring at his game after lazily taking notes. it came to the point where it felt like you were playing the game yourself. every time he would die and have to restart, you felt the anger and frustration for him.

a character would die? you'd silently weep for the fallen character since it seemed like he didn't give a fuck. and if he did, he wasn't one to show it casually on his face.

the most he ever showed (that you noticed, anyway) were subtle stretches of his legs, a twitch in his finger, and a knuckle pop.

or when he won after a tedious battle a sigh of relief, his shoulders dropping.

so maybe your facial expressions were a bit.. emotional compared to his and definitely not as subtle.

it didn't help that whenever the boy, who's name you learned was kenma, would look at you, your body immediately froze and you tried to get your face as normal looking as possible; not realizing what might've seemed normal to you was terrifying to kenma.

he wouldn't hold eye contact for so long before going back to whatever he was doing, much to your pleasure.

the train ride today was a change in your relationship with kenma.

why didn't he look away like normal?

it was a change yes, but not a bad one.

with delusional friends encouraging the idea, you've come to the conclusion that kenma kozume has a crush on you.

sure, maybe you were exaggerating. but any high school girl would, it's part of growing up! you justified this in your head.

and maybe you weren't too far off from the truth. his sneak glances during the school day allowed him to see the happy expression on your face when he reached an ending of the game. the look of anticipation when he was going through his game library; trying to find a new game to play after beating the last.

one he liked most, though, was the look of shock when he angled his console perfectly out of view from the teacher, but in a position for you to see more clearly.

pls reblog and like if u enjoyed it!

kinda proof read kinda didn't lol sorry 4 any errors

[kittiesandkillers]

Nononono keep going I wanna hear about freaky kylar

Fine but it's not my fault if you're traumatized by the headcanons section.

Vrel said that Kylar is one of the kinkiest characters but they themself aren't aware of it since we're their first partner.

Kylar obviously has a breeding kink so I don't have to explain myself there.

Kylar is also strongly implied to be masochistic(to a lesser extent than Sydney, of course).

There are a couple of scenes that show that they're into some light knife play. The knife play becomes not so light when Kylar's at high jealousy.

The fact that they gave us a gift with a camera in it may imply that they're into voyerism. Not to mention the fact that they're a literal stalker.

The (semi) public sex scenes show some light exhibitionism (not even close to that of Whitney's though).

(High jealousy) Kylar is one of, if not the only character who has a somnophilia scene despite Vrel's comment about not wanting to add much somnophilia since they themself aren't into it.

They absolutely have a marking kink, it just makes sense. The scenes that imply it are there.

They might be a little bit sadistic based on some of their high jealousy scenes.

Kylar is a panty thief which means that they definitely have a scent kink.

I'm 90% sure that they choke us at least once during a high jealousy scene, and Vrel said that they'd be into being choked.

This isn't a kink per se but they canonically use their own drawings as masterbation material and Vrel said that they'd do the same with AI generated images of us as well.

Also they own a custom made sexdoll that looks just like us so that's gotta count for something.

(Update) Bondage is a maybe purely because they have tied us up, mainly to kidnap us but I'll count it regardless.

And those are the ones that I can back up with evidence.

I've seen a few people saying 'Kylar would be into (insert nasty thing here)' and I, unfortunately agree with a lot of them. So here's my grossness warning.

'Painting' us, which is supported by a scene where we're wearing a chastity belt.

Jerking off on/in our clothes and making us wear it afterwards. Which is supported by their marking kink and their scent kink.

Wanting us not to bathe so that they can get off better to our smell. As supported by their scent kink.

Similarly to 3, not wanting us to change our clothes as often so that our smell is stronger/lasts longer when they steal our clothes to get off to.

Carving their name into us, only at max jealousy of course. As supported by their knife play kink, their marking kink and their sadism at max jealousy.

Mad/sad jerking it to pictures of us online because how else would they know about all those photos of us without actively searching for them?

Pleasuring themself with any gift that we give them.

Giving us food with their bodily fluids mixed into it. This is one of the reasons why their food is so bad.

Piss kink but only at max jealousy because they'd get bladder shy otherwise. (Edit: piss kink made canon.)

(Update) Fucking our pillow and or blankets because it smells like us and to make something of ours smell like them for the same reasons as number 2.

(Update 2) Honestly, probably anything that has to do with our bodily fluids.

[anonymouschishiyaimaginesandmore]

[Scrubs_MD]

Minors, do not read! Contains mentions of smutty behavior!

MASTERLIST (up-to-date)

This is Part 1 !!HERE!! is Part 2

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Alice in Borderland/Imawa no Kuni no Alice characters or original stories, only the plot of this fanfic. Alice in Borderland/Imawa no Kuni no Alice characters and original storyline belong to Haro Aso, who made the Manga the Series is based on.

Trigger Warning: Explicit Smut Summery: Chishiya x female OC that I gave a Name for this Story

Asana was a good kid when she grew up. She came from a good family with a good background and good parents that just happen to be, you guessed it, good.

And all that stuff stayed that way until Asa, how she preferred to get called, was old enough to start Uni and it just happened to be in Japan’s most populated City, but hey it wasn’t her fault, like her siblings tend to treat it.

It was just that the stuff she wanted to study could be nowhere better archived than there, tho Asa didn’t mind not having to share her room and privacy with the younger ones, so of course she moved. Sadly, the country bumpkin soon had to find out that living in the big City, especially the fancy part of Shibuya was one hell of an expensive place.

Everywhere she looked, prices were bambooing into the sky and Asa didn’t even put the cost of each university year into account. She was constantly running low. Her wallet was dry and empty and the times she did got her twitching fingers on some coin, groceries and other necessities pulled them out again almost instantly. Damn life but meh.

While she did find a cheap place to stay, sharing an apartment with 5 other roommates, money still was tight and the chances to get a job outside of school and work, since all the time she wasn’t spending inside of a lecture hall, was taken by patients in the hospital, running around and demanding her attention while constantly dying, nonexistent.

But Asa didn’t mind it. She loved medicine, it has always been her dream of becoming a doctor so a parttime job had to fill the same gaps of her free time hours and what would be better than Camming right?

One of her Roommates, a girl that already left since she made a good amount of money on the side and didn’t need to share her space anymore, brought up the Idea, splitting the tea and telling poor naïve Asa about all the adventures she had online by showing off her body and moving in sultry ways that were meant to attract horny guys with too much paper in their pockets. And she did.

Since the girl showed Asa the numbers on her account, that just seemed way too unbelievable to be true but didn’t look horrendous enough to forget and asking her if she wanted to join her in a session, things kind of got out of hand fast.

So before Asa could really say what happened, the roommate has left the apartment and Asa picked up where the girl left with her own show, dancing and jumping and flirting on demand.

The roommate has shared some knowledge and Asa was already kind of introduced after a few accompanied sessions, so things did start off smoothy and after a few of her own shows, the young girl has gotten completely used to share her privacy anew. This time with strangers and showing off a lot of skin.

Thirsty Lorelay just started her newest session, come and join her!

Chishiya read the popped-up message at the right side of his screen, while scrolling thru pictures with links to boring Cam shows he already tried but didn’t thrill him in any way.

None of them attracted his lingering desire to get entertained for the night. Not since he dived into the erotic part of the darknet, watching woman undress and moan on his command.

It did have a lot of interesting advantages to tell someone exactly how to behave in front of him, instead of watching already filmed movies where he had no say in how things could possibly turn out and more importantly turn him on. Chishiya has found himself drawn more and more to the forbidden entertainment of online girls.

He was a man after all. The want to get off in a thrilling way came from time to time and it was also a good action to blow off pent up steam.

His dads credit card was the best way to get it and soon Chishiya found himself among other horny people, cheering and promising good money to see more and more of a person, tho he was rather of the silent lingering in a corner type, that overwatched the situation and the people’s reaction to every bit of falling clothing and exposed skin.

The VPN he created at the very beginning of his dive into adventurous streams, made sure to hide his location and that was a precautionary measure he just didn’t want to miss.

In case some hacker would try to trace back his location to frame or blackmail him for payment, Chishiya was safe at least with the newest and best software he could get for his money. No way he would let that happen. Chishiya was too smart of a guy to risk such measures, so he always made sure to hide his IP Adress as good as possible with the newest program and all his might.

However, this action also gave him the wonderful opportunity to watch and explore Cam shows that have been restricted for his location. He knew that some of the girls he watched weren’t dumb enough to pose half naked and then share their identity online, so they could be blamed and found out as the hot but dirty girl the husband or boyfriend or whatever man watched the show, blamed them to be.

People had things to lose. Reputations, their name and their face among family and friends, so, on some occasions, Chishiya turned all other locations off just to see the cam shows that were normally hidden from him.

It gave him the extra kick to know that the girls he enjoyed had no idea he could be their Neighbor or collage or maybe just the guy standing next to them in the underground train.

The show of Thirsty Lorelay asked for 3 000 yen as an entrance fee, but the first 5 minutes were free of charge, so Chishiya decided to take a look what this sinful siren could offer him for his money. His day has been boring. His supervisor didn’t like how much more Chishiya knew about certain aspects the man had to learn more then 10 years ago, so he let him run lap tests instead of joining in on examinations.

What a looser, Chishiya thought. Jealous of a guy half his age. It wasn’t the blond mans fault he was smarter than this old saggy balls neighbor whose wife was probably fucking the pool boy while he had to teach med students how to not kill people the first seconds they entered the ER.

Chishiya taped on his tablets screen that he carried with him everywhere, so he could work and study from the small bistro he liked to enjoy his coffee, all to the library he spends most of his free time in.

The chat took a while too load. Apparently, his newest addition to the list of possible strangers from the street, moaning for him on demand, had a good sum of visitors and Chishiya immediately knew why.

The way the girl, surely not older than him, swayed her hips while laying down on the bed in front of the camera to greet everyone and thanking them for joining her, spoke of someone who was used to this kind of behavior online.

Surely not an amateur and Chishiya smiled to himself, when she read his username, commenting on the nice choice of avatar. It was his upper body, aside from his face. Nude and almost completely hairless with light hints of muscles and a chiseled V-line pointing towards his groin like an arrow.

Chishiya was just not the type to work out constantly, he had to time for it, nor the ambition and his body was showing that, but he was lean, and his skin had a healthy and nice tone with a slightly raised chest and a flat abdomen.

The happy trail showed the dark trimmed hair of his and led down to the black hem of his confinements. That was all he was sharing of himself and with small delight, the blond med student watched the girl bite her lower lip, chewing on it for seconds before releasing it and blowing him a kiss.

One, just for him.

She then went on telling everyone how her day went, unbuttoning her plain boring floral shirt that she probably used to wear all day.

Thirsty Lorelay: “I was shopping” she retold the happening “And there was this guy an isle behind me, watching very obviously how I bend over to get something from the lowest part of the shelf. I felt his eyes on me and I swear I could hear him lick his dry fucking lips.”

She giggled amused while one button followed the next one revealing more and more skin too slow for his liking, but okay, she just started, so the blond man forgave her for teasing him.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Then I thought maybe he was one of you guys and you know what? That totally got me creaming my panties.”

Me too, Chishiya thought, imagining the good-looking patient his collage had today could have been thirsty Lorelay. His flaccid dick twitch under the stiff cover of his pants and the blond man took in a deep breath.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Just thinking one of you could be watching me right then and there, doing my every day and thinking nothing bad could happen”

The last button popped, and the girl slid open the fabric, offering a good view of red lace lingerie that was in no way on the same level of practical clothing like the ugly shirt.

Thirsty Lorelay: “That turned me on so much, I would have loved to know what he was thinking”

“Sure, you did” Chishiya said to himself, scoffing a little too sarcastic. He knew all the girl told him right now, was probably a lie. Maybe she did go grocery shopping this day, but her kind doesn’t tend to view creeps in the wild the same way they did online. After all, why else would she hide her identity if it would be different. The black cotton mask around her eyes wasn’t there to cover possible wrinkles she sure didn’t possess.

No matter, her sultry spoken words indicated something else and the way she turned from a boring no one to a hidden gem right in front of him, was enough to pull him into the fantasy.

Thirsty Lorelay: “The guy sadly did nothing, thought a small bump here and a nice grind there would have been very welcomed.”

The girl winked suggestive and Chishiya slid deeper into his chair. He was at home. The tablet on his lap, hold up by angled legs, watching Fullscreen how an everyday girl told him about fantasies while undressing in the slowest way possible.

Thirsty Lorelay: “What would you guys do if you would met me outside and you knew who I am but I have no idea who you are?”

The shirt slipped over her shoulders while the girl arched her back, titling her head to the side and giving everyone a nice view of just how charming she was.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Would you come over and speak to me?”

Fabric lowered more and more, until her arms were trapped behind her back, hold in place by the ugly shirt she wore moments ago. The round lines of her breasts ended where the fabric begun and even tho it hit so much of precious skin, its tight hugging features also revealed more and more of her wonderful appetizing curves, turning her into an erotic wanking remedy he just couldn’t reach.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Would you tell me how beautiful I am?”

Her chest rose while her voice lowered to an electrifying tone. Dark eyes fluttered shut while her back kept arching towards the camera and she sighed in a hopeless frustrated manner that instantly shot a sign from his brain to his defined dick, still caged between layers of fabric.

Thanks to her behavior, goosebumps raised all over Chishiyas body and he became painfully aware how stiff his neck has gotten over the day, as he leaned forward to get a closer view of the stream unfolding in front of him.

Thirsty Lorelay: “How much you want to drag me out of here and find the next place to ravish me?”

Chishiya watched how her set up posture, sitting back on legs and kept up by knees, parted shameless thighs, promising guilty pleasure but not showing anything besides small pieces of skin he already discovered. He wanted more. Needed it.

To see demanded it now. Growing more and more impatient with every oh so small move the girl far away from him did right now, Chishiya panted now so close against his tablet, fog was building up on the plastic screen, making him realize how much off a fool he was making of himself and sitting back, slightly annoyed at his own want.

She was obviously not willing to let the man in him see what he wanted. Yet. But Chishiya knew that all streams eventually went the same way, and he could wait. Just for now. While a tiny bit of hope raised in him that maybe, just maybe he would have a wonderful evening today after that terrible work he had to endure.

Thirsty Lorelay: “I would have loved that”

With those words, the girl bit her finger and fell on her back, giggling like crazy and wiggling her spine, while her ass slightly raised from the sheets under her, swinging left and right in a playful matter. Then, said finger started its own adventure down her upper body, making every watching person oh so aware of how fast her breath was going.

It begun at her chin and Chishiya gulped, as she drew the outlines of her lips before the small digit withed lower towards her chest and between soft hills of untouched land, to her navel where she drew some rounds, before parting and stopping at the hem of her plaid flat skirt that hid all too well what so many man craved right now.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Where would you have taken me?” she asked further “Your home? To your bed? Or would the situation make you so impatient, that the next ally would have to do?”

The Chat went nuts. Chishiya watched how man after man wrote down sentences of locations, offering way too much of their own information, while explaining what they would do to her if they could get her into their hands.

[SelflessLover69]: I would take my time with you and get you home.

[BigBratThatLovesItHard]: You deserve some nice cock

[HornyDudeNextDoor]: Damn Lory you look so hot

[Masturbator666]: Tie you up and give it to you hard

[Arouse_Me_Mommy]: I bet that sweet mouth knows how to suck good dick

[NaughtyBoy_123]: Shit I could come right over that belly

[AnnonymousGuest]: Be a good girl and you get what you want Lory

[FriskyMe78]: What a sweetheart you are

[RideMyFace]: Baby girl knows what she wants

Chishiya saw plenty of these comments appear. They all tried to outdo eachother and get the girls attention, while she did nothing but tracing her exposed upper body with lost fingers.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Tze tze tze you guys are so dirty” the performer said, shaking her index finger in front of the camera “So impatient” her tongue was pressed against the front of her lips while she moved her head from left to right, smiling all devilish “Your lewd comments alone could make me cum” hips raised to meet the oncoming touch.

Lorelay rose back to sit on her legs. Knees dig deep into the white sheets of her blanket while she sighed in played frustration again, before suddenly her face shifted into a devilish grin with mischievously glinting eyes.

Thirsty Lorelay: “But not today bad boys” she said, reaching for something behind the camera, retrieving it with a purple something in hand and giving the new toy a long, wet and tonguely lick “Today…I want you guys to ravish me with your looks. You think you can do that?” kissing the tip and winking at the lens and everyone behind it.

Again, the Chat went berserk, answering with so many yes’s and pleads, the smaller comments on her appearances got drowned in seconds.

Chishiya watched with raising impressment how the girl that barely undressed in any way already had her crowd cheering in madness, dropping money with wishes and asks for a private chat. But Lorelay ignored them mostly, turning on the vibrating function of her new purple toy and letting it explore her body.

Thirsty Lorelay: “I think” she said reaching her navel anew, the upper part plunging into the way too tiny hole, what made her abdomen flex and retract and forced small gasps out of her sinful throat “Today, there won’t be any penetration.”

[Masturbator666]: Oh no

[AnnonymousGuest]: Why?

Thirsty Lorelay: “I have been such a bad girl, you guys should have seen me at work”

[XXX_SmexyMe_XXX]: Work sucks

[NaughtyBoy_123]: What happened?

[BabyMaker53]: I would have fucked you on my desk if we met at work

[MilfPounder_XX]: You would look so pretty on my cock

[RideMyFace]: Baby girl can ride me all day

Thirsty Lorelay: “My supervisor told me to do something, and I was soouuu bratty” the vibrator moved lower “I didn’t move a finger” right over her hidden cunt “Not a single one” pressing hard against the flesh and eliciting a long desperate mewl “I have such terrible manners” she gasped and Chishiya parted his legs go give his growing bulge more space.

[BigBratThatLovesItHard]: Such a selfish baby

[Ass_on_Me]: So spoiled

Thirsty Lorelay: “He should have spanked me, maybe then I would have listened”

The vibrator went along her thighs and Chishiya saw the goosy flesh pimpling all over her otherwise so smooth skin. He was already addicted to count each one of them, probably hard before he reached even half.

[BabyMaker53]: I forgive you

[HornyDudeNextDoor]: I would ruin you instead

The girl giggled again, letting out a long mhmm as the toy disappeared under her skirt and Chishiya went back to huff and puff against the screen, fogging it all over again.

Thirsty Lorelay: “But we can still have so much fun”

[ProneBoner]: Take off the skirt!!

[RickSpanks]: Show me some skin

[BabyMaker]: Yeah take off the skirt

[Sir_ Cum_a_lot]: We wanna see some good pussy

[BiggusDickus]: Let the London bridge come down!

Thirsty Lorelay: “You guys want me to take off my skirt?”

The chat started cheering, chanting words repeatedly that told her to yes, take off the skirt. Pleads over pleads all begging for the same thing while all she did was snicker all giddily.

Chishiya, under the username Scrubs_MD couldn't help but chuckle at the desperate commands some man did. His eyes followed the toy as she set it aside carefully, then back to her fingers grabbing the zipper on her right hip, pulling it down agonizingly slowly.

Thirsty Lorelay: “You want me naked so fast?”

Again, many yes toppled the chat.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Greedy boys. So impatient”

But Lorelay did what the chat asked her to do and pulled the zipper down, revealing more lingerie in red scandalous lace. Until now, only her thin waist promised what could await a man if he got lucky enough to do meet her in real life, but now it peaked and giving the cheering mass hope for a glance all over. The skirt fell and Chishiya bit his lip, chewing on the sensitive skin as his cock jumped in joy.

What a tease this girl was. Other performer would have already taken off all their clothes, leaving maybe a bra on or just the panties, but Lorelay was still wearing too much for the blond mans liking. He couldn’t wait to see more and so Chishiya tapped the screen, typing a number that he knew only the girl could see.

And she saw it. The message of Scrubs_MD popped up on Asa’s screen, offering her 7 000 yen if she took of her underwear. It made her smile to herself, knowing how much this guy was thriving to see her most inner parts. To have her all on display and enjoy her looks, while telling her how beautiful she was. Back in her hometown, no one ever told her that.

She was nothing more than a Daisy among others. She was called cute and sweet and on some occasions lovely, but never has any man craved to see more of her, obsessed at the thought what she could hide under baggy hoodies and washed out jeans. This Chat was different. All those men wanted her. Begged for her attention and paid money for the tiniest bit sinful skin that only she could offer.

The blissful moments she gave herself were all situations that those man hoped to see more and more of and here she was, depriving Scrubs_MD of a way too soon end, knowing damn well that it would only make him want her more if she kept playing with him.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Nice try, scrubs, but you gotta have to wait like everyone else”

The skirt fell nonetheless and exposed more delicate slick skin, pristine and unspoiled.

No I don’t, Chishiya thought, typing another number and sending away the offer, sure this time he would get what he paid for.

Asa read the new number looking directly into the camera and cocking her head while flashing a seductive discreed smile only for him.

Thirsty Lorelay: “Nah ah, what a stubborn boy you are”

The blond doctor was sure he had her where she wanted. After all, the numbers had doubled and if he was honest, it was the highest he ever paid to have a girl undress in an open chat, but to his surprise, the girl refused again, what weirdy made him proudly puffing his chest up.

Now that he didn’t get what he wanted, Chishiya couldn’t wait to see what was worth more than 14 000 yen. His eyes scanned the girls body up and down. There was a scar on her waist right above her appendix that obviously has been taken out years ago when she was younger and one on her left side, right where her strongest muscle was beating steady, so Chishiya indicated that she also had a heart surgery long ago, since the scar tissue had paled to a nice ivory tint.

On her left thigh there was a collection of small reddish dots. 5 Moles so close to eachother forming the oddly close form of the constellation Cassiopeia. Chishiya narrowed his eyes, squinting while almost faceplanting on his tablet. It looked exactly like the constellation.

It can’t be, Chishiya thought, leaning back into his chair. No way this was a natural birthmark. The blond man was sure it had to be tattooed on her skin, but the fact that at least 3 of them looked a little frayed, told him differently.

He observed now with higher interest how the female camgirl grabbed her toy again and fell to her side, laying completely down and giving everyone a good look of how Leonardo Di ’Caprio would have drawn this not so french girl.

The Vibration made a comeback and disappeared immediately between her legs, hidden by her thighs side that had the 5 small dots playing with Chishiyas mind. Her back arched upwards as the tip likely traced the clothed part of her folds, maybe even dipping in? Who knows.

The crowd could only speculate on it and so could Chishiya. Looking for signs of her body that could indicate that the pleasure she displayed to have, was real or faked. His eyes took more and more of her every move in, making his own heart race with anticipation.

Then it happened. Her free hand reached for her chest, opening the front clip with skilled fingers and Chishiya catched himself holding his breath, while wait for the cups to pile away, but the fabric stayed where it was, not revealing anything and Chishiya groaned annoyed at cursing the stupid designers of this erotic piece of clothing that again deprived him of the least bit of fun he could have set his eyes on.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Why I Love The Owl House-Part One: The Characters

Salutations, random people on the internet who are already skimming past this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Back in 2018, when The Owl House was announced, I didn't think much of it. I looked at the teaser poster and knew that it would be a show that would gain a following, but I didn't think it'd appeal to me specifically. Then, in January 2020, just before the world made an oopsie, I saw that Disney Channel uploaded the show's first episode on YouTube. Having finished my homework and studying at the time and having nothing better to do, I clicked it out of morbid curiosity to gain a first impression of this series. And I'm not kidding when I say that the second the episode ended, I said, out loud, to myself, "I think I just found my new obsession for the next few years."

