#even if that means being yeeted into the sky

[justanechoflower]

flowey do you remember me (throws you into the sky heroically anon) do you want a little lift

[mousydentist]

my favorite fics that i wrote and why

So, first I'll explain. I'm gonna being reccing my own fics which I'm not super sure how to do cause I mostly just yeet shit on ao3 and let the fates decide, and I'm never sure what's like, too much? Like I see other people rec their own fics and I'm like (O O) how do i do that. Like idk why I have this resistance to like, telling people that I like my own fics? So today I said fuck that, everyone's gonna know now.

And I've just been doing not so hot recently for a number of reason and I figured like, I've been obsessing over so much, why don't I get to be excited about the good things? So anyway, these are my favorite fics that I've written, not just the ones that have done the best or whatever, just my personal favorites, so without further ado...

(quick fyi, all of these are locked so you need to be logged into ao3 to view)

First up is sorry that i can't believe anybody really starts to fall in love with me , don't ask why the name is so long I just like the song lmao. This one's special to me cause it was my first KPTS fic. Is it the best? No. Does it have a super deep meaning? Nope. But it's cute and it's mine so I love it. Next!

the imperfect art of making it. Very self indulgent. I wrote this for the endorphins fic fest which gave me the motivation to write, but really I just loving transing my characters, and soft KimChay deserves lots of love.

Next up, do you look up to the sky? My first whumptober fic and the first one I wrote bc as soon as I looked at the prompts I was like "oh Kim's getting locked in the fucking basement for sure" and then he did! Success. Also KimChay are a pstd4ptsd couple, I won't be taking questions at this time.

This is getting longer than I thought it was gonna be but fuck it, I told myself I was doing this to remind myself why I like writing and that I do actually enjoy it so the longer the better tbh bc it means I really do love it. It's not a bad thing if all of my fics have a special place in my heart, right?

Ok last of the non dead dove ones is i should have kissed you. I don't exactly have a reason, I just think it's a good fic.

The next ones are dead dove cause I have two modes which are cute fluff and illegal <3

chay and kinn and chay. This thing is my baby. I love him with my whole heart. I wrote him in discord messages on my walk to and from classes. This is one fic that I would not be ashamed to say I've read several times over. This is the fic that I think of when people say "write the fics you want to read." This was also a spite fic which makes all of that even funnier lmao

Willow Dancin' On Air. This one's not dead dove but it is KimVegas so eh. But this is another fic I wrote purely for myself. I just wanted some fluffy lil somethin somethin and now every time I listen to this song I think of this fic

Ok last one, Why minors shouldn’t gamble. This one also started on discord and was written in my notes app at like. 9 am while I was still in bed lmao. Because that's where inspiration peaks. And it's hot idk. omegaverse will never not be be a special interest of mine, hopefully one day we can find out what happens when Kim joins the party, I'm genuinely curious.

OK! So. That was something. Tbh I feel a lot better lmao. My therapist would be so proud of me if I ever told her I write fanfiction pff. Normalize reading your own fics over and over. I'm saying that directly to myself cause I see all these like motivational things about writing and then I don't believe them, what's that about?? Doing this reminded me that I actually like the things I create, highly recommend. Now I'm gonna get myself a glass of water cause for the next maybe 12 hours I'm changing my life!! I'm doing self care!!! Woo hoo!!!!! Now to post this before I remember that other people can see it :) Ok bye ✌️

[messinwitheddie]

Hey Pur, what was it like living with mem? How did her sworm react to seeing a tallest for the first time?

Mem, did you ever talk about the empire to your kids? That and what the irkens do once they set out for conquest? Are you worried the armada might find your home, even after your death? What would you want your sworms to do? Leave to stay?

Purple "Excuse us, he hates the process but it needs to be done. His nails are lethal...

Mad mother Mem. She was savage. Great Glord I miss her so much.

My first year living under her ceiling was torture. She made it very clear the moment we met SHE ruled the hive and I had no power over her or her swarms.

When the comm officers stumbled upon this planet I led a surface recon mission to see if there were any valuable resources to gather from it. Yeet tried to warn me about a coup, but that sounded preposterous. My generals had surprise-pummeled me, stripped me of my hovor-mobile aids and left me for dead-- OH! AND Zim manually downgraded my PAK while I was knocked unconscious, so I was in no physical condition to defend myself.

She made it very clear to her swarms that I was not to be trusted or treated with dignity. I guess it was her form of payback for how late Miyuki had treated her in the past.

She ordered her swarms to keep their distance from me. Every so often Mem or one of her smeet-soldiers would throw food at my feet. Beyond that, most of the hive was forbidden to speak to me or directly interact with me at all until after the big resisty trial. That day changed EVERYTHING, but that's another long story. One at a time...

When I first arrived here Mem's youngest smeets were fascinated with me. I constantly noticed them scurrying around, watching me from behind corners, only to scatter and hide when I made eye contact. I was the tallest drone they had ever met in person, and Irken tallests have quite a reputation, so I get it. It did make me feel like a spectacle... a different kind of spectacle than how I'm used to. My smaller drones in the empire used to idolize me and cheer for me; or, you know, they pretended to.

The longer I go without being falsely idolized, the less I miss it. I'm practically a coddle drone now, nothing more and I'm much happier. As a tallest, I was a puppet. Here, the admiration I'm given is genuine. I matter to my smeets here and they matter to me even more. I coach them in sting ball, I give the winged ones flying lessons when Helkite and the other eyes in the sky go on aerial recon-- Zim graciously left my holo-wing feature when he downgraded my pak-- I supervise our hive's smeets on foraging trips, scare off predators. They NEED me and it feels good to be needed. If it wasn't for the smeets speaking on my behalf, I don't think Mem would have ever accepted me.

I won't lie, I HATED Mem at first. I wished for her to die a slow, painful death every time she spoke to me. She was a little shrill old service wench who treated me like scum and scratched me until I bled when I protested. She let me hobble around on the cold stone floors of the hive-tunnels for months; no furniture to lounge on, no back massages, no pipe amber, literally no basic comforts. She took delight in watching me suffer. She used to throw things at me, threaten me, insult me-- I mean, just name an indignity, she put me through it. To add insult to injury, I had to occupy the same hive as Zim... and under Mem's command Zim outranked me! It was the un-funniest cosmic joke ever told. I cursed life itself and everything in it.

But at the time, the joke went over my head.

I was a different Purple then; sheltered, spoiled, WEAK. I wasn't able or willing to look at my situation from another perspective. I needed to grow. You know, grow on the inside-- as a drone. I eventually did. I like to think my time spent here built me into a bigger, better person and I have Mem to thank for that...

Ok, we're finished. You're dismissed, Hitz."

Hitz "Thank you, Purple!"

Mem "I didn't tell my first swarm much about the empire or my past... Zim told them much more about the empire than I was comfortable with when he arrived. At first, I was furious with him. I didn't WANT my smeets to be burdened with the toxic culture of the empire. I never wanted to plant the idea in their heads that their height determined their worth as droned...

BUT

Zim made me realize sheltering my smeets from ugly truths about our species and culture could potentially endanger them in the future.

The fear of our refugee planet being discovered by the armada is a VERY real fear we face. The Sage literally abandoned our hive because he feared working with the Resisty may attract attention from the empire thus destroying the sanctuary we built here...

We try to operate underground as much as possible because of this. We try to use as little tech as possible to make the surface of our refugee planet as unnoticeable as possible from space.

If our hive is ever discovered by the empire, I encourage everyone to do whatever it takes to survive, even if that means fleeing the planet. Currently we cannot fight the armada. They outnumber us and outgun us. If my smeets have to abandon the hive and hide out in space, so be it. Even if they have to scatter, they know to regroup when it's safe. Hope takes multiple forms. That is a lesson I have learned well over the centuries.

With any luck, by the time the Armada discovers us and our home, we will have built our defenses up strong enough to fight back or at least escape to a safe place.

Right now, we focus on day to day survival.

[princess-of-the-corner]

"In what sense? Of timeline? I mean each Season is going to be roughly a year?"

Sorry for not being specific.

I meant summary of what changed in each season in comparison to Canon

Okay hm so off the top of my head without going too far into my notes:

Actually side thing is I just realized that most of the Major Changes have to do with the various villains. The Trix being salvageable to the Good Side(after a bit), Darkar getting downgraded to normal, Valtor has been changed completely tbh. The Wizards of the Black Circle have been almost completely yeeted. Tritanus is more of a civil war situation than an outright coup.

Interesting tbh.

Season 1:

Same basic plot of Bloom learning about Magic and going to Alfea, learning about her actual heritage, the Trix being fucks. Some things go sideways, some plots are diverted.