Yeah, I went from thinking the show wouldn't exactly be my thing to being obsessed with it. And obsessed I was! I wrote fan fiction and reviews and even drew a handful of fan art you are NOT allowed to look up due to how bad it is. The Owl House, with no exaggeration, also changed my life as it gave me quite a decent following on Tumblr for thoughts and stories I've crafted regarding the show and even gave me a new friend or two to share those same thoughts and ideas together. One of my closest online friends is someone who once reached out to me as a proofreader for a fic I wrote once upon a time, and I probably wouldn't have talked to them if not for The Owl House. I owe so much to this series that I adore that to explain what makes it so great...can't be done with a single review. I even considered writing a long review after Season One ended but gave up on the idea after realizing there's so much to talk and praise about the series. And that was with Season ONE! That was before Season Two made the show more spectacular in nearly every conceivable way!

So, yeah, we're gonna have to do this in parts, each dedicated to a specific theme. However, before we discuss THIS review's theme, I should get one thing out of the way: I'm not just going to praise The Owl House in every single review. There are problems to be had with the show, and I can't ignore them because the praises are stronger. I love The Owl House. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't. But it's because I love it that I have to point out problems as they come because to truly love something means to take the bad with the good. And while there's a lot of good, there's still some bad worth mentioning.

With that said, let's finally begin by discussing the backbone of any series: The characters. And BOY, does The Owl House have a LOT of great, well-written characters, to the point where I initially considered that there wasn't a bad one in the bunch...I say initially because I finally woke up to how much I despise Tibbles (Yeah, wait until we get to him). Although, know that while discussing characters, we're not talking about one-offs like Bria and her lackeys in "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" or ones who weren't named in the show, like Amelia and Cat. We're focusing strictly on frequent players and fun side characters that nail the short time they appear. And we're also going in order from my least favorite to my most favorite. And just know that this is in order based on how good they are as CHARACTERS and not as PEOPLE. There’s a difference, and I’ll be able to explain as I go.

Now, without further ado, let's begin this wild journey together with the worst character in the series.

(Also, be warned, this is going to be the LONGEST post you’ll ever read. The Google Doc is 33 pages long…)

Tibbles: Yeah, really no contest here.

Tibbles is, quite frankly, the only character that I consider inadequate. I get the idea the writers were going for: He's a secondary antagonist for lighter adventures amongst heavier ones. The problem is that type of character does not function for a show like The Owl House, a series where the writers were told they'd be cut for time while working on Season Two and having little time for lighter tales. Maybe if the show had enough room for twenty more adventures or if The Owl House had a slight lean toward episodic misadventures like Amphibia, Tibbles might have functioned better as a comedic villain that occasionally screws with the main characters for filler. But because The Owl House has so much to do and would eventually become a series with no time to do it, Tibbles becomes more annoying when he distracts from the plot. Fortunately, he's only in three episodes. Unfortunately, Tibbles never becomes as entertaining as he could have been. He has one good capitalism joke, and that's all the good I can say about Tibbles. Let's move on…

Jacob: Another secondary antagonist that would have worked better if the show had more time. Maybe make him a constant threat (read: annoyance) to Vee or the rest of the Hexsquad while they're stuck on Earth. Instead, he's nothing more than a one-and-done threat who makes a singular cameo in the best episode of the series ("Thanks to Them"). At least Jacob being a crackpot conspiracy theorist is kind of funny. Otherwise, he'd be lower than Tibbles.

Perry Porter: He has next to NO character. Barely even a scrap.

He’s the father of one of our primary characters, and Perry has NOTHING going for him other than that and being a reporter. At least he’s not annoying.

The BATs: Yeah, might as well lump these three together because they started off making you think they'd do SOMETHING, only to have very little to do with the plot, with only one of them having a definite personality (It's Amber, and I love her).

Katya's kind of fun as this weird fanfic writer who has a hint of appreciation of showmanship, given how she very clearly wrote Raine's speech. But then you also have Derwin, who's so forgettable that I know for a fact that you had to Google his name to remember who Derwin is. These three are a mixed bag of sometimes being fun yet forgettable, to the point where I don't blame the writers for forgetting their existence when it came to the rest of the series. A shame, really, because there could have been something interesting to explore with this secret resistance organized by Eda's ex. The problem is, just like Tibbles, there's not enough time for characters like the BATs to flourish. They're missed potential, sure, but that doesn't make them bad. Just less than remarkable members of this very extensive cast.

Gilbert and Harvey Park: Have slightly more personality than Perry with Gilbert having more of a playful and laidback side to him and Harvey being the more serious and worried of the two. You can see glimpses of this through the little details like Willow falling onto Gilbert in that swinging memory in “Understanding Willow.” Gilbert laughs with Willow while Harvey looks a little worried. That’s sweet. They balance each other out.

Also, they’re gay, and gay characters are always better. It’s why they’re a step above the BATs. NEXT!

Warden Wrath: He has the same problem with Tibbles and Jacob, where Warden Wrath is a secondary antagonist in a show that doesn't really have the time for him to be as effective as he COULD be. What makes him BETTER is that Wrath is at least funny. Like, the man chopped off Eda's head and then asked her out. That's humor, baby.

Also, he's a good dad to Braxus, so...you know.

Though I will admit, I'm surprised how little a role Wrath played in the show. In "A Lying Witch and a Warden," he gave off main antagonist energy with his look and menacing demeanor. Turns out he's just a throwaway character, and that's for the best. He doesn't overstay his welcome, never distracts from the plot, and has a few hilarious lines and moments. Not the strongest threat or character, but decent's good enough for me.

Kikimora: I might be the only person who doesn't hate this little gremlin, and even I have to admit she's not that great.

Don't get me wrong, I adore how insane she acts and how obsessive she can be in wanting to beat Hunter, specifically. She has a lot of fun moments and, weirdly, looks adorable when not wearing a cone of shame. She has her fun moments...but fun enough to be a recurring antagonist throughout the series? To the point where the characters have boss fights with her in three prominent episodes?

I...don't think so. I like Kiki just fine, but only in spades. Her voice can get grading after a while, and you do get sick of her obsession with the Emperor's coven given time. She's at least funnier than Wrath, though. I will ALWAYS stand by that. But that's not enough to get her higher.

Adrian Graye: He's yet another secondary antagonist that would have benefited from more time...I'm noticing a theme here.

Eh. Either way, this guy's great. His whole schtick is being a bad and nitpicky director, and that's funny to me. It's what I would expect from the head of the Illusions Coven, who are witches best defined as ones with a sense of showmanship. Some might find Adrian annoying, which...yeah, he's kind of intended to be. But I get it. Not everyone would laugh at this guy as much as I do, and that's okay. Comedy is subjective, after all. My only complaint with Adrian is that we don't see more of him. He's too fun of a villain with an equally entertaining concept to be wasted as a one-and-done antagonist that resorted to only cameos in the future. Still, if the worst I can say about a character is that I want more of them, is that actually a problem?

Tinella Nosa: Also known as Dana Terrace's self-insert. She's used primarily for comedy, and thank goodness for that. I don't know if I would have appreciated this character as much as I did if Tinella was best friends with the main cast or had some stake in the plot. In fact, the one plot and subplot that feature Tinella in a prominent role was some of the worst the show has ever had. Thankfully, she's mostly a character for random comedic bits, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way.

Barcus: Another character whose primary purpose is to be funny. At least Barcus is a dog that radiates stoner energy, giving him a ton more bonus points.

Braxxus: ALSO a comedic character, but is only better because the joke's funnier. I mean, Braxxus is just a character who's a little toddler that looks and sounds disturbing. How can you NOT laugh at that?

Eberwolf The Huntsman: Quick aside: Was anyone going to tell me that Eberwolf was apparently a man, or was I supposed to find that out for myself? I mean, shame on me for assuming genders, I guess...But I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one on that.

Anyways, Eberwolf is fine. In the short time he's in the show, Eberwolf offers great humor by being this feral little rascal that primarily annoys Darius. Not much to say other than that, and I doubt having more time would benefit Eberwolf. He really does scream "Comedy Relief" to me, and sometimes being entertaining is enough. Not everyone needs depth.

Boscha: Speaking of depth, I will forever stand by my claim that Boscha worked better as a one-dimensional bully than a three-dimensional one. Sure, three-dimensional bullies can be interesting because it leads to us learning why they do their harsh acts and that there are reasons why they're bad kids...However, that's why we have Amity. And for a redeemable bully like HER to work, you need an irredeemable one to show up to prove that not every little s**t can be better with time. Some are just sadists for no reason. And that's where Boscha comes in as a bully that knows full well she's hurting people but doesn't care because her only justification is that they deserve it. Why? Because Boscha believes she's better than them. That inflated ego makes her the perfect mirror of what Amity could have been and causes Boscha to be the best rival to Willow. Willow starts off with confidence issues, where even though she gains more of a boost thanks to her friends, there's still lingering self-doubt in the back of her brain. Boscha lacks that. She may do some affirmations to her reflection, similar to what Willow does in "Any Sport in a Storm," but while Willow briefly second guesses herself, Boscha says every word as if she knows its universal truth. So when these two go up against each other, it's great because it allows Willow to prove that she IS the best while proving that Boscha's the worst. It was perfect, and it's why I had no issues with Boscha remaining one-dimensional...But then the writers had to SCREW IT ALL UP!

Now, don't get me wrong. Revealing that Boscha had codependency issues with Amity and Boscha's other friends is interesting. There's just one problem: They introduce this idea in the second to last episode of the series. There's next to no time to fully flesh it out, leaving Boscha with a character arc that feels both forced and rushed. It might have been better if this idea had been established from the beginning instead of using most of that time writing Boscha as a one-dimensional bully with no depth to her. I still say she's entertaining, but maybe the writers tried TOO HARD with her.

Matt Holomule: But sometimes, it's better to try for a character that used to be the most universally hated.

How in the hell did I go from hating this little stink rat to being genuinely entertained by him? He's not my favorite or anything, but, like...compare Matt's first appearance with his last. He was an insufferable little prick who caused problems for Luz and Gus all because Matt wanted power and drama. That's it. Just those two things: Power and drama. Yeah, those are not great motivations for a character.

In fairness, it was clear we were supposed to hate Matt, and humor comes from watching him fail miserably. The problem is that he didn't do it enough, and while I'll laugh at the little stink nugget getting messed up at the end of "Something Ventured, Someone Framed," Matt still won by the end of the day, getting everything he wanted. He just got a little messed up along the way, is all. So while the idea is there, it's not strong enough to make the character entertaining.

But then the writers decided, "Hey since we're not going to try with Boscha, let's try SOMETHING with Matt." And it worked! "Through the Looking Glass Ruins" showed why Matt was such an insufferable, slimy weasel because he attended a school where the more powerful received more respect. Matt never got that in his old school, so he tried again in his new school, looking for power and drama because it's all he knows. Then by "For the Future," not only is the guy actually competent, but he's hilarious through false bravado and not being smart enough to know that he's been crushing on a robot. It's a huge improvement...but only from a character that makes three primary appearances and sucks with one of them. A character who's decent two-thirds of the time isn't too bad, but that still doesn't make him high up on my list, where characters are better for far more than that.

Viney: Or a character that has a better vibe despite...barely having anything to work with.

Viney...is insane. She dumps friends over the tiniest of misunderstandings and uses her griffin as an assistant for everything. She's clearly not well in the head...and that's what makes her entertaining.

Vine is a looney nut who might be unaware of her crazy actions. It's good fun, but the problem is that there's not enough of it. Like Matt, Viney has very few prominent moments in the series, and you can tell she's not as entertaining as she could have been. If the writers went all the way with her insanity or made her a character that's the textbook definition of "zero chill," you can bet Viney would be one of my favorite characters. As is, her craziness is only...a scrap of what could have been a great personality. I like her, don't love her.

Jerbo: Jerbo's higher because he has more of a well-defined personality. And he wasn't instantly unlikable, so...

And that really is all there is to say about Jerbo. He's fun as a fearful boy down on his luck and has a bit of intrigue with how he wanted to change the coven system forever. And he does, which is honestly pretty cool. Still, not a lot to make him higher.

Owlbert: Hey, look! It's a character that had a ton of prominent appearances in Season One and was all but forgotten in every season after!

This is a shame because Owlbert is one of the two palisman in the series that feels like a genuine character. The others are cute (my favorite is a tie between Ghost and Stringbean), but Owlbert, for a few episodes, felt like a prominent member of the cast with his loyalty to Eda and the connection formed with Luz. In fact, he and Luz had such a great connection that, for a while there, I assumed the show would do a thing where Eda passed down Owlbert to Luz as a form of passing the torch from the master teacher to the master student. But that didn't happen, which I can be fine with because Stringbean's perfect, and I will not hear any argument about it.

Still, it's weird how Owlbert showed up a fair amount of times in Season One, even having an entire episode dedicated to him, only to be forgotten and discarded by the time Season Two rolled around. And I know someone who'll be mad about that.

Bat Queen: And she's a character that had her own kind of potential only to be forgotten in Season Two. Only in this case, I'm willing to be more forgiving toward Bat Queen. It sucks that we'll never fully know who her owner is, but that always felt like a minor story beat for someone who wasn't that major of a character. Or, at least, someone who never had TIME to be a major character. The Bat Queen had intrigue as a discarded palisman who dedicated her life to looking after abandoned ones, but someone like her doesn't really have a place in the grander story of the show. Plenty of characters in the series have good reasons to have their stories continue or their personalities develop, whether having close ties with a main character or having a narrative purpose. Bat Queen doesn't really have either of those things, so it's why I'm not someone who’s losing sleep at night just because she has this engaging backstory brought forth but never followed up on. I'd still like to see it, but I always knew that after hearing Disney shortened the show, it was always going to be the Bat Queen's story that would fall on the cutting room floor. Missed potential for sure, but at least we had an interesting character for a short while.

Odalia Blight: And the winner for the worst mother of the year goes to--Yeah, I know. An easy joke to make. But I can't help it! It's always served on a silver platter!

Anyways, Odalia's the worst. Yet that's what makes her the best, funnily enough. She's the most snobbish snob that's ever snobbed while having zero respect for other people, least of all her family. You hate her with every fiber of your being, and you cannot wait to see her fail miserably despite trying so hard to reach the top. And Odalia absolutely is a character one loves to hate. She called Amity and her friends into the office and soon scolded Amity for not being in class. It is a challenge to make someone that kind of entertainingly despicable, yet the writers nailed it. However, they might have worked too hard to make us hate Odalia and not enough to deliver her just desserts.

I have no problems with Odalia being an awful mother, wife, and overall person throughout the show. I figured it was only a matter of time before she got hit in the face with SOME karma that would make it all worth it. Sure, it was nice to see her bend to the whim of a literal god that craved pizza bagels, and I do love that Belos, who values life less than her, didn't even want to use Odalia as his meat puppet. Still, she deserved worse. After everything Odalia did and the bridges she burned, it would have been nice to see either Amity or Camila knock her lights out for being a terrible mother. Hell, we even saw Kikimora doing community service and grunt work after her crimes, so it would be fitting to see Odalia right there with her. Or giving her SOME punishment other than making the last time we see her being Odalia standing off to the side and acting like she doesn't care that she lost everything. And that...doesn't feel right. After everything Odalia's done, we, the audience, and her family, deserve to see Odalia receive the worst punishment she had coming to her. Maybe not death or even going to jail. But SOMETHING is better than nothing. She was entertaining, but being so goes only so far without a proper failure.

...But at least she's hot. I know that's out of left field...but we all know it's true...Camila's still hotter, though.

Gwen Clawthorne: ...At least she's a better mother than Odalia?

Alright, I might be the only person who doesn't hate Gwen like others in the fandom, just like with Kikimora. But unlike Kiki, Gwen has much more to like...at least to me. Yeah, her falling for scams isn't great, and realizing the error of her ways could have been done better if not...quickly paced, but I don't mind her. Upon her introduction, it's clear that Gwen wants to try and help Eda with a vile curse. She may have been a bit hostile with her wording, but we soon learn that the curse not only turns Eda into a savage beast but one that clawed Gwen's husband's eye out and ruined the family business that's been around for generations. You can't really blame Gwen for being...agitated about the curse. Or wanting to try anything and everything to cure it. Yes, Eda's curse is often used as an allegory for a chronic illness. And a pretty decent one at that. But sometimes, with a story, you have to remove the allegory from what's shown, and doing so helps you gain more of a perspective for why Gwen reacted the way that she did. Was it right? Well...Not really. I guess she could have seen sooner that she should have been there for Eda instead of scaring her off, not to mention the damage Gwen caused in her debut appearance, but Gwen was at least quick enough to come around and realize what she did was wrong, and APOLOGIZE. Most parents like her won't be that easy, obviously, but another thing about fiction is that you have to realize that it's...fiction. Not everything equates to real life, and you should accept a character's choices and actions if it suits the story. Not many kids can do that, sure, and that's where the hesitation fits, but I think Gwen's kind enough to prove that she's worth believing in. She still spent years trying to help Eda, even if it was misguided, and was ready to kill the guys scamming her. Gwen is not a bad person. Her heart's mostly in the right place despite the troubles she caused, and I'm willing to bet she learned her lesson in the end. Just listen to her speech to Eda (and a little to Lilith) near the end of the episode. That's a mother's imperfect love if you ask me.

Masha: Admittingly, there's not much to them. Masha's a solid character. They have tidbits of personality as someone who's into the grim and horrifying but has a good sense of humor about things when they laugh off reading Vee an accurate fortune by saying she needed bath bombs or humorously sum up Belos' backstory about him being upset that his brother got a hot witch girlfriend. Plus, there's the genuine representation of having Masha be non-binary but still comfortable dressing and looking feminine. From what I've learned, being non-binary doesn't mean sticking to a gender-neutral style. Some like to look feminine, while others are fine appearing masculine, and it's cool for The Owl House to represent that through Masha. I only wish there was more about them. I could go on and on about most of these characters, but for Masha, there's not enough to go off of. It really is the good vibes and representation carrying them, but that's not much to complain about if you ask me.

Skara: SKARA IS THE BEST GIRL!

What's that? She barely has much of a consistent personality and is an over-glorified background character, if anything else? Well, too bad, because she's the best girl.

Honestly, I don't know why I love Skara so much. She hardly has any character to her, but something about her is just so gosh darn endearing. I'm telling you, sometimes a character can be entertaining by having a good vibe alone.

Steve: THIS MOTHER F**KER, however, had NO RIGHT being as entertaining as he was! Nor how popular!

Steve. F**king STEVE! All he had was one or two lines in a less-than-stellar episode, yet the fandom ADORED this mother f**ker! And, yeah, they were funny lines, but not "OMG, best character EVAH" levels of funny! But sure enough, people loved him! So the writers brought him back, and gosh dang it, he's so endearing! He's the most chill and reasonable character in the entire show! He gave King insight into who he was in one of the biggest character moments in the series! He's...NOT the golden god that I think people were picturing him as under that mask, but DAMN, is he still a handsome fella! He's so great, that I honestly wish he was in the show MORE! Gosh, DANG IT!

"If you love him so much, why are you acting angry about it?"

Because it's FUNNY!

"No, it isn't."

Yes, it is! Moving on!

Terra Snapdragon: Finally! Some good frickin' secondary antagonist!

Terra is why I hoped the series would dive deep into the other covenheads, primarily the clearly evil ones. This woman radiated supervillain energy as someone who seemed super sweet but would kill you with zero hesitation. And we learn in the flashback episode that Terra was somehow more bloodthirsty, having zero care for the lives of others, least of all children. The woman was despicable, and it was a treat seeing her return when she did. And, unlike Odalia, Terra had a proper amount of punishment. Sure, it sucks that she slinks away in the finale, but her forced to play pretend with the Collector while in an outfit that...did not work on her is pretty decent karma for someone who saw others as below her. Plus, she at least turned into a puppet for being too big of a big mouth, which is more than what Odalia got. I'd prefer if Terra had MORE punishment, but who knows? Maybe she went to jail or...tripped and snapped her spine off-screen.

If anything, my only complaint was that Terra wasn't in the series more. Make HER the main threat in "For the Future" instead of Kikimora and Boscha. THAT would have been fun. Regardless, she's entertaining enough as is, even if more screen time would have made her better.

Principal Bump: This man deserved more love...He said, while still leaving Bump below several characters.

For real, though, Bump deserves more credit, even from me. He's the school principal in a children's animated series, but instead of making him the demonic, overbearing dictator, the writers made him...the exact opposite. If anything, Principal Faust is more of what I would expect as a cold, careless, and horrifying hater of fun and children. Thankfully, that's not Bump. The man may be strict and have no problems throwing a kid into a detention pit, but he still cares about the safety and well-being of his students. Hell, he loves his students. Even with trouble-makers like Luz, Gus, and Willow, Bump can't help but cry because he has fond memories about the three of them and the trouble they caused. And while he can be dead-set in some ways, Bump is still willing to admit when he made a mistake and chooses to correct it, like in "The First Day" by letting the Detention Kids pick multiple tracks to study from. He's kind and reasonable, and that's what's to love about him. Plus, Bump's got some Grade-A snark on him. Some of the show's funniest and most quotable lines come from his dry remarks, and it's partially why he's bumped (ha) up so high. As I said, Bump deserves more love...It's just unfortunate that there are more entertaining characters than him.

Lilith Clawthorne: Admittedly, Lilith would not be up this high if she remained the person she was in Season One. Back then, Lilith wasn't the worst. She functioned nicely as a foil to Eda's wild side and had a great design for a secondary antagonist. The problem is that Lilith was a little boring, her motivations weren't made clear until the finale for the sake of a twist, and that same twist REALLY hurt her character...for about a week until everyone was quick to forgive and forget after a poorly paced redemption. And that's another fault of Lilith: Her redemption. She cursed Eda, ruined the family, ostracized Eda from society, hunted her down for YEARS because of blind faith in a man playing her like the cheap-ass kazoo that she was, and it all got wiped away almost instantly. Granted, there is one asterisk to this: It was all an accident...Sort of. 

Lilith did mean to curse Eda but didn't intend for it to last as long as it did. And you at least get a sense that Lilith feels some remorse for doing so, even stopping their first duel together the second Eda brought up the curse. The problem is that she doesn't feel enough, still treating Eda as lesser than her despite the two of them being close and Lilith supposedly feeling guilty about cursing her. And, again, it feels like everything got resolved too quickly. I accepted everyone is quick to say, "Everything's good for now" in "Young Blood, Old Souls," but only because I expected Lilith to get dragged through the coals in Season Two. But she didn't. She was quickly treated as one of the gang, and Eda did nothing but jokingly remind Lilith that she cursed her. You do that after years of getting over something, not after a week. So, as a redeemable antagonist, Lilith might as well get a C-...Thank goodness she became an entertaining character, regardless of that.

By Season Two, Lilith becomes an almost different character. Better yet, she becomes what I wanted Viney to be: Bats**t insane. Lilith is violent enough to tell Philip that he better be digging his own grave and punches him in the face without hesitation, ecstatic about banisters and having barnacles on her head, and willing to devote her whole life to an eight-year-old and perform blood sacrifices in his honor. The woman lost her mind, and I was all there for it. Even then, though, she still had a bit of intelligence, being hesitant to trust Philip after seeing some similarities to Belos and studious enough to figure out glyph combos herself. It's just that now because there are fewer worries and fears about keeping an image and being the best, Lilith can let go of inhibitions and go nuts. Her redemption could have used a lot more polish, but being so dang entertaining in Season Two is what made Lilith a character I couldn't care about to one I was excited to see when I could.

Alador Blight: Wish I could say the same about this guy...

I think I love the idea of Alador much more than his execution. Upon his introduction, he's presented as the lesser of two evils between him and Odalia, with Alador being easier to talk to without threatening to kill anybody and trying to find compromises that could stow Odalia's fire when she becomes unreasonably angry. Initially, one could assume that he's on the same agenda as hers, only to later find out that Alador's being mistreated too, with Odalia working him to exhaustion, too tired to even notice his children's problems half the time because he's too busy working for Odalia to the point where he never even took a sick day. In Season Two, this lines up with a lot of his behavior. It's why he acts so scatterbrained and unsure of what to do in most appearances. Or the way he tries to tell Odalia they've demonstrated enough with the Abomiton and how he forces a compromise by making Odalia stick to her word and sneakily tell her that being with friends makes Amity stronger, and how he promises to Amity to let Odalia back down in "Reaching Out." If you look solely at how he acts in Season Two, I believe it's pretty decent character work/development, showing a man who loves his kids but can't be the father he wants and needs to be because of his overbearing wife...However, there is ONE moment that spoils everything.

Yeah, that one. This is the scene that everyone points back to when discussing Alador's change of heart and whether or not he earns Amity's love despite it. He's very clearly on Odalia's side in this argument, being just as cold as her. Some argued that because this memory came from Amity as a kid, she might misremember the details and misconstrued how Alador acted that day. Even his silhouette seems different from how he looks in the present, and I was willing to agree because I remember days when my parents got a LITTLE mad, and it was the scariest thing in the world. However, not only would you be surprised how more traumatic experiences stick with kids, but the show makes it very clear that memories inside one's mind recreate things to the exact detail. Sure, there's the fact that it's Amity's recollection in Willow's brain, which, as far as we know, isn't as perfect as a picture. But The Owl House never explicitly establishes how weak a witch's memory could be while already inside a memory. It's a very weird distinction to make but necessary to prove that Amity's memory isn't as exact as it looks. Although, if you want explanations, I have some of my own. One realistic, another analytical, and one argumentive.

Realistically...this is a retcon. The writers had a new idea of what to do with Alador and realized, too late, that they had to make changes to his character for it to work. Changes that go beyond a scene where all we see is his silhouette. And when a retcon's made, it's sort of a team effort between the writers and the fans to explain how it works, with the writers providing the information and the fans analyzing previous scenes to see how it holds up. And after writing about how he's under Odalia's abuse and manipulation, here's where the analysis comes in.

Alador works so much and dismisses his kids because, if he doesn't, Odalia will have the kids do work for him. Not wanting to let them go through what he does, Alador reluctantly goes along with what she demands, only getting her to back down when he sees an opportunity, like in "Escaping Expulsion." Unfortunately, just like that episode, he's still on her side most of the time, doing what she wants and saying what SHE thinks is right even if he probably doesn't want to. Because if he doesn't, he and his kids are in WORSE trouble. That day, when Alador scolded Amity, might be a day when he felt like there was no other choice because Odalia left no room to back down and was forced to do and say what she wanted.

Plus--and here's where I get argumentive--We forgave this:

Granted, there are some arguments against this as well, one I'll get to when talking about Amity. For now, I will say there are three reasons why we're willing to forgive Amity: One is that she's a kid. People are more willing to forgive a child's behavior because they can outgrow it and become better. People have this idea that adults can't do the same thing, that they should already know better...even though adults rarely do, and they could live up to seventy while still unaware of how their behavior is wrong. Number two is that we spend more time with Amity, learning how much she regrets her actions and proving how she'll work hard to be a better person despite them. We can't have that with Alador because the show has to do so much and has very little time to do it. Some corners can be cut, and Alador was one of them. Thirdly, and this is the one I can't argue against, people understand Amity's plight because they WERE Amity. They've had experience with neglectful and abusive parents, and that experience beats any argument a person has. It doesn't matter if you, me, or anyone else argues that Alador isn't badly written. THOSE people, the ones who had an Alador of their own, will always feel uncomfortable by how the writers made him because those people know not every parent is like him, and they don't want kids thinking THEIR parents are the same. I mean it when I say I can't argue against that because that's a fair reason to not like a character.

Personally, I like Alador enough. At least, I like the idea he represents. It's good to show that parents can be mistreated too, especially a father because not enough people take men getting abused in a relationship as seriously as women do. The execution is a little sloppy because of that one scene in Season One, but it doesn't bother me. It DOES, however, bother others, and for reasons I can't help but sympathize. I won't call Alador a bad character, but I won't stop others from disagreeing. But at least his kids are great (and, yeah, we’ll get to them).

Dell Clawthorne: Dell's kind of both a symbol and a character.

Symbolically, he's the physical representation of Eda's biggest regret. She blinded and crippled her father, ruining the family business in the process. But the sad part is that none of it was her fault. Yet Eda still blames herself, not even wanting to go and SEE Dell because the pain of knowing what she did to him is too great. He proves that Eda can turn into what she is afraid of becoming. Something that we see in her nightmare in "Watching and Dreaming." Something that no one wants to be: A monster. A monster that doesn't deserve forgiveness or love. A monster that should be locked away for the safety of the ones she loves. But the crazy thing is that Dell DOES love Eda. He DOES forgive her.

Dell has every right to be angry. He lost his eye and his job. Who wouldn't be angry after that? And maybe he was for a bit, but I doubt he was ever angry with Eda, let alone resent her for it. Instead, after years of her running away and never wanting to talk to him again, Dell only wanted to see his daughter again. His scene with Eda in "Elsewhere and Elsewhen," where he clarifies that what happened was tragic but still loves Eda despite it, is one of my favorite interactions between two characters in The Owl House. And trust me, that's a hefty list to get on.

Dell's time on the show wasn't long, but what he does gives a lot of substance to the show for a guy who probably has less than five minutes of screen time (I don't know, I didn't do the math). Maybe he could have offered more, but I'm glad with what we still got.

The Titan: The same goes for this fluffy individual. We only knew them for a short amount of time, but holy hell, did the Titan make the most of it. Even though, technically speaking, we knew them the whole time.

I don't think I've seen a show where the setting happens to be an essential character in the plot. I'm pretty sure everyone assumed the Titan was a corpse that our characters had adventures on, and that's it. Any idea that they were a being that could talk to others could get shot down because the only person to "talk" to the Titan was Belos. And with him being the serial liar that he was, any fan could assume that even talking to the Titan was impossible, and meeting them was even more so. Turns out it wasn't.

And the Titan, the powerful being whose corpse is big enough to form a landmass, also turns out to be a chilled-out individual. There are brief moments of seriousness and even nobility in their final moments, but for the most part, the Titan is just a laid-back, jovial person. Personally, I'm into god-like beings that are like that. Not one that's wrathful or vengeful, but kind and acts like someone you could, I don't know, have a beer with. Not that I drink beer, but...you know.

Granted, the Titan WAS a bit wrathful with how they treated the Collector, but they clearly feel bad about it after finally realizing the Collector meant no harm, and it was the Collector's SIBLINGS who did the dirty work. The Titan admitted to making a mistake, making them both a kind god and a humble one. It amazes me how much characterization was given to the Titan in how little time they were officially introduced in the show. There are characters who are better after having more time, but there are also ones who might just be worse. So I appreciate that they made the Titan so top-tier, even if making them nothing more than the Isles, and the show's setting, would have been more than enough.

Emira Blight: I will forever be grateful for the course correction that the writers took with Edric and Emira, not only making them great supporting characters instead of semi-antagonists like in "Lost in Language" but also giving them their own personalities that help them stand out instead of being exact copies like most twins in media. Unfortunately, Emira might be the least interesting Blight sibling.

THAT DOES NOT MEAN BAD! Just because Amity's more engaging and Edric's more entertaining, that doesn't make Emira a horrible character because of it. It just means that, comparatively, she's not as high as her siblings. With that said, Emira's still pretty fantastic as the only Blight with a functioning brain cell. She calls Edric out for his occasional stupidity, gives proper advice to Amity when she's freaking out, and has her thoughts together because Emira didn't work herself to exhaustion. It also makes sense why Emira's a healer. She's there to keep her family physically and emotionally safe, making sure Edric doesn't hurt himself or counseling Amity when things are too overwhelming. Not only is Emira the most sensible, but it might make her the glue that keeps the family together. But despite that, she's still playful, still mischievous. Except, unlike her brother, there's a more controlled intelligence behind the fun and games Emira pulls. It's a bit more subtle, but it's there. So, while she might be the weakest Blight sibling in terms of story value, Emira is still a great character in her own right, being a fun yet essential family member with that perfect older sister energy...Mainly because she's the older sister, but my point still stands!

Edric Blight: Ah, the one Blight sibling that proves how most of the brains went to Amity and Emira while he got only the scraps.

Edric is not smart. And that very fact leads to two kinds of entertainment. Firstly, it's funny seeing his dumbass stumble through life. He tried to eat snow, attempted to keep a wild bat as a pet, couldn't pick up a hint to save his life, and ended up in a full-body cast after a reckless rescue mission. The poor boy is a riot because of how dumb he acts, which leads to the second thing entertaining about Edric: He's aware of his lack of smarts and how others see him as "The Dumb One." It causes Edric to be a little insecure about his talents, despite having great knowledge of Beast Keeping and decent skills with Potions. It's as if the writers saw the fans' preconceptions about Edric and decided to do something with it. Unfortunately, they only did it for one episode because we're strapped for time, but that brief instant of character insight is what's to love about this show. We have so many characters to use and so little time that instances like Edric helping Eda and King make a potion is enough to be considered great character development for someone who could have easily been "The Dumb One" and nothing more. He was funny enough with that simple character trait, but one tends to appreciate when a show goes the extra mile, even if it's for one episode only.

Hooty: Oh, Hooty. Sweet, dearest Hootcifer.

At first, I did not like you. You were an annoying addition as comic relief, whose screechy voice only made me hate you more. But then something interesting happened. As time went on, you became less annoying and more endearing by nature. Having an eagerness to please others mixed with a constant ignorance of social cues made you quite humorous. Yes, quite humorous indeed. The laughs brought forth by things you have done and said were plentiful, and I was delighted by each appearance you've made.

And best of all, dearest Hootcifer, you've made Luz and Amity a canonical couple. In an episode that will be nearest and dearest to many fans' hearts, you have not only brought out beautiful development between King and Eda but also managed the most adorable display of young love to occur. A young love between two girls, no less, meaning this moment of spectacular representation for the LGBTQA+ community is all thanks to you, a character best described as a "bird worm." That is both mildly hilarious as well as incredible.

Unfortunately, dearest Hootcifer, your time on the show was not perfect. Whilst Season Two was you at your best, it took all of Season One for me and others to warm up to you. And by Season Three, with every other characters taking story prominence, there was nary any time for you, Hootcifer, to add anything of value. You hardly had any lines, nor did you manage to have any final words in the series finale. Other characters in the series had faced this injustice too, but it is extra ludicrous for you, Hootcifer. You were there since that very first episode, becoming the fourth member of the Owl House family. To think that your last line was only in the second to last episode, despite how much of an impact you've left on the others and the fans, it pains me that you were one of the few cheated out the most with that final season.

Regardless, despite everything, Hootcifer, you are a well-done character with humor and heart. Tis no wonder that the show is named after you, for you are worthy of such an honor.

...In short, Hooty is funny, endearing, and surprisingly grows on you. I have...no idea why I gave that sentiment across in such a fancy way, but oh well.

(He deserves it anyways)

Flapjack: *Sigh* Another loving bird...

Just like Owlbert, Flapjack's the only palisman with enough prominence in the series to feel like a character, but unlike Owlbert, the writers actually explore more with Flapjack. But that may be because his story is tragic.

It is heavily hinted that Flapjack is Evelyn's palisman, who also lured Caleb into the Boiling Isles and indirectly sparked DECADES worth of...bad stuff. And within that time, Flapjack lost an eye and an owner and spent so much of his life alone. That is until he met Luz...who then introduced Flapjack to Hunter.

It really was a solid expectation subversion that Flapjack chose Hunter as an owner. He had a kind and playful energy that matched Luz perfectly, but no. He wanted Hunter, possibly because he looked so much like Caleb. And not wanting to lose another Caleb, Flapjack seemed to make it his number one goal to help Hunter in every way possible. That's when it hits you why Flapjack is perfect for Hunter: He's what Hunter NEEDS. Flapjack may have worked well with Luz, but Hunter needed him more than she did. Hunter was all alone for most of his life and went through so much emotional and mental stress in his unfortunate existence. Then here comes Flapjack, cheerfully supporting Hunter in his interests and literally pulling him to people who will make him happy. Flapjack's basically a therapy bird if I've ever seen one. And it really was nice seeing the majority of the time he's spent in the series be dedicated to making someone else happy...because it makes his death all the more tragic.

All Flapjack wanted was to make Hunter happy, ignoring the fact for so long that being near Hunter was the biggest risk that Flapjack could have ever taken. The second Belos might see Flapjack, he'd be as good as dead due to Belos' need to feed off the souls of palismens and because of Belos' hatred for everything that Flapjack represents. Yet Flapjack still stuck it out and stayed by Hunter's side despite these risks. His death was all but inevitable, but it hurt all the same because while we knew, deep down, it would happen, we didn't WANT it to happen. But it did, and it stings that a bird that wanted to do nothing but good only paid a horrible price for his kindness. On the bright side, Flapjack died doing the one thing he did best: Helping Hunter. No, SAVING Hunter.

Flapjack was loyal to the end, and we all love him for it. And miss him all the same.

Darius Deamonne: Hey, look! It's another character that's important to Hunter! And this one is FABULOUS!

I'll forever be blown away by the expectation subversion the writers did with Darius. Upon his introduction, you think he would be this menacing secondary antagonist the characters would have to fight through in a final battle against Belos. That was definitely the vibe I got from the guy, with how menacing he acted and how he looked in his abomination form. Turns out, most of that was an act...Most of it. I'm willing to bet that he really was ticked off by whoever was screwing with him, and his annoyance was real with Ebberwolf. But by using what we NOW know, it's clear that Darius was playing SOME of his behavior up to make it convincing enough that he's on the Emperor's side in case any ears are listening in. Belos does have eyes and ears everywhere, after all...somehow. Plus, it makes the reveal that Darius is on the side of good all the more pleasant of a surprise. He's certainly less menacing, but not as a fault. Darius still has the same snark and agitation towards people who are more, let's say, foolish than him, just as Darius did in his first appearance. It's just that now he's more subdued because he's surrounded by people who Darius doesn't need to scare. Even when dealing with the Emerald Entrails, Darius acted cold but reasonable. And when actually TRYING to scare the kids, you can argue he wanted to further scare them away from joining the Emperor's Coven, showing them what type of person they'd be dealing with.

But the biggest surprise came when he turned out to be a decent father figure for Hunter. Unfortunately, we never get to see him as an actual father, but it's still sweet seeing Darius show Hunter the first amount of respect and care from an adult the poor boy ever got. Darius shows interest in Hunter's interest, respects his decisions, and encourages him to be a kid and not a soldier, likely because Darius knows full well where that leads for the previous Golden Guards. It warms the heart to see how much Darius cares for Hunter, getting worried when he's in danger and feeling joy when he's safe and sound. It's all great...and it SUCKS that Darius is one of the few screwed over in the finale. No final lines, just pure silence...and some shipping fuel between him and Alador. At least there were still moments of Darius showing he cares for Hunter, and they're both happy together. I didn't really expect much from Darius. He was already fun upon his introduction, but having him become this stern yet caring person was such an interesting twist that I can't help but admire more. It's not what I expected, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

Vee Noceda: That IS her last name, and I will hear NO SLANDER ABOUT IT!

...Anyway, Vee's a great character.

I am forever impressed by how great of an, yet another, expectation subversion Vee is. Everyone, including Luz, upon first seeing Vee, saw her as an evil doppelganger trying to steal Luz's life. I still remember the shock and fear I felt when first seeing Vee, worried about what this could mean for Luz and Camila. And then we got to know Vee...and I much prefer the character we got over an evil clone or whatever the popular theory at the time was.

Vee, quite possibly, might have the most tragic life out of everyone in the show. She was born in a cage, was treated as a lab experiment and nothing more, gained a ton of PTSD surrounding rats and cages, and likely never knew the feeling of a warm bed or a good home-cooked meal until meeting Camila. Vee's life was a nightmare before running away to the human realm, and after learning about all that, it makes her finding a home with the Nocedas, being a part of their family, all the sweeter. A friend of mine said that her plan was a LITTLE flawed because Vee didn't know whether or not Luz would return, but in fairness, Vee said that she didn't mean to keep the act up forever, but Camila was nice to her. Vee was operating off of emotions due to getting an inkling of what love feels like, even if Camila's motherly love wasn't for Vee exactly. And with the family she's found and the friends she made in the Human Realm, it's no wonder that she prefers a life there, graduating high school with Luz and having a form for herself to gain an identity of her own. It's amazing how much care and attention the writers put into Vee and her story...Especially since she's basically a minor character.

Yeah, it's crazy to think that a lot of this stuff that happens with Vee is for a character with a substantial role in TWO episodes. Honestly, I wish she had more and could have time to bond with Camila and Luz, showing how much of a happy family she's gained. But, even after "Yesterday's Lie" ended, I already assumed the odds of seeing Vee again in something big were NEVER to become a reality. The shortening of the series, leaving fans with only half a season and three specials, meant that the odds weren't in Vee's favor to grow and develop more than she already did. In a case like that, you have to learn to accept what you HAVE instead of complaining that you didn't get what you WANT. And as for what we have with Vee, it's still good and compelling stuff for a character that makes two appearances. Sure, the potential of a greater character is there for Vee, but for a minor character, she's still really great. Now, if she was a MAIN character, THEN it'd be an issue...Speaking of which.

Gus Porter: Ah, NOW we're getting to the important characters.

Gus is...probably the least interesting out of the main cast. That doesn't make him bad, mind you. I mean, look how far he's come in this list. It's just that, compared to everyone else, Gus felt as if he had less going on. While everyone else was dealing with trauma, family issues, and self-worth, Gus was always kind of...there. The worst part is that there are a lot of hints of there being more to him. He somewhat admits to Hunter in "Thanks to Them" that, while things aren't awful, Gus isn't happy. He missed his dad, and Gus was the first to break down and cry after "King's Tide." There's something there to explore, but because it's a season where so much is going on and there's little time to focus on everybody, Gus, unfortunately, gets the short end of the stick when dealing with HIS trauma. And there's not much going on with his family. There's no discussion of what happened with his mom or any animosity between Gus and his dad. They have a healthy relationship together. Which is appreciative, don't get me wrong. But it's NOTHING compared to Amity's issues with her parents, Eda's strained relationship with her sister and mother, and Luz's difficulty in getting her mom to understand her. The closest bit of intrigue we get with Gus and his dad is how bored and kind of annoyed Gus looked during the Grand Prix in "Eda's Requiem." There could be something to explore there, maybe talk about why Gus went with his dad even though he clearly wasn't having a great time. Unfortunately, this was during a season when the writers were told the series would get cut, and they had to rush to close up as many character arcs as they could before reaching the end, with Gus, again, getting the short end of the stick. Thankfully, the show does something about Gus' self-worth, showing his doubts as an Illusionist and some anxiety about being used by others for personal gain. It's engaging stuff, but it comes at the cost of Gus being overshadowed by an admittedly cute couple and the fandom's favorite white boy.

We definitely get a good amount where I say that Gus is an engaging character, but never enough to stand above the others. And that, right there, is why Gus is the least interesting in the main cast. There are great things about him to explore, but he's never given a chance to truly shine. Thankfully, Gus is still great in a supporting role, acting as the group's cheerleader and hyping them up to do something. Or how he acts as the little brother, having sometimes naive optimism and playfulness compared to everyone else. He's still a smart cookie who knows when to be serious, but it's clear that he's the second or third youngest in the cast, right next to King or the Collector. So, while Gus would have been even better with more time dedicated to him and him alone, that doesn't mean he's any worse of a character because of it. He's still endearing with how supportive he is, even if that makes him less interesting than his friends.

Speaking of which...

Willow Park: Willow...has a similar problem as Gus, but it might be a little worse. Because while Gus has entire subplots in episodes dedicated to him and his issues, Willow has consistently shared the spotlight with other characters throughout the series, where they get a lot of development, and she gets the scraps. To the point where fans talk more about the people Willow has a relationship with instead of Willow. She used to have a friendship with Amity? They latch onto AMITY'S side of things. Hunter's her boyfriend? They latch onto HUNTER'S side of things. In fact, I think people talk more about her BULLY than they do about Willow. Rarely does Willow get any attention in the fanbase and even in the series, which is a shame because she IS a solid character.

Willow's your typical shy girl who learns to gain more confidence. Only this one has more of a violent edge and seems more than capable of killing someone for hurting her but doesn't due to her self-confidence issues. Plus, instead of stretching out those issues throughout the entire series, Willow gains more confidence at the end of Season One. An annoying thing about shy girls is that they remain progressively so, getting better through inches instead of miles. With Willow, she gets over it pretty soon, to the point where I genuinely thought Willow didn't have much to do in Season Two because the writers figured her character arc was done. Which is a shame because even though her friends have more development than her, Willow is a great straight man to their antics. She's often remembered as a friend with the one functioning brain cell in the group, acting as the voice of reason when her idiot friends have a dumb idea. But she's still supportive of their ambitions and adventures because THEY were supportive of her. It's her way of paying them back. Willow just has a better idea of when to draw the line.

Plus, there is an interesting idea about Willow that the writers manage to explore beyond her shyness, even if it's not to as great of an extent as everyone else's development. You see, Willow has a problem processing trauma. In "Understanding Willow" (which ironically helps us understand Amity better), Willow states that it's best to hide away what's upsetting her while saying, "Out of sight, out of mind." Only for that to QUICKLY backfire as Amity takes things further by burning the very thing Willow only wanted to hide. They both learn it's better to confront the things that make them uncomfortable, gaining an understanding (ha) that you need to face your pain to heal from it. Except that Willow somewhat forgot that lesson in "For the Future," which showcased what makes Willow great. She's there to help her friends and their issues but ignores her own because she believes her friends’ are more important. All the girl needed was a good cry over her dads, but Willow instead repeated to herself, "Keep it in," not wanting to let her own problems overshadow everyone else's, which caused her emotions to grow more out of control. This side of her is an engaging idea, and it sucks that it's only been explored twice while her friends got more development. I'm willing to blame the shortening of the series for this one because there's no way she only had such a small role to play in the series upon conception. Willow acts as great support like Gus, but she could have been so much more. And that's a "What if" that's going to unfortunately be lost to time.

King Clawthorne: I have mixed feelings towards King, at least in the first season. I didn't hate him. It's just that, within Season One, King hardly had a direction. More often than not, he was the comic relief that went off doing silly things in the B-Plot while everyone else went on the real adventures. It led to entertaining bits, like gaining an army of sentient stuffed animals or using the Owl Beast as a tool to dominate the playground. But then there were times when they felt like an unnecessary distraction, like being an MC at Grom or being mistaken as a substitute teacher. And most of the time, it's all for the sake of an unrealistic goal. I could tell from the beginning that he would NEVER be the actual King of Demons, and it was just something the other characters played along with because even THEY knew it would never be a reality. So there was never anything King could add to the show besides humor, which he did well due to Alex Hirsch's hilarious delivery with a few jokes. If King stayed the same as he does in Season One, he'd go just above Hooty as someone entertaining with a few solid scenes of heart with the rest of the main cast, but nothing more than that.