Changes include

A good chunk of adjusting the whole 'Ancestral Witches' thing and the Fall of Domino because having that happen ages ago but also less than 20 years ago is ?????. Short version: A group called 'Ancestral' that wanted to take over everything invaded Domino for the Dragon Flame. Yadda yadda Daphne yeets Bloom to Earth, gets Spirited in the process, most of the population is killed, most members of Ancestral were either killed or arrested but a few escaped. This is treated as a semi-recent tragedy that most Adult characters remember

Faeries and Witches are the same thing, just using Light vs. Dark Magic. Not different species. Not good vs evil. (Light is not always 'good', Dark is not always 'evil'). The neutral word for them is Magixae. While people from all worlds(other than Earth for reasons unknown) can use base Magic, only Magixae have major powers and can transform like they do. And they only make up a small percentage of the population.

Stella actually has plans to study as both a Faerie and a Witch because stuff with Solaria and the duality and all that. She's starting with Faerie though.

Alfea/Cloud Tower/Red Fountain are colleges, not high school

Bloom actually has friends back in Gardenia, though they're all going off to college, but they appear when she goes home for breaks

Bloom is 100% aware she was adopted and they do kind of assume from the get-go that her bio parents might be from one of the other Magical Realms and she just ended up on Earth

Winx is very 'Sci-Fi disguised as Fantasy' so I'm leaning hard into the fact that they're all aliens and have non-human features and biology which will get explored!

Sky and Brandon still switch places, though it's less 'prince and the pauper' and more a legitimate thing of there's been assassination attempts on the royal family. Diaspro and the arranged marriage also still exist, but Sky is 100% adamant that he's not going to marry her no matter what their parents say.

The Riven/Darcy plot is a legit thing with like. No hypnotisim just genuinely liking each other even if Darcy did start it up just for info. Temporary breakup when the Trix go full evil but....

Kinda dragging the Trix into more 'somewhat understandable, villains with genuine goals not just' to be evil, salvageable and will be dragged to the Good Side eventually' kinda plots. Longer posts on that, but Darcy is the first to jump ship because she's like 'Look I am an ambitious, power-hungry bitch, but I draw the line at full on murder/massacres'. (Speaking of, don't. Don't question the logic re: befriending the person who tried to destroy the world last week. I'm doing some Friendship is Magic shit wtih this we only think about fucked up implications when we want to.)

Diaspro also gets some character development when she tries to take Sky out of the major battle and he decides to stay

Bloom's adoptive parents and friends from back home get dragged into this and are actually helpful in the battle.

Season 2:

Mostly the same plot re: Pixies, Darkar, adding Aisha, so on and so forth. Lot of changes to what Darkar is and the whole shadow phoenix/shadow flame thing with a touch of change to Dark Bloom.

Changes off the top of my head:

Diaspro and Darcy are now added to the main cast as well. Diaspro enrolled herself into Alfea because she wants to find something to do other than being Sky's trophy wife(he's still not into her). Darcy is serving community service. Both of them get dragged into the main plot because the adventure is underground and their powersets are great for this.

Darkar has been downgraded to 'just some guy'(which like. Having a supposed Deity be defeated in only one season and never come back? Kinda lame!). Previous member of that 'Ancestral' group that attacked Domino. Wants the Dragon Flame for the original 'let's take shit over reasons.

His plan involves the Dark Bloom thing. He learned from seeing the Trix fail that taking the Dragon Flame by force won't work, so he decides that using magic brainwashing stuff to have Bloom turn against her friends would work. So we get him posing as Avalon to get access to her.

The "Dark Bloom" thing isn't a 'Dark Faerie', but Bloom channeling the dark/negative emotions into her Magic and going Witch(remember: same species, just depends on where they draw their Magic from)

What is the 'Shadow Phoenix' thing? The opposite energy to the Dragon Flame? It's the Dragon Flame itself. Some yin and yang shit. It is everything. Creation and Destruction, Life and Death, all of it.

Oh also Riven can go Faerie and we get some of his trauma lmao.

Season 3

Final year of Alfea, earning Enchantix, etc. Some of the plots are the same. But there are many a change!

So, firstly, I switched up things for gaining new forms. Charmix was just kind of a 'natural level up progression', but Enchantix takes the new 'you have to overcome something personal'. Mostly because I think it's fucked that Enchantix is supposed to be the normal endgoal(with other forms being optional) but you have to die to get it??? Also there's too much bullshit regarding 'must save someone from your world' because hello??? How do you decide that what counts as 'their world? What do you do with Bloom other than Mary Sue her way out of it?

So everyone gets a plot relating to overcoming something, but we're also going on trips around the Realms and visiting their Homeworlds.

This is probably the most plot-heavy season as everyone has their own arcs going so I won't go into it all here.

But also know that as we're trraveling to all the worlds, we get a LOT of worldbuilding

[oracleofdiscord]

for the oc ask meme, for estrella: 🗡🎨🖊⚡🌪🐱👪

the ask meme

🗡 How good are they in a fight? Do they have a preferred weapon?

Pre-Crystalized, she’s not good in a fight at all. She hangs back when Avery fights and patches her up after. Post-Crystalized, she’s had enough training that she’s definitely better at it than an average civilian. However, I would say that all of the other ninja could still outpace her in a fight. When it comes to signature weapons, I think she has 2. When she first joins the team, she’s still not comfortable being in the thick of the fight, so I think she starts out favoring kunai - in the land of fiction, those are throwing weapons, thus allowing her to keep her distance. But they’re also good in a close-range fight in case she does get stuck in the thick of things. Later, as she gets more comfortable fighting at close range, I think she switches to tonfa. I’d actually been envisioning Sora using the chronosteel to make her a pair of starlight-powered-hardlight blades during the Dragons Rising era…well, I say “blades,” but I was envisioning them strapped to her wrist, so…having seen some videos of tonfa in action, the technique she would use with them would be much more reminiscent of tonfa than swords or even daggers. It makes sense to say tonfa were her signature weapon by that point.

🎨 Do they have a favorite color? What is it?

A tie between navy blue and maroon! Maroon is the signature color of her “civilian palette”, and navy is a prominent color in her “starlight palette” - you can see on a few of her outfits where she hovers between civilian and ninja that maroon and navy are sort of fighting for dominance.

🖊 What season would they be introduced into the story? If not directly introduced in a season, when in the timeline are they introduced?

Well, since she meets Avery post-season 6 (or, technically, when season 6 would have happened but didn’t), and Avery had already met the ninja by then, she could be introduced to them/the story pre-season 7 or during season 7. But I think if I had to narrow it down, she would be introduced in the post-season 7 fanseason idea we’ve vaguely planned out that’s focused on her and Avery. The ninja might have heard of her as a friend of Avery’s before then, but not met her yet.

⚡ What have they been up to after the merge?

I think she got yeeted to the Mother Garden. It looked to me like the Mother Garden was larger than what we saw in the show, and I think it would be funny if some of the other parts were dangerous, so Estrella has spent the few years since the merge traveling around it, occasionally running into or helping people there fight off actual threats. She happens to arrive at the area with the mucoid warriors at the same time Lloyd and Arin do, and so when Lloyd volunteers to walk the Impossible Path, she gives him a warning about how dangerous the Mother Garden can be and is really worried about what it means for the Impossible Path to be the most dangerous place in the Garden…only for it to, you know, play out the way it does in canon. And then she leaves the Mother Garden with Lloyd and Arin.

🌪 Do they know spinjitzu?

Spinjitzu is one of the things Kai trains her to do, so yes she knows how to, and I think that Starlight Spinjitzu is probably very pretty…but I also think she hates doing it. She doesn’t get dizzy particularly easily or anything; it just moves so fast that she doesn’t really feel like she has control while she’s doing it. Like trying to get to a highway exit that’s 4 lanes away at 70 mph.

🐱 If they were to have an animal symbol, what animal would represent them?

Magpies! It’s funny; this was my immediate answer just because it’s an animal I associate with myself and Estrella is the closest of my ocs to being a self-insert, and of the animals I associate with myself, I went with the magpie because thought the iridescent blue wings fit her connection to the night sky. Also, I think she shares my fondness for shiny trinkets (which is not a real trait of magpies but is a superstition tied to them). But then after I’d made the decision to go with magpies, I remembered the story of the Tanabata (star festival) - The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, a story where magpies play a notable role. So yeah, I think magpies are a good fit for her.

👪 Do they have any family members? What’s their relationship with their family?