...But then the writers decided to make King an actual character in Season Two.

King became more consistent and engaging in the series from "Echoes of the Past" to beyond. In most of the series before this moment, King always went back and forth as either a child, a pet, or an immature adult with delusions of grandeur. Post "Echoes of the Past," it's pretty clear that King's a child but one with a bit more maturity than others. He acts naive and has a definite need to be protected at all costs when he acts sad. And Alex Hirsch KILLS it when portraying King's youth, where the times King cries or gets emotional sounds like an actual kid rather than a grown man playing a kid. His delivery isn't just good for humor but for some amazing voice acting that surprisingly adds to the illusion. It's sort of like how John Roberts convinces me that Linda from Bob's Burgers is a New Jersey Mother in a way that's better than any voice actress ever could manage. Sometimes, you need to give in to the illusion.

As for what makes King engaging, that's where his purpose comes in. King wanting to become the King of Demons and have people bow down to him is...cute and results in some good humor. But King wanting to know what he is and where his Dad came from? Now THAT is a way to make someone invested in a character we already enjoyed. King was entertaining before, but seeing his struggles to find answers about his past and heritage was always endearing and helped you feel for the little guy. And when he finally DOES get answers, it cleverly gives King what he wanted in Season One: To be something that people would bow down to in respect and fear...and King doesn't want that anymore. After learning he's the last of his species, that his blood family is dead, and everything is falling down around him and his found family, King doesn't want to be the monster everyone fears. He just wants to be King and have things go back to normal. Or, HIS version of normal, anyway. It's pretty compelling to show King's growth as comic relief to an actual character by giving him everything he thought he wanted, only to practically refuse it. King is almost a completely different character by Season Two, and it really is for the best. Season One King wasn't too bad, but his Season Two self really gave him the boost he needed.

Raine Whispers: Raine is best defined as a pretty flawless character. At least, in my eyes, they are, as there's not really a bad thing I can say about them.

Upon conception, Raine was nothing more than a love interest to Eda...and that tracks. So much of Raine's development and story occurs when Eda is there, fawning over them and wanting to reconnect. Even their debut episode was more about Eda's issues and how Raine was there to guide her to the right path when it mattered most. They're very much a character severely connected with Eda and never had the chance to star in the spotlight instead of sharing it. A shame, really, since Raine organizing a resistance against Belos could be enough for an episode of its own, but, unfortunately, not the case for a series that got shortened. However, just because Raine's a character connected to Eda, it doesn't make them any less fun or engaging.

First and foremost, you GET why Eda is so in love with Raine. Where Eda is an agent of chaos, Raine is more for CONTROLLED chaos, willing to join Eda to cause some mayhem but in a way where they don't get caught or in trouble. And that's just them as kids. As an adult, Raine wants to destroy a militaristic dictatorship from the inside out, determined to keep the act going and fight literal brainwashing no matter how often they get caught. They're also pretty determined, fighting against Belos infecting Raine's brain and fighting with their last breath when Belos tried to get to the heart of the Titan. Because while Raine was one for chaos as a kid, they're still a good and caring person. Raine didn't want Eda involved so she wouldn't get hurt and MEANT their promise to Luz to make sure nothing bad happened to Eda during their mission on the Day of Unity. But on top of everything else: Raine is a charismatic dork, having enough charm to make Eda the Owl Lady blush but still having the dorkiest smile when announcing their crew's name is "The CATs." Raine is ALL these things, and the result is someone who's a blast to watch, even if they're simply Eda's love interest. They still add enough entertainment and drama, even if some of it, unfortunately, focuses more on the Eda side of things. Would I love more of a spotlight to shine on Raine? Of course. They're an outstanding character who unfortunately got put through the wringer, what with being physically tortured, used as Belos' meat puppet, and MAYBE groomed by Terra Snapdragon (That creepy witch). But when a character's conceived as a love interest, even if there's more to them, you gotta take the good moments when they're badass and awesome and appreciate when they contribute to the story on the sidelines as a supporting character than a leading one. At least they were right there to kill Belos and lived happily ever after, snuggling with Eda. Not too bad for a love interest, huh?

Oh, and Raine's also the first non-binary character in a kid's cartoon with a major influence on the characters and the plot. That's pretty cool too.

The Collector: Here we have a character that turned out WAY better than I imagined. I didn't admit it in the past, but I was a LITTLE worried that the writers would make The Collector like Bill Cypher: A chaotic god-like character who takes pleasure in treating others like his playthings. And The Collector IS that...but there's something that makes them a different yet intriguing character: The Collector's a kid. Yes, he's a kid who turned the Boiling Isles into their playground and the residents into toys, but they’re still a kid.

Upon our introduction of The Collector, we're given this idea that he’s a sick and twisted little gremlin who's just as excited as Belos is about the genocide of the Boiling Isles (which might be an image aided by the fact that it's Belos' memory). But every time we saw them since, the more the writers leaned into the Collector's child-like behavior, showing that the reason why he might be all for Belos' genocide and treat people as literal playthings is that they don't understand what life and death means. He doesn't MEAN to be a problem. It's just that no one has ever taught them otherwise. And that's a more interesting way to go about this character instead of making The Collector a new primary antagonist. It might have worked fine, but when you make a character with god-like powers, it becomes difficult to believe anyone could defeat them. So, the idea to stop The Collector by TEACHING him what's right and wrong before it's too late is a clever way to go about things, especially when it's King that does most of the teaching, using his newfound maturity to teach The Collector what Eda and Luz taught HIM. The result is a new, engaging character that also shows the stellar development of another. Not too bad for someone added to the series at the last minute...Yeah, no, that's what The Collector is, though.

After finding out the series would get shortened, Dana Terrace and the writers thought, "Hey, let's just go NUTS this season!" So, they threw in The Collector as a way to add more spectacle to the final three specials of the show. Sure, the writers had SOME idea of what to do with The Collector beforehand. But after getting the bad news from the executives who decided the series no longer fit the brand, it was the final nail in the coffin to shove The Collector in there. And MAN, there is no better representation of the show's forced conclusion than The Collector, as they're this thing that ALL the characters react to, whether protagonist or antagonist, and are forced to work through their story arcs and character development around within the last few minutes of the show. It's a pretty fun way to look at The Collector, even if he's still a great character despite all they represent. Regardless, I'm still grateful the writers didn't just turn him into the new primary antagonist who killed the old one to show off their threat level...Especially since the old one is REALLY good.

Emperor Belos/Philip Whitebane: "YOU LIKE BELOS MORE THAN WILLOW, GUS, RAINE, AND EVERYONE ELSE?!"

Yes...As a CHARACTER. Not as a PERSON. Because he's NOT a PERSON. He's a FICTIONAL CHARACTER.

I'm serious. People should stop equating "good character" to "good person," especially in this fandom. You can't talk about how well-written Belos or Odalia are without someone coming around and saying, "THEY'RE AWFUL PEOPLE!" I know that. Most...SHOULD know that. But here's the thing: Belos is an antagonist. A character whose purpose is for the audience to love to hate him. If that's done well, he's a good character. And guess what: Belos does it REALLY well, to the point where he's one of my favorite antagonists in a Disney property. Probably one of my favorite antagonists of all time.

Upon his introduction, Belos scared the crap out of me. From his design to even the way he spoke sent chills up my spine. He didn't even SOUND all that threatening, with a deep and scary voice. He sounded like a dude, but it’s in the way he said things, as if Belos knew what he was saying was messed up. But he didn't care, almost like it was because he thrived on people fearing him. And that was just on his INTRODUCTION. From a few of his future appearances, the writers showed Belos acting MORE horrifying, having disturbing spells unlike anything we've seen before, being aware that SOMETHING is spying on him, and revealing that he has a curse that turns him into a somehow MORE terrifying monster. It was pretty effective in getting me to fear this creepy son of a non-witch...And then "Eclypse Lake" showed us his face, revealing that he not only SOUNDED like an ordinary dude but LOOKED like one too. Sure, he had that weird green mark that went down his face, but so much fear I had of Belos went away when I saw that he looked like someone's grandpa who forgot to wash his face. But as the show went on, the more it made sense to make Belos look like a regular man. Instead of portraying a fantastical evil, the writers went for a more realistic one...with supernatural powers, yes, but consider the villains of OUR world. They're people who look like you and me, using their faces to hide dark intentions and charm their way to a position in leadership. That fits Belos' actions to a T, and you see how perfectly it matches in real life when Luz voices her frustrations that no one can see how evil Belos really is, only for King to tell her that no one wants to realize that they've been following the wrong guy. Do you want to know why members of your family refuse to accept that a LOT of Republicans are evil? It's because they spent years, even generations, believing the opposite. So to tell them the truth, even if they NEED to hear it, they'll refuse any facts given to them. So having Belos be the exact representation of all of that, showing kids what to be wary of, is a great way to educate them to learn that sometimes the most dangerous people in society are those who control it in the first place. Even making him a grotesque monster doesn't really take away from the allusion but adds to it, letting Belos' true, inner self take physical form and showing kids what happens to these monsters when you're too late to stop them.

And that's not even getting into the motivations! I didn't feel TOO shocked when it was revealed that Belos was Philip Wittebane. Don't get me wrong, I was still a LITTLE shocked, but I predicted it and expected that Belos' big plan was to return to the Human Realm in some way, but that left some holes into why he spent so much time controlling the Boiling Isles to do it...And then it was revealed that Belos was a WITCH HUNTER. And I'll never forget the dread I felt when I realized, "Oh, they're doing THIS. Oh, no..." The level of fear that I once had for Belos skyrocketed once his real plan became clear and how INTENSELY close he was to reach his ultimate goal.

The scariest part of all is how believable it is. Given how real-world politicians are willing to wipe out an entire group of individuals just for existing, someone like Belos isn't too far of a stretch. Neither is how he came to be the monster that he is. Philip was only an orphaned child raised to believe that witches were Satan's spawn set to destroy everything. And one witch "stole" his brother, the only family Philip had left, and left him feeling like his rage was justified. Except...it's not. It was NEVER justified. Caleb left Philip on his own volition and, when Philip found him again, tried to convince the twit that Evelyn was fine. Philip could have easily taken his brother's word for it and changed. Philip would later have YEARS, possibly CENTURIES, to learn that he was wrong, but he never did. The conditioning was put too deep into his brain, and Belos was the result. I wouldn't say that makes him a tragic character, but it DOES explain so much about why he acts the way he does.

The best part about Belos is that he's consistent. Because of his conditioning, he never once wavers his opinions or questions if what he's doing is wrong. Belos considers himself the hero of his story and views Caleb and Luz as tragic losses. When met with the LITERAL GHOSTS of his sins, Belos yells at, or flat out ignores, them, proclaiming that he was doing the right thing and it's not HIS fault that their souls were too far gone. And with Luz, Belos tried to kill her on three separate occasions, actually succeeding the third time around. And when backed into a corner, realizing he's as good as dead, does Belos ask for surrender? Does he beg for forgiveness? NOPE! He initially tries to manipulate Luz, attempting to take advantage of her good nature into thinking he's good now. And, when THAT instantly fails, Belos yells at Luz, saying she's betraying her humanity and is nothing more than the very evil he spent his whole life fighting against. Luz doesn't buy a word of ANY of it, least of all when he says they're better than this petty revenge and killing out of a twisted form of justice. Even though that's exactly what he's been doing all his life.

Evil to the end, Belos is an antagonist that works because of how perfectly diabolical and realistically despicable the writers made him, making him interesting to dissect while having it feel so cathartic to watch him get stomped to death by the very people he hated. I could honestly go on and on about what makes Belos so engaging to watch and easy to hate...but this gosh dang review is long enough already, and I haven't even gotten to my top five favorite characters yet!

Speaking of which, let's talk about the ONE good thing Belos did with his life...After we talk about Amity.

Amity Blight: How's THAT for a smooth transition?

Anyways, Amity's great because with nearly every new appearance she's made, she becomes a better character, and I mean that in two ways. For one, she becomes more intriguing as we learn about her home life, interests, and motivations, all three being connected in some capacity. Everything that Amity did, she did because her parents (her Mom, mostly) told her to do it. Ending her friendship with Willow, forcing her to be friends with Boscha and her mean girl squad, be the best of her class no matter what, and join the coven that she slowly doesn't want to join anymore. These are all the things Amity was forced to do, and had no choice to do it.She had almost no free will, but that doesn't mean she couldn't rebel in the tiniest ways. She took time out of her day to read to kids and used the cover of it being extra credit to keep doing it. She has a secret room with a collection of Azura books to enjoy a fantasy series, idolizes the purest hero, and has some creative freedom if that fan art on her diary's cover is anything to go by. Even her bullying has SOME ways of cheating. Amity may have said that Willow had no talent, but it was an attempt to get Boscha and the others to stop while covering her tracks so they won't tell anyone she went soft on Willow. And in "I Was A Teenage Abomination," some of Amity's words almost sound encouraging. There's a mocking tone to a lot of it, but the subtlety of her going "keep it up" is still there. Sure, Amity would later have a rage later regarding Willow and Luz’s cheating, but even that is more or less justified. They broke the rules, and, knowing how Odalia reacts to failure, Amity is NOT willing to let go of her "Top Student" badge without a fight. Maybe I'm stretching, and maybe I'm looking deep into things that aren't there. But it's the same thing I do with Alador: When presented with new information about a character, it's a collaborative effort to look at what came before and figure out how it works. And I think there's enough to Amity's actions in the past that are justified by her motivations yet still have a bit of her good side shining through. Which is good because that brings me to the OTHER reason why Amity gets better with each episode.

Piece by piece, bit by bit, Amity becomes a better person after learning a new and valued lesson by the end of every episode. And unlike a blonde-haired character I hate from that frog show, Amity has a clear and definite desire to become a better person. The writers SMARTLY confirm early on that Amity doesn't want to be cruel. She specifically can't show weakness, so she builds walls to hide away her good side, believing that part of herself is weak. But through Luz, the best thing that ever happened to Amity, all those walls come crumbling down, and the Amity SHE wants to become would soon blossom. She's less reserved, more open about feelings, smiles instead of sneers, and acts nicer to Luz and others around her. There's still some anger, annoyance, and the occasional snark, but it was nowhere near as bad as how Amity USED to act. And through each wall that falls gives Amity courage to stand up to her parents and finally become her own person, to the point of dying her hair to reflect the kind of person she wants to be. By a quarter of the way through Season Two, Amity finally gains an identity that reflects what she always had hidden underneath. And it's satisfying...And then writers made her Luz's girlfriend.

Yeah, this is a complaint you'll often see floating around. The second Amity and Luz start dating, a lot of her individuality tends to trickle away, with most of Amity’s problems being related to or overshadowed by Luz's. Just look at "Reaching Out," which has Amity dealing with her issues of Alador's neglect and wanting to form SOME connection with him. But it's barely touched upon due to the real meat of the episode being Luz using the event as a distraction towards her own issues, which I remember more regarding that episode than anything Amity went through. And things get worse by Season Three, where almost every character has something to go through or a chance to highlight their grief, and Amity is...just kind of there, being looped in with supporting her girlfriend and dealing with an ex-friend instead of dealing with her own problems.

It definitely sucks that after all that fighting that Amity went through to gain independence and discover her true self, only to be sidelined once she gets it. But I will say that while Amity is forced into being categorized as Luz's girlfriend, that role still highlights Amity's development. She acts warm, kind, and, most of all, understanding towards Luz and her issues, the same way Luz acted towards Amity, proving she can give as much as she can take. It's not how I wanted things to turn out, but hey. At least Amity got a complete character arc before being pushed to the side. That's WAY more than what I can say about Gus and Willow, the characters introduced to us as Luz's best friends. Guess a girlfriend takes more of a priority.

But that's enough about the fandom's favorite white girl. Let's NOW talk about the fandom's favorite white boy AND the writer's favorite punching bag.

Hunter: In all seriousness, Hunter feels like a character where the writers went, "Hey, remember Amity? Let's just...f**king do THAT again. But BETTER."

And they did! Hunter pretty much has the same journey that Amity did as a character, but with all the strengths and NONE of the weaknesses. Upon his introduction, you think he's a charismatic yet evil little brat who doesn't value the lives of others with how quickly he threatened to kill Luz, Eda, and King. But, just like with Amity, the more we learn about Hunter, the more we realize why he WOULD act the way he did and even why he SHOULD.

Hunter is the supposed "nephew" of Emperor Belos, a man who hates failure to the point where he's ready to kill after you let him down ONCE, and you don't want to push his limits too many times. Hunter knows AND fears this fact, so he learns to hold his tongue when possible so as not to gain another injury during one of Belos' temper tantrums. So, Hunter does what he's told, acts carelessly toward others beneath him, and constantly tries to prove himself as a valued soldier instead of acting as a teenager. The poor boy has his own set of walls built up, and instead of letting the cracks grow, he often tries to patch them as quickly as possible because he fears Belos WAY more than Amity fears her parents. And rightfully so, because Belos would absolutely kill Hunter if he betrayed him. He's done it before.

Hunter being a Grimwalker shouldn't surprise me, as the pieces were there and...not really subtly hidden. Yet that doesn't change how horrifying it makes Hunter's situation. It's one thing to fear being replaced by a better soldier in his ranks or something. The fact that Belos can and will attempt to make a better, more efficient clone of Hunter and kill him if needed...makes Hunter digging his own grave in "Eclypse Lake" more fitting than we realized. It makes him not only replaceable but disposable, with that newly acquired knowledge making Hunter shatter, having a panic attack as it hits him all at once that his fears are more than justified. The worst part is that Hunter spent YEARS with that monster, never standing up because he couldn't do it as easily as Amity did to her parents. She can always run away, hide out in someone else's home to escape a mother who probably doesn't even want her. There's NOWHERE Hunter could go that could keep him away from Belos for long, what with him being the Emperor and Hunter having little to no friends. Thankfully, the ones he had did a lot of work.

Luz, Amity, Willow, Gus, and ESPECIALLY Flapjack all helped to give Hunter a better life. Luz offered perspective, showing Hunter that there's more to life than being told how to live it and that the authority figure he listens to isn't perfect. Amity represents evidence, showing Hunter that if you let good people in your life, they will help you with what tortures you. Willow gave companionship through herself AND a group of people that made Hunter genuinely smile for what must have been the first time in his life. Gus then offered comfort, showing Hunter how to calm his anxieties and fears he'll continue to have. And the one to provide all of these things is Flapjack, who gives Hunter perspective, evidence, companionship, and comfort through his own actions and dragging Hunter to people who could offer more. This gave Hunter a support group of individuals that slowly but surely gave him the desire to be the person he wanted to be and gain an identity. Sure, Hunter would build his walls back up each time they tore them down. But there were always cracks that made it easier to convince him what was the right thing to do for others AND himself. And it all gave him the courage to finally stand up to Belos, who saw Hunter as nothing more than a meat puppet, metaphorically and literally.

Hunter's journey does share a lot of similarities with Amity's. I will admit to that. But where she's later demoted as a character defined by a relationship, Hunter is a character that grew because of the support system he gained and was allowed to keep a sense of identity after his friends brought out his good side. They're the ones who guided him down his path, but what Hunter chose to do after was all his own. Plus, it feels SO GOOD to see that after Hunter's grief and knowing how many others before him died tragically to Belos, he gets his happily ever after. Hunter has a home life that's healthy, friends to support him, a girlfriend to LOVE him, and a chance to genuinely smile every day. He LIVED. He SURVIVED. And that must feel inspiring to those who feel there's no escape from the tragedy of their own lives. I love Amity's journey, but Hunter's definitely better and more impactful in ways you won't believe.

And he'd be the best character in the show...if it weren't the fact that I love three more. At this point, you can probably tell who they are, so let's get started with the fandom's favorite MILF.

Eda Clawthorne: I swear that Eda being hot isn't the reason she's in my top three...Maybe.

But for real, Eda is the only character on this list where if the show was about HER...I would watch it. There is SO MUCH about Eda that makes her a blast to see and a lot to dissect that makes her engaging as she is entertaining.

When regarding her personality/character traits, Eda is an instant gem. She's a con artist, frequently driven by greed, has NO problems breaking the laws, and is more than willing to beat up anyone who messes with the kids she's grown attached to. Now many, myself included, have pointed out that Eda's character shares similarities to Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls. And...yeah, there's definitely a lot to compare, but there's much more to contrast to help make Eda stand out more as a character. For instance, while Stan one hundred percent loves Dipper and Mabel, Eda still feels warmer towards Luz and King. She may show some annoyance at Luz's enthusiasm or playfully mock King believing he's the most dangerous creature alive, but when it matters most, Eda's there for her kids. To protect, counsel, and sometimes cry over them when situations seem dire. Though she'd probably hate to admit it, Eda has a good heart and one that isn't buried after years of emotional baggage (don't worry, we'll get into that). And she doesn't need much bonding experience to help bring that goodness inside her. When Eda saw a little creature alone in a dangerous environment, Eda took it in and raised it as her own. When seeing a young girl with the same amount of spirit as Eda did when she was younger, Eda decided to accept that young girl's offer and teach her the best she knew. Eda was a caring mother figure to King and Luz when they needed her. As for being a teacher...she could have been better, what with barely teaching Luz anything. Still, she tried, and that's primarily in part because of her own love of magic.

Eda may be a criminal striving to get rich, but those two things aren't mutually inclusive like it is for Grunkle Stan. Eda's a criminal because she disagrees with this close-minded rule that witches should be in a coven, doing one kind of magic for the rest of their lives, except for a small group of elite soldiers picked out by the Emperor himself. Anyone with half a brain can see the flaws of this, and Eda was one of them, breaking the law for years because Eda couldn't help but see how it never made sense. So, she never joined a coven, something considered a major offense against Belos' rule, with Eda being considered a wild witch by her community. And the woman RELISHED that idea. Due to not joining a coven, Eda was allowed to do any type of magic she wanted without being in a stuffy uniform and listening to the vague lies of an evil emperor. It left her with a bit of an ego boost, claiming that she's the most powerful witch on the Isles, but at least Eda gets to do what she loves. Even as a kid, Eda had a PASSION for magic, wanting to learn as much as she could and knowing more than Lilith, a character proven more studious than Eda. It's why you can buy Eda being the better witch than Lilith, because while Lilith can understand the technique, Eda has a better grasp of how good it feels to do magic. After all, she loves doing it in a variety of ways. Even her being a new headmaster of a magic college makes a lot of sense. She may not have been the best teacher for Luz, but they were both dealing with a form of magic that neither really knew much about. The only time their teaching clicked was that moment when Luz had natural magic, and Eda could finally offer advice she KNEW would work. Natural magic is what she understands and has a greater passion for, and teaching "wild magic" to the new generation, giving them something she always wanted and a chance to learn further, makes all the more sense when you take the time to think about it. It's a side of Eda that I don't think fans talk about much. A shame, really. It's an interesting part of her that's worth sharing and deserves to have more attention drawn to it. The show certainly didn't...Though, to be fair, there was one last aspect of Eda's character that's, admittedly, more engaging.