It’s not good! But then, would she really fit into the world of Ninjago if her relationship with her family was good? Estrella as a child had trouble connecting to people, and that included her parents. They weren’t overtly cruel, but definitely distant, never giving her much attention past providing food, clothes, and shelter. By the time she was a teenager I think she was definitely a latchkey kid. The most familial affection she got was visits from her Aunt Araceli (the only extended family member she knows), who lived in Ninjago City (Estrella and her parents lived in Stiix) and was a bit better off than Estrella’s parents, often bringing her gifts.  Her relationship with her family wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either…at least, until the Pre-Eminent was released. In the aftermath of the damage done to Stiix, her parents suggested that Estrella move in with her aunt until the rebuilding was done, and then they just…never called her back home. And then Araceli started working more and more because 1) she needed to support another person and 2) she was mostly used to showing Estrella affection through gifts, so she needed more money with Estrella living with her. But the end result was that the one family member who had shown Estrella attention before was now leaving her alone at home a lot…and this in the aftermath of Aethra (Estrella’s only friend) dying during the Pre-Eminent attack…Estrella definitely came out of this period of her life with abandonment issues. I think Estrella and Araceli did eventually talk about their issues, and that relationship improved somewhat, but Estrella did still end up moving into the Monastery once she joined the team and didn’t really struggle to make that decision. On the other hand, I don’t think Estrella ever fixed her relationship with her parents or even bothered to try. I’ve debated the idea of her going back to Stiix at one point only to see her parents with a new child who they’re paying more attention to than they ever did to her. But I haven’t decided if I want to make that canon or not.

[commodorebuzzkill]

A bit of distraction for us left-leaning military nerds.

Let's play a game... AND YES, I STOLE THIS SCENARIO FROM THE NAFO GANG ON YOUTUBE, SO SUE ME! You are now in charge of the procurement of military equipment for the nation of Elbonia, a nation that as of now (being around 1956) has had its government overthrown by an authoritarian communist coup (meaning the not fun kind of communism). Headed by El Jeffe, our glorious leader (who has all the meglomaniacal tendencies you'd think he would), the revolutionary army is now looking to fill itself out to a well-rounded modern army and air force with all the bells and whistles. But here's the catch. You are actually a CIA plant, and your job is discreetly sabotage the revolutionary army and revolutionary army air force with equipment that looks cool but is pretty much garbage. If you fail to deliver sufficient coolness, El Jeffe will have you shot. If it actually turns out to be perfectly serviceable, the CIA will have you shot. Thus, the game is this: Select one or more categories of military equipment, and then propose a weapon designed or produced before 1956. This can be something that went into full production, something that died in the prototype phase, or something that never escaped the drawing board. Eastern Block, NATO, Former Axis Powers, doesn't matter, so long as it's before 1956, it's fair game.

I will offer my first entry:

Category: Light Bomber/attack aircraft

The Douglas A2D Skyshark.

Looks a lot like an A-1 Skyraider, don't it? Well, on a basic level, it's a heavily modified Skyraider with a giant turboprop in the front. Said turboprop put out a whopping 5100 shaft horsepower, plus an additional 810 lbs of thrust from the exhaust, attached to a contra-rotating propeller. That means the A2D's top speed is 492 mph! So, El Jeffe, I present you the reliable frame of the A-1 Skyraider, but better in every way! Just look at this big, mean, bruiser of a ground pounder. It doesn't need the giant runways of modern jet aircraft, and the rugged construction and beefy landing gear will allow it to operate from grassy fields. Or even from small aircraft carriers if the glorious navy of Elbonia is provided with them. And now the bad stuff. The Skyshark has about half the maximum bomb load of Skyraider, reduced from 10,500 pounds of underwing ordinance to 5,500. So, that kinda sucks.

But it ain't got nuthin' on the Skyshark's real fatal flaw. That giant turboprop is the Allison XT-40, possibly one of the worst turboprops ever made. The XT-40 isn't really one engine, it's two turboprops coupled together and made to drive a single shaft through a deeply tortured gearbox.

This lead to the destruction or near-destruction of two prototypes. The first XA2D-1 was lost in December 1950, when the starboard power section of its engine failed while the pilot, Cdr. Hugh Wood, was attempting to land. The failed section of the engine failed to de-clutch, and most of the power of the remaining half of the engine ended up going to the compressor of the dead half. Hugh Wood was unable to check the rate of his descent and crashed, unfortunately dying as a result.

Then there was an incident in 1953 when test pilot C. G. "Doc" Livingston was performing dive tests in another XA2D. In the process of pulling out of a dive, his Skyshark made a loud bang, and his front windscreen was covered in engine oil. Doc Livingston then managed with the help of his chase plane to land his now powerless skyshark intact. Upon examining the front of the aircraft, he found that the prop and gear box had wrenched free of his aircraft, yeeting the planes means of propulsion whirling off into the sky.

Not a year after that, the prototype for the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk flew for the first time, putting an end to the misery of the Skyshark program.

So, I can guarantee the CIA that Elbonia won't have much luck with this one. I'd predict lots of engine trouble and maintenance problems all around, with a high accident rate and low operational readiness rate. But since it looks cool, I think El Jeffe will go for it.

And I will pass this one along to @hms-exeter.

[losojos-decupido]

tuck, sender tucks receiver's hair behind their ear.

they near the end now, the academy just coming into view on the horizon—a faint pinprick of light against the dark sky.

a small campfire crackles softly beside them, its flames low but steady. it paints their faces in warm splashes of orange, casting ghostly shadows that stretch and sway around them.

it’s not the most grueling mission either of them have taken on, surely, but there's always some wear on the body. the walking, the constant tension of being on edge, the physical exertion—fighting, surviving. it takes its toll. stamina drained, joy chipped away, the weight of it all settling deep in the bones.

"i didn’t get to say it earlier, but thanks for what you did back there, fogado."

dorothea’s voice is soft, almost lost in the rustling trees. she leans over, fingers gently brushing a stray lock of his hair from his face to tuck behind his ear. her touch lingers for just a moment, and her gaze holds, searching his face for something—anything—that might hint at what he feels.

does he hate it, too? the clash of steel, the bite of arrows, the crack of lightning that tears through the air?

"you’ll rest now, yeah?" her tone is a little firmer now. "it’s only fair that i take the first watch."

fogado is distracted at first by the rise of the monastery.

his eyes are accustomed to the night if he wills them to be, so it is easy for him to make out the rocky edges of the cliffsides or the pocks of trees hanging along the edges. it is all he can to do watch them, waiting for something that not even he knows.

scouting missions like these follow a pattern---search, kill, and then limp home. it's not kind work nor is it special, but fogado keeps volunteering for them anyways. it's better himself than anyone else.

being paired with dorothea has made him work twice as hard, though he never usually gives less than 100%. he'll feel the aches of how he lunged and swung his lance in the morning when next he wakes. for now, he is somewhat weak but satisfied that dorothea is okay.

she leans over to him and says something---a thanks for assisting her in the earlier battle. " what, you mean when i ~heroically~ yeeted my spear at that loser that was gonna get'cha? " fogado replies with good humor, though it's noticeably duller than average. " anytime, thea! a-ny-time. you need me, just say the word. "

when she reaches over and tucks his hair behind his ear, fogado's chest suddenly aches. it's nostalgic yet mourns the things he knows he cannot have---shouldn't have, if he wants to keep performing his best and protecting all of the world's lovely, lovely people. his mother who loves him and his sister right after; their touches are so fond, and he is the one who must keep them present.

it's his duty, but his heart still hurts. there's something else, a secret kept. he swallows his heart and smiles, tired.

this world is filled with love and happiness. so why is it that he must have none of it?

" i guess i can rest a little bit, if you really want me to. " he slings his arms back and turns his gaze to the campfire. " but first i'm gonna make a little snack. have you heard of a s'more? they're super great little sweets. "

[icy-watch]

anyways oof. It goes pretty fast but by rapid pausing, you see Wukong has literally been dragging Macaque through the sky by the back of his clothes, and then when he literally yeets him like a soft ball across the ground 😭 he looks like roadkill. and stepping over him omg the disrespect, hilarious. I mean, maybe Wukong had some control to not step on him? I also love how the sun is shining so brightly on top of MK hugging Wukong and that joke of Macky dying in the background to them living their best life still applies lol. "uhh guys..." lmao pls put him in more situations with them. oh there's one, his face again when MK lands butt first onto Wukong's head XD hope you like your new found family ya fuzzball. this is an average tuesday in the monkie household. seeing him so worried for Bai He and all those instinctual jumps, yeah MK was right there IS a warrior in there when he's free of the henchman narrative and past grudges. Lmao, what is more ShadowPeach than Wukong smiling confidently and Macky hiding scared behind him /j I swear I have a reason for saying that. Falling so easily into the old ways oh, oh no its coming at us with a steel chair- WHEN THE MAGIC CIRCLE AND THEY JUST MAKE EYE CONTACT AND NOD IN SYNC WAHHH they DID THIS BEFORE ICY THEY DID THIS BEFORE- also Macky buddy, how come everyone else gets to have a cool pose and start glowing but you have to painfully yank a magic sphere out of your undead chest to help??? is that the power you took from MK or are you just Like That Now from being revived?? I love Red Son's "yeah I'm here too by the way" they are BESTIES NOW. this finale had such jolly music and insane sunlight at the end, you ever see a villain get so thoughroughly wrecked they needed all that? "Still the same Wukong, doing whatever he wants with no regard for others." aw I can't make jokes forever. Write this one down Icy. even if Macky didn't say it, that's kinda Wukong at the start of Jttw, no? also LOL at the way Wukong loses his balance and flails like that, he was learning on Macky lmao!! goofy monkey, did you miss cuddling? Icy I hope shadowpeach cuddles absolutely takes you out like it did us. "Somewhere where I can do a bit of scheming probably >:)" this little shit. and how Wukong moves his head on the word "cool" they are ridiculous and "I can always get another bowl of noodles" LMAO poor Wukong trying to have a heart to heart and XD "Sometimes I play dumb to lighten the mood" "me too bud, me too" owww ow okay, the way the laugh literally tears itself out of his lungs and how it looks like he's going to cry and the mutual understanding where most people take Wukong's jokes as him being an inconsiderate fool and UGH. Yes I AM thinking about Macky getting slapped with Tang's drawing of the gang during Benched as he is overwhelmed by the power of friendship magic speeches and then getting his own drawing. and finally looking at the SUN. yes there are previous parallels with the sky there, how'd you guess?

I was actually expecting Wukong to step on him. It was a little surprising he didn't.

I'm glad that Mackaroonie is kind of a part of the group and Red Son is now integrated into Team Monkie. They both needed it.

[sky-squido]

Where in the World is the Kindgom of Hyrule?  PART ONE

Alright buckle up, friends—this one’s gonna get absolutely, utterly, wildly out of hand very quickly.

 Section One: The Dream

So recently, someone made the mistake of teaching me how to navigate celestially and we were talking about all the differences between how the sky behaves in the northern and southern hemispheres and I, proudly having absolutely nothing inside of my brain except for LinkedUniverse for almost two and a half years now, thought to myself: hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if one of the LU boys was from the southern hemisphere and all the others had never left the northern hemisphere? The first boy to pop into my head for this was Wind because he, being a sailor, would almost definitely have the best grasp on celestial out of the whole gang and that way he could use a bunch of nautical navigation terms when he freaks out and nobody would have any idea what he’s saying.

I mean, imagine, right, he gets to another Hyrule and he’s got this navigation stuff down pat and while you could do celestial navigation without knowing the earth is round (as far as I can tell, we have no indication the Mayans or Polynesians knew the earth was round, but they were epic celestial navigators), knowing the earth is round is really very handy and we’ve known the darned thing’s circumference for literal millennia. So, since Wind clearly has latitude and longitude lines on his map and those are defined by angles around the earth’s curvature (none of those lines are curved though, so smh my head Wind uses the Mercator projection (to be fair, most navigators do, too, because it makes drawing rhumb lines really easy, but I digress)), homeboy knows the earth is round. And also, I mean, have you seen the Wii U box art?

Anyway, my point is that a southern hemisphere Wind would know that a northern hemisphere exists he and could totally logically deduce how stuff would behave there, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t freak him the FRICK out, especially before he fully figured out what was going on, because supposedly, he’s still in Hyrule, just an earlier one, and he was right above Hyrule, so how the heck could this be in a different hemisphere?

It was at this point that I realized why my fun little idea wouldn’t work—they’re all from Hyrule. It’s the same place, just at different times, and so, if the Kingdom of Hyrule has any internal logic or consistency, it’s all just gonna be the same place so my silly joke wouldn’t make sense.

But then, I realized, the Kingdom of Hyrule doesn’t have any internal logic or consistency! Not only does the map’s basic geography change quite dramatically between games, but it’s full of locations that are quite explicitly meant to be the same ones from prior games, yet their relative positions to each other vary wildly (believe me, we are going to get to this).

Fortunately, we know a truly, insanely, staggeringly massive amount of time has passed between games. I mean, Wild’s Hyrule has lore that, ten thousand years ago, Calamity Ganon got yeeted by tech we don’t even remotely recognize from any of the earlier games, meaning all the other eras are far older than that. For context, 10,000 years from today humans were just starting to figure out how farming worked. If Nintendo is going to casually throw a ten thousand year long timeskip into their silly little timeline, then maybe we can account for all this wacky location shifting with some clever geographical wrangling. I mean, the kingdom of Hyrule is and always has been a big hot mess and if magic exists, ten thousand years is an acceptable amount of time to toss around between games, and *stares pointedly at Tears of the Kingdom trailers* then maybe we can reconcile all of this.

 Section Two: The Little Adventure

I really like that phrase, “little adventure.” I’ve started using it whenever something mundane goes wrong or unexpectedly somehow, like “I’m going to have to walk a whole mile to get back home and it’s raining and I forgot my umbrella? Welp, guess it’s time for a little adventure!”

Yeah, that’s an apt phrase to use here, I think.

Because, like, okay, I know 10k years is like no time at all, geologically, so mountain ranges aren’t popping up and scooting away willy nilly, but we’ve gotta account for canon-typical shenaniganery. So generally, we have Hyrule castle in the middle, a volcanoes somewhere up, a sand somewhere left, and a woods somewhere right (I refrain from using such terms as north, east, south, and west because while the maps all have little compass roses on them and there are compasses in the games, magnetic-true variation is a very big deal, the magnetic poles wiggle around and even fully reverse sometimes, and I have my reservations about trusting Hyrule’s royal cartographers too much. Very soon, you will too). Because even that basic outline of Hyrule is subject to change. Take Twilight Princess, for example. Even if you use the GameCube version, where Gerudo Desert is to the left of the castle, like it should be, Death Mountain is to the right of the castle, not up. Since the forest is straight down, though, we could just be like “oh lol whoops guess the magnetic pole took a hike, let’s just rotate the map an entire forty-five degrees because the Kingdom of Hyrule decides to make all of its maps using magnetic north for some unholy reason.” And I mean, that’s fair game, right? Sure.

This strategy doesn’t hold up for very long.

I mean, I’m looking at broad trends here, right. I’m already assuming nothing is drawn to scale (and they clearly aren’t to scale even when the maps are literally rips of the world like for Legend’s games because I refuse to believe that Hyrule Castle and Kakariko village account for one-quarter of Hyrule’s land area). We’ve all seen those ridiculously inaccurate old maps from ages ago in our own history—there’s a lot of room for error here. I’m already assuming every distance and position and landform is an artistic abstraction and I’m also generously overcompensating for hardware limitations and the fact that Nintendo did not know they were going to try and connect all of these games decades later and was just focused on making fun, interesting, stand-alone adventures. You can keep building your one town in different locations with completely different architectural styles but give it the same name every time just to be cute. You can rebuild your castle regularly in all sorts of different spots without leaving any trace of the original. The Lost Woods can just grow legs and run around wherever they want to because the whole point of the Lost Woods is that the rules of space and object permanence don’t apply to them. We can throw around ten thousand years like it’s nothing. I’m trying to be as charitable as humanly possible. I literally do not care about the minutiae I literally just want the barest, vaguest outline of what the heck this landmass is doing on only the broadest of scales. I want this to work. I’m ignoring virtually everything about the terrain at this point, only using the locations that are canonically the same ones as from other games and allowing for incredible amounts of drift in where these things physically are.

But like—Breath of the Wild insisted on being cute and having that statue of Hylia that ended up in the Sealed Grounds in Skyward Sword be buried in the Forgotten Temple. Nice! Why is it in the top-left corner of the map?! What’s that, Hyrule just expanded out in a different direction and most of Skyward Sword takes place farther to the left than this map shows? Cute, but the Sacred Springs, clearly designed specifically to be the same ones from Skyward Sword, are all along the right side of the map! Like, sure, maybe the Skyview Spring being the Spring of Courage in Faron Woods all checks out and the second spring is in Eldin and Akkala is pretty close to Eldin, so fine, Spring of Power gets a free pass. And, again, we can fudge stuff—Skyward Sword’s map is for artistic purposes, not navigation, so maybe it’s only vaguely accurate. There’s some nebulous unmapped space between Faron and Eldin and we can just… assume there’s mountains there and that whatever pre-Skyward Sword civilization was kicking around building these things tossed a spring up there and Zelda just ~didn’t have to go there~ to get her Goddess powers back because we never saw the Spring of Wisdom in Skyward Sword. Fine.