Eda's past, from her family to her ex and to her curse, is a subject that follows Eda throughout her life whether she likes it or not. One way or another, something keeps crashing back into her life, and the results lead Eda into an emotional rollercoaster that ends in tears or violence. Some healing comes from it, but the tears and violence are still prominent. Her fights with Lilith, turning into a rage monster due to her mother's meddling, losing Raine, and her father wanting to talk are all emotional situations with Eda and the tattered relationships she had over the years. The hurtful part is how it all leads back to her curse, one way or another. I'll talk more about Eda's journey with her curse and the allusion it represents in future parts, but I'll still say that so much of Eda's pain, her drama, became prominent because of something Lilith did and how Eda reacted to it. She always ran away or denied there was a problem in the first place, making a horrible situation even worse as it left her burning bridges she'll want to rebuild later. And the worst part is that this is something Eda struggles with the most.

Despite all her pain and trauma, Eda tries to cover it up with jokes and a cocky smile or anger and determination. When the curse started overtaking her in “Agony of a Witch,” she looked at Luz with a smile to make things light, but the fear in her eyes betrayed everything. When losing Raine to Darius and Eberwolf, she choked back her tears and forced herself to focus on anything else. Because to her, it's better to deny how hard you're hurting than face it. She'll voice her worries from time to time but often hides just how strong those emotions are for her. And she definitely doesn't want to relive emotional memories due to how hard it was keeping things together the first time. The only time when Eda tends to embrace her inner turmoil is when things are so intense that she can't help but cry and voice how scared/worried she is. It weirdly makes sense that the only thing that could make Eda finally open up is facing the end of the world where it's not just HER who's in danger but the people she loves too. Because above all else, while she may hate to show it, Eda is a softie to the ones she cares about, especially Luz and King. The three of them have gone on so many adventures together and faced so much danger that you can understand why it's almost always them that brings Eda to tears. Luz's attempt at a goodbye in "Young Blood, Old Souls," King's adoption in "Eda's Requiem," knowing how deep in trouble Luz is in "Edge of the World," and finally revealing that there's no plan in "O' Titan, Where Art Thou." Those kids mean the world to her, as she would be nothing without King and Luz giving her purpose, love, and a healing heart...Which makes it weirder how little Eda got to do in Season Three.

Yeah, a lot of characters got the short end of the stick in Season Three, even members of the main cast like Amity and Gus. While most got some narrative or development, others got forced into the supporting role to help those more important characters. But for Eda, it feels weird because she's part of the main trio. Nearly every poster and promotional material featured Luz, King, and Eda. Nearly every episode featured Luz, King, AND Eda. And every version of the show pitched, even if they didn't look the same, it was always Luz, King, AND EDA. So to have a season where she takes a narrative backseat while Luz and King have more relevance to the story feels off. Although, to be fair, it's not like there was much to be done with Eda. Pretty much every narrative she had got wrapped up with Season Two. She's accepted the curse as a part of her, made peace with her family, and reunited with Raine (even if they didn't seal that deal with a kiss). It's almost as if the writers knew they wouldn't have a chance to explore Eda further with a shortened season, so they completed every arc they could with her in the remaining time they had left. So I can see why they didn't do much with her because what else could they have done? But it doesn't stop how weird it is that Eda could have easily been written out of the season if not for the fact that she's part of the main trio, and it'd be even WEIRDER to have a final season without her. Because, truth be told, the series wouldn't be the same without Eda.

Eda offers humor, heart, and tragedy to The Owl House. Her past, trauma, relationships, and love make for someone that deserves main trio status. Probably even main character status too. I would love to see more of her with how much intrigue Eda has, even if a lot of it is done already. Would I want to watch a spin-off of her as a teen? Probably not. But I wouldn't mind seeing more adventures this wild witch would get into.

Also, I'll say this much about her: There's a consensus in the fandom that Eda is the best mom in the show. And while she certainly is a great mother like no other...there's someone we ALL know, deep down, deserves the title for Best Cartoon Mom.

Camila Noceda: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH, I have been waiting for this one...

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I am incredibly biased towards Camila. Upon her introduction, I always thought she was neat as a mother who truly cares about Luz, her interests, and her wonderfully creative mind. She said so within the premier. And even when sending Luz away, all Camila tried to do was look to the bright side and convince Luz that her summer won't be as miserable as she might predict it to be. Camila could tell that going to Reality Check Camp was the last thing Luz wanted to do, so Camila tried her best to make it seem like a fun time despite how down it made Luz feel. It shows that while she may not be a perfect mom for sending her daughter away, Camila is still caring enough towards Luz, and she wants her to be happy despite encouraging a decision Luz wouldn't like. I considered that a fascinating angle towards a mother like Camila, providing a reason for Luz wanting to leave but never out of malice. I liked it...But a quantifiable portion of the fandom did NOT, with too many people claiming Camila was an awful mother who hated her daughter. Camila had maybe a minute, maybe TWO minutes, of screentime, and that's somehow the interpretation people made. I wouldn't say I'm the best at analyzing and interpreting characters, which is a crazy thing to bring up THIS FAR into my longest review yet. Still, even I have to say that people's interpretation of Camila was a MAJOR reach. Like...how do you look at a woman who explicitly states she loves her daughter, gives her multiple kisses goodbye, and you immediately go, "Oh, she HATES Luz." How do you do that? And how do you claim she's a worse mom than Odalia? Yeah, that was a thing! People genuinely would defend Odalia for being a good mom with their last breath and then turn around to s**t on Camila. Even after finally meeting Odalia and seeing how bad SHE was, people still somehow considered Camila worse. I never understood how it got out of hand, and I'm convinced the writers somehow picked up on all this overreacting and decided to make Camila better with every single appearance she made soon after.

From that premier, I already gathered this idea that Camila was a flawed but caring mother trying her best despite mistakes. By "Yesterday's Lie," I was convinced she was the best mom Luz could ask for, even if powerful emotions caused Camila to make mistakes. When Vee acts like the "perfect daughter," you can see, on Camila's face, how Camila noticed something was off and how much she didn't like it. To her, "Luz" was throwing away everything that made her Luz, and Camila didn't WANT that, made even more evident by bringing all of Luz's stuff back in after Vee tried throwing them away. Then when the real Luz "calls" Camila, acting like her true self again, Camila seems ecstatic and is willing to play along with what she assumes is a weird game because she's so happy to see Luz be herself again. Through these small moments, you understand more how much Camila cares for her daughter, despite sending Luz to a camp to teach her to fit in better. It was an action done out of love, not malice. Camila couldn't be FARTHER from a bad person, as proven by how she reacts toward Vee. There may have been initial fear of finding out what Vee really was, but through some coaxing from Luz, all Camila can see is a poor girl locked in a cage and needing help. It's there that you understand where Luz got her kindness from. Because even though everything is going beyond Camila's comfort zone, the woman's still willing to kick a flat-Earther's ass to protect Vee. She's kind and warm to the people she cares about and violent to the ones that hurt them. Like mother, like daughter. But Camila isn't all too perfect. As the events finally come crashing down on her at once, she feels ALL the emotions as she has this breakdown. There's fear that Luz is stuck in a demon realm, anger knowing she WILLINGLY went there, and despair at the idea that Camila might never see Luz again. All of this leads to Camila BEGGING Luz to promise to come back, with Luz interpreting her words as "stay here and NEVER return to that awful place." This caused Luz to be fearful for the future, and more fans hyper-focussing on the negatives instead of the positives. They saw a mother telling her daughter to abandon everything that made her happy when anyone with a single functioning brain cell can tell you that it's just Camila being worried about Luz and not fully grasping the whole story. She knows Luz had SOME fun in the Boiling Isles, but Camila's strong emotions at the moment caused her to fail to understand why Luz loves it. Or, at least, misconstrue the facts, thinking it was just Luz living out a fantasy, the same thing Camila sent Luz to summer camp for. It might seem weird that Camila also focuses on the negatives instead of the positives, but in fairness to Camila, the woman went through the worst thing any mother can go through: Losing contact with her child for who knows how long. I can't blame her for her judgment being clouded by everything she's going through. Still, fans clung to the negatives, too...So it's good Season Three shut them all up for good.

Season Three might as well be the season of Camila, because of all the things Season Three did right, diving deep into Camila's character is one of them. Where her first two appearances showed how much of a caring mother she can be, Season Three took it up to TEN notches. She took so many children into her home when they had nowhere else to go, stayed up late to figure out how to get them everything they could need for a happy life, acted nurturing when they had a tough time, chose violence for someone even saying ANYTHING mean about her baby, and dove head first into a dirty graveyard pond to save a child. Camila earned the title "Mother of the Year.” And she wasn't even trying. But while the season shows how kind, nurturing, and even badass Camila can be, it also had her face some mistakes. Camila wasn't bad for sending Luz away or asking her to stay home. She's a single mother who lost her husband, who probably connected to their daughter in better ways and left Camila to do everything alone. She wanted to be the best possible mom but second-guessed every decision and was unsure if she was doing the right thing. So I like that most of this season is about her trying to LEARN from these unintended mistakes, asking for advice from Luz's friends, and finally sharing with Luz the mistakes Camila made and how she now comes to regret them. What's even better is that Camila tries her best to understand Luz's world. A lot of it scares Camila and makes her uncomfortable, even years after being aware of the Isles in the epilogue, but she still puts in the effort to TRY. It's because Camila loves Luz and wants to be a part of every aspect of her life. Camila may struggle, but she still wants to try. And THAT'S what makes her the best mom.

Camila is warm, loving, and just so much fun to see. She isn't perfect, but instead of denying those imperfections, Camila chooses to confront them and TRIES to better herself. It's evidence that not every parent gets the assignment as they receive it, but they're not instantly failures because of it. Yes, there are horrible parents who refuse to change, but I like that the show teaches kids that there are those who care enough to do better. That's what Camila is, and I love the hell out of her for it.

But do you want to know her GREATEST achievement? She gave birth to the best character in the show…

Luz Noceda: Luz Noceda. Luz fickin' Noceda. A character so good that I made an entire post discussing how she's a fan-frickin'-tastic character. And even then, it felt like I barely scratched the surface of what makes her so good. I mean, how can you accurately explain everything that you love about your favorite protagonist ever? Better yet, how can you summarize it for a review that's gone long enough already? Well, I'm at least going to try...Emphasis on try.

Luz is a character that won me over instantly. The happy, goofy character is always fun for me as I think they're perfect for humor and endearing entertainment. That's Luz to a T, as her antics and attitude towards so many things cause me to smile to no fail. How can I not when she has a kind smile as a snake bites off her doll's head or when she has an argument with her hands? Luz is almost always a delight, but what's interesting about her is that while she's primarily happy and fun-loving, that doesn't make her naive or stupid. Luz has a good sense of maturity, even before her angst arc (Yeah, we'll get to that). In "Covention," I was impressed by her response to Eda's disdain about joining a coven. Luz made it clear that she understands Eda's outlook but wants to go and make her OWN decision. In fact, Luz is mature enough not to follow ALL of Eda's orders. There are times when Luz DEFINITELY should, but I like how the writers gives her enough emotional intelligence NOT to listen to ALL of Eda's wild and free ideas of anarchy. She has enough emotional intelligence to know what's right and wrong at times but is still young enough to learn more when put in danger at a time she really SHOULD have listened to Eda. Luz IS a teen, after all. She wouldn't have all the answers.

But now that we're talking about her intelligence, that's probably an aspect of Luz that's looked over the most. Because Luz is smart, and that shouldn't be an argument. It should be a fact. The girl endlessly worked on glyphs until getting them right, often having scraps of paper lying around her after past experiments. And not only is she studious, but Luz is also crafty at any moment. Some of my favorite scenes with Luz are ones where she comes up with a great plan on the spot, like how she thought up a way to brand Belos as he was killing her. It makes sense the girl wanted to try out for theater because her improvisation is on POINT. And she has the power to back it up. I said in that character analysis that Luz is powerful but not TOO powerful. My good buddy @l-egionare pointed out how I misjudged how powerful Luz CAN be, given how a single plant glyph made that big tree in "Enchanting Grom Fright" and how she wiped the floor with Emperor's Coven members and Conformitorium guards. She certainly has the power. I highlighted her intelligence more because I love characters who win fights by outthinking their opponents rather than overpowering them. The truth is, Luz, CAN do some epic stuff. She's just not AS powerful as Eda and Lilith were at their best, due to Luz having limitations to her glyphs and how she sometimes casts them. Luz can be invisible but only for as long as she holds her breath, and the strength behind her glyph depends on how much she uses and how big they are. She can do great stuff, even with very little, but nothing TOO grand until the Titan gave Luz that power boost in the finale (which I didn’t initially want, but DAMN amI not complaining). Besides, as cool as Luz CAN be, and how underappreciated that part of her is, it’s not her best feature.

I think we can all agree that the best thing about Luz Noceda is her kindness. She’s not naive enough to believe that there’s goodness deep down inside everyone. Her kindness has limits and it says something that Luz’s first instinct upon finally meeting Belos for the first time is to go for the head. While she will help others that need it, Luz will still take the violent route if you mess with those she loves. Speaking of, do you remember your favorite characters? You know all that development and growth they all went through? Do you know who’s responsible for ALL of that? Luz, that’s who. She helped reconnect Eda with her family, led King to gaining a sense of identity, helped Willow blossom into becoming more confident, indirectly helped Gus make new friends, and helped Lilith, Hunter, and ESPECIALLY Amity become their truer, better selves. They wouldn’t be who they are now without Luz, as every person she made a connection with had their lives changed for the better. And the crazy thing is that’s…not entirely mutual. Another great point my buddy @l-egionare made is that Luz’s life wasn’t doomed for the worst, and his argument has legs. Luz could have made friends like Vee did at summer camp or befriended those two kids in “Thanks to Them” who seemed to love Luz’s brand of weirdness. After high school, Luz could have also gone on to be a writer, sharing her love of fantasy to the world. Heck, she might even  fall in love with someone else one day, like with a horror nerd that loves gore and doughnuts…Just spitballing ideas here. The point is that while Luz’s friends on the Boiling Isles ABSOLUTELY need her for a happier life, she doesn’t necessarily need THEM. It’s an interesting interpretation to think about that makes Luz even BETTER. She’s a protagonist that leads others to their change and growth, which is a primary directive for most protagonists. Not only should THEY grow and change throughout the story, but they should lead the rest of the cast to do the same. It gives importance to the main character, showing just how much they’re needed for the world and the people in it…Which is why it pains Luz to find out she’s indirectly responsible for some strife too.

Like most plucky protagonists, Luz goes through an angst phase, mirroring how the show started off as light-hearted only to become darker as time went by. Luz’s angst, in particular, started in “Young Blood, Old Souls,” where a bit of Luz’s wackiness remained, but she still slowly got more serious as Season Two continued. By the time we reached “Hollow Mind,” an episode that forces Luz to realize she accidentally helped BELOS, most of Luz’s silliness and optimism became fizzled out, with damn near all of it being gone by Season Three. This is due to her seeing what Belos almost accomplished and the damage that The Collector was already capable of. Luz was accidentally and unintentionally the cause of these issues, and it broke her for reasons that ARE understandable…but they’re not justifiable. You DO get why Luz blames herself for everything that happened. She prides herself on her kindness and helping others, with the idea of being a burden crushing Luz in “Separate Tides.” So, to find out that she’s accidentally responsible for Belos, it hurts her because it makes her believe she’s a burden to EVERYONE, to the point where she believes that the Boiling Isles would be better off without her. Even though we LITERALLY just established how that’s false. There are some haters and idiots out there who do like to point out how none of Luz’s friends wouldn’t have had any strife if she never came to the Isles. Except…No. They absolutely would have. I mean, do you SERIOUSLY think Belos wouldn’t have tricked anyone else? The man pulled off a genocidal scam for DECADES. He could have easily tricked somebody else to do his dirty work for a few minutes.

“But he was driven out of too many towns! No one would trust him!”

Which is why he made a false identity to fix that problem. For all we know, he could have done it sooner.

“But Luz gave him the light glyph!”

A glyph that did nothing but offer Belos a shortcut to finish a job he was already 99% done with. Besides, he could have learned it on his own or maybe even through The Collector, who already knows that glyphs are the language of the Titans. Belos’ plan would have gone forward no matter WHAT reason you bring up. And what’s weirdly interesting is Luz’s refusal to see it. Yes, Belos could have tricked ANYBODY, but it’s still LUZ that he tricked. That guilt eats away at her and I’m kind of glad it’s not entirely resolved by the series finale. Don’t get me wrong, I want my favorite character to live the happiest life imaginable, but there’s a sense of realism that, even though she killed Belos, there’s still a bit of guilt. It’s hinted that it sticks with her years later, as she missed birthdays just so she could help rebuild the Isles. Although, that doesn’t stop Luz from living her life. She still hangs out with friends, joins her school’s softball/baseball team, and goes out with her family. Luz’s guilt is a lot like that scar above her eye. It’ll be small and hardly noticeable on some days, but it’ll still be there, as a reminder that life isn’t a fantasy.

It’s pretty ironic that Luz escaped to a fantasy world to avoid Reality Check Camp, only to get a reality check anyway. Everytime Luz tries to apply her favorite book series or pop culture to a problem she and her friends face, it always goes wrong. Within the second episode of the series, Luz learns quickly that she’s not some chosen one predestined for greatness…I mean, she kind of is, but not in a way most fantasy stories tend to play it. Luz quickly learns that her coming to the Boiling Isles was an accident, and that the environment she’s forced to adjust to isn’t as pretty as it is in her books. Things are difficult and solutions are complicated with there being no easy answers. Luz learns this throughout her adventures and grows to understand that being a witch like Azura isn’t simple. Luz even goes through a sort of identity crisis, now realizing that her dream to be a witch was always a little too vague and that she has no idea what she wants in life after the adventure’s over. It’s a compelling aspect to her character to have Luz realize that she’s not your average protagonist. So many of us want to be the main character of the world’s story, when we should realize that job would be extraordinarily difficult. Luz learned that the hard way after experiencing pain, suffering, and literal death that will haunt her nightmares for life. I wouldn’t call Luz a cautionary tale of what happens when you continue to live in a fantasy. That’s more like Marcy from Amphbia. Instead, I’d say Luz is more of a representation of a character understanding the cruelness of reality, but through a fantasy setting. We all learn best through the things that interest us, and Luz is no different. And that’s one of the MANY reasons to love her.

I could go on and on about how much I adore Luz alone. And probably would if this thing wasn’t THIRTY-THREE PAGES LONG! And you can’t blame me. She’s my favorite protagonist in anything, and is definitely up there as one of my favorite fictional characters. There might be problems with her character, but I’m more than willing to overlook them because of how much I enjoy Luz and the journey she went on. She is flawless in my eyes, and I will never look at her in a negative light no matter who tries to make me.

And that’s it. That’s EVERY IMPORTANT CHARACTER in The Owl House…My goodness.

As you can probably tell, there’s a LOT of characters here. One could argue too many, as it becomes evident that a few of them could be better if the show had more time to let some of them grow. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where The Owl House had three full seasons and all the time in the world to let all its characters blossom into their beautiful selves. But with that said, there aren’t any characters in the show that I’m willing to call bad.

Okay, Tibbles is still inadequate, but he’s still not the worst. None of them are. If any character is lower than the other, it’s due to them being unable to compare to the rest of the show’s standard. Because The Owl House managed to have an expansive cast of lovable, endearing, and complex characters, with a lot of them worth a deep-dive analysis of their own. I can’t get enough of them and they will stick with me for a while.

But as great as these characters are…how well do they work TOGETHER?

Tune into part two, and I might just tell you.

Next part

[monstersflashlight]

(Warning: severe info dumping incoming. I apologise in advance)

I could watch Stargate Altantis forever and never get bored. I basically know it word for word already but it’s just not enough. The show is only five seasons but I definitely think it should’ve ran longer. It was like an addition to Stargate SG-1 which ran for ten seasons (even though the last two were kinda poop imo).

It’s about a group of humans who go to the Pegasus Galaxy through a Stargate, which is a device built by the Ancients (who were the first evolution of humans that then evolved to a higher plane of existence) that allows for instantaneous travel between planets and galaxies. They find the Lost City of Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy and realise that the Ancient Greeks must’ve got the story of the city from an Ancient on Earth. It’s super cool and the show is all about them exploring the Pegasus Galaxy and fighting the Wraith.

Fairly certain I’ve sent things about Wraith before in ‘hear me outs’. In the show they theorise that they’re a race of human-bug hybrids that evolved when the Iratus Bug started to take on characteristics of the humans it was feeding on from various Pegasus worlds. But I’ve read on a few different sites that the Wraith could have evolved from an experiment carried out by the Ancients where they purposely mixed human and Iratus dna to see what would happen.

It’s just a super cool show, and it brings in some ties from SG-1 with some characters crossing over. There’s also a cross over for human form Replicators (they’re beings made up of Nanite cells that can replicate themselves, hence the name). In SG-1 they constructed themselves like that to take the form of Reese, a robot made by an unknown man. She made the first Replicator’s which were just bug like things, but they eventually took on her form. But in Atlantis, they were made by the Ancients as a way to fight the Wraith.

Since the Wraith feed on human life it made sense to find something that wasn’t actually alive to fight them, and the Ancients gave the Replicators an attack command in their base code that the Wraith somehow deactivated. I have a theory that Reese was made by Janis (an Ancient who used to experiment with things the other Ancients didn’t approve of), because we know that the Ancients on Atlantis lived on Earth at some point, so I think he made Reese then had to shut her down and abandon her. That’s not canon though, just a theory. It is canon that he abandoned her though, it was because she lost control of the mechanical form Replicators she made and they started destroying the world she lived on, so Janis told her to ‘go to sleep’ aka shut down, and that he’d wake her when it was over. He never woke her up. I think he just left and went back to the other Ancients as if nothing had happened.

Oh and fun fact about the Wraith, as long as they stay properly nourished they are able to live forever. They don’t get sick or age in the same way as humans, and they can even withstand being shot multiple times if they’ve fed recently. It takes a lot of effort to kill a Wraith, I’m actually not sure they were ever able to kill one who had recently fed. The Wraith are also super sexy which makes my monster mad heart happy lol. They’re like space goths!!!

Some Wraith thirst pictures because I can’t help myself haha:

and ps: they don’t feed on humans by chomping down and eating us, they have a feeding organ on their hand. Here’s a study of it I found online (added link incase the text is too small here):

Hi there! Thats a lot of info, super interesting tho, great choice. Love the sci-fi makeup, super super great monsters. 🥰

[pheonixkenny]

Since I’ve been playing the SP video games a lot lately I thought I’d introduce you to my New Kid! Her name is Alex. I thought I’d give her a gender-neutral name to go with the whole “ambiguous gender” thing she’s got going on. (I’m ignoring “Dovakin” because that’s not a name you give to a girl.) And yes, I said “her”, my new kid is a girl. I based her a lot on me, since the new kid is basically a self insert character anyways. So I gave her my gender, sexuality, religion, even made her look kinda like me. I have a lot of headcanons for her that I’ll list under the cut.

Alex has selective mutism, so she doesn’t talk much. She does know ASL, but none of the other SP characters do, so that doesn’t help her communicate with them. She carry’s around a notepad and a pen with her to write what she wants to say. She also just texts people to talk, even if they’re only a few feet away.

She’s friends with pretty much everyone in town, but the people she’s closest to are; Wendy (because she knows her true gender and didn’t out her. So she trusts her.), Kenny (they bond over being the only people in town with real superpowers.), and Butters (the first friend she ever made in South Park. Plus, he’s a sweetheart.)

Like me, Alex is a lesbian. Her and Kenny like to talk about hot girls together.