Maybe the massive Goddess Statue and Sealed-Grounds-looking temple up in Tabantha are just a different temple in a similar style. Fine, okay, and Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword are the most incomprehensively far apart of any of these games—clearly the only reason the springs survived this long was the fact that they’re sacred.

[Digression time! It’s time for a little adventure where I ramble about the Sacred Springs! It’s not really relevant, but it sure is neat!]

Because if the same springs are in both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, that then implies that they were lurking around in every other era but, acknowledging real life chronology issues, obviously these springs weren’t in the previous games. If we’re willing to ignore cold hard canon to pretend this is a world that really exists, though, which is way more fun, then those springs should still exist and that would be a really fun thing to have the boys stumble upon! Just in case any enterprising fic authors were looking for neat ideas I can tell you where they are, but where they all fall depends on how you decide to line up the maps. As previously established, there’s buckets of drift and inaccuracy, and I’ll get into my own mega-compilation-map after this digression is over, but if you want to just vibe and just stick to the general area and biome (like Nintendo themselves) here’s how you do it:

Courage goes in any forest in the bottom or right, power goes in any hot mountain at the top or the right, and the center of the rightmost part of a Zelda map—the part between the volcano and the forest—is always either unmapped somehow or contains at least one significant area of higher elevation, so just slap the Spring of Wisdom there. It even works for Minish Cap! If you wanna play really fast and loose with exact locations of things and the border of the kingdom and also completely ignore the castle, as I’ve been doing, Minish Cap’s map is just the righthand side of Hyrule rotated like forty-five degrees. Hot mountain up, water to the right, green in the middle and the bottom right. Works out nicely with Skyward Sword to have Lake Hylia there in the forest on the right instead of at the center bottom, and Veil Falls and the Cloud Tops could fall right in that unmapped space between Eldin and Faron, so that’s totally a valid spot to put the Spring of Widsom. (there’s actually a lot of unmapped space in Zelda games once you start looking for it and having fics take place in those areas where the boys can then stumble upon relics of older eras would actually be so badass I’d actually love to see that happen in fics).

For Ocarina of Time, the Spring of Courage would be in the Kokiri Forest or Lost Woods, up to you, Power goes up on Death Mountain, and Wisdom’s in Zora’s River/Domain. For Wind Waker, you can put Courage in the Forest Haven, Power in either Dragon Roost or Fire Mountain, and Wisdom can go on any island between the two or just end up underwater for a hot minute (it’s not like that’s gonna ruin it—it’s supposed to be wet). For aLttP/ALBW, Courage goes down by Lake Hylia, Power’s up on Death Mountain again, and if you don’t want to use Zora’s Domain, we can retcon that the Spring of Wisdom wasn’t in Zora’s Domain in Time’s era, it was in that little unmapped sliver between Zora’s Domain and the foresty area, so now we can slap the spring of Wisdom somewhere around or just past the right side of the Eastern Palace/Eastern Ruins. Isn’t this fun? For Twilight Princess, we already have sacred springs, but these are different ones—by now it’s probably been a few geological epochs since Skyward Sword, so they’re allowed to make some new springs. The old ones still have to be kicking around, though, and Twilight Princess’ map has a delightful amount of uncharted territory so we can toss them in Faron, Eldin, and that mysterious space directly between the two of them.

[Okay, digression over!]

I mean, this is fun, and if the vague suggestion of similar biomes is all we needed to line up all these maps into one cohesive Hyrule, that would be great. But it’s not. There are a few locations that absolutely must line up across games, and they ruin everything. Like, okay, I’m going to start sounding completely feral with rage, but I’m not actually mad at Nintendo. They’re making good games and I’m trying to do something very silly to their games and I knew it wouldn’t work out before I even started. I’m just so incredibly theatrically frustrated by how close it is to actually working until some random detail gets thrown in and it’s always exactly the one thing that would break everything.

Let’s start with some neat ones that do kind of work, though. Positivity! We know that, in Wind Waker, Hyrule Castle and the Deku Tree are the same ones as in Ocarina of Time. If we overlay the maps so these two points line up, we see that Wind Waker is so much bigger than Ocarina of Time and I love that. The ocean should be huge, way bigger than the kingdom, and that means we can end up playing with some navigational stuff, it’s just that Wind won’t be the one freaking out, everyone else will be, because if they go to the right spot in his era, they’ll be dealing with weird latitudes they’re not used to (yeah, remember when this essay was about celestial navigation? Me neither). The only problem here is that to get them to line up, you have to rotate them. So yeah, magnetic north can just trek forty-five degrees to the right and everyone will ignore this fact and continue to make maps in magnetic north for some reason. This is fine.

Honestly, the most consistent feature of Hyrule is the volcanic hotspot. There’s always one there, it’s almost always in a comparable spot, and unlike deserts, which can totally change over pretty short periods of time, hotspots are very reliable and locationally stable irl. I mean, even as the continental plates shift, the hotspot doesn’t. That’s why Hawai’i is shaped the way it is—the hotspot sprouts a volcano, the plates move, it sprouts another, rinse and repeat until you’ve drawn a little line of lava across the ocean. So if we line up all the volcanic areas over the Hylian Hot Spot and do only the minimal amount of rotation necessary to get everything else to roughly align, we can draw some cool connections.

For example, we established how Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time’s Hyrules align. But then in Wind Waker there’s a side quest where you plant a bunch of new Deku sprouts to help spread the forest. If we line up the volcanic hotspots between Breath of the Wild’s map and Wind Waker’s, we can scoot and pivot around and match up all the seedlings to see which one most likely started the line that Breath of the Wild’s Deku Tree comes from (because again, ten thousand years). It’s the Deku Sprout on Eastern Fairy Island! That… actually works out shockingly well. North is the same between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild and even Hyrule castle is in the right spot! I also love how Breath of the Wild’s world is only a little bigger than Ocarina of Time’s and Wind Waker dwarfs the both of them—that’s absolutely correct; you cover so much more ground sailing than on foot. Why the magnetic pole shifted more in the few centuries between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker (so much of Old Hyrule is still alive so I refuse to believe it’s been more than a thousand years between the two of them) than it did in the canonical OVER TEN THOUSAND YEARS between Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild baffles me, but hey, maybe the magnetic pole yeeting across the earth’s surface is a side-effect of Ganon taking power, however briefly. But wait, then shouldn’t it have shifted again in Breath of the Wild, since he won for a minute there? Augh whatever.

Okay, you may be wondering why I’m making such a fuss about where north is on these maps. After all, directions are relative and constructs and it was convention to put south at the tops of maps for a lot of people at different times and places. Yes, that’s all correct and I really wouldn’t have the slightest problem with any which orientation if they didn’t say north ON THE MAP!! And locations have names like “east” and “west” and they’ll say “go south of—” and these are not abstractions! North means closer to one of the axes around which the earth turns, around which the stars and sun and planets revolve. Moving up and down along a given line between these two poles means you’re on a given line of longitude so the sun always reaches its highest point at the same time, east and west mean along lines of constant latitude, where the sun’s highest point on any given day is the same—these directions are not arbitrarily defined!! You can’t just decide to put north somewhere else! You can have true north (the direction to the geographic north pole, the place where all lines of longitude converge and the sun goes around the horizon in a circle on the equinoxes, making a 24 hour sunset, and the pole star stands still overhead) and magnetic north (the place where magnetic compasses point, which is different than true north and moves kind of a surprising amount, but is only really relevant because compasses point there and also the auroras are centered on them too, which is cool), and that’s it! Those are the norths!! Don’t make up new norths!!!

And I said magnetic north moves, and it does, like 25 miles a year, and if we’re dealing with the timescale of thousands of years, that’s gonna add up.

SO WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR MAPS USING MAGNETIC NORTH?! NOBODY USES MAGNETIC NORTH TO DRAW MAPS—magnetic north, as previously established, moves a lot and you don’t want to have to redraw all your maps every year! Why would you do that instead of using the permanent geographical constant that’s easier to calculate because you can use the definite motion of the stars that can be measured to a fraction of a minute (up to a half mile of accuracy anywhere in the globe!) and not a wibbly, imprecise compass needle that’s only ever accurate to about half a degree—which translates to thirty nautical miles when you start trying to figure out where you are with it (nautical miles are bigger than normal miles).

But anyway. Hylian royal cartographers clearly have no idea what they’re doing.

And this is when things start making even less sense.

Because why, why on earth do the two eras who are the most insistent on being canonical neighbors have the least compatible maps?! Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess want me dead in a ditch. The Temple of Time in Twilight Princess goes to great lengths to Be The One From Ocarina of Time. Great! Why the frick is it at the bottom of the map?! The Temple of Time couldn’t be any farther up on Ocarina of Time’s map. We could try just rotating the map because maybe it was that time of the geological epoch and the magnetic poles reversed, but now the desert’s on the right side and it’s always on the left side! If anything, the right side is either mountains or ocean! Definitely not a desert. Not allowed. But what if we used the other version of Twilight Princess’ map—the mirror image flippy one from the Wii version!!! Because this makes sense!!!—and pretend the magnetic pole just happened to invert between these two games and that Hyrule’s cartography division is smoking crack and convinced that orienting all your maps towards magnetic north with no indication that true north even exists is the best way of doing things. Fine. Now Kokiri forest ends up in either Zora’s Domain or Snowpeak and the Hidden Village, which is supposedly the Kakariko from Ocarina of Time, turns out to have once been Zora’s Domain.

And that’s not even the worst offender! I’m already ignoring the frick out of the Four Swords games, but the first two Zelda games?

Like, look, I know I said I was giving a pass for hardware limitations and the irl game chronology but come on—it’s the same guy, it’s the same kingdom, and you didn’t even try to make them match up! Like maybe Zelda 1 can be given a pass because it has that same basic scaffold of mountain up, desert left, forest right, but then Zelda 2’s map is just the biggest pile of mayhem and I wouldn’t be bothered if it wasn’t explicitly the same kingdom just a little while later! Like what?! And there’s no way to reconcile any of this even remotely with that volcanic hotspot location, which has been our one and only constant in this labyrinthine hellscape!

Look, guys, I tried. I tried to come up with a way to make any of this remotely make sense.

This was about how far I’d gotten before realizing I might not be using the right approach, here.

Because the whole point of this silly project is to make celestial navigation jokes! Maybe the Kingdom of Hyrule is on the back of a big massive turtle that crawls all around the world and bumps into other turtles sometimes! It doesn’t actually matter! What matters is how the sky behaves.

So why don’t we just do celestial navigation and see if we can’t figure out what latitudes these absolutely zooted turtles are at.

 But this post is long enough and also I haven’t finished collecting all my data from the various 3D zelda games so i’ll see you all in part two! (don’t hold your breath)

edit: part two is out, baby!!

[sharpscion]

♡ does scathach throw his children into the sky tho

i cannot believe scáthach gets swept off his feet (literally) by altena, and drug off to thracia.

meet vana, a child raised in a castle, but is far from the nobility you would imagine. what do you expect from her, being raised in thracia, of course she is just as fierce and crafty as her late grandfather. and- despite baby vana probably loving that kind of thing, god no scáthach would never yeet a baby into the air.

vana was likely born during the reconstruction of all of thracia and jugdral, meaning her early years likely weren't easy. despite repeated attempts from her father to protect her from the outside world for as long as possible, she did not like being coddled.

much like her parents, she is not afraid to get dirty, and has probably been involved with the upbringing of her country from as early as she could pick up tools and weapons. despite her fathers constant worries, he would eventually relent and join her and altena to keep them happy.

while generally kind, vana holds high standards not only for herself, but others too. if she finds you lacking, she will feel no remorse in telling you so. everyone should be strong enough to protect what they love, lest it be razed from their arms.

despite growing up mostly in peacetime, vana has immersed herself in battle tactics. she had two amazing teachers, after all, and while she always appreciated her mother's advice more, she still enjoyed hearing from her father.

of course vana admires both her parents are warriors, but i think she takes after her mother first. her father is too reserved, always in his head, and she cannot admire such traits. you should be loud, speak your mind, things do not come to you, you come to them, etc etc.

the small moments she sees her parents in action, sparring together, is when her eyes grow wide. even after several years, both had continued to hone their skills, not only for thracia, but for their daughter. eventually she is taught as well, the way of the sword and lance, as well as wyvern riding from altena. when she reaches adulthood, you would be hard pressed to find a better wyvern lord. just as crafty and precise with a lance, as she was fierce and calculating with a sword. though she never could do it quite right, she even has her father's signature astra as a backup plan.

her father likely doesn't live to see her 25th birthday, which of course hardens her even further. she is left only with her mother, and she is determined to keep thracia and altena safe with every fiber of her being. honoring her father's last wishes, however, she does try to loosen up and live a life worthy of peacetime.

[kaliade]

KHRxTwisted Wonderland Idea

Why will my brain not stop with the ideas?!  Why?!

*Sigh*  Ok, so I need to get this down on something so I can go back to ignoring it because I have one too many irons in the fire already.  I do not need another.  So here, have an idea that is free to anyone.  I’m not going to be writing more of it most likely.

The MC in this idea is Tsuna’s daughter, his 3rd or 4th child.  She knows she likely not going to inherit, not with her siblings in front of her and her father being very, very protective of them all.  That’s fine with her.  More time to explore her own interests. 

Now, this MC, who I’m going to call Miku, gets yeeted into Twisted Wonderland as per canon.  But, the Dark Mirror doesn’t say she’s magic-less.

Miku:  I’m Miku.

Dark Mirror: The nature of your soul is....unclear to me.

Crowley:  What did you say?

DM: The magical power in this one...it both is and is not of color or shape that matches any of the dorms for it fits all in some ways.  Therefor, no dorm would be appropriate.

There is an uproar over this announcement.  Someone who cold fit ALL the dorms?

To explain, because a Sky (that is the Flame Type I’m giving Miku) is harmony, her soul would automatically fall into harmony with those around her.  Thus the mirror cannot pick one dorm to suit as they would technically suit all of them.  This means Miku still gets shunted to Ramshackle but Crowley, and the campus as a whole, is a lot more interested in just what this young woman (and wasn’t  that a kicker.  The first female student in over a century) can do.

And then the reveal that she uses Soul Fire (TWST term for Dying Will Flames).  And they are at a usable level for combat!  Most other Soul Fire mages can barely make their Soul Flame visible, let alone fight with them.  Just...what is this woman?

Further, I can see Miku developing a trick for Dying Will Mode that gives her fiery wings to fly on.  She looks like a firebird!  (Just to tie Ramshackle further into Fantasia as its inspiration)

Just think of the shenengans that can come up.  Like her critique of how the Monstro Lounge in run and how the tweels are not subtle at all.  Jamil reacting to her because she gives off assassin vibes from having been around the Varia when she was younger. Idia being fascinated with how Blot reacts to Soul Fire (I headcanon Soul Fire destroys it fast because Flames are about surviving but it could go the other way).  Ace and Deuce and Jack...actually, ALL the freshman squad, even Sebek(boy is a Lightning, obviously), bonding to her as Elements and the angst that gives Sebek.  Malleus being fascinated with her “firebird” wings and abilities Lilia has only heard of in stories. 

Someone, please take this child.  Please.

[bridgyrose]

What if Cinder got yeeted into the void/ever after, either through Neo betraying her or Jaune/some other opponent getting a lucky shot in?

If you intend to make this fallen petals, please don't bother. I've got that ship filtered.

Cinder stared up at the sky as she laid down on her back, trying to remember everything that had happened to bring her here. Wherever here was. Everything had gone according to plan: Ruby was gone by Neo’s hands, Neo was taken care of with no loose ends, the rest of Ruby’s friends had been picked off one by one and Winter… of course that robotic maiden wouldnt give her the maiden powers and handed them straight to one of Atlas’ elite. 

She picked herself up and looked around the paper forest she had found herself in, everything coming back to her. The feeling of the ice that had encased her for a brief moment until she could thaw herself out still lingered across her skin. Her grimm arm, which had been severed, seemed to have stopped growing and moving, even the faint whispers she had heard from it seemed to have quieted in whatever world she ended up in. But if she was here, then that would mean Ruby and the others that fell would’ve survived as well. 

Fire started to engulf Cinder’s hand as her eyes burned with the maiden powers, the very thought of Ruby being here and not dead caused the rage in her heart to burn as she placed her fiery hand against one of the paper trees, watching it burst into flames. She pulled her hand away from it and the flames disappeared as she heard a voice behind her. 

“I dont think I have ever seen someone like you around here before. Especially with such peculiar powers.” 

Cinder turned around to find a cat behind, watching her movements. “And you are?” 

“Why I’m the Curious Cat,” the cat answered as it seemed to bow down in front of her. “Though the more important question is who are you?” 

Cinder paused for a moment and looked over the cat, not sure how to feel about it. She knew something felt off about it, but she couldnt seem to place her finger on what. “Cinder. And I need to get back to Remnant.” 

“Remnant you say?” the Curious Cat said with almost a twinkle in its eyes. “I can get you back to Remnant, but we’ll need to get to the tree first!” 

Cinder looked around the forest and her eyes came across a large tree towering in the distance. “And how do we get to that tree?” 