She does eventually trust Kenny with her real gender identity. She figures she owes him that since she knows his big secret. (He’s immortal.) Kenny’s kinda surprised and it’s a little awkward at first because he doesn’t really hang out with girls who aren’t his little sister, but he eventually realizes she’s still the same person she was before and they fall back into their regular dynamic. (They have a brother/sister dynamic after that. Since Kenny does say you remind him of his sister.) Besides, he kinda gets it. He played Princess Kenny, Alex can be King Douchebag if she wants to.

Part of the reason why she hid her gender from everyone (besides the government.) is that she just wanted to play Stick of Truth with the guys. It looked fun.

She does like to do some girly stuff with Wendy too though, since she doesn’t get to very often. So once in a while they’ll turn on a rom com or princess movie and give each other makeovers. (Though Butters is sometimes also down for a good princess movie.)

She doesn’t tell Butters about her gender identity. She likes him but the boy is not great at keeping a secret.

Even though she doesn’t show it, she cares deeply for all her friends. They’re the first ones she’s ever had. (It turns out online followers are different than real friends.)

Doesn’t know how to feel about Eric Cartman. On the one hand, he did bring her into the Stick of Truth game and taught her a lot in it. On the other hand, he did kidnap her parents, so she’s pretty mad about that.

If/when the South Park gang get the government off her back for good. (I know they probably could. I doubt there’s anything these guys can’t do at this point.) Alex gets the most emotional that anyone has ever seen her. It actually kinda freaks them out. She then comes clean about her real gender identity since she doesn’t need to worry about being tracked. Everyone kinda reacts with an “ah, that explains some things.” attitude. Cartman’s really the only one who has a problem with it.

[earth-93]

Mystic’s Musings: New Warriors, the Animated Series

Hey, y'all.

Now that I got the ball rolling on this site, I want to start sharing all my other thoughts and ideas not related to Earth-93 (Though, in the case of this one, it very well might be incorporated into Earth-93 sometime down the line. We'll see). And I figured what better place to start than with the project that not only predated Earth-93, but might have been my earliest, most committed attempt at a fanwork ever: A treatment for an animated series based on the underrated Marvel super-team, the New Warriors.

HISTORY

First, come context, as there is a chance a lot of you might not know the full story.

The New Warriors first made their debut in 1989 in a two-issue arc of The Mighty Thor, where the young heroes sprang into action to assist Eric Masterson in a brawl with the Juggernaut. They would get their own series the following year, developed and written by Fabian Nicieza and drawn by Mark Bagley. Comparisons to the Distinguished Competition's own band of young superheroes have been made over the years, but more than a replication of George Perez's iconic New Teen Titans run, Nicieza described the Warriors as more of a hang-out group who sometimes fought evil and even saved the world: "The New Warriors isn't an official group with a rule book and charter and the like. They're more of a club for super-powered teens. So if Darkhawk wants to hang out on a Friday evening and talk about his powers, then he'll stop by the New Warriors' crash pad."

While the original series had a fairly solid 75-issue run, any attempts afterwards to reboot the Warriors have struggled to find any footing, up to this day. I'm sure you are all well aware of the infamous backlash for the pitch of the newest New Warriors rebrand back in 2020, but you might be surprised to know that was merely the tip of the iceberg for the team's bad luck in continuing their legacy. If not the whole "Snowflake & Safespace" debacle, you probably know of the Warriors as the reckless, fame-hungry super-team who provoked a supervillain into committing the Stamford Incident and kicking off the first Civil War. That and the entire reality show premise of that run was but one of many attempts from the late 90's all the way up into the present to relaunch the team, sometimes with a few founding members but never a full-on reunion, and all have had middling runs if not preemptively cancelled altogether, as was the case for the 2020. This bad luck extends even outside of published comics, with a Squirrel Girl-staring New Warriors live-action series getting canned before it really got off the ground.

The Warriors have existed in this strange comic-book limbo where they can never quite catch a break, yet continue to have consistent enthusiasm backing them to try again a few years down the line. The original run concluded before I was even born, so I was exposed to and became endeared with the Warriors retroactively. Going back to my senior year of high school, I was obsessed with shows like Young Justice and Spectacular Spider-Man. Around the same time, I had come upon the story bibles for Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series online, which gave me the drive to try my own hand out at adapting a comic property in the framework of an animated series as a writing exercise. I was too intimidated at the time to write for a big name such as Spidey, not feeling my skill and familiarity at the time was up to the task. I then thumbed through my school library’s copy of the Marvel Encyclopedia, where I first came upon the Warriors. Operating in their own little bubble, not too terribly tied to any major characters or events, they seemed ripe for adaptation, and I slowly collected the original run on eBay. I read the entire first twenty-five issues over one weekend and was hooked. To this day,  my friends among fandom spaces know me as the resident New Warriors scholar and defender.

Much like the Warriors themselves, this project has had many stops and starts since its inception. A lot of thought and effort put into it, but never really at any semblance of completion, and almost always back at a time where I was too comfortable with sharing my works with others in the first place. At best, it was more of an idle project to tinker with on my creative off-days, such energy would shuffle around to other endeavors, including what would become Earth-93. But in my boost of confidence with my writing and just wanting to make a habit of getting more material out there, I decided to dust off all my notes and give it a more proper shot. Shout out, by the way, to @spiralcass​ , whose own #New X-Men: The Animated Series project and minimalist screenplay format lit a fire under me to revisit a similar project.

If this pitch is well-received, it will become the first of a two-part entry; the second of which I will get more in-depth with recurring and supporting characters, as well as an outline to what a figurative first season of storytelling would play out as. But before we get to the cast, allow me to set the stage:

SETTING

The wider world the Warriors live in is early 90's Marvel, full stop. I would like to feel as though we have progressed past the point of making fun of Liefeld's art and can appreciate the quality content in the supposed Dark Age of Comics that existed amid the admittedly still quite embarrassing material that grabs most people's attention when looking back on that era. The Warriors are absolutely an era highlight, and as plotting and research developed the figurative show slowly evolved into a love letter to the Marvel canon as it existed in the early to mid 90's.

That's not to say the art direction to this figurative show would reflect this period or any particular artist, though I would absolutely preserve various designs and specific status quos as homages and signifiers. Reed Richards is rocking a fisherman's vest. Ghost Rider is burning a blue flame. The Hulk can be seen sporting a black tank top, and seems to have gotten his temper under control. Spidey is zipping around in the Ben Reilly suit (Is it actually Ben? We won't know, this isn't Spidey's story). Et cetra.

There will also be two major events prior to the events of the series which will significantly shape the wider world:

OPERATION: GALACTIC STORM

As the Kree-Shi'ar War begins to encroach into the Sol System, the Avengers bring on every active member they have and split into three teams. Two will enter space and sneak into both sides of the alien war to try and diffuse the conflict while one stays behind to protect the Earth. It is a prolonged effort out in space, where every hero fights and negotiates with everything they have, and it all ends up doing nothing when a bio-bomb is released that decimates the majority of the Kree race. Not too long after the heroes discover much to their horror that the bomb as well as the war itself was orchestrated by the Kree's leader, the Supreme Intelligence, who deduced that a mass culling of its people was a necessary action to jumpstart Kree’s stagnant evolution. 

This revelation shook the Avengers to their core, and while some just wanted to go home, others refused to leave until justice was served. This faction of Avengers, led by Iron Man, stormed the Supreme Intelligence's base and killed the being in retribution, while the opposing Captain America-led faction stood their ground. The heroes returned home splintered, and returned to find the Earthbound team having fallen into dysfunction.

All of this would have happened less than a year before the Warrior's formed, but it would still radically reshape the superhero community. Cap and Wasp remain leaders of the Avengers proper, holding down a new, more oddball team as many veterans stepped away following Galactic Storm. Some joined Iron Man's Force Works team in California, who took a more proactive mission statement to their duties rather than primarily intervening at the moment of crisis. Others had taken up employment at the recently expanded Heroes For Hire, and a few outright retired.

THE TAMING OF TERRAX

The Sphinx was an immortal wizard who sought to find a means of finally ending his overlong life. He menaced the hero called Nova, believing the Xandarian Worldmind might have the answer to his query, but upon tapping into the vast knowledge of the Worldmind, Sphinx swiftly changed his directive and sought to steal this power for himself and ascend to godhood. Nova failed to fight back against the Sphinx, necessitating the intervention of the Fantastic Four. The Four in turn found themselves bargaining with Galactus to overpower the Sphinx, and the eater of worlds cajoled the heroes finding him a new herald in exchange for his intervention. 

Desperate, the Four targeted Tyros the Tamer, the brutal ruler of a small planet, rationalizing he is more deserving of such a fate than others. Imbued with the Power Cosmic, Tyros became Terrax, gaining an incorporeal form that took solid shape of whatever solid matter the planet he strikes down into is composed of. Galactus slew Sphinx, hurling him into a time loop where the immortal’s consciousness would be worn down to almost nothing, and for punishment of bringing both Xandar and potentially the entire universe to the brink, Nova was stripped of his powers and sent back to Earth as an ordinary teenager, Richard Rider. 

Just a few years later, Terrax would break free of Galactus’ bonds, and crash into Manhattan, demanding the Four face him, or else he would bring the city down to rubble. It was then that six superpowered youths would take the call to protect New York...

MAIN CHARACTERS - THE WARRIORS

NIGHT THRASHER

Mix:

Fistful of Steel - Rage Against the Machine

Cult of Personality - Living Colour

Bring Da Ruckus - Wu-Tang Clan

Re-Ignition - Bad Brains

Life Goes On - House of Pain

Dwayne Taylor’s comfortable childhood as the son of a philanthropist was violently upended one night when his parents were gunned down in the street right in front of him. Taken in by his father’s war buddy Andrew Chord, Dwayne spent his adolescence honing his body and mind, channeling his grief and rage into becoming the Night Thrasher, New York’s newest costumed vigilante. Initially, Dwayne formed a partnership with the brother-sister duo of Midnight’s Fire and Silhouette, and for a time the three struck out as a trio patrolling the streets of lower Manhattan. A gang bust gone awry left Silhouette critically injured and Dwayne barely escaping with his life from the wrath of Fire, who blamed Dwayne for his sister’s paralysis. Dwayne retreated to Madame Tai, his and Chord’s enigmatic martial arts master, dejected over his failings, to which Tai merely scolded her pupil further before instructing him to lick his wounds and try again. 

When he did, Dwayne decided to dream bigger, accessing SHIELD and Hellfire data to find candidates to a super-team that could match the iconography of the Fantastic Four. Dwayne’s candidates understandably did not take well to Dwayne’s method of recruitment, assembling them at a meet-up through vague, threatening messages and testing their skills through direct combat. When Terrax suddenly menaced the city, the quartet were able to put their enmity aside for the sake of others, and through Dwayne’s tactical skills they succeeded in fending off the cosmic threat long enough for the F4 to take him down. The public gave the more famous team with the success over the fight, but none of them could deny they had a synergy capable of great feats. Dwayne propositioned the group once more, this time far less abrasively, and thus the New Warriors officially came together. 

Dwayne is steadfast, focused, and wildly competent, though a lot of that is not wholly authentic to who Dwyane truly is. He takes any failure very personally, and has low tolerance for it with those around him.  Dwayne starts off treating the Warriors more as soldiers than as teammates, to which most of them manage to tolerate with for their own reasons. This will come to a head part way through the first season, when Speedball’s mother comes under threat by a gang of eco-terrorists, and instead Dwayne is attempting to keep the Warriors on track to his ongoing plans to strike back against Midnight’s Fire. The few people whom Dwayne trusts to be vulnerable with is Chord and Silhouette, who even then Dwayne is more talking at while she remains in the coma her injury left her in. That slowly changes the more he works alongside the Warriors, and finds the affirmation that Madame Tai never provided. As the season goes on, Dwayne uncovers the conspiracy behind his parent’s murder and the devastating reveal of who had been manipulating the direction of his life into the present. With the Warriors’ help, Dwayne fights back, but in that victory he also loses that razor-sharp focus which had largely allowed him to operate through the trauma left unresolved. By the season’s end, Dwayne will pass along leadership duties to Namorita as he takes some time off with Silhouette to more properly find himself. 

FIRESTAR

Mix: 

Do You Wear The Mark - Danzig

Mary-Christ - Sonic Youth 

Velouria - The Pixies 

Crush - Smashing Pumpkins 

Angels of Deception - The The

Angelica Jones’ mutant ability to generate microwave heat first manifested through the intense grief of her beloved grandmother passing away when Angelica was fourteen. Rather than a certain man in a wheelchair entering the scene, the Jones household was instead visited by Emma Frost, the villainous White Queen of the Hellfire Club but known by the public as the headmistress to the esteemed Massachusetts Academy. Angelica’s father, well-meaning but unequipped and overwhelmed as how to nurture his daughter and her newfound powers, hastily agreed to Frost’s offer to take in Angelica and properly tutor her. Though Emma initially planned to enroll Angelica into her clique of mutant students she dubbed the Hellions, once Emma estimated the sheer scope of Angelica’s microwave powers, she instead took the young girl directly under her wing. Over the course of her adolescence, Angelica was desensitized to violence and had her devotion to Emma solidified through entrapment and emotional and psychic manipulation, all in the service of Angelica being made to be a literal nuclear option for Emma, should her feud with her fellow Hellfire members necessitate it. 

Angelica was discouraged from socializing with her fellow Hellions to ensure Emma’s direct control. When a rogue student Emplate fled the Academy, Angelica went against Emma’s orders out of her utter devotion and tracked down Emplate herself. During their fight, Emplate used his powers to unearth Emma’s exploitation of Angelica that had always been in her periphery, but could no longer deny. Her entire world shaken, Angelica was driven into a blind rage and stormed back to destroy Emma’s personal office back at the Academy. She left for home, threatening Emma to never come near her again. Angelica attempted to return to her old life, but the years of abuse had turned the shy but kindly young girl into a sullen and withdrawn teenager, unwilling to let other people in and distrustful and resentful to even her father for allowing Emma to come into her life in the first place. Then came the fateful evening where she came home to an empty house and a vaguely threatening message left by Dwayne. By the end of that night, Angelica was forced to use her powers for the first time in months for the sake of the city. 

Firestar might be my favorite characters in the whole team, and I love the backstory that Tom DeFalco had crafted for her after the decision to make her canon to the main Marvel universe. With that said, there was always one glaring thing about her that was one of my least favorable aspects of the original Warrior’s run, and that is that, for the most part, there’s no real impetus for Angel to continue with the superhero life. In both her origin story as well as the first few arcs of the series, she is portrayed as having overcome the trauma inflicted upon her by Emma Frost and is by all accounts a well-adjusted teenager. I always felt what Angel went through would have created far deeper repercussions than her initial depictions would have let on, something that Angel’s more recent depictions in the Krakoa era appear to be aware of. 

Committing to that, I decided Angel’s initial arc would be while she is still very hesitant to use her powers offensively even as a hero, she nonetheless agrees to join the Warriors because, at that time, there’s no one else she can confide in how having superpowers has affected her life. Eventually, Emma will reenter Angel’s life and will finally overcome her menace for good, but in the following episode Angel will realize how hollow her victory truly feels, and it will take more than retribution to fix her problems. From this, Angel steadily opens herself up a bit, which in turn allows her to better empathize with her teammates. She can better recognize the pain in Dwayne’s eyes, and how the brutality in his combat might stem from more than a bad attitude. She sees Vance as less of a stuffed shirt and a boy scout, and how his own trauma shaped who he is. And she becomes more receptive to Nita’s efforts at becoming a friend. In effect, Angel becomes a happier, more well-rounded person thanks to being a New Warrior. 

NOVA

Mix: 

Tear It Up - Queen 

Take Me Home - LOUDNESS 

Love Gun - KISS

Fire Your Guns - AC/DC 

Turbo Lover - Judas Priest

Richard Rider was just an average teenager before he was the unexpected bystander to Nova Corpsman Rohmann Dey’s crash-landing onto Earth. Mortally injured, Dey entrusted his powers and duties of interstellar peacekeeping to the young man, and for the next several Rich years went on high-flying adventures as Kid Nova, the human rocket. One day, however, Rich squared off with a villain far stronger than him, putting both the treasured Worldmind of the Nova Corps home planet Xandar and with it the safety of the very universe. As punishment, Rich was stripped of his rank and sent back to Earth, where he found out his prolonged time out in space left him severely behind on his schooling. No powers and no diploma, Rich is slaving away at a dead-end fast food job when Dwayne leaves his meet-up directions. Unlike Angel or Vance, Rich has no powers to test out against Dwayne, to which Dwayne retorts that his research has led him to believe Rich’s Nova powers are still within him, but as a fail-safe in a life or death situation. With this, Dwayne hurls Rich off the roof, and though Rich does find himself once more encased in his Nova armor, it was not for the reasons Dwayne stated. Rich attempts to fight Terrax on his own, but realizing how rusty he has become, allows the others to assist in spite of the power gap between him and them. 

Rich will slowly mature into the seasoned hero some of us know him to be. His time in the Warriors is that awkward middle ground between that and being the plucky new hero on the scene, a broad archetype I like to call the Washed Up High School Athlete. Having fallen so low and then seemingly reclaimed his lost glory, Rich has a bit of an ego about him. Additionally, Rich is inarguably the most experienced in the superhero game than any other Warrior. He’s gone out to space multiple times, has had tons of team-ups with major players, and has had his own robust rogues gallery. Rich’s arrogance, however, doesn’t come from an overestimation of his abilities—no, he learned that the hard way in his battle with Sphinx. Rather, it comes from the flip-side of an insecurity to prove that he’s still worthy of being Nova. He’ll pall around with Speedball, develop a teasing friendship with Justice, and butt heads repeatedly with Thrash. Part of which stems from a desire to lead the Warriors himself, but as he slowly learns humility he will concede that just because he’s the power house doesn’t mean he deserves to be running the show. This is when his bond with Nita strengthens, who previously rolled her eyes at Rich’s flirtations, but shows due respect and encouragement once Rich slowly began to take things more seriously. 

JUSTICE

Mix: 

Something I Learned Today - Hüsker Dü 

Everything Turns Grey - Agent Orange 

Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time - Gang of Four 

Life Goes On - The Damned 

Lawless - Social Distortion 

Vance Astrovik grew up in a lonely household, with his mother having died when Vance was young and his father emotionally distant, unsupportive, and generally scolding and abusive. A chance encounter with a strange man in the park, who advised Vance to “focus” his frustrations, allowed him to first tap his mutant powers of telekinesis. As Vance got older and his father’s abuse became physical, Vance lashed out with his powers before running away from home. Vance enrolled into the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation, lying about his age and utilizing his telekinesis to imitate super-strength, to make a living on his own. After winning a streak of matches under the persona of “Marvel Boy”, Vance was set up with the UCWF’s highest-profile contender: The one and only Thing, who like Vance was at the time also living a life on the road, struggling to find himself. Seeing the eyes of an angry, tortured young man staring back at him struck a chord with Ben, and he very quickly threw the fight against the promoter’s demands. Ben let Vance use him as a big, stony punching bag to let out all his emotions, and when the match was over Ben approached Vance more earnestly. 

With the senior hero’s help, Vance slowly started to get his life back together. Vance went back to New York with Ben, where he split his time between a contract with the Heroes For Hire while also catching up on his missing education. For the first time ever, Vance’s life was stable, and through the Heroes For Hire he was even able to live out his dream of being a superhero, though he longed for the gung-ho adventuring of the profession that didn’t seem to be around in his generation. It was that type of longing that made Vance the most amenable to Dwayne’s proposal, despite his unorthodox method of recruitment. When up against Terrax, Vance was directed by Dwayne to use his telekinesis in a more intangible way, and pooling his powers with Speedball’s, ended up becoming an instrumental force in disarming Terrax and saving the day. Vance’s enthusiasm continued into Dwayne’s second attempt to assemble a team, and was the first one to agree. 

Vance is the fanboy of the team, who loves all things superhero. Rather than having the plucky enthusiasm a character like Robbie might instead bring, think of Vance as the type of fan who is somewhat embarrassed or even ashamed to be a fan among his given friend group. He’s reserved and stoic a lot of the time, but the moment he’s in his element or encounters a fellow fan in the wild, a switch just goes off in him and his enthusiasm comes out. Ergo, Vance could potentially be the point of exposition in a given situation (Because he's done the research on his down time) but only if other team members such as Dwayne (The tactician) or Rich (The senior most hero) aren't around to exposit themselves, or might just be drawing a blank on the matter at hand. This close-to-the-vest behavior is extremely indicative of Vance at the beginning. He is reserved yet courteous, bashful yet determined. He believes the most in the Warriors, but because of his fledging confidence never volunteers to actually lead. 

He will start the series utilizing his powers more like Superboy, "tactical telekinesis" and all, but the more the series goes along and the more emotionally available Vance becomes, the more his mind becomes open to the more intangible aspects of his powers. Vance is patient towards Dwayne's hostilities, but less so with Rich's braggart behavior. He geeks out over Namorita at first, badgering her with questions over her famous cousin, but learns to reel back and respect Nita as a person and as a hero in her own right. He gets along well with Bobby in their mutual enthusiasm, though Bobby is significantly less mature and far more rambunctious than Vance might prefer. The only team member Vance actively comes to blows with is Firestar. They start out fundamentally disagreeing on helping others being a duty to people with powers such as themselves, but once Angelica’s abusive past comes to the forefront, it allows Vance the ability to unpack the baggage from his own abuse. He apologizes to Angelica for his confrontational attitude from before, and the two develop a bond and understanding unique from the rest of the team. 

NAMORITA

Mix:

Train of Thought - a-ha 

The Blood - The Cure 

Another Part of Me - Michael Jackson 

Dazzle - Siouxsie And The Banshees

Raspberry Beret - Prince

The “little cousin” to the tempestuous prince of Atlantis, Namorita is the daughter of Namor’s maternal cousin, Namora--more precise, Nita is her mother’s own genetic clone, conceived in such a way due to Namora’s hybrid physiology rendering her infertile. Namora died when Nita was still very young, killed in a coup against Namor orchestrated by his treacherous cousin, Byrrah. Namor was exiled and Nita was lied to by Byrrah and his conspirators that it was Namor who was the betrayer who left her mother to die. In spite of the loss of her mother and apparent betrayal of her cousin, Nita otherwise had a happy childhood as princess to the Atlantean throne. She was trained in combat by the warlord Krang, educated by the sorceress Llyra, and nurtured by the lady Dorma, all steps made to endow her with the skills necessary to be Byrrah’s eventual successor. Only when Namor returned to Atlantis decades later to challenge Byrrah for the throne did Nita understand the truth of her family, and she gallantly assisted her older cousin in reclaiming his birthright as Atlantis’ king. 

Still, the revelation left Nita troubled, and Namor recommended to his little cousin that some time away from Atlantis might help her clear her head. Namor arranged for Nita to live with Betty Prentiss, an old friend of his who had long retired to upstate New York. Nita grew to love Betty as a maternal figure, so much so that she took Betty’s name as part of her surface-world identity. Betty’s health began to fail, but she urged Nita not to hold herself back on her part, stressing that she was ready to brave the rest of the world. Nita was living in New York as a part-time college student, part-time sidekick to Namor’s new adventures, the day Terrax attacked the city. Though she was not among Dwayne’s initial recruits, she charged in and fought the good fight regardless, and it was her mastery in the water which barred Terrax from recomposing his physical form long enough for Rich to absorb his Power Cosmic directly and launch Terrax back out of the atmosphere.

Out of all the Warriors, Nita is the one who comes in the most put-together. She’s the oldest—literally. Despite physically and mentally still being around college-age, by non- Atlantean conditions she is in her 40′s—and unlike the others she joins the Warriors not out of a claim for fame or fill some existential void, but because she thought it would be fun to have a group of super-teens to become friends with. In the team’s earliest outings, Nita’s fun-loving nature comes off as flighty and vicarious to some, but as the Warriors grow more seasoned Nita demonstrates repeatedly how dedicated she is. When the chips are down, she does not make light of the crisis at hand, and is swift and unforgiving in her actions. The two big things that get under her skin are deception and not properly valuing the loved ones in one’s life. 

Nita is transparent and unapologetic in who she is, but that’s not to say she has all her issues of self-esteem squared away. Even in her time in Atlantis as next in line for the throne, there was always a pervasive contempt aimed at Nita, for no fault of her own than that she shared the pale skin of the betrayer, Namor. Additionally, later on Nita will discover the nature of her conception which will briefly throw her into an identity crisis, fretting on whether or not she is a “real” person. She constantly brings her other team-members up, yet rarely asks them to do so for her. So when Dwayne steps down by season’s end, it’s not Nita who volunteers to fill his role as leader, but her friends and teammates who rally behind her. 

SPEEDBALL

Mix: 

Stand Together -  Beastie Boys 

Molly’s Lips - Nirvana 

The Farther I Go - Mudhoney 

Lexicon Devil - The Germs 

Scenario - A Tribe Called Quest

Slacker Robbie Baldwin was working late at his custodian job at a local research laboratory when he became an accidental witness to an illegal testing of experimental energy. Robbie was bombarded with this kinetic energy, endowing him with extraordinary powers, not only generating and projecting this energy but also using it to launch and propel his own body as a kinetic force, all while his body is rendered immune from physical harm. After making a splash in his hometown of Springvale, Connecticut as the local hero Speedball, Robbie decided to strike out in the superhero capital, New York City, only to quickly realize he was a big fish in a small pond. He even attempted to make a big splash to impress the Avengers and talk them into taking him in, only to be politely but firmly rejected by Captain America himself. Robbie was nearly ready to pack it in when he just so happened to be in the city on the day of Terrax’s attack. Though at first Robbie sought to distract Terrax and keep his rampage out of the way of civilians, he rolled with Dwayne’s direction to combine his powers with Vance’s, which gave a massive blow to Terrax’s physical form and won the heroes an edge that helped to secure the fight. 

At sixteen, Robbie is the youngest of the Warriors, and by every measure the least experienced and most immature. That excitement manifests in his powers, to which Robbie has to actively exert himself to calm down and lessen his generation of kinetic energy. In his earliest outings back in Springdale, Robbie was more a showman than a proper superhero, and that class clown persona carried over as a New Warrior. Next to Namorita, Robbie is the one with the most unabashed excitement towards being a superhero, and through that ends up becoming the heart of the team. His pluckiness allows him to easily chum it up with Rich and Nita, and his light-heartedness shines through to even the most jaded members of the group, such as Angel and Vance. He’s the biggest wild card for Dwayne, but keeps him on board for his untapped potential, a call that brings Dwayne to blows with Chord and Tai, one of many as the Warriors continue to operate. 

Dwayne volunteers to train Robbie in combat as a compromise with his mentors, an arrangement Robbie isn’t initially receptive to but commits to once he understands how important it is to keeping him on the team. For outside of simply wanting to strike out as a superhero, Robbie seeks any excuse to get out of his house, as his parent’s constant bickering and intrusive opinions on what Robbie should do with his life make Springvale nigh insufferable. Getting to and from the Warriors in New York and his home in Springvale, all while concealing his identity to his parents, is a strenuous to maintain, but Robbie keeps at it. This dedication eventually pays off, granting Robbie a focus and determination that not only allows for a greater application of his powers, but makes him a more capable hero that he would have been without the support of his fellow Warriors. 

GENERAL GUIDELINES

The team are rarely all together at once.

This is both a tool to alleviate the burden of handling up to six main characters at once, as well as taking writing cues from previous shows such as Teen Titans 2003 and Justice League in juggling their own large casts. Additionally, I feel like this would help sell the Warriors' status as being a bunch of kids with their own lives and priorities. Dwayne is rich and has his own personal pilot, sure, but Angel lives in New Jersey, and Speedball in Connecticut. Rich and Vance sometimes have their own hero-work to do, as does Nita when adventuring alongside her cousin. The plan is to use this status quo to the story’s advantage, focusing generally on up to two or three characters at a time with every episode, building up on their relationship with one another in addition to individual one-offs. Whenever the Warriors are fully assembled, such as the series premiere or the season finale, it's made that much bigger of a deal.

The team is not trying to replace an established super-team, nor do they regularly rub elbows with more famous characters on a regular basis.

Not to say it never happens, but cameos should be used sparingly, especially for the first season. The Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men and Heroes for Hire, and any other big names are all out doing their own things, and so will the Warriors. Team-ups with the F4 and Avengers are planned in this first season, but that and any subsequent team-ups should always happen organically and contribute to the episode’s plot.

Every Warrior starts out incomplete in some way, and becoming a team and befriending one another slowly helps them realize their potential.

Their initial formation, banding together to fight Terrax, happens completely by accident, and not before Night Thrasher attempts to form the team forcibly, hacking the private information of Firestar, Justice and Nova. Even then, there is a period after Terrax’s attack where the group rarely see each other, and some assume it was just a one-off thing. But all six are compelled to work along with one another, and make that initial agreement with Thrash following Terrax’s invasion, based on a very specific shared circumstance: They are all young people with superpowers that have affected their lives, for either good or bad, and they don’t have anyone in their personal lives to relate to or confide in. That’s what keeps them coming back despite in some cases living across the city or whole states apart, and that budding friendship with people they never would have engaged with otherwise helps each member of the team become more complete individuals in the process. That’s the biggest through-line of this series.

[sleepymccoy]

For the oc's in your story: where is everyone from? I know you said there was some travel within the solar system then it stopped, so are the crew all from the same planet? Are they all from planets at all? (This ask is partially inspired by the fact that star trek enterprise had a character who was born and raised on a space freighter but never really explored that. Such a cool concept but they never gave him the time of day)

Yeah, historically humanity made the moons and planets they could habitable and built big ol space stations and interplanetary travel and trade. Then a few hundred years ago all the comms failed and never came back online. How tech works was hoarded by Luna and Earth so people around Saturn and Jupiter especially struggled to learn how to make things work. They've been mostly relying on things just not breaking for a while now. There are serious constraints around trialing inventions and innovations because so much of the tech you're integrating with is unknown, so advancement is very slow on Saturn

Travel is back, but it's expensive and rare and risky and time consuming. So it's pretty notable when someone has travelled out to Saturn.

No planets beyond got terraformed back in the day, so Saturn is where the livable solar system ends.

So, we've got kind of three zones of where someone can be from

1. A Saturn moon

This is the most normal. Grew up with sky and dirt. Day and night is different on each moon and some cities constantly move to stay in the very slowly shifting perpetual twilight as their moon is tidally locked w the sun. Most moons have some kind of ocean. All livable ones have atmosphere and a reasonable amount of gravity (like, .8 to 1.2)

Life on a moon is functionally similar to regional living. There are cities, but they're more in the half a million people region rather than 12 million. Moons are absolutely about farming and production because livable space is very limited on a station, but on a moon there's a whole lot more flexibility

2. A Saturn space station

High risk! There's been many space stations that had a catastrophic failure and the inhabitants died. Some in living memory. But, these are like the big cities of now so some people like it anyway. Trade is easier because you don't have to spend fuel to leave orbit. Stations have perfect gravity due to some old tech no one is brave enough to inspect (it's a mini black hole in the centre of the station, it will kill you if you get too close)

3. Anywhere else!

This story is set around Saturn, but I have two or three characters from elsewhere.

One is from Luna, he's running from the Vatican (Catholics won the moon) and doesn't talk about home at all. Solar is his second language and Lunan, his first, has no contractions (it's what's can't didn't) so he has a slightly stilted way of speaking. Still working through the catholic guilt of it all. There's absolutely Luna outposts around Saturn and they are all churches. Luna has way more advanced tech and they hoard it like complete assholes. This character was in a major accident and his spine is cybernetic. So, a computer managed his reflexes and automatic body functions. Part of his brain is also cyborg-y to integrate the spinal column. The cultural impact is huge cos he can't hide it, people know he's Lunan and there's rumours about cyborgs he has to deal with. Physiologically I haven't figured out everything he's dealing with, but he requires less oxygen and other complex chemicals cos half his brain doesn't need them. He also is afraid of hospitals cos he doesn't want some Saturnian doctor who's never seen a cyborg before poking around in his circuitry. He has no plan for what to do if something fucks up

Another character is from the asteroid belt! I have very vague ideas about belter culture, but I think it's super worth-based. Like, what's your job and do it once do it right. He doesn't use his personal name (if he even has one) and just takes on his job title as his name, Manifest. So his name changes with job. The belters are all genetically modified to withstand a life of no gravity, I'm still figuring out the medical side effects of that. I really ought to actually read that twin study w the guy who spent a year on the iss. Manifest is quite under described in my story so far, but I've got his personality figured out so that's fine for now. There's gonna be some laws against genetic modification and maybe if Manifest father's a child it has to be un-modified to be allowed to carry to term. That's sort of stuff, but that may not come up in the story we'll see

I've got one other character who I think I'm gonna say was born on a transport ship from Jupiter. That journey takes a couple years so she was a toddler when she arrived around Saturn. I think her paperwork and ID is a bit messy because of this. She's functionally Saturnian in culture tho

[vampkitty66]

2023 Spring Anime Season: My Thoughts Thus Far

Yamada-kun at Lv999 

Disclaimer!! These are just my opinions

Status: Currently Ongoing

Starting off we have Yamada-kun at Lv999. I will say after watching the first two episodes I immediately picked up the manga. It currently only has five episodes, and the final episode will be the thirteenth. This follows Akane, a college student who recently got dumped by her boyfriend for a girl he met in a online game they both used to play together. Wanting to make him jealous, she attends an event for the online game knowing that he’ll be there and meets a boy named Yamada. Yamada helps Akane out after she tripped and her ex boyfriend spots them together. Turns out her ex is a big fan of Yamada’s, and in an attempt to make her ex jealous she bribes Yamada to say that they are dating each other.  Since I am a shoujo lover myself, I felt super drawn to this series because it feels nostalgic. I think the characters are likeable and despite their age gap ( although I don’t find it a big deal as its only two years apart ) their relationship is healthy. Really enjoying it so far, I think its refreshing to see a romance anime nowadays with little to no fan service. If you haven't, I highly suggest picking up the manga.

Hells Paradise

Status: Currently Ongoing 

Completing the “Dark trio” we have Hells Paradise, I preface that I have not read the manga. With only five episodes so far, I've got to say that this might be one of the best watches for me this season. Mappa has really outdone themselves in my opinion, the animation is crazy. The story follows Gabimaru the Hollow who was captured and sentenced to death. With him practically being invincible, Sagiri, his executioner, gave him an opportunity to be pardoned. To be able to be pardoned he and other death row convicts have to find the elixir of life. I think the story is fantastic and the characters are all interesting. I’m really excited to see what comes next as the series continues, and we’ve already seen some development in some of the characters, as well as some of the backstories. Waiting for my girl Sagiri to be an absolute badass and prove everyone who doubts her wrong. Also just got to say that the opening song is  fire and its been on repeat for me. 

Skip And Loafer  

Status: Currently Ongoing   

Skip And Loafer, another romance anime with only five episodes so far (its very exciting to have so many wholesome animes come out this year) This one also feels like a very nostalgic shoujo, but its in fact a sienen. This one is based in high school and it follows Mitsumi Iwakura, a girl who lived on the countryside her whole life. Iwakura attends high school in Tokyo and even though she thinks everything will go smoothly, it turns out to be quite the opposite. Watching this made me cringe so hard not even going to lie, its awkward and goofy but that’s also what I like about it. Despite having to throw my phone to the other side of the bed because of the awful secondhand embarrassment I got, I'm definitely going to continue watching it. 

Why Raeliana Ended Up At The Dukes Mansion

Status: Currently Ongoing 

This was originally a manhwa that got adapted into an anime. I have not read the manhwa so I can’t base anything off of it, but so far I'm enjoying it. It follows Raeliana who was originally Park Eunha who had died in the real world and woke up to be Raeliana. The world that she is in as Raeliana is based off a novel she had read in her previous life, so lucky for her, she knows what's to come. There were a lot of isekai animes this season and to be honest, this is the only one I've watched. This seemed like an interesting concept, I don’t watch or read too many isekai series because a lot of them feel the same and I find some of them boring but maybe I should give it more of a chance? I digress, I like most of the main characters so far and if I were her, I’d totally jump on the duke bandwagon. The animation is a little iffy but I can look past it, overall I don’t have that many complaints about it.  

Honorable Mention

Oshi No Ko

Contains spoilers!!

Status: Ongoing

Note: This is an absolute mess of a review oops

Okay so I’ve only watched the first episode so far (I think there's two or three now??) The first episode was like an hour long and it was a lot. We start off meeting the two main characters in the hospital, the little girl and the doctor. We see Ai on tv and to be honest does no one else find it weird that the doctor is like obsessed with a teen idol? Yes I know its because of the little girl, she was his patient and she died blah blah blah. I just find it a little odd... I don't know, it’s fine, moving on. Ai is pregnant and the doctor gets assigned to her, turns out shes having twins and on the night that she is supposed to deliver, the doctor gets pushed and dies. The doctor and his little girl patient gets reincarnated as her twins but they are fully aware of their previous lives. So now a 12 year old girl and a 20 something year old man are Ai’s twins. Also forgot to mention, didn’t the doctor say something sus to the little girl before she died because didn’t she want to marry him??? Honestly I forget, anyways, fast forward the twins, Aqua and Ruby, get older throughout the episode. Ai has been doing her idol shit and what not and Aqua also dabbles into acting a bit. Ruby is dancing or something and all is swell until it all turned to shit. Ai is I think 20 years old now? There's someone who comes to the door and she opens it, he then stabs her and she dies. Oh and she finally tells her kids that she loves them. The episode is almost over at this point, Aqua asks this one guy to raise him or something and Aqua pretty much figures out that his dad hired someone to kill his mom so he’s in his revenge era now. This was a whole mess but its fine. I liked the characters designs a lot, I thought they were really pretty. I have some problems with this anime but I think I might continue to watch it and then do a whole review on it. Still baffled on how people claimed that this was the best first episode they've seen ( even topped aot ) I think it was a good episode don’t get me wrong and I liked the animation style and there were cute moments but I don’t think it was the best first episode I've seen. Ai’s song was fire though, I will say that.

[the-official-account]

Is it just me, or does lesbian fandom have a problem?

My name is Edil. I've been a medium-sized name in several small fandoms, especially podcast fandoms. I am also a women appreciator, and enjoy media that centers on women. I'm going to mostly be talking about my experiences in two fandoms: The Strange Case Of Starship Iris and Pasithea Powder, both podcasts with central wlw ships, though I've also seen these same issues in Goncharov (1973) of all places.

When I go into fandom I go hard. My brain, which is very autistic, breaks down information of small details for fun. It's the reason why I wrote a dwarnian (TSCOSI's fictional alien language) dictionary for the podcast. The reason why I have a massive notes document on all of Pasithea's season one and the reason the wiki...looks and reads like that. It isn't owned by me, but most of the formatting, fonts, content: yours truly.

And I'm proud of these projects, which took time and effort and skill building to do! But I haven't finished or caught up with either of these podcasts, and that's because the online spaces that center around them have been overwhelmingly hostile.

I have a strong emotional connection to this issue — of whether or not sapphic fandoms tend to be more hostile to diversity, especially race and nuerodivergance — so I can't make a distinct analysis, not without more distance and more information. That's part of why I am making this post.

Mods and members of the TSCOSI discord circa 2020 will know me, and know why I left. That being a series of unwarranted criticisms and bad faith readings that left me with anxiety even interacting with the fandom I loved.

I am probably a lot less known in the Pasithea fandom, because I wrote fewer fics for it and left more quickly. After TSCOSI, I recognized resentment faster. But the Pasithea notes document that I've posted here before and the wiki, three fics, fan art and that one comic that's still to this day the only comic I've drawn: me.

This is not a callout post, not for individuals or for groups, and I don't have screenshots. I am only trying to open a discussion.

See, the pattern that I am seeing is that fandom spaces centering on wlw ships attract fans who are wlw. And while nothing is inherently wrong with that, issues in the lesbian community start to become very obvious.

Firstly, the lack of diversity in sexuality among most of the fan base (As I suspect bi and gay people have largely more popular media that attracts them, and lesbians have to dig deeper for smaller spaces like these podcast) starts to feed this sense of possession among fans. As if there is a correct, normal, or standard way to be sapphic. A set of rules stating that anyone who doesn't obey it hates lesbians.

From Pasithea, I got this in comments about how I was drawing the characters "ugly" (Jane is canonically fat and has a scar, which I made very visible...because I wanted to. I gave her strong Hispanic features because it appealed to me. Sophie is butch, and canonically has or had a buzz cut. Which is what I drew. — The "appearance" section of the wiki? Yup. I wrote that.)

These comments, which were themselves problematic, came from a place of implying I was lesbiphobic for drawing these wlw as "ugly". When in fact, I was drawing the type of characters that would appeal the most to me, and hopefully to others like me.

These expectations of skinny, eurocentric appearing, usually feminine characters... Well it reflects a lot of issues with TERF-y feminism and lesbianism at large. Lesbianism on the internet has an issue with gender essentialism that isn't universal but is incredibly worrying. And when WOC are often masculinized because of their non-white features, that transphobia becomes anti-butchness (or strict standards of butchness) and racism.

While TSCOSI fans were more receptive to my designs, I was drawing in a less realistic style where "ugly" was less of an issue — and, to be frank, The main ship being Southeast and South Asian made it hard to draw them "ugly" from a eurocentric perspective. Realism there would just be...exotic, I guess.

However, with TSCOSI fans there was still a sense of possession around how these characters were interpreted, especially in headcannons, that lead to me deleting more than I posted as time went on. Some of those were genuine issues on my part ("what if the Jewish guy was a vampire in a au haha!" I said. Then went to bed, woke up, googled it, and went "NOPE! NOPE!!! SORRY.") Others were just unnecessary, such as comments on how silly head cannons were "unrealistic", and how I should write more cannon compliant work, rather than what I was doing for fun.

Ultimately these are the ONLY things that made me stop listening to these podcasts. The ONLY reason I put down the projects I poured consecutive hyperfixate weeks into. Part of me thinks it was this enthusiasm in the first place that was the biggest threat others reacted to in how I spoke and acted.

For instance, in trying to write for both the TSCOSI and Pasithea wikis, I had folks try to change my methods of research and writing to a style that worked best for them. When I said they were welcome to work that way, there was no offers to assist. And communication with those who had established work was either non-existent or hostile. I've had people question if my passion projects were necessary, berate me for meaningless mistakes, and treat what could be fun collaborative work like a pissing contest. For TSCOSI, none of this occurred on the wiki, and mostly around documents I owned for my own note taking. Even then, the hostility of Wikipedia culture is an unnecessary and hurtful thing to bring into fandom wiki culture.

The TSCOSI people went on to make a wonderful wiki that I deeply admire, but I still wish I could have been part of that project in its infancy, instead of being pushed away. (I may have made the navigation system if I remember correctly, but I'm not certain. So this is not to say I was not allowed any input whatsoever.)

I love sapphic media, it's my bread, butter, pride, joy, and favorite past time. But time and time again I have found far safer social spaces for media that centers around gay men, even if it isn't my personal first choice.

As a non-white, non-allistic, non-lesbian, not-skinny fan...I have concerns.

I know you all want sapphic media to get more attention. I want that too. But unless you start actively searching for and calling out bigotry in those spaces, it absolutely cannot and will not happen. So much of fandom is powered by autistic people with time on their hands, and I want there to be space for people like me. Who get TOO excited, TOO far from cannon, TOO analytical about race and class and fatphobia and whatever else.

Sapphic media obviously has issues reaching fans that aren't the fault it's its current audience. But the good thing about being part of or close to a problem, is having the power to make incredible, effective change.

I refuse to leave these podcasts behind, I love them more than anything, and the projects I got out of them are still my beloved brain children (The alien calligraphy from the random writing system I made for dwarnian is still up on my wall. "It is what. It IS what, keeps us from the abyss.") I refuse to be shoved aside my racist fans and random people who assume they can act rudely to strangers because they treated characters or lore differently. I refuse to be sidelined from conversations just cause I can act weird.

But I also refuse to spend so much of my beloved labor on people who turn up their noses and belittle it.

This all has had a lasting effect on how I interact with fandom, a legitimate fear-responce to the idea of trying to engage deeply with women-centered podcasts. Something I'm trying to unlearn and overcome.

So. There's my explanation of why I don't do tscosi anymore, which I mentioned on the minibang I'd eventually follow up on. And a criticism of sapphic fandom which, I'll be real, I have a few more essays worth of commentary about, and it's also another expression of how I stare longingly at Pasithea every time it comes up on my dash.

But, most importantly, this is my question of whether anyone else has found themselves in a similar place. If it's a trend or an anecdote.

If you have thoughts, please reblog with them. I'd love to know what you have to say.

[doriansredroses]

I still miss Quotev. It was the only writing site I actually enjoyed. I had a phase on Wattpad when I was 12-14 but that was before I found out about Quotev. I loved it there. I didn’t know it existed until 2019. I may have taken quizzes prior to that year but 2019 was when an old friend in high school signed me up for it. I never used the account and deleted it.

But then I decided to go back to it. That’s where I met two of my best online friends. The first one, I met them through a Harry Potter quiz. We both wrote fanfics that were tied together in the same universe as our first crossover. Then I met @xxiamtiebrousxx. We're so close. We’re both in the animated Barbie movies fandom, so she’s the Erika to my Anneliese, the Liana to my Alexa. She and I started writing constant collaborations and are trying to figure out how to continue now that Quotev is dead.

This is what I miss most about the site, the community and the way we both wrote together. I miss posting some random thing on feed and tagging her or one of my other mutuals. I miss the groups where she and I posted things privately for each other. I loved how accessible the site was, how clean it looked compared to Wattpad, and that it was so private.

Despite all of the fond memories I’ve made, I am honestly relieved in some ways that I’ve left the site. I went through hell on Quotev. A lot of people bullied me, and it wasn’t just simple cyber bullying, it was blatant betrayal. I had one friend a few years ago, who I really liked until I found out they were talking about me behind my back. When I confronted them, it turned into an argument and blew up in my face. They apologized and we tried again. But then they started hating on me for liking a specific Disney character, saying that I shouldn’t be liking him. It hurt. I lashed out because I was struggling a lot with depression and suicidal urges, but once again, things blew up in my face. I was the one getting yelled at and canceled. I lost another friend because of it. Turns out, he was just a jerk and we were better off without each other. Another user started ghosting me because of political reasons and started another war against me because I simply asked why she hurt me. This isn’t even the worst part.

On here, I met this guy who I cherished. He was really sweet to me then and I helped him discover who he was. He was struggling with being trans and wanted help finding a name and stuff. I gave him one based off of a character from a favorite novel of mine, and one he ended up reading because of me. He even said I was his muse, just like the character he was named after said to the character I most identified with. Things got rough afterwards. He was awful with communicating with me when things went wrong. His solution, ghosting me. He then ended up saying he was leaving me, and I flipped out because it was the start of my suicidal depression. We split.