“You dont go to the tree, the tree comes to you. Well, unless you’re me you see.” 

“Then you can take me there.” 

“I can, but you’re going to need to tell me a bit about yourself on the way there.” The Cat jumped up onto a rock with the front half of its body, leaving the tail end behind. “Afterall, I am curious about how a human such as yourself has made it to the Ever After.” The cat paused for a moment as it saw the grimm arm on Cinder. “And what exactly happened to you.” 

“I dont have time for this!” Cinder growled as her hand lit on fire once more. “Take me to the tree! I need to get back to Remnant before Ruby and her friends do!” 

“There are others that came with you?” 

“Not with me, before me.” Cinder growled and started to walk off. “I dont have time for this. Get me to the tree so I can get back to Remnant!” 

The Cat almost seemed to smirk as it pulled themself together and started walking. “Its still a long way to the tree, and a few stories will help pass the time quicker! You can tell me all about your friends-” 

“They’re not my friends!” 

“Acquaintances?” The Cat asked. “Either way, I’m sure if you tell me more about them, we can find them and get you all out of here together.” 

Cinder frowned, then thought for a moment. If she was right and Ruby ended up here too, then killing her here would get her out of the way. And then, once she returned to Salem, she could deliver the unfortunate news of Ruby’s demise. Her frown slowly changed to a smirk as she looked at the Cat. “Alright, I’ll tell you about the other humans that fell as well. And you can help me find them too, right?” 

“Of course I can! Just tell me what they look like and I’m sure I can bring you to them!” 

“Then we better get going.”

[obscuremarvelmuses]

Hey guys! Welcome back to the annotated Darkstar reread! Tonight it’s Champions #13-15, in which Laynia is a mean lesbian to Bobby and there’s a lot of BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!

Champions #13: In the narrative box of the first page, all the members of the Champions and something about them—”The incomparable Iceman!” for instance—are listed. Except Darkstar lol. Even though her face is there. Nice. Nah, I get it, no one would have known who the fuck she was, though actually given she was brand new I’d think she’d be pushed more? Anyway–Luke Cage gets very literally sucked in a battle (via portal) to a battle between the Champions vs a sorcerer type dude named Kamo Tharn who is super mad that Hercules stole The Stranger’s staff, which actually does seem to be the case. The sorcerer is sending monsters at them and, bless her, Darkstar does think “Lenin’s ghost!” and I’m so embarrassed I ever said she doesn’t do that like Colossus. She somehow picks up that the portal that brought them there is still there, it’s just REALLY small and shrinking by the second, so she uses her Darkforce to force it open, which, is a pretty neat move. She goes into it, Iceman thinks something got her and follows in order to rescue her. Aaaand now he’s falling through the vacuum of space with no Laynia in sight. Whoops.

He realizes she IS there, she’s just sealed in this globe of darkness, and she doesn’t realize he’s there. This is what’s enabling her to survive in space. That’s…REALLY AWESOME, I had TOTALLY forgotten that Darkstar could FUCKING SURVIVE AND TRAVEL IN SPACE via a Darkstar cocoon! Oh, and Iceman is able to be alive in space long enough to cocoon himself in ice/snow because he was in solid ice form, which slows down his bodily functions, as he explains to us helpfully via thought balloon. Remember thought balloons? I miss those things. They suddenly appear spilling out of a Darkforce portal in front of the Stranger. Laynia is ready to fight, but Iceman is FUCKED because he made that ice-cocoon from the water in his own body so he’s severely dehydrated. Laynia. . .doesn’t really seem to notice.

Ok, this is really mean of her and I feel bad for Bobby, but also out of context, I’m sorry, the images are just super funny to me. Also she genuinely had no idea he was there. Anyway, this is a good refresher because I tend to think of Laynia as The Nice One but to be honest, that’s more the case when she’s on one of the Russian squads because she’s nice BY COMPARISON to her teammates. But, as shown here, she’ll ignore a teammate in distress because she’s got shit to handle. It’s understandable, granted, but it’s not NICE.

Anyway, the Stranger says he’ll hear her out, and she speaks, and we are told approximately NOTHING of what she said. He listens to her though, and opens a portal to the staff that this whole fuss has been over. Turns out it was left sitting in the hospital broom closet after it was used to resurrect Jane Foster. Oh man, don’t you just hate it when that happens? Laynia reaches through the portal, grabs the staff, and the Stranger tells her she must use it. She’s understandably shocked, but he says “There is no other! You have proven able to wield to madman’s staff!” She. . .did? When? Because she can pick it up, I guess? Anyway he guides her on its use, she becomes this solid black being surrounded by solar fire (kinda reminds me of Binary) and saves the day! Then there’s this panel which also cracks me up, as she CONTINUES TO IGNORE BOBBY BUT IS HYPED NATASHA TALKS TO HER OMFG

I wonder if she even realized he was there the entire time because she did not even look at him through the whole ordeal. I’m so sorry Bobby fans I know thats horrible but IM LAUGHING mean lesbian Laynia for life! Oh, and as a bonus, here’s the image from Champions #11 where he offers her an ice-slide-ride and she’s like LOL NOOOOOPE

LIKE. HER POSE. IT’S SO FUNNY. SHE REALLY JUST TRULY YEETED HERSELF FUCKIN BACKWARDS ASS-FIRST INTO THE SKY RATHER THAN HOLD HIS HAND I CANNOT Also this panel from earlier in #11 is also sending me. He’s literally positioned between them as they stare into each other’s eyes, Laynia’s expression dreamy as she thanks Nat

Like come on this is hilarious. Even if you don’t interpret Laynia as gay (which is valid, not being into Bobby does not a lesbian make, and I’m sure loads of straight women would girlcrush on Nat) it’s just so funny to me how they’re arranged. Bobbo, you never had a chance.  Okay, on to Champions #14! OH, IT’S THE BEE ISSUE! I TALKED ABOUT THIS! We first see Laynia in this issue seeing off her trainer, Ivan Petrovitch, the same man who helped train Natasha. He’s going back to Russia. If you’ll remember, his son Yuri was Darkstar’s boyfriend, and she asks if he finds him, will he tell him that “Darkstar still thinks of him?” and Ivan assures her he will, that there must be good in him if a girl like her loved him once. Don’t think that’s how that works but okay. Laynia lesbian headcanons or not she does still think of Yuri, at least at this point. Oh, and Ghost Rider is there too. Ivan gets on the plane, his thought balloons revealing the real reason he’s going back is that he got a call from Nick Fury. But the moment he walks into his cabin, there’s men with guns waiting for him. Meanwhile a crate on the pier explodes. AND IT’S BEEES! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! Giant bees at that! Darkstar, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider see the GIANT BEES attacking a nearby dude who cries out THE BEES! THEYVE FOUND ME! Which I just find hilarious for some reason. Obviously, they fight the bees! Darkstar of course tries to aid her comrade Ghost Rider, who angrily says he doesn’t WANT her help. Darkstar asks why he hates her so, and his thought balloons say that it’s because the Champions accepted her from the start but still fear him. Okay, I was wondering if they were going to come back to him suspecting her defection was fake. Turns out there’s a more emotional base to it than just the logical suspicion. While they’re having this out, a man MADE OF BEES approaches the dude who was initially attacked. He kills the man WITH BEES and tries to take the briefcase he was holding, but, finding it “coated with some manner of repellant” his bee-arms (“my arm-units”) cannot touch it. He departs, and so too do the giant bees that th Champions were fighting. Laynia somehow knows that they’re not fleeing, they’re following something. I really don’t know why it’s always Laynia who gets flashes of convenient comic-book insight. Maybe she’s meant to have really good intuition, not a real psychic power but just enough to make her seem kinda mystical-ish? I dunno. But she’s right. They find the body, and it turns out the guy was an Interpol agent. They conclude he was killed for his briefcase. When the trio arrive back at the base, they’re just in time to see a GIANT SWARM OF BEES coming towards the tower. The story ends here. Champions #15 picks right up with several pages of them fighting the bees in various ways til Swarm himself shows up. One of the giant bees grabs Darkstar, who the narrative box refers to as the “non-Champion” and EXCUSE ME?! How is she not a Champion?! Bullshit! Anyway, as always when Darkstar is in real or imagined danger, Bobby freaks and attempts to rescue her, and, like last time, just ends up got got too and they are both carried away unconscious by GIANT BEES You are not going to see me ease up on the capslock around the bees, fyi. Oh and Swarm got the briefcase. Iceman and Laynia come to in Swarm’s clutches and Bobby chooses NOW of all times to call Laynia “honey” Like Really? Swarm explains his backstory. He’s a Nazi who got turned into bees. He killed the Interpol agent because the dude stole the Queen Bee and encased her in a chunk of amber (cue Jurassic Park theme music in my head!) but she’s still alive. He holds the chunk up, and Laynia deduces he’s been unable to figure out a way to free her without harming her, and, as Bobby notes, he needs the Queen to keep the bees under control that make up his body, and he needs their powers. Laynia actually wants to help, much to Bobby’s shock. Laynia explains she doesn’t want to help Swarm, she wants to help the Queen, claiming “She is…TRAPPED, Bobby! You can’t know what it is to be. . .apart! But I–I can! Mind to mind, she cries out to me–to the Darkforce! And we shall be free!” I find Laynia’s phrasing REALLY interesting here. Not just the bit where she apparently has bee telepathy, but what does she mean by being apart? For the Queen, that would of course mean being apart from her hive, but what relation does Laynia have to that? My first thought was her tie to the Darkforce, the relationship between then, but then I remembered that Laynia is a Soviet character and how Soviet characters were often portrayed in this era. Comparisons to wasps, ants, and bees don’t seem far off. She’s a collectivist who is separated from her collective, like the Queen. And with that proclamation, her Darkforce bursts the amber apart! Darkstar is knocked unconscious by what Swarm explains as “the intrusion of an alien mind-force into her consciousness, in shall we say, an outpouring of gratitude from the swarm for having freed their queen!” Okay so yeah, the bee is telepathic. Ok. I find that less weird than if Darkstar was the one specifically telepathic with bees. Like, a psychic bee is not far-fetched in comics, but totally incongruous powers in one person like Darkforce control and bee-telepathy just breaks my suspension of disbelief, unless the character is introduced like that from the star (ex: Nightcrawler’s mutant physiology + teleporting). Funny how that works. Anyway, the freed queen is now growing bigger and bigger and Swarm is yammering about how through her he’ll control the planet. Laynia awakes, Bobby orders Natasha to get her out of here (ok, I know it’s hopeless but it is kinda sweet how hung up on her welfare he is), while Laynia mutters “Trapped. . no life…hope…nothing!” and I wonder if she’s talking about herself, the situation, or what the Queen was feeling? Also Nat tells Bobby that Laynia is a big girl and not to tell her what to do. While fighting giant bees.Since the Queen controls all the bees, and the bees make up Swarm’s body, Hercules has the brilliant and also visually hilarious idea to THROW THE QUEEN OUT THE WINDOW and as far as he physically can, which, being Hercules, is REALLY DAMNED FAR. All the little bees that make up Swarm’s body follow her, leaving him a skeleton that collapses. Freaky visual. And I guess the bees are just...out there doing their thing now wherever. Okay, that’s all for tonight! I gotta note, Laynia’s desire to free the trapped Queen was something that really stuck out to me when I first read this, and I kept the idea that she’ll compulsively free ANYTHING that’s trapped, even an insect, even the tool of an enemy, out of empathy for that. But rereading it, it seems that’s less what moves her and more the Queen specifically being “apart” and separate from her hive, her people. This reread was really worthwhile. 

[grapecaseschoices]

Kendis is over 6ft tall???! Omg and I thought she couldn't get any finer. All of your ocs are so fine, like excuse me the audacity to create such amazing ocs should be a crime. 😩

That being said how do Kendis and Kai like their eggs in the morning. I've got two hands to hold both of theirs. 👀👀👀

Because I will not be made to choose between them. 😌😌

But Kendis has honestly been living in my mind rent free lately. Could we know some more facts about them? I would love to learn more about their family background and their hobbies. 👀👀

All twc variations of Kendis are 6'2" -- but Regular degular Kendis tends to be 5'11" [all Kendis' wears heels so they're well above six feet at any given time -- Think Jessica Pearson styles]. But maybe I should make that uniform? I just like Kendis shorter than their big brother, parents, and uncle -- let them have that! Kendis is the baby and is far too fast grown. qwere But I'll think upon it.

This made me laugh. Thank you! You're such a sweetheart, anon! I am very flattered. Though facts, Kai isn't prone to drama but he would rather yeet himself than be in a polyam with Kendis. Even as her metamor.

I feel Kendis tends to have their eggs scambled [soft] or overhard, but they're down to clown when it comes to food. Kai is coffee and pastry. But if he must have eggs, probably hard boiled!

As for Kendis facts:

I don't remember what I've shared of Kendis ... and I have like five different versions ... maybe more. Who can count?

But let's see for AG/vvicked Kendis [who I usually mean when I say OG - though there is K. Crawford-Gagne who is more femme and just younger, but still stubborn and selfish lol]:

I think that Kendis is the youngest of four -- technically. She has an older half brother, and she is her dad's only child. But she was also raised around his half-sisters from his dad.

Kendis is very much Younger SiblingTM. Though their mom was tough [a park ranger who came by her 'mountain bwitch' accusations honestly], she mellowed some when Kendis came around. And her dad is a human carebear. So in a way Kendis was spoiled. They were also had respiratry issues as a kid.

But Crawfords aren't always the best with dealing with emotions and talking things out .... and her siblings had a LOT going on [their dead beat dad, bad relationships, her oldest brother's trauma, etc], so in a sense though Kendis was the baby, spoiled, they were also over protective. And had a lot of 'don't wanna be a burden' issues that helped shape who Kendis is today [oh, and she had some shit aunts, gossipy town members, and an eventual dead best friend -- etc, etc, is it gay to have a dead bestie?, etc]

It wasn't always functional but it was full of love. And pets. And Montana sky.

Kendis got into a lot of trouble tho. They were a bratty overprotective menance. Their oldest sib got them out of jailtime once. bb!Kendis didn't believe in hitting a person [though they'd threaten], but your property? Grass.

Hobbies: Lessie. Eat lmao. Baking, cooking, throwing parties, hiking, organizing shit, pottery. They're down to try anything once.

Ty for asking! I've missed this pest <3

[cinemagh0ul]

No because Lois Lane was a FREAK in all caps and I mean this in the best way possible!

She was a respectable journalist despite the fact that she frequently misspelled words (which btdubbs, a storyline where Lois is canonically dyslexic but still wins a Pulitzer >>>>)

She was constantly yeeting herself in death’s way just to prove that Clark was Superman, knowing full well that if she was wrong she would likely die; DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES THROUGHOUT HER CHARACTER RUN SHE HAS JUMPED FROM TALL BUILDINGS ON HER OWN ACCORD???

Or even the multiple times that the writers imply that she’s a little freaky, like that one comic panel where her and Superman get ‘intimate’ IN THE SKY. Or even in the original film adaptation where she was asking about Superman’s X-Ray vision and unpromptedly was like “hey, if you have X-Ray vision can you see what color underwear I’m wearing” (or even the “how big are you” slip up in the very same interview).

Lois Lane is a goddamn menace to society and I love her. It bums me out that so many modern DC fans don’t seem to have this understanding of the character and how she’s really been written over the years (and if I’m being honest I kinda blame Zach Snyder’s totally bland as a sack of flour portrayal of her, but I’m sure there are other factors) and thus don’t appreciate when modern Superman media stays true to this characterization. Anyways, rant over

TLDR: Bring Back Lois Lane’s Freakiness

“We want more evil female characters”

Y’all can’t even handle Lois Lane

[icharchivist]

Lucifer has only forgiven Belial for the murder though. He will still yeet Beelzebub out of the sky and be very cold to Lucilius. But Belial gets a pass because Lucifer wants to have a relationship with him

nods nods, Belial has big brother privileges. And the fact Lucifer feels guilty for putting such an inferiority complex on his brother that he blames himself for not having been able to see it (the same way he took all of the blame of Sandalphon's misbehaving for the same reasons). Adding to how he spent his whole life wanting a connection as equal with his brothers and is now able to see that the murder was pretty much the culmination of this failure to do so, Lucifer jus wants to fix things with Belial

Beelzebub doesn't have either the relationship with Lucifer, nor the tragic reasons to do what he did.

Though it's even funnier considering Beelzebub didn't have any personal stakes in killing Lucifer.

Bubs: I only did it because Belial asked me to???? Lucifer: So you enabled him and encouraged him down a self destructive path. Bubs: exc- Belial: yeah Bubs, take your responsibilities! Bubs: EXCUSE M-

(Belial is only siding with Lucifer there to bother Bubs, i would picture him being sooo annoyed to blame someone else for the actions he choses to do. But in this situation, annoying Bubs comes in priority.) (also yes Lucifer #1 Belial Apologist. Belial hates it. Which means Lucifer doubling down on that is just as much of a punishment as it is an attempt at bonding back, so it works out).

Bubs is going to regret everyday the day he crossed path with Lucilius and his clowns.