But he found me again on Quotev. He stalked me there. Right after he returned into my life, there was a story posted on an anon story account. The account was created for authors who didn’t want to post stories linked to them, but still wanted to write. The intention was great but the outcome was devastating. One day I decided to check the account to see what had been posted. I saw an interesting title. I started reading it. The story had used my real name, my high school friends, and was profiting off of my current mental health issues that stemmed from abuse and friendship drama. I had every reason to get upset. My personal information had been breached to the public and it was clearly malicious. It’s very likely it was him because every single sign pointed to him, yet he denied it when I confronted him. The story made me physically ill. Someone wanted to hurt me. Things only got worse.

That same guy kept pestering me, and being the kind soul I am, I allowed him to talk to me, but from a distance because I was scared. He did the same thing again with the ghosting and I finally snapped. I was livid. What did he do in response? He started posting rumors about me that weren’t true and ended up turning almost all of my Quotev friends against me. One of them who was always there for me when I felt like I wanted to end my life posted on her feed “I hope Willow burns in hell and never sees the gates of heaven”. I broke down sobbing afterwards. It was a slew of getting blocked by old mutuals for something I didn’t do. My time from 2023 to shortly before the shutdown was full of abuse. I had to change accounts a hundred times in hopes of escaping the pure hell I was going through. The drama ruined a collaboration with my friend. People stopped reading it.

And about that one guy, one of the rumors was that I suicide baited him. I was actually suicidal and he thought my depression was a manipulation tactic to keep him from leaving. It was the Quotev/Tumblr equivalent of baby trapping in his eyes. I had offline drama too with my family and also an ex best friend who pulled some crap when he ditched me too. Quotev was supposed to be my safe space, but it turned into my worst nightmare.

I still sort of miss it. Once I got things under control, I just chatted with a few friends and stuff. I don’t love Wattpad but honestly, I realized how toxic Quotev truly was. I was chronically online, I kept getting hurt by people I thought could be trusted, and without it, I can focus on healing. I’m still going to write, and I may leave up my Quotev account for drafting purposes, but that era is behind me.

I joke that the site shutting down was a fate deserved, but at the same time, I hate that it happened because so many people are grieving. I don’t know if I could’ve left the site without this and recognize that it contributed to a lot trauma that may take a while to recover from. Some of these backstabbing Quotev users are here too, but since we are now not in the same circle, I feel free.

After running away from the villains in my life, I finally settled on Willow as my online name. You know that it means? It means freedom (and willow tree). Willow means freedom. The universe might’ve been telling me that I would soon be released from some of what had been tormenting me for an entire year. I will always have some nostalgia for Quotev and I miss how easy it was to navigate, but I had some very unfortunate experiences there that I hope not to experience here. It feels good to get this off my chest and to finally feel ready to move on. I spent so much time bending to other people’s whims that I’d forgotten what made me happiest. It’s time for me to say goodbye to the dead site and live my life.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in ESO #7

A lot of my gameplay has been catchup by day, RP by night.

I had a decent windfall of selling a chunk of crowns for 19mil gold, and I've spent the bulk of that decorating several households to serve as heist targets for thief-based RP with variable difficulty. I mentioned that in the last post.

I was trying to conserve my last few mil to buy and decorate the upcoming Merryvine villa in Gold Road. However I kept getting into gearing and re-gearing old and new alts to make them playable. Some of my older alts had a far too hefty reliance on Briarheart and Hundings when the new(ish) Order's Wrath set for crit is now the go-to baby. I set up one of my arcanists as a tank and following a build online got incredibly expensive, utilizing those runes that cost ~90k each (they buff all three stats). That tank set is stupidly well geared now, but I still generally prefer healing. I've been slowly but surely trying to gear up a lot of my "most used" alts for double duty. DPS in overland, questing, zone clearing, etc, but having a heal/tank set for faster queues and generally having more to offer my roster than others.

Exception being perhaps my werewolf orc, whom I've retooled with Oakensoul. She has some insane light attack crits and can almost braindead her gameplay but she's so much more viable than the basic bow/bow bitch that threw cliff racers at people.

I've discovered I don't much care for B/B builds anymore except in one scenario; Battlegrounds. It's fun to plug away with poison-based arrows, whittling down enemy HP bars while it takes them several seconds to figure out where all that damage is coming from. Sure I get spotted and gunned down like I usually do, I'm not invisible, but it's fun to join already in-progress fights and plug away before they realize where that damage is coming from.

An exception to this exception is that my main necromancer. The class just isn't very fun to play at all. Our main sources of damage are all deeply flawed. Their biggest his is the blastbones skill that every Necro build uses but it takes a full 3 seconds to even leave the ground. By that time the trash pack might be dead already, or against single target bosses that's 3 seconds of not doing very much else. You have a skeleton pet (usually archer, I don't even know what the other morph is because nobody uses it) that only lasts 16 seconds and only shoots every so often, but mostly serves as another corpse to use once it goes down. Then there's the corpse-based laser beam that's very awkward to use and position reliant, and in certain boss fights your position may matter more than the laser beam. So that's another DPS loss.

I couldn't even play melee necro because you spend your whole rotation summoning blastbones, throwing the skull, or using some other skill that I found myself not swinging my weapons at all. Just a clunky cooldown chase. Gross.

The good thing is, she has a functional heal kit so that's another queue in the bag usually. Not as good as my arcanist healer whom is amazing, but still feels better to play than any kind of DPS.

On an RP standpoint, I've joined and left a couple of RP guilds. Well, more on the cusp of being kicked before just quitting to maintain my own dignity.

I won't name any names but it was a guild based on the Brotherhood. I have an assassin character and wanted to put her to use. They had this fun little system where they had a discord bot that would spit out a target, custom added. It gave more variance to overworld stabbing because it feels like base-game DB radiants just send you to the same six places over and over. So it was fun to get a change in scenery, and even helped push my assassin girl to collect a few wayshrines from lesser-seen towns. It also tied in their promotion system. Normally I wouldn't like PvE achievements leaking into RP promotions but it was a fun thing to do. The guild was also heavily hybridized, they had a lot of their membership that don't RP at all.

I found this culture to be a bit taxing. They had this strangest system of using local chat for OOC and only RPing in emotes, which I have never seen before (in any RP setting, ever). They claimed it was for filtering purposes.

There was also a jarring moment where, after claiming I was doing OOC movements, went around to take OOC screenshots of their promotion event. I have a reshade and screenshot helper mod to help me get very cinematic shots but while my UI was hidden apparently I was getting yelled at for being on the main stage where all of the officers were. I had already specified I was OOC but they claimed I was "breaking the sanctity of the ceremony". So my first day in there, it felt as though I had joined a guild of people that were incapable of keeping their attention on anything specific. Can't differentiate any posts between IC and OOC, and can't handle a crouched, hiding character in a corner taking cool screenshots of your proceedings.

I was in this guild for a solid three weeks or so but eventually an officer contacted me about there having been multiple complaints against me. It felt like this post's situation all over again, though the officer here was significantly more diplomatic than that link. I just got the "I've gotten complaints about you" vibe when a large portion of this guild barely interacted with me at all to know otherwise.

Basically my style or personality was conflicting with people. Naturally I never got any specifics or names so I couldn't defend myself properly. According to this officer my previously mentioned conflicts about the way their do their RP, I was trying to set my standards as "THE" standard. While I was in fact, trying to make conversation and understanding their way a bit better. But it rubbed some people the wrong way. I decided instead of being shadow-shunned by several people I would just leave. The options were to shut my own personality down and be much more silent in the guild (which defeats the fucking purpose of RP as a hobby), or continue to RP and interact with a guild where I know there's several people purposefully avoiding interaction with my character because they didn't like me as a player. I just can't really handle being in a guild where I know most people don't want to interact with me. Or is it most? Or is it just two or three complainers? I have no idea! Because the officers that have these conversations never tell me!

This happened before in another guild I quite liked. Though a while ago, back when I was much more active in 2021. I liked that guild, its systems, but the officer of the 'roguey' sub-faction in the guild just decided he didn't like how I spoke to him (completely ICly, mind you) and chastised me for that.

And much like that guild from three years ago, this Dark Brotherhood one wasn't all bad. In some cases I'd even recommend it to people, but it would come with a few asterisks and extra thoughts on the matter to those who would care to hear it.

Kinda put me off for a couple days. I'm not really sure how to adjust my own self when approaching a future RP guild to replace my lost 5th slot. Do I just... talk less? It's certainly some food for thought.

[lyinginahammock]

DC - The Reigning King of TV Superhero Animation

Let’s get this out of the way - on September 7, 1992, DC won the battle for TV superhero animation for all time with the premiere of the Batman: The Animated Series season 1, episode 14, “Heart of Ice”. The heartbreaking tale of Mr. Freeze’s origin, it won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program. Honestly, if nothing DC every put on broadcast TV ever again was any good, this episode would still be talked about as one of the greatest pieces of animated TV ever. 

But instead of resting on their laurels, DC decided to keep kicking ass. “Beware The Grey Ghost,” “Almost Got ‘Im”, “Trial”, “Mad Love”, “Growing Pains”, “Over the Edge”, “Old Wounds” - all amazing episodes of animated television from Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures. 

Then, in 1999, DC decided to go for (and pull off) a Batman hat trick with the debut of Batman Beyond, a series originally designed to sell toys that the writers decided to make kick ass. But still, it eventually had to come to an end, and Marvel breathed a sigh of relief. 

Until November 7, 2001, when DC dropkicked them with the premiere of The Justice League, which transitioned into Justice League Unlimited with grace and style and was similarly amazing, but appeared to end that run of successes. 

At the same time, DC released the series that sealed their eternal victory and proved them the king of superhero animations - Teen Titans. An anime-infused take on the superhero team of the same name, it featured DC’s trademark complicated storytelling and ran for five years, followed by a pretty good movie. And the theme song fucking slapped, both in English and Japanese.

Also running concurrently was The Batman, another interesting take on the caped crusader which reimagined the origins and appearances of his rogues gallery and had some absolutely heartbreaking twists and turns.

After that came Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I’ll die on this fucking hill - the show is better than people online give it credit for. It focused on the campy elements of comic books of yore, but also gave us the amazing episode “Chill of the Night!”, an examination of what it means to be the Batman.

Then came Young Justice, a wholly original take on a number of DC heroes and villains and marked the TV premier of fucking Superboy. The first season is, in my mind, damn near perfect.

Of course, you have stuff like Teen Titans Go! but that isn't conducive to my point, so I'm ignoring it.

Finally, we get to the present day with programming like The Harley Quinn Show and My Adventures With Superman, the former of which has gained a strong fan base and the latter of which shows amazing potential.

So, why does DC's animation devision have so many absolute fucking bangers under its belt while Marvel doesn't have nearly the same track record? Well, I have a theory.

Marvel hit it big with the MCU and thus have a sort of cannon and, as such, the characterization of their characters has to be pretty consistent across mediums, even animation. DC, however, doesn't have anything like that and can reimagine their characters any way they want. That and their animation department has been kicking ass so long they've proven that, left to their own devices, they'll pump out quality material.

So, yeah.

[adair-trashart]

i dont know if anyone else did this but im doing it anyways a lot of it is pulled from his list of works wikipedia page but id figure i could at least make it easier to immediately see where to experience a lot of this stuff since a lot of it can be confusing to find super long post ahead

List of Akira Toriyama's stuff he did you can experience in some way:

(* means digital is the only option for people afraid of buckaneers and scallywags ** means the seven seas are the only (easily accessible to most) option ^ means it is (at least somewhat affordably) available physically or digitally, but not in English)

Manga

Dragon Ball related things:

Dragon Ball (the manga that Dragon Ball Z was adapted from is considered to be still a part of the original series. the manga relevant to that is/was sold over here as the Dragon Ball Z manga, but I'm not sure whats going on with that. can someone whos more of a dragon ball superfan help me figure that out a little???????? even the wiki articles are confusing me on this)

Dragon Ball Super (concepts, storyline, some storyboards and dialogue. It is mainly done by Toyotarou and was released at the same time as the anime before the manga got ahead of it)

Dragon Ball: The Return of Son Goku and Friends! (adaptation of the OVA. overseen storyboards and gave advice to Naho Ooishi. According to the intro he sees this as better than the special this was based off of)

Jaco the Galactic Patrolman

Neko Majin^

Kochira Namekku-sei Dragon Kōen-mae Hashutsujo** (a crossover chapter with KochiKame that apparently appears in Cho KochiKame)

Cross Epoch** (One Piece crossover one-shot)

Things you can experience through Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater:

Wonder Island/Wonder Island 2

Today's Highlight Island

Tomato the Cutesy Gumshoe

Pola & Roid

Escape

Mad Matic

Pink: The Rain Jack Story

Chobit/Chobit 2 (not to be confused with Chobits by CLAMP)

Dragon Boy

Mr. Ho

Lady Red

Young Master Ken'nosuke

The Elder

Little Mamejiro

Karamaru and the Perfect Day

Soldier of Savings Cashman

Dub & Peter 1

Go! Go! Ackman

Alien X-Peke

Sachie-shan Good!!

Jiya

Other manga:

Dr. Slump

Rocky** (Dr. Slump spinoff)

Dr. Mashirito – Abale-chan** (Dr. Slump spinoff)

Wolf** (accessible through the artbook Akira Toriyama: The World)

Hetappi Manga Kenkyūjo**

Tokimecha**

Majin Mura no Bubul** (prototype for Cowa!)

Cowa!*

Kajika^

Mahimahi the Lungfish**

Hyowtam!**

Sand Land

Oishii Shima no Ū-sama** (an educational manga whose only PDF online is no longer accessible. images of it are on the Dragon Ball fandom wiki, but I can't navigate the websites linked very easily since I dont speak Japanese)

Kintoki**

Awawa World** and Mysterious Rain Jack** (unpublished early works)

Art books:

Akira Toriyama: The World** (vaguely more affordable on Amazon but I'd rather not give them money right now)

Akira Toriyama: The World Special** (I don't know what the difference is but it is way more expensive)

Dragon Ball Daizenshu: The Complete Illustrations**

Dragon Quest Monsters: Akira Toriyama Illustrations (the 30th anniversary version is fairly cheap by artbook standards)

Dragon Quest 25th Anniversary Monster Encyclopedia^

Dragon Ball: A Visual History (secondhand prices are decent on some websites)

Work he did on anime:

Crusher Joe* - MAX 310 space station (image found in the video linked at the bottom of this page)

Kosuke & Rikimaru: The Dragon of Konpei Island** (original concept, script, character designs)

Imagination Science World Gulliver Boy (mechanical designs. wikipedia is vague and the bottom of this link is the only thing i could find of specific concept art (mild buggish warning i guess))

Dragon Ball GT (yes, believe it or not he was mildly involved. he did character designs and made the name and logo)

Sand Land (the anime was supposed to come later this month, and he worked on some kind of new story for it. there is also a video game that's supposed to come out later this year and we will see by then if he had any further involvement in that)

Lumping the rest of the anime first Dragon Ball stuff here:

Dragon Ball: The Return of Son Goku and Friends!** (original and story concepts)

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (original and story concepts, character designs)

Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' (original concept, screenplay, character designs, title)

Dragon Ball Super (original and story concepts, character designs, title, released at the same time as the manga before the manga overtook it)

Dragon Ball Super: Broly and Super Hero (original concept, screenplay, character designs)

Dragon Ball Daima (original concept, story, character designs, was supposed to come out this fall)

Anime adaptations (and adjacent things) of his stuff:

Dragon Ball stuff:

Dragon Ball tv series

Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies

Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle

Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure

Dragon Ball: The Path to Power

Goku's Traffic Safety and Goku's Fire Brigade** (theyre both PSAs, easily accessible through unofficial YouTube uploads)

Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins** (unlicensed Taiwanese live action remake of Curse of the Blood Rubies)

Dragon Ball: Fight Son Goku, Win Son Goku** (unlicensed Korean live action adaptation)

Dragonball Evolution (very loose western adaptation that somehow has a game on the PSP)

Dragon Ball Z stuff:

Dragon Ball Z tv series

All of the Dragon Ball Z movies (seriously there's so many and I even checked each movie individually if yarhargle is the only option. it is not but it's also $3.99 per movie so keep that in mind)

Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku

Dragon Ball Z: Summer Vacation Special**

Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks

Looking Back at it All: The Dragon Ball Z Year-End Show!**

Dragon Ball Z Side Story: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans**

The World of Dragon Ball Z (English dub exclusive OVA, uses both the BLT/Ocean dub and the in-house Funimation dub)

Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock (OVA adaptation of Naho Ooishi's manga)

Other stuff:

Dr. Slump Arale-chan(**?) (first adaptation, unsure if truly otherwise inaccessible since it has a very unsearchable name for search engines)

Dr. Slump 1997 tv series

Dr. Slump movies**

Pink: Water Bandit, Rain Bandit**

Go! Go! Ackman**

Work he did for video games:

Dragon Quest series (character designs)

Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo** (character designs)

Famicom Jump II: Saikyō no Shichinin (designed Dark Raid)

Chrono Trigger* (character and setting designs, helped with animation for the 1999 PlayStation port)

Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2** (character designs)

Blue Dragon* and Blue Dragon Plus** (character designs, there's also a Blue Dragon anime but I don't know how involved he was)

Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow** (character designs, voice of Toripo)

Chōsoku Henkei Gyrozetter** (designed Beeman 500SS)

Dragon Ball FighterZ (designed Android 21)

Dragon Ball Legends* (designed Shallot and Zahha)

Jump Force (several original character designs. I have no idea who Wikipedia meant by this)

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (designed Bonyū)

Fantasian* (designed a diorama used for a level)

Shueisha related stuff:

just assume theyre all highly unavailable and poorly archived online i can't even find archives of mainstream magazines from the us half the time

Weekly Shōnen Jump (designed Captain Gyao for the 20th anniversary, designed Kaizo-kun for the website. I cant navigate that website very well so can someone else find Kaizo-kun for me??????)

V Jump (designed V Dragon)

Weekly Jump F-1 Club (designed the mascot Wins-kun)

V-Net (designed the mascots Dr. Tobo and Happy 1)

Souvenirs entomologiques: Shueisha Bunko edition of the Japanese translation (cover illustrations, here is the link (super realistic big bugs warning)

Shueisha (designed Rīdon for the 25th anniversary of Shueisha Bunko)

Dragon Ball Damashii (logo design)

Jump Shop (designed Janta)

My Jump (designed Mai and Honbot)

Other things:

Fuel Album by George Tokoro (insert illustration)

Fire! Staff Tripper by Akira Sakuma (album cover, notably not mentioned on Wikipedia, possibly lost media, thanks to @/ToriyamasArt on Twitter for providing an English name)

Polkadot Magic by Mami Koyama (album cover, lyrics for "Crilla" and "Helicopter)

Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens (logo for the koala exhibit)

Fine Molds (packaging and instructions illustrations for the Lisa model, designed the mascot Goshikiken, designs packaging and instructions for seven World Fighter Collection models)

Dakara Bike Daisuki! by Haruka Takachiho (cover art)

Super Sense Story (character designs, it's a road safety brochure for Honda and I can't find images for it)

Bitch's Life Illustration File (illustration, I have no idea how many)

Toccio the Angel** (writer and illustrator, it's a children's book)

QVOLT (it's a car, he designed it)

Rule/Sparkle by Ayumi Hamasaki (art of Hamasaki dressed as Goku on the CD and DVD (image is accessible on the Dragon Ball fan wiki)

Ichigo Dōmei by Chiaki** (cover art)

Invade by jealkb (album art)

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (promotional poster art)

Dr. Mashirito's Saikyō Manga Jutsu by Kazuhiko Torishima** (cover art)

Kiyosu (20th anniversary city logo)

Sources:

List of works by Akira Toriyama (a lot of it was also connected pages and me individually searching for different things listed)

Dragon Ball fan wiki

Dr. Slump fan wiki

this Kazenshuu forum post by Angelus about Akira Toriyama's earlier manga, including the unpublished stuff

the news section of the official Dragon Ball website

this page on the KochiKame fan wiki

this article for crusher joe and the video linked in it

various 🏴‍☠️ websites i wont list here specifically because loose lips sink ships (they're not hard to find if you care that much)

various IMDB pages (largely for finding ways to watch for people unable or unwilling to do the only other alternative)

this Hungarian website where I found the Dragon Ball Damashii image

jump shop (janta is fortunately plastered all over the place so i could find example images easily)

@/ToriyamasArt on Twitter for the bug covers in the Shueisha section and an English translation for the name Fire! Staff Tripper

This website (in Portugeuse) that has a lot of the art in the other things section

this archive of Toccio the Angel

anonymous Blogspot post covering QVOLT

jealkb Invade CD listing with the jpged image

allocine.fr is where i got the Journey to the West poster but it gave me some unavoidable pop up that's seemingly immune to Firefox's website translator and i already spent 5 hours on this post so screw that website

Kiyosu logo source (their image breaks on Tumblr so i screenshotted it)

[tnc-n3cl]

Hello there!! I see a lot of your world building posts on a regular basis, and I love getting to hear about everything you're working on, so I want to ask: how do you go about world building? What's your process? How do you keep track of it all?

As always I adore seeing you on my dash and I love seeing you in my notifs, all my love to you! May you have a good timezone!!

Oh how to answer this... Hmm... I guess it's kind of a hyperfixation on one particular aspect at a time? I'll think about one aspect or another and ideas will come to me. Depending on what it is I may have to do some research and then start writing things down (or in some cases drawing).

For example, I started working on an alphabet for the Avestrens (bird people) in Project 47 and early on I had decided to avoid the monoculture tropes so often seen in scifi/fantasy so there are populations of Avestrens spread out across three continents. After coming up with this, I thought it would be fun to base their language on mythical bird names.

Three days of looking up mythical birds on Wikipedia (and one or two other sites), I had enough to go on. Then I broke down things into themes. For example, the nations of Kyros had Asian themes so I used various bird/bird like creature names from Asian mythologies. Kyros has two different Avestren languages. All in all I came up with 9 different alphabets.

Right now for my Final Fantasy fic I'm (slowly) coming up with backstories and technobabble about the various planets in The Quintet. (For example, Eden orbits at 2.5 AU's which is roughly the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt IRL, which takes 4.6 Earth years to orbit around the Sun. For a fun FFXIII/DS9 reference, I gave Eden a 26 hr day, which I had to find a calculator online to convert into 1550 hours in a year, which I evened out to 50 months lasting 31 days each, cause I really didn't want to do the math to try and make a leap year kinda thing...)

(The Quintet has common hour/etc. definitions, but years and days are all by planet (though most of the more habitable worlds are more or less the same in that regard), so for the example above they use Dia Eden for an Eden Day and Annus Eden for Eden Year (change planet name as needed).)

As for keeping track of it all... I do that with multiple Word files, sometimes with multiple versions, cause when I make a big change I'll save as a new file. I tend to keep a sort of general idea file I'll call "Production Notes" and then make a different file for each specific thing (character lists, biology stuff, etc.) Sometimes I'll write things in a post here or elsewhere and then copy/paste them into Word, but mostly sometimes I'll type it all out first then copy/paste it here or wherever.

I have a folder for each project and then multiple folders for each thing associated with that project. (And I've been doing this for YEARS and will often go back to old notes for inspiration or whatever.)

Thank you so much for the kind words and the ask!!!!